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Word: "By barren cliff and scaur and splintered stair..."

1. A precipitous bank; a cliff; the ridge of a hill.

MENTAL BREAKDOWN [3/3]
 032. Robert Lowell - The Fat Man in the Mirror
 033. Eugene Lee-Hamilton - Ipsissimus
 034. John Peale Bishop - Ode
 035. George D. Painter - Encounters with a Doppelganger
 036. Anonymous - A Case
 037. Thom Gunn - The Monster
 038. Vincent O'Sullivan - Brain Fever
 039. Elizabeth Jennings - The Shot

Wiki: "Simultaneously, I recognized it for the ancient Egyptian god Set, or Seth, the Destroyer of Souls."

Wiki: " Kurukulla on a clamshell!"

MENTAL BREAKDOWN [2/3]
 024. Robert Graves - Nobody
 025. John Wain - The Bad Thing
 026. John Peale Bishop - Perspectives are Precipices
 027. Trumbull Stickney - Mt Lykaion
 028. Edgar Allan Poe - from The Bells
 029. Thomas Kyd - from The Spanish Tragedy
 030. Alfred, Lord Tennyson - from Maud
 031. Robert Browning - Madhouse Cells: II

MENTAL BREAKDOWN [1/3]
 015. Robert Graves - The Halls of Bedlam
 016. Robert Graves - The Castle
 017. John Webster - from The Duchess of Malfi
 018. Howard Nemerov - Brainstorm
 019. Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven
 020. David Gascoyne - from Night Thoughts
 021. Elizabeth Jennings - A Fear
 022. Walter de la Mare - Drugged
 023. William Empson - Let it go

ILLNESS [2/2]
 008. Sylvia Plath - In Plaster
 009. Andrew Marvell - A Dialogue between the Soul and Body
 010. Elizabeth Craigmyle - Chained Tigers
 011. Alan Dugan - Against France: On the Algerian Pleasures of Entity
 012. John Davidson - Insomnia
 013. John Marston - from The Malcontent
 014. Eugene Lee-Hamilton - The Mandolin

ILLNESS [1/2]
 001. William Blake - from An Island in the Moon
 002. Sylvia Plath - Surgeon at 2 a.m.
 003. Francis King - Patient
 004. W.D. Snodgrass - Operation
 005. W.E. Henley - Operation
 006. Elizabeth Jennings - Pain
 007. Francis King - Sick

Wiki: "... Pym didn’t publish another novel until 1977, when her nomination as the most underrated novelist of the century in the TLS sparked a revival of interest in her work."

03. Dead Man's Mirror, 3 stars. Pompous rich man summons Poirot to his estate with a vague mention of family matters, gets himself murdered before Poirot can satisfy his curiosity.
04. Triangle at Rhodes, 3 stars. Poirot's dream of a quiet off-season vacation is spoiled by a messy love affair being played out in public.

Wiki: "She’s fond of the fleshpots and she likes money."

1. A pot in which flesh is boiled. Chiefly in phrase the flesh-pots of Egypt (see Exod. xvi. 3), or with allusion to that phrase: Luxuries or advantages regarded with regret or envy.

Hence flesh-pottery (nonce-wd.), high living, self-indulgence.

01. Murder in the Mews, 3 stars. The scene of a locked room suicide seems tampered with, an unsavory character last seen with the young woman is the obvious suspect.
02. The Incredible Theft, 3 stars. Top secret military plans are stolen while a smug lady spy is conveniently present, seemingly the entire household was creeping around that night.

Wiki: "Below it the ground sloped gently away, permitting a magnificent view over the Sussex weald."

Phrase: "No, he wasn’t. Bit hairy at the heel. Definitely not out of the top drawer."

3. hairy at (about, in, round) the heel(s) (fetlocks): deficient in breeding.

14. Mon Plaisir, 2 stars. Complacent couple in a dead relationship, woman gets restless enough to makes changes.
15. Birthmark, 4 stars. Woman regrets removing her port wine stain, resents her husband for loving her without ever seeing it.
16. How to Tell Stories to Children, 3 stars. Lonely ex-mistress is enmeshed in a bizarre intense family unit, comes to loves the child of her friends more than anything else.

10. The Boy from Lam Kien, 2 stars. Woman can't go outside, gives a strange kid an apartment tour.
11. Making Love in 2003, 1 star. Disturbed teacher's assistant molests a mentally handicapped teenaged boy.
12. Ten True Things, 2 stars. Lonely secretary obsesses over her the wife of her boss, lightly stalks her to sewing class.
13. The Moves, 2 stars. Dad teaches daughter his fingerbanging skills.

Word: "You were a noddle, Anne, not just to have looked up at the right minute. If only you had, you could live like a duchess for the rest of your life on blackmail."

3. The head as the seat of the mind or thought. (Colloq., and usually with playful or contemptuous suggestion of dullness or emptiness.)

Word: "Even the louche Amis recalled the episode with a slight horror."

1. Oblique, not straightforward. Also, dubious, shifty, disreputable.

05. The Sister, 3 stars. Lonely old man gets catfished & date raped by a coworker.
06. This Person, 2 stars. Finding comfort in disappointing people.
07. It Was Romance, 2 stars. Sad women attend a seminar to improve their love lives.
08. Something That Needs Nothing, 2 stars. Girls do sex work, break up, do more sex/carpentry work.
09. I Kiss a Door, 1 star. Girl finds out her friend is sleeping with her own father.

Wiki: "... before the high altar in the church he had built."

Wiki: "... he was highly content where he was, restoring the old mission church of St Xavier del Bac, which he declared to be the most beautiful church on the continent, though it had been neglected for more than two hundred years."

Hmm: "He was tall, gaunt and ill-formed, with a snake-like neck, terminating in a small, bony head. Under his close-clipped hair this repellent head showed a number of thick ridges, as if the skull joinings were overgrown by layers of superfluous bone. With its small, rudimentary ears, this head had a positively malignant look."

Swan Boy - Branson Reese

Wiki: "Consequently he slept late the next morning — did not awaken until six o’clock, when he heard the Angelus ringing."

Wiki: "My new study, dear brother, as I write, is full of the delicious fragrance of the piñón logs burning in my fireplace."

01. The Shared Patio, 2 stars. Creepy neighbor is overly invested in patio fairness, takes a problematic nap.
02. The Swim Team, 2 stars. Teaching elderly people to swim on the floor with their face in a bowl of water.
03. Majesty, 2 stars. Woman has an erotic dream, has phone sex with her sister.
04. The Man on the Stairs, 2 stars. Miserable woman in a miserable relationship hears someone break into their house.

Wiki: "When you say the word 'Korean', some people automatically think of Jackie Chan’s South Korean hapkido instructor, Grandmaster Kim Jin Pal; I think of Vincent."

01. Sanctuary, 3 stars. Dying man tries to ask the vicar's wife for help.
06. Miss Marple Tells a Story, 3 stars. Marple solves the crime after hearing a brief summary of events.
07. The Dressmaker's Doll, 2 stars. Creepy doll makes herself at home at a seamstress', they chuck it out the window.
09. Greenshaw’s Folly, 3 stars. Rich old lady tricks her housekeeper out of wages, gets killed for the money.

02. Strange Jest, 3 stars. [2021]
03. Tape-Measure Murder, 4 stars. [2021]
04. The Case of the Caretaker, 3 stars. [2021]
05. The Case of the Perfect Maid, 4 stars. [2021]
08. In A Glass Darkly, 2 stars. [2021]

Wiki: "Writing to his mother that everyone at Oxford was either “rich and vapid or poor and vapid,” Henry Yorke, with his first novel already published the previous fall under the name Henry Green, left without his degree to work instead on the shop floor of the Birmingham manufacturer of bathroom plumbing and brewery equipment owned by his father."

DNF for now.