Category: bingeable series

bingeable series, series

Mystery Series: Miss Dimont

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Happy Friday everyone, it’s nearly the weekend, so nearly and I’m back with a post about a historical mystery series.

It’s the 1950s in the town of Temple Regis on the coast of Devon, where Judy Dimont is a reporter at the local newspaper, The Riviera Express. Across the course of the series she finds herself not just reporting on murders in the town, but also investigating them because the local police are inclined to play things down and rule every thing death they can as an accident to protect the resorts image and keep the tourist trippers flooding in.

The first book in the series was a Book of the Week back in 2017 and I stand by what I said then: Judy has an excuse to be rootling around in murder investigations and the portrait of an English seaside town with delusions of grandeur is excellent. Over the course of the four books the secondary characters are developed as well as Judy’s backstory, which involves mysterious doings in the Second World War. I read these out of order – with the second one in 2019 and then coming back through for the other two last month and neither the gap nor the out of order-ness messed with my enjoyment of the books. As it’s been six years since the last one, I think we can probably assume that this is a completed series now, which is a shame since I would happily read more of them.

I got the first and fourth from NetGalley but bought myself the middle two when they were on offer at some point in the unspecified past. You can get them in Kindle or Kobo and they did come out in paperback, but I suspect they’ll be hard to track down (new at least).

Have a great weekend everyone!

bingeable series, mystery, series

Mystery series: Sam Clair

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Happy Friday everyone, I’m back with another mystery series to talk about after I burned through three of the four books in this series a couple of weeks back, after having read the first one ages ago when it first came out and then forgetting to go back and follow up. Which, you know, is fairly typical for me given the state of the tbr pile…

Our amateur detective is Sam(antha) Clair, an editor for a small-ish publishing house who finds herself caught up in a string of murders across the course of the four books. The first book was a Murder of Magpies, where Sam’s caught up in a police investigation when someone decides that they really don’t want one of her books – a tell all about the fashion industry – to be published. In the second book, A Bed of Scorpions has one of Sam’s friends in trouble when his partner at the art gallery is found dead. In book three A Cast of Vultures Sam is caught up in neighbourhood drama when an house being used by squatters burns down and a body is found in the wreckage. And finally in A Howl of Wolves a trip to the opening night of a play, starring her friends from one of the other flats in her building, turns to tragedy when a real body appears hanging from the rafters instead of a dummy.

Sam is a great character – but she’s also surrounded by a cast of supporting characters who really make this sing. There’s her frighteningly clever and well connected solicitor mother, the handsome police inspector, Sam’s goth-y assistant and the various other people who live in the other flats in the converted house where she lives. I love a reoccurring character in murder mystery series and this has lots of really good ones. Sam hates conflict and will avoid (potentially) difficult conversations like the plague and means her relationship with Jake (sorry for the spoiler) the policeman who becomes her boyfriend has some real moments – where she should be telling him things and finds ways to avoid doing it.

Only three of these are available as e-books (although they are in Kobo plus in the UK at the moment if you’re a member there), the fourth is only available as a hardback, which I bought myself as soon as I finished reading book three because I really wanted to find out what happened next. These are Judith Flanders’s only novels as far as I can see, the rest of her writing is non-fiction history and while I’m sure they’re really good and interesting, it’s a shame because these are great and Sam is the sort of character you would like to have as a friend.

Have a great weekend!

bingeable series, fiction, Series I love

Series Redux: Cazalet Chronicles

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We’ve had events marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day this week, and so I thought I would mention one of my favourite series that’s set at least partially during the Second World War today – and that’s Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet series. I wrote a full post about the books back in 2020 and you can read that here.

The end of the war comes during the third book and as I love the children’s stories (or at least they were children at the start) the third and the fourth books are my favourites of the series in many ways. Here’s a bit from Archie and Clary’s VE Day celebrations

Showers of golden stars from rockets occurred in the crocus-mauve sky and the Palace was floodlit, and round the statue of Queen Victoria an enormous snake of people were dancing the hokey-cokey, singing and stamping their feet, and beyond, near the railings, people were chanting, shouting for the King. There were thousands of them, so many indeed and sometimes so tightly packed that they had held hands all evening in order not to get parted, and sometimes they had to shout to each other to be heard, but sometimes they simply sang whatever everyone else round them was singing: ’Land of Hope and Glory’, ’God Save the King’ and bits of the hokey-cokey.

Confusion by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Anyway, I love them, they’re wonderful and if you haven’t read them, you should. They always seem to be in print and I own them in paperback, ebook and also some on audio. That should give a sense of how dear to me they are. And as they’re not short, if you like them you have about 2,000 pages of them to enjoy.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

bingeable series, series, Series I love

Mystery series: Fetherings

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The twenty-second book in Simon Brett’s Fetherings series came out this week – and I am nearly up to date with the series at this point, so it seemed like a good point to revisit them.

Our detective duo in this series are Carole and Jude, next door neighbours, very different personalities but unlikely friends. I really love the groups of characters that Brett creates – whether it’s Charles Paris, his bottle of Bells and on off relationship with his wife, or Mrs Pargiter pretending she doesn’t know about her late husband’s criminal activities. In the case of Carole and Jude, it’s the friction between the incredibly uptight Carole – who would secretly love to be less repressed if only she could figure out how – and the much more chilled Jude who has a more open minded attitude towards life but who has people floating in and out of her life but never really staying.

And the small town life of Fetherings means there are plenty of different locations for murders without it seeming repetitive. We’ve had museums, cafes, stables, tennis clubs, boat clubs and when needed nearby towns too. Accoding to the blurb, In Death in the Dressing Room the murder happens on stage during a stage version of a popular sitcom. Given Brett’s knowledge of the workings of TV and Radio I think that this has potential to be a lot of fun, so I’m looking forward to reading it when it’s at a sensible price.

If you haven’t read any of these yet, the first six are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment which would give you a good sense of the series – and the next six are all under £3. You can find them on Amazon here.

Have a great weekend

bingeable series, Christmas books

Christmas Series: Under the Mistletoe

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After I mentioned this on release a couple weeks back I tthought it was only fair to report back now I’ve read them all!

So as I said in my previous post, this is an Amazon special Christmas novella collection featuring some big name romance authors. I did try and pick a favourite – recency bias wants me to say Only Santas in the Building, but reviewing the others there wasn’t really one I don’t like – they’re all pretty good. I guess my least favourite was Merriment and Mayhem, but even that’s just a relative thing!

If you want a quick blast of Christmas spirit to read in between wrapping presents, decorating or preparing food ahead of time, these would make a good choice. I read them in order but you could start with your favourite (or least favourite!) author and go from there. I do recommend …only Santas or All By My Elf though.

These are Amazon exclusive – but also free if you have Kindle Unlimited. Here’s the link to the series so you can decide for yourself

Have a great weekend!

bingeable series, series

Bingeable series: Busybodies

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Happy Friday everyone. This week I’ve got a series of mystery novellas for you, just in case you’re not quite in the mood for Christmas reading yet!

This is another of Amazon’s original story series, where they commission popular authors from across a genre on a single theme and then make them available for free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers and at fee to everyone else. The blurb for this one from Amazon is:

Every nosy neighbor, gossipy friend, and meddling relative is just one good mystery away from becoming a detective. From behind locked doors or out in broad daylight, driven by chance or curiosity, amateur sleuths get in over their heads in these six hair-raising, hilarious stories.

I’ve read two of the authors before – Nita Prose and Jesse K Sutanto and I have some Alicia Thompson on the to-read pile. But I actually quite liked all of these. I read them in order and sometimes with collections like this there is a weak link, but they were a really consistently good set. If I had to pick a favourite, I might go for Crime of Passion. I think the Nita Prose is the creepiest but there’s nothing particularly graphic or horrible – as the covers sort of indicate. None of them are particularly long, so they make a nice easy way of passing a few hours all together. And one of them ticked me another state off the list too…

As I said, these are Amazon originals, so that’s the only place to get them – the link to the series is here.

Have a great weekend!

bingeable series, cozy crime, detective, series

Bingeable Series: Museum Mysteries

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Happy Friday everyone, I’m back with a cozy crime series that I blitzed my way through over a couple of months, and although I’m still annoyed that the final book is a different size to all the others, I enjoyed them enough that I’m trying to work past the issues it gives me for shelving them and writing about them anyway!

At the start of the series Nell Pratt is the chief fundraiser at the Society for the Preservation of Pennsylvania Antiques, when an archivist is found dead on the same day that it’s discovered that a collection of letters from George Washington is missing. Of course she starts to investigate – this is a cozy crime series after all – and thus a series of museum/antique related mysteries is underway. Like most similar series, Nell develops a group of friends and colleagues who help out with the investigation and there’s a running romantic subplot through the series too.

I bought the second in the series at Bristol this summer – and once I’d read it, I went off and started buying up the others and then read them in order. I really liked the set up of the museum and philanthropic community around Philadelphia – it felt like something a bit different after a lot of small business related cozies. I don’t know a lot about the way the museum sector works behind the scenes in the UK, let alone in the US so I have no criticisms to make on that front – I just enjoyed the mysteries and the characters and let it all unroll!

I haven’t read any other Sheila Connolly – and I was sad to see when I was digging around into her writing to find that she died in 2020. But she has other series that I will happily work my way through should the opportunity present itself.

This is another of those times where most of a cozy crime series isn’t available on Kindle – only the last one is in ebook format, and I didn’t realise when I ordered the paperback it that it was going to be a non-matching size – if I had I might have gone with the ebook.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

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!

bingeable series, series

Series Update: New Flavia de Luce

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Yes it’s Friday, no this isn’t really a series post. Well it is, sort of. Let me explain. Back in May 2022 I wrote a series post for Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce books, and in it I said that as there hadn’t been a new book since 2019, I thought the series might be finished… but no! After a six year wait, we have an eleventh book, and it came out this week.

A quick recap for those who haven’t read any Flavia (or in fact my previous post about her). She’s still not quite in her teens yet and a prodigy when it comes to sciences, but in most other areas very much as mature as you would expect for her age, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships. In this latest instalment, Flavia is still saddled with her even younger cousin Undine, who is desperate to be part of all of Flavia’s activities no matter how hard Flavia tries to stop her or put her off. When a village resident is found dead after eating poisoned mushrooms and Flavia’s own housekeeper is the prime suspect, it is only natural that Flavia starts to investigate herself, which leads her into areas that she could never have suspected.

The next thing to say is that you should not read this as your first book in the series. Alan Bradley writes lovely prose, and his descriptions are amazing, but this has got a lot of threads to it that call back to previous books in the series but also goes in a slightly different direction to the usual historical mystery vein of the series. I enjoyed reading it – it was great to be back in Flavia’s world – although I had to do a quick refresh of where we’d left her as it had been so long. And I would say as well that this doesn’t feel like it’s a final hurrah either. I mean it could be, but there are definitely options.

You can buy What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust on Kindle, Kobo and it should be in the shops too – but as I said, if you haven’t read any of the series before, don’t start here. The others are usually fairly easy to get hold of in bookstores, although they’re now on their third cover style (at least) with this new one so don’t expect to be able to get a matching set…

Have a great weekend everyone!

bingeable series

Bingeable Series: Darling Deli

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After blitzing my way through Patti Benning’s Real Estate Rescue series earlier this year, I’ve now done the same thing with her Darling Deli series, and now I’ve made it to the end – and I think this series is completed – it’s time to talk about it.

Our heroine is Moira Darling. She’s a single mum with a just about adult daughter and owns and runs a deli in a small town near Lake Michigan. In the first book of the series the owner of one of the rival businesses in the town is found dead and Moira finds herself suspected of killing him. Over the course of the next 32 books she continues to stumble across an improbably high number of bodies and help solve the crimes, with the help of her daughter, a handsome local private investigator and an increasing group of friends. The locations expand to include a nearby town where her daughter opens her own business and the occasional trip to other parts of the country.

Like the Real Estate Rescue series, these are not the longest books, or the most complicated on the plot front. This is an earlier series, so at times the writing is a bit clunkier, but they’re basically the perfect length to read on my commute to work – which means that I don’t often read more than one in a sitting (although you’ve seen that I’ve often done more than one in a week) so you don’t notice the issues as much. The main one being that if you think too hard about how many bodies Moira is finding, and in such a short space of time, you realise that she’s a bigger curse than Jessica Fletcher and Maple Creek has a higher homicide rate than Cabot Cove! But they’re a nice easy read – and it’s not always the new character who has just been introduced who gets murdered, so that makes a change too.

These are all available in Kindle Unlimited – if you’re a KU subscriber they’re a good deal, but given their length (usually around 120 pages) I’m not sure they’re worth the non-KU price.

Have a great weekend!