Category: series

series

Series: Vera Kelly

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Breaking away from the romance theme of the last few weeks for something different today. And this series is actually a trilogy, but it’s my blog and I’m not changing my title rules. Sorry, not sorry.

Anyway, to the books, which are about a female spy turned detective and have such great covers that how can you not want to pick them up? In Who is Vera Kelly, we meet our heroine in New York in 1962, where she is struggling to keep her head above water, working nightshifts at a radio station. But when she’s noticed by the CIA she suddenly finds herself in Argentina trying to infiltrate a group of student radicals and wire tap a politician. But after a coup she finds herself abandoned and has to find her own way home. In Vera Kelly is not a Mystery, she is rebuilding her life after the events of Argentina and in the final book, we’ve reached 1971 and she finds herself trying to solve her own girlfriend’s disappearance.

As you will all know by now I love mysteries, adventure capers and snarky heroines and this has all of that and an interesting setting to boot. If you like the Kinsey Milhone series, then you might want to try this. I wasn’t that familiar with the situation in Argentina in the 1960s, so that was interesting even beyond the spy caper and then the all of the detail of life for queer people in America in the 1960s and early 70s is also really interesting. And obviously it has clever mysteries for you to try and figure out. But mostly you’re there for Vera and to see how she manages to get herself out of the situations she finds herself in and how she manages to build a life for herself.

I originally heard about the first book when it came out in the US in 2018 and really wanted to read it, but it wasn’t easily available in the UK (imported only on amazon and not on Kindle at all) so I had to wait until I was in the US for the midterms – which is why my copy of Who is Vera Kelly is a different size to the copy of Lost and Found. And the situation was similar with the second one – until it won the Sue Grafton memorial award (see my comment above about being interesting to fans of the Kinsey Milhone series) at which point we suddenly got the second and third books in paperback and they all appeared on Kindle. As you can see I found the second two in Foyles the other week in the mystery department and this week I found the latest one on the romance shelves! And even better – the first one is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment in the UK if you are a subscriber and want to give it a try.

Happy Friday everyone.

American imports, cozy crime, series

Series: Library Lovers

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This Friday it’s another cozy crime series – and another from Jenn McKinlay. I wrote about her Cupcake Bakery series about a year ago, and now we’re on the other side of the US with her Library Lovers one.

Our sleuth is Lindsey, library director in the small coastal town of Briar Creek. At the start of the start of the series she is recently arrived in town and getting to grips with her new job and the characters and rivalries at the library. As the series progresses Lindsey gets more and more established in town and develops a group of friends and love interests. Obviously there is also a murder each book – not always in the library thank goodness, because otherwise who would dare borrow a book – but some how Lindsey is always involved enough to start detecting – I mean it wouldn’t be a cozy otherwise, would it!

I’m only seven books in to the series – there are fourteen – because they’re relatively hard to get hold of over here – but so far there’s enough progression in the running strands to stop them getting repetitive (or annoying) and the murders are pretty varied too. I don’t like them as much as I like the Cupcake mysteries, but they still make for a nice comforting read when you need that sort of thing.

If you’re in the US, you should be able to get hold of them fairly easily. If you’re in the UK, it’s trickier because they’re not available on Kindle if you have a UK account. But I think I have spotted them in bookshops on occasion- and obviously Amazon have the paperbacks…

Happy Friday!

romance, series

Romance series: Chance of a Lifetime

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With a new Kate Claybourn novel out this week, it seemed like the perfect time to talk about her Chance of a Lifetime series which I read over the last couple of months – and yes, like so many things it would have been quicker if I hadn’t gone on the Meg Langslow rampage. So sue me.

So this is a trilogy featuring three friends who win a lottery jackpot after buying a ticket on a whim. Each book features one of the women finding love and a happily ever after. Beginners Luck is about Kit, a materials scientist who has spent her adult life building herself the stability that her chaotic childhood didn’t have. She uses some of her lottery win to buy a fixer-upper to turn into her first real home. But standing in her way is Ben who has returned to his home town to try and recruit Kit for a corporate gig. Book two is Luck of the Draw, featuring lawyer Zoe who uses her winnings to quit the job she hates and to try and make it right for some of the people whose cases she was involved in. Aiden’s brother died in a wrongful death case that Zoe worked on – but when she turns up at the family home to try to make amends instead of sending her away he asks her to pretend to be his fiancée to try and help him buy a campground as part of his brother’s legacy. And finally Best of Luck is Greer who uses her winnings to go back to college and try and finish the education that she missed out on and to prove to her overprotective family that she’s independent. But when she discovers a problem that might stop her graduating. Alex is a world renowned photographer and Kit’s brother – and back in town for her wedding – and finds himself agreeing to help Greer with the photography projects that she needs to complete to get her degree.

I had trouble picking my favourite – I lurch between Kit and Zoe, but maybe give it to Zoe because the set up for her romance is so difficult that I wasn’t sure it was going to be fixable. I mentioned the fact that Ali Hazelwood has blurbed Georgie, All Along yesterday and if you like heroines with jobs in Stem, definitely go for Kit and Beginner’s Luck. I liked Greer’s story – but I did mostly want to strangle her family who take infantilising her to whole new levels, even if there is some reason for it. Of course there is a chance that I came to Greer’s story having read too much Meg Langslow where there is a tight knit family, but it all has a humour about it, that these don’t have so it may be a me thing.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a romance trilogy to read, these would be a good choice. Equally if you’ve just read the new Kate Claybourn and want more – these would be a good place to go to. As you’ll see I managed to buy one of the series twice, but I got them all on offer so I don’t begrudge it. And it made me laugh that I managed not to have a matching set despite owning one of them twice. Anyway, these are easily available from your ebook vendor of choice – Kindle has the three book omnibus for £3.99 at the moment, but the single books are £1.99 for book one and three or 99p for book two as I write this.

Happy Reading!

crime, series

Mystery series: Christy Kennedy

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For the first series post of the new year (yes I spent nearly two weeks looking back at 2022 and looking ahead to 2023), we’re going back in time to the late 1990s and a London-set mystery series from a time before smart phones and being able to google anything you don’t know.

Inspector Christy Kennedy is from Ireland but his patch is Camden, in North London and across the series he investigates a series of murders across his patch. He’s also involved with a local journalist ann rea (her spelling/capitalisation) who isn’t quite as convinced about the relationship as he is. The first book in the series was I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass, which sees Christy investigating a record producer who has gone missing and later turns up dead, but the second book, Last Boat to Camden Town, is actually a prequel where you see ann and Christy meet during the investigation into the death of a doctor found dead in a canal. Paul Charles worked in the music industry for years – managing bands, being an agent and programming the accoustic stage at Glastonbury, so when the books are dealing with the music industry – and they often are, see also the titles – it’s from an actual position of knowledge from someone who was there at the time and that’s the sort of detail that I love.

And it’s delightful – although a little bit disturbing – to see 90s London in a book and realise how much everything has changed. I mean I know that everything has changed over the last *gulp* 25 years, but this is definitely an era that I remember – although I wasn’t reading crime fiction at the time – so it’s weird to see how much things have changed over just a portion of my lifetime! When I first read these, it did send me on a bit of a 90s crime jag – if you were around this blog at the time you may remember me doing these and the Sam Jones mysteries around the same sort of time as each other – and I’ve since been picking up the Liz Evans’ Grace Smith series whenever I spot them too. There’s something about this sort of era that means that murder mysteries really work – maybe it’s because a lot of the stuff that’s been written now has gone super gruesome or psychological and I’m not up for that, or maybe it’s just that because it’s in the past it gives me a bit of a remove from stuff and means I can deal with it a bit more. Anyway, I love discovering old crime series that I missed – so do stick any more you can think of in the comments.

Buying this series is where it gets tricky – I read the first five of the series when Fahrenheit Press republished them nearly six years ago. I’ve since picked up the sixth, and have just ordered the seventh while I’ve been writing this and then there are another two after that that I haven’t read. I’m just going to point you at Paul Charles’s own website and the info he has there and hope that’s the best option!

Have a great weekend everyone!

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

Series of the Year 2022

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So this is the point where I look back on the series I’ve read this year and pick out some highlights for you.

Let’s start with a new to me discovery – Her Majesty the Queen Investigates. These were fun cozy Murder mysteries with a royal twist. As I said in my series post about them, I think they work best in slightly closed settings – or at least not London – but I liked the characters and the tone a lot. It’s a shame there’s a year until the next one.

Moving on to Richard Osman. This year we got the third Thursday Murder Club book and they continue to be both clever and witty and fun but occasionally heartbreaking. This is the series that spawned the copycats that are popping up all over the place at the moment – I’m reading my way through some of them so you don’t have to!

I really enjoyed the Nanette Hayes mysteries, but I wish there were more of them. I am still looking for more 90s crime series that I missed out on (too young at the time!) and can catch up on now because they do seem to work for me – see some of the Fahrenheit series I’ve enjoyed. And I have another of the Liz Evans books waiting that I picked up from the charity book stall at the shopping centre. If you have any suggestions please do whack them in the comments please.

I’ve also carried on working my way though some of the other series I’ve been reading for years. I’m up basically up to date on the Kate Shackleton series now, as well as Dandy Gilver. It continues to be tricky to find new historical-set mystery series that I don’t wish to throw across the room, but I’m still trying. I hope Carola Dunn is having a happy retirement but I do miss her and the prospect of a new Daisy Dalrymple. But I’ve basically binged the Mary Russell series over the last two years, which has been good, but that age gap still annoys me. Royal Spyness continues and Kerry Greenwood has written a new Phryne that I’m saving for a special occasion. All hail Kerry.

Roll on 2023!

Christmas books, series

Bingeable series: Holidays with the Wongs

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Continuing my festive-y seasonally appropriate sort of theme in a way, this week’s series is the Holidays with the Wongs novella collection by Jackie Lau.

This is a four novella collection based around holidays – starting with (Canadian) Thanksgiving, then Christmas, Chinese New Year and Valentines day. The premise is a set of siblings trying to avoid the matchmaking attempts of their parents, but finding love in the process. In trope terms we have only one bed in the Christmas story, where the hero and heroine get stuck in a snow storm, fake relationship, sort-of second chance and then no strings relationship turns real. I really enjoyed these – they’re funny as well as being romances and the Wong family are a hoot across the whole series. And as an added incentive, this series of novellas has just had the film rights bought – so you never know, you might be seeing them on a movie channel near you in the next few years

If you haven’t read any Jackie Lau before, they’re a really nice place to start. Lau writes really fun Canadian-set romances. And she has several other Christmas-set novellas too if you like them as well as full length novels. I recommended Donut Fall in Love in my late holiday reading post, but there are several of her books that I’ve really enjoyed over the last couple of years.

So you can buy these individually, but they’re also available as a bundle of all of them on Kindle and Kobo which is actually the best value way of doing it.

Have a great weekend everyone!

series

Wintry Series: Trisha Ashley’s Lancashire books

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So this is actually two separate series and one standalone. Or at least it is the way I’m counting them. But they are (in the main) really quite Christmassy and often Wintery too so they’re perfect for this time of year. And as we’re in the middle of a cold snap here at the moment, books for curling up in front of the fire with are great.

I’ve grouped them together because they are all set in little villages in Lancashire where you see some of the previous characters pop back up in later books – and two thirds of them centre around Christmas. I’ve written about Trisha Ashley before, but thear are probably my favourite of hers – as I said at the top, they’re warm hugs of books, perfect for cozy afternoons on the sofa under a blanket. They’re all romances – but the British kind, where there is a bigger plot going on that ends up in a romantic happy ending, rather than the more American one type – where any other plot is a side order to the romance. I hope that makes sense, I’ve only just come up with that sort of definition. And only now because I hate using the term Woman’s fiction so much.

Anyway, in the Sticklepond sequence is A Winters Tale is wintery but does have Christmas in it and is about Sophy, who goes back to her big historic family home for the first time after she inherits it. There’s a charming but dubious cousin and a strong and silent gardener as well as some eccentric older ladies and a possible ghost. Chocolate Wishes is not a Christmas novel, but has a chocolate maker and an ex-rock star in a second chance romance. Chocolate Shoes… is a shoe shop owner with a very annoying fiancé, who gets a mysterious next door neighbour. And the. We’re back to Christmas with a single mum with a poorly child and a handsome baker.

Then Twelve Days of Christmas and A Christmas Cracker are both set in Little Mumming – the first has a house sitter running into the home owner who is trying to avoid the village festivities, the second has a cracker factory and a woman who is trying to recover after she was framed for a crime she didn’t commit. And finally The Magic of Christmas has another cute Lancashire village with some unique festive traditions and the heroine is unexpectedly single with several men vying for her attention.

And to be honest if you can’t find something there to tempt you, I wash my hands of you. They’re all fairly easily available in ebook although as they’re fairly old now (A Winters Tale is the oldest and came out in 2008) I don’t know how easy they’ll be to find in the shops.

Have a great weekend everyone!

series

Wintry series: O’Neil Brothers

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We’re moving towards Christmas and so I thought I would start a seasonal series strand to help with your festive reading needs! And I’m starting with an old favourite author – Sarah Morgan and her O’Neil Brothers series, which is are nearly a decade old now – which is frankly quite scary.

And I’m going to say at the outset, that only two of the three books in this series are set at Christmas – but that’s two thirds so it still counts. This series is set in the Snow Crystal ski resort in Vermont. Our three heros are the O’Neil brothers – whose family run the resort. In the first book in the series. Sleigh Bells in the Snow, Kayla would rather ignore Christmas than celebrate, but she heads to Snow Crystal to try and win the marketing business of the resort’s owner Jackson. Suddenly Last Summer is about Elise, a chef in the town and the runway brother Sean, who is a surgeon who had a one night stand a few years back and are busy ignoring it. And the third book in the series is Maybe this Christmas where ex-ski racer and single dad Tyler ends up with his friend Breanna (who is secretly in love with him) staying in his chalet because the resort is overbooked. So that’s a career girl finding love while turning aroudn the fortunes of a ski resort, a second chance romance and a single dad romance. If you don’t want to read the whoel series – and why wouldn’t you because you’ll then get to see the previous couples pop back up again – you can pick your trope and start there!

Sarah Morgan has a long list of Christmas books now, so it took a bit of thinking to pick one to feature here – but I went for the O’Neil brothers, because the snowy setting makes it feel extra Christmassy. But if you want more Sarah Morgan Christmas, there is a Christmas book in her Puffin Island and From Manhattan with Love series as well as various standalone novels.

You should be able to get hold of these fairly easily in ebook, but I don’t know how likely you are to find paperbacks nearly decade on. But to get yo sgtarted here is the Kindle link to Sleighbells in the snow and a Kobo link to the “box set” of all three.

Happy Friday everyone!

series

Series reminder: TE Kinsey

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As I mentioned in the Kindle deals post – the series is on offer at the moment – and it turns out it’s because the new one is out on the 29th, so this Friday I’m taking the opportunity to remind you about the series as well as give you a quick review of the new one – as far as I’m able without spoilers!

You can get the full lowdown in my series post here from June, but the quick set up is that these are late Edwardian/early 1910s murder mystery novels featuring an eccentric widow (but not as old as you think when you see widow!) with a mysterious past and her maid who start solving mysteries after they move to the countryside and stumble upon a body. As the series goes on, extra strands get added and the core group of character widens, but they’re basically pre-World War One historical cozy crime stories.

In the new book, number nine in the series, we’ve reached 1911 and our intrepid duo are at the theatre celebrating Lady Hardcastle’s birthday when murder victim is discovered on stage at the start of the second half. Of course they’re soon investigating and trying to discover what’s going on behind the scenes of the theatre company that could have led to murder. I read it across about 24 hours and really enjoyed it – it was just the break from the day to day that I needed this week. I don’t think you need to have read the rest of the series to enjoy it, although if you have it will obviously work better for you. And as the rest of the series is on Kindle Unlimited at the moment, you can try the series in the next few days ahead of this coming out if you want to.

I got my copy from NetGalley – hence why I’m able to review it a few days before publication – but it looks like it’s going into KU when it comes out as well, so it may just be on Kindle to start with at least. And I’m never sure where this series lands in ease of getting hold of hard copy terms – there is a paperback listed of this new one, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of them in the flesh. I will try and remember to check Foyles next time I’m in there though! And if you want more books set in theatres, I have a whole post of those for you too!

Have a great weekend everyone.

binge reads, series

Bingeable series: Her Majesty The Queen Investigates

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The latest of these came out last week and as I recently binge read the three books I thought it would be a good time to make a post about them.

So the premise – as the series name suggests – is that the (late) Queen subtly helps solve some murders that have occurred in her vicinity. Set a few years back – when she was in her early 90s, she uses her assistant Rozie to do the investigating she can’t do. In the first in the series, The Windsor Knot, the victim is an overnight guest at Windsor and it’s a bit of a closed group sort of thing. In the second, our the victim is a staff member, found dead by the side of the Buckingham Palace swimming pools. And in the third it’s the brother of a neighbouring aristo to the Sandringham estate.

I think the first book and the third book are stronger than the second, but given that I binge read the series I can’t say that the issues with the second book put me off. For me these work best when the problems they are solving seem the most organic – I can’t quite work out why but the second book felt much more contrived and complicated than the first one – and the third one, for all that the third is out and about all over Norfolk.

But they are all easy to read, with nice details about the royal residences involved (there really is a swimming pool at Buckingham palace – who knew?!) and enough real bits and bobs about the Queen’s life and family to feel like the person you think you know through the media. I did wonder what would happen now that Elizabeth II has died, but they are set in the mid 2010s and at the end of book three it says there is a fourth book coming so there will be one more at least, and I will be looking out for it.

As I said earlier, the new book is out now in hardback – in fact as I write this Amazon has the hardback as a Black Friday deal. I do think you need to read them in order though – but the good news is that the first in the series is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment – so if you’re a member you can read it for free. The second one has a different title in the US – so be careful of that because it’s easy to think it might be a fourth one you haven’t spotted, but the actual fourth one isn’t out until early 2024. But if you’ve enjoyed things like the Royal Spyness series, this might be the contemporary cozy crime equivalent you have been looking for.

Happy reading!