February 2023 – Page 3 – Verity Reads Books (lots of them)

Here we are with this month’s Kindle offers for your delectation – and there are a lot of them so lets get right to it.

Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age is 99p this month, I’m not quite sure why as the paperback isn’t out until March, but take advantage while you can. I really enjoyed this tale of retired assassins on the run – and one of my besties is reading it at the moment and really enjoying it too (unless something has changed!). Jill Hornby’s Godmersham Park is 99p at the moment, Miss Austen was a book of the Week and I really enjoyed Godmersham Park, which is a sort of sequel – it’s definitely a continuation set in the same world. I mentioned Daphne Du Maurier in my post about books set in Devon and Cornwall – if you fancy a bit of Cornish Smuggling action, Frenchman’s Creek is 99p this month – it’s not my favourite, but I do love my beautiful Virago Designer Hardback copy!

Another recent BotW pick The Last Hero is 99p, but one of my all time favourite Terry Pratchetts, Going Postal, is £1.99. There are a lot of Georgette Heyers at £1.99 this month, including some of my favourites like Sylvester, These Old Shades, Devil’s Cub, Venetia and Frederica. It’s actually easier just to send you to the list than the original pages! On the Wimsey front, some of the series are now dropping out of copyright so there are a lot of quite cheap kindle books popping up, but I can’t vouch for their formatting and accuracy. Of the editions that match the Hodder and Stoughton paperbacks, The Nine Tailors is the 99p book this month – if you haven’t read it, it’s set in the Fenland, there are floods and church bells and bodies in the wrong grave and its really quite something.

If you were tempted by the Her Majesty the Queen Investigates books after my series review last year, the second book in the series is 99p at the moment – A Three Dog Problem is set around Buckingham Palace after a murder at the palace swimming pool (a real thing!). Very recent release Shipwrecked by Olivia Dade is 99p, as is In a New York Minute by Kate Spencer (which I talked about in my late summer reading post) and Miss Aldrige Regrets is on offer again.

We don’t have a date for series three of Bridgerton yet (please can it be soon Netflix, thank you), but the good news is that this month Romancing Mr Bridgerton aka the book the next series is based on is 99p – read it before the series. Interestingly Colin and Eloise’s story is actually the fourth in the series, not the third, but I do fully support the decision to skip book three (Benedict’s story) for now because it’s a Cinderella retelling and it’s a) not my favourite and b) doesn’t fit in with what they’ve been doing with the series. I am fascinated to see what they decide to do about it – and also about Eloise’s book which is number five, but now doesn’t fit in at all with the chronology they’ve created if she’s going to end up with the same person as she does in the books. And that’s all I can say without it being a spoiler!

Whistling through some other stuff – A Village in the Third Reich is £1.99 – you may remember I bought myself this and Travellers in the Third Reich when I was writing the Buy Me a Book for Christmas post last year! There are a couple of Mhairi McFarlane novels that are 99p – including You Had Me At Hello and Last Night. In other authors that I like, Christina Lauren’s Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating is 99p, and there are quite a few Trisha Ashley‘s for 99p including my all time favourite A Winter’s Tale, which is a Christmas novel but which I can read any time of year!

In stuff I purchased while writing this post, there is Nora Goes off Script, about a scriptwriter for a romance channel who turns her divorce into a screenplay and the “sexiest man alive” is cast as her ex-husband. In stuff I should have read but haven’t got around to (yet), Stephanie Gerber’s Caraval trilogy is 99p for the complete thing which is a total bargain. Likewise, in stuff I haven’t read yet, Jodi Taylor’s newest Time Police (that’s the spin off series from Chronicles of St Mary’s) novel About Time is 99p too. Also 99p is David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue which I really keep meaning to get around to!

It’s a short month, so catch them while you can! Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books, detective, Forgotten books, mystery

Book of the Week: Death of an Author

February 7, 2023February 6, 2023 veritywilde

Another classic crime reissue from the British Library this week – this is the book I mentioned that I hadn’t finished in time for the Quick Reviews and in the end that’s turned out to be a good thing as it means I can write about it at a greater length here. And I’m also relatively timely for once – as this was one of the BLCC’s January releases.

The author of the title is Vivian Lestrange, the reclusive person behind several bestselling mystery novels. He is reported missing by his secretary – who arrived for work one day and found the house locked up and her boss – and his housekeeper – vanished without a trace. But the investigation is mired in confusion from the start – there is no body and there is even doubt about whether Lestrange really exists. Could the secretary, Eleanor, perhaps be him? Bond and Warner from Scotland Yard have a real job on their hands.

I enjoyed this so much. Lorac has set up a seemingly impossible crime and laid so many red herrings around that you can’t work out what you’re meant to think. And then there’s the humour. As previously mentioned E C R Lorac is a pen name for Carol Carnac, a woman mystery writer. And it’s clear that she’s having a lot of fun at the expense of reviewers and readers of the time who couldn’t believe that a woman could write mysteries the way that she did. It’s just delightful. I read it in about two giant sittings, across 36 hours and if I hadn’t had to get on with my normal life I would have read it even faster! It was first published in 1935 and has been incredibly rare and hard to get hold of until now – which is a bit boggling because it is so good – so thank goodness for the British Library!

I got Death of an Author through my Kindle Unlimited subscription, so that’s the only ebook platform you can get it on at the moment, but you can of course buy it in paperback direct from the British Library shop where they are doing three for two at the moment so you could pick up some of the others that I have recommended recently – or potentially through your local bookshop that carries the BLCC series as it only came out in the middle of January so it may well be in their latest selection.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 30 – February 5

February 6, 2023February 7, 2023 veritywilde

It is official: I have finished the Meg Langslow re-read and I now have to wait until *checks* August for a new one. But, even though it’s been a blast, it has set me behind some of my other goals for the year. The best the to read page in my journal is looking worryingly empty. And this week hasn’t really helped that much as I was away for four nights and didn’t take a book with me – and I bought three on that trip to Foyles on Friday. Oopsie daisy. Still at least I made some progress on the NetGalley list and a lot of progress on one of the long runners. Maybe this week…

Read:

Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh

Vermeer to Eternity by Anthony Horowitz

Death of an Author by E C R Lorac

Irish Coffee Murder by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis and Barbara Ross*

Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh

Death Comes to Marlow by Robert Thorogood*

Dashing Through the Snowbirds by Donna Andrews

Crowned and Mouldering by Kate Carlisle

Started:

Vera Kelly: Lost and Found by Rosalie Knecht

Peril in Paris by Rhys Bowen

Still reading:

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

Going With the Boys by Judith Mackrell

The Empire by Michael Ball*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe

Exes and O’s by Amy Lea*

Three books bought in Foyles, plus one Kindle book. And the audiobook on CD of the last (chronologically) Amelia Peabody so that Him Indoors can hear how it all ends!

Bonus photo: as I mentioned, I was away for four nights – this time staying near St Paul’s cathedral. So I offer you a lovely nighttime photo of that, that I took on my way back from the theatre on Friday.

*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, tv

Not a Book: Wednesday

February 5, 2023February 5, 2023 veritywilde

Back at Halloween last year I wrote about the Addams Family films from the early 90s and now I’ve watched the new Netflix series about Wednesday and can report back!

So the premise of this, as you can probably tell is Wednesday Addams Goes to Boarding School – and it’s a boarding school for outcasts. Now given my fondness for boarding school stories I could very much get on board with this. And obviously because this is Wednesday we’re talking about – allergic to colour, incredibly morbid, not really into emotions – this is going to pose some challenges. On top of that, this is the school her parents attended and to say there is some history there is to understate the situation. And then there’s the fact that there appears to be a monster killing people and the pupils of the school, with their special powers/skills are the prime suspects. So a fish-out-of-water school story with a murder mystery/thriller twist, brought to you by Tim Burton. Sounds good right?

There is also good news for those of you who are as sentimentally attached to the Julia/Huston Gomez and Morticia as I am, that although the parents appear in the show, they are only in a couple of episodes. And though I have a few issues with Catherine Zeta Jones’ Morticia (not least the wandering accent), Luis Guzman’s Gomez is brilliant in a different way to Raul Julia and I really, really liked it. And as Wednesday, Jenna Ortega is fabulous, she’s got the creepy, disconnected affect down as well as the deadpan delivery. And the plot and script are really clever too. There are nods and winks to the various different incarnations of the family previously (not least Christina Ricci as Wednesday’s dorm mother) whilst still making it feel its own thing.

Wednesday has Thing with her at school – which shows how far CGI/Special effects have come in the last 30 years that it’s now super easy to have lots and lots of Thing, and Uncle Fester pops up too. But for most of the characters are new – Enid, Wednesday’s roommate, a crowd of popular kids including a siren and a pupil whose drawings come to life and a group of townies who have a very, very mixed relationship with the boarding school on their doorstep which adds another level of tension to everything. And then there is Wednesday’s special gift – which causes her even more issues. In short – plenty of plot strands to keep everything moving along and to keep you guessing about how it all might tie together.

We watched it across about four days – there are eight episodes – and were really sad when it was over. And clearly we’re not the only people who have made it to the end of the series (which seems to be the metric which Netflix bases stuff off) as they announced a second season last month. I’m interested to see where they take the show next, as the plot for this was self contained enough that it wouldn’t have left viewers mad if it didn’t get a second series but equally left you with a tease for what might happened next. And don’t worry, the teaser trailer below doesn’t give any spoilers away.

So if you need something to binge watch, and you haven’t already, I recommend this for your next duvet day on the sofa.

Happy Sunday everyone!

American imports, cozy crime, series

Series: Library Lovers

February 3, 2023February 3, 2023 veritywilde

This Friday it’s another cozy crime series – and another from Jenn McKinlay. I wrote about her Cupcake Bakery series about a year ago, and now we’re on the other side of the US with her Library Lovers one.

Our sleuth is Lindsey, library director in the small coastal town of Briar Creek. At the start of the start of the series she is recently arrived in town and getting to grips with her new job and the characters and rivalries at the library. As the series progresses Lindsey gets more and more established in town and develops a group of friends and love interests. Obviously there is also a murder each book – not always in the library thank goodness, because otherwise who would dare borrow a book – but some how Lindsey is always involved enough to start detecting – I mean it wouldn’t be a cozy otherwise, would it!

I’m only seven books in to the series – there are fourteen – because they’re relatively hard to get hold of over here – but so far there’s enough progression in the running strands to stop them getting repetitive (or annoying) and the murders are pretty varied too. I don’t like them as much as I like the Cupcake mysteries, but they still make for a nice comforting read when you need that sort of thing.

If you’re in the US, you should be able to get hold of them fairly easily. If you’re in the UK, it’s trickier because they’re not available on Kindle if you have a UK account. But I think I have spotted them in bookshops on occasion- and obviously Amazon have the paperbacks…

Happy Friday!

books, stats

January Stats

February 2, 2023February 1, 2023 veritywilde

Books read this month: 30*

New books: 13

Re-reads: 17

Books from the to-read pile: 4

NetGalley books read: 2

Kindle Unlimited read: 3

Ebooks: 15

Audiobooks: 6

Non-fiction books: 0

Favourite book this month: Of the new stuff, probably The Three Dahlias

Most read author: Donna Andrews – 11 Meg Langslows, only one left in the reread now

Books bought: I mean I’d rather not talk about it to be honest. Probably about 20!

Books read in 2023: 30

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 669

Minor tweaks to the format of the stats for 2023 – taking out library books, for now at least. Aside from that the new year continued as the end of the old – with the Meg Langslow binge. But as I only have one left now, that can’t really continue so I look forward to seeing what I replace it with in February!

Bonus picture: from our day out in Wells as part of our trip. You may recognise this as a location from Hot Fuzz, and yes we were intermittently muttering lines from the movie at each other all day!

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

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: January Quick Reviews

February 1, 2023February 1, 2023 veritywilde

Only two books this month, you’ll probably understand why when you see the stats tomorrow. There was nearly a third, but I fell asleep with 50 pages to go on Tuesday night and didn’t finish it before the end of the month and I do try not to cheat!

Death Spins the Wheel by George Bellairs

It’s been a while since I mentioned an Inspector Littlejohn mystery, as I’ve read nearly all of the ones that are easily available at the moment. But Death Spins the Wheel popped up and it’s a good one. Once again on the Isle of Man, it features an elderly lady who comes to the island to gamble at the casino and then turns up dead. There’s one strand of the plot that I’m wildly dubious about (if you know me and read it you’ll know what!) but I liked the actual resolution and the familiar characters. Maybe don’t start here, but if you’re reading them as they pop up on Kindle Unlimited then it’s definitely worth a look.

Vermeer to Eternity by Anthony Horowitz

Another author I’ve written about relatively frequently, but this is another KU read – this time a really quite satisfying short story with a really neat premise and two interesting characters. If you’ve read the Hawthorn novels, you’ll probably see some similarities to “Anthony” as seen in them, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.

And that’s it for stuff I haven’t already talked about in January – or at least it is unless you want repeats or rereads! I wonder if I’ll manage more than two in February?