Any other Ashtown Burials fans excited for the long awaited release of the final chapters of The Silent Bells? Such a lovely email to find in my inbox this spring morning.   Now to see if I can also get my missing chapter. I think I might finish the books I'm currently reading and then do a read through of the series to get ready for new chapters.  

This past week I read the Old California series by Stephen Bly, another series I had not read for ages. I was going to read Cheney and Shiloh: the Inheritance series (by Gilbert Morris and Lynn Morris) next, but then one of my sisters mention something about this series and I realized it had been an awfully long time since I read it. The first book, Red Dove of Monterey, has the best plot and characters in the series, but I like all three books.

I think I'll read through Cheney and Shiloh: the Inheritance series before probably moving on to Ashtown Burials by N.D. Wilson.

@waggawerewolf27, I have read Great Expectations before (it was my first Dickens), but I don't remember Madgewick with any amount of detail, I'm afraid.

The French fairy tales sound fun, @Col-Klink! I hope the semi-translations turn out well.

Glad to hear you're enjoying Persuasion, @Lucy85! Are you hoping to eventually read all of Austen's works?

I was a bit shocked by the email, @SnowAngel - I knew there was supposed to be news about it at some point, but I'd forgotten since it'd been so long since that last email. I hope you can get the missing chapter without too much trouble (I had to get one I was missing too); maybe once the new chapters start coming in consistently, I'll actually read the older ones too - or maybe I'll wait until I have the last one, just to be sure it's actually happening. XD
You also finally nudged me to do a reread of the first five Love Comes Softly books. While I see some of the rough patches and imperfections better now as an adult, I also saw a number of things I appreciated that I didn't notice as a younger reader. I had a lot of fun overall and had to remind myself I didn't actually want to read the last three. Instead, I did a reread of A Woman Named Damaris (oh boy, a mixed bag but there's still something about it) and am eying a reread of A Gown of Spanish Lace (which I suspect will be similar) and perhaps a handful of other ones if I can track them down (I don't have access any more to all the ones I did when I was younger).

 Interestingly enough with the recent discussion, I recently read a collection of P.G. Wodehouse's letters and am currently working on a collection of Jane Austen's letters. The Wodehouse letters were well-edited and had a lot of helpful explanatory and biographical notes and were thus pretty easy to read. The Austen letters seem to have been edited for a more academic reader, or at least one who has a much more detail understanding of her life, family, friends, acquaintances, residences, etc. Ah well.

Posted by: @snowangel

Any other Ashtown Burials fans excited for the long awaited release of the final chapters of The Silent Bells? Such a lovely email to find in my inbox this spring morning.

I just filled out my form!!! Now I need to go dig out my previous newspapers to make sure I have them all. I'm not entirely sure where they even are.  

  @Valiant Archer

I have read Great Expectations before (it was my first Dickens), but I don't remember Magwitch with any amount of detail, I'm afraid.

Abel Magwitch was a major character from Great Expectations, set in about 1829.  Though he was a frightening character, Pip was kind to him and after serving time in New South Wales, he came back under another name, Provis, to repay Pip's kindness.

Wikipedia says: Compeyson argued that his escape was due to being terrorized by Magwitch. Consequently, his punishment was light, whereas Magwitch was put in irons, retried, and deported to New South Wales for life. Magwitch had a number of jobs in Australia, including that of a sheep farmer and stock breeder, and became rich. He never forgot Pip's kindness to him and decided to do something for the boy, in part because he reminded him of his lost daughter, who would have been about the same age as Pip. 

Abel Magwitch wasn't the only underworld character Charles Dickens put into his books, when, in Oliver Twist, Fearless Fagin appears as a secondary character, along with the Artful Dodger. 

According to Wikipedia, Fagin's character might be based on the criminal Ikey Solomon, who was a fence at the centre of a highly publicised arrest, escape, recapture, and trial.

This real-life transported convict to Van Diemen's Land in 1828 AD, has also been written about extensively by others, in particular, in Bryce Courtenay's Potato factory. Sometimes truth is more entertaining than fiction.