As you may have noticed, the US presidency has changed hands this week, so for recommendsday this week, I have a few books – and other posts to point you at if you want a US politics fix. And I’ve even got a photo of the White House from my time in DC in 2018 to fancy it up a bit!
First of all, let me point you at my JFK adjacent post – which has got a whole lot of fiction and non fiction about the Kennedy family – and I’m currently reading even more on top of that with the White Hiuse by the Sea nearly finished and also Ask Not waiting on the pile. There’s also post I wrote for the first Trump Inauguration eight years ago, which has a bit of cross over too.
Then there’s Kate Anderson Brower who has written a lot about The White House and what it’s like to live there. There’s First Women, First in Line and Team of Five – about the wives of presidents, the vice presidents and the club of former presidents respectively – there’s a bit over overlap between them so maybe just pick the topic that interests you most.
And if you want a bit of lesser spotted presidential scandal, there’s also Rachel Maddow’s Bag Man about Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s disgraced VP.
Happy Tuesday everyone and today’s pick is a first in series historical cozy crime that I picked up when I was spending that Waterstones gift card before Christmas.
Our setting for Deadly Summer Nights is a holiday resort in up state New York. It’s 1953 and it’s the second season that Elizabeth has been managing Haggerman’s Catskill’s Resort. Her mother is a former actress and dancer and inherited the resort – and although she’s using her connections to book entertainment acts for the resort, it’s her daughter who is doing all the hard work on the day to day. And because it’s the 1950s and she’s a woman, not everyone is pleased about that – or prepared to listen to her. The last thing they need is a dead body at the resorts, but that’s what they’ve got. And in the dead man’s cabin the chief of police finds a copy of The Communist Manifesto and suddenly everyone is claiming that the resort is a hotbed of communists. But Elizabeth isn’t convinced and sets out to try and figure out what happened herself.
I really, really enjoyed this. The setting is fun and a bit different – even if I was really annoyed on Elizabeth’s behalf at all of these useless men who wanted to dismiss her. I do like a historical murder mystery and I haven’t read a lot that are set in mid-century America outside of a big city like New York. And the resort setting is a lot of fun whether it’s modern or historical- I’ve read Kathi Daley’s series set on a resort and I would happily read more if they appear.
This is also my first Vicki Delaney novel – although I have read one of her books under her Eva Gates pen name. There is only one other book in this series so far – and I will try and get hold of it to see what happens next. This has the start of a promising love triangle going on and I hope there’ll be clues in that about whether there will be more – Delaney seems to have a lot of series going on under her various names and I don’t know enough to know which ones are still active.
My copy came from the lovely cozy crime bookshelf in Waterstones Piccadilly, and I think it’s going to be a special order if you want the paperback version. And it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.
I had a week off work. And this year we didn’t go on the usual January holiday, instead I’ve been up to Carlisle and back again and then mooched around the house and town for the rest of the week. But a four hour each way drive means you can’t read a book (if you’re driving, which I was) and quality time with the family is more important than reading. So this week’s list is heavy on the audiobooks and light on the new reads and finishing of long runners. But it was a lovely, lovely week.
Here I come again with another play on another Sunday. Although to be fair, this is one I saw a fair few weeks ago now and has had to wait its turn. And given that we’re into 2025 now, it’s not even the tenth anniversary year any more – which was one of my reasons for revisiting the show.
The Play That Goes Wrong follows an amateur dramatic group as they attempt to put on a performance of a murder mystery as their latest show. And as the title suggests, it just keeps going wrong. Then even more wrong. Each actor is playing a character in the drama club who is playing a role in the show. And if you’ve ever spent any time around an am dram group you may recognise some of the types that seem to turn up in amateur productions. And then there’s the show – it’s sort of Mousetrap-y but it doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen the Mousetrap, because it’s a murder mystery play where anything that could go wrong does go wrong.
The first time I saw this – on the original UK tour in 2014 I laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe and my sides hurt. I saw it again in London with maybe the second cast and so I think this was my third trip. And it’s still hilarious. The cast make it look easy but it’s really not – so much depends on the timing of all the physical comedy – and it’s impeccable. The company behind this are Mischief Theatre and they’ve gone on to do another show featuring the same characters from the drama group – Peter Pan Goes Wrong – which I saw for a second time this time last year when it had a Christmas run in the West End with many of the original cast returning. And they’ve done several other shows – several of which I’ve seen – and they have a new show coming into the West End later this year which is definitely going on the to-see list.
I struggle to think of anyone this isn’t suitable for – it would definitely make a great first grownup show for older kids (and I think there were a few families doing that when I was there) as well as people who maybe don’t speak as good English – because there’s so much physical comedy in it as well as the puns. And because it’s been going a decade it’s usually pretty easy to get sensibly priced tickets too if that’s what you’re after as well.
It’s that time again – my latest batch of book arrivals. So we have one one post Christmas, panicky 50 states purchase that didn’t turn up in time and will get used for this year (The Children’s Blizzard), three purchases in Carlisle in Bookends – including a replacement for my awol copy of Goodbye to All That in the same edition of the original, and a Christmas themed murder mystery bought in January. Restrained really.
Happy Friday everyone and after all the quiet of December we have loads of new releases starting to come through and so today’s post is about one of the series that I’ve been enjoying which has a new instalment out this week: The Marlow Murder Club.
In the first book, Judith, who is in her late 70s and is a crossword setter for The Times, witnesses a murder while out swimming in the Thames and when the police don’t believe her, sets out to solve the crime with the help of local dog walker Suzie and Becks, the vicar’s wife. In books two and three they’re investigating the deaths of local grandees and gaining a certain amount of local notoriety as well as a a grudging alliance with one of the local detectives. The new book, Murder on the Marlow Belle features the local amateur dramatic group, whose founder member is found dead the morning after a river cruise with the group’s most famous former member. And it has the bonus of one of the characters being called Verity, which is always fun, although Veritys don’t have a great record in murder mysteries – Verity is after all the victim whose murder Miss Marple is trying to solve in Nemesis.
I particularly like this series because one of my ex-boyfriends lived in Marlow so I spent a bit of time around there over the years and it’s always fun when places that you’ve lived in or know well are in Books! More than that, these is just so easy to read – a bit like the Richard Osmans are, although in a different style. They’re written by Robert Thorogood who also came up with the idea for the death in Paradise TV series and books. We watched a lot of Death in Paradise over Christmas and you’ll be glad to hear that the books are a bit more complicated than Death in Paradise episode but you can see a lot of the same sort of things going on here.
There was a TV adaptation of the first book last year and they needed two episodes to get through all the plot. They’ve made a couple of changes for the TV series – for example Samantha Bond is at least a decade younger than Book Judith and is playing her as more her own age than the book. And as I said when I wrote that post about the adaptation I find them more obviously comedic on TV – in fact it’s almost too cringe for me. But in the books I don’t notice that and I really like them. Of course it does post a question of what’s gonna happen with when the Thursday Murder Club comes out as a movie. What am I going to notice in the adaptation that I didn’t in books and am I going to enjoy that as a movie as much as I enjoy the books. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Anyway, you should be able to get hold of any of these pretty easily, I’ve seen them all over the shops. My copy came from NetGalley – hence why I’m up to date for once! As I said at the top, the new one came out yesterday, so you can get that on Kindle and Kobo now, and the other three are at reasonable prices as ebooks at the moment too: here are the Kindle and Kobo links to those too. And indeed there’s already a preorder link up for an as yet untitled fifth book – due this time next year!
Long time readers will know that I am a big figure skating fan (but an extremely bad skater myself) so it may not come as a surprise to you that I wanted to mention a novel that’s out this week and features a pair of ice dancers. The Favourites is about a pair of wrong side of the tracks skaters, Katarina Shaw and Heath Roca, who captivate fans right up until something happens at the Olympics to cause the instant end of their partnership. Ten years later there is a documentary coming out about them and Kat may need to speak out if she wants her story to be heard.
I’m fascinated to read this and see how much of it is skating, how much of it is drama and what on earth the incident was. I will endeavour to report back, maybe even before the skating season is over*…
*Worlds is at the end of March so that’s possible right? Right?
It’s January. It’s incredibly cold. So you should buy books. And there are some kindle bargains to help you with that!
Let’s start with two authors who I mentioned in my anticipated books post at the weekend. Firstly Taylor Jenkins Reid whose tennis comeback storyCarrie Soto is Back is 99p this month just in time for the Australian Open. Then there is Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five – also 99p and really worth reading – especially given how much it upset a lot of the so-called “Ripperologists”. If you’re interested in social history and the lives that women lead in the past (and that don’t often get covered) you will find it really interesting, even if (like me) you don’t usually do Jack the Ripper content.
We’re under a week away from another Presidential inauguration (and we just had the funeral of another former president), and Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife is on offer – this is her book that’s inspired by Laura Bush. I like it (but not as much as I like Romantic Comedy) and I am looking forward to her collection of short stories that is coming out next month.Ready Player One is back on offer – I like the book way more than the film, and I say that as someone who likes the film, although I still haven’t managed to bring myself to read the sequel.
On the non-fiction front, there is Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking – which I actually listened to on audiobook (read by Carrie herself) a few years ago (while painting the spare room at the old house), but as a tale of growing up in Hollywood it’s incredible – and really funny and well written: after all Fisher was a script doctor who punched up the scripts of movies including favourites of mine like Sister Act and The Wedding Singer. On the history front, we have Alison Weir’s The Six Wives of Henry VIII which is a good starting point if you’re interested in the wives and want to know more. Also in the historical overview section of reading is Ian Mortimer’s The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, which is some of the most fun you can have reading about an era where the Plague could get you if the dysentery didn’t and if a woman made it to my age she was doing well. Talking about fun historical reads: Greg Jenner‘s Ask a Historian is also on offer, I’m guessing because there’s about to be a new series of You’re Dead To Me.
Excellent news on the Terry Pratchett front: Men at Arms is £1.99 this month. It’s the second in the Watch sequence, but it’s still early enough in the series that you can read it standalone without missing too many jokes. This one is playing with all the tropes about secret kings as well as a band of misfits finding home in the city police force. Also on offer is the graphic novel The Last Hero, which was a BotW a couple of years ago. This month’s Georgette Heyer is Black Sheep, there are Agatha Raisins and Hamish MacBeth’s on offer in the form of Down the Hatch and Death of a Spy. Josephine Tey’s The Man in the Queue which is the first in the Alan Grant series is 99p
In stuff I have waiting on the tbr pile (virtual or otherwise) that is on offer, we have Beth O’Leary’s The Road Trip (now in a tie-in edition because of the Paramount+ adaptation), Frank and Red by Matt Coyne, which is about an unlikely friendship between a curmudgeonly old man and the six year old who moves in next door to him. The Socialites was my Amazon Prime reads pick last month – and is now out and 99p. It says it’s for fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid (tick), Katherine Tessaro (tick) and Fiona Davis (tick) and follows three girls from their convent school in the 1920s to their lives as actresses and writers and similar. This definitely falls into the fictionalised real people area of my reading wheelhouse.
And finally, in other stuff worth mentioning, Elusive, the second in Genevieve Cogman’s French Revolution series is on offer, ahead of the release of the third in the series later this year.
After breaking the rules last week with a book I finished on Monday, I’m breaking a different rule this week and writing about a book that’s later in a series. But it’s ok. I can explain.
This is the thirteenth in the Goldy Schulz series and sees our heroine taking on a catering contract for a local law firm. One of the staff at the firm is Dusty, a friend and neighbour who has recently started working at the law office and who has asked Goldy for cooking lessons. But when Goldy arrives at the office to prep the next day’s breakfast meeting food, she finds Dusty dead on the office floor. Of course she can’t help but start investigating – especially when the victim’s mother asks Goldy to because she doesn’t trust the police. It turns out that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes at the law firm – and plenty of options for Dusty’s killer. But can Goldy avoid the killer’s attentions herself?
What I like about this series – apart from Goldy herself and I’ll come back to that – is the way that Mott Davidson uses the catering business to find new and interesting settings for the murders that Goldy gets caught up in. This means that there are always new characters coming through (so your old favourites don’t get killed or turn into killers) and helps combat the “how does this business stay open with all these murders” issue of so many small business cozies. And Goldy is such an appealing character – and she’s so consistently herself too. I’ve read all bar two of the series now and although her life has changed and improved, she’s still recognisable as the same person as the first book and that’s not always the case – especially when a series has been written across a long period of time.
This is an older cozy crime series (the first one Catering to Nobody came out in 1990!) and in my series post a year ago I said that it was tough to get hold of some of them because they’re not all in ebooks. But much to my delight since that post (and since I ordered a second hand copy of Dark Tort and sighed sadly over the cost of the others second hand) the rest of the series has not only appeared as ebooks but is currently in Kindle Unlimited. Meaning that I could read this on KU while away from home and still get a book off the pile! And of course it means that it’s easier for the rest of you to get hold of it too now. Three cheers all around.
Well it’s that time of year where the counters are reset and some of the audiobooks that I listen to more than once a year will appear on the lists again. And aside from that, I’m also trying to be better with the NetGalley reading than I was for some (most?) of last year. So still a bit behind on clearing the long runners, and of course I broke my own rules with last week’s BotW so we’ll see what I do about tomorrow on that front…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 