Happy Saturday everyone, it’s book shop post day again!
So Judd Books is another one on my regular rounds of bookshops in Bloomsbury, but it’s a bit different to the rest of the round because you can never predict what you’re going to find in there. It has secondhand and bargain books and sort of specialises in books on the arts and social science but it also has some fiction in there too. It’s the sort of book you wander into to see if you can find a book you’d like to read rather than a bookshop you go into to find a specific book. So you might go in and discover they’ve got a book you’ve been looking for for ages, or find something completely new to you. I took this photo on my four book afternoon (that also saw me go to Word on the Water among others) and I bought the first in a crime series from the early 90s as well as a Dorothy Dunnett mystery to try out. I’ve been in again since but realised that I didn’t have time to browse properly because I had an appointment so some how came out empty handed! Anyway, if you’re wandering down towards central London from Kings Cross, it’s a good place to stop on your way. And it’s not the only bookshop on the route either but more on that anon…
Books bought: 7 ebooks, 8 books and a couple of pre-orders arrived too, plus a holiday book from mum (thanks mum!)
Most read author: Jill Paton Walsh as I binged the entire Imogen Quy series.
Books read in 2025: 92
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 587
I may have bought too many books, but I did at least get more off the to-read pile than I put on it (just) and it was a really good month in non-fiction reading which makes for a change. I also did well on the NetGalley front but not on the Kindle Unlimited one – but I guess I can’t do everything!
Bonus picture: some more Wales – this time Anglesey – from the end of month trip.
*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – but not this month!
June is Pride month and so its fitting that the first new release I’m featuring this month is the new book in Alexis Hall’s London Calling series – aka the third in the series that started with Boyfriend Material. It’s called Father Material and I have to say I am trepidatious. I loved Boyfriend Material and I liked Husband Material, just not as much (but still enough for it to be a BotW). I liked that Husband Material didn’t use the break-them-up-to-create-conflict trope that you see so much in sequels to romance novels – but the ending of Husband Material was not quite what a lot of readers wanted and left some people feeling like they’d fallen for a bait and switch. I did not feel like that I should say – I thought it was a perfectly consistent way to wrap up the conflict that was going on in the book. But there is definitely potential for another similar situation in this book, and that’s where my trepidation comes from – because if it does, then there’s been no character growth in anyone, at all, since the first book. And I’m not here for that. And of course it could go in a totally different direction to all of that – and I have a mixed record with some of Alexis Hall’s plots. I really liked Rosaline Palmer Takes The Cake, but I couldn’t finish the next in that series Paris Daillencourt is about to crumble and I had very strong feelings about Val deserving better than he got in Something Fabulous, to the point where I still haven’t read the sequel because I’m worried I will hate it.
All of which is to say – there is a second sequel to a beloved first book that came out this week and you should be able to find it in stores as well as on Kindle and Kobo. Best of luck everyone…
Happy first Wednesday of the month, and usually this would be where I publish my Quick Reviews for May. However, I have read a bunch of mysteries of various types that either came out yesterday, today or are coming out tomorrow and so I’m saving the quick reviews for another Wednesday and giving you a quick review round up for them. Why isn’t this just the May Quick Reviews repurposed? Well because I read one of them in April…
Played to Death by Mike Ripley*
This is quite a hard one to describe, because it’s told by four unreliable narrators, but I’m going to give it a go. A new murder mystery play is being put on by the Hopewell Players but there are some… concerns. Pantomime Dame and local solicitor Adam Cunningham consults a local librarian (and former crime fiction editor) because he thinks it’s ripping of a lot of Golden Age mysteries. The author of said play is the producer’s father but the future of the production is in doubt when one of the actors is found dead on stage. This is written by Mike Ripley, who also wrote a number of Campion continuation novels and he’s very much using his knowledge of Golden Age mysteries in this, but with a great twist with the shifting narration. I particularly enjoyed the footnotes about which books the various bits of plot had been lifted from. I read this in one day (not quite in one sitting) and immediately went off to read one of the aforementioned Campion continuations after I discovered that his other book featuring Roly the Librarian isn’t available on Kindle. The good news is that this is – and also that it’s out today and included in Kindle Unlimited.
The French Market Murder by Greg Mosse*
This is the third book in Greg Mosse’s series set around a bookshop in a small town in Provence. The first in the series was a BotW not that long ago and I’ve read book two since then as well, but I think I actually liked this the most of the three in terms of writing style and the regular characters but I found the solution to the mystery pretty predictable – I figured out most of it pretty quickly after the body was found, which actually happened quite late on for a murder mystery. But I do really like the setting and set up for this and would happily read more, and every time I read one I think that I should go and read his other series which features a much younger Zoe as a side character to the main sleuth, although without reading them it’s hard to tell how prominent she is but they get plenty of references in these! I really do fancy a holiday to Provence now though…
A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Catching a Killer by F H Petford*
This is the follow up to 2025’s A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Solving a Murder which was also a BotW. We rejoin Alma at the gang at the Timperley shortly after the conclusion of that book – and as a warning, if you haven’t read the first book you will find out who did it if you read this one so plan your reading accordingly – and things seem to be going well. Well that is until a guest is found dead in their bed. With the police short-staffed because of officers signing up to fight, Alma is asked to help with the investigation and she’s very willing as the circumstances suggest that the killer may be inside the hotel. The mystery in this is good, and I liked the widening of the group around Alma as well. I’m not really into spiritualism or ghosts, but these are at the end of the ghostly spectrum that I can get on board with. I read this very quickly (across about 36 hours) and I’m so pleased that there’s already a third book planned that I have it pre-ordered already. If you haven’t read book one – and bearing in mind my warnings above you should before you read this – that one is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment if you have that.
Sconed to Death by Betty Hechtman*
This is the second book featuring a heroine who inherited a yarn shop in a small Indiana town and (temporarily) moved there from LA. Annie’s father is a high powered entertainment agent, and in tow with her is Gray, the daughter of one of her father’s most important clients and now her business partner as Annie tries to get the yarn shop ready for sale. In this book the summer residents have descended on town and Annie has a lot of balls in the air, including trying to help Toby who bakes the scones for the yarn shop’s tea room get on a reality show in the hopes that it means that any buyer for the store will keep him on as a supplier. I realise that that sounds complex, and that’s not even the murder side of the plot! There is a murder (don’t worry) which could also be an obstacle to the sale of the tearoom and so Annie is soon low key investigating that. And also navigating a potential relationship and managing Gray’s fractious relationship with her mum. When you write that plot down it’s quite a lot, even with just the bare bones that I’ve given you, but it actually (mostly) works when you’re reading it. The set up of Annie’s presence in town is pretty neat and Gray’s pampered princess life makes for some good tension in the plot and some reasons why Annie wouldn’t just be having actual conversations at various points. The writing style was a little repetitive at times -for example it was reminding me of details that it had told me just a couple of pages prior, but I do wonder how I would have felt if I had read the first book and already knew all the backstory to everything because I definitely don’t think there is anything I was missing about the first book (except for who did the murder so that’s good at least). I haven’t read anything by Betty Hechtman before, but she’s a pretty established author so I suspect this is just her style and it might just not quite be for me, but I enjoyed this enough that I would happily read some more books by her to find that out!
And there you have it – four reviews of four books out this week. I promise that the quick reviews will turn up on a future Wednesday as will the Kindle Offers.
Amidst all the Marilyn Monroe of yesterday, I forgot to mention that June is Pride Month and I’ve got some bits and bobs planned for that – so keep your eyes peeled on that front as we head through the month. And I’m also coincidentally starting the month off with a m/m romance pick so that’s somewhat serendiptious too. This was also one of the books in my Anticipated new releases post at the start of the year, so I’m really pleased that it lived up to my expectations for it!
Star Shipped is Cat Sebastian’s first contemporary romance and it’s a slow burn enemies to lovers story about two co-stars on a sci-fi TV series. It’s told entirely from the point of view of Simon, who has spent seven years hating his co star Charlie even as the fans analyse their every move on screen to try and work out if their characters are (secretly) in love. Now he’s leaving the show and can get away from it all. Except that there’s a chance that people might think he’s been forced to leave the show because he’s difficult to work with (which he knows he kinda is) and that could cause him problems down the line. Charlie is also worried that he might catch the blame for Simon’s exit because of what happened during his first season on the show. So they agree to stage a public friendship to try and quash any rumours. And then when Charlie needs to leave LA in a hurry, somehow Simon finds himself joining him. Thus begins a road trip that should be everything that Simon hates, but he’s actually sort of enjoying. And maybe they actually don’t hate each other after all?
I read this in less than 24 hours from getting my grubby hands on it (it was delivered to my parents house for *reasons*) and when I was on a family holiday away in Wales and probably should have been being more sociable (sorry family) because it was just so good. I’m going to have to take some time to think about why Simon – a hero with an actual anxiety problem that he’s not really dealing with that well – worked for me when some other anxious main characters have really not, because I’m not sure how I could have enjoyed it more. It also fell exactly on the right side of the enemies part of the enemies to lovers spectrum – mostly Simon’s “hatred” of Charlie consists of being snarky to him (off page, before the book starts) rather than pranks or things that actually affect Charlie’s career, and Charlie never really hated Simon to start with. Then you add in a road trip (love a road trip) with some Only One Bed scenarios and a bit of found family and it’s really my thing. Additionally this is quite low angst on the external front – and none of the angst comes from fear of being outed or homophobia in it’s many forms and I really like that too.
This came out in paperback at the end of April – I had mine pre-ordered from Waterstones in their pre-Christmas discount offer and what has turned up appears to be an American edition but I’m not complaining. I spotted this in Gay’s the Word when I was in there a week or two back, but I’m not 100 percent sure if I’ve seen it anywhere else yet. It’s £1.99 on Kindle and Kobo this month, which is annoyingly a pound more than it was lat month, but it’s not often that Cat Sebastian is on offer at all, so don’t necessarily rely on it dropping back down. That said there are a few of Sebastian’s back catalogue at £1.99 at the moment, so if you have gaps in your library you want to fill in this may be the time.
Firstly – Marilyn Monroe would have been 100 today (June 1st) so if you need an excuse to watch Some Like It Hot or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes again, this is it. Secondly, if it seems like I’m on a bit of an Agatha Christie kick at the moment, that’s because after revisiting Caribbean Mystery the other week I’m trying to reread the whole series before the new continuation novel by Lucy Foley comes out and there was a Poirot short story collection that I haven’t read in Kindle Unlimited too. And because I forget about things and get distracted quite easily I’m striking while the iron is hot and getting on with it!
Happy Sunday everyone and I’ve got another theatre trip for you this week. I was going to save this for next weekend when we’re into Pride month, but this is a limited run and the tickets are getting very limited so I thought I’d maximise your chances of getting to see it by posting it sooner.
End of the Rainbow is a play by Peter Quilter about Judy Garland at the time that she was doing a series of concerts at the Talk of the Town. If you know your Judy lore, this is less than a year from her death and at the time that she was engaged to Mickey Deans who would become her fifth and final husband. This is the struggling with her addictions latter day Judy, and her relationships with both Deans and her pianist and friend Anthony are somewhat strained. This is a play with music – with rehearsals with Anthony in the hotel suite as well as performances with a band at the club. It’s also the source material for the movie Judy, which won Renée Zellweger an Oscar back in 2020.
If you’re a drag race fan you’ll know that Jinkx Monsoon did a very good Judy in Snatch Game on her All Stars season and she’s had success on Broadway in the last couple of years in musicals in Chicago, then Pirates! The Penzance Musical and then in the play Oh, Mary! but this is her first non-comedic acting role. And it’s a big one to take on because this play exists essentially as a showcase for whoever is performing as Judy – they need to be able to sing in a good enough facsimile of Garland and act their hearts out across comedic and tragic moments. And Jinkx is really, really good – better in the comedy and the singing than the tragedy, but pretty good all around. The audience that I saw it with went absolutely wild for it – and I enjoyed it just not as much as them!
But that said this isn’t my first time seeing End of the Rainbow – I saw the 2011 tour with Tracie Bennett, ahead of the transfer to Broadway. And my opinion on the play itself hasn’t changed – it’s a great concept and a great showcase, but it’s a bit long and doesn’t quite stick the ending and really hammers home Anthony’s role as an avatar for Judy’s gay fans in the second half in a way that is totally unsubtle and overdone (for me anyway). However it has a great band and great performances and they make up for a lot. If I’m nitpicking, I would say that the lack of height difference between the characters means that part of Judy’s force of nature character is lost. Garland was under 5 feet tall – and Tracie Bennett is about 5’2″ – and the way that Garland’s voice and charisma dominated the room and the people about her despite her diminutive size was part of the wonder of the performance. But Jinkx is the height she is, and male actors are not a tall breed, and they do make great work of the steps on the set to try and set her at a disadvantage to Mickey at various points to help with that.
This production has been getting four star reviews from the professionals – and I would basically agree with that. It’s worth seeing if you’re a Jinkx fan – and the audience reaction (and sales!) have been strong enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if this goes over to Broadway next season and that this time next year Jinkx is factoring into the Tony award conversations.
End of the Rainbow is on at the Soho Theatre Walthamstow until the 21st of June – and it’s worth the trek up the Victoria Line to zone 3 to see it.
I’ve been in a lot of bookshops recently, so this Saturday I’ve got a quick round up of some of the new releases that I’ve spotted in the shops.
I’m starting with the new book from Maria Semple, because it’s been a long, long time since her last book came out and I’d almost forgotten about her. Which is a terrible thing to say, but it’s a decade since Today Will Be Different and 14 years since Where’d You Go Bernadette, so I don’t think that’s unfair. Accordig to the blurb, Go Gentle is about a midlife transformation of a divorcée complete with romance and globe trotting. I have a mixed record with Semple – I loved …Bernadette, hated This One is Mineand quite liked Today Will Be Different, so I’m sure I’ll read this at some point even if just to see if my assessment back in 2016 of when I like Semple’s books is right or not!
There’s another author back from a long hiatus in this shot of the bestsellers (in Waterstones Gower Street) too. Kathryn Stockett’s The Help was a huge hit when it came out in 2009 – it won a bunch of awards and was turned into a hit movie starring Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis (among many) in 2011. But it was also polarising and Stockett faced criticism for writing the story of black maids through the eyes of a white woman and the controversy over it has only increased over time. In fact in the run up to the publication of The Calamity Club, Stockett told The New York Times that her publishers cancelled her contract in 2020. So after such a big gap and so much controversy The Calamity Club – which is more than 600 pages long and once again set in Mississippi but this time in the 1930s – has had a relatively low key release. I’m fascinated to see how it does. Apart from that, you can also see the new Matt Haig, The Midnight Train, which is set in the same world as his mega hit The Midnight Library, the new Elizabeth Strout and also that Murder at Worlds End is now out in paperback.
On to some murder mysteries in hardback (some of which came out la little longer ago) and we’ve got the Sophie Hannah Poirot continuation that came out in the autumn, the latest Judy Murray cozy crime, and the Jennie Godfrey that I’ve seen everywhere. The House of Fallen Sisters was one I hadn’t come across before – set in Covent Garden and the underbelly of 18th century London and I’ve now seen various of Andrey Kurkov’s Kyiv Mysteries around so much that I think it might be a message for me to try one! Amin Ahmad’s A Killer in the Family sounds interesting – the blurb calls it “A caper, social satire, and propulsive thriller rolled into one” the first two of which are totally my thing – but as we know thrillers can go either way for me! And strangely this also has Elizabeth and Marilyn about the meeting between Elizabeth II and Marilyn Monroe in the summer of 1956 and which I didn’t have down as being a mystery but am even more interested in now that I’ve seen it in this selection!
I mentioned Emma Straub’s American Fantasy when it was released the other week, so it seems only fair to mention that I was right that I would spot it in the shops a lot (this wasn’t the only time I could have taken a picture of it in a store) and also that it’s blurbed by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Also in the now out in paperback is Andrew Lownie‘s Entitled – which as you can see from the cover has had more material added since the hardback edition. This makes me wonder whether if I had bought it on Kindle I would have got the new material added automatically, or whether I would have had to buy it again. As it is, I bought a physical copy at the airport (partly to escape any redactions that might later happen!) and so now I have to figure out how much I want to read Lownie’s take on everything that has happened to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor since Entitled first came out last summer when he was still known as Prince Andrew.
And finally for today we have Katja Hoyer’s Weimar, which is one of the anticipated history books of the year – examining the town that gave its name to the government of Germany from the end of World War one until the Nazi regime took power. It was also a key location in the rise of the Nazi party as well as the home of the Bauhaus movement. Hoyer is looking at the town and it’s people from 1919 until 1939 charting how it all happened. I’ve got a stack of books about German twentieth century history waiting on the various to-read piles but I’m still really tempted by this – as depressing as I suspect it may be.
And sorry to end on that miserable note, but there we are, that’s the way it goes sometimes. Enjoy your weekend everyone – I hope the weather is good where you are.
It’s Friday again and it’s not due to be quite as hot today as it has been earlier in the week, for which we should all be very thankful. Britain is not built for 30+ degree heat – let alone in May. Anyway, I hope you’re somewhere suitably shady, while you read this week’s series post.
The By the Book Mysteries are a series of three books about Tess Harrow, a mystery writer who moves back to her grandfather’s rural cabin in Washington state with her teenage daughter in the aftermath of her divorce. Once she arrives there she stumbles upon a real life murder. The first book in the series was my Book of the Week back in December and by the end of that she’s decided to make Winthrop her permanent home. In book two Tess is renovating her grandfather’s former hardware store into a bookshop when she discovers a body and in book three they’re preparing for the opening of the bookstore when the murder occurs.
As well as Tess and her daughter Gertrude, the other regular characters are the town’s sheriff (who looks disturbingly like the hero of Tess’s books); Nikki who runs the local book mobile and from book two onwards Jared, who works at the local logging concern. As well as the murder of the week, there is a running plot about whether the loggers are up to something illegal and a will they won’t they romance between Tess and Sheriff Boyd. These are very easy to read, with some nice humour and enough going on that they rattle along nicely and make for an enjoyable way to spend sometime.
There are three books in the series with the third coming out back in 2023 – a gap which suggests that Tamara Berry may be done with the series as they were published at a rate of about one a year until then and Berry having published two books in a new series since then. And so I issue a slight warning: book three doesnt’ feel like it was intended to be the end of the series and not all the plot strands are tied up at the end it. I’m fairly used to series that I like just stopping at unexpected points so it doesn’t bother me too much, but it would be remiss of me not to alert you. So your mileage may vary on that front – at least I’ve read them for you and warned you appropriately!
Happy Thursday everyone and this week’s new book to mention is the new Annabel Monaghan, Dolly All The Time which came out on Tuesday. According to the blurb, this is about self sufficient, problem solving, single mum Dolly who moves back to her seaside home town and finds herself in a fake relationship with the wealthy, workaholic son of one of the town’s major families. I loved, loved, loved Nora Goes Off Script back in 2023, and I have enjoyed the three books of hers I’ve read since, although none of them have quite hit the same buttons for me as Nora did. But that’s a very high bar. I had this pre-ordered, so I already have my copy waiting for me but if you weren’t planning that far ahead, it’s out now in paperback, Kindle and Kobo.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 