#Oscar de Muriel

[storms-of-lastweek]

Wanted to practice horses today, what better way to do that than paint the lovely Rye and Phillipa!

[pastlivesandpurplepuppets]

That’s your problem, boy. You think. You assume. You give your senses more credit than they deserve, and then think we’re all idiots for not seeing things through the same glass as you.

~ Oscar de Muriel, A Mask of Shadows

[27morayplace]

So, I finally have my hands on ‘The Sign of The Devil’. A bittersweet moment, as I have been a fan of the Frey & McGray series since ‘The Strings of Murder’ when I first saw it in Sainburys when it came out, and has now replaced another series, which shall remain nameless *cough*Miss Peregrines*cough* after a terrible, terrible film adaptation. I’m going to reread all the books now (now I’ve finished the last book I was reading, Museum of Extraodrinary Things, if anyone’s curious, it was pretty good). I’m going to go into the little mental notes I’ve made while reading when I finish each book on here. 

[withsomejam]

The Sign of the Devil, Oscar de Muriel

The Sign of the Devil, Oscar de Muriel

5/5 stars! A wonderfully-thrilling final book to the Frey and McGray series, The Sign of the Devil is full to the brim of twists and turns with family secrets revealed and bombshells dropped mercilessly throughout. It was everything I had hoped it would be and so much more. Multiple grave-robberies? Murdered asylum patients? The sign of the devil reappearing everywhere? Nothing is adding up in…

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1896 – Birth of Kathleen Barry at 8 Fleet Street, in Dublin.

Kathleen Barry Moloney was the eldest of seven children. Her parents Thomas and Mary (née Dowling) and her aunt Judith ran a prosperous dairy that included an eighty-six acre holding at Tombeagh, Hacketstown, Co Carlow and a retail outlet below the family home in Fleet Street. When Thomas Barry died in 1908 the Barry family found themselves split between their homes in Dublin and at Tombeagh. The…

[doreyg]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Frey & McGray Series - Oscar de Muriel Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Ian Frey/Adolphus "Nine-Nails" McGray Characters: Ian Frey, Adolphus "Nine-Nails" McGray Additional Tags: Mid-Book 7, Carriage Sex, Rimming, Anal Sex, First Time, Infidelity (Sort Of), Kissing Summary:

“I need to relax, for her sake if nothing else. I need something to take the edge off, before I fucking explode.”

“That may be sensible, at current-” I started soothingly, pleased that he finally realised his endless forceful push would only send him sooner to the grave, but then noticed his eyes upon me. His dark eyes, his demanding eyes, his downright hot eyes lingering in a way that they hadn’t since I’d left Edinburgh. “Are you serious?”

[pinkgrapefloyd]

my new fic "and I wouldn't marry me either" is online! Frey / McGray, 9k, T rating. May I offer you some "crack treated seriously" in these trying times?

but Stella, you say... Stella, I'm not even in this fandom!

To this, I say: do you like Cobra Kai for its unhinged energy and sexually charged arguments? do you like The X Files for its codependent skeptic/believer dynamic? do you like the Holmes canon for its investigations in a late 19th century setting?

Congratulations! You're now an honorary member of the Frey & McGray fandom! Go read about two men homoerotically bullying each other and getting engaged while viciously arguing!

(THIS IS A TINY FANDOM. IT WOULD MEAN THE WORLD TO ME IF YOU CHECKED IT OUT. THANK YOU. FOREHEAD SMOOCH IF UR INTO THAT.) ❤️

[bookquest2024]

100 Books to Read Before I Die: Quest Order

The Lord Of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Under The Net by Iris Murdoch

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

A Passage to India by EM Forster

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

1984 by George Orwell

White Noise by Don DeLillo

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Oscar And Lucinda by Peter Carey

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré

Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Ulysses by James Joyce

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Are You There, God? It’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Herzog by Saul Bellow

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul

A Dance to The Music of Time by Anthony Powell

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Little Women by Louisa M Alcott

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

Watchmen by Alan Moore

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Money by Martin Amis

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

[rockislandadultreads]

Read-Alike Friday: The Poisoner’s Ring by Kelley Armstrong 

A Murder in Time by Julie McElwain

Beautiful and brilliant, Kendra Donovan is a rising star at the FBI. Yet her path to professional success hits a speed bump during a disastrous raid where half her team is murdered, a mole in the FBI is uncovered and she herself is severely wounded. As soon as she recovers, she goes rogue and travels to England to assassinate the man responsible for the deaths of her teammates.

While fleeing from an unexpected assassin herself, Kendra escapes into a stairwell that promises sanctuary but when she stumbles out again, she is in the same place - Aldrich Castle - but in a different time: 1815, to be exact.

Mistaken for a lady's maid hired to help with weekend guests, Kendra is forced to quickly adapt to the time period until she can figure out how she got there; and, more importantly, how to get back home. However, after the body of a girl is found on the extensive grounds of the county estate, she starts to feel there's some purpose to her bizarre circumstances. Stripped of her twenty-first century tools, Kendra must use her wits alone in order to unmask a cunning madman.

This is the first volume in the “Kendra Donovan” series.

The Strings of Murder by Oscar de Muriel

1888: a violinist is brutally murdered in his Edinburgh home. Fearing a national panic over a copycat Jack the Ripper, Scotland Yard send Inspector Ian Frey. Frey reports to Detective "Nine-Nails" McGray, local legend and exact opposite of the foppish English Inspector. McGray’s tragic past has driven him to superstition, but even Frey must admit that this case seems beyond belief...

There was no way in or out of the locked music studio. And there are black magic symbols on the floor. The dead man’s maid swears there were three musicians playing before the murder. And the suspects all talk of a cursed violin once played by the Devil himself. Inspector Frey has always been a man of reason—but the longer this investigation goes on, the more his grasp on reason seems to be slipping...

This is the first volume in the “Frey & McGray” series.

The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma

This rollicking page-turner with a cast of real and imagined literary characters and cunning intertwined plots stars a skeptical H.G. Wells as a time-traveling investigator.

Characters real and imaginary come vividly to life in this whimsical triple play of intertwined plots, in which a skeptical H. G. Wells is called upon to investigate purported incidents of time travel and to save lives and literary classics, including Dracula and The Time Machine, from being wiped from existence.

What happens if we change history?

This is the first volume in the “Trilogía Victoriana” series.

The House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O’Donnell

London, 1893: high up in a house on a dark, snowy night, a lone seamstress stands by a window. So begins the swirling, serpentine world of Paraic O’Donnell’s Victorian-inspired mystery, the story of a city cloaked in shadow, but burning with questions: why does the seamstress jump from the window? Why is a cryptic message stitched into her skin? And how is she connected to a rash of missing girls, all of whom seem to have disappeared under similar circumstances?

On the case is Inspector Cutter, a detective as sharp and committed to his work as he is wryly hilarious. Gideon Bliss, a Cambridge dropout in love with one of the missing girls, stumbles into a role as Cutter’s sidekick. And clever young journalist Octavia Hillingdon sees the case as a chance to tell a story that matters—despite her employer’s preference that she stick to a women’s society column. As Inspector Cutter peels back the mystery layer by layer, he leads them all, at last, to the secrets that lie hidden at the house on Vesper Sands.

[hydrangeawise]

Because something something end of the year something, I felt like doing a small post on things I really enjoyed this year, in no particular order:

Sasaki to Miyano (anime): made my heart bloom like, idk, a meadow in spring or something. I've adored the manga for years, and the anime transported everything in this story so well!

Aurora - The Gods We Can Touch (music): uh, yeah. This album was released early in the year and I haven't stopped listening to it since.

Sabikui Bisco (anime): tackled me into the ground, has excellent worldbuilding & character dynamics, made me cry.

Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road (Light Novel): probably the thing that got me back into reading physical books again, swallowed me whole, made me fall in love with many unhinged women (I'm still waiting on my pre-ordered copy of the fifth volume, I can be patient though).

Little Witch in the Woods (video game): very charming story so far! I'm a bit miffed that almost all my progress got deleted when I updated to the Beta version, so I'll have to redo a lot of things when I get playing again the next time, but still, very charming.

Frey & McGray series by Oscar de Muriel (books): I'm currently reading the 4th book. It's all very enjoyable, the character dynamics are intriguing, I enjoy the stories very much, and I'm looking forward to slowly making my way through the rest of the books.

Lycoris Recoil (anime): I still am very much hip deep in this. Takina still has my whole heart, thank you very much. I'm looking forward to the light novel & the manga. (I did write a lot of posts screeching about the girls).

Hello from the Hallowoods (podcast): I adore this podcast. With my whole heart. I'm slowly making my way through the episodes because sometimes I get easily overwhelmed when I'm listening to it, but - I adore it; so much!

Kitchen for Singles (series of short videos on YT): pure comfort to watch - I also started trying some of the recipes (and I may have adopted the tomato sauce permanently into my staple recipes).

The Cat Proposed (manga): uh, yeah. So this manga probably kind of preserved my sanity? In a "I found it when I was in a pretty not-good place and it got me back on solid ground" way, I suppose (maybe I'm being a bit melodramatic, but I truly feel like it did save some part of me). Charming story, charming characters, I have so so so much love for every single bit of it.

And that's it, I believe. This is what my cheese brain held on to for the last 12 months.

[some-geekiness-for-your-day]

Great Dark Academia Books!!!!

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (one of my personal favorites)

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio (its like the secret history but for theater kids)

One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

The Dead Poets Society by N.H. Kleinbaum (another great one)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (one that makes you think)

The Maidens by Alex Michealides

Rebecca by Daphne de Muir (an amazing suspense novel)

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

[wulfs-book-reviews]

The Darker Arts by Oscar de Muriel My rating: 1 of 5 stars I read one book at a time, always. I simply cannot just “switch” from one book to another anymore. So, if I hit a rotten tomato I tend to actually read less. I’m typing this on my iPhone. A minute ago, I found myself wondering and thinking, “I usually read at a time like this.” - while I was playing a game. Then it began to dawn on me: ‘How much must you despise a book to fantasise about writing its review on GoodReads while actively trying to avoid reading said book?!‘ The answer in a nutshell: Very much, and the reason is that pretty much everything in this book is bland, wrong and unbalanced. Let’s start with the supernatural aspects: While I’m in no way superstitious, don’t believe in anything supernatural, I actually greatly enjoyed the ambivalence of the previous instalments in this series. For McGray pretty much everything was at least supernaturally influenced whereas Frey never really believed in anything like that. The resulting strains between both and the different approaches made things interesting. It made for a nice balance. Even better: De Muriel kept the ambivalence and we never knew for certain if there were supernatural elements or not. We, as readers, could make up our minds ourselves. In “Darker Arts”, though, Frey and his no-nonsense philosophy clearly dominate the entire book. McGray basically only features as an unhinged clown who has a good idea at times but mostly raves or broods, sometimes attacking people. Somehow, among complicated family trees, goldmines in Africa and lots of spiteful people the story meanders along, seemingly aimlessly and no progress is being made. At first, our heroes don’t worry but time passes and nothing really seems to be moving anywhere. Lots of false leads, a travesty of a trial and until the sensationalist ending during which Frey miraculously conceives the solution to the crime in a most unbelievable way, de Muriel obviously tries hard to bore us to death. The solution to the crime is so complicated that de Muriel actually has to resort to having Frey spell everything out to his superior and, thus, us. If an author has to resort to such desperate measures, they’d better gone back and revised their plot. Plus: Frey is basically constantly bemoaning his uncle’s untimely death during the previous book. The previous book, in fact, overshadows this one as it is being alluded to all the time. So often actually that I became annoyed about it. Yes, I enjoyed “The Loch of the Dead” but it’s not like it would garner de Muriel Nobel the Nobel Prize in Literature… “Darker Arts” reads like de Muriel has spent all his good ideas. If it wasn’t for certain developments at the very end, I’d say this might be a farewell to the series – McGray receives grim personal news, Frey is impaired by the events of “The Loch of the Dead”, another important character leaves the scene… Ultimately, considering the bland story, the bad writing and the fact that this book made me read less, I think that’s it for me – Oscar de Muriel just lost a reader for good. Or, to say it with McGray’s constantly repeated words: “Och nae…” View all my reviews

[isabelle201180]

Sang d’encre, Oscar de Muriel

https://collectifpolar.blog/2023/12/27/sang-dencre-oscar-de-muriel/

[rosewolfin]

GETTING TO KNOW YOU — answer the questions below, then tag nine others that you would like to know better.

TAGGED BY : @xiidoctor ♥ TAGGING : whoever wants to steal this from me!

𝐅𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐑(𝐒): red! but I also like dark blue.

𝐅𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐑(𝐒): sweet. then spicy!

𝐅𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐂: my spotify wrapped for the last few years says it all: rock. but I do like other genres, I just always ends up listening to the same songs on repeat.

𝐅𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐄(𝐒): the doctor who tv movie. iron man (anyone of the trilogy but especially the first one).

𝐅𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒: doctor who, a classic to say on this blog, I know! death in paradise. bbc's ghosts. call the midwife. for book series I have to say the Frey and McGray series by Oscar de Muriel is pretty good but I really haven't found MY book series after the HP drama.

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆: hayloft II by mother mother.

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒: doctor who, since I am currently rewatching!

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐄: I don't actually remember. probably one of those typical christmas movies because it was on TV.

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆: nothing really. I need to pick up a book.

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆: doctor who.

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐍: cleaning up my blog(s) and drafts!

[atletasudando]

Atractiva nómina para el 21k y el maratón de Medellín

Fuente: RunningColombia El Maratón Medellín 2023 de este 3 de septiembre será la carrera de las cifras récord, para la prueba que llega a su edición 29, ya que competirán 18.600 atletas, se tendrá la Expo Runners más grande y se contará con el lote de atletas élite más numeroso de su historia. En total serán más de 50 atletas profesionales en las distancias de los 42 y los 21 kilómetros. El grupo lo encabeza Jeison Suárez, del Equipo Élite Asics, campeón del año pasado en la distancia de maratón, en la que su compañero Franklin Téllez terminó segundo, y también estará en la línea de partida. Jeisson impuso el mejor tiempo de la carrera (2:15:53), desde que se llevó a cabo la distancia de los 42 km por primera vez, en 2012, en la prueba que nació en 1994 y que desde 1996 comenzó a disputarse como media maratón. Jeison Suárez es el actual campeón y recordista del Maratón Medellín (2:15:53) En total, para la XXIX edición de la carrera medellinense se inscribieron más de 18.600 atletas, de los cuales 3.500 serán para los 42 km, más de 8.000 para los 21 km, 5.000 para 10 km y 1.500 para 5 km. Y en cuanto a los atletas élite habrá un lote de más de 20 corredores y más de 30 para los 21 kilómetros, lo que garantiza un gran espectáculo en estas dos distancias, que partirán a las 5:30 de la mañana de este domingo 3 de septiembre. Nómina élite maratón varones: Número Atleta Representación 1 Jeison Suárez Colombia – Equipo Élite Asics 2 Emmanuel Oliaulo Kenia 3 Dickson Kimeli Cheruiyot Kenia 4 Paul Kipkemoi Kipkorir Kenia 5 Franklin Téllez Colombia – Equipo Élite Asics 6 Carlos Mario Patiño Colombia – Caldas 7 Víctor Hugo Ocampo Colombia – Antioquia 8 Sergio Rodríguez Colombia – Caldas 9 Edison Guanarán Colombia 10 Yesid Orjuela Colombia – Bogotá 20 Rito Antonio López Colombia – Antioquia 41 Jonathan Camilo Castillo Colombia Nómina élite maratón damas: Número Atleta Representación 11 Margarita Núñez Perú 12 Yuliana Navarro México 13 Sandra Marcela Rosas Colombia – Boyacá 14 Ana Milena Orjuela Colombia – Bogotá 15 Yolanda Fernández Colombia – Bogotá 16 Caroline Chepkirui Tuigong Kenia 17 Francy Jerop Kenia 18 Mildrey Johana Echavarría Colombia 19 Aideth Anaya Colombia – Antioquia Nómina élite media maratón varones: Número Atleta Representación 33 Joseph Kiprono Kiptum Kenia 34 Crhistian Vásconez Ecuador 35 José Luis Rojas Perú 36 Fabián Jimmy Gómez Ecuador 37 John Tello Colombia – Arroz Zulia 38 David Gómez Colombia – Porvenir 39 Cristian Moreno Colombia – Equipo Élite asics 40 Javier Peña Colombia – Fuerzas Armadas 42 Santiago Zerda Colombia – Bogotá 43 Oscar Quitián Colombia 44 Oscar Acosta Colombia 45 Rodrigo Jaramillo Colombia 46 Robinson Reinoso Colombia 48 Edinson Bernal Colombia – Fuerzas Armadas 49 Yeisson Parra Colombia 50 Miguel Amador Colombia – Bogotá 51 Juan Camilo González Colombia 52 Juan Camilo Morales Colombia 53 Robinson Ordóñez Colombia 54 Helber Zúñiga Colombia 55 Yony Erazo Colombia Nómina élite media maratón damas: Número Atleta Representación 23 Muriel Coneo Colombia – Porvenir 24 Diana Landi Ecuador 25 Carolina Tabares Colombia – Antioquia 26 Leidy Lozano Colombia – Marathon 27 Jhoselyn Camargo Bolivia 28 Rocío Marisol Cántara Perú 29 Alexandra Aldana Colombia – Boyacá 30 Daniela Montero Colombia 31 Sonia Catalina López Colombia 32 Sandra Milena Gutiérrez Colombia Read the full article

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1896 – Birth of Kathleen Barry at 8 Fleet Street, in Dublin.

#OTD in 1896 – Birth of Kathleen Barry at 8 Fleet Street, in Dublin.

Kathleen Barry Moloney was the eldest of seven children. Her parents Thomas and Mary (née Dowling) and her aunt Judith ran a prosperous dairy that included an eighty-six acre holding at Tombeagh, Hacketstown, Co Carlow and a retail outlet below the family home in Fleet Street. When Thomas Barry died in 1908 the Barry family found themselves split between their homes in Dublin and at Tombeagh. The…