Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh

I read it pretty quickly -- it was light and funny.

I sent this one off to bookcrossing.

Holy Fools -- Joanne Harris

Holy Fools -- really enjoyed this. I picked it up while I was on holiday in Turkey (I left a couple of my own books in return). I like the way Joanne Harris builds up the atmosphere using the weather. And I love how previously harmless characters suddenly become threatening. And how do you set an unreliable person up as a reliable narrator? LaMerle tells the truth because he is so proud of his scheme and is a showman.

Troll Mill -- Katherine Langrish

Another brilliant installment set three years after the first.

Kersten thrusts her baby into Peer's arms and throws herself into the sea, leaving Peer with doubts about her husband, his friend Bjorn. Worse is to come -- there are rumours that the Grimmerson's mill is running again by night. But the millers who so badly mistreated Peer in the first book are trolls, so who is operating the mill, and what is the strange gritty flour that they are milling?

Nothing much has changed from the first book -- Peer is still worried about everything; and wishes Hilde would take more notice of him, while Hilde is determined to keep him at arm's-length in case her feelings for him result in a family and no more adventures.

I'm going to pass this and the first book on to my cousins.

Troll Mill (Troll, book 2) at Fantastic Fiction

Spinsters Abroad -- Dea Birkett

An examination of what drove Victorian lady explorers -- and many of them were driven, trying to escape from their own illness, or that of their families.

Most of them seem to have died wretched deaths -- alone and frustrated by their infirmity.