Today’s Recommendsday book is Annette Dashofy’s latest cozy crime No Way Home, which came out yesterday and which I’m currently reading. This is the fifth novel in her Zoe Chambers series about a paramedic and deputy coroner who gets entangled with the crimes in her neighbourhood. No Way Home sees a rash of teen drug deaths in Zoe’s home town, the death of a popular town commissioner and the disappearance of Zoe’s best friend’s son in New Mexico – which sends Zoe out of her comfort zone and across the country to try and help find him.
The cover definitely does the New Mexico end of the story well!
This is the second book in the series that I’ve read (I read the first a few weeks back now) and they’re well-put together murder mysteries with an interesting cast of characters and a “detective” who has a great excuse for getting involved in investigations and a job that gives her access to information. Having skipped a couple of books there are some developments in this that I’ve missed, but nothing that means I can’t follow this book (and no spoilers so far for the plots of the other books).
Catnip wise, they’re set in small town, rural Pennsylvania with farms and horses and there’s also a slow burn romance going on too. As yet, no crafting or bakeries! Zoe is a little foolhardy at times, but never quite into Too Stupid To Live territory so far and I’m really quite enjoying this. Here’s hoping it doesn’t all go wrong in the final quarter.
My copy came from NetGalley and although I think it is an actual physical release, it’s super expensive over here, but it’s more reasonable on Kindle.
This week’s BotW is the latest from long-time auto-buy author of mine, Trisha Ashley. If you’ve been here a while this choice will not surprise, you because you’ll know that I’m a big TrishaAshley fan. I’m on her mailing list, I go to her London readers’ tea party, I keep her books on the special downstairs bookshelf of books I might need to have handy to read again AND I have copies of most of them on Kindle. So you can imagine how delighted I was when I got an advance readers copy of her new book The Little Teashop of Lost and Found – and how much willpower it took not to squeal all over the place, read it straight away and then immediately blog about it. But I have been restrained. Very. It helped that I had to pack all the book piles away for the fireplace work – and that they still haven’t been properly unpacked. It helped that I knew I had nights coming right before it was due out and that this would be the perfect book to save as a post-nights* treat to myself. But still. Points for will power for waiting to read it so that I could post this the week that it comes out. Anyway, you want to hear about the book, not about my crazy fangirling, so here we go.
Check out my attempt at pretty photography. I like the contrast of the daffodils and the book cover.
The Little Teashop of Lost and Found tells the story of Alice, abandoned on the moors above Haworth as a baby, adopted and then abandoned again in various ways by various people as she grows up into adulthood. Always feeling like an outsider, after her latest setback she buys a rundown cafe in Haworth in the hope that being close to where she was found might help her find the home and the family that she’s been searching and longing for. While she’s setting up her tea emporium – and writing her book – she makes friends and starts to try and unravel the mystery of who she really is. But will she get her happily ever after?
Trisha Ashley’s heroines tend to be looking for a second chance at love and have tragedy in their past – and Alice is no exception.** She’s had so many knock backs and tragedies that it’s a wonder she’s still in any way optimistic about the future. And life in Haworth isn’t plain sailing at first, although she soon acquires a surrogate family to help her along. I liked the interludes with extracts from the dark and twisted fairy tale that Alice is writing and I loved the secondary characters – the Giddings family, Lola and the rude waitresses with the hearts of gold are all brilliant. And I really liked the other intercut sections that I can’t talk about without giving too much of the plot away – they’re so cleverly done that I had to go back and reread some of them at the end in shock to check I hadn’t missed something earlier!
This is warm, witty and uplifting as well as being a great slow-burn romance where the reader and every one else around the heroine can see what’s going on so much more clearly than she can. This is also (obviously) set in Yorkshire rather than the more traditional Trisha-world of Lancashire but there are some familiar faces here despite that. If you’ve read the novella Finding Mr Rochester you’ll spot some characters from there – in fact I need to go back and read it again to see exactly how many characters from that pop up in this.
The Little Teashop of Lost and Found is out in hardback on Thursday (the 9th) and you can get your copy from Amazon (for a bargainous £6.99 at time of writing), Waterstones and Foyles or buy it on Kindle or Kobo. The paperback isn’t out until June, but you can pre-order that from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles too. I need to get myself a copy too – because the ARC doesn’t have all the recipes in the back!
Happy Reading!
*Proof reading this was a real hoot – I wrote this when I was still quite nightshift-brainy and when I came back to check it, well lets just say it was a haven for unfinished sentences, typos and mismatched tenses. I think I’ve fixed them all, but hey, if a few have crept through, I’m sorry!
**In fact I think the heroine’s backstories are getting sadder – Tabby from Christmas Cracker had been in jail (she was someone else’s dupe), Cally in Wish Upon a Star had a seriously-ill daughter, Izzy in Creature Comforts had been involved in a serious car crash, now Alice abandoned at birth. I don’t know how the books still end up being so cheerful and uplifting!
I know. This is a day late. What can I say – nightshifts really wiped me out. I have spent so much time sleeping – and then a lot of life admin to do to try to catch up after two weeks of living nocturnally. So this is a Recommendsday post instead – and you can wait until tomorrow for February stats. Sorry. Anyhow, this week’s BotW really brightened my nightshifts commutes up last week – Lucy Parker’s second book, Pretty Face.
You know its in London because of the bridge!
Lily Lamprey is an actress. Unfortunately she’s handicapped by a sexy voice and curves that saw her cast as a man-stealing bitch in a popular period drama. But now she’s leaving the show and she wants to do something different. Respected theatre director Luc Savage has poured his heart and soul into restoring his family’s London theatre and now he’s casting the opening production. Some of his partners think that Lily giving a role would be a great way to sell tickets. But he’s not convinced she can pull it off. When the two meet there are sparks – and instant attraction. But Lily’s mum has a reputation for getting ahead through her relationships and Lily knows what people will say if she starts seeing Luc. Luc’s long-term relationship has just finished and he’s older than Lily – he’s sure it’s just a mid-life crisis and he’s not willing to risk his career and reputation on it.
This is just what I like in a romance. It’s an enemies to lovers story with witty banter, plenty of snark and a great set up. Both characters have their issues and their reasons for avoiding a relationship with each other and the way things are worked out and worked through is fun to read about. Parker’s depiction of the world of the theatre is great – full of well-rounded characters and personality. If I have a problem with the book it’s that a few of the British references and British-isms jarred for me and didn’t ring entirely true. But that’s little nitpicky details that most people probably aren’t going to spot/be annoyed by.
Pretty Face was just what I needed last week – fun and romantic, with a bit of emotional peril and a satisfying conclusion. And I liked it more than I liked her first book, Act Like It, too. I just hope we don’t have to wait too long for another one.
My copy came via NetGalley, but you can get an ebook copy from Kindle or Kobo, who also have Act Like it as well (Kindle, Kobo).
Nightshifts are well underway here, so hopefully I’ll be asleep when this publishes. I say hopefully, if day one is anything to go by I’ll have been woken up half a dozen times by assorted phone calls, tradesmen and delivery people. Anyway, as I said last week, I’ve been looking for a new cozy crime series. And as you know, I’m always looking for new historical crime series. So this week’s BotW is a new historical crime novel from the cozier end of the spectrum which I’m hoping is going to be the start of series.
Cover of The Riviera Express
The Riviera Express is the first book from TP Fielden* about Judy Dimont, a newspaper reporter in a south-coast seaside town in the 1950s. Miss D has a nose for a scoop, an editor who doesn’t always appreciate her and a rivalry with the paper’s other lady reporter. The Riveira Express is both the name of the paper and the name of the train which brings holiday-makers to the resort of Temple Regis and one of Miss Dimont’s regular jobs is meeting the train if it’s got a celebrity on board. But when she and her photographer arrive to meet film star Gerald Hennessey, they find him dead in his first class compartment. Called away from the scene to a second death, Judy becomes convinced that there is a link between the two – even though the police aren’t convinced that either is the result of foul play. Soon she’s investigating the links between the film star and the seaside town as well as between the two men and dealing with a couple of highly strung actresses who are mourning the dead star. Will Judy find out the truth – and if she does will her editor let her publish it?
I hope that sounds like fun, because this book is a lovely romp through an English seaside town with pretensions of grandeur led by a charming character in Judy Dimont. One of the toughest things to do in stories like this is create a leading character with an excuse to go poking about in murders and mysteries – and a reporter is an ideal one. Judy has a perfect excuse to nose around and to get information from the police and the authorities. It also means that she is going to keep coming across bodies in a more natural way than a private citizen would. And it makes a change from private detectives of all shapes and sizes well. The secondary characters are well drawn and there’s plenty of potential here for on-going plot strands without it feeling like there’s lots of set up being done. I’m looking forward to finding out more about Miss D’s past in the next book.
Here’s the rub – The Riviera Express isn’t actually out for another 9 days yet – but you can pre-order the hardback from Amazon or Waterstones and hope it turns up on the day or on Kindle or Kobo and it’ll download itself on the 23rd as a lovely treat.
Happy reading.
*I would love to know who TP Fielden is – this doesn’t feel like a first novel and there’s very little information that I can find on TP, but their Goodreads biography says that they are a “leading author, broadcaster and journalist” so it feels like a pen name – and I’d love to know who is behind it!
I feel like I’m getting repetitive here, because this BotW is another Fahrenheit Press pick. Seriously, my Fahrenheit subscription has been one of my best book-based purchases this year. It was a total bargain (and I got in early so it really was a bargain!) and I’ve discovered older series I was too young for (or not in the right crowd for) first time around and new authors doing interesting things and who I’m hoping I can say that I was there at the beginning for.
And Sparkle Shot falls in the latter camp. It’s Lina Chern’s first book and it’s short but it packs a lot in. The subtitle is “A wannabe cowboy, a handsome cop and the search for a perfect breakfast cocktail” but that doesn’t really do it justice. It is a perfect fit for the Fahrenheit family – Mara fits in somewhere between Sam Jones from Black Rubber Dress and Eva Destruction from Barista’s Guide to Espionage, in that she’s sassy, smart and runs with an interesting crowd which sees her getting tangled up with things she’d rather not be. In this case, her roommate, a stripper who dances under the name of Karma misses a breakfast date with her and then phones in a panic – she’s witnessed a murder and needs Mara to help stop her being the next victim.
Sparkle Shot races along at 100 miles an hour, with boys with guns, girls with guns, wannabe mafia dons, cops and peril. It’s probably technically novella length at 95 pages, but doesn’t suffer from any of my common complaints about novellas. There’s not a hint of underdeveloped story or things feeling too rushed. There’s plenty of plot, there’s backstory, character development and proper tension and proper danger – not just the sort of thing that is a misunderstanding or could be fixed with a simple conversation. It does feel like it could stand a sequel or two – hopefully longer than this because it was over too fast – but even if it’s not more from Mara and her friends, I’m still looking forward to seeing what Lina Chern writes next.
You can buy Sparkle Shot on Kindle or in paperback from Amazon, or you could treat yourself to some Bad Santa Bucks from Fahrenheit themselves and buy a few of their books – the discount gets bigger the more bucks you buy – and given that I’ve already mentioned two Fahrenheit books that have been BotWs and I’ve also recommended Death of a Nobody and Murder Quadrille (this is why I think I’m getting repetitive with my love of Fahrenheit, but honestly, so many good books) that’s five there – even if you only buy the first Sam Jones book and not the series… And if you’re still not sure, both Sparkle Shot and Barista’s Guide to Espionage would be good books to read if you’ve read Stephanie Plum or any of the other Janet Evanovich thriller series and are looking for where to go next. And on that encouragement to buy books I’ll go away before I buy more myself.
A quite while back now (September, yikes) I had a little look ahead to some of the books that I was excited about this autumn. And now I’ve read a few of my picks, I thought it was time to give you an update in the form of a bonus post…
Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple(6 October)
I was worried about hating this, but this is neither good Semple or bad Semple – it’s somewhere in between. But the good news here, is that I’ve worked out what I like about Maria Semple’s writing and what I don’t. I don’t like being inside the head of her female leads – they’re self-centred, middle-aged quirky-to-the-point-of-irritation and they drive me crazy. But viewed through the eyes of someone else (more normal) they can be funny and touching. And that’s why I liked …Bernadette – because she’s not there for most of the time and it’s Bee who’s trying to work out what’s going on. This didn’t make me tear my hair out like This One is Mine did, but it did make me vaguely annoyed. So lesson for the future: if Semple’s next book is written from the perspective of a woman with children then I won’t bother reading it.
The Wangs vs The World by Jade Chang(3 November)
Well I liked this, but I didn’t love it. May be I was reading it too soon after Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, or maybe the fractured elbow was impeding my sense of humour. I think my problem is that there wasn’t a family member that I loved – and I wanted to fall in love with one (or more of them). Each of them has a frustration (or two) about them which stopped me from embracing this as fully as some of the people I’ve heard recommending it have. It’s a good road trip book and it was funny in places, but it wasn’t hilarious. And I really wanted it to be.
The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch(3 November)
I loved this so much. So much. There’s magic, and the super-rich and posh school kids and all sorts of new complications. If you like the other books in the series, I suspect you’ll like this – but the overarching story is not finished yet and there is a frustration that comes with that, along with a delight that there should/will be more from Peter and the Folly. I read it too quickly – once I started reading it that is – and now I suspect I may have a long wait until the next installment appears. I’ll have to console myself with the graphic novels in the interim.
I still haven’t read Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson(22 September) or How to Party with an Infant by Kuai Hart Hemmings(8 September) because I haven’t managed to get copies of them yet, but I live in hope that one or both of them may appear in my Christmas stocking…
I know, you all looked at my list of books I read last week and just knew that this was going to be my pick for BotW didn’t you? So sue me. Today feels momentous and a little terrifying with what is going on in the world, and what better way to take your mind off what may or may not be about to occur than a charming children’s novel about school girls solving mysteries.
A Christmas book in early November? Bite me.
Long standing readers will be familiar with my love of Robin Stevens’ Wells and Wong series (see here, here, here and here) and Mistletoe and Murder (which incidentally shares its name with a Daisy Dalrymple mystery which is also very good) is the fifth installment in the series and sees the girls spending their Christmas holidays at Cambridge visiting Daisy’s brother. But of course the girls can’t help but run into an investigation – this time in competition with their rivals at the Junior Pinkertons. But soon suspicious accidents have turned deadly and the girls are in a race against time to figure out who did it and why.
I’ve said before that these books are the perfect blend of Agatha Christie and St Clares stories and I stand by that – they’re brilliant and inventive and I wish they’d been around when I was the “right” age. I practically gobbled this up in one sitting, which was a mistake because I’d already read the Halloween short story and now I have to wait months and months and months for the next one. This would make the perfect Christmas book for the young reader in your family – or the big kid if you’re like me. It’s the perfect escape from the trials and tribulations of the grown-up world.
But if you’re not into middle grade fiction (more fool you) and still want some escapism, I can also heartily recommend Gail Carriger’s latest novella – Romancing the Inventor – in which we see one of the most beloved side characters in her steampunk world, Madame Lefounx, finally get over the pesky Angelique and find love again. It probably works best if you’ve read the Parasol Protectorate series, will work even better if you’ve also read the Finishing School series. I loved it – it’s a great, fun love story with some guest appearances from old favourites. What more could you want?
Robin Stevens’ Wells and Wong books should be available where ever children’s books are sold (if they’re not, ask them why), but here are links to Mistletoe and Murder on Amazon, Kindle, Waterstones, Foyles and Kobo.
Romancing the Inventor is one of Gail Carriger’s self published works – so it’s not quite as available in the shops, but you can get it on Kindle and on Kobo or special order it in paperback from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles.
I know, I know, I know. This is a day late. I have excuses – relating to post nightshift haze and then a few days away and only remembering I hadn’t written this post at 11pm after a couple of cocktails. And as drunk blogging doesn’t end well, I thought it could wait til the cool light of day and rational thought, especially as this week’s pick is Important to me.
So this week’s BotW is Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors and Trailblazers who changed history. Written by Sam Maggs, this is a series of potted biographies of women who you may not have heard of, but who have played an important role in various areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Espionage and Adventure – aka areas that tend to be seen as traditionally masculine. There are 25 featured women – but at least the same again get bite-sized mentions too. I’m a history graduate (admittedly specialising in British and European history) and there were a lot of names here that I had never come across before – and many fascinating stories.
I’m definitely not the target market for this – which is written (I think) very much with tweens/early teens in mind – and some of the language started to annoy me a little, but that’s because it’s written in a vernacular that is not really mine, although I do think that the choice of language will appeal to the intended audience. It’s got lovely illustrations for the 25 women, which is a nice touch. My copy was an e-galley for my kindle e-reader so I don’t think I got the full effect, but from what I’ve seen the actual book itself looks attractive and appealing.
This would make a good book for an upper-primary school/middle school age girl and would also be a great addition to school libraries for that sort of age of child. I’ve said there that it would be a good book for a girl – because I think young girls need reminding that they can have adventures too, and be brave and daring and that careers in things like science and tech aren’t just for boys. But boys need reminding that too – and that there have been women through history doing important things, often against the odds and against societal expectations. I saw this video last week, and it may have been the nightshifts, but it got me all emotional. And it’s an important message for children to get – girls can be anything, do anything – nothing is a man’s job – or a woman’s job.
Anyway, lecture over. As I said, my copy was an e-galley via NetGalley, but this is out now and you can get it from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles as well as on Kindle and Kobo – although I think it would look best in the hardback actual book.
This was a tricky decision, but I had a Margery Allingham as BotW a couple of weeks back so I went for a romance option instead. And it’s another contemporary romance as well! Daughters of the Bride is the latest from Susan Mallery – who has more books than I can count on Goodreads, even if this was the first of hers that I have read.
Courtney, Rachel and Sienna are preparing for a wedding – their mother’s. After their father died when they were young she’s found love again. But each of the three sisters has a secret (at least) from the others. Courtney is the misfit – she doesn’t feel as together as her sisters and she’s got a plan to prove to her family that she’s not the failure they think she is. Sienna’s boyfriend just proposed in front of all her friends and family, but with two failed engagements behind her, has she picked the right man this time? And Rachel has been divorced for a while now – but as her husband takes a more active role in her son’s life, she’s forced to reexamine the reasons for their break up and whether she’s ready to move on.
I really liked this book – all the sisters have strong stories and have been affected by the death of their father and the ramifications on their lives differently and it is a rollercoaster of emotions watching them work through their issues to get their happy endings. I had a favourite (I think you always do!) but the other two behind were pretty level. Their mum is a little harder to like at times – she’s tough and no nonsense and can be a bit self-centered, but as a reader you can understand why she behaved the way she did when her first husband died, even if you don’t understand her (seeming) inability to fully realise and acknowledge the effect it had on her children.
So there you have it – another contemporary romance book of the week and another book that would make a great beach read if you’re off to sunnier climes. My copy came from NetGalley, but you can get it on Kindle or Kobo, although the hardback price on Amazon is ridiculous (£20.40 as I write this) so don’t do that – it’s not long enough to be twenty quids worth of book!
This week’s BotW is Sarah Morgan’s latest book – Sunset in Central Park. This is the second book in her new series – about three young women who leave Puffin Island (the location of her previous series) for the bright lights of New York and a career in events management.
This is Frankie’s story – and Frankie is extremely wary of relationships after watching the fallout from her parents’ divorce when she was a teenager. She avoids emotional attachments to anyone except her two closest friends – who she works with – and garden designer Matt, one of her friend’s brothers and the owner of the brownstone where they all have flats in Brooklyn. She’s determined to keep their relationship strictly platonic, even though he makes her insides feel a bit odd, because all relationships end and she wants to keep him in her life. But what she doesn’t know is that Matt’s been crazy about her forever, but has kept quiet because he knows how fragile she is. But as he finds out more about her hidden depths as they work together on a project, the sparks fly. Will he be able to convince her to take a chance on what they have?
This is romantic, fun and satisfying. You know where it’s going, but it’s so much fun watching the characters work through all their issues to come to a happy conclusion. Sarah Morgan has created a great group of strong competent women and is busy pairing them up with the men they deserve – equally strong and competent, and who compliment the girls – who definitely don’t need a man to complete them or fix their lives. They can fix their own lives and problems, but the men will support and help them as they do it. I did want to give Frankie a bit of a slap at times, but I always understood why she was behaving the way that she did. I think I preferred the first book in the series slightly* – but that’s because I’m more of a Paige than I am a Frankie.
I don’t have a paperback copy of Sunset in Central Park, but I do have other Sarah Morgans!
If you asked me, I would probably tell you that I don’t like contemporary romances, but that’s because when people say contemporary romance I think of billionaires and secretaries, doctors and nurses, nannies and lonely widowers, secret dukes and princes, secret babies and accidental pregnancies – none of which float my boat. I like smart heroines getting a happy ending – and if the books have a touch of humour, so much the better. Thinking about it – and looking at the downstairs keepers bookshelf – there’s a lot of contemporary romance there – the sort of books that 10 years ago would have been called chick lit. I don’t like chick lit as a term – but women’s fiction is too broad a description – so they probably would fall under the contemporary romance banner.
I only started reading Sarah Morgan because I met her at Sarah MacLean’s London tea-party and got given a free copy of one of the Puffin Island books (although I then went out and bought the first in this series and read that first after hearing Sarah Morgan talk about it on Smart Podcast, Trashy Books at the end of May) but it turns out that her latest books are exactly what floats my boat. There was a sampler for Eva’s book at the end of this one and it left me desperate to read a Christmas-themed book – in July. And you know my feelings on starting to read about Christmas too early.
My copy of Sunset in Central Park came from NetGalley – but you can get a copy from Amazon and Kindle (actually cheaper in book form at the time of writing) and I suspect possibly in supermarkets and other bookstores. Don’t be put off by the Harlequin logo on the spine – if you are, you’ll be missing out. I’m off to mine more of Sarah Morgan’s back catalogue – although I’ll never get through all of it and some of them are medical romances…
Happy reading!
*I read Sleepless in Manhattan the same week that I read The Rogue Not Taken or it would probably have been BotW that week.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 