books, stats, week in books, The pile

The Week in Books: March 23 – March 29

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It’s nearly the end of March and Easter is fast approaching. The clocks have sprung forward and my commute this morning was plunged back into darkness again after a couple of weeks of glorious daylight. I had a day off last week and a day of work from home and the lack of commuting reading time on those two days shows up on the list and the fact that I’m not really sure what I’m going to write about tomorrow…

Read:

A Death in the Dark by Ellie Alexander*

A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh

Just As You Are by Camille Kellogg

Mrs Spy by M J Rowbotham*

Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh

Fishing for Trouble by Elizabeth Logan

Cloaked in Chaos by Patti Benning

Started:

The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula*

The French Bookshop Murder by Greg Mosse

Still reading:

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

I managed to resist buying too many books this week, considering how over the top I went last week, but if you are in the market for books, Dawn Tripp’s Jackie is 99p on Kindle at the moment – I don’t know how long it will last because it doesn’t say, but march ends shortly and often that is the cue for price changes.

Bonus picture: I do not need novelty salt and pepper shakers. I do not need novelty salt and pepper shakers…

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

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: The Producers (again)!

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Yes, yes, yes, I realise that this is the third time I have talked about The Producers here. Once when I saw it at the Menier in late 2024 and wrote a review, and then I reminded you of it when the transfer to the West End started last summer. But this week I went back again (third visit!) and I couldn’t resist.

So as previously mentioned, this is the first West End revival of Mel Brooks’s The Producers, the musical version of his classic movie that sees a Broadway producer and his accountant try to put on a surefire flop that they’ve oversold to investors so they can get rich. This revival has four Olivier nominations (the ceremony is in two week’s time) for Andy Nyman (Max Bialystock), Marc Antolin (Leo Bloom), Trevor Ashley (Roger De Bris) and Best Revival. I think it’s going to struggle to win any of them because it’s such a strong year and they’re up against Paddington and Into the Woods (which have been incredibly well reviewed and taking awards in the run up) but it really is an excellent production of a genius show.

Now I mentioned Andy Nyman there, and the reason that I went back to see the show again this week is because Andy is out of the show until mid-May because he’s doing a play in York, and he’s been replaced by Richard Kind. Now if you don’t recognise the name, you will recognise the face because Kind has been in so many things possibly most notably Only Murders in the Building, Curb Your Enthusiasm and the voice of Bing Bong in Inside Out. But he was also one of the replacement Maxes in the original Broadway production, and was also Max when the show played at the Hollywood Bowl and now he’s bringing it to London. And he’s wonderful. It was only his second night when I went (there was a gala performance on night three though) and he was brilliant and more impressively it already looked like he and Marc Antolin had been working together for months, despite the fact that he’s joining a very different production of a show he was last in more than a decade ago. Kind is 69 now, and he’s a tad slower around the stage than Nyman and had a couple of moments where the muscle memory of the old version seemed to kick in, but I’m pretty sure that will iron out – if it hasn’t already.

As you can see I was quite a long way back in the stalls, but that didn’t really matter because it’s not a show that has a lot of stuff happening high up and some how Kind manages to make the more subtle choices he makes reach the back of the room. If you haven’t seen the show already, you could make this your excuse and if you have it’s worth going to see the different version of Max that Kind is giving. I’ve had the tunes from the show stuck in my head all week – in fact some of them are so catchy that they started being earworms at the mere thought of seeing the show again!

The Producers is on at the Garrick Theatre and is booking until mid-September, Richard Kind is in it until May 9 with Andy Nyman returning on May 11. And if you want to see Nyman, there’s a code on the show’s website for some money off if you’re booking more than 8 weeks ahead…

Have a great Sunday everyone.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Kibworth Books

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As I said last weekend in my post about The Works, I’ve been on a bit of a bookshop odyssey and during that I finally made it to Kibworth Books. This is only about 20 miles from home, but as is the way of country roads, actually takes about 45 minutes to get to, hence not having got there before. But it was worth the trip because the selection is great and the staff are incredibly knowledgable and helpful. I can confirm: I bought books. Three of them.

So this is the front of the front table which has a really good selection that tells me that this is a bookshop that might understand what I like and have recommendations for me! I’ve read the Sittenfeld and I have the Hornby on the pile waiting. I’ve also raed a bunch of the crime selections there – and have the Elly Griffiths on the pile too. So I eyed up a few of these, although my actual purchases didn’t come from this table!

And you know me, I always check out the romance section, because I read so much of it and I also think you can tell quite a lot about a shop by what they do with romance. and in this case it’s a small but seemingly carefuly chosen selection. There’s stuff here that I’ve read like Funny Story and One Day and authors that I’ve read (If not those precise books) which suggests that some of the others might be things I’d like too. Also I have Match Point on the pile and I really should get around to that too.

And the other section I always look at is the crime section. And apologies for the wide shot, but it seemed to make more sense to do one big paragraph on crime than three small ones! So there is plenty of series action here including loads that I read (and some I don’t but might get around to some day) – with Elly Griffiths, including Ruth Galloway ( can you believe that that binge was this time last year?!) and her Brighton mysteries; Mick Herron for the people who’ve been watching Slow Horses, Kate Atkinson for the Jackson Brodie fans; Richard Osman, Richard Coles, Anthony Horowitz, and all the rest – along with some less usual stuff. When I was chatting about books at the till, the recommendation was the Holly Stars which I’ve read (and the sequel) but the next one I hadn’t even come across so of course thats one of the ones that I bought. And a quick mention for the Agatha Christie and BLCC selection to cover off the classic crime fans.

And finally, how amazing/adorable is this? I thought this was so cool, although my picture of it isn’t the best so doesn’t really do it justice. Google tells me that it’s a little kit that you make yourself which makes it extra impressive because there is no way that I would have the patience and find motor control to assemble something this tiny and finicky – and that makes it extra impressive. Anyway, I really had a great time visiting Kibworth Books, bought three books even though the pile is huge and will be going back again next time I’m up that end of the woods.

Have a great weekend everyone.

cozy crime, series

Mystery series: Writer’s Apprentice

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It’s Friday again and I’m back with only my second post about a mystery series this year.

This is a small town cozy crime series with a literary twist – there are six books in the series and I’ve read five of them. At the start of the series, in A Dark and Stormy Murder (which was a BotW back in the autumn of 2024) Lena London is an aspiring suspense author who moves to Blue Lake in Indiana because she’s just landed her dream job as assistant to her favourite author Camilla Graham who is based there. As it’s a mystery series bodies start to turn up and there are love interests and the first book also sets up a running back story mystery that needs solving involving a secondary character.

Unlike a lot of mystery series, Lena actually choses between her love interests pretty early and the running mystery isn’t dragged out too long either. Julia Buckley introduces new regulars as the series goes on too which helps broaden the world and introduce new avenues for corpses to appear – although the same person is the prime suspect in the first three mysteries for reasons related to the running side plot. Blue Lake is a nice setting and Lena’s status as a new arrival, albeit from not far away and with a friend living in the town, means that you get explanations of who is who and what is what pretty naturally in the narrative, which isn’t always the case.

The fifth book did feel like a bit of a shift from the other four with a missing person and a (possibly) evil corporation coming to town rather than a body and I didn’t like it as much. I think the series probably did need to do something a little bit different but the direction of the plot felt a bit confused and like the book couldn’t quite decide if it wanted to move towards a more cozy thriller type thing. Number six (aka the one I haven’t read) has a different cover style and is significantly more expensive and isn’t linked to the previous five on Amazon so I suspect that it may be a different publisher, which maybe suggests that the previous one didn’t work as well for other people two.

That said the first four books in this series are good, well plotted mystery stories with a nice setting and a good cast of characters and are worth a look if you see them around. Unlike a lot of the cozy series I read these are available as ebooks on Kindle and Kobo, and I’ve picked up a couple of these from the Big Waterstones in Picadilly, so they’re easier to find than some of the mass market series I read.

Have a great weekend!

Book previews, graphic novels

Out This Week: Soulless Manga Omnibus

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I’ve written a lot about Gail Carriger’s Parasolverse before, but it’s been two whole years since I last wrote a post about it, so I think it’s only fair to do this week’s new book post about the omnibus edition of the Soulless manga, which came out on Tuesday. This is exciting because the individual editions which you can see in my picture are out of print and have been for a while (I’m very glad I splurged on them back in the day) and so it means that (hopefully) it will get a bit of a new life with the omnibus.

soulless omnibus cover

The manga covers the first three books in the story of Alexia Tarabotti, namely Soulless, Blameless and Changeless. I would tell you where that takes you to in her story, but that would be a spoiler so all I will say is that there are two more books – Heartless* and Timeless – after this, which haven’t been turned into manga (and won’t be) but it does work as a trilogy. I’m a graphic novel reader rather than a manga one, but I really did enjoy these and I’m glad to have them on my shelf. I will also be telling the comic book store to make sure they get a copy of the omnibus because I think there will be a customer or two who would like it.

*I’m still angry that my Heartless is a different size to the rest of the series, and if I ever see a copy that is the same size as the others I will be buying it so I can shelve them in order by chronology not by size because you can see from my photo what an absolute mess it is.

book round-ups, Recommendsday, series

Recommendsday: First in series…

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Happy Wednesday everyone, this week I’ve got a mixed bag of first books in series that I have recently read – we’ve got one fantasy, one historical mystery and one cozy crime, which may not be entirely representative of my general reading over the year, but is actually fairly representative of where my reading is at at the moment, minus a romance but I’m mostly reading standalone romances rather than series at the moment so I didn’t have one I could include!

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

After having enjoyed Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter so much last month, I went out and bought the first in Heather Fawcett’s previous series (yes I know, I’m repeating an author, but hey I make and break my own rules) about a professor who studies faeries and folklore. Emily Wilde has gone to visit a village in the far north to study the Hidden Ones, their local fae. She doesn’t want to talk to the locals and she is less than pleased when one of her colleagues from Cambridge turns up to help her. I really loved the world building and the characters are great. I felt like Fawcett did a really good job of explaining how the world works without info dumping on you and the two main plot strands – what are the fairies up to and who is Wendell Bartlett – provided plenty of action without being too stressful. Cozy fantasy so good I have already acquired the rest of the trilogy…

Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claud Izner

This is the first in a series of books featuring bookseller Victor Legris in late nineteenth century Paris. In this it’s 1889 and Paris is a buzz with the World Exposition. Victor witnesses a woman’s death on the viewing platform of the brand new Eiffel Tower and doesn’t think that the official explanation is the right one. Soon he’s ducking and weaving around Paris trying to work out what happened and who did it and more people start to die. The original French version of this won the Prix Michel-Lebrun in 2003, which is a prize for French crime novels, which I thought was a good sign, but I was obviously reading it in English and although the mystery is good I found the writing style quite hard going, but that could of course be the fault of the translator. I bought this on my trip to Paris about 18 months ago so it’s taken me a while to get to and I do have the second on the shelf already ahving spotted it cheap second hand. So I’ll give that a go at some point and see if it grows on me.

Jammed with Secrets by Selina Hill*

This is the first in a new series of small town cozy crimes and sees Sadie, a disgraced chef return to her home town to try and rebuild her life. She’s trying to do this by running food trailers at a local music festival when a member of a 90s boyband is found dead in one of them. Not satisfied with the police investigation, Sadie starts to investigate herself to try and save her business. The actual murder mystery plot was pretty good – but the problem here is Sadie. There are some issues with her backstory that make it hard for the reader to sympathise with her and entirely understandable why the people in town wouldn’t want to eat her food. This is a problem entirely of the author’s own creation – and made me wonder why it wasn’t set up differently. And that’s all I can say without spoilers, but this is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment if you want to go and find out what I’m talking about!

Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: Slow Dance

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We’re less than a month away from the release of Rainbow Rowell’s new novel Cherry Baby, so I thought I could probably risk reading her previous adult work now. You know what I’m like about saving things sometimes. Anyway, I wasn’t feeling very well last week so it seemed like a good potential treat in a week when I needed one. And here it is, this week’s BotW,

Shiloh and Cary were best friends in high school. The two of them and the third member of their trio Mikey were inseparable. But it was Shiloh and Cary that everyone thought would end up together. But they didn’t – and more than a decade later they’re going to meet for the first time in years at Mikey’s second wedding. Shiloh’s divorced with two small kids and Cary’s in the Navy, spending months at a time at sea. But is this the time that they will finally work out that they’re meant to be together?

This jumps backwards and forwards between the characters’ present day, high school and college showing how things were, how it fell apart and how they’re trying to make it work. I ended up really enjoying this, but I did have a few frustrations about it. Both characters needed to use their words more and have actual conversations, but I understood why they didn’t as teens because both had complicated home situations that they were working their way through. However, being inside Shiloh’s head made me anxious some of the time because the self sabotage was very real. But perhaps that’s what makes you root for them so much. This made me feel quite on edge through the final third, waiting for it all to fall apart again, but actually the resolution was pretty good. I can find military heroes a bit trying, but I understood why Cary was joining the Navy and what it was doing for him, but it was very much in the subtext and I felt like Shiloh’s lack of understanding about as a teen that was quite out of character for her considering how smart she was in other ways.

I can see that it won’t be for everyone – common threads in reviews that haven’t enjoyed it are around Shiloh being too hard to care for because of a perceived “too cool for school” or “not like other girls” type personality, or the characters not changing/developing as the years pass, but honestly I read Shiloh more as stand-offish and not letting people get close to her because if people are close they can hurt you (or judge you) more than anything else, and I think they did grow and change although it’s mostly in the subtext rather than one character overtly saying “OMG you would never have done that when we were at school” or similar. But I read this across about 24 hours and was smiling at the end, so that’s a pretty good recommendation and if you look at how much I’ve written about it, it will at least make you think!

My copy of Slow Dance came from NetGalley (yes I know, I told you I was behind) but it’s out in paperback now as well as in Kindle and Kobo. Rowell has a new book out in April, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a price drop on the ebook price next month to go with the new release. You should be able to find it in bigger bookshops relatively easily too.

Happy Reading

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 16 – March 22

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Genuinely cannot tell you how please with myself I am for getting the two longest runners off the list this week. Sadly it happened mostly because I was poorly for a couple of days and stuck at home, but the point is, I did it. Yay me. And aside from that a pretty good week in reading too – I read the new Katherine Center short I mentioned in last week’s BotW and strangely that is one of two on this list which are a second chance romance with hero who is in the Navy. So long since I’ve had a military hero pop-up in a book and then two come along at once. Had a bit of a day out on Saturday – more on that to come – but it was an eight book (purchase) day. Which is great in terms of new reading material, bad in terms of size of the shelf!

Read:

Woof Times by Patti Benning

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Fairies by Heather Fawcett

Tea’d Off by Patti Benning

Death with a Dark Red Rose by Julia Buckley

Everybody’s Favourite Guy by Katherine Center

Ritual of Fire by D V Bishop

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell*

Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath

A Murder in Eight Cocktails by Kelly Mullen*

Started:

Mrs Spy by M J Rowbotham*

Just As You Are by Camille Kellogg

Still reading:

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

As mentioned up top, eight books bought just on Saturday. Luckily that’s it – apart from one pre-order placed.

Bonus picture: a misty frosty morning on the train, which turned into a 17 degree day! Spring is doing some weird things right now.

*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

Not a Book: My Neighbour Totoro

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Happy Sunday everyone. I thought I’d make this a bit of a themed week and follow up on the Vanderbeekers series post on Friday with a family show that children will really, really enjoy in case you’re looking for something to take them to in the next school holidays.

My Neighbour Totoro is the RSC’s stage adaptation of the 1988 Studio Ghibli film of the same name. It tells the story of two young girls who move to the countryside with their father, to be closer to their mother who is being treated in hospital. In the countryside they meet magical creatures and make new friends. That’s a very simplistic description of the plot, but if I try and do any more then it gets really long and spoilery and no one wants that.

This is a really clever mix of real actors and puppets, with adults playing the child characters and human puppeteers who run the many, many puppets of hugely varying sizes. I just thought it was breathtaking – clever and beautiful. I think children will love it – and adults will get something out of it too, because a story that is about adventure and exploration and magical creatures for children has layers that work differently for adults. I hadn’t seen the movie when I went to see it – and it was such a hot ticket at the Barbican and when it first moved into the West End that it’s taken me a while to see it and I was a bit sceptical about whether I was going to like it, but I really, really did. As you can see from the photo I was really close (I got a rush ticket on the day) but I don’t think it spoiled anything for me being able to see all the tricks up close – if anything it enhanced things for me, because I do like to see how things work and how things are done. There aren’t a lot of shows on in the West End at the moment that I would consider going back to, but this is definitely one of them. It was magical.

And I love that something magical is in the Gillian Lynne. This was the first West End theatre I ever went to back when it was still called the New London to see Cats when I was in primary school. I can remember being completely blown away by the magic and specatcle of it – and although Totoro doesn’t use the revolving stage the way that Cats did, I think this would be a similarly special first show for children.

My Neighbour Totoro is currently booking until August 2026, and they seem to have a bunch of offers to try and make it more affordable for families too which is great.

Have a great Sunday.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: The Works Spring 2026 edition

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It’s Saturday and I’ve been touring the bookshops recently so I’m back with some posts for my recent visits over the next couple of weeks. I’m starting with The Works, because I use it to analyse the trends of what’s selling in popular fiction.

So the main thing for me here is that a couple of books I thought were really good from the last couple of years have made it here now – namely The Favourites and I’m Glad My Mom Died. Aside from that, the romance selection continues to be dominated by dark romance, sports romance and cowboy romance.

The romantasy and fantasy section continues to expand – and once again it’s the crime section that is contracting to fit it. There is still Frieda McFadden though – so it’s the cozier/traditional end of the crime shelves that are losing ground here. I feel like I’ve gone from having read a lot of authors on the shelves here to very few. But there’s still Not in My Book at least.

There are a couple more that I’ve read here though – Mrs Porter Calling is great as are the other books in that series – Dear Mrs Bird is tucked at the top of the bottom rack stack; down the bottom left is one of Kate Claybourn’s Chance of a Lifetime series and Paper Towns too. I guess it’s good for my bank balance that there’s next to noting in the three for… any more, but it does make me sad that my tastes are diverging from popular fiction, even if I have enough books on the shelf waiting to last me for years at this point!

Have a great weekend!