Category: series

bingeable series, series

Mystery Series: Miss Dimont

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Happy Friday everyone, it’s nearly the weekend, so nearly and I’m back with a post about a historical mystery series.

It’s the 1950s in the town of Temple Regis on the coast of Devon, where Judy Dimont is a reporter at the local newspaper, The Riviera Express. Across the course of the series she finds herself not just reporting on murders in the town, but also investigating them because the local police are inclined to play things down and rule every thing death they can as an accident to protect the resorts image and keep the tourist trippers flooding in.

The first book in the series was a Book of the Week back in 2017 and I stand by what I said then: Judy has an excuse to be rootling around in murder investigations and the portrait of an English seaside town with delusions of grandeur is excellent. Over the course of the four books the secondary characters are developed as well as Judy’s backstory, which involves mysterious doings in the Second World War. I read these out of order – with the second one in 2019 and then coming back through for the other two last month and neither the gap nor the out of order-ness messed with my enjoyment of the books. As it’s been six years since the last one, I think we can probably assume that this is a completed series now, which is a shame since I would happily read more of them.

I got the first and fourth from NetGalley but bought myself the middle two when they were on offer at some point in the unspecified past. You can get them in Kindle or Kobo and they did come out in paperback, but I suspect they’ll be hard to track down (new at least).

Have a great weekend everyone!

detective, series, Series I love

Mystery series: Flaxborough

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Happy Friday everyone, it’s the last working day of August and I’m back with a classic and amusing mystery series.

Flaxborough is a sleepy English market town, in the sort of Lincolnshire-East Anglia part of the world. Our detective is Walter Pirbright, a CID inspector who is polite and decent and solid, if not the cleverest and most exciting detective you will ever read. But his down to earth normalcy means that there can be some quite outlandish happenings that go on around him without it seeming ludicrous. As you go through the series other regulars join him – including Miss Teatime, who arrives as a conwoman but nearly gets herself murders and yet still decides to stay in town. They also do a nice line in split point of view which means that the reader knows more than the police do, which is a lot of fun. Colin Watson apparently took a lot of inspiration from real people who lived in his town and if you’ve ever lived in a small town (or large village) you’ll be familiar with the idea of the local characters complete with their idiosyncrasies- and here they are amped up to eleven!

The first of these was originally published in the 1950s and the last in the 1980s, but I don’t think the same amount of time passes in the books! They were reissued a few years back at which point I read all of them as they came out, mainly from NetGalley but enjoying them so much I bought the ones I was missing, which tells you something about how much I enjoyed these. The twelfth and final one is 99p at the moment, but don’t start the series there – most of the rest are not £2.99 so go have a read of the blurbs and pick one that appeals if you don’t want to read them in order, although the first one is good so you could totally start there.

My favourites included Lonelyheart 4122, where middle aged women start disappearing after signing up to a lonely hearts agency; Charity Ends at Home which is a fun romp through charitable works turned vengeful and murderous; One Man’s Meat where a private investigator finds himself in over his head at a pet food company where the MD’s marriage is falling apart.

These are all available on Kindle and Kobo and I think I saw some in paperback when they first came out. But haven’t recently.

Happy Reading!

series

Series redux: Thursday Murder Club

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The movie comes out next week and we’ve got a little over a month to go until the release of book five, The Impossible Fortune, so it seemed like to point you at my posts about Richard Osman’s series about a group of crime solving group of pensioners from a retirement complex in the south of England. You can find my review of book one here, and my series post here. Of course this series has also spawned a gagillion lookalike covers and books – you can read Smart Bitches Trashy Books’ post about the covers here and listen to Sarah’s conversation with Kayleigh Donaldson about them here. And no I don’t know where my copies of the first and second ones are. Probably on loan somewhere. I think. I hope.

Have a great weekend!

romance, series

Romance series: Heartbreaker Bay

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It’s Friday and I’m back with another romance series for this week’s series post. This time another Jill Shalvis series – I’ve already written about her Lucky Harbor series and recommended a few of her others in recommendsday posts too.

Heartbreaker Bay is a series of eight connected romance novels centered around a renovated building in San Francisco, with characters coming from the residents of the building and employees of the businesses in it or nearby. In the centre of the building is a courtyard with a fountain, and the legend is that if you wish on the fountain you will find love. You know where this is going! You don’t have to read them in order – in fact I read them radically out of order because I borrowed loads of them from the library and read them over a fairly extended period. Half of the series are Christmas books and there are fill in novellas as well.

I was trying to pick a favourite of these but was struggling – by ratings it’s either Accidentally on Purpose or Chasing Christmas Eve, but I read them a while ago and who can tell if I’d still rate them above the ones I’ve read more recently. What I will say about all of these is that the characters have proper backstories, often with some trauma and have reasons for being wary of relationships and that often makes for the most satisfying romance novels for me. So maybe just start at the beginning and go from there!

These are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so the time is ripe for you to read them if you’re interest – that’s what finally got me to finish off the series now my local library and its hours are unpredictable…

Happy Friday everyone!

bingeable series, mystery, series

Mystery series: Sam Clair

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Happy Friday everyone, I’m back with another mystery series to talk about after I burned through three of the four books in this series a couple of weeks back, after having read the first one ages ago when it first came out and then forgetting to go back and follow up. Which, you know, is fairly typical for me given the state of the tbr pile…

Our amateur detective is Sam(antha) Clair, an editor for a small-ish publishing house who finds herself caught up in a string of murders across the course of the four books. The first book was a Murder of Magpies, where Sam’s caught up in a police investigation when someone decides that they really don’t want one of her books – a tell all about the fashion industry – to be published. In the second book, A Bed of Scorpions has one of Sam’s friends in trouble when his partner at the art gallery is found dead. In book three A Cast of Vultures Sam is caught up in neighbourhood drama when an house being used by squatters burns down and a body is found in the wreckage. And finally in A Howl of Wolves a trip to the opening night of a play, starring her friends from one of the other flats in her building, turns to tragedy when a real body appears hanging from the rafters instead of a dummy.

Sam is a great character – but she’s also surrounded by a cast of supporting characters who really make this sing. There’s her frighteningly clever and well connected solicitor mother, the handsome police inspector, Sam’s goth-y assistant and the various other people who live in the other flats in the converted house where she lives. I love a reoccurring character in murder mystery series and this has lots of really good ones. Sam hates conflict and will avoid (potentially) difficult conversations like the plague and means her relationship with Jake (sorry for the spoiler) the policeman who becomes her boyfriend has some real moments – where she should be telling him things and finds ways to avoid doing it.

Only three of these are available as e-books (although they are in Kobo plus in the UK at the moment if you’re a member there), the fourth is only available as a hardback, which I bought myself as soon as I finished reading book three because I really wanted to find out what happened next. These are Judith Flanders’s only novels as far as I can see, the rest of her writing is non-fiction history and while I’m sure they’re really good and interesting, it’s a shame because these are great and Sam is the sort of character you would like to have as a friend.

Have a great weekend!

series

Series Redux: Three Dahlias

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The fifth Dahlia Lively book came out while I was in Ghana the other week and was waiting for me when I got home, so this Friday I want to point you back in the direction of my series post about the Three Dahlias. The blurb for the new book promises Posy and Caro performing in two different plays in the West End when murder occurs, with Posy under suspicion amid tensions between our trio. I’m really looking forward to reading it. And we know there is a sixth book coming – but at the moment that is the last contracted book (per Katy Watson’s newsletter) so that could be it…

romance, series

Romance Series: Bareknuckle Bastards

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Happy Friday everyone. As I mentioned last week, Sarah MacLean’s first contemporary fiction book is out in the world, so this week I thought I’d take the opportunity to talk about one of her historical romance series while I wait to see if I can find a copy of These Summer Storms in the shops!

There are three books in this series, for three brothers and each has one foot in high society and one in the more dangerous streets around Covent Garden. In fact two of these were books of the week when they came out – that’s Brazen and the Beast and Daring and the Duke which are the second and the third respectively.

These started coming about about seven years ago, which was right when historical romance really started to pivot to include more stories that weren’t just happening in ballrooms but got out into the streets a little bit more. I have always really liked MacLean’s writing style – she has a wit and sarcasm that really appeals to me. And although these have sex in them, and are sexy, they’re not as 0-100 as a lot of books can be at the moment – there is relationship development before they jump into bed!

These were relatively easy to get hold of when they came out: they had UK paperback editions, although I bought two of mine from Word in the US and we won’t talk about what that cost me in postage because they are signed and they came with goodies! And I own at least one as an ebook too because they’re on Kindle and Kobo as well.

Have a great weekend everyone!

historical, series, Series I love

Series Update: Emmy Lake

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Happy Friday everyone! After breaking the rules on Tuesday with my book of the week, I’m back with another later in series book for this Friday’s series post, but I have a reason for this. It’s two years since the previous book in the Emmy Lake series and book four came out last week and I have read it and I wanted to report back.

So the first thing to say is that my prediction that the fourth book would arrive in 2025 was right, and the second thing is that this series is now complete! We rejoin Emmy and the gang in 1944 and by the end of Dear Miss Lake we finally reach the end of the war. In book four, Emmy and the team at Woman’s Friend are trying to find ways to keep morale up on the Home Front as the war drags on, but also starting to think about what might happen afterwards when it’s all over. Emmy’s journalistic career continues to flourish, and her husband Charles* is finally posted back in the UK. But there are still some challenges for the team to face before Victory in Europe finally arrives.

I’ve enjoyed reading this series so much, but every one of them has made me cry at some point – and this one is no exception. And without spoilers, it wasn’t (only) happy tears about the war finally ending for everyone. There is still peril in this one and it’s not insignificant peril. But it’s a book set in wartime, so it wouldn’t feel real if no one in the core group was ever in danger. I’m probably the most avoidant I’ve been of books with potential for deaths of key characters at the moment (murder mysteries don’t count) but I enjoy this series so much that I read it in the run up to release last week (thank you NetGalley for coming through on the copy for me) because I wanted to see how it ended. I’m sad it’s over, but I enjoyed it so much, and I look forward to seeing the characters that A J Pearce creates next.

As I just said, my copy was a preview copy, but it is out now in hardback and on Kindle and Kobo. You really should read the other three books first though to get the most out of it and the good news is that I’ve seen them in in shops on the regular so if you want to read them you shouldn’t have too many issues. Side note: the Audiobook for this series is read by Anna Popplewell, who was Susan in the three Chronicles of Narnia movies that came out about a decade ago.

Have a great weekend everyone!

*yes that’s a spoiler, but it happens in book 2 so what can I do?

mystery, series

Series Update: Secret Bookcase

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So back in November last year I did a post about Ellie Alexander’s Secret Bookcase series after the release of book four, but this week the final book in the series, A Body at the Book Fair, came out and I wanted to return for a quick update. First a recap of the set up: Annie works at a specialist mystery bookshop in a small town in California, but she actually trained as a criminologist before her best friend was murdered during their final project. In each book in the series she’s solving a murder of the week, but also inching closer to solving the mystery of what happened to her friend.

Back in November, I was getting fed up with waiting for the resolution of the murder and enjoying the murders of the week more. And as the series went on on, the mysteries the books have been trying to solve seemed to get less complex because of the need to move the other story on. But until the final instalment, the books had had mostly been satisfying on one front or the other: either the murder of the week was good or the progress on the background investigation made up for it. But in book six I’m not sure either side of the story works – the mystery-of-the-week is very thin, and the background mystery felt a bit anticlimactic too, for reasons which I can’t really explain without giving you spoilers.

At the end of the final book there is a note from Ellie Alexander saying that there is a spin off series coming in 2026 called The Novel Detectives, featuring Annie and her friends. And as I still like the characters and the set up, I’m hoping that this will be much more of a the murder of the week but with developments in their personal lives as the running strand and will get back to what I liked about the earlier books. I’ll be looking out for the first one anyway and will keep you posted!

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Series Redux: Mary Russell Mysteries

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Happy Friday everyone – and this week we had a new book out in the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. I’ve written about this series a couple of times, and while I retain my reservations about the massive age gap between Mary and Sherlock, I really enjoy the mysteries and the way that they weave all sorts of threads together. I will freely admit that I have read more books inspired by Sherlock Holmes than I have of the original Conan Doyle books, so if you’re more of a Holmes afficianado than I am, your mileage may vary.

My original series post for these came after after Castle Shade, which was the seventeenth in the series and the new one is book 19. In Knave of Diamonds Mary’s uncle reappears in her life after a long absence to ask for her help with his problems, one of which is his involvment in the disappearance of the Irish Crown Jewels, which is why his family disowned him in the first place. After a couple of books on the continent (Romania in Castle Shade and France in the Lanterns Dance) it looks like this one may see Mary and Sherlock head across the Irish Sea. I’m looking forward to reading it when I can get hold of it.

This latest is a hardback release so prices on the Kindle edition of Knave of Diamonds is commensurate with that. But the first two in the series are in Kindle Unlimited and the next three are £1.79 before the price jumps to £5.99 and then £7.99. But these are fairly easy to find in the shops new and used so there are options here if you want to try the series out.

Have a great weekend!