Blog hop for International Authors' Day!

I'm participating in a Blog Hop for International Author's Day, so look out below for comments on favourite authors, links to the organiser, and a giveaway!

In addition to the giveaway (which is real, papery books) here's a code for a free ebook on Smashwords - HU35S. The book is The Tender Herb: A Murder in Mughal India

[ http://www.b00kr3vi3ws.in/ ] Debdetta Dasgupta Sahay, the organiser - check out the blog!
 
We've been asked to write a bit about our favourite authors - but picking an absolute favourite is completely impossible, of course. I've cheated a little and picked two, one mainstream and one indie, both crime writers as that's my own chosen genre.

The mainstream author is Kate Atkinson. Yes, she's a literary author too, and I love her debut novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum and others, but I particularly relish her series featuring Jackson Brodie, starting with Case Histories. Set in various cities and in between, these books are full of wit both in the sense of humour and the sense of quick intelligence. The plots are intricately woven, festooned with tricks and surprises and things that turn round on themselves and meet you coming back, and instead of feeling stupid you simply laugh with delight at what it's done to you and your expectations (all right, so you might occasionally kick yourself. But Reggie is a man's name!). Though she doesn't give, to me at least, a strong sense of physical appearances (when the BBC serialised Case Histories I had none of my usual 'But that doesn't look like ...!'), her characters are immensely powerful and memorable. And her titles are great - Started Early, Took my Dog (and the dog is brilliant, too).

The indie author I've chosen is my current favourite, Cecilia Peartree. Cecilia (apparently a pen name) sets her cosy crime novels in a fictional village on the coast of Fife, in Scotland, which she populates with all kinds of difficult people who are just a stage worse, and funnier, than when you meet them in real life. The heroine is the dashing Amaryllis Peebles, retired from her career as a secret agent, who has palled up with Christopher, a dull archivist whose life was very quiet (apart from the challenges of his family) until Amaryllis chose to join his worthy but inactive local improvement group. Along with a small gang of pensioners, they tackle crime in their community with stoicism and vim. The characters develop from book to book, and the plots frequently make me laugh out loud. They're also pretty clearly labelled so you know which one to read first!

Hm, now I look at these I wonder if what I'm really interested in is humour, not crime!

Now,  the giveaway is for three signed paperback copies (tricky to sign e-books) of Death of an Officer's Lady, and I'm doing it via Goodreads giveaways. It's open to some surprising countries apart from the usual ones, so if you're interested take a look and see if you qualify - it's very annoying when you just happen to live in the wrong country, isn't it?

Linky code below: