books

Books in the Wild: Book Extravaganza

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Happy Saturday everyone – here is the final installment from a bookish odyssey I took on a March weekend that saw me visit five bookshops and a book fair. You’ve already seen the fruits of this in my Spring Works update, the post about Kibworth Books and of my revisit to Quinns. Today, it’s the turn of the book fair.

First things first, this is a book fair of the type where you can buy direct from Indie authors and also buy bookish merch and crafts. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from it in terms of types of books that would be on sale, but at the Market Harborough event it was a mix of everything – there was historical romance, mystery, local history, childrens, fantasy and more. It was in a conference centre behind one of the town centre hotels and I don’t think they could have got any more stalls in without it seeming over crowded. There were loads of people in there when I got there (about an hour after opening, late morning) and all the vendors that I spoke to were friendly and not pushy.

I know your next question is going to be what did I buy, but you’ll have to wait for Books Incoming next week for all the details, but it was an eight book Saturday across the fair, Kibworth and Quinns, three of which came from the fair. What I will show you though are the gorgeous blind dates with a book I bought:

These are not only beautifully wrapped, but came with stickers and a bookmark each. I’ve had mixed fortunes with book blind dates because I have read so much and have ended up with stuff I’ve already read before, but the smart people behind Literary Luxe Designs had put codes on the back of them so that they could give you clues and would even check your Goodreads for you to see if you’d already marked something as read. Of course once they’d done that, I still wanted to know what they were – and they would tell you too – so I was happy with my choices and content to leave them wrapped up until I got home which meant I didn’t risk losing the stickers in the car!

The book fair was run by Rosie’s Retro Bazaar – who run them at venues across the Midlands. The next one is in May in Birmingham. They were also handing out flyers for Coventry Festival of Books in July which I will be keeping an eye on the line up for, although it is the weekend before Book Con 2026 so it might be one book event too many this summer unless the guest list is up my street!

Have a great weekend!

series

Series Redux: Vinyl Detective

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Vinyl Detective books on a shelf

Happy Friday everyone. For today’s post I wanted to point you all back at the Vinyl Detective series by Andrew Cartmel. It’s been nearly four years since I wrote my original series post and we’ve had two more books in the series since then so I thought I would come back around to it. These are mystery stories based around a never-named record collector and record hunter for hire and his group of friends and associates. Each book focuses on the hunt for one specific record in a different genre – so far we have done jazz, 1960s rock, World War II era big band, 1970s electronic folk, punk, death metal, electronic dance music and Italian movie sound track music. The EDM book is my least favourite, so I was pleased when the Italian film music one was a real return to form.

I came to this series because he was one of the Rivers of London graphic novel authors and worked with Ben Aaronovitch on Doctor Who and so I think if you like Aaronovitch’s writing, you will like these. So far this hasn’t hit any of the music genres that I have any real depth of knowledge on – but I’m hoping that it does soon (so either classic musicals or boybands of the late 1990s I guess?) so that I can look for hidden easter eggs of knowledge because I think there’s loads of insider jokes in there that I’m missing because I don’t know enough. I’m hoping we have more coming, but Cartmel also has second series going now with the Paperback Sleuth books and he could do a fourth in that series next – or something different altogether I guess. Anyway, these should be fairly easy to get hold of in any bookshop of a decent size or a decent crime section.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Authors I love, Book previews

Out This Week: New Kate Clayborn

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Kate Clayborn has consistently written some of my favourite books of any year that she has published a book, so it would be remiss of me not to mention that she has a new book out this week. It’s called The Paris Match and it’s about a woman who heads to Paris for her former sister-in-law’s wedding, where she accidentally gives the bride cold feet and ends up butting heads with the best man who wants her to fix it. I love the sound of this, and I love a book set in Paris. I had this pre-ordered in paperback (as you can maybe tell because of the photo!) and I’m planning on making this my post Easter reading treat. In the meantime, you can read my posts about The Other Side of Disappearing, Georgie, All Along, Love Lettering and the Chance of a Lifetime series.

books on offer

Recommensday: April Kindle Offers

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It’s the second Wednesday in April and so it’s Kindle Offer day! Yay! Hide your wallets – mine took a bit of a hit while I wrote this I have to admit, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

Cover of The Astral Library

Lets start with the new (or new-ish) releases that are on offer: there’s Rachel Joyce book that I mentioned in my post about Quinns, The Homemade God, which is 99p this month. I bought that, but I also bought the new Kate Quinn book The Astral Library which is a time travel novel with a hidden library and traveling inside books and which I’ve heard so much about since it came out in February.

On the mystery front, there’s the Andrew Taylor A Schooling in Murder, the Rivers of London novella The October Man, The Pie and Mash Detective Agency that I mentioned in Quick Reviews last week, the fourth Shardlake book Revelation, Detective Aunty by Uzma Jalaluddin is 99p and in Kindle Unlimited.

On the romance front there are a couple of former BotW’s on offer in Emily Henry‘s Happy Place, Kristina Forest‘s The Neighbor Favor, recent pick The Future Saints, the second Emmy Lake Yours Cheerfully which isn’t entirely a romance but still fits best in this section and The Rosie Effect which was a featured review back in the day rather than a BotW. There’s also Annabel Monaghan’s It’s A Love Story, Kirsty Greenwood’s Love of my Afterlife, Trisha Ashley‘s Leap of Faith, Crazy Rich Asians and To Sir Philip, With Love aka Eloise’s story is on offer.

The latest series of Bridgerton is a Cinderella retelling which neatly takes me to Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser which is 99p and moves me neatly into other fiction! Also on offer is Vianne by Joanne Harris aka the latest Chocolat novel, the thirteenth 44 Scotland Street book by Alexander McCall Smith The Peppermint Tea Chronicles, The second Cazalet Chronicle Marking Time is also on offer as is

In classic fiction there’s Nancy Mitford‘s The Pursuit of Love, Daphne Du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel, one of my teenage favourites A Town Like Alice (once she gets out of the prisoner of war march at least!) and Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. The Terry Pratchett offer this month is Only You Can Save Mankind, the first book in the Johnny Maxwell trilogy for middle grade readers. The Georgette Heyer is The Corinthian which is one of her girls-dressed-up-as-boys plots, and the Poirot is A Death in the Clouds.

In other stuff I bought while writing this: Brigands and Breadknives the third Legends and Lattes, the fourth Before the Coffee Gets Cold book Before We say Goodbye, 10 Marchfield Square which has finally gone on offer presmably because the sequel came out a couple of weeks ago. And if that’s not enough for you I don’t know what is!

Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Sky High

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It’s Tuesday so so here I am with another Book of the Week – and I’m back with the British Library’s Crime Classics series this week, making it two (albeit very different) murder mysteries in a row for my picks.

Cover of Sky High

Brimberley is a peaceful village, where everyone knows everyone else and very little happens. That is until the lead tenor in the village choir is killed by an explosion at his house. Choir leader Liz, her son Tim (a former commando) and a retired general are soon investigating to try and work out what’s happened. This was first published in 1955 and the post-World War Two world is very evident here – there are lots of ex military men of various types and vintages who may or may not be involved in the murder – and may or may not still be involved with the military. Some of my favourite of the Miss Marple plots revolve around issues thrown up by the aftermath of the war – I’m thinking of Brian Eastley in 4.50 from Paddington or the food rationing and bartering in A Murder is Announced that mean people can’t tell the police everything they are up to (and also a mega plot spoiler that I can’t explain) – which may be why this worked so well for me despite feeling a bit far-fetched at times!

This was a Janurary 2026 release in the BLCC series and I was pleased to see it pop up in Kindle Unlimited already. I read and enjoyed Michael Gilbert’s Smallbone, Deceased a year or two back which drew on Gilbert’s experience as a solicitor, while this one captures small village life in the 1950s with classic murder mystery mixing with spy thriller in a really pleasing way. I’ve got another of Gilbert’s books on the shelf and I’m moving it up the list now because I enjoyed this so much.

As I mentioned, this is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment which means it isn’t on Kobo right now, but it is available in paperback from the British Library online shop where once again they are running their three for two offer.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 30 – April 5

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Happy Bank Holiday Monday to everyone who is celebrating. Here the sun is out and I’m starting to think that we may be using up our quota of nice bank holiday weather! I had a two show week last week, but also the Easter weekend so the reading list is a reflection of that. And also of the fact that I was writing the Kindle Offers post and it was an expensive one as you will see on Wednesday! As for tomorrow’s pick, I sort of gave myself issues by using the French Bookshop Murder to solve last week’s difficulties so I do need to get back on a bit of an even keel. Oh and the re-read of A Case of Life and Limb was the audiobook as it was on offer – and it’s just as good as an audio as it was to read.

Read:

The French Bookshop Murder by Greg Mosse

Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh

Sky High by Michael Gilbert

Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree

Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee

A Case of Life and Limb by Sally Smith

The Madonna of Darkness by Hugh Morrison

The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula*

Started:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Enemies to Lovers by Alisha Rai*

Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree

Still reading:

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

We shall not talk about – no actual books but more than half a dozen kindle books. Whoops.

Bonus picture: On the way out of the Bridge on Wednesday night after Into The Woods.

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

book adjacent, not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Into the Woods

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It’s Easter Sunday and if you have a long weekend I hope that it is going well so far, and not too encumbered by the sort of weather that a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK always seems to cause. For the third weekend in a row I have a theatre related post for you and to be honest, I don’t think it’s the end of the run of show posts because I’ve seen a lot of shows in the last six weeks – including two this week alone. But this week I’m going with another Sondheim show to join my posts about Here We Are and the Frogs, Merrily We Roll Along and Old Friends.

Into The Woods is Stephen Sondheim’s take on some of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, intertwining them to tell the story of a childless baker and his wife who try to life a curse that has been placed on them by a witch but finding her a series of items in the woods. This brings them into contact with other story book characters. We’re taken through the story by a narrator. I can’t really tell you much more about the plot than that without giving too much away, but the story takes the familiar fairy tale tropes and plays with them. Sondheim’s music is often tricky to perform – there are difficult harmonies and tunes that don’t go where you expect. Into The Woods has got repeating motifs that evolve through the show – you’ll come out humming snatches rather than having an earworm of one tune stuck in your head. The lyrics are brilliant – clever and often witty and even the spoken lines have a rhythm to them.

In the Stephen Sondheim canon, Into the Woods comes after Sunday in the Park with George and is the second of his three collaborations with James Lapine and is at the tail end of his run of what was probably his best work. I had seen the movie of Into the Woods, but this is the first production that I’ve seen in person – the last time it was in London was 2010 when I wasn’t seeing as much theatre for various real world reasons. That production had Hannah Waddingham and Jenna Russell, this one has Jamie Parker and Kate Fleetwood. Now when I (first) went to see it Jamie Parker got injured midway through the first act* and was replaced by his understudy, and there were also understudies on for The Baker’s Wife and Little Red. But I enjoyed it so much that I went back this week to try and catch some of the people that I missed before they leave (more on that later) and to get a different view of the stage.

And as you can see – I was higher up and further back but straight on and that means I could see a lot more detail of the set and the action behind. If you’re going to see this then try and be as front on as you can – I think probably ideally a level down from this seat in Gallery 2 but those seats are pricey – so for the money this was excellent. And I did get to see all of Jamie Parker this time with the original Baker’s Wife Katie Brayben. There were still a few understudies on though – including Little Red again but also Jennifer Hepburn as the Witch. All the performances were excellent, but I can imagine that when it’s the full main cast it is really quite something because I definitely have preferences having seen it twice. I can really see why it earned 11 nominations at the Oliviers – as I said in my Producers review last week I’m expecting the winners to come from this and Paddington. That said I’m expected possibly more Paddington given that Paddington took the Whats On Stage awards – although they are voted for by the public and the Oliviers are voted by the industry so there maybe a difference there. I haven’t seen Paddington because tickets are like gold dust until the summer so I can’t judge, but this is truly brilliant.

In fact it’s been such a success that the run at the Bridge has extended until the end of May, having been originally due to end on April 20th. There is a cast change that comes with that though – the details of which were announced last week and is the reason why I hurried back this week to try and catch Parker and Brayben before they left. The replacements are pretty good too – Rachel Tucker, John Owen Jones and Melanie Le Barrie are all names in their own right, and Hughie O’Donnell is who I saw take over as the Baker mid-performance and he was very good too. Not going to lie, I am tempted to go back again..

Happy Easter if you’re celebrating, happy Sunday if you’re not!

Into the Woods is at the Bridge Theatre until May 30th

*if you know the show, he got injured somewhere in the sequence in the wood shed.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Quinn’s Spring 2026

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Happy Saturday everyone, and this is the third instalment from my bookish wander around Leicestershire the other Saturday. I’ve already covered the bargain book selection at The Works, and the beautifully curated selection at Kibworth. This week it’s a revisit to Quinns, where I was mostly looking at what they had picked out to put on the displays because I love seeing what booksellers have picked to highlight.

This is the mystery and thriller table in the window and I haven’t read a single one of them. Which is fascinating given how many mysteries I read! I know that the Asako Yuzuki and the Uketsu are too scary for me – as is so much of the stuff that’s got dark and moody covers. I have a Janice Hallet waiting to be read on the pile though and I’ve read Sophie Hannah’s Poirot continuations but not her own stuff, and I used to read Lisa Jewell when she was writing women’s fiction.

It’s a similar sort of story here. I have read all of Joanne Harris’s other Chocolate books so I have Vianne on the kindle waiting to be read and the same with the Gill Hornby, which is the latest of her books related to the Austen family. I saw The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry the other week as you know, so I was tempted by the Rachel Joyce which is about the daughters of a famous artist who has died in Italy and the masterpiece he went there to finish is missing. This is Jennie Godfrey’s second book – the first has been everywhere and it’s definitely on my list to try, if I can just get the pile down a little bit!

We’re back to authors who I have books waiting to be read on this table too – I’ve got one of Francis Spufford’s on the actual self and the same with Natasha Pulley. The Gregory Maguire is his new Wizard of z prequel hot on the heels of the success of Wicked – the book of which I didn’t manage to finish. The intruiguing one on this table though is Winterbourne, which I hadn’t seen before. It came out at the end of January and it’s about a librarian who goes to a remote Island off the coast of Scotland to catalogue the library of a grand house. It’s described as a chilling and unpredictable mystery and a reinvention of the Gothic genre, so who knows if I can deal with that – I’ll wait for the paperback!

I’m finishing with a bonus picture from the Waterstones, just to prove to myself that I really do read books I’ve read The Potting Shed Murder, Murder on the Lusitania, Knife Skills for Beginners, And Then There Were None, The Housekeepers and The Thursday Murder Club off this table and the first Antique’s Hunter book (although not this one) and I have How to Solve Your Own Murder on the pile too. And now I feel better!

books, stats

Reading Stats: March 2026

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Books read this month: 33*

New books:26

Re-reads: 7 (6 audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 10

NetGalley books read: 8

Kindle Unlimited read: 6

Ebooks: 3

Audiobooks: 6

Non-fiction books: 1

Favourite book: of the things that have been published Agnes Aubert but also the upcoming Nora Breen sequel

Books bought: lets just skip over this because that Saturday in Leicestershire was a lot and that’s before anything else I did…

Most read author: Jess Kidd with Murder at Gulls Nest and the sequel

Books read in 2025: 92

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 598

A pretty solid month all in. I was actually quite surprised when I came to put this together because I thought I had more novellas in there than I did, but actually my dedication to the NetGalley list and reading from the pile at weekends has paid off a bit. Not as good on the non-fiction front though, so that’s something to work on – and it’s Good Friday today so maybe Easter weekend is my opportunity. All the motorsport is cancelled after all!

Bonus picture: Leicester Square Theatre right back at the start of the month ahead of a recording of The Horne Section podcast – complete with former Taskmaster contestant special guests!

*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – 4 this month!

Book previews

Out This Week: The Geomagician

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The stats are coming up tomorrow as a Good Friday treat for you all, but before we get to that given that I’m on a run of cozy fantasy books I wanted to mention this one, which came out on Tuesday and which I’m already reading (but haven’t finished yet so this isn’t a review!). This is an alternative history type historical fantasy in a world where magic is real and Mary Anning (who was a real life fossil collector and palentologist) is a struggling fossil dealer who wants to be accepted into the Geomagical Society of London but is stymied by her gender and her lack of formal higher education. But one day she is out fossil hunting after a landslide when a pterodactyl egg hatches in her hand. Ajax could be the thing that makes her career – but the emissary from the society is her former fiancé and soon she is stuck between rival factions of the society with their own agendas. This is blurbed by Heather Fawcett (as in Emily Wilde and Agnes Aubert) which is why I requested it – so far (just over a third in) it’s a bit less cozy and has more religion than I was expecting, but I’m interested to see where it goes and how it all gets resolved.