Month: May 2025

Book previews, bookshops

Books in the Wild: New Releases

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I’ve been wandering the bookshops again in search of new books to add to the ever expanding want to read list on Goodreads, and I’m back with my results. The good news is that they’re all hardbacks, so I was able to resist buying them because of a) price and b) the fact that hardbacks impulse buys sit on my shelves for a lot longer than paperbacks. And paperbacks can sit there for a long time…

Honestly non-fiction hardbacks are the hardest thing for me to resist, but also the things that take me longest to read. Here you can see the new Hallie Rubenhold which I mentioned in my 2025 preview back in January, but also Edward White’s Dianaworld which I hadn’t heard about until I saw it in the store – and then came home to find a review of it in the latest Literary Review which only made me want to read it more. I also hadn’t come across The Fall of the House of Montague before and that looks right up my street too – it’s all about the collapse of the fortunes of the Dukes and Earls of Manchester across four generations. I’m also tempted by The Dream Factory, but given that I already have at least four books about Shakespeare (or his plays) on the bookshelf waiting to be read I didn’t even let myself pick it up!

This selection of hardback fiction was facing the entrance – I really want to read the Emily Henry but I’m restraining myself because I’m fairly convinced there will be an airport paperback version of this that I can buy next time I fly somewhere, if there isn’t a deal on the ebook first. Open Heaven is described as “heartrending” and I think we know I’m not in the market for that, the Isabel Allende sounds interesting, but I still have at least one of hers on the Kindle waiting to be read but the Sayaka Murata sounds interesting – about a world where most babies are conceived by artificial insemination and marriages are sexless – but also I’m still not in the market for dystopian future stories!

And then finally we’ve got Julie Chan is Dead in the wild, The Marble Hall Murders – which like the Emily Henry I’m hoping will have an airport paperback version (although it is huge and possibly unmanageable as a physical copy), and the new S J Parris which is the start of a new series and which I have on my kindle waiting for me to read. Apart from that we have a few thrillers that are clearly too scary for me and Fair Play by Louise Hegarty which is a murder mystery where two thirds of the blurb sounds like I would like it and then the final sentence makes me wonder: Louise Hegarty’s Fair Play is the puzzle-box story that brilliantly lays bare the real truth of life – the terrifying mystery of grief.

That’s your lot today – have a lovely weekend.

series

Series Redux: Su Lin Mysteries

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I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I wrote about Ovidia Yu’s Su Lin mysteries, also known as the Crown Colony series, but it has because there is a new one out next week! I am still stuck at number six – because number seven hasn’t gone into KU yet or dropped to a price that falls into my Kindle range. But I do own number eight because that has. But I’m stubborn and I’m refusing to go out of order because I’ve done everything else in order. Also and this is also related, be warned: if you’re behind in the series, do not read the blurb for the upcoming ninth book The Rose Apple Tree because it’s got a huge spoiler in it for something that has clearly happened in one of those two previous books – it’s hard to tell because book 7 doesn’t have a plot summary attached to it in the blurb at all, just “The next title in the Mystery Tree series, exploring Singapore after the Japanese retreat and in the aftermath of WWII” and book 8 is tagged as being set in 1949 and book 9 in 1947. And i am not reading the samples to find out because: spoilers.

Any way, I have really enjoyed reading these Singapore-set murder mysteries which have taken us from the Abdication crisis through to the end of the Second World War, from Su Lin’s teenage years to adulthood as she straddles the line between the Singaporean community and foreigners in power – which started as the British and then changed to the Japanese during the war.

The first six are still in Kindle Unlimited and they’re well worth a look, and as you can see, you can also find them in some of the bookshops with larger mystery sections.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Book previews

Out Today: New K J Charles

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We have a bit of a surprise new release today – I only found out about this one about ten days ago when Amazon sent me one of those “new release from an author you like” emails and was surprised to see it was a new release coming very soon. Anyway, K J Charles‘ latest is Copper Script which is set in the 1920s and features a Metropolitan Police Detective and a graphologist who can work out people’s lives and personalities from their handwriting with freakish accuracy. I pre-ordered this off the back of that email – so I have a copy dropped onto my Kindle just waiting to be read once I’ve finished the current Mitchell and Markby….

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Struggling Wives

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Happy Wednesday everyone, and yes, this is the second Recommensday inspired by reading At Mrs Lippencote’s! The first one back at Easter was about unhappy marriages, and this one is about Struggling Wives of various types.

Paperback copy of At Mrs Lippencote's

Julia in At Mrs Lippencote’s is the wife of an RAF officer who finds the social expectations of her frustrating and can’t ever quite get to grips with what she ought to be doing and what she wants to do. In Mrs Tim of the Regiment – Hester is also a military wife, but she’s not struggling with her relationship with her husband like Julia is – it’s everything else that’s causing her headaches. Her husband is away, and she’s been moved to a new area and has a lot on her plate: a new group to fit into, a friend with a romantic entanglement and some one chasing after her too. This is written as a diary and part of the fun of it is Hester’s obliviousness to the various men who are sniffing around her. In The Diary of a Provincial Lady, our heroine is also struggling – but in her case it’s mostly to keep the house from falling into chaos whilst also trying to keep up appearances in the neighbourhood. This is not the first time I have recommended this and I continue to love it and empathise with an inability to plant bulbs when you’re meant to!

In Marghanita Laski’s To Bed With Grand Music, Deborah is struggling in a different way: to be faithful to her husband who has left for Egypt (why always Egypt?) and who she promises to be faithful to despite the fact that he says he can’t promise to be. She up sticks for London, abandoning her son and takes lover after lover. Deborah is an awful person – and a terrible failure as a wife and mother – but it makes for great reading. and finally In Guard Your Daughters the daughters are the centre of the plot but their mother is absolutely a struggling wife. She’s not living in the real world or actually participating in the household and you could say it’s the root of all the problems in that household.

I have plenty of books that suggest they might be in a similar vein on the shelf to be read: like Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins, An Academic Question by Barbara Pym and Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple, so there may yet be a follow up-follow up post!

Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: On Turpentine Lane

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Amid all the murder mysteries last week there were a couple of other books – one of which was my first Elinor Lipman novel which is now my first non-mystery BotW in nearly a month – dragging the ratio of mystery to non-mystery so far this year up to 13 mystery to seven others!

Our heroine is Faith Frankel, 32 years old and back in her home town working in fundraising at a private school. Not in town (or answering her messages) is her boyfriend/fiancé Stuart, who has taken off on a cross country walk to find himself. In his absence Faith has bought herself a house – a fixer-upper bungalow – and is trying to get her life on track. But the history of the house may be less than peaceful – for starters the police turn up to search her basement for bloodstains. And her family life is less than peaceful too – her father is having a midlife crisis and has has left her mother to pursue his a new career as a painter of fake Chagalls and one of his new benefactors.

I know I said this wasn’t a mystery – and you’ll have noticed in that summary that there is a mysterious element to this, but really it’s not the main thrust of the plot – which is a delightful and some what madcap romantic comedy. It’s a bit chaotic and the plot developments just keep coming, making the pace really high and keeping you turning the pages. I was a little bit perplexed as to why someone as sensible as Faith was with such a freeloader as Stuart to start with, but I just gave up and went with it because he wasn’t really a presence in the book – but he did provide plenty of humour and acted as a catalyst for other events in the book. I would happily have read another 100 pages of the madness – but Lipman did tie it all up very neatly at the end so I can’t really complain too much.

This is in Kindle Unlimited and Kobo Plus at the moment, I’m not sure how easy the paperback woudl be to get hold of, because I’ve never really looked for Elinor Lipman in the shops. But of course this does give me an excuse…

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 19 – May 25

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It’s another Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK, so I hope those of you who aren’t working have a nice day and that the weather cooperates with whatever your plans are. There are three different football teams celebrating today, two of them with full on parades, so chances are there’ll be rain at some point! I continue to binge my way through the Mitchell and Markbys – and it’s surprising me how much I had forgotten from first time around. It makes them even more of a treat, but also harder to resist just going straight on to the next one! But I’ve still managed to get a few other things read this week – even if I didn’t get that much off the long-running list! Onwards we go…

Read:

A Touch of Mortality by Ann Granger

A Knife to Remember by Jill Churchill

A Word After Dying by Ann Granger

The Beast of Littleton Woods by T E Kinsey

Call the Dead Again by Ann Granger

Amelia’s Shadow by Marie Benedict

On Turpentine Lane by Elinor Lipman

Started:

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater*

Still reading:

Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary

The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

Wish You Were Here by Jess K Hardy*

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

Three ebooks and a pre-order

Bonus picture: Rainbows and sunshine at the train station.

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

comedy, not a book

Not a Book: Greg Davies

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So I’m finishing off Brighton/seaside week with one of the other things we did while we were there – which was see Greg Davies’s latest tour: Full Fat Legend. And before I get to that, it should be noted that we saw him in the Brighton Dome – aka the site of Abba’s triumph at Eurovision in 1974. So that was a) very cool and b) also a sign of how much Eurovision has grown because this is a capacity of about 1,500 people – and 30 years on last year’s contest was held in the15,500 capacity Malmo arena that’s the second largest venue in Sweden. Anway, to the comedy…

This is Greg’s first tour in seven years, and while we had definitely seen him before, I can’t tell you if it was that tour, or the one before. But either way, it was a long time ago. And since then Taskmaster has got even bigger (we have done a recent binge) – which I’m assuming is (along with Covid) the reason for the big gap between tours. In Full Fat Legend Greg is telling stories of the things that have happened to him in the last year and I’m not sure how much more than that I can tell you without ruining it, but it’s been *quite* a year.

I laughed so hard I cried my eye make up off and even if I had realised ‘d done that (which I didn’t) I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it without leaving the show, and by the time I did realise I was back at the hotel having walked a mile and a bit though central Brighton and along the seafront with mascara marks all over my cheekbones (how? I don’t know). It got a little bit close to too embarrassing for me to bear, but only very briefly. And it’s a big long set that Greg is doing too – we had a support act who did about 25/30 minutes and then there’s an interval and then it’s 90 minutes of Greg.

We were incredibly lucky to get tickets very last minute – because looking at the tour website writing this, a lot of the venues are a lot bigger and every other date this year is sold out – except for a “last few” for Wembley Arena in June. But the goodness is there are arena dates in March 2026 which have tickets. And so if this sounds like your thing, plan ahead!

Have a great Sunday everyone.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Brighton Waterstones

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I’m sure you didn’t think that I was going to do a whole week based around the seaside without giving you a bookshop visit did you? In fact it was one of the first places that we went after we arrived – as we walked past it on our way from the railway station to the seafront and of course the early visit meant I could leave the purchases at the hotel along with my rucksack so I didn’t have to carry them all around with me!

Lets start with the fact that this is a big store, over a lot of floors and they’ve got a really large selection of new hardback fiction right as you come in the door. And as ever, I’m focussing this post on the stuff that interests me – that I read and that I’ve been looking out for and not on the whole store! Brighton has got quite a distinct identity – it was the first place to elect an MP from the Green Party back in 2010, it’s got lots of students and a large LGBTQIA community so I was interested to see their book selections.

And across those new fiction shelves, as well as recent releases I’ve read and written about, like the Curtis Sittenfeld short stories collection and The Rest of Our Lives, there’s also stuff on my pile like The Three Lives of Cate Kay and books that I’ve seen reviewed in the latest edition of Literary Review like Call Me Ishmaelle and the new Katie Kitamura.

And the table next to it has got the really new stuff – like that third Magpie Murders, which I really want to read but is Very Very Big in hardback and so I’m going to have to wait for the Kindle edition to drop to a sensible price. And there’s also the new Gregory Maguire on the far left there – Elphie – where he’s returning to the world he created in Wicked although I have to say I thought he’d covered Elphaba’s childhood in that but it’s a long, long time since I (tried to) read that.

I am of course all about the crime at the moment because romance moving towards Romantasy and contemporary romance having ever younger protagonists is not really what I want right now, so here we have some mystery books. And I was impressed/horrified at how many of this lot I’ve read already – or have on the pile. ON this side I’ve read the SJ Bennet, the Richard Osman and the Anthony Horowitz and I have the Golden Spoon and Vera Wong (as previously mentioned) on the Kindle waiting to be read. I also want to read Displeasure Island which is the sequel to Grave Expectations, but haven’t bought it yet.

And on this side my hit rate is even higher: I’ve read Knife Skills for Beginners (and its sequel, A Fatal Crossing, the Grantchester, the Andrew Cartmel (which is one of the non Vinyl Detective ones), Death and Croissants, The Marlow Murder Club, the Richard Coles and the Agatha Raisin.

Even more crime here – and my hit rate is lower, but it does include one of my purchases which was of course A Case of Mice and Murder – but also Seven Lively Suspects and another Canon Clement along with a bunch of covers that look too dark for me, although I am trying to adjust my snap judgments on that front after Ruth Galloway.

And finally, this had the new Vinyl Detective which I would have bought and read if my pre-order wasn’t already at home and the final Maisie Dobbs which is now out in paperback. I was going to do the romance section, but basically, I’d read so few of them that it felt a little bit pointless. I would say I should try and change that, but we all know how big my To-Read Pile is right now so I’m not making any promises.

Have a great Saturday everyone.

detective, series

Mystery series: PI Grace Smith

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Happy Friday everyone, and to tie in with the theme this week, I’ve got a mystery series set not in Brighton but in the fictional town of Seatoun, somewhere on the south coast within easy reach of London, so you can see why it might fit my seaside-y vibes this week!

Grace is a former police officer, who left the force under something of a cloud, and who now works as a private detective in the town where she used to be a cop – trying to avoid her former colleagues as far as possible. Her career as a PI isn’t really going anywhere – and the cases she gets tend towards the mundane and the ridiculous. Less dead humans, more dead animals or missing people.

At this point it should be noted that I’ve read all but one of the five books in the series in their original late 1990s paperback form. And yes I know there’s only four in the photo (and in two different covers styles) but I couldn’t find a copy of Who Killed Marilyn Monroe on my shelves and there’s a chance I found it on the shelves at one of the hostels that I stay at. But anyway, these days they have been retitled and reissued on Kindle and that’s how I read book three. Now I read these all fairly well spaced out, so I can’t say for certain, but I didn’t notice any major re-working or rewriting between the two versions – just the radical change in title and design.

The new covers look much darker and more thriller-y than the previous ones. But don’t be deceived. Like Ruth Galloway, these are not as scary as the covers would have you expect. Obviously these are books written 20 years ago – so mobile phones are much less common and research is all done in person in archives and not on the internet – but that really works for a mystery series. And as I can remember this era from growing up – and cassette tapes machines, smoking in bars, a time before smart phones – there’s a nostalgia factor here for me too.

Only five are on Kindle at the moment, but they are all in Kindle Unlimited. One of them – with yet another different cover and the original title is available on Kobo. But I have managed to pick up most of these in second handbook shops or book exchanges so the paperbacks are not as hard to find as you might think.

Have a great weekend.

Book previews

Out Today: The Elopement

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I mentioned Jane Austen yesterday, and today I wanted to mention Gill Hornby’s new book which is the third that she’s written around Jane Austen’s family. I really enjoyed Miss Austen and Godmersham Park and I’m looking forward to reading this one. Looking at the blurb this is focusing into a family that Austen’s niece marries into and the family from Godmersham Park. I suspect this will be really easy to get hold of – the others have been and of course we’ve just had the TV adaptation of Miss Austen (which I really need to get around to watching) which may lead to increased visibility for this unofficial trilogy of Austen-adjacent novels.