To my faithful readers,

This time next week, I will be in London. The internship with an antiquarian book dealer that I alluded to in May (see "A Very Bookish Holiday") came through, and so I'll be spending the next four weeks living an Anglo-bibliophile's dream. Don't hate me.

As you might expect, one of the most immediate concerns about this trip was planning my reading. Because I'll be staying for a month, suitcase space is limited. I realize it's not as if there will be no books to be had in London, but the thought of being held captive for seven hours, plus, in an airplane and airport makes me want to be sure the books I have with me don't suck.

How'd I decide on the short list? I took some sage advice from Alexandra and read the first five or so pages of each of these to make sure it's a book I could commit to.

So here goes:

ABC for Book Collectors, 8th ed., by John Carter and Nicholas Barker. Required reading for anyone contemplating the antiquarian book trade, from either a buyer's or seller's point of view. Fascinating reading for anyone with even a passing interest in the book as object. Sample entry: "BIBLIOMANIA. Literally, a madness for books. A bibliomaniac is a book-collector with a slightly wild look in his eye." But there's lots of serious information to be had from ABC, too, such as the difference between a book that is "cased" and one that is "bound." Details, such as a "paste-down endpaper," are cleverly illustrated on the paste-down endpaper itself.

The Defense, by Vladimir Nabokov. On my list for quite some time and seconded by a reader who claims allegiance to one of my very favorite books of all time, The Queen's Gambit. (See "Mate in Two," April 12.) It's Nabokov and it's chess. What's not to like?

Ex-Libris, by Ross King. What mystery could be more appropriate than one that features a London bookseller who's called upon to recover a most unusual library destroyed during the English Civil War. The action takes place in the 1660s, and King proved himself (at least in my eyes) as an historical novelist of merit with the excellent Domino, He's also an art historian and author of Brunelleschi's Dome and, more recently, The Judgment of Paris. Ex-Libris promises to be a literary feast of adventure and intellectualism.

In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden. Not my usual sort of pick, this one was recommended to me by Alexandra, who says she gulped it down in the better part of an afternoon. In short, it's the story of Philippa Talbot, a woman who leaves a successful career and social life to become a Benedictine nun. The secondhand copy I picked up had stuck in its pages a postcard dated 1969 sent from London and featuring the changing of the Guard at Buckhingham palace. Don't you love literary coincidence?

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. I couldn't go to London without a little bit of philosophy. While I think it's a safe bet that everyone knows something about the Tao Te Ching, few can say with authority they know much about its author, a court archivist and purported founder of Taoism. The most interesting part of the Penguin edition that I have is the introduction, which explores the various legends of the elusive Lao Tzu.

I'm not going so far as to say this list is final. Among those that may still make the final cut: Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Jill, a novel by the poet Philip Larkin. And then, would any trip to London be complete without Agatha Christie? The Forsyte Saga? I'm sure I'll sort it all out before departure time.

But this is not farewell! I hope to have time to drop you all a transatlantic post or two from London.

Until then,
Happy reading.

"Truth is the daughter of time."

That's the telling little epigram that opens Josephine Tey's (the nom de plume of playwright Elizabeth MacKintosh) most intriguing, if not most popular, novel, The Daughter of Time. And history buffs, this one's for you.

The book intrigues me because it's a mystery, but not one in the traditional sense. The story unfolds not in a stately manor house during the reading of a will, on the shadowy streets of Glasgow or on a luxury train speeding to the Orient. Rather this mystery unravels in the monastic cell of a hospital and almost exclusively in the mind of Inspector Alan Grant (a recurring hero in several of Tey's detective novels). What's more, the crime appears to have occurred some five hundred years earlier.

Grant is flat on his back and on a painstakingly boring mend when a friend from the theatre brings him some prints as a sort of cheering up. One of those prints is a portrait of England's Richard III (b. 1452, d. 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth).

Grant figures he knows something about faces, but this one catches him up short. Suddenly Grant's on an obsessive endeavor to find out what made Richard III change from a loyal brother and honorable commander (and one of the richest and most powerful noblemen in England) to a child murderer and pretender to the throne. Problem is, Grant can't get up from his hospital bed.

I realize a premise like this promises to put to sleep all but the most earnest readers of British mysteries -- but I'm telling you, The Daughter of Time is unputdownable. Perhaps it's because Grant is immobile and therefore reliant on his interactions with others. Or perhaps it's because the book is really a paperchase through history and the historical record.

In either case, Tey does an excellent job of exposing history in the making. It becomes painfully obvious how so much of what the modern world accepts as historical fact is colored by perspective and allegiance. If you think you know Richard III, think again. Perhaps you'll even close this book believing no one, really, is exactly as they seem.

Happy reading,
Elizabeth Frengel