As you may have noticed, the US presidency has changed hands this week, so for recommendsday this week, I have a few books – and other posts to point you at if you want a US politics fix. And I’ve even got a photo of the White House from my time in DC in 2018 to fancy it up a bit!
First of all, let me point you at my JFK adjacent post – which has got a whole lot of fiction and non fiction about the Kennedy family – and I’m currently reading even more on top of that with the White Hiuse by the Sea nearly finished and also Ask Not waiting on the pile. There’s also post I wrote for the first Trump Inauguration eight years ago, which has a bit of cross over too.
Then there’s Kate Anderson Brower who has written a lot about The White House and what it’s like to live there. There’s First Women, First in Line and Team of Five – about the wives of presidents, the vice presidents and the club of former presidents respectively – there’s a bit over overlap between them so maybe just pick the topic that interests you most.
And if you want a bit of lesser spotted presidential scandal, there’s also Rachel Maddow’s Bag Man about Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s disgraced VP.
It’s January. It’s incredibly cold. So you should buy books. And there are some kindle bargains to help you with that!
Let’s start with two authors who I mentioned in my anticipated books post at the weekend. Firstly Taylor Jenkins Reid whose tennis comeback storyCarrie Soto is Back is 99p this month just in time for the Australian Open. Then there is Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five – also 99p and really worth reading – especially given how much it upset a lot of the so-called “Ripperologists”. If you’re interested in social history and the lives that women lead in the past (and that don’t often get covered) you will find it really interesting, even if (like me) you don’t usually do Jack the Ripper content.
We’re under a week away from another Presidential inauguration (and we just had the funeral of another former president), and Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife is on offer – this is her book that’s inspired by Laura Bush. I like it (but not as much as I like Romantic Comedy) and I am looking forward to her collection of short stories that is coming out next month.Ready Player One is back on offer – I like the book way more than the film, and I say that as someone who likes the film, although I still haven’t managed to bring myself to read the sequel.
On the non-fiction front, there is Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking – which I actually listened to on audiobook (read by Carrie herself) a few years ago (while painting the spare room at the old house), but as a tale of growing up in Hollywood it’s incredible – and really funny and well written: after all Fisher was a script doctor who punched up the scripts of movies including favourites of mine like Sister Act and The Wedding Singer. On the history front, we have Alison Weir’s The Six Wives of Henry VIII which is a good starting point if you’re interested in the wives and want to know more. Also in the historical overview section of reading is Ian Mortimer’s The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, which is some of the most fun you can have reading about an era where the Plague could get you if the dysentery didn’t and if a woman made it to my age she was doing well. Talking about fun historical reads: Greg Jenner‘s Ask a Historian is also on offer, I’m guessing because there’s about to be a new series of You’re Dead To Me.
Excellent news on the Terry Pratchett front: Men at Arms is £1.99 this month. It’s the second in the Watch sequence, but it’s still early enough in the series that you can read it standalone without missing too many jokes. This one is playing with all the tropes about secret kings as well as a band of misfits finding home in the city police force. Also on offer is the graphic novel The Last Hero, which was a BotW a couple of years ago. This month’s Georgette Heyer is Black Sheep, there are Agatha Raisins and Hamish MacBeth’s on offer in the form of Down the Hatch and Death of a Spy. Josephine Tey’s The Man in the Queue which is the first in the Alan Grant series is 99p
In stuff I have waiting on the tbr pile (virtual or otherwise) that is on offer, we have Beth O’Leary’s The Road Trip (now in a tie-in edition because of the Paramount+ adaptation), Frank and Red by Matt Coyne, which is about an unlikely friendship between a curmudgeonly old man and the six year old who moves in next door to him. The Socialites was my Amazon Prime reads pick last month – and is now out and 99p. It says it’s for fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid (tick), Katherine Tessaro (tick) and Fiona Davis (tick) and follows three girls from their convent school in the 1920s to their lives as actresses and writers and similar. This definitely falls into the fictionalised real people area of my reading wheelhouse.
And finally, in other stuff worth mentioning, Elusive, the second in Genevieve Cogman’s French Revolution series is on offer, ahead of the release of the third in the series later this year.
It’s the week before Christmas and I have a stack of Christmas books that I want to read – but I’ve mostly only managed novellas so far because of the fact that I haven’t finished that pesky 50 states thing. So for this week’s Recommendsday I wanted to mention a few – some that I’ve read in previous years and haven’t written about yet, and one that’s new this year!
Holiday Hideaway by Mary Kay Andrews
This one is the new this year and has a newly single – and unexpectedly homeless – woman who is using one of the vacation rentals she manages as somewhere to live in the gap before her new home is ready. Except then the house’s new owner turns up to get it ready for sale and suddenly she’s hiding in the attic while he’s staying downstairs. I was slightly sceptical about this as a premise, but actually by the end it did work. This is going to be divisive – because the new owner has a girlfriend back in the city and I know that’s a hard no for some people. But for me it was a fun slightly nonsense read that maybe isn’t quite as Christmas-themed as the cover would suggest. Oh, and I wish Andrews had specified a location in it, it would have made my life so much easier…
Missing Christmas by Kate Clayborn
This is the novella that fits in as book three and a half in Clayborn’s Chance of a Lifetime series, which features one of the side characters from the first book getting his chance at a happy ending with his business partner when the two of them are snowed in at the house of a scientist they’re trying to recruit – so forced proximity and only one bed in the festive season. I enjoyed it and if you like Claybourn’s writing – which Iobviouslydo – this is definitely worth checking out.
A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong by Cecilia Grant
How about a historical romance novella with birds of prey? Fancy a falcon this Christmas? Yes? No? This has a hero who is trying to make a perfect Christmas for his family before his sister gets married and things change, and a heroine who is delivering the falcon he’s ordered on the way to a Christmas party. Except that there’s snow and an issue with her carriage and suddenly they’re stuck together and in the wrong place. Yes, I know another forced proximity Christmas novel – but snowed in at Christmas is a trope for a reason: it works really well! This is a prequel to a series of novels about the hero’s siblings, which I haven’t read – but Cecilia Grant says she specialises in high angst-to-plot ratios, so they may not be my thing because: angst. Anyway, if you want a historical novella this year, this worked for me.
Also with a few on sale, it’s the new adaptations. Anthony Horowitz‘s Moonflower Murders is 99p – the TV version is on at the moment (as well as a new one coming next year) and Frederick Forsythe’s Day of the Jackal is on offer too as the new Eddie Redmayne series is going out on Sky at the moment too. I’m still not over the 1970s movie version, and I’m not sure I can bring myself to read the book.
And finally I don’t often recommend coookery books in ebook form but Diana Henry’s From the Oven to the Tableis one of my favourites and has some really excellent recipes for chicken thighs.
Another month over, and as you probably saw on Monday, a mega reading list to finish the month off, because we were on holiday. Only one of these is actually something finished on the holiday – but I promise you will hear more about a bunch of those holiday books at some point. However in the meantime here’s a three of the books I read in November and haven’t told you about yet!
Frequent Hearses by Edmund Crispin
I’m slowly working my way through the Gervase Fen series – so slowly in fact that they’ve now started a fresh redesign since I started reading them. I’ve now read six of the ten slightly out of order as this is in fact book seven. It sees Gervase entangled with the movie making set and trying to untangle the mystery around the death of a young actress who threw herself from Waterloo Bridge one night after a party. I had part of the solution figured out, but not all the whys and wherefores so it was a good read finding out.
Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans*
The Second World War is over and Valentine Vere-Thissett is on his way home. Except the war has changed his world – his elder brother has been killed, leaving him with a title he doesn’t want and and now the fate of his family home, built in the 1500s, in his hands. I have really enjoyed a lot of Lissa Evans’s novels, but for some reason this one didn’t quite work as well as I wanted it to. It’s got all the elements – a reluctant younger son taking over, post war setting, an ill-assorted group of people thrown together, but just this time, it didn’t provoke as strong a set of emotions as her books usually do. It’s still good, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not brilliant, and I was hoping for brilliant.
A Body on the Doorstep by Marty Wingate
It’s 1921 and Mabel Canning has moved to London to try and strike out on her own and be a Modern Woman. To this end she’s got a job with the Useful Women’s Agency, but one one of her assignments a dead body turns up on the doorstep when she answers the door. And of course she can’t help but get drawn in to trying to figure out what happened to him. This was the latest in my quest to find a new historical mystery series to fill the gap left by the end of the Daisy Dalrymple books. And it’s not bad – the mystery isn’t the most complicated, but it’s got a fair bit of set up to do and characters to introduce as the first in the series so I don’t mind that too much. It’s in KU so I will likely read more of them as and when I get a chance.
Anyway, some Christmas murder mysteries for you today – and did I say I was done with British Library Crime Classics for the year? Ahem. Here I am with a post that’s two thirds BLCC. And that’s if you’re being charitable. It’s probably more like three quarters. Oopsie Daisy.
Santa Klaus Murders by Mavis Doriel Hay
Starting with one I read a while ago – in fact I’ve read Mavis Doriel Hay’s other crime novels, which were among the first BLCCs I read and they are brilliant, but forgotten, Golden Age crime stories. This is no exception. A Christmas set house-party murder – with chapters written by various different character – it ticks all the boxes for what I look for in a murder mystery. It’s well worth starting your Christmas reading with this – especially as it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment.
Dramatic Murder by Elizabeth Anthony
So this is the new BLCC release for this Christmas, and features the murder (even if the courts think it’s accidental death) of the host of a Christmas show party by one of the guests. I will admit that I had the culprit worked out before the end, but as far as Christmas mysteries go, this is a pretty good one.
Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie
The Autumn equivalent of this was a BotW not that long ago, but I think this winter version is maybe slightly better – at least if you like Christie’s big name detectives. This has plenty of Poirot in it as well as some Miss Marple, Parker Pyne and Harley Quinn and the mix is pretty good. And of course the fact that it’s short stories means that you can read one, and then go do something else – ideal if you’re preparing for Christmas!
Just a couple more from the British Library to mention before I go: firstly Mystery in White by J Jefferson Farjeon – I’m the reverse of most people in that I prefered Seven Dead to Mystery in White, but if you want a locked room Christmas mystery, then this might be it. Then of course there is Christmas Card Crime – book of the week just after Christmas 2021. Silent Nights collection – BotW back in 2015!
I was trying to work out when I was finishing the Week in Books yesterday how obvious it was that what I was going to pick today. I was figuring that given that I wrote about the adaptation on Sunday and then a 700 page plus book appeared on the list and had been read in under a week the signs might have been there. But who can tell the workings of my mind? Anyway, here we are.
So (obviously) this is the book the Disney+ series is based on. And what I didn’t mention in the post on Sunday is that the eight parts of the adaptation don’t cover the whole of the book. And having been left on a cliffhanger of not knowing l of course I wanted to see how it all turned out without having to wait however many years it’s going to be for series two. If we get a series two because I’ve been burned before (see: My Lady Jane, Pushing Daisies, The New Adventures of Superman). And also I wanted to know how different the book is from the show.
And the answer to that second question is it’s pretty close. There are a few things that happen a bit differently most of which I can’t mention because of spoilers but the one I can is that Rupert being blonde in the book and dark haired in the show. And that didn’t bother me because traditionally I prefer a dark and brooding hero and I saw the adaptation first. I’m fickle me. The 80s attitudes to some things are still there in the book – but some of the best lines in the show come directly from the book dialogue.
Some of the people are worse in the TV show than the book, others the reverse. There are a few characters in the show who are more fleshed out on screen than they were in the book. I was wondering how they could do a whole other season out of what was left of the book but there’s so much plot still to cover I’m pretty sure they can – especially if they want to bring a few of the things that are different back around to the book. Plus the ending of the book is all very fast. So there’s a bit of scope there.
All in all it’s deeply readable and although it satisfied my craving for resolution it probably made me even more desperate for series two sooner rather than later. Hey ho. At least I can reread/rewatch if I want to.
You should be able to get a copy of this absolutely everywhere given the adaption and of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too. Plus there’s a new reading of the audiobook performed by Georgia Tennant aka David’s wife if you want a bit of a crossover effect and nearly twenty five hours of audio to listen to!
It’s been a while, but here I am, back with another post of some of the really good British Library Crime Classics I’ve read recently. And recently is a fairly elastic thing, because I started putting this together ages ago, and then some of the books that I was expecting to use in this ended up being Books of the Week instead!
Impact of Evidence by Carol Carnac
This is set in the Welsh borders where an elderly doctor known for his erratic driving has gone off the road and into the river – but when the police pull out the vehicle a second body is discovered in the back. Who is the mystery corpse, how did he get there and was the doctor responsible? This is another mystery centering on a tight knit community where everyone knows everyone else’s business and so clues can be picked up that way. Really good and atmospheric.
Excellent Intentions by Richard Hull
This is a murder mystery about the murder of a deeply unpopular man, who drops dead on a train to London. There are four suspects, and the story is told by intercutting the investigation by Inspector Fenby and judge sitting watching the prosecution at the trial – which he intends to be his last case before retirement – without telling you who the accused is until very late on. I really enjoyed reading it – I wasn’t sure who I thought the accused was going to turn out to be, and then I very much enjoyed how it all revealed itself and what the solution turned out to be.
The Measure of Malice Edited by Martin Edwards
A collection of murder mystery short stories all with some sort of scientific twist to them. There are some authors here I haven’t come across before along with some familiar names if you’ve read other BLCC titles and then two really big names in Conan Doyle and Dorothy L Sayers. Not being a Sherlock Holmes expert I can’t tell you if the story here is one of the better known ones, but I can say that the Sayers is a Wimsey that I have read before in one of the Wimsey short story collections, which probably isn’t a surprise, although it is a good one (even if I think bits of it clash with part of the first Paton Walsh continuation, but that’s a really nerdy point). All in all a good and varied selection.
And that’s it – and I can’t see that I’ll have read enough of these for another round of of BLCC before the end of the year, although who knows whether one will end up as a Book of the Week before then in the six weeks we have to go…
It’s the second Wednesday in November, so I’m back with another round of Kindle offers, and as we’re coming up to Christmas it’s a real bumper month – with relatively recent releases as well as Christmas themed reading. So lets get down to it…
Lets start with recent BotW The Darkest Sin by D V Bishop from his Cesare Aldo series. Also in historical mystery, the fourth in C J Sansom’s Shardlake series, Revelation is 99p – this is the next one I need to read in the series so I bought it, because it’s a total bargain for 600+ pages and it’s easier to read on Kindle when they’re that big! Just a mystery, not a historical mystery is C L Miller‘s The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder, as is the second Canon Clement, A Death in the Parish. More expensive, at £2.89 is last year’s Josephine Tey Mystery by Nicola Upson – the Daphne Du Maurier-y Shot with Crimson.
The 99p Georgette Heyer is A Civil Contract, which is possibly my least favourite of her Regency novels, but your mileage may vary. The Terry Pratchett is Thud at £1.99 which is one of the Watch stories – but is particularly Sam Vimes focused. On the classic front Carry on, Jeeves is 99p and Hercule Poirot’s Christmas is 99p and in KU as well if you’re in that.
On the non-fiction front, there’s another recent BotWThe Formula and also Laurence Leamer‘s Capote’s Women. And finally in things I haven’t read – there’s Rachel Lacey’s Stars Collide – and age gap romance with two pop stars at different points in their careers find they have more in common than music after they perform together 99p – also in KU – andCasey McQuiston, of Red, White and Royal Blue fame’s latest novel The Pairing is 99p
That your lot – Happy Reading and try not to spend too much…
There are not many of these this month I’m afraid, largely because I’ve read a lot of books from series, including a complete re-read of Lily Bard, but also because I read a few things that I didn’t like and don’t really want to write about either! But you’ve got two, so that’s something, and they’re both non-fiction, so maybe I should say it’s a non-fiction special and style it out? Except I’ve told you that now so it doesn’t really work does it?
Murder: The Biography by Kate Morgan*
This is a really interesting and incredibly readable look at the legal history of the crime of murder in England and how the statute has developed and evolved over time. It picks out the key cases that have shaped the law’s application – some of which you will have heard of, others you may not. If you’re a reader of crime fiction, this is really interesting – as you can see the development of things that you’ve seen in classic murder mysteries but in real cases. It also includes the development of corporate murder and manslaughter statutes and their success (or lack thereof) in the latter half of the twentieth century. Interesting and thought provoking.
Unruly by David Mitchell
I saw someone somewhere describe this as “Horrible Histories for grownups” and I think that’s not a bad comparison. This is a look at the Kings and Queens of England from King Arthur until the death of Elizabeth I from the comedian and actor (and history graduate) David Mitchell. It’s quite sweary at times and it’s full of pop culture/modern day references which I think is where that Horrible Histories comparison comes from, but I think it’s also got some comparators in the podcast world – with things like You’re Dead to Me and Even the Rich – as well as some stand-up comedy that goes on. I enjoyed it, and I learned a few things – mainly because it focuses on the early kings more than the later ones who are the ones I usually read about!
And there you go, that’s your two – they wouldn’t make bad Christmas books if you buy those for the people in your life and Unruly is in proper paperback now (as opposed to airport paperback like my copy) too so it’s more stocking sized now as well.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 