2020 Reading Challenge: Deal Me In

Deal Me In!

The object of the challenge is to read 52 short stories over the course of the year. As I already had several anthologies of short stories that have been languishing on my bookshelves for a while now, I hoped that signing up would give me the impetus I needed to actually sit down and read them!

I started with ‘The Mistletoe Murders And Other Stories’ by PD James, then my local library had another crime anthology (‘Mystery Tour’, by the Crime Writers’ Association), which took me to a solid 31 books. I remembered that I bought a copy of ‘Rainbow Romances’, a charity anthology to benefit the National AIDS Trust at Pride last year, and together with all the short stories collected in ‘Fresh Ink’ from my local library I was sitting at exactly 52.

(This was after forgetting how many cards are in a standard deck of cards and going on to add some extra short stories from Cecilia Ahern’s ‘Roar’ to my list before realising. Oops.)

I assigned them all a suit and number so now I’ll just pick a card at random and try a new story!

I like the idea of getting to randomise what I’m reading a little bit as it’s nice to think I might try something new. I will say that I might have inadvertently spoiled that, a bit, by having all my stories come from a relatively small number of anthologies with what looks like quite a lot of murder. I will see how it goes and I wanted to read these anthologies anyway because I thought I would be interested in these stories, but even before I begin I’m wondering if maybe I should have spread my net a little wider and made my list include some different genres or different time periods.

Anyway! Without further ado, my list of short stories:

Hearts

1. The Mistletoe Murder by PD James
2. A Very Commonplace Murder by PD James
3. The Boxdale Inheritance by PD James
4. The Twelve Clues of Christmas by PD James
5. The Queen of Mystery by Ann Cleeves
6. Return To The Lake by Anna Mazzola
7. You’ll Be Dead By Dawn by C L Taylor
8. The Last Supper by Carol Anne Davis
9. The White Goddess by Cath Staincliff
10. High Flyer by Chris Simms
11. Accounting For Murder by Christine Poulson
12. Travel Is Dangerous by Ed James
13. Take The Money and Run? By Gordon Brown

Spades

1. No Way Back by J M Hewitt
2. Mystery Tour by Judith Cutler
3. Wife On Tour by Julia Crouch
4. The Naked Lady of Prague by Kate Ellis
5. Snowbird by Kate Rhodes
6. The Repentance Wood by Martin Edwards
7. A Mouthful of Restaurant by Martine Bailey
8. Cruising For A Killing by Maxim Jakubowski
9. Three On A Trail by Michael Stanley
10. The Riddle of The Humming Bee by Paul Charles
11. Writer’s Block by Paul Gitsham
12. Lady Luck by Peter Lovesey
13. A Postcard From Iceland by Ragnar Jónasson

Diamonds

1. A Clever Evil by Sarah Rayne
2. The Prodigy by Shawn Reilly Simmons
3. A Slight Change of Plan by Susi Holliday
4. Bombay Brigadoon by Vaseem Khan
5. Matricide and Ice Cream by William Burton McCormick
6. The Spoils by William Ryan
7. Eraser Tattoo by Jason Reynolds
8. Meet Cute by Malinda Lo
9. Don’t Pass Me By by Eric Gansworth
10. Be Cool For Once by Aminah Mae Safi
11. Tags by Walter Dean Myers
12. Why I Learned To Cook by Sara Farizan
13. A Stranger At The Bochinche by Daniel José Older

Clubs

1. A Boy’s Duty by Sharon G. Flake
2. One Voice: A Something In Between Story by Melissa De La Cruz
3. Paladin/Samurai by Gene Luen Yang
4. Catch, Pull, Drive by Schuyler Bailar
5. Super Human by Nicola Yoon
6. Stripped Bare by G.R. Lyons
7. Broken Defences by G. R. Lyons
8. Online Casanova by Michael Ferrante
9. Far Water by Amir Lane
10. Something To Hold On To by Carmilla Voiez
11. Bedsitter Christmas by Melanie Quinlan
12. Until my Dying Day by Sarah Beth James
13. Selia by Marolyn Krasner

Photo by Amanda Jones on Unsplash