Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Miss Blaine's Prefect & Golden Samovar
    Unavailable
    Miss Blaine's Prefect & Golden Samovar
    Unavailable
    Miss Blaine's Prefect & Golden Samovar
    Ebook302 pages5 hours

    Miss Blaine's Prefect & Golden Samovar

    By Olga Wojtas

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    "The creme de la creme of crime debuts.' Al Guthrie

    Fifty-something Shona is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, but has a deep loathing for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which she thinks gives her alma mater a bad name. Impeccably educated and an accomplished martial artist, linguist and musician, Shona is thrilled when selected by Marcia Blaine herself to travel back in time for a one-week mission in 19th-century Russia: to pair up the beautiful, shy, orphaned heiress Lidia Ivanovna with Sasha, a gorgeous young man of unexplained origins. 

    But, despite all her accomplishments and good intentions, Shona might well have got the wrong end of the stick about her mission. As the body count rises, will she discover in time just who the real villain is?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherContraband
    Release dateJan 25, 2018
    ISBN9781912235018
    Unavailable
    Miss Blaine's Prefect & Golden Samovar
    Author

    Olga Wojtas

    Olga Wojtas is an unconventional – and very witty – writer of postmodern crime fiction whose surrealist humour has been compared to the likes of PG Wodehouse, Jasper Fforde and the Marx Brothers. Her debut novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar, has been published in the UK and US to great critical acclaim – being longlisted for the inaugural Comedy Women in Print Prize 2019, shortlisted for a CrimeFest Award, and named as one of the best mysteries and thrillers of the year by Kirkus. A journalist for more than 30 years, Olga was Scottish editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement before she began adding creative writing to her portfolio. She won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2015 and has had numerous short stories and several novellas published. Olga's second novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Vampire Menace, was published in 2020. She lives in Edinburgh, where she once attended James Gillespie’s High School – the model for Marcia Blaine School for Girls, which appears in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the novel that inspired the Miss Blaine’s Prefect series.

    Read more from Olga Wojtas

    Related to Miss Blaine's Prefect & Golden Samovar

    Related ebooks

    Crime Thriller For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2024

      I was trying to look a little less like myselfand more like other humans, humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.Purchased in another life, when I had a husband and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,the skort even had its own little poc

      6 min read

    • Article

      Estella’s Fate

      May 17, 2023

      Estella’s Fate
      7 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      1. Here there’s no rainy season.Sun scalds my forehead,yet the pool is empty. Beside it,a toppled table, its glass surface shattered.The asphalt is too hot for bare feet. 2. Far away: white hillocksand white dunes under a deepblue sky. Swirling winds

      5 min read

    • Article

      Estella’s Fate

      May 17, 2023

      Estella’s Fate
      7 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Dec 1, 2023

      Table Talk
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Periodic Stranger

      Mar 2, 2017

      My roots are in a hilltop village west of Matera, where rabbit and boar run riot in the fields. Figs, apricots, and pears hang in heavy clusters, at eye-level and within easy reach. There, the local girls are famous for their calves, made firm and st

      21 min read

    • Article

      The Periodic Stranger: When exile becomes home.

      Dec 12, 2013

      My roots are in a hilltop village west of Matera, where rabbit and boar run riot in the fields. Figs, apricots, and pears hang in heavy clusters, at eye-level and within easy reach. There, the local girls are famous for their calves, made firm and st

      21 min read

    • Article

      A Brief Ghostly Encounter…

      Nov 30, 2020

      A Brief Ghostly Encounter…
      7 min read

    • Article

      My Interiors Life: Weaned On The Small Screen

      Nov 25, 2021

      FOR ME, IT WAS ALL DOWN TO what I saw on the box (which was a lot) — and this extended too to the arenas of action: a fantastic littering of such beautiful and extraordinary interiors, not one of which had I ever set foot in, nor even so much as glim

      9 min read

    • Article

      Maxim Osipov

      Mar 9, 2021

      Vnukovo is the smallest, most intimate of Moscow’s airports, and when your flight arrives—especially if it arrives on Saturday at eleven at night—you don’t expect to see much of a crowd. Stamps in the passport, baggage claim—quick and easy. “Where ar

      14 min read

    • Article

      The Man I Should Have Married

      Dec 29, 2019

      The Man I Should Have Married
      11 min read

    • Article

      Our Lady Of The Rockies

      Aug 7, 2023

      Our Lady Of The Rockies
      13 min read

    • Article

      Yara And The Witch Queen

      Oct 1, 2019

      I knew the dangers of witchcraft. My parents had told me about the time before I was born, when magic plagued our desert kingdom of Bahati. Untrained witch doctors trying to cure warts ended up paralyzing their patients or turning them into crocodile

      10 min read

    • Article

      Guided To Grainger’s Grave

      May 19, 2022

      SEND FORUM SUBMISSIONS TO THE EDITOR: DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM Last night I found a smudge of lipstick on my Covid mask. I don’t drink or suffer memory lapses and have no recollection of any intimate encounter that might have created this crimson bl

      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler

      Jun 25, 2019

      A excerpt from Butler's debut coming-of-age novel, set in an appealingly rich world with quirky, flawed characters and a dramatic oceanfront landscape. The post ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      La Otra Historia

      Jun 30, 2022

      La Otra Historia
      14 min read

    • Article

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Air You Breathe

      Aug 20, 2018

      The Air You Breathe
      23 min read

    • Article

      My True Ghost Story

      Feb 9, 2022

      Last night I found a smudge of lipstick on my COVID mask. I don’t drink or suffer memory lapses and have no recollection of any intimate encounter that might have created this crimson blemish. In my previous – very popular – column in this periodical

      5 min read

    • Article

      Sleepwalking In Venice

      Mar 15, 2018

      Two kinds of imagination: the strong, the promiscuous. —Leopardi Watching a boneless nymph’shalf-hearted resurrectionfrom a spout in the pavementover and over; catching a glimpseof the source of my exhaustion,as if my gaze all this time had lent musc

      3 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Nov 17, 2022

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Love Token

      Apr 1, 2021

      Love Token
      5 min read

    • Article

      L’amour vrai

      Oct 27, 2022

      L’amour vrai
      5 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Hello, Grim Reaper

      Dec 15, 2021

      She was a babe. A fully paid-up, card-carrying babe. There was absolutely no doubt about it, and she was heading straight for me. She was almost sprinting towards me across the recently reimagined lobby of Claridge’s. She looked up, her scarlet-anoin

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Escape Of Koravitch

      Sep 30, 2019

      The Escape Of Koravitch
      16 min read

    • Article

      Worship On High

      Oct 18, 2021

      Worship On High
      5 min read

    Reviews for Miss Blaine's Prefect & Golden Samovar

    3.5/5

    22 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 1/5
      It's been a long time since I've wanted to throw a book against the wall. Normally I've stopped reading and chosen a different book long before that feeling arises. I just don't have time to waste on books that infuriate me. But I did this time.It might be because I was in the mood for a book that featured a little time travel, but something tells me that wasn't really it. How Shona got from present-day Edinburgh to Tzarist Russia was never explained, and how she conducted herself was one of the things that infuriated me the most. She was given absolutely no instructions when she arrived. She had a house and a servant at her disposal, a wardrobe full of appropriate attire as well as a pair of Doc Martins and a drawer filled with "multiway bras." She was told, more or less, that she would know what she was supposed to do when she saw it. I've been told that it's unladylike for a female to snort, but I did it anyway. More than once. Shona proceeds to flounce about from place to place, spraying 21st-century opinions about like a machine gun. She quickly decides that a beautiful young heiress recently returned from exile needs to be married off to a beautiful young man and immediately begins working toward that goal. In almost no time at all, it seems that a tidal wave of elderly, filthy rich women begin falling down staircases and dying. Yes indeed, every time Shona and the beautiful young heiress visit, an old lady dies. Within a few pages, the identity of the killer is obvious, yet Shona never considers it for a second because... it's inconceivable that anyone who's so beautiful could be a homicidal maniac. (I think it's this assumption of hers that infuriated me the most.)It didn't take me long to realize that I was undoubtedly supposed to read this book as a farce. That in itself is dangerous because farce is pretty hit-or-miss with me. Would my reaction have been more favorable if I had knowledge of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie? Perhaps, but I'm not in the mood to take the time to find out. The real question is: why did I keep reading all the way to the bitter end if the book infuriated me? I did want to find out if Shona ever got any sort of message from headquarters, or if she ever learned what year it was there in Russia. (No and No.) The more I think about it, the more it occurs to me that I was actually enjoying the way the author was saying what she was saying-- and she does have a wonderful sense of humor. There you have it. It's all Olga Wojtas' fault.The final question is: Do I ever want to meet Shona McGonagle again?Not on your life.
    • 5/5
      Delightfully witty and thoroughly entertaining! A new author to certainly take note of.
    • 4/5
      Rating: 3.8* of fiveShona McMonagle, whose life as a librarian is spent attempting to expunge [The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie] from the world's...okay, from Scotland's...make that Edinburgh's shelves for its heinous, unforgivable insults to her Revered Preceptress Marcia Blaine of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls. You will not be surprised to know that Miss Blaine, though more than 274 years old, accepts this tribute to herself and her educational precepts, her centuries-old vow to make all her girls the crème de la crème in all their fields of endeavor, by inviting (in a more commanding than inviting way) Miss McMonagle to undertake a delicate mission for her. That mission will involve time travel to Tsarist St. Petersburg at some point between the Decembrist Revolution of 1825 and the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. (Running joke that gets forgotten a lot. You'll see.)What can one say to a 274-year-old that hasn't been said many times? Shona accepts the brief and, hey prestwick...I mean presto!...after some thoroughly unpleasant pains she awakes in a peculiarly unsurprised and complaisant version of the capital of paranoid, isolationist, status-obsessed Imperial Russia, where she is Princess Shona Fergusovna. Or so she decides, being rather forced to take a title as her own despite her egalitarian and feminist principles. She does not, however, go so far as to pooh-pooh her Russian home from home's accoutrements: I wandered back into the brightness of the salon and saw at the far end of the room my second samovar of the evening, vaster than the first, big enough to hold boiling water for the largest tea party I could host. It was golden, the pinnacle of the craftsman's art. It had whorls, it had curlicues, it had scallops, it had convolutions, it had involutions, it had dimples, it had excrescences, it had gibbosity, it had indentations, it had crenellations—it was utterly spectacular. And most magnificent of all was the design of the spigot. It was shaped like a ferocious eagle, its wings outstretched, its beak—I was about to run my fingers down it when I backed off. Its beak was razor sharp. I couldn't help tutting. It was an accident waiting to happen. I would have to remember this was an era before health and safety, and treat the samovar with extreme caution.Charming litany. I quite like Princess Fergusovna. I also like her complete willingness to lust ever so discreetly after handsome young buck Sasha, whose beauty she first appreciates from beneath a sofa:The young man's voice was light and attractive, the sort that you could listen to for hours on the radio. I wondered whether he had a face for radio as well.He most assuredly does NOT have a face for radio, in that he is the protégé (pronounced by Shona, then all those who hear her, in the manner français, this reliably sends the Russians into fits of giggles for slightly obvious reasons) of a dreadful, lustful, stout, snobbish, evil-hearted countess. Her designs on his corpus delectable are strictly dishonorable, as are those of every other woman in St. Petersburg:"I shall be waiting for you tomorrow afternoon," {a randy old widow} was saying."And I shall be counting the minutes until then," Sasha replied.He was such a sweet guy. When he married Lidia, she would have to be careful that he didn't exhaust himself doing good works, and left some time for her.You see, Miss Blaine wants Shona to infiltrate society's upper echelons to make sure beautiful, naive heiress Lidia gets her proper mate in this life. So Miss Blaine, through means undisclosed, gives Shona a house, a serf, and a lot of money. No one in St. Petersburg questions this apparition, it seems, accepting her story of being a Scottish peeress without question. And Shona, for her part, is a late-middle-aged matronly sort with peerless language and ninja skills, preternaturally acute hearing, and not one shred of common sense. Who cares who Lidia marries, especially a twenty-first-century feminist? Why go to all this trouble for someone who simply isn't that interesting, except that there needs to be a plot? And Shona's highly lusty crush on Sasha means she sees him as the proper mate for delectable little Lidia (who couldn't possible care less about him) in spite of a zillion unsubtle clues that she's got that wrong. (When she does get the right man for Lidia all set up, it's pretty much anticlimactic.)But the journey's the thing, not the destination, right? I found trotting alongside Shona as she falls flat on her assumptions, picks herself up and carries on assuming (despite her new-found fondness for the aperçu "Never assume, it makes an ass of (yo)u and me" about which ::facepalm::) everything is about value of face as well as face value, to be a chuckle.Not, however, a major one. This is a first novel and it is clear that the author hasn't quite got her hands around the neck of this clue-dropping thing just yet. She's quick with the witticism, johnny-on-the-spot with the dry double entendre, a dab hand with the mildly amusing misunderstanding and/or malapropism. All are inherent in slamming a bog-standard fiftysomething Scottish lady librarian (how Shona would *hate* that description!) into a culture much more patriarchal than the present Western one, and even though she endows Shona with amazing skills though without any solid explanation for them, the joke of the fish out of water works pretty well. For a while. By the end of the 250-page book I was really, really ready for the story to be wrapped up, and the couples (plural) to embark on their Russian lives, and Shona to get the heck back home. The throwaway bit at the very end about the blue paint made me guffaw, and sent me off away from the read with a much happier frame of mind that I would have been in otherwise.Will I read the next one, assuming there is one? Maybe. I might. I could be persuaded. I will not, however, be waiting with bated breath for it to arrive. There are other, more deft, whimsical mysteries for me to read while the wait goes on.