Author: veritywilde

Journalist, armchair sports fan, book worm and show fiend. There's a sentence you don't hear too often.
books I want

Buy Me a Book for Christmas 2024

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At the behest of my sister – and because I really do want to make sure I get some of these in my stocking this year, I’m back with this year’s suggestions for books I would like to receive this Christmas before we’re even out of November. You’re welcome.

As you know, the general theme of these posts is that I pick books that I want to read but can’t justify the price of right now given the side of the pile – which often means hardback non-fiction and this year is no different. So lets start with Women in the Valley of the Kings by Kathleen Shepherd. My love of the Amelia Peabody series is well known and this is the story of the real women Egyptologists in the so-called Golden Age of Exploration. Next up is Ask Not by Maureen Callahan, which has the subtitle “the Kennedys and the Women they Destroyed”, or The White House by the Sea by Kate Story about the Kennedy’s Hyannisport compound which both slot right into my reading interests because the Kennedy circle is both insane and strangely fascinating in a sort of horrified way. I also wouldn’t mind a copy of Not Your China Doll by Katie Gee Salisbury which is about Anna May Wong, the first Asian American film star and thus is in my Old Hollywood wheelhouse, as is A Murder in Hollywood by Casey Sherman about the murder of Johnny Stompanato.

Moving on to the fiction side of things, there’s The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living by Louise Miller, which has got a comparison to Diane Mott Davison in the blurb, but isn’t a murder mystery (or at least not as far as I can work out), Steven Rowley’s Guncle sequel, The Guncle Abroad, or Beatriz Williams’ The Beach at Summerly which is now in paperback. There’s also Avery Carpenter Forrey’s The Social Engagement which looks like proper Rich People problem fiction, and Love at First Spite by Anna E Collins which is a romcom about a woman trying to get her own back on her cheating ex-fiancé by building a vacation rental on the land next to the house they were meant to live in together.

And one final one before I go – Helen Ellis has a new book of essays out – it’s called Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge and the sample is as funny as her other books, American Housewife and Bring Your Baggage, and Don’t Pack Light.

As always part of the fun of this for me is the fact that I know my mum and my sister often pick from this list based on which books they would most like to borrow from me after I’ve read them, so I look forward to seeing what turns up this year!

Have a great weekend everyone.

mystery, series

Mystery Series: The Secret Bookcase

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Happy Friday everyone! The fourth in Ellie Alexander’s new series based around a bookshop in California came out on Wednesday, and I have read all four of them, so now it’s time to write about them!

Our heroine is Annie Murray, a former criminology student turned bookseller at the Secret Bookcase in the small town of Redwood Grove in California. IN the first book, The Body in the Bookstore, she’s looking to try and boost the shop’s prospects by expanding into events – but of course a body turns up and she needs to solve the crime or the shop will end up in an even worse situation than it was to start with. Investigating the murder is one of her former professors, who also tries to entice Annie back to the world of criminology which she left after her best friend was murdered – in a crime which remains unsolved. And thus we have the template for the series so far – Annie organises an event and there’s a murder, and in the background she’s trying to decide between bookselling and criminology but with the running thread of that unsolved murder of her best friend in the background.

These are really easy to read, well plotted cozy crime novels. Annie has a nice group of friends around her which make for good secondary characters, and the events mean that there’s been a variety of locations where the murders have taken place, not just in the bookshop which helps with the “How is this business still going given all the murders” issue of the small business cozy crime. I have a little less patience with the best friend murder running strand than I do with the crime of the week (so to speak) but that’s probably because it’s going so slowly and I just want it wrapped up and sorted. But given the structure of the books, I get why it’s not happening fast.

In an astonishing turn of events, the first of this series only came out in June, and we’re already up to book four – with book five coming early next year. I’m assuming Ellie Alexander had a few of these stacked up already because the first two came out on the same day and then we’ve had another one every three months so far since, so we’ll see how long that pace can keep up, especially given as she has a couple of other series too. They’ve used various comps across the four books – some of which I don’t agree with because they lean towards the comedic and I don’t really see that in these, but generally, if you like a small business cozy crime, these may well work for you.

Anyway, I read the first one and the fourth one via NetGalley, but two and three thanks to the wonders of Kindle Unlimited. And that of course means that these are only on Kobo as audiobooks.

Have a great weekend!

books

Out This week: New Royal Spyness

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I mentioned back in the Christmas series post that we have another Royal Spyness novel this winter – and I wanted to give it another mention because the series has been creeping its way towards the Abdication crisis since at least book eleven and the blurb for book eighteen suggests we’ve finally hit the height of it all. In We Three Queens we’re in late 1936 and Georgie is at the centre of it all- with Wallis Simpson staying at her house while the King figures out what he wants to do – while at the same time a film crew have been given permission to shoot a movie there by her step-father Sir Hubert. And of course Mrs Simpson needs to be kept out of sight – and Georgie still has a newborn to deal with.

And of course if you want to know more about the series, you can go back and read my other posts about it – you can find them here and here.

detective, Forgotten books, mystery, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: BLCC round-up 2024 edition

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It’s been a while, but here I am, back with another post of some of the really good British Library Crime Classics I’ve read recently. And recently is a fairly elastic thing, because I started putting this together ages ago, and then some of the books that I was expecting to use in this ended up being Books of the Week instead!

Impact of Evidence by Carol Carnac

This is set in the Welsh borders where an elderly doctor known for his erratic driving has gone off the road and into the river – but when the police pull out the vehicle a second body is discovered in the back. Who is the mystery corpse, how did he get there and was the doctor responsible? This is another mystery centering on a tight knit community where everyone knows everyone else’s business and so clues can be picked up that way. Really good and atmospheric.

Excellent Intentions by Richard Hull

This is a murder mystery about the murder of a deeply unpopular man, who drops dead on a train to London. There are four suspects, and the story is told by intercutting the investigation by Inspector Fenby and judge sitting watching the prosecution at the trial – which he intends to be his last case before retirement – without telling you who the accused is until very late on. I really enjoyed reading it – I wasn’t sure who I thought the accused was going to turn out to be, and then I very much enjoyed how it all revealed itself and what the solution turned out to be.

The Measure of Malice Edited by Martin Edwards

A collection of murder mystery short stories all with some sort of scientific twist to them. There are some authors here I haven’t come across before along with some familiar names if you’ve read other BLCC titles and then two really big names in Conan Doyle and Dorothy L Sayers. Not being a Sherlock Holmes expert I can’t tell you if the story here is one of the better known ones, but I can say that the Sayers is a Wimsey that I have read before in one of the Wimsey short story collections, which probably isn’t a surprise, although it is a good one (even if I think bits of it clash with part of the first Paton Walsh continuation, but that’s a really nerdy point). All in all a good and varied selection.

And that’s it – and I can’t see that I’ll have read enough of these for another round of of BLCC before the end of the year, although who knows whether one will end up as a Book of the Week before then in the six weeks we have to go…

Happy Humpday everyone!

Book of the Week, Children's books, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: The Top of the Climb

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I was wondering what to write about this week and then I realised that I was the only person to have read and rated this on Goodreads and so obviously the choice became clear! And so this week we have another in my intermittent series of career books for girls from the mid-twentieth century.

As you can tell from the cover, this is the story of a plucky young wannabe air hostess through her training and into the early stages of her career. In this case it’s Caroline, who comes down from the north of England for her interview at London airport and doesn’t speak much of any foreign language, but clearly has the right accent and the right stuff for the job. This runs you through the skills that an air hostess needed at the time, and then a bit of the day to day of the job once you qualify.

The rest of Betty Beaty’s books appear to be Mills and Boon category romances – between air hostesses and pilots, but there’s not actually a lot of romance in this – for all that the traditional love interest is easily spotted early on. There’s a dollop of glamour with trips to New York- but also the usual dash of teething troubles and peril. I’ve said before that my expectations for air travel were made unrealistic by the fact that I read Shirley Flight, Air Hostess as a child – and this would have done the same, although maybe not quite to the same extent.

Of course the main issue with a lot of this era of books is that problematic content can pop up anywhere – and anything with travel tends to have at least a few issues. The Shirley Flight books are particularly bad when it comes to the portrayal of anyone non-British, and although it has a moment or two, The Top of the Climb is better than they are on that front. And also, spoiler, there’s no plane crashes in this. Shirley crashes in practically every other book, but Caroline makes it to the end sans wrecked plane – despite a few scares. All in all an interesting and mostly fun way to spend a couple of hours.

I bought this at Bristol Book Con this year, and I can’t see any other copies anywhere, so if you want to read this you may have to make me an offer. But I don’t suppose you will – and indeed I’m not really suggesting you should.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 11 – November 17

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A steady old week in Reading and a very busy week in life. So I suppose I’ve done OK all things considered. And Kiss Me, Kate was wonderful at the cinema too yesterday afternoon so that was delightful as well.

Read:

The Killer in the Choir by Simon Brett

Star Trap by Simon Brett

A Comedian Dies by Simon Brett

Cruel Winter with You by Ali Hazelwood

A Jingle Bell Mingle by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy*

Death in the Dark by Julia Buckley

The Measure of Malice edited by Martin Edwards

The Top of the Climb by Betty Beaty

Started:

Frequent Hearses by Edmund Crispin

Still reading:

The Divorce Colony by April White

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

Another preorder turned up, and one other acquired. Oopsie

Bonus picture: The British Museum as I walked past on my way back from a comedy gig one night last week. I can’t pass it without thinking about Amelia and Emerson…

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

announcement, film, not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Kiss Me Kate in Cinemas

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You all know I saw this three times at the Barbican this summer, so it’s my duty to report that they recorded the revival of Kiss Me, Kate and it’s coming to cinemas from today (17th November) and I am in fact going to see it, in my local indie today because a) I loved it and b) I want to see how it comes across on screen. It’s one of those event-cinema releases, so the dates may vary (the cinema where I’m seeing it is only showing it twice a couple of days apart at the moment) and you may need to look at either an indie or a larger multiplex cinema, but hopefully if you want to see it you’ll be able to find it.

The pile

Books Incoming: Another November post

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As I said last week, there were too many arrivals for just one post, so I’m back with a second one. And this is fifty percent preorders (that’s the whole front row), and then a few others. And several of the others are because I’ve been ordering Christmas books – and to get free postage from Waterstones you need to spend more than £30… so I just bought myself something to get up to the value, because I haven’t been organised I’ve just been ordering in dribs and drabs. Anyway, to the actual books: we’ve got the new final Vanderbeeker book which is finally out here in paperback, the next part in the Fangirl Manga and the latest Katherine Center (which I also saw in the shops last week). Then there’s A Star Is Bored which has been recommended by several authors that I enjoy reading, the Roseanne Montillo book about Truman Capote and Ann Woodward and The Divorce Colony, which has been on the list for so long that I forget who recommended it to start with, but which had a price drop. So all lovely stuff hopefully, I just need to stop acquiring things and start reading them…

Have a great weekend!

bingeable series

Bingeable series: Lily Bard

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The last couple of years I’ve reread some Charlaine Harris around Halloween, and this year it was the turn of Lily Bard, which is closer to Aurora Teagarden in feel than Sookie Stackhouse, but still has a similar feel in a way.

Lily Bard lives in the small town of Shakespeare in Arkansas. She moved to the town to escape a traumatic event in her past and has built herself a small, protected life as a cleaning lady whilst also honing her martial arts skills at the local gym. In the first book she sees a body being dumped near her house and after anonymously tipping off the police tries hard to stay out of it – until people start to suspect that she is the killer. And off we go for a five book series where Lily unravels a series of murders in her small town.

In some ways these are like other cozy crime novels: small town, female heroine who runs her own business etc, except that Lily’s life has been darker and more traumatic than most usual cozy heroines and her world view is pretty dark and cynical. The first time I read this series, I read them out of order and had a bit of a mixed response. But this time, reading them in order I could watch Lily develop and grow as she slowly breaks down the walls she has built around herself and starts living life rather than just existing. And yes I’ve hedged around what happened to her – because it’s a spoiler, it’s not in the blurbs, but it’s sexual violence and it’s bad. So be warned.

A few of the reviews of the books have some issues with the way that Lily views other women and her attitudes towards them, whereas if you read them in order, I interpreted it as it Lily knowing that she wasn’t doing anything wrong when she was attacked and so she can’t see why anyone would be so trusting as to let themselves be vulnerable. But these are definitely darker murder mysteries than Aurora, there’s a lot less sex than Sookie, which I guess makes them Harper Connolly but without the ability to see deadbodies – and there are people that have problems with that series too so maybe it is pretty apt!

Anyway, I bought the Kindle omnibus edition this time because I didn’t have them all in paperback to start with and I’m not sure I still have any of them any more (I couldn’t find them anyway) even if I wasn’t mostly binging through them while staying away from home. Kobo only seems to have the individual books. I’m not sure how easy they are to find in the shops atm – Charlaine Harris is a bit of a weird one on that front. They’ve definitely had a cover redesign since I last read them.

Have a great weekend!

Book previews

Out This Week: Under the Mistletoe Collection

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This is one of those Amazon collections that are free if you’re in Kindle Unlimited and features five novellas from some of the big name romance novels at the moment. So there are stories from Ali Hazelwood, Tessa Bailey, Olivia Dade, Alexandria Bellefleur and Alexis Daria all around a Christmas or holiday theme. Olivia Dade is one of my favourites – and I’ve written about Hazelwood and Bellefleur before, so I’m looking forward to reading these – hopefully at some point in the run up to Christmas – and I’ll try to remember to report back!