Oh I was so in the mood for something light and fun – a wee tad heartwarming maybe, but not super mushy or romantic.  I found it – and it was the next book up (Jan, 2018) on the discussion schedule at the BookGroup List .

Arthur Pepper of somewhere north of London has been widowed for about a year and is finally going through his late wife’s things when he finds a beautiful gold charm bracelet he’d never seen before.

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The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper
by Phaedra Patrick
 2017 / 336 pages
read by James Langton – 8h 58m
rating:   7  (for fun) / contemp light fiction
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This find stirs some kind of serious curiosity in him and he examines it carefully noticing some tiny engraving on the elephant charm.  As it turns out the engraving is a single word followed by what appears to be a phone number.  He calls it and is connected to a jeweler in India and yes, they had known Miriam many years prior.   What a shock! Miriam had never said anything about any time spent in India.

This leads Arthur to some travel in order to checking out the sources of the other charms which include a tiger,  a thimble, a painter’s palette, a ring and a heart.  In doing so he has some adventures and meets a number of curious but mostly lovely people.  He also remembers Miriam and grieves.

Meanwhile,  one of the women in his own neighborhood bothers him, as well as a number of other people, with cooking and looking after.   She has her own son who is a bit lost.  The two of them help Arthur in ways – they all become friends.

But even Arthur’s own children are kind of lost to him  – his son is in Australia with his own young family and his daughter,  single again and childless,  is recovering from a messy divorce.

Arthur started out only wanting to know more about his late wife’s past but ends up with a huge treasure of his own.  It’s a feel-good book.