Category: Recommendsday

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Swoon-y romances

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Lets continue the romance theme for Valentines week after Nora Goes Off Script yesterday with some romances that will sweep you off your feet!

Right, lets start off with some literal sweeping off someone’s feet -although as a tall woman, it’s something that’s probably never going to happen to me, unless it’s a giant and a fireman’s lift. Moving on… let me take this chance to reintroduce you to #DrRugbae from Talia Hibbert’s Take a Hint, Dani Brown who rescues our heroine from a fire drill and spawns a fake relationship for social media. Another book with a literal sweeping off the feet on the cover is Ali Hazelwood’s Love on the Brain, where our heroine gets her dream job only to find out that her arch-nemesis is the person in charge of the project.

Next up: epic grovelling, because some times that’s what you need – one half of the couple (it’s usually the hero!) has made a huge, mistake at some point and they’re going to have to do something pretty spectacular to make up for it. Sarah MacLean is the queen of this and my favourite of this oeuvre is Day of the Duchess which is the final book in the Scandal and Scoundrel series where we’ve hearing about the heroine’s issues with her estranged husband since the first book and it finally all gets sorted out – and the problems they have are the sort where you really wonder if a happy ending is possible. But it’s a romance so of course it is! And if you want a contemporary grovel, how about The Bromance Book Club – where our hero has missed a bunch of problems in his marriage and turns to romance novels to try and fix things. I have a minor quibble with part of the resolution to this, but it has a great hero and heroine pairing who have potentially insurmountable differences to a Happily Ever after.

Moving to some slow burn romances – can you count Pride and Prejudice as a slow burn? Because it really is – it doesn’t get much slower burn than Elizabeth’s journey from hating Darcy to loving him and then a happy ending, even if he’s at the love stage much earlier! Anyway, it’s just over two years since Kate Claybourn’s Love Lettering was a BotW (and the third time this year I’ve mentioned Claybourn, but shhhh) and this was one of my favourite of that year and it’s a really lovely journey with the heroine as she becomes friends and then more with this man who wants to know how she predicted that his marriage wouldn’t last. Then there’s In A New York Minute where the heroine and hero feature in a viral moment together and personality-wise they seem like complete opposites but they just keep running into each other.

And if these weren’t enough don’t forget, I’ve written a lot of other posts about romances over the years – whether it’s enemies to lovers (also good for a grovel), romances on ranches, secret identities, funny and smart romances, and royal romances, as well as romance series like Bridgerton, Desperate Duchesses, London Celebrities, London Highwaymen or Georgette Heyer.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: February Kindle offers

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Here we are with this month’s Kindle offers for your delectation – and there are a lot of them so lets get right to it.

Killers of a Certain Age

Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age is 99p this month, I’m not quite sure why as the paperback isn’t out until March, but take advantage while you can. I really enjoyed this tale of retired assassins on the run – and one of my besties is reading it at the moment and really enjoying it too (unless something has changed!). Jill Hornby’s Godmersham Park is 99p at the moment, Miss Austen was a book of the Week and I really enjoyed Godmersham Park, which is a sort of sequel – it’s definitely a continuation set in the same world. I mentioned Daphne Du Maurier in my post about books set in Devon and Cornwall – if you fancy a bit of Cornish Smuggling action, Frenchman’s Creek is 99p this month – it’s not my favourite, but I do love my beautiful Virago Designer Hardback copy!

Another recent BotW pick The Last Hero is 99p, but one of my all time favourite Terry Pratchetts, Going Postal, is £1.99. There are a lot of Georgette Heyers at £1.99 this month, including some of my favourites like Sylvester, These Old Shades, Devil’s Cub, Venetia and Frederica. It’s actually easier just to send you to the list than the original pages! On the Wimsey front, some of the series are now dropping out of copyright so there are a lot of quite cheap kindle books popping up, but I can’t vouch for their formatting and accuracy. Of the editions that match the Hodder and Stoughton paperbacks, The Nine Tailors is the 99p book this month – if you haven’t read it, it’s set in the Fenland, there are floods and church bells and bodies in the wrong grave and its really quite something.

If you were tempted by the Her Majesty the Queen Investigates books after my series review last year, the second book in the series is 99p at the moment – A Three Dog Problem is set around Buckingham Palace after a murder at the palace swimming pool (a real thing!). Very recent release Shipwrecked by Olivia Dade is 99p, as is In a New York Minute by Kate Spencer (which I talked about in my late summer reading post) and Miss Aldrige Regrets is on offer again.

We don’t have a date for series three of Bridgerton yet (please can it be soon Netflix, thank you), but the good news is that this month Romancing Mr Bridgerton aka the book the next series is based on is 99p – read it before the series. Interestingly Colin and Eloise’s story is actually the fourth in the series, not the third, but I do fully support the decision to skip book three (Benedict’s story) for now because it’s a Cinderella retelling and it’s a) not my favourite and b) doesn’t fit in with what they’ve been doing with the series. I am fascinated to see what they decide to do about it – and also about Eloise’s book which is number five, but now doesn’t fit in at all with the chronology they’ve created if she’s going to end up with the same person as she does in the books. And that’s all I can say without it being a spoiler!

Whistling through some other stuff – A Village in the Third Reich is £1.99 – you may remember I bought myself this and Travellers in the Third Reich when I was writing the Buy Me a Book for Christmas post last year! There are a couple of Mhairi McFarlane novels that are 99p – including You Had Me At Hello and Last Night. In other authors that I like, Christina Lauren’s Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating is 99p, and there are quite a few Trisha Ashley‘s for 99p including my all time favourite A Winter’s Tale, which is a Christmas novel but which I can read any time of year!

In stuff I purchased while writing this post, there is Nora Goes off Script, about a scriptwriter for a romance channel who turns her divorce into a screenplay and the “sexiest man alive” is cast as her ex-husband. In stuff I should have read but haven’t got around to (yet), Stephanie Gerber’s Caraval trilogy is 99p for the complete thing which is a total bargain. Likewise, in stuff I haven’t read yet, Jodi Taylor’s newest Time Police (that’s the spin off series from Chronicles of St Mary’s) novel About Time is 99p too. Also 99p is David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue which I really keep meaning to get around to!

It’s a short month, so catch them while you can! Happy Reading!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: January Quick Reviews

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Only two books this month, you’ll probably understand why when you see the stats tomorrow. There was nearly a third, but I fell asleep with 50 pages to go on Tuesday night and didn’t finish it before the end of the month and I do try not to cheat!

Death Spins the Wheel by George Bellairs

It’s been a while since I mentioned an Inspector Littlejohn mystery, as I’ve read nearly all of the ones that are easily available at the moment. But Death Spins the Wheel popped up and it’s a good one. Once again on the Isle of Man, it features an elderly lady who comes to the island to gamble at the casino and then turns up dead. There’s one strand of the plot that I’m wildly dubious about (if you know me and read it you’ll know what!) but I liked the actual resolution and the familiar characters. Maybe don’t start here, but if you’re reading them as they pop up on Kindle Unlimited then it’s definitely worth a look.

Vermeer to Eternity by Anthony Horowitz

Another author I’ve written about relatively frequently, but this is another KU read – this time a really quite satisfying short story with a really neat premise and two interesting characters. If you’ve read the Hawthorn novels, you’ll probably see some similarities to “Anthony” as seen in them, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.

And that’s it for stuff I haven’t already talked about in January – or at least it is unless you want repeats or rereads! I wonder if I’ll manage more than two in February?

Happy Reading!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Books set in Devon and Cornwall

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Did I go on holiday last week? Yes. Did it inspire this post? Absolutely yes. You are very welcome.

Let’s start with the obvious: Daphne du Maurier. There are a whole host to pick from – but I’m going to go for Jamaica Inn because we drove past the turn for it and gosh blimey is the moorland there desolate and creepy – I don’t think I would be brave enough to read the book while staying anywhere near there!

Next up, previous BotW pick 1949’s The Feast – which I think is due for a rementiok because it’s so good. This isn’t creepy like the Du Maurier, but it is thrilling in a different way. Ignore any introduction your edition might have until after you have read it and meet the guests at the Pendizack Hotel in the run up to a fatal cliff collapse (and that’s not a spoiler because it opens after the collapse and then jumps back in time.

Still in Cornwall but written more recently we have Carola Dunn’s Cornish mysteries. As well as writing the Daisy Dalrymple series, Dunn also wrote four books featuring Eleanor Trewynn, a widow running a charity shop in a fictional coastal village in the 1960s. I’ve read three of the four and really enjoyed them. And this has reminded me to try and get hold of the final one!

Crossing the border into Devon, yesterday I wrote about a murder mystery tied to a fictional Golden Age crime series so I would be remiss not to include an actual Golden Age Crime novel as Agatha Christie set a lot of her novels in the county – as she lived there for many years (and her house is on my list of places to visit at some point). I’ve picked Sleeping Murder, because the theme of today is creepy and I’m still traumatised by the cover of the edition of Sleeping Murder my mum had when I was little which features a woman with a knitting needles stuck in her eye. You’re welcome.

I’ve only read a three of Ian Sansom’s County Guides novels but one of them is Death in Devon (book 2 of five) which sees the prolific author and professional know it all Stanton Morley and his assistant on a trip to the county where they end up solving a murder at a boys school. And finally I started with a creepy atmospheric book with moors and I’m going to finish with a book set on a different moor – Lorna Doone. Full disclosure: I’ve only ever read abridged children’s versions of this – and as it’s 800 pages long I’m not planning on changing that, but if you want a classic may be think about trying this story of star crossed lovers on as moor in the late 19th century.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Even More British Library Crime Classics

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Continuing on from the cozy crime BotW pick yesterday, lets have some more murder mysteries today. After all, it’s been whole month since I recommended a British Library Crime Classic, so it must be time for some more – Happy Wednesday everyone!

Seat of the Scornful by John Dickson Carr

A very dislikeable judge is found holding a gun by the body of a murder victim. He says he didn’t kill his daughter’s fiancée but all the evidence seems to suggest that he did. Gideon Fell investigates a crime that turns into a game of cat and mouse. This is really strong on creating a set of characters that you feel that you’d understand and although the denouement feels very of its time, I did enjoy it.

Death on the Riviera by John Bude

This is another in the Inspector Meredith series and deals with an investigation into a currency racket on the French Riviera. Side note: I feel like the French Riviera gets more than its fair share of murder mysteries from this era – there are a lot of them in the Inspector Littlejohn series, as well as a few Agatha Christies and that’s just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head. If only Peter Wimsey had investigated down there we could have the full set. Anyway, this has an eccentric English woman with a house full of bohemian guests and quite a lot of the requisite glamour from the setting, but the solution is… a lot to deal with and I wasn’t sure if it all quite worked over all. Still if you like John Bude, definitely worth checking out, as it’s been out of print for yonks.

Mystery in the Channel by Freeman Willis Crofts

This is a little bit different – a seemingly impossible murder on a boat that turns into a financial mystery. The story opens with a ferry between Newhaven and Dieppe spotting a seemingly deserted yacht – and then spots what looks like a body on deck. When the crew investigates, they find not one but two bodies on board – but no sign of the murder weapon. Once the investigation gets underway, the victims are identified as two key figures in one of the largest financial houses in the country. Inspector French of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate and after a bit more digging it emerges that the firm is in trouble – on the brink of collapse. A huge sum of money is missing – and so is one of the other partners in the business. Were the dead men fleeing the country? And if they were, where is the money and who killed them? I really enjoyed this – and the denouement is really clever and fast paced. I’m not normally a boat person (save Swallows and Amazons) but this explains everything in simple enough terms for a non sailor like me to understand and yet is really quite complex. Definitely worth a look.

Enjoy the rest of the week everyone!

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: January Kindle Offers

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A new year and a new batch of Kindle offers for your delectation today. And it’s quite a good one so if you weren’t as lucky as me and Santa didn’t bring you what you told people you wanted, you might be able to pick some fresh reading material up in the offers.

One of my all time favourites is back on sale for 99p – Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. I’d love to get something new from her in 2023, but as it’s only three years since The Starless Sea came out and it was nearly triple that between The Night Circus and that, I’m trying not to get my hopes up! And Bridget Jones’s Diary is also 99p – it’s been years since I read it (rather than watched the film!) but it was such a huge part of my reading back in the day – even if I haven’t read either of the two most recent sequels! Another book that I read ages ago and loved is on offer too – Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility. I didn’t love his follow up A Gentleman in Moscow, but I have the latest one, The Lincoln Highway, on the Kindle TBR and I must try and get to it soon.

This month’s 99p Georgette Heyer is The Quiet Gentleman – which is from the more mysterious end of her romance books and features Actual Peril at times. On the contemporary romance front, if you read and enjoyed the O’Neil Brothers books after I wrote about them before Christmas, Holiday in the Hamptons from Sarah Morgan’s From Manhattan with Love series is 99p. I bought myself the new Mary Balogh while writing this – Remember Love is the first in a new series for her and I’ve had a good history with her historical romances – right back to my Essex days. There’s also one of the recent Lisa Kleypas’s – Devil’s Daughter – which is the next generation sequel to her fan-favourite Devil in Winter.

If you’ve been reading Philippa Gregory’s Tudor novels after I wrote about them last summer, The Taming of the Queen (about Katherine Parr) is the one on offer at the moment. It’s not a great month on the crime/mystery offer front though. Or at least not if you read the sort of mysteries that I do – all the books on offer are the sort with dark and brooding covers with ominous shadows on them or bare branches, which is an indicator that they’re too psychological or gruesome for my tastes! A Spoonful of Murder is on offer though, which is one of the crop of if you like Richard Osman… that are now appearing and which I’ve got on the physical to-read pile but haven’t got around to yet!

Happy Wednesday!

Best of..., book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Not New Books of the Year

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So yesterday we had new fiction books of the year, tomorrow I have new non-fiction for you, but today we have my favourite not new books of the year.

Ask a historian cover

Lets start with the newest – and it’s Greg Jenner’s Ask a Historian, which is out now in paperback and answers all sorts of questions that he’s been asked over his years as a public historian. He also has a new book for kids this year called You Are History, which I haven’t read yet but sounds like it’s a middle grade cross between Ask a Historian and his A Million Years in a Day. Anyway, Greg’s writing style is as much fun as he is in his podcasts, and Ask a Historian is a great book for reading in little bits when you get a chance, if you’re trying to get more reading done for example, because the question and answer format makes it easy to pick up and put down.

Moving on to some fiction, and I found it really hard to pick my favourite of the Persephone books I read as part of my gift subscription last Christmas, so I’ve ended up including a few of them here. Jocelyn Playfair’s A House in the Country was written during the war and deals with wartime life at a big country house. If you like books like The Cazalet Chronicles or Dorothy Whipple, then this maybe one for you to read. Then there’s The Young Pretenders by Henrietta Fowler about two young children who move to live with their aunt and uncle while they wait for their parents to return from India. I feel like if you’re the sort of person who liked Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes when you were younger, then this might be a book for you.

I’ve read a lot of classic crime this year – as all the British Library Crime Classics posts I’ve done demonstrate – but it’s been hard to pick favourites. So I’ve gone with a couple that were Books of the Week – Green for Danger by Christianna Brand, the creepy war time murder mystery in a hospital; Fire in the Thatch by E C R Lorac, about an arson attack; John Dickson Carr’s Til Death Do Us Part, with an impossible locked room mystery and Lois Austen-Leigh’s The Incredible Crime about a a murder and a drug gang in Cambridge.

This is already a long list, but two more before I go – for kids, Piglettes by Clementine Beauvais about three girls’ cross country cycle trip in France, and a romance: Jackie Lau’s Donut Fall In Love which features a Hollywood movie star and a baker falling in love and taking part in a baking show. Not necessarily in that order!

Happy Reading!

Christmas books, new releases, Recommendsday, reviews

Recommendsday: New Christmas Books 2022

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It’s the final few days before Christmas, so here I am with a round up of some of the Christmassy romances that have come out this season.

There’s Something about Merry by Codi Hall*

This is a Christmas romance with a You’ve Got Mail-ish twist as the new foreman of a Christmas tree farm in Idaho falls for the boss’s daughter – except he doesn’t know that’s who he’s talking to. Merry’s spent the year working on herself and is ready for romance, but Clark definitely isn’t – he’s a single dad and he’s focussing on his son. The writing to each other stage of this was over faster than I expected, but the characters are nice, the setting is charming, and it’s got a very weird speciality knitted product to make you laugh. Fun.

Snowed in for Christmas by Sarah Morgan*

This is Sarah Morgan’s Christmas novel for this year – I’ve already mentioned that it’s a Kindle Deal this month, and obviously written about my love of her O’Neill brothers series. I don’t love this as much – it’s just got too many plot strands and a Very Definite Resolution for something that takes place over a couple of days, but the Snowy rural Scottish setting is delightful and I do love the way she creates her families. I could just have read a whole book each about two of the main plot strands so I wished there was more of each of them. I do think in years gone by she might have done this as a pair of novels set across the same period. But hey, the times they are a changing.

The Holiday Trap by Roan Parish*

Greta’s family don’t really understand how hard it is to be the only Lesbian in their tiny community in Maine. Truman’s had his heartbroken again and needs somewhere to escape to. A mutual friend organises a house swap between the two which sees Greta head to New Orleans, and Truman to Maine, where unexpected things happen to them both. Now, I should say that this didn’t work for me, because the characters rubbed me up the wrong way and the quirkiness levels were off the charts* BUT I know that it’s going to be someone else’s cup of tea because I’ve seen other people raving about this author. But if you want a swapping lives type romance – and some Jewish representation this Hanukkah week, you could do worse than try this.

And that’s your lot for today – but if you want some more Christmas recommendations- I have a lot of previous posts – so go check them out!

*I’ve had a lot of problems with Too Much Quirk recently. It’s getting tiring.

Christmas books, detective, Forgotten books, Recommendsday

Book of the Week: The White Priory Murders

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As you may have noticed yesterday, last week was very much a week of Meg Langslow. But I did also finish a murder mystery with Christmas in the subtitle: which is a perfect timing as everyone* starts to finish work for the holidays.

A glamorous Hollywood actress is back in London. Marcia Tate has returned to try and get her revenge on the theatre community who snubbed her before she was a star of the silver screen. But when she’s found dead in a pavilion in the grounds of the author of the play she’s due to star in, a murder investigation starts and Sir Henry Merrivale is called in to investigate. This is a variation on a locked room mystery, where snow plays a key role. There is a large cast of suspects but it seems impossible for any of them – or anyone – to have committed the crime. And yet someone did.

Every year the British Library adds another few seasonal mysteries to their Christmas collection, and this is one of this year’s additions but despite the subtitle, the snow is the only really festive element – I think A Winter Mystery would probably be a better description. Carter Dickson is one of John Dickson Carr’s other pen names, and like his other books all the clues are there for you to figure it out if you know where to look – and he’ll give you the page numbers to prove it! Dickson’s writing style is not my favourite of that group of crime writers, but it’s a clever enough impossible puzzle that I didn’t mind too much.

I got my copy via Kindle Unlimited, which means you won’t be able to get it on Kobo at the moment, but you could also buy it in paperback from the British Library bookshop – it’s too late for posting before Christmas, but you could pop in to the shop if you’re in London, and I’m sure it’ll be on the Christmas mystery table in the larger bookshops.

Happy Reading!

*everyone else – I’m still at work until Friday night, and it’s a really busy week.

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: November Quick Reviews

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We’re into December now and I have lots more Christmassy books to tell you about, but today I’m sticking with the quick reviews – because after all, everyone needs a break from Christmas at some point in December!

Better than Fiction by Alexa Martin

As previously mentioned, Alexa Martin wrote some of my favourite American Football romances, and this is her second standalone rom-com. Drew has inherited her beloved Grandmother’s book store in Colorado, and feels way over her head as a self-proclaimed non-reader. Jasper is an author who comes to the store to do a reading and event and who decides to try and change her mind about books in return for her help with his settings for his new novel. I’m not usually a fan of people tryng to turn others into readers – or telling them that they just haven’t found the right things to read yet, but this actually manages to make it work. Drew and Jasper are engaging characters and the gang of old ladies are a delight. Plus Martin makes hiking in Colorado sound so beautiful that even I started thinking that it might be fun – and I *hate* hiking

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra*

Cover of Mercury Pictures Presents

This tells the story of Maria Lagana, an Italian in Los Angeles in the 1940s. I really like stories about the movie industry, and stuff set in World War Two and this is both of those – split between Mussolini’s Italy and California, it looks at the immigrant experience in America in war time and the risks that people will take to survive and the sacrifices people will make for the people they love. If you’ve read non-fiction (or fiction) about the studio system or the Hollywood blacklist, this might well be of interest to you.

Chester House Wins Through by Irene Smith

And finally another from my Book Con haul and this makes it onto this list as it’s a massive curio really – a book about a girls school where there is rivalry between the day girls and the boarders. That’s not unusual in itself – but here, the day girls have their own house and are deeply unpopular with the rest of the school for not pulling their weight and for behaving badly in town. It’s also from the late 1960s so it has a side order of society changing and girls wanting to go out and do things in the evenings and not be so protected. So far, so interesting, except there’s a lot of talking about doing things, and not a lot of actual doing on the page. The day girls do turn it around, but it has to be said that there’s not a lot of likeable characters here. One for the Girls Own collectors really.

Happy Wednesday everyone!