Weekend Blog Hops: 20 October 2017

Off the book topic - What is your favorite scary movie?
I'm not a big horror fan in films or in books. I loved them at age 13 or so, but went off them by about age 16. However, as with many things, there are exceptions to that rule, and one movie I enjoy, and which is technically horror, is Crimson Peak. I adore all Guillermo del Toro's work. Add in Tom Hiddleston and sumptuous period costumes and you have a winner! I can watch that film again and again.




Opening sentence:
The Emporium opens with the first frost of winter.







From page 56:
By the flick of a wrist, the deft twirl of a brush and a misting of lacquer, the faces of the soldiers became known.




 
My Current Read 
The Toy Makers
Robert Dinsdale

The Emporium opens with the first frost of winter. It is the same every year. Across the city, when children wake to see ferns of white stretched across their windows, or walk to school to hear ice crackling underfoot, the whispers begin: the Emporium is open!

It is 1917, and London has spent years in the shadow of the First World War. In the heart of Mayfair, though, there is a place of hope. A place where children’s dreams can come true, where the impossible becomes possible – that place is Papa Jack’s Toy Emporium.

For years Papa Jack has created and sold his famous magical toys: hobby horses, patchwork dogs and bears that seem alive, toy boxes bigger on the inside than out, ‘instant trees’ that sprout from boxes, tin soldiers that can fight battles on their own. Now his sons, Kaspar and Emil, are just old enough to join the family trade. Into this family comes a young Cathy Wray – homeless and vulnerable. The Emporium takes her in, makes her one of its own. But Cathy is about to discover that while all toy shops are places of wonder, only one is truly magical...