–American novelist Chuck Etheridge has published earlier this year a new book entitled Chagford Revisited. Here’s the description from the publisher:
Marker, an American Anglophile software engineer, has purchased the home Evelyn Waugh stayed in while writing Brideshead Revisited. He soon discovers the house is a money pit and quickly runs through his life’s savings. To save his home, he and his friends from the Castrated Goat, his local pub, start staging 1930’s style murder mystery role-play weekends for guests in Marker’s home. This attracts the attention of cheapskate BBC producers, who seize upon the low-cost opportunity to produce a lucrative TV series. Marker soon runs afoul of the Lord Mayor’s wife, the patrons of the Tortured Terrier, a supercilious rival pub, and the law. After causing an international diplomatic incident, getting arrested, and surviving a septuagenarian sex scandal, he succeeds in making Chagford the singles destination in the UK. But is this the Chagford he came to England to find?
Etheridge, who lives in Corpus Christi, is currently featured in a podcast interview on TheAuthorsShow.com. The book is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and ebook editions and several reader reviews are posted.
–Daisy Waugh’s new book Phone for the Fish Knives (see previous post) has recently been reviewed by Daisy Goodwin in the Catholic Herald. After a summary of the book, the review concludes:
This is a delightful soufflé of a book, puffed up and bursting with wit and attitude but lacking any solid underpinnings. Frankly that is a relief after reading so many thrillers which start with the mutilated corpses of young girls, and go downhill from there; or the psychological noir books in which women are gaslighted by horrible men. Phone For the Fish Knives may not be psychologically profound, but it is witty, well written and determinedly entertaining. In a year of gloom and dashed hopes, really who could ask for more?
This is the perfect book for the staycation, amusing enough to distract you from the driving rain or family you can’t get away from, but not so complicated that you can’t follow it after a couple of much needed gin and tonics. This book made me laugh out loud, and frankly that’s all I am looking for right now.
The book is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and audio editions. Thanks to Dave Lull for sending the review.
