cozy crime – Page 6 – Verity Reads Books (lots of them)

The Second Annual Cozy Crime round-up

November 5, 2016November 5, 2016 veritywilde

If you remember my post about comfort reading, you’ll remember me saying that I one of the genres I turn to is cozy crime. And I’ve been reading an awful lot of them recently, so I have books (and series) to recommend. There are definite trends in cozies, and so I’ve tried to provide some variety – and also go for new/newer series that you might not have come across before. I have lots of old favourites too, but here are some new (or at least new-to-me) series to take a look at.

Max Tudor by GM Malliet

Copyof The Haunted Season by G M Malliet — This is the 5th Max Tudor – currently waiting on the to-read pile!

Max Tudor is a vicar – who was in the secret service before he was ordained – which is a nice touch which explains why the police might be willing to have him involved in their investigations (always a problem when your “detective” isn’t actually a police man). He’s unmarried – and the subject of matchmaking among his parishioners – and his eventual choice makes for some nice conflict of its own. I’ve read the first four books in the series (which are all named after seasons) and am keeping my eyes open for the next two. These are fun, clever and witty – even if the author needs to remember that no Land Rover owner would ever call their vehicle a Rover!

Headlines in High Heels by LynDee Walker

I wanted to include some competence porn in here – because I do love a book where the main character is good at their job. Reporters/journalists make great leads in cozy crime series – because they have an excuse for coming across bodies – or at least getting involved in solving mysteries in a way that say… cupcake bakers don’t. But there are some pitfalls. I’ve recently been infuriated by a reporter in a book not doing their basic fact checking (it did come back and bite them, but they shouldn’t/wouldn’t have done it and it shouldn’t be a plot device) and while Nichelle Clarke does have a slightly dodgy (for her job) relationship, for the most part she’s a conscientious reporter who does the job properly. And the cases are interesting too. It didn’t surprise me to find out that the author is a journalist…

Mainely Needlepoint by Lea Wait

I’ve read three (of the four) books in this series and they are well put together mysteries set in Maine. At the start of the series, our heroine, Angie returns to her home town after ten years when her missing mother is finally found. She soon ends up helping her grandmother with her needlework business and sets about trying to reintegrate in a town where she struggled as a child as she tries to work out what she wants in her life. I like Angie, and while these books don’t have the humour in them that I prefer in my cozies, they are interesting and page turning mysteries, even if I do find the references to guns and concealed carry a little disturbing and off-putting as a Brit who is not used to guns being around in every day life!

Amory Ames by Ashley Weaver

Death Wears a Mask by Ashley Weaver — Another photo of a book taken on a train. I know. I’m so predictable!

I do love a good book set in the period between the wars – it’s my book sweet spot. So many good series are tucked up in here – my beloved Lord Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion and the early Inspector Alleyns all written at the time and series like Phyrne Fisher, Daisy Dalrymple and the Lord Edward Corinth series. And Ashley Weaver’s Amory Ames series has potential. Amory is a wealthy young woman who has married a playboy and is regretting it. Milo is handsome and charming – but, Amory fears, unreliable and possibly (probably) unfaithful. There are only three books in the series so far – and I’ve read two of them – but this has a complicated central relationship and a sparky heroine and the mysteries are well worked out. I have high hopes for book three.

So there you are. As you can see, I’ve read at least two books in all of these series, more in some cases, because cosy series can take a while to hit their stride… And this feels like only the tip of my cozy crime reading iceberg – to get to this (slender) list of recommendations I’ve read a few turkeys as well! And if this not enough cozy crime for you, in a nice piece of serendipity, I did a similar post this time last year, and those recommendations still stand too! And don’t forget previous BotW picks Death of a Nobody (and Death of a Diva), Earthly Delights and Murder on the Half Shell.

Happy reading – and apologies if this has got a little expensive for you…

Book of the Week, cozy crime, historical

Book of the Week: A Royal Pain

October 18, 2016October 18, 2016 veritywilde

Where did that week go? Blimey. This week’s BotW is A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen – slightly by default, as I’m working on a post about cosy crime series and don’t want to repeat, and can’t tell you about Corinna Chapman again (oh the perils of binge-reading series). Anyhow. A Royal Pain is book 2 in the Her Royal Spyness series. The series name makes me cringe, but I picked this (and another in the series) in The Works the other week in the hope that it would help scratch my Daisy Dalrymple/Phryne Fisher itch as I wait for new books in either of those series. And in the most part it did.

The Royal Spyness of the title is Lady Georgie, 34th in line to the throne and flat broke. She’s trying to make her own way in London with a secret job as a maid-in-disguise when the Queen lands her with the job of babysitting a Bavarian princess and accidentally-on-purpose putting introducing said princess to the Queen’s playboy son. Along the way they discover two bodies, and Georgie discovers that Princess Hanni drinks like a fish, has a vocabulary strongly influenced by American gangster films and keeps getting herself tangled up with the Communist party…

This isn’t ground breaking or perfect, but it is good fun and rattles along at enough of a pace that you don’t notice its flaws too much. I had the culprit figured out fairly relatively early on, but that’s not too much of a problem for me as long as I’m enjoying the story (which I was). I did feel like I was missing a few bits of backstory coming into the series in book two – and i suspect they are bits of backstory that couldn’t be explained without giving away too much about the previous book. A Royal Pain never hits the heights that the best of the Phryne Fisher and Daisy Dalrymple books do, but it avoids most of the pitfalls that some other books in this sub-genre suffer from which can induce book-flinging levels of rage in me and put me straight into hate-reading mode.

As I mentioned at the start, I have another in this series sitting on the to-read pile which I’ll happily read when I get a chance, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for more in the series. You can pick up a copy of A Royal Pain from Amazon, Kindle, Waterstones, Foyles, Kobo or The Works – which has the best price I’ve spotted and the very tempting 6 for £10 offer…

Authors I love, Book of the Week, cozy crime

Book of the Week: Earthly Delights

October 4, 2016October 4, 2016 veritywilde

As you may have seen from yesterday’s Week in Books, I had a bit of a strange week reading last week, having trouble settling down to books – and a few that I didn’t like. But choosing this week’s BotW was easy – Kerry Greenwood’s Earthly Delights.

You might recognise Kerry Greenwood’s name because she’s the author of the Phryne Fisher series of murder mysteries set in 1920s Australia, which I adore and have been turned into a TV series – which I have thoughts about. This the first in her Corinna Chapman series – which is set in present day (or at least present day when they were written a few years back) Melbourne, where Corinna is a speciality baker who runs her own bakery in one of the slightly seedier areas. The bakery is proving a success, but suddenly she’s getting anonymous letters calling her a whore, a junkie has overdosed in the alley behind her shop, there’s a mysterious but gorgeous man showing an interest in her and her shop assistants are starving themselves to try and get a role on a TV show (any TV show). She’s determined to get to the bottom of the letters – which are upsetting and scaring her and her friends – and ends up getting sucked in to some of the other drama as well…

Although this is the first in the series, I had already read one of the later books and enjoyed it although I was missing some backstory. This fills some of those gaps in nicely and sets up the series as well as having an excellent mystery. Greenwood always creates great settings and quirky characters in the Phryne books – and she does the same here. Corinna is very different to Phryne, but she’s great fun, smart and warm-hearted, just like Miss Fisher. Her apartment building is a brilliantly quirky invention – as are many of the people who live there.

I didn’t love this the way that I love Phryne, but in the absence of a new book about the Fabuous Miss Fisher, I’ll happily work my way through these. I’ve been waiting for either the kindle price or the second hand price to drop on this series for ages – and these have all dropped from over £5 for the Kindle edition to just over £3, which is still on the top end of what I’m prepared to pay for ebooks, but is much more doable. I shouldn’t really be buying books, but when has that ever stopped me before. You can pick up your copy on Kindle or Kobo (which isn’t price-matching Amazon at time of writing sadly), in paperback from Amazon (if you’re prepared to shell out £11+ for a new copy or £8+ for a second hand one) or you can trawl the second hand shops because it’s out of stock and un-orderable at both Foyles and Waterstones.

Happy reading.

Chick lit, cozy crime, crime, historical, holiday reading, romance

Summer Reading Recommendations 2016

August 13, 2016August 13, 2016 veritywilde

So you’ve read my Comfort Reading Picks post, now you want the Beach Reads don’t you? Well, here we go…

Eligible

Curtis Sittenfeld’s retelling/reworking of Pride and Prejudice is my top pick for the beach. I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy of this before it came out here in May and had to restrain myself from raving about it straight away. It’s part of the Austen Project and it’s so clever. Sittenfeld has taken P&P and rather than translating it direct to the current day, she’s thought about what the modern equivalent of the books situations might be. So we have Lizzy the magazine writer brought home by her dad’s health scare, Jane the Yoga Instructor, Bingley the Reality TV star (and doctor) and Darcy the neurosurgeon. Kitty and Lydia are crossfit obsessed Paleo fans and Mrs B is a kleptomaniac desperate to marry off her nearly 40 year old oldest daughter. I thought it was brilliant – funny and smart and spot on. I lent it straight to my mother – I wasn’t sure if she’d buy into the changes the way I did, but she loved it too. Perfect beach reading – it’s a hardback, but I’m hoping there’ll be airport paperback copies too if you’re buying en route. If not: Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Kindle, Kobo.

Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins

If you’ve been watching the ITV series, you may already have read James Runcie’s books about Grantchester’s vicar. I prefer them to the TV version and I particularly like their episodic nature – each book has several mysteries, some (most) involving deaths and some which don’t. As you work your way through the series you see Sidney grow and mature. He’s 32 in the first one – which is set in the 1950s, and by the fourth one we’re into the 1960s. I haven’t read book five yet – because it’s only out in paperback, but if you’re looking for a series to read while sitting in the garden enjoying the British summer, a visit to Grantchester might be an ideal option for you. I think it would work best if you start at the beginning of the series, but the latest paperback (Forgiveness of Sins) should be fairly easy to find in the shops at the moment. Forgiveness of Sins: Amazon, Kindle, Foyles, Waterstones, Kobo. Shadow of Death: Amazon, Kindle, Foyles, Waterstones, Kobo.

Fahrenheit Press

Ok, so this is a second crime recommendation – and a much broader one. Go have a look at Fahrenheit Press’s catalogue. There will definitely be something that you’ll like. I’ve already picked Black Rubber Dress, Murder Quadrille and Death of a Nobody as Books of the Week, and I could have added others to that list. I have their subscription – and I have several books waiting for me to read on my Kindle – including more Sam Jones which I’m saving for a holiday binge. There’s thrillers, more cozies, historical and pretty much every other type of crime there, all with a slightly different perspective. I defy you not to find a beach read there – and more are being added at a rate of knots. They’ve only just started bringing out actual physical books – so the best way to find them is to search for Fahrenheit Press on Amazon – or check out their website.

The Highlander

This is about as close to an Old School Historical Romance novel as you get in new books these days – and does all the best bits of those late 80s and early 90s books, but without the rape and rapey bits I find so problematic. This is not subtle. It’s big, it’s melodramatic, it’s very Scottish. I recommended The Highwayman last year – and this isn’t quite as good as that, but it is very good. It has governesses and secret identities – which I like – but also an asylum (which I didn’t like and might be triggering for some) and a subplot with a brother which I didn’t like. I know that sounds a bit less than enthusiastic from me – but it’s not – I kept turning the pages and I was engrossed. Worth a look if you like your romances Gothic with brooding damaged Scottish heroes. Amazon and Kindle are probably your best bet for this, as although Waterstones lists the two earlier titles in this series, it doesn’t have this one there yet.

So there you go. My Summer reading suggestions. Slightly later than planned (sorry) but hopefully still in time for the summer. And if you’re still at a loss – I’ve stuck to books I haven’t recommended before, so don’t forget The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts, Sunset in Central Park, The Tumbling Turner Sisters and Jane Steele which would all be great to read on the beach.

Authors I love, Chick lit, cozy crime, crime, Fantasy, Series I love

Pick Me Up Books

July 29, 2016July 29, 2016 veritywilde

It’s a funny old time at the moment isn’t it? There’s so much news about – and lots of it is depressing for various reasons, that working in news for my day (and this week night) job* is getting a bit tough. I’ve retreated into the world of Happy Endings. Dystopian fiction is firmly off the menu, as is anything that might end on death, destruction or a down note. This means I’ve been revisiting some old favourites again as well as reading loads of romance and cozy crime. You’ll get some posts soon on the best of the new stuff – but I thought I’d also share some of my favourite old friends and Not New books.

Angela Thirkell

Witty interwar comedies, mostly of manners, set in Barsetshire. They’re a bit Mapp and Lucia (but with more sympathetic characters) and they remind me of the Diary of a Provincial Lady as well. If you like the world of Golden Age crime, but don’t want the murders, then come take a look for a bit of wry social satire. Virago are re-releasing them at the moment – and they’re gorgeous – but you should also be able to get them from a good second hand shop too. You may remember I had Northbridge Rectory as a BotW a few weeks back, but as well as that one, if you liked Provincial Lady… start at the beginning of the series with High Rising, but if you loved boarding school stories, start with Summer Half and if you liked Downton, start with Pomfret Towers.

Charlaine Harris

Sookie Stackhouse, Harper Connelly, Lily Bard, Aurora Teagarden (a new book coming soon!) or Midnight, Texas, it doesn’t matter. Yes they all have a body count, and you might lose a character you like from time to time. But as escapist reading they’re pretty much all you could want. Soapy melodrama with vampires (sometimes), small towns and kick-ass women (although Rue can be a bit wet at times). Perfect for binge reading to take your mind off the real world. After all there aren’t any vampires, werewolves or witches in the real world.

The Cazalet Chronicles

I had four matching copies. Then the fifth book arrived. And I got the hardback.

Retreat into the world of Home Place, the Brig and the Duchy, their children and grandchildren. You meet them in 1937 and you can follow them through the Second World War and beyond across five books – until the grandchildren are grown up with families of their own. There are so many characters and so many different stories that you can read 400 pages without out noticing. Everyone has a favourite or two – mine are Rupert (from the children) and Polly and Clary (from the grandchildren). I think my mum’s copies are so well thumbed that they fall open to my favourite sections about each of them – especially in Casting Off. Glom on them on the beach if you’re on holiday, as I resist the temptation to rebuy a new matching set – you can get all 5 books for £6.99 from the Book People as I write this.

Vicky Bliss and Amelia Peabody

My kindle go-to at times like these is Elizabeth Peters’ Vicky Bliss and Amelia Peabody serieses. I tried to pick one, but I couldn’t. I mentioned both in passing in my Nightshift books post back in this blog’s early days and Amelia got a shout out in my Summer Reading post two years ago, but I was shocked I hadn’t given either a post of their own. Amelia is a female Egyptologist in the late nineteenth century. Vicky is an art historian in sort-of fairly recent times. Both end up in thrilling adventures. Amelia picks up a crew of regular side-kicks along the way including, but not limited to a husband, a son, a faithful site foreman and an arch-nemesis and Vicky just keeps running into this gentleman thief-con artist type. Both remind me in some ways of a female Indiana Jones, but funnier.

And on top of all that, there’s Georgette Heyer, Janet Evanovich, Peter Wimsey and a few of my recent BotW picks that would serve the same purpose and cheer you up too – check out Little Shop of Lonely Hearts, The Rogue Not Taken, Sunset in Central Park and Fangirl. Also, if in doubt, read Georgette Heyer – start with Venetia or Regency Buck. Coming soon: Summer Holiday reading recommendations…

*In case you missed it I’m a journalist in real life.

Book of the Week, cozy crime, detective, new releases

Book of the Week: Death of a Nobody

May 24, 2016December 18, 2016 veritywilde

The Fahrenheit Book Club subscription comes up trumps again – this time with Derek Farrell’s Death of a Nobody – the second book in the Danny Bird series. You may remember me raving about Death of a Diva in my Easter Recommendations post but as it didn’t get a BotW then, it means I can do this one now – Hurrah.

So, to fill you in. Danny Bird runs a pub in South London. He hopes it’s an up and coming gastro pub, after his attempt to turn it into a gay bar resulted in a corpse. Sadly he’s being hampered the fact that the pub’s owned by a mobster, who has also foisted an unwilling and unpaid extra employee on him. On top of this they’ve got a post-funeral do to cater for a local girl turned Lady. Danny’s already been asked to investigate some poison pen letters when a corpse turns up in the loo. Soon he, Lady Caroline, the Asbo Twins and the gang are in the midst of a murder mystery in high(ish) society.

What I really like about these books is the humour. It’s snarky and caustic and everyone gets some great zingers. My favourite in this one is possible when Caz describes Danny as “Poirot on poppers” – which made me attract attention to myself on the train by snorting with laughter. It’s not graphic or violent – the gore level is pretty much cozy crime – but this is much more fun and sly than stories about bakers or home decorators or country policemen. Imagine a Gay Stephanie Plum was running a pub instead of chasing criminals, but kept stumbling across bodies and you’re sort of kind of half way there. Maybe.

And the supporting cast are a hoot too. The dynamic between the pub’s workers is a joy – and the gang have everything you need to make you laugh – a posh bird, the Asbo twins (who do exactly what they say on the tin), a hard boiled bar managed and a gangster’s spoilt little princess with her own criminal tendencies. If that doesn’t sell it to you I don’t know what will.

Get your copy from Kindle or if you like the sound of it and Death of a Diva and the Sam Jones series, then you might want to look at the Fahrenheit Press Book Club – for a stream of crime fiction appearing through your inbox through the year.

Book of the Week, cozy crime, reviews

Book of the Week: Speaking from Among the Bones

April 5, 2016April 5, 2016 veritywilde

Back to detective fiction for this week’s BotW which is Alan Bradley’s fifth Flavia de Luce book. Unusually for me these days, I’m reading this series out of order – I read the first book first, but the only others I’ve read in the series are the two which follow this one.

In Book 5 we join our heroine as the village is preparing for the exhumation of their local saint from the church yard to mark the 500th anniversary of his death. But when they open the tomb, instead of a skeleton they find the recently deceased church organist and the pre-teen detective can’t help but start to investigate…

In the first book, Flavia trod a fine line for me – between engagingly and clever and irritatingly precocious. In this book (and the other later ones that I’ve read) she’s smart, with some pretty peculiar interests, but doesn’t ever cross too far over into preternaturally omnipotent! Aside from her sisters, most of her relationships are with adults and I enjoyed watching how the different adults interact with her – and their varying success (in her opinion) in treating her “properly”.

This was a fun page-turner, I had my suspicions about the culprit but couldn’t figure out the hows and whys – but the explanation was ingenious. I’m obviously still enjoying the series despite reading it out of order – you should be able to find Flavia’s adventures (where ever you want to start with them) in all good bookshops and online or, as I did, at your local library.

cozy crime, detective, fiction

Book of the Week: Death of a Cozy Writer

March 8, 2016March 8, 2016 veritywilde

Back on the cozy crime for this week’s BotW with G M Malliet’s first St Just mystery. I’ve read a couple of Malliet’s Max Tudor series before – dishy vicar with a Past in rural village – which I’ve enjoyed so I was interested to read more from this author.

Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk is a best-selling mystery writer, who delights in tormenting his adult children by constantly rewriting his will. Then he announces his engagement and the whole family gathers to “celebrate”. But when his eldest son and heir turns up dead, suspicion, greed and malice run riot in the house. Detective Chief Inspector St Just and Sergeant Fear must try to track down the killer before someone else ends up dead.

The whole Beauclerk-Fisk family are hugely dislikeable and this adds a certain something as you read about their machinations (some subtler and cleverer than others). There’s also a lot of references to classic crime – so if you’ve read a lot of Christie you’ll enjoy that too. Sir Adrian has distinct Luther Crackenthorpe tendencies and is stuck writing books about a detecting spinster who he has grown to hate and tried to kill. His writing methods and plot accuracy (as described) also feel like a bit of a comment on someone too.

DCI St Just features less in this than I was expecting, so you don’t really get to know him massively, so I’d need to read another book in the series to make a proper judgement, but he comes across as quite well – fairly inoffensive, not overly flamboyant or extravagant – and obviously as a police officer he has a perfect right to be investigating the crime which was not the case in one of the other cozies I read recently which didn’t work anywhere near as well.

It’s not perfect, but it is a fun mystery with a good few twists before you find out who actually did it. Get your copy from Amazon or on Kindle. My copy was second hand – but I have seen some of Malliet’s books in store in The Works too.

Book of the Week, cozy crime, new releases

Book of the Week: Murder on the Half Shell

February 23, 2016February 23, 2016 veritywilde

This is a strange BotW post for me to write – as there were two other books that nearly beat The Murder Quadrille last week, and nothing that I liked as much as them this week. But I have a rule about not carrying over picks that weren’t used in a previous week. So Shawn Reilly Simmons’s Murder on the Half Shell gets the nod – but I enjoyed it more this paragraph implies. Trust me, keep reading!

Murder on the Half Shell is the second book in The Red Carpet Catering Mysteries. The plot: Penelope Sutherland runs a catering company that works on film sets, she’s on an island in Florida catering a movie – but it’s not all plain sailing. The director is difficult, the leading lady has a seafood allergy and it is hot, really hot. Then two of the waitresses she’s been using go missing after a crew party and Penelope’s former culinary school instructor turned celebrity chef is the prime suspect. But she’s sure he didn’t do it and starts to look into it herself.

Food-related cozies are such a massive trend at the moment. There’s a lot of cupcakes, bakers and coffee shops and so a catering company is a nice variant. One of the problems I often have with cozy series is that there’s a lot of murder going on in a very small area. I’m not sure how long a real cake shop/coffee shop/bakery would last if bodies kept turning up outside them and that does sometimes affect how I feel about a series as it goes on – depending obviously on how the author handles it. But the location catering idea means that there’s potential for the series to move around a bit. This of course makes it a little harder to maintain a large gang of supporting characters, but it does stop the Cabot Cove effect. The flipside is that with location moving around does it does mean that the murders might start to seem to be following the lead character around – the Jessica Fletcher effect. But there are ways and means of dealing with all of these issues – and we’ll see how Red Carpet Catering copes if the series continues.

Penelope is one of the more appealing heroines I’ve recently read in the genre too. She’s not too stupid to live (or at least not often), she’s not too obviously encroaching on police territory in a way that would get her arrested and she still manages to spend enough time at her business (or have staff manning it) that you can see that she’d stay solvent. I guess I’m trying to say that Murder on the Half Shell has a good premise, lead character and is solidly executed. I did think that some of the set-up and diversionary tactics were a little heavy-handed at times – the “obvious suspect” evidence particularly – but it wasn’t enough to annoy me. It’s not as humourous as my favourite books in the genre, but again, that’s not really a problem if the mystery is interesting – and this one is.

Murder on the Half Shell was a perfectly nice way to spend a couple of train journeys – my copy came from NetGalley and I liked it enough to go back and get the first book in the series from there too. If you fancy dipping your toe in the world of cozy crime on location, you can pick it up on Kindle (for £1.99 at time of writing).

Happy crime reading!

Authors I love, books, cozy crime, historical, Series I love

My Big Obsessions of 2015

December 31, 2015December 31, 2015 veritywilde

As you may have noticed, I am a total binge reader when I discover an author I like and promptly buy up their back catalogue (or borrow it from the library) to fulfill my desperate craving for another fix. This does not help the state of the to-read pile or my bank balance and can make me look a little unhinged. So here – for your amusement – are my big obsessions of 2015 and a few examples of the ridiculous lengths I’ve gone to…

Janet Evanovich

Can it really be true that I only read my first Janet Evanovich novel in April? Goodreads assures me that it is so and thus it must be. Since my first taste (Wicked Business), I’ve read 18 Stephanie Plums – and all four between the numbers fill-ins, the other two Wicked books, two Full books, two Fox and O’Hares and a standalone romance. So that’s 30 Janet Evanovich novels in less than nine months. This is why people think I’ve got a bit of a book problem.

Deanna Raybourn

I read Silent in the Grave back in January – and since then I’ve read three more of the Lady Julia series – with a fourth waiting for me on the shelf. And the only reason that that has been waiting is because the price of the next one has been so expensive. And ditto her standalone novels. But in a piece of glorious serendipity, they’re all on offer on Amazon Kindle at the moment – so last night I spent just under £20 on 8 (!) books and novellas – buying up the rest of Lady Julia, the first Veronica Speedwell and two standalones and their prequel novellas. Now that is what I call obsession…

Historical Romance

My love of historical romance has continued this year. In fact it’s turned into more of a quest – to find more authors who write my favourite sort of smart, witty, sexy romance novels. Because this is the problem with being a binge reader. You find someone that you like, you binge on their back catalogue and then you have to start following their publishing schedule like everyone else does – so you might have to wait a year before you can get another fix from them. So you need another author to read. In 2015 I’ve read some really good, some really bad and a lot of in between. Among the good were Sabrina Jeffries, Kerrigan Byrne, Johanna Shupe and Courtney Milan. I’m not going to mention the bad! There’s loads more I want to read – listening to the DBSA podcast each week will do that to you – but the prices of those sort of American-published romances are often really quite high over here – and fall into the same buying rules as the cozy crimes. So often I play roulette with NetGalley – requesting new releases there and hoping I like them. Sometimes it pays off – the aforementioned Byrne and Shupe for example – and sometimes it doesn’t…

Cozy Crime

I’ve always had a soft spot for the “lighter” end of the crime market, but I’ve really been rattling through various cozy murder mysteries this year. I’m still reading Donna Andrews (three of them this year) – but now I’m closer to the end of the series the books have got more expensive to buy and I have rules about what I’ll spend on a book that will only take me a couple of hours to read. So as a consequence my net has spread wider. Jenn McKinlay’s become firm favourite and there’s a bunch of other series I’ve dipped into too (again thanks to NetGalley) – to varying success. I feel more coming on in 2016.

Historical Crime

This is often the meeting of two of my other obsessions – Cozy crime and Historical romance. The Daisy Dalrymple and Phryne Fisher series were two of my discoveries of 2014 – and now I’ve read all of them, I’ve been searching for more – and not just those set in the 1920s and 1930s. That’s how I discovered Deanna Raybourn and started that obsession. But as well as Lady Julia, there’s Tasha Alexander’s Lady Emily and James Runcie’s Sidney Chambers. And then there’s the ones which are more crime-y and less romance – like Catriona McPherson’s Dandy Gilver, Carola Dunn’s Eleanor Trewynn. And no romance at all – like Flavia de Luce (because she’s a child!). So many good books.

So there you are. My five big obsessions of the year. Of course some would argue that books in general are my biggest obsession of them all. And they’d be right. There’s nothing like sitting down with a book and being transported to another world to make life seem better. You can live so many different lives and visit so many different places by reading a book. And then there’s the friends that you can make – real people I mean – because of books and the book community. The ones that you chat to on Twitter, the ones you meet at author events and who turn into proper friends and everything in between. Long may my book obsession continue.

Happy 2016 everyone – and thank you for reading my bookish wafflings. I hope you’ve enjoyed them – and I’m sure that there’s more where they came from.

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