I try and write one of these every year, and as ever the new books are weighted towards the start of the year because those are the ones that we know about already and the later part of the year is somewhat less clear. But if you go back and read yesterday’s series post you’ll see quite a few books there in the back half of the year, so it does even out a little bit.
Let’s start with something I have mentioned before: the new Taylor Jenkins Reid – Atmosphere – which comes out in June and which I had pre ordered about 30 seconds after I found out that it existed. It’s set in the 80s and about astronauts in the space shuttle programme and I am very excited to read it.
Next up is one that came out this week and is blurbed as “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meets First Lie Wins” – Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagin. It’s about an elusive best selling author who has managed to keep her real identity a secret but is now ready to face her past. I will be reading this, probably sooner rather than later.
Also due to be read sooner rather than later (because I have a copy from NetGalley) is Murder in the Dressing Room which is a murder mystery set in Soho with a drag queen detective. It’s written by Holly Stars, who is a drag queen and writer who wrote the drag murder mystery play Death Drop which has had a couple of runs in London. It’s out in early February and I’m hoping for good things.
On the non fiction front we have Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold coming in March. This is her first book after the really successful and very very good The Five and she’s now turning her attention to Doctor Crippen – again looking at a notorious murder from the point of view of the women involved.
And then let’s finish with a couple of romance novels: Emily Henry’s next novel is Great Big Beautiful Life which is coming on April 22, and Ashley Poston has Sounds like Love coming on June 17. The Emily Henry has two writers in completion to tell the story of a famous heiress and the Poston has a songwriter whose parents are closing down the family’s music venue.
Happy Friday everyone, today I wanted to mention some of the series that I’ve written about that have new books coming this year. And there are quite a few, this list is by no means exhaustive and are also in no particular order…
Lets start with one I haven’t mentioned yet – book ten in the Rivers of London series, which is coming in July. It’s called Stone and Sky and it sees Peter Grant on holiday in Scotland. Side note: I can’t believe this was announced in November and I missed it! I have mentioned the new Susan Ryeland mystery from Anthony Horowitz though, The Marble Hall Murder which is out in April. Also already mentioned is the eighth and final Thursday Next book is due in November, and I am unreasonably excited about it. It’s called Dark Reading Matter and it’s been a long wait. Also in November is the fifth Her Majesty The Queen Investigates book, The Queen Who Came in from the Cold.
The fifth book in the Three Dahlias series, is coming in July and is called A Deadly Night at the Theatre – which makes it the first not to have Lively in the title. Katy Watson has said that she’s already working on the sixth book – which is currently titled Bon Voyage, Dahlia and which is the last book on her current contract for the series, but she doesn’t know if it’s the final book yet (despite as she says the ominous working title) but will by the end of this year.
In the autumn we also have the return of the Thursday Murder Club. Richard Osman hasn’t revealed the title of Book five in the series yet let alone anything about the plot, but it’s out in September. Donna Andrews has her usual (!) two books in the Meg Langslow series coming – firstly book 37 which is called For Duck’s Sake on August 5th, and then the Christmas one which this time is called Five Golden Wings in early October.
Lady Hardcastle number 12, The Beast of Littleton Woods is out in May and Simon Brett has a new Fetherings book coming in April – but sadly no news on whether there is a new Charles Paris also in the works. I’m getting very behind on the series, but Tasha Alexander has an 18th Lady Emily coming in September. Amazon also thinks there’s a new Kate Shackleton coming in March – but it has no title and no blurb yet, so that may just be pie in the sky!
And finally, dateless, but very exciting: Kerry Greenwood has a new Phryne Fisher in editing. She said in October that Murder in the Cathedral will be out in 2025 some time, and I am more than happy to wait for it – just knowing it’s written and coming is almost enough!
After including The Reunion as one of my favourite Not New books of 2024, it would be remiss of me not to mention that her next novel is out on Kindle today. The Lodge is about a writer who snags the job of ghosting the memoir of a former boyband member. The blurb says that she moves to a penthouse in Vermont to get the job done, but while she’s combing through her clients voicemails and documents to try and work out what happened to one of his bandmates who went missing, she starts taking skiing lessons with a handsome instructor called Tyler. As I said in the best of the year post, The Reunion was bang in the current trend for books about former teen stars – and there also seems to be a trend starting for books about ghost writers. It’s described as a cozy rom-com so I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens.
A month very much dominated by the mad dash to complete my self-imposed Read Across the USA challenge for another year and listening to Phryne Fisher audiobooks on the commute. I’ve written plenty about Phryne before, and I didn’t like a lot of the desperation picks for the reading challenge and I still had Books of the Week to pick, but I’ve still managed three for you. Check me. I wasn’t sure that I would for a while, but the last week and a bit of the month really helped.
Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N Holmberg
It’s 1846 and Merrit has just inherited a remote estate in the Narrangasett Bay. It comes a a good time for the struggling writer – somewhere free to live would ease his money woes. He’s pretty handy so he’s confident that even if no one has lived there for a century he can turn it into home. Except the house has other ideas – locking him in when he arrives and refusing to let him out. Enter Hulda Larkin from the Boston Institute of Keeping Enchanted Rooms who is trained in taming magical structures. As the two of them work together to discover the house’s secrets, what they don’t realise is that there is a threat to the house – and them – from the outside too. This was actually the book that ticked off my very last state (Rhode Island) and I was really glad that it was one I enjoyed. This is more historical fantasy than anything else, although it does have romantic elements. It’s the first in a series – with four books already published and a fifth coming this year and I would happily read more of them. And I have several other books by Holmberg (in one of her other series) on the Kindle waiting to be read – and maybe this was the push I needed to finally get around to reading them.
Picture Perfect Frame by Lynn Cahoon
This is a rare book in the month in that it was not a missing state – it’s set in Calfornia. But this is a cozy crime series that I read when they cross my path. The detective is Jill, former lawyer and current book store owner. She’s supported by a fairly typical cozy crime miscellany of supporting characters – an aunt, a friend, her employees at the shop, a neighbour who says she’s a psychic and her boyfriend who is a local police officer. This instalment sees her supporting another local small business by going to a paint and sip event (which is something I had never heard of but is apparently a thing) at a local art studio. When one of the other participants is found dead in the studio the next morning, Jill can’t help but investigate as the dead woman’s spouse is claiming her neighbour (the fortune teller) is responsible. Not a difficult read, but a fun one.
Open Season by C J Box
I started with a 50 states book and I’m ending with one too. Joe Pickett is a game warden in Wyoming. He’s underpaid, under-resourced and unpopular in his new community – not just because he’s not local but because he won’t take bribes. When a local hunting outfitter is found dead on his property, he takes it personally and when more bodies are found he continues to investigate despite the police closing the case. Soon he’s caught up in a dangerous situation involving the murders, an endangered species and a company that wants to build a gas pipeline. This is a bit darker than the mysteries that I usually read – but I could cope with it because I was so interested in the mystery. It’s the first in a 25 (!) book series and the teaser for the next one had me intrigued so it looks like I might be covered for Wyoming in future challenges!
Yes, for my first BotW of 2025 I am breaking my own rules again and picking a book I finished on Monday. I just can’t help myself. And also if I could have finished it sooner I would have but Carlisle to Northampton is a long drive, even when it’s not snowy/sleeting/raining/foggy – and at various points on Sunday I had all of these, which does make it particularly ironic that this is a book mostly set on a tropical island!
The plot: Anna married West when they were both students in order to be able to access subsidised family housing. She also thought that the papers she signed when they graduated meant they were divorced. But then three years later West turns up on her doorstep, just after she’s been sacked from her gas station job and it turns out they’re not. And also that West is the heir to a huge amount of money and if they can’t convince his family that they’re actually a happily married couple at his sister’s wedding it would have dire consequences. And he’s willing to pay her to help him pull it off and the money would help Anna pay for her dad’s medical treatment but also maybe give her some breathing space to help her focus on her art career.
So there’s a couple of things to note here: firstly Anna would have to be incredibly incurious to not have figured out who West is, especially given she is also friends with his brother (and as a nosy person I had to suspend disbelief here!). Secondly there are a lot of awful rich people in this (not West!) and although there is comeuppance, your mileage on this may vary. But that said, I enjoyed this a lot as escapist fiction with a good twist on the fake relationship-turns real trope and plenty of witty banter. I’m a little unsure how West and Anna didn’t get any action together when they were roommates the first time but hey, staring a relationship with a roommate is a bad idea in case it doesn’t last. Trust me.
This one should be fairly easy to get hold of – I’ve seen the paperback in shops, although I have a copy on Kindle.
I finished the old year with possibly the last of the Christmas-themed reading (but who can tell) and started the new with lots of good resolutions about finishing the stuff on the long running list – and then forgot to take any of the physical copies of it up to the Frozen North with me. So one off the list, and a slow start to the year. But it was a busy week, and there was a lot of driving.
A modern classic of a musical today – and actually one that I saw early in December when it was still in previews but as the whole run was sold out before it even started previews, there was no point in rushing!
This is the first London revival of Mel Brooks’ musical version of his classic movie The Producers. It follows Max Bialystock, a down on his luck theatrical producer, and Leo Bloom, and accountant turned producer, who team up together to try and swindle investors by deliberately putting on a show that will fail. Except that their sure-fire flop (Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden) is a surprise hit – and now they have to pay back their investors.
My first exposure to this show was the Broadway message boards of the early 2000s and then I West End production, on about its third cast one summer holiday. And it was wonderful. It was big and brash and funny and had huge production numbers. I loved it – and the CD of the Broadway cast recording was in regular rotation for me for years. I think I could probably still sing along to almost the whole thing. But given how big the original production was, and how small the Menier Chocolate Factory is, I was fascinated to see what they did with it, especially given their reputation for transforming massive shows into more intimate productions. I am forever in love with their La Cage Aux Folles, where they did just that, and which remains one of my favourite things that I have ever see in a theatre.
And it was a brilliant night. The Producers is still hilarious and the performances were brilliant – Andy Nyman was just as good (maybe better?) in this as he was in Hello Dolly this summer as Max and his pairing with Mark Antolin as Leo was brilliant. And it felt rawer and less shiny than the Drury Lane original did. The sets are smaller, the cast is smaller with the ensemble doubling or even tripling roles (especially on the night I was there where the artistic director came out before the start to say they were three cast members and the stage manager down). But it also felt very familiar. But with so many jokes and so much there in the writing how much can you really change? And had they actually just changed enough to make it feel fresher and less like an Old School Musical than the original did – and thus more likely to appeal to new audiences, as opposed to jaded old theatre habitues like me? I went with someone who had never seen it before and she really enjoyed it. I got exactly what I wanted – another look at a favourite show, done a bit differently – and I would have gone again if I could have done. But I can’t because it’s sold out. But if it transfers to the West End…
Have a great Sunday everyone.
Oh and here’s the original London production on the Royal Variety Show back in the day so you can see the difference in scale…
As ever, as well as reading a lot of new fiction, I’ve read a whole bunch of not new fiction that is still very good, and given that the non-fiction best of was a mix of new releases and old, it would be remiss of me not to complete the set with the old (so to speak) fiction. And I’m working from published longest ago to most recent for reasons that will become obvious very shortly…
Rivals by Jilly Cooper
Ok, I’m starting with the one on this list that I should absolutely have read before now, and which you’re going to have the least trouble getting hold of because the adaptation is (rightly) everywhere at the moment. As I said in my BotW review at the start of December the very 80s attitudes in the adaptation are there (and even more so) in the book. So if you didn’t get on with that aspect of the TV version (or don’t like books like that in general) than your mileage may vary. But I absolutely raced through it – Goodreads tells me it’s the longest book I’ve read this year (over 700 pages) and yet I read it in under three days. And only one of those days was a weekend (and that was the one where i only had about 100 pages to go and finished it on a plane) – so that’s fast even for me. Season Two has now been announced for the adaptation, and we can only hope that the scripts are already written (or at least part written) and so they can get on with filming it asap…
The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams
Beatriz Williams’s 2019 novel fits neatly into a couple of my reading interests – fiction set in the first half of the twentieth century, Edward and Mrs Simpson-related fiction and spy and espionage stuff that’s not too, too terrifying. This has a split narrative between Nassau in 1941, where Lulu has been sent to write an article about the former King and now governor of the Bahamas and his wife; and a sanatorium in Switzerland atthe start of the twentieth century. The blurb majors on the Windsor connection, but they’re not really the centre – that’s Lulu. I continue to be about three books behind on Williams’ solo releases because they just seem to be harder to get hold of here, but whenever I read them I really do enjoy them.
A Murder Inside by Frances Brody
It’s the late 1960s and Nell Lewis has just been made governor of a new women’s open prison in Yorkshire. The job was going to be challenging enough before a body was found on the grounds and so Nell sets out to solve the crime and protect the women inmates from the suspicion of the local community. I really liked the set up and the 1960s setting – I haven’t read a lot of mystery series set in this time period, or at least not stuff that wasn’t contemporary to it when it was written. I’m not sure how many books it’s going to be possible to set around this one prison, but there are currently two of them we’ll see how the second ends when I get around to reading it. Frances Brody has published another in her Kate Shackleton series since this came out, so it may be that she’s going to try and run the two series in parallel to start with and see how it goes. I hope so, because I do like Kate, and I think there’s plenty more that she can investigate too.
Flying Solo by Linda Holmes
Laurie has just returned to her home town in Maine to sort out the estate of her 90-year-old aunt. She’s also recently cancelled her wedding and ended that relationship and is about to turn 40. Among her aunt’s possessions and mementos of travels around the world she finds a wooden duck and a love letter that references “if you’re desperate, there’s always the ducks”. And so Laurie sets out to discover the history of the duck – and in doing so gets caught up in antiques dealers and con artists and late night dates at the library with her high school boyfriend. This was Holmes’s follow-up to Evvie Drake Starts Over, and although both of them have A Novel written on the front, I would say this is further towards the Women’s Fiction end of the spectrum than the other one was. It has a satisfying ending, but it’s a grown up one – not a throw everything you know about yourself away and give yourself over to The New one. I really enjoyed it – and the only reason it wasn’t a BotW is because I read it the same week as The Rom-Commers (which is on the best new fiction list). Was my late November-early December holiday a real high point in my reading this year or is it recency bias – who can tell, but I did read a whole bunch of books I’d been saving on that holiday as a treat.
The Reunion by Kayla Olsen
Liv was the star of a hit teen TV show and grew up on screen. Twenty years on, a reboot is in the offing and she finds herself back on set with all her old castmates – including her former boyfriend. She’s built herself a new life since the show – but this is her chance to try and get closure on what happened with her on and off screen love interest when the show ended. Once they’re back on set together, they fall into old habits – but will this time have a different ending? This was released in January 2023 and is part of what is now a growing collection of novels set around nostalgia for TV shows or movies – whether it’s characters transported into them, or former stars of them involved in romances some how. I’ve read a few of them, with mixed success, but this is a really good one*. Like Flying Solo it has “A Novel” written on the front of it – and in this case it means that the novel is more about Liv finding herself than completely centred on the romance between her and Ransom. This one is harder to get hold of I think – I bought it in Foyles and it’s definitely an American paperback size, but if you do spot it, I think it’s worth it.
Have a great day everyone!
*so is yesterday’s BotW pick, but it is much more Christmas-themed and also a new release so doesn’t fit in to this post.
Most read author: Kerry Greenwood because all 10 of those audiobooks were Miss Fisher mysteries and no other author got on the list more than once because there were a lot of states to tick off…
Books bought: 2 preorders, 6 ebooks, 1 book. Most of the six were to fill in missing states, although Kindle Unlimited did a lot of that work for me.
Books read in 2024: 413
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 756
A month spent frantically ticking off the missing states in the 50 states challenge because that was infinitely more achievable than the idea of me carrying around physical books the whole month to try and finish that challenge, or in fact buying the kindle versions of books on the shelf to do it that way (because that is Defeating The Point). But I got there in the end, and the full list of what ticked off what is coming up in the next few days. All in all, a pretty good year in reading – 413 is my highest ever total, but I’m under no illusions that that’s because of the sheer number of cozy crime novella series I’ve read this year. But I couldn’t have completed the 50 states without them this year, so goodness knows what I’ll do next year if I do it again. I will try and pace myself better if I do it again – the mad dash in December isn’t a lot of fun and it meant I didn’t finish any NetGalley books last month because they didn’t fit the missing states. I need to work on that. I think I have done better at keeping my requests there down, but I always say that and I’m not sure it’s true. Anyway: here’s to a fresh start and a fresh slate in January!
Bonus picture: Goodreads tells me over 100k pages last year. Wowzers.
*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including 7 this month!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 