Category: genres

Book of the Week, Forgotten books, women's fiction

Book of the Week: A House in the Country

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I said on at the weekend that it’s sometimes been a struggle to finish something that’s not a reread and isn’t a later in series book that breaks a bunch of my rules do BotW posts. And this week was looking very like that, until I finished A House in the Country on Sunday evening.

A House in the Country is set in 1942, at the time of the fall of Tobruk. The titular house is a large, attractive country pile run by Cressida, a widow with an unhappy past. She is looking after it for its real owner who is away, and is supporting it by letting rooms. It’s filled with characters and types and shows the different ways that people are affected by wars. At times it’s comic, at times tragic. There is not a lot of Big Plot Action – although six bombs are dropped nearby one night they’re in the countryside and the war can feel a long way away from their every day lives – but it somehow manages to feel like everything is happening at the same time as well.

It was written in 1943, so at a time when no one knew which way the war was going to go and this gives it an underlying thrum of uncertainty that you don’t see in similar books set after the period. It’s like a little slice of some of my favourite things in the Cazalets – a dashing brother descends on his sister and wants advice on a love affair, young men picking the wrong women to propose to, older relatives not understanding the difficulties and shortages of war – but without the definite endings that strands of the Cazalets get. It will make you think and maybe break your heart a little bit, or a lot.

My copy was the second in my subscription picks from Persephone Books, and you can get it direct from them but you can get Persephone Books from good book shops too – like Foyles.

Happy Reading!

not a book, romantic comedy

Not a Book: The Philadelphia Story

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This Sunday I’m treating you to the latest instalment in my occasional series about films I love is the Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn comedy The Philadelphia Story.

Hepburn plays Tracy Lord, the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia family, who is about to get married for the second time. Days before the wedding, her ex-husband turns up, with a tabloid reporter and photographer in tow. C K Dexter Haven (Grant) has been working for Spy magazine in South America since his marriage to Tracy broke up (she didn’t like his drinking, he drank because he didn’t like her criticisms of him) and is inveigled into taking Maccauley “Mike” Connor (James Stewart) and Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) the the wedding with a threat that if he doesn’t then a scandal about Tracy’s father will be published instead. Thus the scene is set for a love square as Tracy finds herself drawn to Mike and to her ex husband all while she’s preparing to marry George.

There’s more to it than that of course, but that’s the best potted plot summary I can come up with. It’s very funny and is managing to skirt the production code rules of the time by being a comedy of remarriage (see also Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday among others) and it’s full of snappy, witty dialogue as well as a few nice bits of physical comedy. If you’re a fan of movie musicals, you’ll recognise the plot as it was later turned into High Society (with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly) but it started as a stage play -written for Hepburn – and marked her comeback after being dubbed Box Office Poison after a string of flops. I didn’t know any of the Hepburn-y background when I first watched it on a DVD in my hall of residence at university. I just thought it was clever and funny and something a bit out of the normal run of the black and white movie classics I was renting (from LoveFilm!) at the time.

That said, it does fit perfectly into the types of romantic comedies – films and books – that I love. It’s got a smart heroine (as well as a smart hero), it’s got plenty of banter and the comedy doesn’t come from humiliation – see also When Harry Met Sally, Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Shall We Dance (the Fred and Ginger film) and authors like Jennifer Crusie, Susan Elizabeth Philips, Julia Quinn and Lucy Parker (although those last two are more witty than comic).

Anyway, this is the sort of film you’re most likely to come across on TV on a Sunday afternoon – and if you do, you should definitely stop and watch it.

Book of the Week, historical

Book of the Week: Better Luck Next Time

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And for the third week in a row I’ve picked something other than romance or mystery for BotW. Today we’re in the historical fiction portion of my reading life for one of my library books that was coming due and which I really did enjoyed as I read it over the weekend.

It’s 1938 and Ward is a cowboy working at a dude ranch just outside Reno that caters to women who are visiting town to get a quickie divorce. To qualify for a divorce, they need to satisfy the residency requirements and that’s where the Flying Leap fits in – we’re told it was even designed by a Hollywood set designer. Ward’s family lost their money in the Great Depression – which also forced him to drop out of university and he’s got the job at the Flying Leap because of his handsome good looks. No one at the ranch knows about his somewhat well heeled previous life and he likes to keep it that way, enjoying the assumptions that the guests make about him – they think he’s pretty but dumb and using his looks to try and get ahead. He, in return, thinks he has the women who visit the ranch all figured out, but one particular group are different. Among them is Nina, the heiress and aviatrix, back for her third divorce and Emily who says the bravest thing she has ever done is to drive to the ranch leaving her cheating husband behind. Over the course of their stay friendships and relationships are made and broken.

Don’t worry, it’s not miserable, for all that I’ve put broken in that last sentence. It’s a cleverly put together glimpse at the six weeks at the ranch that changed Ward’s life. It’s more bittersweet than anything else, if we’re using book blurb code phrases, and it is not a romance – if you’re a romance reader, I’ve described this as historical fiction for a reason! But if you want some 1930s hi jinx with an interesting premise that I hadn’t come across before, then this would make a great choice for your sun lounger or sofa.

As I said at the top, my copy of Better Luck Next Time came from the library but it turns out that I’ve managed to be accidentally timely as it comes ot in paperback this Thursday! It’s hard to work out if it’ll be available in stores, but I suggest it’s going to be an order in job as that’s what her other novels are on Foyles’ website. But of course it’s available on Kindle and Kobo as well as in audiobook from the usual sources.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, new releases, romance, romantic comedy

Book of the Week: Playing for Love

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After a few weeks of murder mystery picks of various types, I’m back with another romance book for this week’s BotW – and it’s even a new release! Check me getting new books read in a timely manner. I know. Astounding

Ever since her mum died, Samadhi has watched YouTube streams of video gamers to help her destress. Sam plays games herself as well, so when she’s selected in a contest to partner her all-time favourite streamer, Blaze, in a competition to promote a new game, it’s her lucky day. Except that in real life she’s trying to get her fashion business off the ground and she needs all her time to do that. Blaze is a swashbucking pirate type – with a big following and as well as wanting to make sure she doesn’t embarrass herself in front of the internet, she’s also got a bit of a crush. Ok, make that a lot of a crush. But what she doesn’t know is that in real life, Blaze is actually Luke – the shy guy from her office who has been helping her with her crowdfunding campaign. And of course Luke doesn’t know that Sam is Bravura. And every day as Luke is working up the courage to ask Sam out, Sam is falling a little bit harder for Blaze. How will the competition end – and will Sam realise who Luke is before it’s too late?

So I love a double identity/mistaken identity romance which is something I could list a whole bunch of historical romances with that trope but I’m going to save that til tomorrow (!) and obviously there are also films like You’ve Got Mail, Pillow Talk and Some Like it Hot. And this is a delight. I really appreciated that Luke never took advantage of the fact that he realised who Sam was first (which is my problem with You’ve Got Mail and Pillow Talk if I think too hard about it) and there is also plenty of competency porn and calling out of people being icky to women in the gaming world and in the bottom half of the internet. But the slow burn romance is the main attraction here – and it’s a delight to watch especially as I wasn’t quite sure how it was all going to work out.

This is the first book that I’ve read by Jeevani Charika – but she also writes as Rhoda Baxter and I’ve heard her interviewed before on the Smart Bitches podcast and have been meaning to try and read some of her books. And I enjoyed this so much that I’ll definitely be doing that. If they’re all as much fun as this, I’ve got some really good reading in front of me. I complain a lot about wanting more romantic comedies and how hard it is to find them – so I really enjoyed finding one and I’m hoping that the act of buying some of the back catalogue will help the algorithm put some more my way!

My copy of Playing for Love came from NetGalley, but it’s out now and is a bargain 99p on Kindle and £1.99 on Kobo as I write this. And it’s also coming out in paperback, but not until April – and don’t worry Foyles will let you preorder it.

Happy Reading!

children's books, not a book

Not a Book: Matilda the Musical

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Another post from my trip to London the other week. As well as the Elizabeth and Mary exhibition and a wander around the national gallery, we went to see Matilda, the musical based on Roald Dahl’s children’s book of the same name.

So I want to say that this isn’t the first time that I’d seen Matilda – I actually saw it in its original incarnation at the RSC in Stratford a decade ago, but it was the first time I’ve seen it in the West End. I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to my memories of it – especially as I’ve got the CD (yes I know, it’s that long ago) and have sung along to it in the car a lot, but actually it really did. There are a few bits of staging that have definitely changed since that Christmas run, but that’s probably not a surprise given that the stage at Stratford was much more of a thrust stage than the Cambridge theatre is. We bought our tickets on the day (from the theatre) and were sat in the middle of the Dress Circle, which was really good value and a really good view. There is some running around in the aisles in the stalls that you can’t see, but for me it wasn’t worth paying an extra £50+ for.

In terms of the book vs the show, Matilda’s own story is fairly similar, but there’s a secondary plot strand added to tie in (that really works, don’t worry!) and you see less of the telekinises than you get in the book – but given that you have to try and make that work on stage, it’s not a surprise. I’ve always thought that picking Tim Minchen to do the music was inspired – he’s funny and clever and a little bit dark and sly. And like the book it’s funny but funny and suitable for children – there aren’t any jokes here that parents are going to get awkward questions about. And I know it’s a children’s show so you’d think that there wouldn’t be, but actually you’d be surprised!

Anyway, we had a blast, five out of five, would recommend, just maybe don’t go on a Saturday (or in the school holidays) if chatting children during the show are going to annoy you!

Book of the Week, Forgotten books, LGTBQIA+, mystery

Book of the Week: Death Goes on Skis

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Yes I finished this on Monday. So yes it’s cheating. But it is a book set in a ski resort and I spent the part of my weekend that I didn’t spend in London watching the Winter Olympics so I am going with it!

Death Goes on Skis is one of a series featuring Miriam Birdseye, written in the years following the Second World War. Miriam is a revue artist and has a champagne lifestyle and a coterie of hangers on. This is the first in the series that I have come across (and isn’t it gorgeous!) but Good reads tells me it is the fourth in the series. It sees Miriam on holiday in a ski resort popular with Brits. Her fellow travelers include a ballerina and her night club owner husband, a playboy, his wife and their children and their governess and a wealthy couple whose family make their money from perfume. Most of these people are awful, but when they start dying in mysterious circumstances, Miriam and her friends investigate. But, crucially, they’re investigating because they are bored and not because they have a burning passion for justice or to see the criminal behind bars.

And that is the difference to other Murder mysteries of the era that I have written about – this is a farce and a (black) comedy and doesn’t quite follow the genres connections that you might expect. Think Evelyn Waugh does murder mysteries. And it works very well. You’re not going to like any of the suspects, and the children are truly awful, but it’s really quite entertaining. It also comes neatly broken up into nice small chunks, which makes it perfect for bedtime reading – which is mostly what I’ve been doing with it, although I did read some of it on the sofa on Monday night because I wanted to finish it!

If the name Nancy Spain sounds familiar, well that may be because she’s one of the women featured in Her Brilliant Career, but in brief she was a great niece of Mrs Beaton (of household management game) she went to Roedean and then became a journalist after being asked to write about women’s sport. She served in the WRNS in the war and afterwards started writing detective fiction. This got her a newspaper column and also turned her into a personality who appeared regularly on TV and radio. Her partner was editor of She Magazine, Joan Werner Laurie and they lived openly together in what sounds like a somewhat complicated household with the rally driver Sheila Van Damme. They were friends with Noel Coward and Marlene Dietrich and she was the inspiration for a song. Spain and Laurie died in a plane crash at Aintree in 1964 – they had been travelling there to cover the grand national.

I bought my copy of Death Goes on Skis as a birthday present for myself, and I’ve already ordered another one of them, as Virago have helpfully reissued several of them now, all with delightful covers in this style. They’re also on Kindle and Kobo and in a matching audiobook to this from all the usual vendors.

Happy Reading!

Series I love, women's fiction

Series I Love: Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire

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So this is a post I’ve been thinking about writing for ages – but thought I probably ought to read some Anthony Trollope before I did so that I can sound knowledgeable about the origin of the setting. But I’m finally admitting that that’s probably not going to happen any time soon – because, you know, huge to-read pile, pandemic and my general (and ever more pronounced) reluctance to read anything “classic”. And the other issue is that I’ve only read fifteen of them. But if I wait for Virago to publish all of them I could be waiting a long time. So, I’m going for it now. Sorry, not sorry.

This is a series of loosely connected books all set in the same (fictional) county and featuring some of the same characters. The first book was published in 1933, and as in book 15 I’ve just reached the end of the Second World War the section of the series that I’ve read fits nicely into the interwar period that I read about so much. Not a lot happens in them – or at least nothing dramatic – they are just amusing and witty portraits of life in a certain part of British society. In High Rising – the first in the series – we met Laura Moreland, a widow who started writing books to help pay the school fees for her irrepressible son Tony. The books are wildly successful, but not highbrow, so Laura is somewhat embarrassed by them. There are squabbles in the community, misunderstandings, misbehaving children, there are issues of class and there are gentle romances. The pattern for the series is set.

They do turn darker through the Second World War, and there are bits that haven’t aged as well as others. I see from notes on the later books in the series that they turn more romantic and less social comedy, but as far as the ones I have read go, they are comedies of manners and society with some romantic interludes. Think the Golden Age murder mysteries in style and tone but with more humour and no dead bodies. If you read school stories as a child (or still do as an adult like me) then Summer Half is a behind the scenes look at what might have been going on in the staff rooms of some of the schools that you read about (albeit at a boys school). There are books set at Big Houses or at weekend parties. There are fetes and village events. And there is a lot of gentle fun to be had.

And as we all know that’s the sort of mood I’m in (almost permanently) at the moment. Gentle fun, low peril, it will all turn out alright in the end type books. In fact the only thing that hasn’t turned out right in the end here is that Virago changed the editions so that the cover illustration doesn’t wrap around the spine on the later books that they’re republished so my shelf doesn’t match as nicely as I want it to. Truly a first world problem.

You should be able to get hold of these fairly easily – I’ve bought mine in various bookshops as well as on Amazon (there are a couple that were kindle only at first). In fact I think I originally started reading them because I spotted one on a table in Old Foyles. I saw the cover and read the back and off we went. And it’s been delighful.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, cozy crime, detective

Book of the Week: Beware False Profits

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Pinch, punch, first day of the month, white rabbits etc. Welcome to February everyone. Despite the fact that January is my birthday month, it does always feel like a bit of a slog to get to the end of the month, but we’ve made it through and into Freburary, which always feels like it rattles by at speed. All the usual goodies coming up on the blog this week – monthly stats, mini reviews etc. But first: a book of the week review.

In a week that saw most of my “reading” actually be revisiting audiobooks that I have listened to before, mostly from series that I have already written about so it’s a good thing that this was really good – even if it’s a sort of rule breaker because it’s not a first in series book! This is the third in the Ministry is Murder series, which features a Minister’s wife in small town Ohio. There are five books in the series – the newest of which is from 2010. In Beware False Profits, Aggie and her husband’s trip to New York is disrupted when a member of their congregation goes missing on a work trip there. And when they get back to Emerald Springs, the mayor’s wife is murdered at an event for the local foodbank – which is run by the missing man.

What I really like about Aggie is that she has an excuse for snooping – as a minister’s wife she has an excuse for being involved in the locals lives – especially as you need to keep your congregation happy to keep your job. And that’s another reason I like the series – it’s an insight into a way of life. I nearly wrote a profession, but that felt wrong – even though Aggie isn’t the one with a vocation, it’s her husband. I should add that it’s definitely not a Christian cozy – because I read one of those at the end of last year and this doesn’t have the detail of the sermons or biblical verses to reflect of that that did. Anyway there are a lot of cozy crimes featuring bakers and small businesses and the like and although Aggie also has a side line in house flipping, the ministry side of things gives it a nice twist. And the actual mysteries that need to be solved are good too. All in all a very nice way to spend an afternoon or two on the sofa.

Now because these are an older cozy (and boy does it feel weird to be saying that about something that was published this century!) they’re not available in Kindle – so in the UK you’re likely to be looking at picking them up from Amazon or second hand. I found the first in this series in a second hand bookshop – I think maybe one at a National Trust house, but subsequently I’ve bought from Amazon when the prices have been acceptable – I see that the first two at the moment are insanely expensive there though. So maybe one to add to your list to watch out for the next time you’re mooching around a charity shop!

Happy Reading!

cozy crime, detective, Series I love

Series I Love: Cupcake Bakery Mysteries

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Happy Friday everyone! It’s the end of another week and I am back with another series I love post. Yesterday I was talking about my search for a new historical cozy crime series, so today I’m doing one of my reliable favourite contemporary cozy mystery series.

So Jenn McKinlay’s Cupcake Bakery series follows Mel Cooper and her friend Angie DeLaura as they run the Fairytale Cupcake Bakery. Along with their friend Tate, they’ve been stumbling across bodies for thirteen books now, with a fourteenth due this year. I’ve read eleven of them as you can see from the photo, which is – unusually for me – somewhat out of order*. Over the course of the series the cast of secondary regular characters and getting the bakers out and about so that you’re not constantly wondering how a cupcake bakery can stay in business if a bodies keep turning there!

You mostly see the action from Mel’s perspective, but because you have the trio of main characters, you’re able to get personal life developments for each of them – which also helps the series avoid falling into the pitfalls of an endless love triangle for the heroine (see Steph Plum) or an endless on off relationship for the heroine (see Agatha Raisin) or marrying the heroine off very quickly and landing her with kids the author doesn’t know what to do with! The complexity of the murders can vary a little – depending on how much running plot stuff is going on – but they pretty much always manage to avoid the Too Stupid To Live pitfall, although Mel and or Angie do find themselves one on one with the murderer at the denouement with alarming regularity!

But as a calming way to pass a few hours, they are fairly hard to beat. I keep meaning to try out one of the cupcake recipes at the end, but the combination of having to turn the measurements into British (how much *is* a stick of butter in metric?) and the fact there are only two of us in our household and cupcakes need eating quickly means that I’ve never got around to it. They do always sound like they should taste good though – which isn’t a given for cozy crime recipes.

When I started buying these, they were only available in the American mass market paperback editions that you see in the photo. But the good news (for you, not me because now I’ve started in physical copies you know I’ll carry on**) is that you can now get most of them in Kindle!

Happy Reading!

* and yes it does bug me that the spines changed mid series and so they don’t all match.

** yes, I did indeed buy book 12 while I was writing this post!

Fantasy, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Magical worlds

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Goodness me I started this post ages ago and then ran out of steam because I thought I didn’t have enough books to talk about and got distracted before I read any more. But hey I’ve got here at last…

Shades of Magic by VE Schwab

Cover of A Darker Shade of Magic

This is a trilogy set in three parallel Londons in the Regency era.  Kell is from Red London and is one of the rare people who can travel between the worlds and he does so as an ambassador for the Red King, but also as a smuggler, moving articles between one world and another.  White London is violent and enchanted, with frequent bloody regime changes, but its magic is disappearing. Grey London has Mad King George and no magic at all, and that’s where Kell escapes to early in the first book of the series (A Darker Shade of Magic), when one of his transactions goes awry, and where he meets Delilah after she picks his pocket.  I made the final book in the trilogy a BotW, so if you want to follow the madcap duo escaping mortal peril, rocketing through the three different worlds facing enemies and discovering the secrets of magic and trying to work out what happened to Black London.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgernstern

Cover of the Night Circus

There’s only one book in this world, but what a world it is.  This is another former BotW (but that was years ago, so it’s over the statue of limitations for repeats!), so I don’t need to write too much about it here because you can read more of my thoughts there. The Night Circus has been so successful, it already has a Vintage Classics Edition – as you can see.  For a slightly more spoiler-y summary than I was prepared to give back in the day, I’ll tell you that Le Cirque de Reves appears and disappears in towns without warning.  Inside is a wonderful world of marvels – but only at night.  Behind the scenes two magicians, Celia and Marco, are competing against each other in a duel, but what they don’t know is that it is a duel to the death.  When they meet, they fall in love but once a duel is started, it has to play out. Morgernstern’s second book The Starless Sea, also features a magical world – with a main character who finds an authorless book which seems to be telling a story from his own past and starts a trail that leads him to an ancient library.

The Discworld by Terry Pratchett

If you’ve been here a while, you’ll be aware of my love of Terry Pratchett, but new readers may have missed out because because I’ve already read pretty much all of his writing, I haven’t had an opportunity to talk about him recently.  I adore the Discworld.  I listen to at least one of the books set there on audio book pretty much every month, but because I’m a bit picky about my narrators (once you’ve heard Stephen Briggs you can’t go back) then they’re all from the later end of the saga.  I think my favourite book is Going Postal, but it’s tough to chose – especially as there are so many that are so good.  Unusually for me, I never tell people to start at the beginning of the series – but to go for either Mort, Wyrd Sisters or Guards, Guards as a starting point.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Rincewind and I want a Luggage of my own, but they’re not the most accessible of the series.  But what’s not to love about Death’s Apprentice (Mort), Granny Weatherwax and her Coven (Wyrd Sisters) or Vimes and the Watch (Guards, Guards) and they give you a starting point into some of the series’ big themes as well as the running threads.  And if you’ve got middle grade children, the Tiffany Aching books are perfect too.

The Last Dragon Slayer by Jasper Fforde

This is the most “Normal” of all of Jasper Fforde’s books, but don’t let the TV tie-in edition cover fool you, his middle grade series is just as mad and freewheeling as his adult stuff – just for kids. The Last Dragonslayer is set in a world where magic is disappearing. Jennifer Strange runs an employment agency for magicians, but then the visions start and they predict the death of the last dragon in the world and that it will be killed by an unknown dragonslayer. And well, you’ll have to read it. There are four in the series, and the last only came out in 2021. I’ve only read the first one, but I want to read the others – I just haven’t got to it yet, because, well you’ve seen the star of my to-read pile. Anyway, if you want a magical book for young readers that doesn’t involve a school, then take a look.

And finally, a couple of other books that feature magical worlds but that are still within the statute of limitations for me writing about them, there is The House in the Cerulean Sea, and although not strictly magical but because of the feeling that it creates while you read it The Circus of Wonders.

Now you’ll notice that all these books are set in the past – there are a few magical books that I love that are set in the present – but mostly you’d’ve got me wittering on about Peter Grant and how much I love the Rivers of London series – and I’ve already done that plenty!