I have an extra review this week because A Very Novel Murder came out on Tuesday and I have already read it – back in December in fact. This is Elllie Alexander’s new series which is itself a spin-off of her Secret Bookcase series. So if you’ve read that you’ll already be familiar with our heroine Annie, who is now opening her own private dectective agency with her friend Fletcher, as well as continuing to run the Secret Bookcase bookshop. I can’t really say any more about the backstory than that, because if I do, I’m spoiling the previous series for those who haven’t read it – but you can find my post about the series here.
Anyway in this first in the new series, Annie and Fletch take on their first case when an elderly woman asks them to investigate the death of her neighbour, a promising surfer whose death the police think was either accidental or suicide. There is also a new running story for the series, in the same way that the thread that ran through the Secret Bookcase was Annie’s quest to find out who had murdered her best friend.
I enjoyed this – it’s got some set up going on for the series, but because it’s an established group of characters from the previous series Alexander hasn’t felt the need to go overboard there (also it would have been spoilery!). I had the culprit for the murder pegged relatively early, but there were enough side twists that I didn’t mind too much when I did turn out to be right. My issue with the final Secret Bookcase was that the running plot meant that the mystery of the week (so to speak) got less complex to allow time for that, this was better than the last couple there, so hopefully we won’t see the same thing again in this series. I’m looking forward to reading the next one.
I got my copy via NetGalley, but it’s out now and in Kindle Unlimited, which of course means it’s not on Kobo at the moment except for as an audiobook. I’ve never seen these in the shops, but Amazon claims it’s available in Paperback (and that that came out in November) so who knows.
How long has this post taken me to write? A long time. Did I start it in summer 2025 when I saw that there was a sequel to The Socialite Spy coming? Yes. Has this see-sawed wildly in the writing between abdication books and Edward VIII books? Also yes. Am I posting it now because yesterday was the 90th anniversary of Edward VIII’s accession? Yes. Was that the thing that finally gave me the push to post it? Yes again. Anyway, here we are.
Andrew Larman’s The Windsor’s At War is actually his second book in a trilogy about the Windsors. The first, The Crown in Crisis, followed the events leading up to the Abdication, and this follows the relations between the now-Duke of Windsor and his brother the new King from 1937 and through to the end of the Second World War. The final book in the trilogy is The Power and the Glory and examines what happened after the Duke of Windsor’s wartime activities emerged and finishes with Elizabeth II’s coronation. I’ve only read this one of the three, and I’m not sure this told me anything I didn’t already know – and the writing can be a bit dry at times. But if you’re after an in-depth look at the situation this – and the others in the trilogy – might be a good option for you. I’ll be keeping an eye out for them, at a sensible price of course!
I’m following that with Abdication by Brian Inglis, which was actually written in 1966 for the 30th anniversary of the abdication, by an author who remembered it happening when he was a school boy and who had access to lots of the people involved because they were still alive. And it’s definitely got a different sort of sensibility to the more modern books, but those eyewitness reports are worth it if you’re really interested in the minutae of what went on and already know a bit about the characters. Which I am, and I do. It’s especially good on the political context of the time and who the different non-royal characters were. But probably one for the completists.
Next up is Anna Pasternak’s The American Duchess, which is a 2019 biography of Wallis Simpson originally called Untitled, but renamed for the paperback publication. Pasternak says she’s trying to understand the woman behind the headlines, and as is often the case with Wallis biographies says it’s “her story as it’s never been told before”. Having read that, I would say that the way that it is different is that it is giving Wallis a very easy ride – putting the best possible interpretation on her behaviour and ascribing the worst interpretation to everyone else’s actions. It was published before Lownie’s Traitor King, which led to a re-evaluation of the Nazi sympathies of the couple, but even bearing in mind what was known before that Pasternak glosses over the pre-war visit to Hitler and the events surrounding it. It gives a lot of weight to Diana Mosley’s views on the Duchess – without giving the context of Mosley herself – married to the head of the British Fascists, who was friends with Hitler and wrote an incredibly partisan and gushing biography of her friend. The Anne Sebba is better on pre-war Wallis, the Lownie better on post war.
Talking of Diana Mosley, I have also read her book about The Duchess of Windsor and I cannot recommend it. My goodreads review from back in 2016 reads: “I was expecting this book to be partisan, but it was much, much more biased than I had expected… Worth reading only as a lesson to retain your critical faculties when you read any non-fiction book to remind yourself what the author’s objectives may be.” I need say no more.
Moving on… The Kings Loot by Richard Wallace is a look at the astonishing jewel collection that Edward bought for Wallis and the origins and provenance thereof. Like the Brian Inglis, it’s probably only one for the truly interested because the writing style is hard going. But there is some really interesting stuff in there about Edward VIII’s potential raiding of the royal jewellery hoard which had been gathered from colonising the world and marrying into various European royal families.
There are still a couple of books I’m yet to read – the Phillip Ziegler Edward biography and the Michael Bloch Wallis biography as well any of the Andrew Morton about Wallis. I’ve tried some of the Alan Lascelles diaries and never managed to get through them, but I may yet give them another go. I have the Larman that precedes Windsors at War on the Kindle as well. And of course it’s a source of endless fascination to historians, particularly in the current climate, so I’m sure there will be more in the pipeline…
I’m sorry! Too much skating, not enough reading . I’ve got three things part finished but nothing to write about today so I’m giving myself a pass this week. In the meantime, here are some of my favourite performances from last week that might have gone under the radar if you only watched the final groups of the competition:
Josefin Taljegard from Sweden absolutely nailing her skate to It’s All Coming Back To Me Now, skating second in the women’s free programme (after the first person fell five times) and getting a standing ovation from the crowd for her performance, musicality and emotion. And we didn’t give many ovations.
We’ve had a lot of Moulin Rouge routines over the year but nothing quite like The Finns and their slightly unhinged but very entertaining take on it (that’s them in the picture at the top taking their bow).
And finally, my prediction for a potential viral moment at the Olympics: if Tomas Llorenc can land the triple axel at the start of this Minions programme for in Milan it will take the roof off.
So I was off work last week, but I was also spending 7 hours a day watching figure skating, so not a lot of reading happened! It was a fabulous week though, it was amazing to see all the European skaters at their last competition before they head to Milan for the Olympics next month. The atmosphere in the arena was amazing and all the people sitting around me were great too. It all went very fast, and I can’t believe it’s over already. Normal reading should be resumed this week…
Happy Sunday everyone, I’m back with a documentary series for you this week, but just a warning to start with, it may make you wary of eating mushrooms for a while after you eat it!
Has there been a more notorious true crime case in the last five years than the case of the Mushroom Murders in Australia? I’ll wait. Erin Patterson invited four of her in-laws over for lunch and afterwards three of them died and the fourth nearly died. When the investigation started it discovered that the four victims had ingested death cap mushrooms. The story was soon being covered by international media outlets, and when the trial happened this summer there were multiple daily podcasts about the case as well as a huge amount of reporters from around the world covering the case.
This is a three part documentary which explores the investigation and trial and has the advantage of many true crime docs because of all the coverage that this case had. I’m not a big true crime person, but so many of the series that I have watched are reliant on reconstructions. This does not have that issue. There were journalists on the ground from the start, this was clearly in the process of being made during the trial and because it’s so recent the memories of the locals that are interviewed are fresh. It’s so fresh in fact that Erin Patterson’s appeal against her sentence (sorry, spoiler!) was only lodged in November.
For me, the most interesting part of this case was seeing and finding out more about the part of Australia where this happened. Leongatha has a population of less than 6,000. Morwell where the trial took place has around 15,000 residents. They’re both in the Gippsland area of Victoria, which basically looks like beautiful English countryside and not like the desert outback that you so often picture when you think of Australia. And the Paterson case turned the town upside down – firstly because everyone knows everyone there and secondly because of the huge attention it garnered. I watched all three episodes back to back one night in the run up to Christmas and could have watched another hour if there was one. All of which means that I suspect this won’t be the last content about this case I consume, even if I haven’t knowingly eaten mushrooms since!
If you want to watch this, it was made by the Australian streamer Stan and has been sold on to various different streamers in other parts of the world. The trailer I found on YouTube is for CNN and says it’s a CNN Original, but in the UK it’s on Netflix. So you may have to have a little hunt on your local streaming services to find out where this is in your territory.
There were nearly no books for this post, and I was actually starting to congratulate myself a little bit, but then I went into a bookshop on Tuesday night and bought two books and then another one on Thursday and bought a third and so here we are. The Mitford and Waugh letters should hopefully be interesting, Just As You Are is a Pride and Prejudice retelling and The Gay Best Friend has got comps to other books that I’ve really enjoyed so fingers crossed!
The latest Marlow Murder club mystery is out this week and so I thought now was a good time to point you back at my post about the series last year – which you can find here. This new books is The Mysterious Affair of Judith Potts centres on a secret from Judith’s past. She’s always been a bit of an enigma, but it looks like we might be about to get some answers as someone from her past appears in town. On top of that, there’s two dead local celebrities for the ladies to investigate. I really enjoy these – actually more than the TV versions of them as the adaptation seems much more played for laughs/humour than it reads to me as a book. The new one is in hardback and should be pretty easy to find in shops as well as in ebook and audiobook from all the usual sources. And if you haven’t read the earlier books yet, the first is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and all the others are on offer for £2.99.
Happy Thursday everyone, and having mentioned one of the Christmas Notch books in my Not-New Christmas Recommendsday, I wanted to flag that Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy have a new book out today, The Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl. This is set in a college town and has a professor for the hero and a new lecturer in town for the heroine. I’m looking forward to reading it, but have a few reservations about the conflict of interest situation here because as you know I’m all about the competent heroines. However given that they’ve managed to handle similar stuff quite well in Christmas Notch I’m prepared to go with it and give it a try!
It’s the second Wednesday of January, and once again I’m back with the Kindle Offers that I’ve spotted that I think might interest you if you read this blog, or interested me while I was looking!
There is actually not a lot that I’ve already read and recommended on offer this month – probably because I don’t read a lot of romantasy or creepy thrillers. But there are a few to mention. I’m going to start with a former BotW: Armistead Maupin’s Mona of the Manor. My love for the Tales of the City books is well known at this point and this is the tenth (and probably last?) in the series. Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle, which was one of my 50 States books from 2023, is 99p as is the second Bridget Jones book The Edge of Reason and Amy Lea’s Set On You about a curvy fitness influencer is back on offer too.
On the buzzy books front there is Bob Mortimer’s The Hotel Avocado, Harlan Coban’s Run Away – presumably because the adaptation has just hit Netflix, and Hannah Grace’s Icebreaker which is one of a slew of ice hockey related romances on offer, presumably because of the imminent arrival of Heated Rivalry to our streaming screens. In other things I have’t read there is a T J Klune from a couple of years back The Bones Beneath My Skin which I didn’t buy but only because I still have two Klunes in the backlog and I have rules that I’m trying to stick to. Talking of rules I’m trying to stick to, Assistant to the Villain is back on offer – I bough this last year and still haven’t read it and really need to get around to it because there are already two sequels with a third coming in the summer. Also waiting to be read (as a paperback though not on the Kindle) is Ashley Herring Blake’s Dream On, Ramona Riley, presumably because the second book in that series, Get Over it, April Evans, is out at the start of February.
This month the Terry Pratchett are the second and third in the Discworld series, The Light Fantastic and Equal Rites. Frederica is the Georgette Heyer One of my favourite Katie Fforde’s is on offer too – Flora’s Lot is set in an auction house and has bonus kittens. Romancing Mr Bridgerton is back on offer too – this is the book that the last season of Bridgerton was based on. Sidenote: the new season drops at the end of the month and is Benedict’s story aka based on An Offer from a Gentleman (which also happens to be in Kindle Unlimited at the moment). If you’re in the market for historical romance, Mary Balogh’s Remember When from her Ravenswood series is on offer as well. In classics, Ross Poldark, the first in Winston Graham’s Poldark series is on offer too.
In things I booked while writing this post we have The Almighty Dollar by Dharshini David and Dan Jones’s Henry V book (which is £1.99 rather than 99p) which is positively restrained.
Happy Tuesday everyone and this week I’ve picked one of this week’s new releases – it’s out last week if you’re in the US or on Thursday if you’re in the UK. Check me out being actually topical for once.
It’s 1964 and Del and Dinah Newman and their two sons are household names across the States as the stars of a prime time TV show based upon their lives. But their 12 year contract is coming to an end and the ratings are down, the times are changing and behind the scenes the family itself is fraying: Dinah and Del are sleeping in separate rooms, elder son Guy has a secret in his private life and younger son Shep, a rock and roll teen idol, may have run into a problem his dad can’t buy him out of. And then Del is in mysterious car crash that leaves him in a coma with just weeks to go before the season finale – which could well be the series finale. Dinah decides to take matters into her own hands and take over the reigns of the family and the show. But can they keep it all together to get the finale across the line?
This is Jennifer Niven’s latest novel and is being blurbed as for fans of Lessons in Chemistry and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and I would say that that is a pretty good comparison. The family live in the spotlight and who struggle with it in various different ways but as well as that the world has changed around them and their brand of entertainment hasn’t changed fast enough. It’s also a look at the way that women were viewed in society in the 1960s and the restrictions that they chaffed against (or not in some cases). It felt really timely to me, because the fight for various rights has never really gone away and it is good to have a reminder of how recently some of these things actually happened. But that makes it sound a lot heavier a read than it is – it’s fun and frothy and surprised me in how things all resolved at the end. I do hope that’s not too much of a spoiler!
My copy came from NetGalley and I’m writing this before the release in the UK so it’s quite hard to tell how widely available this will be in the bookshops, but I’m hoping to spot it soon because Waterstones are showing plenty of copies on their website. And of course it’s also available in Kindle and Kobo and as an ebook.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 