I mentioned Jane Austen yesterday, and today I wanted to mention Gill Hornby’s new book which is the third that she’s written around Jane Austen’s family. I really enjoyed Miss Austen and Godmersham Park and I’m looking forward to reading this one. Looking at the blurb this is focusing into a family that Austen’s niece marries into and the family from Godmersham Park. I suspect this will be really easy to get hold of – the others have been and of course we’ve just had the TV adaptation of Miss Austen (which I really need to get around to watching) which may lead to increased visibility for this unofficial trilogy of Austen-adjacent novels.
Anyone fancy a Lady Spy novel set in the 1960s? Well this is out today and sounds intriguing. This from the blurb:
Maggie Flynn isn’t your typical 1960s mum.
She’s a spy, an unsuspecting operative for MI5, stalking London’s streets in myriad disguises.
Widowed and balancing her clandestine career with raising a Beatles-mad teenage daughter, Maggie finds comfort and purpose in her profession – providing a connection to her late husband, whose own covert past only surfaced after his death.
It goes on to say that there’s a Russian agent and her husband’s death may have been because he was betrayed by someone on home soil. And as you can see from the cover above it’s got a “Thursday Murder Club for Spies” line on it. If I can just get over my need for comforting familiarity, this will be jumping right to the top of my list!
For this week’s new release it wanted to mention the new novel by Rachel Lynn Soloman. Her last book Business or Pleasure was a book of the week, but she can be a bit hit or miss for me or at least the books can sometimes not quite live up to the promise of the blurb. The blurb for What Happens in Amsterdam promises a second chance romance with a heroine who moves from California to Amsterdam after being dumped only to run into her first love, a Dutch exchange student who mysteriously ghosted her a decade earlier. I love a second chance romance – just as long as the reasons for the first time going wrong aren’t too, too awful – so I’m hopeful about this one.
Welcome to May everyone and I’m starting the new month by mentioning a really buzzy book that came out today, but one which may be too far down the thriller and of things for me!
Julie Chan’s identical twin sister is an influencer. Julie is not. But when Julie finds Chloe’s body and unlocks her twin’s phone to call the emergency services, she sees the reality of her sister’s life: the sponsorship deals, her money, her followers. And Julie wants some of that for her. So she decides to take over Chloe’s life. All she’s got to do is try and blend in with the gang of influencers that Chloe was a part of. Except someone seems to know that something is up…
One of the blurbs describes this as edgy and vicious – hence my doubts about whether it is a Verity Book, but it sounds totally intriguing so I look forward to seeing if it turns up around the swimming pools and on the airplanes this summer!
Given that I’ve already written series posts for most of Simon Brett’s other series – namely Fetherings, Charles Paris, Mrs Pargeter – it would be remiss of me not to mention that he has a new book out this week and it’s the first in a new series. It’s called Major Bricket and the Circus Corpse and there is already a second book in the series listed on Amazon for this time next year. Our new amateur sleuth has just retired to the village in Suffolk where he’s owned a home for years, although he hasn’t really lived there because his work has taken him abroad a lot. The village has speculated about his occupation, but when he discovers a body on his lawn, he uses his professional skills to try and figure out what happened. I’ve actually read this already (thank you NetGalley) so this could actually count as a bonus review so your luck is in!
Now I’ll admit that I haven’t read Brett’s Blotto and Twinks series, so i can’t include them in this but if there is a scale of realism in his books where Jude and Carol in Fetherings live in the most realistic world and Mrs P is the least – then Major Bricket is the new measure of the far end out beyond Mrs P. Brett is doing his thing on your spy-thriller-secret identity type novel with more than a dash of the OTT about it. I’ve been trying to figure out what it reminded me of, and I can’t quite work it out – but it’s definitely closer to the M C Beaton Hamish MacBeth-everything-falls-into-place end of the cozy scale than it Brett usually is. Overall, I’m glad I read it, but I would rather have had another Charles Paris I think!
Happy new Vinyl Detective week. Underscore, which is the eight in the series came out on Tuesday and I have my pre-order in my grubby little hand! This time we’re in the world of Italian Movie Soundtracks, which is a great excuse for me to drop a video of one of an ice dance routines into this, because there have been some really good programmes to Italian film music. Anyway, I continue to be impressed with Cartmel’s ability to find new genres to use for this series, although I didn’t love last year’s instalment Noise Floor as much as I have liked previous books in the series. Fingers crossed this is a return to full form… If you want to dip back into my archive, check out my Series I Love post from 2022 here.
Series I love post was 2022, last year got a out today.
Honestly. I’m so excited about this. I’ve been saying in my reviews of Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorn and Horowitz books that I hoped that there would be another Magpie Murders book and today is the day: the third Susan Ryeland mystery book is out. This has a continuation to the Atticus Pund series being written by the grandson of a beloved children’s author who, coincidentally thinks his grandmother was murdered. The reason why I wasn’t sure if there would be another in this series is because how many murders could be tied into the Atticus Pund series. So I’m incredibly excited to see what Horowitz has come up with – and it’s already been bought up for a third series of the TV adaptation. I can’t wait!
It would be remiss of me not to mention that the second Lowe and le Breton is out this week. I reallly enjoyed Death at the Dress Rehearsal last year – it was a book of the week – and I’m looking forward to seeing what our Dad’s Army-esque gang gets up to next in the sequel when I can get hold of it. And who knows when that might be…
Back in January I did a couple of posts about new books coming this year – the standalone stuff and the series – and now we’re a few months into the year there are a bunch more books that I’ve got on the list as coming this year I thought it was time for an update/extra post. This mostly straight up romances – with a side of a romance author writing their first contemporary fiction novel. I think that’s probably because most of the mystery authors write in straight up series which I’m better at keeping track of, so I covered those off at the start of the year. Or my brain could have just been a bit broken and I forgot about a bunch of authors I really like in January – or maybe some these books really weren’t available to preorder when I was writing that original post. Anything is possible…
Lets start with another book from Jen DeLuca that’s set in Boneyard Key, following on from Haunted Ever After last autumn. Amazon is currently claiming Ghost Business comes out in the UK in Mid August, but given that the actual author says September, I know who I’m trusting on that one. And it should also be noted that DeLuca is now writing a fifth instalment in the Ren Faire series and I cannot wait for that to arrive (presumably in 2026).
Next up, and it should be noted that this was announced last year, and I’m really not sure how it didn’t make it into either of the earlier posts, but Sarah MacLean has her fist contemporary fiction novel coming out in July. It’s called These Summer Storms and it has the children of a billionaire on the family’s private island after their father’s death only to discover that he’s left one final challenge for them to complete in order to receive their inheritance. Yes. Rich People Problems on a private island. It sounds great. I can’t wait.
Also left off that earlier list is the new Elissa Sussman, which I pre-ordered a full year ago, which was already nearly a year after Once More With Feeling Came Out. Totally and Completely Fine is due on July 8 – the same day as the Sarah MacLean – and this makes me very happy. Funny You Should Ask was a Book of the Week and Once More With Feeling would have been except that it was only a few months after I read Funny You Should Ask, and I have rules about repeats (that I sometimes stick to) so it went into a Recommendsday post for new romances instead. Anyway, the blurb for Totally and Completely Fine has the widowed younger sister of mega star Gabe (our hero from Funny You Should Ask) meeting a handsome (and also famous) actor on the set of her brother’s new movie. I am very optimistic about this one.
We also have dates and titles for the new books from Katherine Center and Annabel Monaghan. Center’s new book is The Love Haters which has a video producer trying to save her job by making a profile of a coastguard rescue swimmer (another job that I didn’t know existed until I read the blurb and had to google) and Monaghan has It’s a Love Story which features a former teen sitcom star who is trying to get her career as a producer off the ground and goes too far in her quest to get her first movie greenlit. They’re out a week apart at the end of May. Also in May is Dream On, Ramona Riley by Ashley Herring Blake – which is set in New Hampshire (which is great for my 50 states challenge!) and about a small town waitress and a Hollywood star who comes to town to film a rom com – but the two of them have met before. There’s a trend going on for time travel or time skip romances and joining that club is Time Loops and Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau, which is coming in June.
And finally (for now) in November we have the second Harlot’s Bay book from Olivia Dade. I loved At First Spite and Second Chance Romance features Karl the Baker from that and his former high school crush, who thinks he’s dead after his obituary mistakenly appears in the local paper. It sounds utterly delightful and I wish I didn’t have to wait so long for it, but hey, it’s good that books I want to read are spaced out!
I can’t work out if I’ll read it – I read the original trilogy but I’m still angry about the end of the final book, and I’m off dystopian fiction these days – but the new Hunger Games book came out this week and if nothing else it’s got a big window display at Piccadilly Waterstones!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 