Yes this is something of a cheat, because I finished this on Monday, but it would have been Sunday night if I hadn’t been so very tired after book conference. So here we are, and let’s hope now that I’m not scuppering myself for next week’s pick!
When an Amy Snowden marries a much younger man, her neighbours are outraged. When she then apparently kills herself a few months later, her husband then disappears. The coroner rules it suicide, but Sergeant Caleb Cluff isn’t convinced. He knows the area and Amy and thinks someone is getting away with murder. So he sets out to find out the truth about what happened to Amy, despite the disapproval of his colleagues.
This was originally published in 1960, but like the Lorac the other week it is another that is really good at conjuring the location and the people and is very atmospheric. It’s also quite creepy – as a reader you’re not in a lot of doubt about whether it was a murder at the start but it builds and builds. Yes there are some slightly dubious attitudes here, but it does all make sense within itself. This is the first in a series and I will look out for more.
This is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so if you don’t read on kindle you may have to buy the paperback or wait for it to cycle out of that for it to pop up on Kobo.
So it’s a short list this week because I’ve been at Book Conference and I’ve been hosting guests. Oh and the Olympics is on… But I have spent even more time than usual thinking about books, I just didn’t have time to read many!
The Hazelbourne Ladies’ Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson*
The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmire*
Quite a few books bought because there was a dealer book sale and a participant book sale, and the new month has started so there are fresh kindle offers.
Bonus picture: cacti in the botanic gardens in Bristol on Saturday!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
I know, I know, I try not to do theatre two weeks in a row, but both this and Hello, Dolly! are limited runs – and so I wanted to get this out as soon as possible.
This is a musical adaptation of a 1938 French movie of the same name, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz aka the man who wrote the music and lyrics for Wicked. The plot is pretty simple: it’s set in a French village where there are a range of petty rivalries and disputes. It has been without a baker for some weeks, and the lack of bread is driving the locals mad. The new baker arrives – Amiable, a middle aged man and his much younger and very attractive wife Genevieve (and their cat, Pompom). The villagers are shocked at the age difference between the baker and his wife, and their prying causes Genevieve to run back into their house crying. The local Marquis’s chauffeur takes a fancy to Genevieve and starts flirting, and a chain of events is set in motion.
The Baker’s Wife is a bit of a cult classic – it’s never made it to Broadway, and has a history of being well reviewed, but not finding commercial success. This production is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, an off-West End venue which has a history of producing really good productions of hard to stage musicals – the revival of Merrily We Roll Along which has just won Tonys in New York (including for Daniel Radcliffe) started at the Menier more than a decade ago (and I saw it in the West End). And this is another one that works really well. As you can see from the photo, it’s a small space, set up as the village square and the actors are right there with you and around you and it’s really immersive.
The cast is excellent too – with Clive Rowe (fresh from his run in Sister Act) as Amiable and Lucie Jones – who is now building a really strong West End resume – as Genevieve, along with Josefina Gabriele (who was also in that production of Merrily) as Denise, who is the most developed of the village characters. I’m not going to say all of the songs are massively memorable once you’ve left the show – although Meadowlark is – but it’s generally a great show at a lovely venue.
The Baker’s Wife is on at the Menier for another six or so weeks – until the 14th of September. You can get tickets through all the usual sources. And I’m very excited because in the last ten days or so the Menier has announced that they’re staging a revival of The Producers next year, and I really want to see what they do with that one.
Have a great Sunday everyone – have a video of Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez singing some Sondheim to send you on your way.
I’ve done it. I’ve done some clearing and there are boxes going to Book Con with me. This box is mostly Girls Own.
This has got a few things I’ve written about here, but I have written about, but that I don’t think I’ll be reading again.
And then this is mostly crime, with a touch of literary fiction and some women’s fiction. There is another box, also of girls own, but I forgot to get a phot! I’ve priced them to sell as they say with an aim of not bringing too many home with me, especially as I expect to buy a fair few…
Most read author: Probably Patti Benning again, because I read a bunch at the start of the month, but Hugh Morrison coming up fast behind at the end of the month
Books bought: One book-book, two ebooks and a preorder
Books read in 2024: 240
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 740
A pretty solid month in reading, although ending slower than it started. I was binging through one author at the start of the month, and moved on to mini-binges on a couple of others as we moved through. Not enough Netgalley reading done, which is all pretty standard stuff for me.
Bonus picture: Another picture from the Barbican Conservatory before Kiss Me Kate
*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including this month!
There is a new standalone Rainbow Rowell out this week and I am excited. Slow Dance is about two friends who went to school together and who everyone thought would end up together, but whose lives took different paths after high school. Now one of them is heading to an old friend’s wedding and wondering whether the other will be there and whether she wants him to be…
Doesn’t it sound great? It came out on Tuesday on Kindle and Kobo and is out on August 8th in hardback. Rowell typically gets pretty big releases – Waterstone’s had a signed pre-order option, so I’m hoping you’ll be able to get hold of it pretty easily in stores if you want to.
Yes, it’s nearly the end of July, so we’re well over six months in to the year, but I’m here and I’m using this week’s Recommendsday to shout out my favourite books of the year so far, in no particular order.
But I’m going to start with At First Spite, Olivia Dade’s latest novel, which came out in February and which I read basically as soon as the paperback hit my doormat. It’s the first in a new series, and features a heroine who finds her self living in a tiny house between her ex-fiancé on one side and his brother on the other. If you go and read my Book of the Week review for this, you’ll see that it’s not all sunshine and roses for Athena, but it all works out beautifully. And I can’t wait for the next book in the series, which is currently called Dearly Departed, whenever it arrives.
Next up is a March release – Kate Claybourn’s The Other Side of Disappearing, which is a romance, a mystery and a road trip as two sisters travel across the US with a podcast production crew to try and find out what happened to the con-man their mum used to date. This also has a retired college football (the American kind) player – so if you’re after sporty-themed books this is another one – but I couldn’t include it in last week’s Recommendsday, because: statute of limitations, and also twice in a week would be boring!
And now an April release – Emily Henry’s Funny Story. And I ummed and ahhed about whether to include this because I feel like I’ve written so much about her over the years, but then I went back and checked my review and I read it in less than 18 hours, which is probably the quickest of any of the books on the list, so how could I leave it off? It’s another newly single heroine, who is stuck in close proximity to her ex, but more different to At First Spite than that makes it sound. It’s so good, and I would read it again today, if only I didn’t have so many other books on the go at once…
On to May, and a book that I bought in paperback after reading the kindle sample and then read immediately. I explain in my review of Summer Fridays why this is going to divide romance readers, but I loved it and I think it is closer to “a Novel” than “a romance”. Travel back to 1999 New York with Sawyer and spend the summer with her and Nick as she figures out what she’s doing with her life. If you’re about to go on holiday, this might be the perfect sun lounger read.
This was very nearly an all romance post – and indeed I’ve grouped them all together, but I wanted to include one other new release – Mona of the Manor. Yes, it’s the tenth in the Tales of the City series but I think it stands alone more easily than the other contender for this final place which was the final Maisie Dobbs novel, The Comfort of Ghosts. Mona of the Manor is a fill in of a portion of the Tales Story we haven’t seen – and as it’s in the British countryside in the 1990s it’s pretty self-contained. And it’s so much fun as Mona tries to make ends meet by turning the country house she’s inherited into a not-quite-a-hotel with the help of her adopted son.
And there you have it. My five favourite new books of the year so far. I think. But as ever, I’m a fickle thing, and who knows what will be the top five by the end of the year!
Oh you’re so unsurprised by this I know. I can’t keep myself. I tried to pace myself with this one but in the end, I just finished it. On Sunday evening and here we are!
As I said in last week – this is the story of Willa and Hudson. Willa is a widow and she has just moved to an island in the Pacific north west where she has inherited a house from her great aunt. Her parents want her to get a “proper” job, but she wants to try and rebuild her career as a cookery book ghost writer. Her comeback assignment is for a viral social media star who is more famous for the fact he cooks topless than his actual recipes. But no matter, she is determined. Hudson is her new neighbour. He lives on his parents’ farm, along with one, sometimes two of his grown up children. He’s a handyman and she has a house that needs work. Soon they are spending lots of time together, more than is technically necessary and it’s clear there’s something between them.
In case you haven’t worked it out, this is another romance from Cathy Yardley featuring an older hero and heroine. Both are in their 40s, both have got baggage and like Role Playing a lot of what is going on here is two mature adults figuring out that they’re into each other and then working out if that’s a thing that can work in their lives long term. There is no big external conflict here – and no real conflict between them really – so despite the sadness in Willa’s backstory (and it’s not a passing reference to her late husband, it’s a big part of her) this is actually quite low stress. You want them to get together, they want them to be together; they’ve just got a few things to work through.
So it’s a really comforting read as well as being romantic. And I also loved the setting – in real life I could not cope with living on an island, but in a book: totally. A lovely way to spend a few hours.
Anyway, I had my copy of Do Me A Favour preordered, it’s currently £1.99 to buy on Kindle but it’s also in Kindle Unlimited and also an Amazon imprint in paperback.
A steady week in reading – one night at the theatre, a busy week at work and the start of the Olympics all adding up to not as much read as I would have liked – and I’ve still got those two on the still reading list as well. It’s Book Con at the end of this week, so the reading could go either way with that, and traditionally the reading there tends to be books that I have bought in the various book sales…
Another week, another trip to the theatre, and this time to see this summer’s most anticipated and most hyped musical: Hello, Dolly! with Imelda Staunton.
This is the story of Dolly Levi, a widowed matchmaker and meddler who travels to Yonkers to try and find a match for the grumpy and miserly “half a millionaire” Horace Vandergelder, who she’s actually plotting to marry herself and so in the process needs to detach him from his other options whilst also helping his niece marry an artist – a match with Horace is against. Meanwhile Horace’s two clerks at the feed store, who have bene left in charge while their boss is away meeting potential brides, decide they would like to get out of Yonkers for the day and go to New York.
So this is the point where I admit that I had neither seen the whole film of this one before, let alone a live production. I’ve seen bits of the film and I know some of the songs, but nothing had stood out to me enough to get me to watch the whole film and I’d never felt inspired enough to look out a production. In fact I think the only song I’d seen live before was Put on Your Sunday Clothes, which I saw the John Wilson Orchestra do at the Proms which doesn’t feel like that long ago but was actually the summer of 2011. Goodness I feel old. Anyway, I’ve put the link to that at the bottom and now I’m going to talk about this production.
This is the summer musical at the Palladium, which is the biggest theatre in the West End, and I think it’s pretty clear that this wouldn’t have been put on if it wasn’t for Imelda Staunton in the lead role. Yes it’s a classic, but when you’ve got more than 2,000 seats to fill every night, and a show with more than 20 piece orchestra and sets that include a moving train (that is used once) and a street car, you need a big name. And it doesn’t get much bigger. I have seen her previously do Sondheim in both Follies (which I adored and saw three times across its two runs) and Sweeney Todd, but missed her Gypsy because I had loved the production of that that I had already seen (with Caroline O’Connor in the lead) and didn’t want to pay the prices and was hoping for discounts which of course never materialised. I learned my lesson and I bought these early. And I am glad I did because she is giving an absolutely barnstorming performance – she’s funny and touching, but also hard where she needs to be and she sounds great.
The supporting cast is similarly strong – with Andy Nyman (who I saw be amazing as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof a few years ago), Jenna Russell (who I’ve never seen do anything bad) and Harry Hepple (who was in the same production of Follies as Staunton, but who I also saw in Pippin more than a decade ago) doing fine work in the key supporting roles, but really there is no one giving a bad performance.
Now I don’t think Hello, Dolly! will ever be my favourite musical – to be honest, if it comes back around again I probably won’t go unless it’s got a really stellar name as Dolly because Imelda is enough – but if you do love the show (and the stalls this week was clearly full of people who do love it) and you’re in London this summer then you should really try and see it. And if you’ve never seen it before, I can vouch for this being worth your time – a work colleague who also went this week and wasn’t expecting to love it also really enjoyed it – and the good news is, there are still some reasonably prices seats available.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 