Verity Reads Books (lots of them)
In which our heroine attempts to tame the to-read pile
Happy Friday everyone, it occurred to me that I haven’t done a round up of all the various series posts I’ve done for a while. But there’s so many of them now that I’ve actually just done the romance ones for you today because it’s February and it’s Valentine’s Day the other week. And I’ve tried to categorise them a little bit for you.
Small Town romance
Showbiz/showbiz adjacent
Sports romance
Paranormal
Historical romance
Novella series
I read Julie Tieu’s Fancy Meeting You Here back in the autumn of 2023, which was an opposites attract romance with an overstretched florist and a caterer who happens to be the brother of one of her friends. I have the follow up – with a fake relationship between colleagues on work trip – on the Kindle waiting to be read. But I’m now two behind because Tieu has a new book out this week. The Girl Most Likely too is set at a twentieth High School reunion, with the heroine attending with her former frenemy and discovering that their roles are now reversed – she’s the one without direction, he’s the one who is thriving. We all know that enemies to lovers can be a bit hit or miss for me, but I am optimistic about this one, although I really should wait until I’ve got the backlog down a bit before I buy it…
After picking a Kate Shackleton yesterday which was particularly evocative of Yorkshire I thought I’d mention a few more books set around the county
Let’s start with one of my very favourite Georgette Heyer’s – Venetia. Most of this is set in and around Venetia and Damerel’s houses in rural Yorkshire. Venetia is feisty and independent- but Jasper is one of Heyer’s best hero’s and among the most well fleshed out. Another Yorkshire set historical romance – but with a very different vibe – is Sarah MacLean’s Ten Ways to be Adored while Landing a Lord. Our heroine is running the family estate with very little money, and the hero is escaping from fashionable society to the country. This is the second in the Love by Numbers series.
When other people were reading Rivals, I was reading Barbara Taylor Bradford. And A Woman of Substance is set in Leeds and the surrounding countryside. I think this was the first book with sex scenes I ever read but it’s mostly a big old saga as Emma Harte raises herself up from housemaid to department store tycoon. I did read the rest of the trilogy and some of her others, but I think this – which was her big breakthrough was the best.
I mentioned it in the summer when I went to see the stage adaptation at the Open Air Theatre, but a reminder that Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is set in Yorkshire. I’m going to admit that I haven’t reread this since I was a child, so I can’t swear to how the original is aging… and of course there’s also James Heriot and his adventures in veterinary medicine.
Another book I read recently is Sovereign, the third in the Shardlake series, which sees Matthew following in the train of Henry VIII as he makes his progress to York. As well as a good murder plot it’s also really good at creating sixteenth century York – and given how much of old York still exists you can really conjure up the settings in your head. It was particularly good for me because my history supervisor at university was based in Kings Manor, which is one of the principal locations.
And finally several of the series I really like have installments in yorkshire – including Lady Julia Grey and Royal Spyness, but you really need to ahve read the others to get the most out of them.
Happy Humpday everyone!
Breaking all my own rules this week with the only Kate Shackleton mystery I haven’t read yet, which I’ve read extremely out of order which is not the best idea but which has a very good murder plot.
Kate is called in to investigate a death at a quarry in a Yorkshire village. Two children went to get their dad after a days work and the elder finds him dead and they run for help. But when they return the body is missing and the local police are more inclined to believe that Ethan has left his wife Mary Jane after an argument. But Mary Jane believes her daughter Harriet and pleads for Kate’s help and Kate is unable to resist. What happened to Ethan – who was a union organiser and had also fallen out with his best friend who was about to sell his farm and move away.
This is the third in the series and as well as having a good and twisty mystery also sets up some of the running plot strands in later books which I had sort of wondered about but would have wondered more if I had realised how many books I had (or hadn’t) read in the series. Like Dandy Gilver these are historical mysteries that have darker solutions than you might expect from the covers – and I sort of like them more for that because of the variety and inventiveness of them – and because Agatha Christie and the actual golden age books are sometimes darker than you remember them being – Sleeping Murder, Artists in Crime, Nemesis – they all have grim bits in them.
Anyway – these are easy to get hold of, I don’t think the series is over so there may be ebook offers next time a book comes out whenever that may be. Any bookshop with a reasonable crime section will have them – I think that’s where I got this one.
Happy Reading!
Yeah, so the reading list is being held up by the audiobooks and I’m not really sure why, because it felt like an ok week in reading. The Kings Loot is nearly finished though, and I’m not making bad progress on the Holly Stars. But that still reading list is looking a little long, so I need to do a bit of work on that front this week, or at least try to.
Read:
Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh
Poppy Harmon and the Pillow Talk Killer by Lee Hollis
Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh
Metropolitan Murders edited by Martin Edwards
Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh
Murder in the Afternoon by Frances Brody
Started:
The Kings Loot by Richard Wallace
Still reading:
Murder in the Dressing Room by Holly Stars*
The Favourites by Layne Fargo*
A Traveller in Time by Alison Utley
Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher
No books bought, which is probably a good thing really things considered.
Bonus picture: Filming in Fitzroy Square 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.
Happy Sunday everyone and hilariously this post was mostly written before I realised that in order to compare something to Jonathan Creek, I probably needed to explain what Jonathan Creek was and why I love it because it is somewhat vintage these days and I am old. So now I’ve done that, my review of Ludwig will make more sense…
Ludwig is a six-part detective drama-comedy series starring David Mitchell as John, an anti-social puzzle designer and Anna Maxwell Martin as his sister-in-law Lucy. In the first episode Lucy sends for John to help as her husband, his identical twin brother James has gone missing. James is a police detective and has left her a letter of resignation as well as some instructions. Lucy says that James has changed over recent months and rather than submit his resignation or report him missing she wants John to pretend to be James and infiltrate the police. Thus starts the running plot of the series alongside a murder of the week each episode.
I described this series to one of my work colleagues as Jonathan Creek but with puzzles instead of magic and a running plot beyond Creek’s will they or won’t they in the Maddie years. I struggled whether to call it a drama or a dramedy or a drama comedy in the description at the top because there is humour but it’s not laugh-track sitcom funny (or at least what sitcoms are aiming for) and if the comedy to drama scale has Brooklyn 99 at the comedy end and something really bleak at the other, this one falls somewhere closer to the halfway point than to the Brooklyn 99 end. It’s got less jokes than Deadloch but it’s also nowhere near as bleak as the final episode of that gets (which was nearly too far for me).
I really enjoyed the murder of the week element, but I did worry how they were going to resolve the fact that John was pretending to be a police officer – and what might happen to those cases that he had solved. But actually it sorted that pretty neatly in the end. And it’s got a lot of familiar faces to me in the various murder cases – mostly people who I’ve seen in the theatre more than on TV – like Hammed Animashaun who was one of the scene stealing thugs in the Kiss Me, Kate I loved so much last summer.
This has already been commissioned for a second series, which is good news for a number of reasons. If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s on the iPlayer now in the UK, but I’m not sure what the international streaming situation is – BritBox US’s website doesn’t work properly for me because I’m in the UK and I can’t face setting up a VPN just to find that out!
Have a great Sunday everyone!
For once I have already read half of these. So they’re not going into the pile – but straight onto the shelves – or in some case to the parents for them to read. Who knew I could do that. Actually it’s probably one of the most me things ever – the mood reader buys books and immediately reads them instead of everything waiting on the shelf. Anyway: the ones I’ve read are the Richard Coles, the Nev Fountain and the second Vicki Delany. The Elly Griffiths is the next for me in the series after I remembered about them when mum’s book club read the first one. And then the other two are cozy crimes I had a read of when I was in Waterstones Picadilly and Gower Street and liked the look of. So not adding too much to the pile but not exactly restrained either!
Jill Shalvis – 12 books have read them all
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone and how could I do any thing other than a romance series for my post today?
Our setting is a small coastal town in Washington state, and our romances are standalone but interconnected. So you can read them in any order you like, but in some cases you’ll get the best pay off from having read in order (Forever and a Day I’m talking about you). Lots of my reviews for these on good reads use the phrase “fun and flirty” which I think is fair – there are challenges in the lives of lots of the characters, but never in a bleak and hopeless way that takes away their agency in finding a happily ever after. Peril is low, but satisfying resolutions are guaranteed.
On occasion there are issues that could have been solved with a simple conversation – but I forgive them because the accidental pregnancy trip crops up very rarely here, and we all know that’s one of my least favourites!
I thought I had read all of these – but it turns out I may not have. I blame the fact that I read some in omnibus form and that makes it easier to lose track of things. But on the brightside that means I may still have a couple of treats in store when I need them.
These should be pretty easy to get hold of – the three book omnibuses are actually better value on kindle – and if you’re not sure and want to try I find the samples on omnibuses are actually pretty good because they’re often a longer length because there are so many pages the percentage adds up a fair representation
Have a great Valentines everyone whatever you’re doing and a lovely weekend!
This week I wanted to mention that we have a new book from B K Borison this month – and it’s got Sleepless in Seattle vibes. Borison is the author of the very popular Lovelight Farms books, which I’ve read one of, but have been all over all the bookshops in the last year. First Time Caller is the first in a new series called Heartstrings. That name seems to come from the Baltimore radio show hosted by the hero of the book, Aiden who despite the fact that it’s a romance hotline is over love. Our heroine is Lucie, whose daughter calls in to Aidens show for some dating advice for her mum. I am a big Nora Ephron fan and really like Sleepless in Seattle, for all that it has some slightly stalkery vibes at times, so I’m looking forward to seeing how Borison has taken inspiration from the movie and updated it for the 2020s
It’s the second Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for some more Kindle offers. And I’m not going to lie, given that it’s Valentine’s Day this month, I was expecting more romances on offer than I actually found. But hey, maybe this is counter programming?
Lets star with the romances I did find though. There’s an older Katie Fforde Living Dangerously, Casey McQuiston’s Red, White and Royal Blue, Kirsty Greenwood’s The Love of My Afterlife, How to End a Love Story (which I had some reservations about), recent release (and even more recently mentioned) Not in My Book and one of the Christina Laurens I haven’t read – Love and Other Words.
There are a few intriguing looking new releases on offer – like Frances White’s Voyage of the Damned, which claims “if Agatha Christie wrote fantasy, this would be it” which is quite the claim and almost enough to get me to buy it without reading a sample for 99p. But not quite enough because I’m working on that impulse control, so I have the sample on the Kindle now.
If you want to start the Rivers of London series ahead of the next book this summer, the first book is 99p this month. There are a couple of Agatha Christies on offer too – Sparkling Cyanide and Nemesis. Also in old favourites there’s Memoirs of a Geisha, which I first read at uni and is way better than the movie of it is.
In stuff I have but haven’t read yet, there’s T J Klune’s retelling of Pinoccio In the Lives of Puppets and Stephanie Garber’s Caravel.
Two Discworld books to flag this month – I Shall Wear Midnight from the Tiffany Aching middle grade series is 99p and Feet of Clay from the Watch sequence is £1.99. There’s a Georgette Heyer murder mystery, Death in the Stocks, on offer at 99p as well as a few romances including one of my all time favourites in Devil’s Cub and short story collection Pistols for Two at £1.99.
Happy Humpday!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 