@Jo, I'm actually very familiar with the FotF radio theatre drama of The Secret Garden; it tends to be rarer for me to be more familiar with an adaptation than the source material, but it was that case here. I will be curious to hear what you think of the Alicia Appleman book - I'm not familiar with her, but it sounds like a worthy account to read about.

I got my chapter 22 last week, @SnowAngel, but I didn't look at it closely enough to see the "24". I also haven't see anything about new hardcovers, but that doesn't sound good. :[]
Oh, yes, that can be a problem with Christie! I've generally liked the Tommy & Tuppence books (though, I think there's one I haven't read still) - even when the mysteries aren't necessarily my favourites, they're great characters.
Alas about the books you left behind at the bookstore (hurrah for Richard Scarry!)! I hope they'll still be there the next time you go.
I know I've read one (or maybe two?) of the The Man from U.N.C.L.E. novels - I think it may've been The Doomsday Affair as I had a similar reaction to it. Hopefully the next one(s) will be better!
Glad you're enjoying your current nonfiction read, even if it's been slow.

I recently read The Dragon and the Raven by G. A. Henty; it was much shorter than The Cat of Bubastes but felt similarly sloggish and suffered from bouncing between a historical narrative and telling a separate story. But I think it was even worse than Cat in that the protagonist was the best at everything and always succeeded, even to the point of being instrumental in saving England and Paris multiple times - he should've left a mark on the historical record if he was real. He also sure went after Danish ships and men for booty an awful lot for someone who claimed he only fought to defend England.   And then there was

Spoiler

Spoiler

telling Freda that of course she would become a Christian and abandon her "barbarous" gods and people when they got married, though she rightly immediately told him that his God seemed good, but she'd like to know more about Him before she decided to follow Him.

@narnian-in-the-north yes I think I would agree about not recommending a steady diet of Henty. Or maybe it’s more that if one does have a steady diet of Henty in one’s fiction there ought to be at least some side dishes of biographies of the real people in those stories and/or general history focused on them if that makes sense? That said, if anyone has recommendations for books that have to do with border troubles between Scotland and England, and/or border troubles with Wales and England, I’m all ears!

@valiantarcher I finished The Mysterious Affair at Styles and enjoyed it! I will be listening to the next Poirot at some point soon, but my next audiobook is going to be Duncan’s War by Douglas Bond. I’ve read it before and did enjoy it, but for some reason that I don’t remember I didn’t read the next ones in the Crown and Covenant series, and I think I need a refresher before I do.

Well I may have been as much as 2/3 of the way through The Dragon’s Tooth before I really got to the “can’t put it down” point. And once I did I plowed though it, and The Drowned Vault, and Empire of Bones. So now I’m on to The Silent Bells! I’m trying very hard to pace myself with just two chapters a day but I’m already ready for Chapter 17. I’ve received 22 chapters but it seems like I’m due to get another soon?

@narnian78 I really like The Secret Garden and hope you enjoy as well! I have no green thumb but it always made me want a garden. Especially, it must be said, a secret one.  There are some children’s books I’ve reread as an adult that haven’t held up to my memory, but quite a few are either just as good or I find I appreciate them more as an adult. I’ll also happily read ones I’ve never read before if they look interesting. For a fairly recent example, a long time ago I read The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, but never knew there were sequels (this was before I knew to search the library catalogue for more by this author, or maybe before I could do that without help? I don’t know for sure) and last year I reread The Saturdays and read the sequels for the first time. I absolutely loved them.

@jo I will be looking forward to seeing what you think of Alicia: My Story. It sounds right up my alley and it turns out I have easy access to an audiobook of it.  

 @snowangel

New covers? :[] I’ve mostly avoided looking at any news on The Order of Brendan even though I did join the forum because I’ve been worried about spoilers before I catch up. Now I’m worried.

I’m new to Christie in general but I always get excited when I see anything about Tommy and Tuppence. I’ve read them all. They’re such fun! One of these days I’ll look into the tv series.    

@valiantarcher That’s funny, you do have at least one of the same objections to The Dragon and the Raven that my little brother did (the part about how if he was real he should’ve left a mark on the historical record)! I don’t know why it didn’t bother me that he was doing things that he would’ve gotten into history books for if he’d been real, but I guess I’d gotten used to it, though this book is possibly the most egregious example of that (or at least of the ones I’ve read). And now I’ve made myself curious as to the publication order of his books and what his earlier books look like vs. his later ones. If this was an earlier one, I might say he grew as an author and realized he didn’t have to have his character save the city or an important battle in order to save the day. 

I still have only vague memories of it and probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much now as I did at the time I read it but I’m still mildly curious, if only to see what I did see in it at the time. I probably won’t try though, just because I’m still stuck on Both Sides the Border. There are some very engaging scenes but I admit I do get rather tired of it when the protagonist gets to be the best at everything and is universally praised and so modest etc. etc.

The going after Danish ships and also what you referred to in the spoiler could be seen as examples of how the character isn’t perfect, but it is unfortunately hard to say whether that was intentional on the part of the author.    Freda’s response leads me to say it could be, though I actually can’t remember how I took it when I read it.

Given that this is one I probably would’ve said is a decent one to read to get an idea of what his books are like, I think you can say you’ve given Henty a fair shot by now. Sorry they were more of a slog, but I’m glad you got to read something more enjoyable next! What was the collection of mystery stories?

@lady-merian I haven't read the entire series but The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett is an excellent historical fiction series set during the Tudor era that features the conflict between England and Scotland, as well as what was happening in the rest of Europe at the time. I've seen the series compared to Game of Thrones, which I can't verify since I neither read that book series nor watched the television show, but The Lymond Chronicles are very violent, however I feel it is probably historically accurate. The series is not for the faint of heart though.

I can highly recommend the books written by Ellis Peters/Edith Pargeter for the Wales/England border wars. They aren't as violent as those of Dorothy Dunnett but are just as enjoyable. 

@Lady-Merian, I'm glad you enjoyed The Mysterious Affair at Styles and look forward to reading more! Ooh, I hope you enjoy Duncan's War (and the rest of the trilogy). I read them years ago and have fond memories, but I haven't reread, partially because I have a bit of a suspicion that it won't live up quite to my memories.    
You've made great progress on The Silent Bells then! Chapter 23 should be arriving in the mailbox soon, I would think. That is funny that your brother had the same objections I did; I don't think that the narrative treated Edmund's flaws as flaws, though. :/ According to a list I just found, The Dragon and the Raven is book #16 while Both Sides of the Border is more like #66? So not one of the first books he wrote, but earlier in the grand scheme of things. Sounds like Henty didn't entirely learn his lesson. The mystery stories were a collection ostensibly collected by Alfred Hitchcock called Let It All Bleed Out.
I feel like I should know some books about the border wars, but am drawing a blank this moment.

I settled on the book of Czech folktales. I do feel like they were a bit of a mixed bag, but there were some quite fun ones too. I've now moved onto a Wodehouse book for something slightly different.

I'm going to have to do a lot more reading if i want to match my goal from last year, let alone beat it, but i made a bit of progress over the past couple weeks by reading the first four Murderbot Diaries (and accidentally skipped #5 and jumped ahead to #6, whoops).

TMD is a series i've heard a bit about here and there on the Internet, finally learning more about the premise with the recent Apple TV adaptation. It's about a security robot, the eponymous Murderbot, who has gained social anxiety along with free will, and would rather watch soap operas than deal with humans. 

Overall, i'd give it 3/5 or 6.5-7/10. It's occasionally funny (though more action-y and less comedic than the above premise might suggest), the robot characters are interesting (the humans.... not so much), and as it's mainly a series of novellas (i think #5 is novel-length?) they're quick and easy to get through. That said, it's annoyingly light on the world-building; for example, it's mentioned that some humans are augmented, but how, what, and why are completely unexplained, even six books in. The plots aren't very imaginative (#3 in particular feels very much like a variant on #1), and the characters (especially the humans, and especially-especially the villains) are poorly developed. Also, there's a fair amount of, erhm, modern values referenced in the background, though the books share Murderbot's total disinterest in romance. There's also a fair amount of bad language.

I'm going to see if my local library has the fifth book, and probably read #7 at least -- i'm not sure if there are more, tbh. #6 felt like it took a couple steps in the right direction, and the plot of #5 sounds more promising than the first four, so maybe it will improve more. It's one of those series that i could go on and on for paragraphs about what i didn't like and what i don't think works, but there's something that keeps me reading. If nothing else, it's fun to complain about.

Do the people here like the Amish novels by Beverly Lewis and Wanda Brunstetter?  I have been reading some of them lately, and they seem quite good.  I am now enjoying The Rose Trilogy, which has the conflicts of people who have left the Amish lifestyle and have returned to it. Beverly Lewis spoke in our area a few years ago, and I met her in person.  I haven’t read much of Wanda Brunstetter, but I am interested in reading more of her books sometime in the future. The other Lewis may be better known here, but Beverly Lewis’ books are certainly worth reading. 🙂

There is one Australian book that two of my daughters had to study at school but which we all enjoyed immensely. That is Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow, which was later filmed. If you want to see a film reasonably faithful to its literary source on Netflix, it will be available until August 31 on Netflix after which it will be deleted. This is time travel back & forth from the poor & rather sleazy Rocks area of Circular Quay of 1873 and the later Sydney of 1973, with both the Opera House & the Harbour Bridge in place. The church featured in the story is the old Garrison Church, the oldest in the colony. If you do choose to give this film or book a go, I'd dearly like to hear what you think about it.