I am traveling with my Syrian lover in the Edwardian time. We are en route to Africa and I will have my first spectacular view of Victoria Falls. It is so hot that I have discarded my overskirt. I am shocking the populace by refusing to ride side-saddle. I am not missing my native England at all.

I am at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight where I have just got married, after many tantrums and difficulties from my Mama who wants me always to be near her. Since the age of four I have lived in a funereal atmosphere with no companions and little fun. If I had less of a kindly, obedient disposition I might have rebelled at my Mother's demands and at being known as Baby by my family. For goodness sake, I am nearly twenty eight.

Victoria, I think you are about twenty one if you have just got married! Check your birth certificate...

Annpan, right idea but a generation later. It was Beatrice, youngest daughter of Victoria and Albert doomed to live in the shadow of her Father's early death and to be the chosen 'help-mate' of her Mother and never allowed to forget she was not just a daughter but a subject.

Oops! "My bad!"
After living with the Duchess of Kent all those years you would think that Victoria would have had some idea what it was like to be in that position. She seemed to have been just as overbearing!

Could you please name the titles of these books for some of us "clueless" lurkers?

Shelgal - I believe the idea is for the rest of us to try to guess the books. (Unfortunately, I can't guess any so far.)

Lemonhead - Is that correct?

The only one I think I recognize is lemonhead's post: Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library?

I'm floating on the Thames with 2 friends and the dog....

Three men in a boat, Jerome K. Jerome?

I'm on a small boat on the sea between Malaysia and the Philippines. The vessel has just been boarded by Philippine rebels and I'm engaging them in friendly conversation in order to ease the tension and escape being robbed and killed.

I'm on a cargo/passenger ship heading to South Africa with a few other passengers. Unfortunately, one of them is a serial killer...

Donnemira, would that be one of the "Narrow Dog to ----" books? Would the dog be a greyhound?

Woodnymph - annpan had it right: Three Men In a Boat. I recently saw it on stage, and I recognize so much of the text!! But it's an easy book to put down, so it's taking me a while to finish it.

I'm living in Colombella Italy with my husband who is a retired pilot and we are enjoying acting as hosts in our gorgeous restored farmhouse.

Donnamira - you had my book title right. Good one.

Now I'm in North (or Norf) London with a private school boy who is doing his weekly "Social Work" visiting a small Chinese boy who needs some social interaction. It's cold, foggy and rainy outside, and the kid lives in council housing with loads of bird cages outside their front door.

The serial killer was caught, young love triumphed and the famous detective has headed home to be with his equally famous artist wife.

Now, I'm visiting a different world. One where the heads of the five prime families can control the elements. My heroine has just discovered that she is one of the primes and can control water.

rouan, sounds like an Ngaio Marsh mystery? Maybe Singing in the Shrouds? which is the only one I can remember having a serial killer.

I'm about to take command on my upgraded patrol ship, Rascal, in Familias space.......

Donnamira, you got it right on the first guess. :)

I have arrived somewhere in Ireland with my husband, to live in my childhood home, which I inherited years ago. We spent many years in Burma, but now that we are to settle in Dene's Court, I'm worried by the new responsibilities of being landlords, "it is as if were are being asked to be fully grown-up for the first time in our lives".

I'm a rather sad and disgruntled middle-aged man not long returned from five years in India. Life in England is not what I had expected, and currently, I'm a not-very-successful door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman in 1930's Brighton and living in a soul-sucking boarding house. What to do, what to do...

I'm a Regency-era heiress at my engagement dance. I am miserable, about to marry into the aristocracy (who frankly terrify me) and my husband-to-be (a duke, no less!) only offered for my hand because he felt he had compromised me.

Lemonhead , I thought it might have been Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana" because of the vacuum cleaner salesman but when I checked this story line on Google "Of Love and Hunger" also popped up! I suppose that could be cheating?
Netla, I suspect a Barbara Cartland novel or similar author! But I think that is normally too light a genre for you so it is probably a non-fiction biography. Unless you are out of your usual comfort zone? :-)

I am following the life of a young woman from a comfortable middle-class family who rails against what she sees as the small-mindedness of her provincial town and wants to study at Oxford University. By the time the necessary extra school work/examinations have been completed it is 1914 and her world and that of all her friends and family will be changed for ever.