Tuesday Tomorrow
Celebrating All Creatures Great and Small: For the Love of the Yorkshire Dales by All Creatures Great and Small
Published by: Michael O'Mara Books
Publication Date: December 17th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"The official visual celebration of All Creatures Great and Small and its incredible setting: the Yorkshire Dales.
Featuring over 200 spectacular shots from all four series, plus an in-depth look at the characters and real-life inspiration for the show, this book tells the fascinating story of the program's main character: the Yorkshire Dales.
The official All Creatures Great and Small companion offers a glimpse behind the scenes of the award-winning show, with beautiful photography throughout."
I mean, we're days away from Christmas and this is the perfect gift for those who love a cozy heartwarming tale every Sunday night... Also I'm personally hoping for lots of pictures of Samuel West in those delicious brown boots Siegfried occasionally wears...
Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: December 17th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 288 Pages
To Buy
The official patter:
"Detective Galileo, Keigo Higashino's best loved character from The Devotion of Suspect X, returns in a case where hidden history, and an impossible crime, are linked by nearly invisible threads in surprising ways.
The body of a young man is found floating in Tokyo Bay. But his death was no accident - Ryota Uetsuji was shot. He'd been reported missing the week before by his live-in girlfriend Sonoka Shimauchi, but when detectives from the Homicide Squad go to interview her, she is nowhere to be found. She's taken time off from work, clothes and effects are missing from the apartment she shared. And when the detectives learn that she was the victim of domestic abuse, they presume that she was the killer. But her alibi is airtight - she was hours away in Kyoto when Ryota disappeared, forcing Detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi to restart their investigation.
But if Sonoko didn't kill her abusive lover, then who did? A thin thread of association leads them to their old consultant, brilliant physicist Manabu Yukawa, known in the department as "Detective Galileo." With Sonoko still missing, the detectives investigate other threads of association - an eccentric artist, who was Sonoko's mother figure after her own single mother passed; and an older woman who is the owner of a hostess club. And how is Sonoko continuing to stay one step ahead of the police searching for her? It's up to Galileo to find the nearly hidden threads of history and coincidence that connect the people around the bloody murder- which, surprisingly, connect to his own traumatic past - to unravel not merely the facts of the crime but the helix that ties them all together."
And if the person you're buying a Christmas present for isn't into the cozier side of life, how about some murder? It's not the holidays without murder, in my mind...
The original All Creatures Great and Small has always held a special place in my family's heart. My grandfather, who has to be held partially responsible for turning me into an Anglophile by having the rule that every Sunday when we visited the TV had to remain on AND remain on PBS, had the complete series of books by James Herriot that I ran off with. As for my father, let's put it this way, when one of my friends announced she was marrying a rural Canadian vet his first question was had they watched All Creatures Great and Small together yet. I have a sneaking suspicion that my parents didn't get an invite to the wedding because my friend knew the gift would be the complete DVD set of All Creatures Great and Small followed by incessant pestering if they had watched it yet. Therefore when the new series was announced it was greeted with incredulity in my house. How could they remake such a classic!?! My Dad was actually a little flabbergasted that I wanted to watch it when it started on Masterpiece. I told him my reasoning. First, it had aired in Britain earlier and all my friends there who had the same fanatical devotion to the original show that my father has fell in love with it. Secondly, it would be a return to something comforting and secure on a Sunday night, which I think we can all agree we need right now. On January tenth the first episode, "You've Got to Dream," aired and I KNEW my father was hooked by the fact he was copiously sobbing at the complicated labor of a cow. I was more shocked than anything though when after a few episodes he said he thinks that Samuel West is a better Siegfried Farnon than Robert Hardy. This is as close as it gets to blasphemy in my house. But the show is magnificent. It's a breath of fresh air, and those gorgeous Yorkshire landscapes! THIS is what Masterpiece Theatre has always been about. Tapping into the perfect dream of England, with a little trouble and strife along the way, but a happy ending to cap it off. Nicholas Ralph who plays James Herriot says he hopes next season that his character and Helen go on their first date after her engagement with Hugh was broken in the Christmas special. Personally a true happy ending to me will be their marriage! Or I will be willing to substitute Samuel West wearing those gorgeous knee-high leather boots in every episode.
