Category: book round-ups

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: March 2026 Quick Reviews

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It’s the first day of April and it’s also a Wednesday, so I’m back with the quick reviews from last month. This was an interesting one to pick – because there were quite a lot of books from last month that I want to write about, but a lot of them fit into other posts that I’ve got planned, but in the end it’s worked out ok – with three murder mysteries so it even feels a bit cohesive! The stats are coming up – but I think it’s fair to say that I did quite well on the to-read pile front and on the NetGalley one too, and this post reflects that: two books from NetGalley – both recent releases – and one from the pile.

A Murder in Eight Cocktails by Kelly Mullen*

Willa is a recent (early) retiree who has turned herself into an ASMR cocktail influencer. When she’s invited to the launch of a new bar, she’s excited to make content for her account – even if her husband is less than enthusiastic. But when she arrives at the even she discovers it’s being hosted by her ex-husband and things go from bad to worse when the owner of the bar is found dead on the rocks below the ocean-side bar. The police think it’s suicide, but Willa isn’t convinced, and soon she’s teaming up with her ex-husband and her current husband to try and figure out what really happened. I wanted to like this more than I did, but I found the way that Willa bounces between unhappiness with her husband’s “dullness” and enthusiasm for working with her ex-husband quite trying. I think the push-pull was meant to create tension in the story (beyond the murder mystery) but I thought it reduced the reader’s sympathy/empathy for Willa because she never really gives concrete examples of the problems in her marriage or tries to address them with her husband (she just seems to get exasperated) and is written in a way that suggests that she might jump ship to her ex. The mystery was interesting though – although I’m not sure about an emotional support chameleon…

The Pie and Mash Detective Agency by J D Brinkworth*

Jane Pye and Simon Mash are a couple who start taking a private detective class in their free time and end up investigating a real live case as part of their final assessment. A woman called Nellie Thorne has been reported missing by her boyfriend – except that she is not the first Nellie Thorne to go missing, there have been at least five of them over the last fifty years. Can these two wannabe PIs work out what has happened to all the Nellies? Ok, I’m not going to lie, this didn’t really work for me. I was hoping it would, but I found it quite hard going. There is some fun dialogue between Jane and Simon, but you never really got to know them that well – what their personalities are like and why they are a thing – beyond the snark. The mystery was quite convoluted and I felt like it couldn’t quite decide if it wanted to go all out into the surreal/fantastic or stay in the cozy crime lane. Hey ho, this happens – the cover is lovely though.

Fishing for Trouble by Elizabeth Logan

This is the second book in a cosy crime series set in Alaska. Charlie has taken over running her parents diner after moving home following a broken engagement in San Francisco. In this it’s high summer, with long days of daylight and lots of seasonal workers. But when one of those seasonal workers collapses and dies in her diner, Charlie starts to investigate. So this didn’t really work for me. Charlie doesn’t have a lot of personality beyond liking her cat (shown by buying him loads of cat toys she can run from her phone while she leaves him home alone all day) and being a bit immature as well as somewhat too stupid to live. It’s a shame because the details of life in Alaska make for a nice change from most cozies.

A quick reminder of the other posts from March – the Recommensdays were Books set in the Tower of London, and some first in series books; and the Books of the Week were The French Bookshop Murder, Slow Dance, The Love Haters, Murder at Gulls Nest and Love and Other Brain Experiments.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday, series

Recommendsday: First in series…

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Happy Wednesday everyone, this week I’ve got a mixed bag of first books in series that I have recently read – we’ve got one fantasy, one historical mystery and one cozy crime, which may not be entirely representative of my general reading over the year, but is actually fairly representative of where my reading is at at the moment, minus a romance but I’m mostly reading standalone romances rather than series at the moment so I didn’t have one I could include!

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

After having enjoyed Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter so much last month, I went out and bought the first in Heather Fawcett’s previous series (yes I know, I’m repeating an author, but hey I make and break my own rules) about a professor who studies faeries and folklore. Emily Wilde has gone to visit a village in the far north to study the Hidden Ones, their local fae. She doesn’t want to talk to the locals and she is less than pleased when one of her colleagues from Cambridge turns up to help her. I really loved the world building and the characters are great. I felt like Fawcett did a really good job of explaining how the world works without info dumping on you and the two main plot strands – what are the fairies up to and who is Wendell Bartlett – provided plenty of action without being too stressful. Cozy fantasy so good I have already acquired the rest of the trilogy…

Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claud Izner

This is the first in a series of books featuring bookseller Victor Legris in late nineteenth century Paris. In this it’s 1889 and Paris is a buzz with the World Exposition. Victor witnesses a woman’s death on the viewing platform of the brand new Eiffel Tower and doesn’t think that the official explanation is the right one. Soon he’s ducking and weaving around Paris trying to work out what happened and who did it and more people start to die. The original French version of this won the Prix Michel-Lebrun in 2003, which is a prize for French crime novels, which I thought was a good sign, but I was obviously reading it in English and although the mystery is good I found the writing style quite hard going, but that could of course be the fault of the translator. I bought this on my trip to Paris about 18 months ago so it’s taken me a while to get to and I do have the second on the shelf already ahving spotted it cheap second hand. So I’ll give that a go at some point and see if it grows on me.

Jammed with Secrets by Selina Hill*

This is the first in a new series of small town cozy crimes and sees Sadie, a disgraced chef return to her home town to try and rebuild her life. She’s trying to do this by running food trailers at a local music festival when a member of a 90s boyband is found dead in one of them. Not satisfied with the police investigation, Sadie starts to investigate herself to try and save her business. The actual murder mystery plot was pretty good – but the problem here is Sadie. There are some issues with her backstory that make it hard for the reader to sympathise with her and entirely understandable why the people in town wouldn’t want to eat her food. This is a problem entirely of the author’s own creation – and made me wonder why it wasn’t set up differently. And that’s all I can say without spoilers, but this is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment if you want to go and find out what I’m talking about!

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Books with Sports

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We are closer to the end of the Winter Olympics than we are to the start so for today, I’ve got some novels with sports in them for you. They’re not all winter sports, but some of them are. There are also a whole bunch that I’ve read and not liked and haven’t included here – although I have included one of my more recent sports reads, because it made me cross and I needed to talk about it! And also the book that I was hoping to replace it with has also made me cross, but in a less interesting way. Anyway, I’ve also already written a Recommendsday about sports romances, so if you haven’t had enough yet, you can find that there.

The Favourites by Layne Fargo

Given that all the drama that came out of the Ice Dancing results (if you haven’t read about it yet, here are some articles), I couldn’t not start with Layne Fargo’s book about ice dance from last year. I wrote a bonus review about it around the time of Worlds last year, but it’s so much fun that it bears a repeat. This has got a scrappy wrong side of the tracks pairing taking on the world of ice dancing, and is framed through a documentary being made ten years after their final skate. It’s got lots of drama, the bits of the sport that Fargo has tinkered with are cleverly chosen and you don’t have to know anything about skating to enjoy it. I’m a huge figure skating fan – until Tuesday night I had watched every minute of competition this games, and this is one of the very few books I’ve read set in a sport that I’m a keen follower of that hasn’t managed to really annoy me in one way or another. There’s a reason why I haven’t read many/any of the figure skater (usually with a hockey player) romances that are having a resurgence at the moment. I read a few a couple of Olympics ago (Pyeongchang games I think) and they really wound me up and I haven’t been back since. But this I can really recommend.

Isn’t It Bromantic by Lyssa Kay Adams

Cover of Isn't it Bromantic

I’ve got an ice hockey-related romance for you now, and it’s not Heated Rivalry! Isn’t it Bromantic is the fourht book in the Bromance Book Club series, which have a couple of sporting heros. The first in the series had a baseball player hero who is trying to win his estranged wife back with the help of a secret romance book club for men, and the other books follow the other members of the group. Isn’t It Bromantic’s hero is Vlad aka The Russian who is a professional ice hockey player in Nashville. Years earlier back in Russia, he married one of his childhood friends to help her after her journalist father disappeared. It’s been a marriage of convenience, but Vlad has decided he wants more and is using the book club to try and work out how to win his wife’s love. This was the story in the series that I had been looking forward to maybe the most and although it didn’t quite live upto all my hopes it was still a fun read even if it did have far too many tropes all mashed in together. I found the series as a whole a bit uneven – full of great ideas but not always as good in the execution, which was a bit frustrating, but I don’t think any of them were actually bad if you know what I mean.

Cross The Line by Simone Soltani

Cover of Cross the Line

Dev is a Formula One driver who may have blown up his career prospects with a social media disaster Willow is his best friend’s little sister who is full of ideas but struggling to get a job out of college. Dev hires Willow to help with his image problem, but the two of them struggle to keep it professional as their feelings threaten to get the better of them. I am a massive Formula One fan, and have been for as long as I can remember and really I think this may make me a bad candidate for reading F1-set romances, because I will pick at the sporting detail. All that aside, this one has a massive plot device that it uses towards the end but then leaves unresolved that really, really wound me up. In fact it annoyed me to the point that I went back and read the final chapter and the epilogue again the day after I read it, because I had finished it late at night and I wanted to make sure that I hadn’t missed something. I hadn’t. So, all in all frustrating. And as I said at the top, it made me cross and I wanted to talk about it, but also people who know I read romance and like F1 often ask me if I’ve read any of the booming trend for F1 romances and so now I’m reporting back!

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: December Quick Reviews

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The theme of this month’s quick reviews could be described as “reporting back” given that we have two books that I’d mentioned on release day that I’ve now read and I’m starting with a sequel to a Book of the Week from the start of last year.

Lies and Dolls by Nev Fountain

Lies and Dolls is a return to the world of Kit Pelham after The Fan Who Knew Too Much and sees Kit and Binfire on their way to Lincolnshire for the opening of a rare toy museum which will be housing some rare figurines from the Vixens of the Void series. Soon the figures go missing and start turning up in pieces. And then there are actual murders. I said in my review of the first book that it could have used being a bit shorter and that the plot was insane – this is even more outlandish on the plot front, but felt like it had had a tighter edit. The world is more absurd than ever, and Kit keeps making the wrong choices in her personal life, but it’s got plenty of black humour as well as another uttlerly bonkers mystery plot. Looking at the “Readers also enjoyed” choices on Goodreads, this is more unrealistic in many ways than the Peter Grant books – and they have magic – but it’s definitely less realistic than both the Andrew Cartmel series too but they are similar in some other ways.

Second Chance Romance by Olivia Dade

Cover of Second Chance Romance

Karl and Molly had crushes on each other when they were in high school, but nothing really happened. When they were at college they had an argument and never spoke again.Since then, Molly has become a successful audiobook narrator and Karl (although she doesn’t know it) is her most faithful listener, usually while he’s working in his bakery. When Molly sees an obituary for Karl she flies from California back to Harlot’s Bay for his funeral. Except that he’s not dead – and the two of them get a second chance to work out if that old connection was the real thing. I’m reporting back in on this one because I mentioned it on release day but although this is the second book in this series, you could read this as a standalone . That would would spoil the outcome of that first book as well as you missing out on the running humour that is Karl’s audiobook habits in that first book – so really, you should read At First Spite first. I really liked the relationship building here as Karl tries to show cynical and jaded Molly that he’s worth taking a chance on. And the Harlot’s Bay community continues to be a lot of fun providing plenty in the subplots as well as the romance.

You Had to Be There by Jodie Harsh*

Cover of You Had to Be There

This one took me so long to read – and I previewed it here when it came out – that I had to come back around with a review now I have finished it. I’m quite conflicted writing this review because I found the writing style quite hard going for large parts of the book – breathless isn’t quite the right word, but it is stream of consciousness and breakneck for the majority of the book, just like Jodie’s/J’s life was. And so that might be a stylistic choice, but that is one of the reasons why it took me quite a while to read. The other is that J/Jodie is also making some very bad choices at times and has a lot of traumatic events in his childhood and that is also quite hard to read. But this is a very honest book that is a glimpse into what it was like to be caught up in the Soho nighttime scene in the last years before Crossrail came and closed things down and knocked them down. The buildings that replaced them are shinier and more corporate and the things that were lost can never be replaced. But that’s the way of London – always changing and shifting and moving on to the next thing for more than a millennia. I’m lucky enough to remember seeing it before it changed – and after reading this I’ll be thinking about the communities and clubs that were lost every time I go down the escalators at Tottenham Court Road.

And that’s your lot. A reminder that the recommensdays in December had a strong Christmas theme – with series at Christmas 2, Not New Christmas Books and New Christmas Mysteries – and the BotWs were Season of Love, Murder Most Modern, Odd Flamingo, Heir Apparent and Buried in a Good Book.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: November Quick Reviews

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Happy first Wednesday of the month everyone. It will be no surprise to you that two of my quick reviews this month are books that ticked off missing states in this year’s reading challenge! Without further ado, here are the reviews.

The George Eliot Murders by Edith Skom

College professor Beth Austin is off to Hawaii for a vacation during her term off teaching. At the resort on the island she takes part in a tennis tournament and comes into contact with some of the hotel’s highest spending guests. When a woman falls from a balcony, everyone thinks it’s suicide or an accident, but Beth isn’t convinced. And then another body is found and she starts investigating for real, with the help of two friends that she’s made at the resort. This is as bit of a strange one because it was first published in 1990 and is quite dated and of its time in some ways, but actually in others it feels more modern. I also didn’t think it needed the Middlemarch tie-in, but I get that that’s the conceit of the series and so it has to be there. I’m not massively familiar with Middlemarch (I think I read the book after I watched the TV adaptation in the mid 1990s!) so it also didn’t really make a huge amount of sense to me either! But I liked Beth as a character and the mystery was good with a neat conclusion. I wouldn’t rule out reading more of these, but given that I picked this up from a bookswap bookcase I suspect I won’t be come across them any time soon!

Death and the Final Cut by G M Malliet

I wanted to report back in on this one because I mentioned it when it came out earlier this month. A reminder of the plot: an actress is found dead late at night in the Round Church in Cambridge, which is being used at the set of a Viking epic movie. As St Just investigates it becomes clear that there is plenty of conflict among the cast and crew and reasons why a murder could have happened. Despite having missed three books in the series, it was pretty easy to pick up the threads of the main characters and the mystery itself is pretty good interesting and I really like the Cambridge setting. I’ve got back and bought one of the ones in the series that I’ve missed to try and fill in some gaps.

Animal Attraction by Jill Shalvis

This is the second in Shalvis’s Animal Magnetism series which is set in the town of Sunshine, Idaho. Our hero is Dell, the town’s vet and the heroine is Jade, currently working as his receptionist after having mysteriously appeared in town one day. Dell knows that Jade has a secret – she’s overqualified for the job that she’s doing and doesn’t want to let anyone into her life. Jade has always said her time in town is temporary, but as the deadline from her family to leave approaches she realises that she doesn’t want to go. Jade has some trauma in her back story which is a fairly major plot point, but it never gets as far as romantic suspense and there are plenty of cute animals and a kind and sensible hero to even that out.

And that’s your lot for this month – the other Recommendsdays in November were First in Mystery series and Dysfunctional Families and the BotWs were Murder at World’s End, Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge, Buffalo West Wing and Death in High Heels.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: October Quick Reviews

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It’s the first Wednesday of the months and I have quick reviews for you – and one of them is even a new release! Two days in a row! Yes, it can happen! I’m almost proud of me. Except for the fact that the rest of the pile is massive. Moving on. To the reviews:

Taylor’s Version by Stephanie Burt*

Cover of Taylor's Version

I’m going to be honest and my most listened to album last month was the new Taylor Swift album. What can I say, I’m a millennial who likes Swedish pop, so an upbeat Max Martin-produced album is totally my jam. And so I was interested to read this book, which is a critical appreciation of Swift’s work, written by a professor who runs a course on her at Harvard. And it was interesting, but I had two key problems with it: one, I’m not a big enough Swiftie that I’m able to remember all the songs off all the albums without going back and listening to them again, and two, I’m not across (American?) music terminology and theory to be able to understand all the technicalities of the music and composition that Burt is explaining. I need someone to play it to demonstrate it to get it – like the Switched On Pop guys did with The Life of a Showgirl the other week – and to really understand the points that are being made. But I think it may well work for other people more than it did for me.

From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming

Paperback copy of From Russia With Love

This was my purchase in the Penguin Pop-Up back in September and is only the second of the actual James Bond books that I’ve read. I’ve watched the Connery and Bond movies a lot, so it was really interesting to see what the original was and where the plot was changed to make it into a film – and there are a few changes here and they weren’t always what I expected. There’s actually not a lot of Bond here until fairly late on – it’s mostly about the Russian side of the plot, building up to the chase sequence as Bond tries to make his way back to Britain (with Tatiana in tow). As a book it is of its time, but if you’re familiar with all the issues of the movie series, you know what you’re letting yourself in for!

The Body in the Kitchen Garden by Paula Sutton*

Cover of The Body in the Kitchen Garden

After reading the first in the Hill House Vintage mystery series last year, I’m back to report in on the second, because I said that I would come and report back on a sequel if it came. This sees Daphne helping in the renovation of the local manor house after the return of the owner after years out of the country. But when an unidentified body is discovered in the garden, she’s drawn into another murder investigation. In the first book, I had the murderer pegged fairly early on but I thought that might be because it was a debut, but also because there was a lot of series set up going on, so the mystery couldn’t be as complex as a result. But this didn’t have all that set up to do and I had the victim’s identity and the murderer worked out as early (if not earlier). And that’s a shame because I still really like the main characters and the setting. It’s just not got enough happening or complexity for me. Hey ho.

And that’s your lot for this month, as a reminder, the Books of the Week were: The Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Solving a Murder; What You Are Looking For is in the Library; Red Land, Black Land and I Shop, Therefore I Am. The Recommendsdays were a Halloween preview, mysteries set in theatres and Novelised Real People II

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: September Quick Reviews

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It’s the start of October today, so I’m back with the Quick reviews for September, and stats will pop up later in the week. And September was quite a ride on the reading front. It really has. I’ve read some good stuff and some less good stuff, I’ve struggled with books for BotW at some points, but I’ve ended up at the end of the month with plenty of books on the list to chose from to talk about here, but I’ve decided that this month it’s a follow up special…

Chris at the Kennels by Patricia Baldwin

It’s been a while since I did a Girl’s Own book, and a year since I did my post about Girl’s Own career’s books, and so I’m popping this one in here as a follow up. This is another evangelical career book – so Chris finds God while she carries out an apprenticeship at a kennels. Because in the 1960s it seems that breeding dogs and showing them and doing a little bit of boarding for other people’s dogs was enough to pay two salaries as well as supporting the owner. Chris is a twin and grew up on a farm, but instead of staying on at school and trying to get into university she wants to leave and work with dogs. I have no idea how accurate this is on a life of a kennel maid front, but I enjoyed seeing what drama Baldwin had found to keep the plot moving and break up the dog care info! Additionally, unusually for the Baldwins that I’ve read, Chris’s religious awakening happens from reading the Bible and from the other kennel maid’s scepticism about religion, rather than a religious person coming in and converting her!

Island Calling by Francesca Segal*

I mentioned that this was coming out back in June and now I’ve read it, I am reporting back. I really think you need to have read the first one to make the most of this but it is part two of a trilogy, so that’s not really a surprise. But for me, having enjoyed Welcome to Glorious Tuga, it was lovely treat to return to the characters and the great setting and get another slice of island life. This time we have the addition of Charlotte’s bossy mother unexpectedly arriving on the island. There is some peril here, but it never feels too awful so it’s a charming and relaxing read. As far as I can tell there’s no news yet on a date for part three, but if it follows the pattern of this one, it should be next summer sometime.

The Paris Spy by Sarah Sigal*

And I’m also reporting back in on this one which came out a couple of weeks ago. The follow up to The Socialite Spy takes Lady Pamela More to Paris on the eve of WW2, and back into the orbit of Wallis Simpson, now Duchess of Windsor. I didn’t think this was as successful as the first book because it has a less defined task for Pamela to do, and it also covers a much wider and more chaotic time. It continues to follow fairly closely to what I have read about the antics of the Windsors after the abdication, so it feels pretty accurate on a history front, I just think it’s trying to do too much and doesn’t always resolve things as successfully as you want, although I suspect there’s a third book in mind… and I did enjoy this enough that I would read it though if there was!

That’s your lot today, but a reminder if you need it that this month’s books of the week were: The Last Supper, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, Breakneck and Entitled.

Book previews, book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: New Autumn Fiction

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After last week’s look at the non-fiction, this week I’m using Recommendsday to talk abou the big fiction releases of the autumn as we hurtle towards Christmas.

I’ve already written about the new Dan Brown which came out on the 9th, but tomorrow sees the other biggie September with the arrival of the new Richard Osman. After taking a break from the Thursday Murder Club last year with We Solve Murders, he’s back with the fifth in the series The Impossible Fortune, which sees the residents of Coopers Chase back on the case. You’re going to want to have read the previous book because there was a Big Plot Development at the end of The Last Devil to Die.

Also out this week is the new novel from Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You. This is inspired by Lockwood’s own experiences suffering the effects of Long Covid on her memory and promises to be a slightly trippy and inventive read. I read Lockwood’s memoir Priestdaddy years ago and still need to read her first novel before I get around to this one, even if I was ready to start reading books set during Covid. Which I’m not sure I am yet!

The new R F Kuang, Katabasis is already out and completely everywhere. This is Kuang’s first book since Yellowface and is a return to speculative fiction. If you are a reader of Literary Fiction, there are lots of the Big Authors who have books out this autumn – from Salman Rushdie with The Eleventh Hour on November 4, to Ian McEwan’s “literary thriller and love story” What We Can Know (which came out last week) and William Boyd’s historical spy novel The Predicament which is his second book featuring Gabriel Dax (the first being Gabriel’s Moon).

There are also new books from some of the mega thriller writers: John Grisham has The Widow (October 21) which is being described as his first whodunnit as well as being a legal thriller. Jeffery Archer also has a new thriller out this week with End Game. In (other) books that are Not For Verity there is also the Nicholas Sparks and M Night Shyamalan book Remain

But what am I waiting for, I hear you ask. Well my autumn pre-orders include Olivia Dade’s Second Chance Romance. This is the second book in the Harlot’s Bay series, and I’ve had it pre-ordered since March, because that is how I roll. If you read At First Spite, this is Karl the Baker’s story, and the heroine is an audiobook narrator who moved away from town after high school. I can’t wait. It’s out at the end of November. I’ve also got the paperback of Katherine Center’s Love Haters ordered – the ebook came out at the start of the summer, but for some reason Past Verity went for the paperback and a longer wait!

The fifth H M The Queen Presents book, The Queen Who Came in from the Cold is out the same day – it’s the early 1960s, and The Queen is getting ready to go to Italy on the Royal Yacht when someone claims to have seen a murder from the Royal Train. There is another Sophie Hannah Poirot novel coming this autumn too – The Last Death of the Year – which sees Poirot arriving on a Greek island for New Year. These can go either way for me – I’ve liked two, disliked two and just picked up the one I haven’t read on offer to see how that one suits me.

And finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Stephen Rowley, author of The Celebrants and The Guncle, has a new one coming in mid October. Just a warning though that The Dogs of Venice is a novella – it’s already available on Audible and only lasts 80 minutes, so it’s quite pricey as a £20 hardback (no matter how much I love him).

Book previews, book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: New Autumn non-fiction

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September is the start of the mega Christmas release schedule and as ever there is a shedload of celebrity memoirs and non fiction coming out this Christmas season. SO this week I thought I’d mention the ones that I am particularly looking forward to.

Let’s start with Tim Curry’s Vagabond which comes out in mid October. Curry has had a long and successful career – you’re likely to know him either as Frank-n-Furter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pennywise in the original It, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, or the voice of Nigel Thornberry in The Wild Thornberrys. He’s always been a somewhat private person and he’s been largely out of the spotlight and only doing voice work since he had a major stroke in 2012. So I’m really excited to find out what he’s got to say about his career (because I’m not expecting any revelations about his personal life) and as he’s reading the audiobook, I think I may well consume it that way so I can listen to his wonderful voice.

The other big actor memoir that I’ve seen this autumn is Michael J Fox’s Future Boy which is specifically about the period in the 1980s where he was making both the Back to the Future films and the sitcom Family Ties. That’s out in mid October. The week before that there’s Ozzy Osborne’s Last Rites, which takes you (apparently) right though his life to that final gig just a few weeks before he died in July.

But the other book on my list is Making Mary Poppins by Todd James Pierce. Mary Poppins is one of my very favourite ever movies and as you know I love stories of behind the scenes in Hollywood. I’ve already read both of Julie Andrews’s memoirs so I’ve heard about the filming from her, but I’m sure there is much more to find out.

The Big Political Book this autumn is Kamala Harris’s 107 Days, which is out next week and looks at her very brief campaign to become President, starting from when Joe Biden announced that he would no longer seek reelection.

Talking of American politics, not a memoir per se, but Michelle Obama has a new book out in early November – The Look is an examination of her evolving style over the years and the impact that fashion and style can have on you. And there’s also a new cookbook from Samin Nosrat whose Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat won a bunch of awards back in around 2017. Good Things is recipes to cook – 125 of them in fact. Padma Lakshmi also has a new cookbook out – All American – with recipes from all the many cultures she’s come across during her decades travelling in the US.

I’m really interested to have a look at Cory Doctrow’s Enshittification, which is looking at why so many things in tech and online start off being good and then go downhill as it is monetised and the impact that this has on everything in our lives. That’s out in mid October. In a similar sort of area, I’m also interested in Streaming Wars by Charlotte Henry, which is about the changes in the media industry that streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, Spotify and the like have caused, and what happens next. That’s out at the start of October.

I won’t be the only person out there who studied The Handmaid’s Tale at A Level, even if I’ve only read one (maybe two?) of Margaret Atwood’s other novels in the years since (more if you count her graphic novel series AngelCatbird). But she has a memoir out this autumn The Book of Lives out in early November. In other notable prize winning authors, Zadie Smith has Dead and Alive, an essay collection, out at the very end of October and Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me is already in the shops.

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: July Quick Reviews

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A slight theme to the post this month – everything is a mystery, two of them are first in series and the other is the first book I’ve read by the author. And yes, I finished this first one after last weeks’ BLCC roundup had gone up or it might have gone in that instead and reduced the amount of Lorac/Carnac books in that one!

Scandalize My Name by Fiona Sinclair

This is one of the more recent BLCC releases (it came out in April) and is one from a much lesser known author who, based on this, really deserves rediscovery. The murder happens at a house in North London that has been divided into flats. While the residents and neighbours are assembling for a 21st birthday party, one of the residents has been killed in the basement. There is no shortage of people who might have wanted the victim dead, and Superintendent Grainger has a tight group of suspects all of whom had motive and opportunity. Sinclair introduces a lot of characters in a hurry at the start of this which might put you off initially, but stick with it and it’s a good and clever read. I skipped back and read the first chapter again after I had read the solution and spotted a few really neat details hidden in plain sight, although it doesn’t really gives you all the clues to be able to solve it yourself.

Six Sweets Under by Sarah Fox

This is a cozy crime novel set in a fictional town in Vermont which is filled with canals and small businesses. Our detective is Becca, a former actress who has moved back to her home town after a spell in Hollywood. She’s taking over her grandparents’ chocolate shop and settling back into small town life when a local man is found dead after having been seen arguing with her grandfather, who becomes one of the main suspects. So, because this is cozy crime, Becca sets out to clear him. This has an interesting setting – lots of canals, lots of boats – but I found the heroine a bit irritating (for example she’s afraid of deep water because her brother told her there was a monster living in it) and the characters didn’t feel as well developed as I would have liked. I picked this up from the cozy crime section in Waterstone’s Piccadilly back in the autumn and I can see that there are two more in the series – but the second of those appears to have changed publishers so I suspect that there will be no more. I enjoyed it enough that I’m not ruling out getting one of the others to help me out with Vermont if I do the 50 States challenge again in 2026.

Flipped for Murder by Maddie Day

This is another first in series, another cozy crime and another of the harder to get states for the 50 states challenge. This time we’re in Indiana, and our detective is Robbie (short for Roberta) who has moved to South Lick in the south of the state after falling in love with the town while visiting her aunt. In this Robbie is opening her new business, a country store and restaurant, but the day after the grand opening, the mayor’s assistant is found dead and Robbie finds herself in the spotlight. This has got a lot going on, particularly with Robbie – she’s a cook and carpenter, she likes puzzles, her mum has recently died and there is a bit of a love triangle going on too. I had the culprit figured out early on but for some reason I had the second book in the series on my kindle (they’re all in KU at the moment which is how I read the first one) so had a read of that as well to see if the mystery in that was harder to solve, and it wasn’t really, but the love triangle seemed to get sorted out. Solidly OK, but not something I’d want to spend a load of money on.

And that’s your lot for this month. As a reminder the Books of the Week in July were Finders Keepers, Not to Be Taken (even more BLCC!), Next Stop Murder, We Three Queens and Death and the Conjurer, making it an incredibly Mystery-centric month when you add this to the mysteries set on film sets and bonus review of the second Gabriel Ward.