Category: new releases

Book of the Week, new releases

Book of the Week: Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway

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Happy Tuesday everyone, and I’m back with a Book of the Week pick after last week’s skip, although I have a slight issue, because although NetGalley says it was out last week, none of the sites seem to have it as out until the middle of February. But as it was the best thing I read last week, I’m still writing about it. Sorry, not sorry. I’ll try and remember to remind you when it comes out.

It’s 1949 and Beattie Cavendish works for GCHQ. Officially she works in admin and training secretaries, but actually she’s a covert operative. When her bosses send her to Scotland to investigate a disappearance at a a listening station. The staff there are suspicious of her, and she has a job on her hands to find out what is going on. Her uncle lives near the station but when she goes to visit, she discovers that his cottage is empty and looks like it was left in a hurry. Beattie becomes convinced that the two things are related and starts to dig in to what is going on in the Highlands with the help of private investigator Patrick Corrigan, who is all to happy to leave London for a bit after having caught the attention of some Russian gangsters.

This is actually the second book featuring Beattie, and although I haven’t read the first it didn’t really cause me too many problems with the plot. There are some throwbacks to that previous novel but enough is explained that you can follow along – although it did make me interested in reading that earlier book. This is the first book by Mary-Jane Riley that I’ve read but also the first Cold War set historical mystery that I’ve read in quite a long while. And this is specifically Cold War (rather than generic 1950s) because of Beattie’s work and all the circumstances of the mystery. And I enjoyed it a lot.

There are some commonalities in Beattie’s back story with other characters that I have liked in inter-war-set mysteries – I can’t really tell you what because it’s spoilers – and it makes for an interesting character. I’m also interested in the friendship with Corrigan and the context around that – this is where I did feel that I was missing some context – he has a fiancée and without having read the first novel I wasn’t sure if I was meant to be rooting for him to break it off with her for Beattie or not – because from the information given his fiancée had helped in that previous mystery even if her actions in this one seemed to be slightly against what Patrick wants in terms of his future. So definitely up for reading a third book to see what happens there.

My copy came from NetGalley, as I said at the top it’s not out until February 19th. You can however pre-order in Kindle or Kobo. There is also apparently a paperback edition coming in the autumn.

Happy Reading!

Book previews, cozy crime, detective, first in series, new releases, reviews

Bonus Review: A Very Novel Murder

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Cover of A Very Novel Murder

I have an extra review this week because A Very Novel Murder came out on Tuesday and I have already read it – back in December in fact. This is Elllie Alexander’s new series which is itself a spin-off of her Secret Bookcase series. So if you’ve read that you’ll already be familiar with our heroine Annie, who is now opening her own private dectective agency with her friend Fletcher, as well as continuing to run the Secret Bookcase bookshop. I can’t really say any more about the backstory than that, because if I do, I’m spoiling the previous series for those who haven’t read it – but you can find my post about the series here.

Anyway in this first in the new series, Annie and Fletch take on their first case when an elderly woman asks them to investigate the death of her neighbour, a promising surfer whose death the police think was either accidental or suicide. There is also a new running story for the series, in the same way that the thread that ran through the Secret Bookcase was Annie’s quest to find out who had murdered her best friend.

I enjoyed this – it’s got some set up going on for the series, but because it’s an established group of characters from the previous series Alexander hasn’t felt the need to go overboard there (also it would have been spoilery!). I had the culprit for the murder pegged relatively early, but there were enough side twists that I didn’t mind too much when I did turn out to be right. My issue with the final Secret Bookcase was that the running plot meant that the mystery of the week (so to speak) got less complex to allow time for that, this was better than the last couple there, so hopefully we won’t see the same thing again in this series. I’m looking forward to reading the next one.

I got my copy via NetGalley, but it’s out now and in Kindle Unlimited, which of course means it’s not on Kobo at the moment except for as an audiobook. I’ve never seen these in the shops, but Amazon claims it’s available in Paperback (and that that came out in November) so who knows.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Heir Apparent

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Now considering that I finished the new Olivia Dade last week this may be a surprise to you, but you all know I like Olivia Dade and Second Chance Romance was indeed great fun, but Heir Apparent is a new release and I enjoyed it although I have some quibbles as you will see so I have things to say about it that you won’t have heard before!

Lexi Villiers is living in Tasmania and in the middle of training to be a doctor. She’s busy building an independent life for her herself. But on New Years Day a helicopter lands and her grandmother’s right-hand man steps out to tell her that her father and her twin brother are dead and she needs to come home. Lexi’s grandmother is the queen of England and Lexi is now next in line for the throne. She’s got to decide if she wants to return to the family fold – and if she does she’s got to figure out how to get the British public to warm up to her and how to deal with the scheming that surrounds the monarchy, particularly from her father’s younger brother Prince Richard who is next in line after Lexi.

So in case you’re wondering, in the world of Heir Apparent, Charles II’s wife died and he remarried to his mistress Barbara Villiers, who then acted as Regent when Charles died before their eldest son was of age. This means that Armitage has been able to invent her own cast of characters and a distinct history for the House of Villiers, but as a reader you can also spend time spotting where she’s taken inspiration from the real British royals. So Lexi’s mother died young after an acrimonious divorce from her father, who went on to marry his mistress. You get the idea.

This is a really fun and page turning read – partly because of how much fun it is looking at those parallels to the real royals. I really enjoyed it – right until the end where I don’t think it quite stuck the landing. I really can’t explain why without giving huge, huge spoilers, but I suspect that other people may feel the same as me. It’s a great sun-lounger read right up until that point though, and I don’t even think that the ending issue is because Armitage is leaving room for a sequel. So that’s frustrating. But your mileage may vary on that ending – and you won’t know until you’ve read it! If nothing else it will make for a debate at all the book club meetings – and it’s a Reese’s Book Club pick so it’ll be popular on that front.

I got my copy from NetGalley and as it only came out on Tuesday last week I haven’t had a chance to look for it in the bookshops yet, but I will report back in when I do but it should be really easy to get hold of in the US because of that Reese pick. It’s also available on Kindle and Kobo and as an audiobook.

Book previews, new releases

Out This Week: New Royal Spyness

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After talking about the new H M The Queen Investigates book a couple of weeks ago, today it’s the turn of another Royal-related historical mystery series – Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness books which has reached number 19 – with From Cradle to Grave – which came out on Tuesday. I remain surprised and delighted that Bowen continues to find more set ups for murders for Georgie to solve, but also that she’s continuing to put out multiple books a year despite being in her 80s. Anyway the blurb for this latest installment has nanny problems (more accurately sister in law problems) as well as a string of deaths which may threaten Georgie’s beloved husband Darcy. I am up to date with this series – and always wonder if the next book will be the last but surely Bowen wouldn’t finish on a strange number like 19 when 20 is right there? Right?

Book of the Week, historical, mystery, new releases

Book of the Week: The Murder at World’s End

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It’s Tuesday and I’m back with this week’s Book of the Week – which is actually a book that came out last week. I’m even topical. Go me!

The year is 1910 and Haley’s Comet is passing over the earth. On a tidal island of Cornwall, a Viscount is preparing for the apocalypse. But when the staff of Tithe Hall unseal their rooms the next morning, Lord Conrad Stockingham Welt is dead in his office and a murder investigation gets underway. Straight into the police’s crosshairs is Stephen Pike, who arrived at the house fresh from Borstal the day before the murder. But Stephen knows he didn’t do it – he was looking after the elderly aunt of the victim Miss Decima Stockingham, who is foul mouthed, but very, very smart. Soon the two of them are trying to work out who did commit the murder as the policeman in charge of the case makes wild claims to try and pin it onto one of the servants.

This has got such a great premise – I love a cantankerous older woman heroine and the pairing of Miss Decima and Stephen is really entertaining and makes a great use of the above stairs-below stairs nature of the plot. And it’s really quite humorous at times too. I will admit I had the solution worked out well before they did though – but forgive them because there is world building and setting up going on here for a sequel and I am very much here for that when it happens.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out now in Kindle and Kobo as well as in hardback. I’ll be watching out for it in the shops.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, mystery, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Solving Murder

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It’s Halloween week, and so today’s Book of the Week has ghost in the title, even if it’s not so much spooky or scary as mysterious. You’re welcome.

It’s the end of 1914 and Alma Timperley has just found out that she had an aunt that she didn’t know about, but also that her aunt has died and left her a hotel in her will. The Timperley Spiritualist Hotel is in Cornwall, and caters to a very specific clientele – those who wish to communicate with the dead. And as the first Christmas of the war approaches, there are more people than ever looking for comfort in hearing from their recently departed loved ones. As if that wasn’t enough, soon after Alma’s arrival at the hotel, one of the maids is found dead and there are suggestions that there is a German spy in town. And then there is the fact that Alma can talk to the dead, just like her aunt could.

The spiritualist craze that happened during and after the Great War pops up in a few books – notably (in my reading life anyway) in Dorothy L Sayers’ Strong Poison, where Miss Climpson uses her experience of fraudulent mediums to help Peter Wimsey – but in this case, the mediums (or some of them at least) really can talk to the other side. And in terms of the mystery that needs solving, as a newcomer Alma is able to ask plenty of questions about the hotel and it’s inhabitants without arousing too much suspicion. I have a somewhat mixed relationship with books with supernatural elements as you all probably know by now, but I really, really enjoyed this – it’s a great idea and an interesting twist on a wartime spy mystery and not too heavy on the actual ghosts – I wouldn’t even really say it was haunted. This is F H Petford’s first novel (at least as far as I can find) and the end of the book suggests that there is the possibility of a sequel – which I would read with great pleasure.

My copy of A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Murder came via NetGalley, but it is out now in Kindle and Kobo, where it is £1.99 at time of writing, as well as in paperback.

Happy Reading!

Book previews, new releases

Out Today: Mrs Pargeter’s Past

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The latest book in Simon Brett’s Mrs Pargeter series is out today, and as I read it when I was on holiday the other week, I have a bonus review for you today!

Mrs Pargeter’s Past is the tenth book featuring the widow of Mr Pargeter, who definitely wasn’t one of the biggest crooks in Essex. This time out Mrs P is coming to the assistance of one of her husband’s former associates who has got himself into a touch of trouble because of his gambling problem. This leads us to some more of Mrs Pargeter’s backstory because the nasty characters who Short Head is entangled with are some of the same nasty customers that Mr P had some run ins with. Not that Mrs P knows about that.

I really enjoyed this – Mrs P and her deliberate refusal to acknowledge her husband’s past while making extensive use of his little black book of contacts will never not be funny to me, and in this one Simon Brett has found a way to bring in lots of the regular assistants in their various guises to help out with the mystery. I said when I wrote Major Bricket and the Circus Corpse that Mrs P is at the least realistic end of the contemporary-set Brett oeuvre and it does push on that, but it’s so funny and wry and I have a history with the characters that means that I don’t mind it really at all. Possibly not the place to start your adventures with Mrs P, but if you’ve already enjoy any of the books in the series I think it’ll work for you. I’m still hoping for another Charles Paris though.

Book of the Week, memoirs, new releases, non-fiction

Book of the Week: I Shop, Therefore I Am

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Lets just take a moment for the fact that my pick this week is a book that came out last week so I am actually topical and sort of on time for once. Lets mark it, because it happens less often than it ought to, considering the number of advance copies I have of things!

Cover of I Shop, Therefore I A,m

I Shop, Therefore I Am is Mary Portas’s second memoir – I haven’t read the first, but I think this picks up where the first one ends – with Mary starting a new job in charge of window displays at Harvey Nichols. During her time there (which starts in the late 1980s), it transformed from a department store somewhere mostly patronised by older ladies from the Home Counties and in the shadow of their neighbour down the road Harrods, to a headline making store at the cutting edge of the fashion industry.

I grew up watching Absolutely Fabulous (not quite when if first came out, but not *that* long after that) and part of the joy of reading this is getting to see the impact that that show had on the store. But it’s also fascinating to see the mechanics of how the shop worked at a time which (in hindsight) was basically the heyday of the high street. I worked in retail for my first Saturday job was in a clothing store, but the behind the scenes of that was nothing like this – I was at a much lower level but also the clientele was very, very different. I also really liked Mary Portas’s writing style and her voice. She balances the day to day of what she was doing with fun gossipy insights into high fashion and celebrity. And she also seems incredibly normal and down to earth with it that it’s easy to forget that she was moving in really high powered circles until she suddenly mentions how upset they were when Princess Diana died because they all saw her in the store all the time, or when she gets Naomi Campbell to do her instore fashion show.

This is a really good read that would work whether you remember the time that Mary is talking about or not, but I think you’ll get different things out of it depending on whether you remember the time before internet shopping or not! It would also be a great Christmas book for someone who is interested in fashion.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it came out last week and I’m expecting to see it in all the bookshops ahead of the festive rush, especially because it made a bunch of the anticipated book lists earlier in the year. And of course it’s also in Kindle and Kobo.

Book of the Week, new releases, non-fiction

Book of the Week: Entitled

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I mean, I’d be shocked if any of you are surprised by today’s pick if you saw yesterday’s reading list, because I am somewhat predictable BUT this really lived up to the hype and is worth reading.

Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York is a joint biography of Prince Andrew, Duke of York and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. It’s written by Andrew Lownie, whose previous book was The Traitor King (which I also read on a holiday!) but has also written about The Mountbattens and Guy Burges. Lownie says in the introduction that he asked the Duke and Duchess to participate in the book – who then tried to prevent the book from happening. He says he approached more than three thousand people as part of the process of writing this book, of whom only around a tenth responded. All of which is to say that he wants you to know that he’s really tried to get the whole picture about the couple. It’s a joint biography but it’s also a look at the way that the couple remain incredibly intertwined nearly 20 years after their divorce. Andrew of course was forced to retire from public life after his disastrous Newsnight interview in 2019, where he tried (and failed) to answer questions about his relationship with the paedophile former financier Jeffry Epstein.

Now you may have seen the headlines generated first by the serialisation ahead of publication, and then the think pieces afterwards about what it means for the future of the couple. Or of course the headlines this week when Sarah Ferguson was dropped by a series of charities after an email from her to Epstein emerged from after the time when she said she had cut all contact with him. And you may think that given all that, what is the point of reading the book, surely all the best bits are already out there.

Well. Yes, the biggest revelations are already out there, but I think reading the book really brings home the scale and volume of it all. And although a lot of the focus of scandal in recent years has been on him (and indeed the serialisation headlines), her behaviour is worth reading about too – according to this she’s a charming people person and great sales person, locked in a cycle of spending, debt and then grift and deals to try and bring it round to a point where she then repeats the pattern.

In The Traitor King, Lownie made a persuasive case that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were active and willing participants in the Nazi intrigues that surrounded them as part of a concerted effort to benefit themselves and improve their positions and I think it changed significantly the way that the couple are viewed. This isn’t changing the way that the Duke of York is perceived – it’s putting all the pieces together and adding in the background information to really cement the idea that he’s up to his neck in scandals around sex and money. And between the two of them – in Lownie’s telling – they present a big challenge for the British monarchy to deal with at a time when there are less and less “working” Royals and also perhaps less public fondness for the institution as a whole.

I bought my copy of Entitled at the airport but you should be able to get this basically everywhere – as long as they haven’t run out of copies. And at Birmingham last week, they only had copies in one of the bookshops (and as I said on Saturday I didn’t manage to get it in any of my pictures!) and not many of them. But I’ve seen it in any bookshop of any size that I’ve been into since early August, and it’s obviously in Kindle and Kobo and audiobook too – although those e-versions have already had a edit, which is a good reminder to us all that ebook files are changeable, and your hard copies are not – once you’ve bought the original version I mean!

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, new releases, reviews, romance

Book of the Week: Finders Keepers

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It’s Tuesday and I’m using this week’s BotW to report back in on the new Sarah Adler, which came out back at the end of June, but which I bought in paperback which hampered my reading of it what with having started it right before I went to Ghana.

Quentin and Nina were best friends when they were at school, right up until they weren’t. But now they’re both back in their home town for the summer and living next door to each other again. Nina was expecting to be moving in with her boyfriend and getting ready for the new term as a professor. Instead she’s single, homeless and jobless. Quentin is back from Europe and also newly single and suggests resurrecting the treasure hunt that that they were trying to solve that last summer when they fell out. Surely after nearly two decades they can figure out what went wrong that summer – in the hunt and between the two of them?

Is it a second chance romance if they weren’t ever really together the first time and they just had massive crushes on each other? Because that is what we have here. It should also be noted that I absolutely loved Mrs Nash’s Ashes, and really liked Happy Medium despite the presence of ghosts and fake mediums. This is making the hat trick of BotWs for Adler’s first three novels but I liked this the least. But that’s because it turns out two of the main things it’s doing are not really my favourite tropes: this has got an incredibly oblivious heroine with anxiety problems that make me stressed and the two of them need to use their words more. If they had done that then they wouldn’t be in the mess they are and I wouldn’t find it so stressful to read and could probably deal with the cringey bits of their treasure hunt better.

But I’m still recommending it because I know that this is very much a me thing and I know other people are going to really love this. Yes I’m hoping adler’s next one goes back towards the vibes of Mrs Nash’s Ashes and gives more sunshine-but-quirky but given where we are in romance at the moment with a lot of college age pairings and early 20s heroines who are learning to adult I will still take it. Because that’s not where I am in my reading life at the moment and you just need to look at my post from The Works on Saturday to start seeing why that’s a problem right now!

I’ve got this in paperback so I’m hoping it will be one of my easier picks to get hold of and of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too for £2.99 at the moment (but who knows how long that will last given that it’s nearly the end of the month.

Happy Reading!