Breaking away from the mystery theme of the new books from the last few weeks to mention that Juliette Fay has a new book out this month. I read her novel The Tumbling Turner Sisters nearly a decade ago and it was a BotW here all of those years ago. The blurb for The Harvey Girls says it follows two women who want to become waitresses in a hospitality chain on the Santa Fe railroad. From very different backgrounds and with different motivations, both are hiding secrets and must try and overcome their dislike of each other in order to survive training and then working at a luxurious hotel at the Grand Canyon.
I thought I’d mention this because of my recent recommendsday about books set in hotels, but I don’t know how easy it will be to get hold of here. I have another of Fay’s novels on the tbr shelf waiting – but I picked it up second hand and it’s an import. And this has reminded me that I really should get around to reading that soon….
Having spent a couple of days last week wandering around Norfolk, for this week’s Recommendsday it seemed like an obvious choice to talk about books set in the county.
I’m starting with the most obvious books – because they’re the ones I’ve read/binged the most recently: the Dr Ruth Galloway series. They’re mostly set around north Norfolk – up around Kings Lynn and Hunstanton (which we visited on our trip) as well as Norwich (and occasionally further afield). And as I’ve also written about them in two other posts, so this is all you’re getting on Ruth today.
I have got another mystery novel set though: The Norfolk Mystery by Ian Sansom. It’s the late 1930s and Spanish Civil War veteran Stephen Sefton gets a job as secretary for Swanton Morely “the People’s Professor”. Morely is planning to write a series of guides to the different counties of England and the first stop is Norfolk. Accompanying them on this trip is his daughter Miriam, but the trip soon turns into a murder investigation. This is the first in a series set and suffers a bit from needing to set up the premise and the characters (who aren’t always that sympathetic!) but I liked it enough that I went on to read the next three books in the series too, although I’m still to read the fifth and seemingly final one.
I’m not going to miss an opportunity to recommend some Laurie Graham, and Future Homemakers of America is set on and around a US Airforce base in the early 1950s. The future homemakers of the title are five wives of US servicemen stationed in Norfolk who initially seem to have very little in common except that their husbands are all in 96th Bomber Wing. The book opens with the death of George V when the women meet Kath, a local, when they go to watch the funeral train go by. It’s been years since I read this, but writing about it has made me want to read it – and its sequel The Early Birds again.
Also in line for a re-read at some point are the Arthur Ransome’s set in the Norfolk Broads. I don’t think I’ve read Coot Club in 30 years – it’s one of the ones that doesn’t have the Swallows and Amazons in it, just Dick and Dorothea from the previous book in the series Winter Holiday. Ramsome was smart to expand the series out beyond the original characters, but Child Verity didn’t appreciate that at all! Anyway, as well as Coot Club, Big Six is also set in Norfolk – and that is one of the ones that I don’t own and in fact I’m not 100 percent convinced I did actually read it even back then!
Still in the classic children’s books area of my reading is Margaret Finds a Future by Mabel Esther Allen*. Margaret is an orphan and at the start of the book the aunt who was her guardian has died leaving behind debts which mean she can no longer stay at her boarding school in Wales. Instead she moves to a stately home in Norfolk (described one of the most famous in Norfolk besides Holkham and Blickling) where another aunt is a custodian. This was one of my early forays into career books (as opposed to boarding school books) and it’s a bit old fashioned, but I enjoyed reading it – and in fact read about 75 pages of it again while I was writing this post – and it has some atmospheric descriptions of Norfolk too.
And finally to end, as you may have noticed, I don’t often read award-nominated books but Rose Tremain’s Restoration is one of the ones that I have read. It tells the rise and fall of Robert Merivel in Stuart England. He starts as a medical student, gains the patronage of the King and is given an estate in Norfolk when he performs a service to the King. And when he falls from favour, he finds work in Norwich. I don’t want to spoil the plot too much, but if you like historical literary fiction you should read it.
Happy Humpday!
*Who also wrote my beloved Drina series as Jean Estoril
Following on from The Celebrants two Tuesdays ago, today I’m writing about A Star is Born, which I discovered is written by Steven Rowley’s husband when I read the thanks for The Celebrants. And as I had on the pile already of course I went on to read that. And so here we are.
Charlie needs a new job and a gig as personal assistant to Kathi Kannon, an iconic Hollywood actress who played a character he had a figurine of as a child. He’s searching for meaning in his life and a way of moving on past his difficult childhood, she needs someone to organise her chaotic life. She’s impulsive and carefree, and everything that Charlie is not. She’s also Hollywood royalty with mental health and addiction issues and an octogenarian mother who was also an actress who lives next door.
Now if this sounds like Carrie Fisher (and her mum Debbie Reynolds) that might be because Bryon Lane worked as Fisher’s assistant for three years and says that that job inspired the novel. Now you can draw your own conclusions about how much of Kathi is Carrie and I can see from the reviews on Goodreads that it’s a polarising one. And if you’ve read any of Fisher’s memoirs that may also colour your opinions.
For me, Kathi’s hedonistic devil may care manic presence was there as a foil to Charlie’s own issues. He’s totally lost and allows the job to consume him and become his identity. It’s all amped up to eleven and Kathi’s antics seem purposefully extreme and exaggerated so that the reader is often thinking “come on Charlie, surely this is the thing that will make you wake up”. The blurb calls it hilarious, but a lot of the humour is too much towards the cringe for me, and I definitely wanted Charlie to pick himself up and grow some self worth well before he did. But by the end I was pleased with the journey that he had gone on and the person that had come out the other side.
Like The Celebrants, this one isn’t on Kindle and is going to be a special order, to the point where it’s not even listed on the Waterstones website. I’m not sure it’s a spend loads of money to get it type buy, but if it should come your way at a reasonable price it’s an interesting read. And I’d happy read another book by Byron Lane if that came my way.
A good week – in life and in reading. We’ve wandered Norfolk, I read an entire book while sitting in a field at Sandringham waiting for bands to perform, and I’ve finished another non-fiction book – two now this month. Bravely I’ve started two more, here’s hoping they don’t end up on the long-running list…
Read:
Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford
Seams Like Murder by Dorothy Howell
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
It’s summer and we’re trying to take advantage of the good weather to get out and about a little bit and make use of our National Trust cards a bit. We live in a little bit of a National Trust desert, so you have to go a little bit further afield meaning we often end up doing things on the way home from somewhere else. Our latest jolly was over to Norfolk for a couple of nights, mostly to a concert at Sandringham, but it we did two Jacobean mansions on the trip.
Lets start with the bigger of the two: Blickling. This is a Jacobean house built on the same site as an earlier house that is believed to be the birthplace of Anne Boleyn. Designed by the same architect as Hatfield House, it has a main building with two wings alongside and framing the main building. The main house has an important and large collection of books and manuscripts in the various libraries and galleries. It’s got huge grounds including a lake, a big walled kitchen garden and a parterre. It’s also got a museum dedicated to the RAF base that was set up nearby in World War 2 and whose personnel were housed at the house. It’s also got a big second hand bookshop. There is plenty to do and see – we were there on a really, really hot day, so we didn’t do any of the walking trails (there are loads) because we didn’t want to melt, but you could really easily spend the whole day here.
Felbrigg is the smaller house – and we were expecting it to be the quieter one, but it actually seemed a bit busier, possibly because we arrived just as the house was opening for the day and so maybe it seemed like there were more people in the house than at Blickling. It was in the same family for most of its life and has a really interesting collection of artefacts from the family’s travels over the centuries. It also has a fair bit of bird taxidermy, which is in the process of being conserved. In fact there are a few conservation projects going on here, including on their state bed, and I appreciate the information that the National Trust now gives you about the work that they’re doing on their properties.
Talking of taxidermy and conservation, I present Calke Abbey in Derbyshire, which we visited a few weeks ago after a night out seeing Tim Minchen in Nottingham. This is a very different stately home, because it has had very little restoration and is largely in the state that it was when it was handed over to the trust, at the end of about a century of decline. The work at the Abbey has been about preventing further decay and stabilising what remains. So many grand houses were lost in the 20th century as the world changed and the families who owned them could no longer afford the upkeep and Calke demonstrates that – as the money started to run out, the family just shut up more and more of the house and lived in smaller and smaller portions of it. So there is peeling wallpaper, abandoned rooms, and so much taxidermy. I cannot tell you how much taxidermy. Honestly, the last time I saw this many stuffed animals and birds was when we visited the National History Museum at Tring. And yes, Tring has more, but it’s a museums you expect that!
One thing that all three of these had in common was that the National Trust have made a big effort with the activities for kids this summer. All three of these had a Summer of Play area with games and activities to do, there are passports for children to get stamped and trails and treasure hunts. I’m pretty sure I would have been a lot more enthusiastic about National Trust trips when I was little if all this had been about then!
Oh this looks bad. Really bad. But it’s not as bad as it looks. Honestly. Let me explain: nearly a third of these were pre-orders, so really they shouldn’t count right? I mentioned the Nev Fountain on Thursday, and the new Dahlia, and I really should have mentioned the Elissa Sussman too, but it came out the same week as the Sarah MacLean. Then the Otto English and the Richard Coles were my airport purchases on the way to Ghana – and were the only books I took with me. Now I was so busy that week that I only read one of them, but that still means that that one is going straight from the incoming pile to the shelf. And A Howl of Wolves is going onto the shelf too because it’s that fourth Sam Clair that you can’t get on Kindle, so really buying it was the only way I was going to get to read it and thus finish the series. And then while I was buying it from Abebooks, I checked what else the seller had that was on my list, because you get postage on a scale if you’re buying more books from the same person, and that’s how/why I got the Jill Churchills. And then finally the Jackie, Ethel, Joan was my purchase in Waterstones last week. So really that’s the only one that counts as an impulse purchase. And that’s what I’m meant to be working on…
It’s Friday and I’m back with another romance series for this week’s series post. This time another Jill Shalvis series – I’ve already written about her Lucky Harbor series and recommended a few of her others in recommendsday posts too.
Heartbreaker Bay is a series of eight connected romance novels centered around a renovated building in San Francisco, with characters coming from the residents of the building and employees of the businesses in it or nearby. In the centre of the building is a courtyard with a fountain, and the legend is that if you wish on the fountain you will find love. You know where this is going! You don’t have to read them in order – in fact I read them radically out of order because I borrowed loads of them from the library and read them over a fairly extended period. Half of the series are Christmas books and there are fill in novellas as well.
I was trying to pick a favourite of these but was struggling – by ratings it’s either Accidentally on Purpose or Chasing Christmas Eve, but I read them a while ago and who can tell if I’d still rate them above the ones I’ve read more recently. What I will say about all of these is that the characters have proper backstories, often with some trauma and have reasons for being wary of relationships and that often makes for the most satisfying romance novels for me. So maybe just start at the beginning and go from there!
These are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so the time is ripe for you to read them if you’re interest – that’s what finally got me to finish off the series now my local library and its hours are unpredictable…
Back in February, The Fan Who Knew Too Much was a Book of the Week, so I wanted to mention that the sequel, Lies and Dolls, came out on Tuesday. The blurb for this promises Kit and Binfire en route to Lincolnshire to see undiscovered tapes of Vixens of the Void and promises missing action figures that lead to murder. I thought the first one could have been a bit tighter, but that was possibly because it was doing the world building work – so I’m looking forward to seeing what Nev Fountain has got planned and how it’s all developed. As you can see, I had the paperback pre-ordered – but given the state of the pile at the moment, who knows how long it will take for me to get to it!
Happy second Wednesday of the month – I’m back with the Kindle offers that I’ve spotted (and in some cases bought!).
Lets start with the fact that The Three Dahlias (aka the first in the series) is 99p this month. I really like these as you all know at this point, so if you haven’t already checked them out, now may be your time. Murder Most Royal, the third HM the Queen Investigates book is 99p, and the first two are actually in Kindle Unlimited at the moment too. And recent book of the week A Murder for Miss Hortense is 99p too which is a total bargain.
Meanwhile there are some new releases on offer too: like the new Ashley PostonSounds Like Love is 99p at the moment – this is one of the books I bought while writing this! The latest Trisha Ashley, The Book of Lost Stories, is 99p – if you’re a Trisha reader, it should be noted that this is an updated version of Lord Rayven’s Revenge which apparently has new material. If you like a pregnancy plot then Cara Bastone’s Ready or Not is 99p. Pregnancy tropes are not my thing but this one is well reviewed for those of you who are and I like other books that are in the same multi-author series/collection.
In other things I bought while writing this post, there is Carl Hiaasen‘s latest book Fever Beach for 99p, and it should be noted that one of his earlier books Razor Girl is also on offer – this is the sequel to the recently-adapted Bad Monkey. I also bought Maigret’s Holiday, because I keep picking these up when there’s an offer on one I haven’t read and it’s a hugely long series so that happens fairly often!
Happy Tuesday everyone, I finally made a start on the Alicia Thompson backlog last week and here I am reporting back!
When Daphne goes to a baseball game days after she’s signed her divorce papers, she’s doing it because her ex wanted the ticket. So she gets drunk and then she heckles a player and seems to make him cry. The moment goes viral and she reaches out to him on social to apologise… except in all the drafting and redrafting she edits out the bit where she says she was the heckler. And so when Chris unexpectedly replies to her message it all gets complicated really fast. Chris is struggling with his own issues and finds himself strangely drawn to his new online friend. But how long can Daphne keep her secret and what happens when he finds out?
Let’s get the big problem over with right away: yes she’s basically catfishing him. And we’re meant to be fine with it – or at least get over it by the time it’s all resolved because: romance reasons. And so your mileage on this one may vary depending on your tolerance for that. I was mostly OK with it, but it took far too long for Daphne to come clean with Chris and I think there were ways that the book could have worked better if the dual identity situation had been resolved sooner.
And I realise that that sounds like I didn’t enjoy this, but I actually did – I read it in about 24 hours – and I liked the banter and the baseball setting and the development of Daphne’s character. I just wanted it to be better in a couple of areas. I wanted to see Daphne’s ex getting his comeuppance for his awful behaviour – which would have helped the reader understand her a bit better (and thus help with the deception thing) – which could just have been as simple as him being really annoyed at the success she sees as part of the plot.
I’ve seen this in Big Foyles and the Waterstones with the romance sections, so it should be fairly easy to get hold of this one (compared to some of my choices I mean) but it’s also on Kobo and Kindle.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 