I have an extra review this week because A Very Novel Murder came out on Tuesday and I have already read it – back in December in fact. This is Elllie Alexander’s new series which is itself a spin-off of her Secret Bookcase series. So if you’ve read that you’ll already be familiar with our heroine Annie, who is now opening her own private dectective agency with her friend Fletcher, as well as continuing to run the Secret Bookcase bookshop. I can’t really say any more about the backstory than that, because if I do, I’m spoiling the previous series for those who haven’t read it – but you can find my post about the series here.
Anyway in this first in the new series, Annie and Fletch take on their first case when an elderly woman asks them to investigate the death of her neighbour, a promising surfer whose death the police think was either accidental or suicide. There is also a new running story for the series, in the same way that the thread that ran through the Secret Bookcase was Annie’s quest to find out who had murdered her best friend.
I enjoyed this – it’s got some set up going on for the series, but because it’s an established group of characters from the previous series Alexander hasn’t felt the need to go overboard there (also it would have been spoilery!). I had the culprit for the murder pegged relatively early, but there were enough side twists that I didn’t mind too much when I did turn out to be right. My issue with the final Secret Bookcase was that the running plot meant that the mystery of the week (so to speak) got less complex to allow time for that, this was better than the last couple there, so hopefully we won’t see the same thing again in this series. I’m looking forward to reading the next one.
I got my copy via NetGalley, but it’s out now and in Kindle Unlimited, which of course means it’s not on Kobo at the moment except for as an audiobook. I’ve never seen these in the shops, but Amazon claims it’s available in Paperback (and that that came out in November) so who knows.
The latest Marlow Murder club mystery is out this week and so I thought now was a good time to point you back at my post about the series last year – which you can find here. This new books is The Mysterious Affair of Judith Potts centres on a secret from Judith’s past. She’s always been a bit of an enigma, but it looks like we might be about to get some answers as someone from her past appears in town. On top of that, there’s two dead local celebrities for the ladies to investigate. I really enjoy these – actually more than the TV versions of them as the adaptation seems much more played for laughs/humour than it reads to me as a book. The new one is in hardback and should be pretty easy to find in shops as well as in ebook and audiobook from all the usual sources. And if you haven’t read the earlier books yet, the first is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and all the others are on offer for £2.99.
Happy Thursday everyone, and having mentioned one of the Christmas Notch books in my Not-New Christmas Recommendsday, I wanted to flag that Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy have a new book out today, The Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl. This is set in a college town and has a professor for the hero and a new lecturer in town for the heroine. I’m looking forward to reading it, but have a few reservations about the conflict of interest situation here because as you know I’m all about the competent heroines. However given that they’ve managed to handle similar stuff quite well in Christmas Notch I’m prepared to go with it and give it a try!
Happy Tuesday everyone and this week I’ve picked one of this week’s new releases – it’s out last week if you’re in the US or on Thursday if you’re in the UK. Check me out being actually topical for once.
It’s 1964 and Del and Dinah Newman and their two sons are household names across the States as the stars of a prime time TV show based upon their lives. But their 12 year contract is coming to an end and the ratings are down, the times are changing and behind the scenes the family itself is fraying: Dinah and Del are sleeping in separate rooms, elder son Guy has a secret in his private life and younger son Shep, a rock and roll teen idol, may have run into a problem his dad can’t buy him out of. And then Del is in mysterious car crash that leaves him in a coma with just weeks to go before the season finale – which could well be the series finale. Dinah decides to take matters into her own hands and take over the reigns of the family and the show. But can they keep it all together to get the finale across the line?
This is Jennifer Niven’s latest novel and is being blurbed as for fans of Lessons in Chemistry and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and I would say that that is a pretty good comparison. The family live in the spotlight and who struggle with it in various different ways but as well as that the world has changed around them and their brand of entertainment hasn’t changed fast enough. It’s also a look at the way that women were viewed in society in the 1960s and the restrictions that they chaffed against (or not in some cases). It felt really timely to me, because the fight for various rights has never really gone away and it is good to have a reminder of how recently some of these things actually happened. But that makes it sound a lot heavier a read than it is – it’s fun and frothy and surprised me in how things all resolved at the end. I do hope that’s not too much of a spoiler!
My copy came from NetGalley and I’m writing this before the release in the UK so it’s quite hard to tell how widely available this will be in the bookshops, but I’m hoping to spot it soon because Waterstones are showing plenty of copies on their website. And of course it’s also available in Kindle and Kobo and as an ebook.
It’s the first day of 2026, and instead of doing the stats for last month, I’ve decided I’m doing my lookahead to the books that are being published this year that I’m looking forward to reading, many of which are already pre-ordered! There is no real order to this and I’m going to start with the standalone stuff, because as always there are loads of series books coming out but you know what I read in series, so I’m starting with the less predictable bits!
First up, is the one and only non fiction book in this post: Liza Minelli’s memoir. It’s called Kids, Wait Til You Hear This! and it’s out in March just around the time that she turns 80. You may remember from my review of the documentary about her Liza: A Trully Terrific Absolutely True Story that Liza’s public persona is so ingrained in her that she doesn’t really show you anything behind that in the doc. And so I’m fascinated to see whether this is any different. But even if she’s still got the public face on, her life is still so incredible that I’m looking forward to reading about it in more depth. I pre-ordered this back in September and I can’t wait.
To the fiction: Emma Straub’s new book American Fantasy which is set on a cruise ship with all five members of a 90s boyband on board along with thousands of their fans. I’ve really enjoyed a bunch of books that have featured famous people and normies and this looks like it’s doing something similar but in a more lit-fic way than some of the ones I’ve read. The bar here is Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy though and that is high. This is out in April in the US and May in the UK.
Next up is Star Shipped which is Cat Sebastian’s first contemporary romance. This is an enemies to lovers deal about Simon and Charlie, two costars on a popular sci-fi TV show. As someone who was a massive Star Trek fan back in the day, I look forward to figuring out which shows (or franchises) this is pulling from as well as seeing what Sebastian’s writing looks like in a contemporary setting. This is out in early March in ebook and late April in paperback. Also in March is a new book from Sarah T Dubb. I loved Birding with Benefits which was one of my best books of 2024 and so I’m looking forward to Honey Bee Mine which has a bee keeper and a bad boy restauranteur who end up working together on a honey festival. Sounds sweet right? (sorry, terrible pun)
Another April release is Cherry Baby, the new Rainbow Rowell. This is about Cherry, whose husband has gone off to Hollywood to make a movie based on his comic strip which features a character based on her. However what no-one in her town knows is that he isn’t coming home leaving her to figure out who she is without him. But then on a night out to see a band she runs into someone who knew her way back when and even better – has never heard of the comic strip. I love a second chance romance and I like Rainbow Rowell so I’m really looking forward to this.
And now the series: the first to arrive is The Mysterious Affair Of Judith Potts, which is the fifth Marlow Murder Club Book from Robert Thorogood and is coming in two weeks time in mid January. We have a new Hawthorne and Horowitz coming in April. And A Deadly Episode sounds like it’s taking the series even more meta as the first book in this series (where a fictional version of the author is solving mysteries) is now being turned into a film and a murder takes place on set. I’m very interested to see how this works out! In July we have the next Three Dahlias mystery, Death on a Lively Sea, which sees Posy, Caro and Ros on a super yacht belonging to a billionaire who is convinced he’s going to be murdered! And there’s another Dahlia novel due in December – Murder on the Mistletoe Express.
The tenth Veronica Speedwell, A Ghastly Catastrophe, is out in March, There’s also a 14th Kate Shackleton book which allegedly is coming in April, but has already slid from March and still has no title, so I am fully expecting it to slide again! Away from murder mysteries, there is a sixth Before the Coffee Gets Cold book coming in May called Before I Knew I Loved You. We also have the sixth and final Heartstopper coming in July with Nick heading off to university – can he and Charlie make long distance work? There is also the series finale to Jen DeLuca’s Ren Faire series, Well Versed, which is out in September and Caitlin is the same age Emily was when she rushed home to help Caitlin and her mum in Well Met. This time it’s Caitlin who is back in her home town, back in her childhood bedroom and back at the Ren Faire where her teenage heart was broken – only to find that the guy who did the breaking is back too. I don’t want the series to be over, but one more visit to Willow Creek is better than no more.
And finally there is one book out in 2026 that I have been waiting a long, long time for. And that is Jasper Fforde’s Dark Reading Matter. The final Thursday Next book has been more than a decade in the waiting for. And I have been very patient and I mentioned this in last year’s anticipated books and the release date slid into 2026, and it’s slid again in the last few weeks to September, but I have it pre-ordered and so eventually it will turn up. I have faith.
And that’s your lot. It’s quite a bit isn’t it? And the good news is that the majority of them are either pre-ordered or I have copies already via NetGalley so the chances of me reporting back in on some of them is high!
I’ve been reading Julie Mulhern’s 1970s-set Country Club Murders series whenever they drop into a price band that I can justify, but this week she’s got a new book out which is the first in a new 1920s set series. Murder in Manhattan features Freddie, a female journalist in Prohibition New York who finds herself caught up in a murder investigation when someone she wrote about in her magazine column is found dead. The blurb says it’s inspired by the first female reporter at The New Yorker and also drops a load of famous names from the period so this could be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Now we’re into December the new releases have really slowed down because all the stuff that was hoping for big sales in the run up to Christmas is already out there and we’re now into the counter programming. For context, the list that I usually look at for new releases has December bundled in with November instead of having a separate page. And most of them are November books, believe me, I checked. So today I wanted to mention a new book from an author that I really like, but in a series of hers that I haven’t read: Catriona McPherson’s Last Ditch series. I’ve read McPherson’s Dandy Gilver books and one of her 1950s set Helen Crowther books, but not any from this contemporary and (mostly) California set series with a Scottish Heroine. Scots Eggs has some missing tourists and a potential double murder and the whole series sounds a lot of fun. Don’t be surprised if you see the first in the series pop up on the reading list in a few weeks, just as soon as I’ve got the Dakotas sorted out on the 50 states list…
By the time you read this, my final* pre-order of the year will have dropped through my front door because Olivia Dade’s Second Chance Romance is out in the world. I ordered this back in March, but I’ve been waiting to see what Karl the Baker’s deal is since I read the first Harlots Bay book At First Spite back in February last year. According to my reading plan, I’m meant to be reading Christmas books this month but there is a fairly high chance that this will be jumping right to the top of my to-read list.
After talking about the new H M The Queen Investigates book a couple of weeks ago, today it’s the turn of another Royal-related historical mystery series – Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness books which has reached number 19 – with From Cradle to Grave – which came out on Tuesday. I remain surprised and delighted that Bowen continues to find more set ups for murders for Georgie to solve, but also that she’s continuing to put out multiple books a year despite being in her 80s. Anyway the blurb for this latest installment has nanny problems (more accurately sister in law problems) as well as a string of deaths which may threaten Georgie’s beloved husband Darcy. I am up to date with this series – and always wonder if the next book will be the last but surely Bowen wouldn’t finish on a strange number like 19 when 20 is right there? Right?
I’ve written about G M Malliet’s Max Tudor series before, but this week she has a new book out in her St Just series. I’ve read the first three in this series, but hadn’t realised that there had been more since then and this is actually book seven. This sees a film crew visiting Cambridge and the star of the movie turning up dead. It’s been a long time since I read those first three, but I have this one from NetGalley and I would say I will report back but that’s always tricky with later books in series so I can’t promise anything, or at least not necessarily in the immediate future!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 