Verity Reads Books (lots of them)

It’s the first Wednesday of the month and so here I am with some quick reviews of some books I read last month that I haven’t already told you about. I had a lot of books that I didn’t like last month, but I’ve tried to moderate myself and give you some stuff I actually did like!

Laura Clark is Away from Her Desk by Helen Russell*

Laura Clark is a 40-something HR manager, married to a golf-obsessd husband with a 19 year-old daughter who is drifting towards the end of a gap year with no idea what comes next and a mother who constantly calls on her to ask for things or complain. But one day Laura doesn’t turn up for work, disappears from her home and stops answering her phone. Gradually the people in Laura’s life find their lives descending into chaos without her there to perform the invisible labour they had all taken for granted. This is told from the point of view of one of Laura’s work colleagues, her husband, her daughter and her best friend and as you read you build a picture of a deeply unappreciated woman moving through her life without anyone doing anything for her. The collapse of everyone else’s lives is humourous to read, but actually I found this suprisingly bleak – the idea that Laura had been slogging on through all of their grunt work without anyone noticing is chilling. Luckily I thought the ending pulled it around or I might have been really quite depressed by the end!

In Dog We Trust by Beth Kendrick

Jocelyn is a town person and her mother has always told her to stay away from summer people – except for providing them with their clean laundry as part of the family business. But when she is named legal guardian for a pack of pedigree dogs she finds herself thrust into the rich side of town. But along with the dogs comes their owner’s estranged son who is determined to overturn the will…This is the fifth book in this series and I’ve read the first two and really enjoyed them and skipped a few to get to this one and it’s fine – but it’s not as good as the first two. I appreciated the subtle commentary on class but I did want to give some of the characters a bit of a shake at times. I think if I hadn’t enjoyed the previous two so much I would have enjoyed this more – I was just holding it to a higher standard!

When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between by Ruth Jones and James Corden

This is a retrospective on the beloved TV series written by its creators. If you like the show, you’ll enjoy the insider information in this – I really liked learning how the show evolved from its original form into the show that we all loved. James Corden has a bad rap (rep?) as a person these days but Gavin and Stacey is a masterpiece and his rapport with Ruth is charming. If you like the show you’ll like this, but if you like the behind the scenes of how things get made, this is also interesting.

Book of the Week, mystery

Book of the Week: The Final Problem

October 6, 2026October 6, 2026 veritywilde

Yes, yes, yes, I know. I’m doing a book I finished on Monday again. But I have reasons: I’m carrying on two themes – it’s Sherlock Holmes related following on from the new Lady Sherlock coming out last week and it’s also translated – this time from Spanish. So there’s method to my madness.

It’s 1960 and in Greece bad weather has stranded tourists on the island of Utakos where they are staying in the only hotel. Then one of them is found dead in a beach cabana. It looks like suicide but one of the guests Basil Ormond – an out of work actor who is best known for playing Sherlock Holmes in a series of movies – thinks that it may be murder. The police can’t get to the island because of the weather and the other guests depute him to investigate because of his experience playing the detective on the big screen. Can he find the killer before the police arrive – or before the killer strikes again?

This is billed as inspired by Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes and I think that’s pretty accurate. It’s got a clever mystery, an interesting group of characters and it’s got a really nice style about it – I don’t know how much of that is the translator Frances Riddle vs Arturo Pérez-Reverte himself but it makes for a good reading experience. I didn’t have the killer worked out – which is also good – and once it was revealed I thought it was really neatly done.

Pérez-Reverte is a long established author in Spanish – I’ve seen him on the book shelves when I’ve been browsing on holidays in Spain – and upon looking on amazon it looks like an other series of his about a Spanish D’Artagnan type may also be available in English but I’ve certainly never seen them in shops the way I have this one over the last few months. If you like a classic crime novel this is worth a look, and I enjoyed it enough that I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more of his books – and if this does well may be we will get some more of them in English.

It’s on offer for 99p on Kindle and Kobo at the moment, and as I said it should be fairly easy to find in the shops too.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 28 – October 4

October 5, 2026October 5, 2026 veritywilde

Considering how big the finished list is, I really shouldn’t have added a book to the still reading pile, and yet I did. I got distracted and forgot about it until Sunday. And I’m in a bit of a situation for tomorrow too because I did that thing again last week. When will I learn? (Ed: never!) Anyway, let’s see if I can fix that this week coming…

Read:

A Game of Cat and Killer by Jiro Akagawa*

Unnatural Death by Dorothy L Sayers

Murder on the Cornish Train by J M Hall*

Alan Opts Out by Courtney Maum*

The Voices of the Dead by Nicola Upson*

Puzzles of the Parish edited by Martin Edwards

The Gentleman’s Book of Vice by Jess Everlee*

Take Six Girls by Laura Thompson

A Murder at Midnight by Ellie Alexander

Started:

Julia at the Drive-In by Rainbow Rowell

Pride, Prejudice and Peril by Jessica Bull*

Still reading:

The Final Problem by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Two books and one ebook

Bonus picture: as I started the week by picking a book I finished on Monday as my BotW I’m carrying on the cat theme with a picture of this kitty, spotted in my neighbourhood.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books, stats

Reading Stats: September 2026

October 4, 2026October 1, 2026 veritywilde

Books read this month: 30*

New books: 25

Re-reads: 5 (all audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 9

NetGalley books read: 10

Kindle Unlimited read: 1

Ebooks: 4

Audiobooks: 5

Non-fiction books: 3

Favourite book: Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy

Books bought: five books and ten ebooks

Most read author: Probably Dorothy L Sayers because I’ve started the Wimsey audiobooks with a different narrator…

Books read in 2026: 294

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 591

A fairly solid month in books in the end. I’m sort of surprised it turned out so well because there were a lot of theatre trips in there – five musicals and a concert. And we’re deep into the autumn new release season so it’s a surprise to me that I didn’t buy more in the end. Roll on October.

Bonus picture: the final curtain of the special 20th anniversary performance of Avenue Q – with many of the original cast and the current revival one. A lovely night in the theatre.

*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – this month!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Daunt Notting Hill

October 3, 2026September 27, 2026 veritywilde

Happy Saturday everyone and I’ve got another bookshop for you, and another with not a lot of photos because it was busy and it is small! And yes I’ve cropped my photo of the exterior – because there was a lady sitting on the bench outside and I try not to do that.

This is one of their displays – as you can see it’s got a real range of books, but tending towards the more literary than genre end of book selection. And because of the size here, there’s no space to break down by genre of fiction – so it’s one fiction section upstairs and you’re going to have to have a bit of a browse to see what they have. But if you have an author or a book you’re looking for that does make life easier because you don’t have to play guess the section for your author.

Downstairs they’ve got a large section for children’s and young adult books – where I spotted the new Lissa Evans as you can see – as well as more specialist non-fiction than the general non fiction section upstairs. I really liked the large section of picture books for toddlers – but that may be because I’m most frequently buying for a toddler when it comes to children’s books at the moment!

Because it was so busy upstairs when I was there (and also close to closing time!) I found it quite hard to figure out what sort of book purchaser this one is best for – but busy is good when it comes to keeping bookshops open. And Daunt Notting Hill is literally 50 meters or so away from Notting Hill Books, so you’ve got an option for a really book heavy afternoon if you want to go out that side of London – you can do Saucy Books, Notting Hill Books and across the road from that one there’s also Books for Cooks – which I did have a quick wander around and has more cookbooks than you can imagine – and also a kitchen demonstration area at the back which suggests they host some really tasty events!

Have a great Saturday – go buy some books!

series

Series Redux: Lady Sherlock

October 2, 2026September 27, 2026 veritywilde

It’s been two years since the eighth Lady Sherlock book but this week book 9, The Vanished Sister has come out. In the interim Sherry Thomas has written a contemporary thriller called The Librarians (which I still haven’t read) but she’s now come back to her series about Charlotte Holmes. I’ve written a Series I Love post about this series before, but as a reminder, the set up here is that Sherlock Holmes is the alter-ego of Charlotte Holmes in order to circumvent the restrictions of being female in Victorian England. And because it’s inspired by the original books there are lots of nods back to those books.

The last couple of books have become increasingly interlinked as Charlotte investigates Moriarty’s network – and when I read book eight a few weeks back I wished I’d re-read book seven first to remind me of how everything was left in that because there was so much building on the previous book(s) – but looking at the early reviews of The Vanished Sister it looks like it might be more standalone, which would be a really good thing. The blurb says that Charlotte and co are on holiday in Devon when Mrs Watson’s estranged sister Mrs Carstairs invites her to a house party and then disappears. A body is found, but Mr Carstairs insists that the body cannot be his wife – despite the fact that it matches her physical description. So what has happened? Why did Mrs Carstairs want a reconciliation? Who is the real Mrs Carstairs and was she actually trying to get the attention of Sherlock Holmes all along?

My interest in this book has increased at the idea that it is a standalone, but (and here’s my little moan) but don’t expect me to read this any time soon because I suspect this is going to be really hard to get hold of in the UK in paperback. As you can see from the photo, I’ve been buying the paperbacks since book three and I would like to carry on doing that – not least because the kindle prices for this series are often higher than my kindle purchase limit. But when I read book eight I realised that it wasn’t a US import like the others, but a print on demand version of the US book. You can’t tell from looking at the spine – but from the top you can see the paper is different and when you’re reading it it’s heavier and generally just less comfortable to read than a normal paperback. And I find that really annoying. As of time of writing, Amazon has separate pages (ie not linked editions) for the Kindle and paperback versions of this book and wants more than £30 for the paperback which suggests there’s something weird going on. So I’m moderating my expectations for if (ever) I will be able to get hold of an actual copy of this one. But if you’re in the US that’s not going to be a problem for you. And if you haven’t tried the series before, you may be able to start with this one without being as lost as you would have been if you started with the previous one.

Have a great weekend!

Book previews

Out this Week: Clover Lake book 3

October 1, 2026June 29, 2026 veritywilde

Take A Chance, Sasha Sinclair has filmmaker Sasha trying to make the documentary film her late parents dreamed of – about the life of Alice Bishop. Alice’s descendant Margot doesn’t want to be making the film, even though her family’s businesses really need the boost it could give them, but as she spends more time with Sasha… I know it’s the first of the month today and so it probably should be the stats post, but given that the first in this series, Dream On, Ramona Riley, was BotW back in June when I mentioned that a third book was on the way, it’s only fair that I circle back around today and say that this came out on Tuesday. I’m looking forward to reading this when I can get my hands on it – maybe this is the excuse I need to head to a romance bookshop or Gay’s the Word in the near future?

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Mysteries set on boats 2

September 30, 2026September 30, 2026 veritywilde

Happy Wednesday everyone. I’ve already done one set of murders set on boats, but I’m back with even more this week. And I’m not ruling out a third post in the further – because there’s the latest Three Dahlias that I still haven’t read and I’m sure I can find some more…

Death on Lusitania by R L Graham*

Set on the Lusitania in 1915, if you’ve spent any time looking at maritime history around this time you’ll know that the omens are not good for the passengers on board the voyage from New York to Liverpool, but on board is Patrick Gallagher, who in charge of getting a disgraced diplomat back to Britain. Gallagher is a former sailor turned civil servant of a fairly specific type and when another passenger is found shot dead in a locked room, the captain asks him to investigate. He quickly uncovers a range of people who could have wanted the victim dead and the countdown is on until they enter the war zone. This is a carefully constructed mystery, that moved a bit slower than I wanted it too initially until all the twists and turns really started to kick in. The pace did pick up as the end approached, but the actual ending was over pretty quickly. I liked Patrick as a character though and I’m pleased to see that there is another book featuring him because there are definitely some lose ends left about him and his personal life.

Murder Below Deck by Orlando Murrin*

This is the second book about Paul Delamare, and after the murderous events of the first book he’s been inveigled into a trip on a super yacht to help a friend write her memoirs. Except that once he gets on board things start going wrong and all is definitely not quite what it seems. I really enjoyed Knife Skills for Beginners as you may remember and was really pleased to be back in Paul’s world again. A book set on a super yacht felt like it was something a bit different but I think this plot is more far-fetched (I can’t really say why because: spoilers) but it moves so quickly that you don’t really notice that until the end when you have time to think about it. It has got a large cast of pretty unlikeable characters outside of Paul and the claustrophobia of the limited communications on the yacht really adds to the tension. I enjoyed it and will happily read a third book if it should come along.

Murphy’s Law by Rhys Bowen

This is the first in Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy series and is a little bit of a cheat because the murder happens at Ellis Island just after Molly has got off the ship to New York, but a lot of the build up to it is on the ship. Molly is fleeing to America after committing murder in self defence. She’s also travelling under an assumed name and looking after children that aren’t hers, so being prime suspect in a murder investigation really isn’t what she needs. This also looks at the Tammany Hall corruption of the era as Molly tries to clear her name and keep her chance to stay in America. It’s a promising start to a series – I will read some more just as soon a as I get the to read pile down!

That’s your lot today – Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week, mystery, new releases

Book of the Week: A Game of Cat and Killer

September 29, 2026September 29, 2026 veritywilde

Happy Tuesday everyone. After last week’s Japanese fiction Recommendsday it just so happens that I’ve got another Japanese novel in translation today – it’s actually a new release in English and it’s got a very different feel from the ones I mentioned last week…

Yoshitaro Katayama is not an ideal candidate to be a detective: he doesn’t like heights, he’s socially awkward and he’d rather not come into contact with dead bodies. But his father was detective and it was his dying wish for his son. And so here he is. One morning he’s offer the choice of looking at some gruesome crime scene photos of a murdered young woman or going to the college she was a student at to conduct investigations. He chooses the latter, but soon there are more bodies and he has acquired a cat which belonged to one of the victims. He’s not keen on having a pet, until she starts to show an unusual level of interest in the case…

Now I know there are a lot of cozy mysteries with cats (often talking cats) in them. This is not one of those. Katayama also has a sister that he lives with and worries a lot about, and an auntie who is trying to arrange him a marriage but this is not cozy. Do not be deceived. This is a serial killer mystery which happens to have a cat. The detective is a bit hapless but the crimes he is investigating are anything but.

This originally came out in the late 1970s and is the first in a long running series by Jiro Akagawa that has only just making it into English. Considering their age they felt surprisingly current – obviously there are no mobile phones or computers but apart from that they could have been now. Of course that could be down to the choices Haydn Trowell has made in the translation. The murders were a bit on the gruesome side for what I’m used to reading, but I am interested enough in what happens to detective Katayama next that I may pick up the next one when it comes out in a few months time.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out today in Kindle and Kobo and all the usual formats. I have no sense of how easy (or otherwise) this will be to get in hard copy, but it’s got physical copies listed so it may be possible

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 21 – September 27

September 28, 2026September 28, 2026 veritywilde

It was one theatre trip and a concert in the end – and a non-fiction book, which always takes me longer than fiction. And we’re hurtling towards the end of September too, which is terrifying. Hey ho, we will get there. A quieter week this week (I hope) with plenty of opportunities for reading.

Read:

Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanne Tesori

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers

Hollywood Whispers by Eileen Cope*

Baekjo Laundry Has a Neat Answer to All Your Problems by Lee Jae-in*

Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters

Get Over It, April Evans by Ashley Herring Blake

Safe Harbor by Nicola Yoon