Category: week in books

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 21 – October 27

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So… did I watch three episodes of Rivals back to back on Thursday night and a fourth on Friday while I was staying with a friend? Yes. Did this affect the amount of stuff I’ve read this week. Yes. Do I regret not having Disney + at the moment so I can watch the other four episodes? Absolutely. Is it for the best that I don’t have it at the moment? Also yes, but we’ll see how long my will power lasts because the last episode of Only Murders in the Building series four hits Disney+ this week… Anyway, to the actual books I did read, and I still need to do a bit of work at getting that long-running list down, but I may have got a little distracted by trying to get a couple more states ticked off my 50 states list for the year…

Read:

The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham

Murder: The Biography by Kate Morgan*

Digging Up History by Sheila Connolly

Passed in Pennsylvania by Sheila Benning

A Dark and Stormy Murder by Julia Buckley

Sugar Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke

Started:

n/a

Still reading:

A Jingle Bell Mingle by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy*

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

Astor by Anderson Cooper

One pre-order dropped onto my kindle, one book bought in Waterstones Piccadilly and one ebook bought

Bonus picture: my newest houseplant baby, which is growing fast!

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Haunted Ever After

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Oh I’m super predictable aren’t I? I finished this last week, it’s fast coming up for Halloween so of course it’s my pick today. I’m sorry. Well I’m not but i have to say I am.

As I said in my release day post, our heroine is Cassie, who moves to out of the city to Boneyard Key, which has the reputation as being the most haunted place in Florida. Her new house has just been renovated by a flipper but she soon discovers that it’s some what legendary on the local ghost tour and starts to investigate whether it is in fact haunted with the help of local cafe owner Nick. Nick’s lived in Boneyard Key all his life and he’s very wary of people who move in ti the area because they don’t stick around. So he’s got a tourists only rule for his relationships – or really situationships, but is Cassie the one who is different?

This is lots of fun. I’m not always great with books with the supernatural or paranormal but this hits just the right side of everything for me. It’s fun, it’s flirty and it knows what the rules of the world are. If you like Jen DeLuca’s Ren Faire series, this has the same sort of humour and sensibility but it’s in Florida and it’s got some ghosts. I really enjoyed it and I look forward to seeing what the next hook in the series is.

You can get it in kindle and kobo now, and theoretically paperback, but I haven’t spotted it in a shop yet – and I have been looking

Happy Reading.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 14 – October 20

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The Lily Bard binge reread is over, which means I’ll presumably find something else to fixate on imminently to distract me from reading the backlog. It was ever thus. That said, it wasn’t a bad week of reading, even if there are still a few on the long running pile. This week coming is going to be a busy one though, so we’ll see how that all plans out.

Read:

Shakespeare’s Trollop by Charlaine Harris

Shakespeare’s Counsellor by Charlaine Harris

Haunted Ever After by Jen DeLuca

More Work for the Undertaker by Margery Allingham

A Holiday for Homicide by Devon Delaney*

The Methods of Sergeant Cluff by Gil North

Unruly by David Mitchell

Started:

Digging Up History by Sheila Connolly

A Jingle Bell Mingle by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy*

Still reading:

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

Astor by Anderson Cooper

Bonus picture: party time in town on Saturday with an ABBA Tribute band to mark the end of the market square redevelopment. We were on our way to the cinema, so we didn’t stay that long!

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Autumn Chills

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This weeks BotW is one of my purchases while I was writing the Kindle Offers post after I got the sample which didn’t get to the end of the first short story (a Poirot one) and I needed to know who did it! So here we are, an Autumn book read in Autumn – check me.

This is a collection of twelve short stories from Agatha Christie, including all of her most famous detectives among them and with a preface that is a relevant section of her autobiography complete with a poem that she wrote about her childhood. It also includes the original version of Witness for the Prosecution which was turned into a film in the 1950s starring Marlena Dietrich and has been running in a site-specific production at London’ in an actual courtroom’s County Hall for more than five years.

As is always the case with me and Christie (and in fact crime more generally), I enjoyed the ones with the regular detectives more than I enjoyed the standalone ones but they’re all pretty good and I read the whole book in less than a day, which again given that it was a work day says a lot about how much I was enjoying it!

This is on offer at the moment in Kindle, and Kobo. It also comes in a hardback edition. There are also three other short story collections – for the other seasons obviously – and Midwinter Murder is currently in Kindle Unlimited if you want some more.

Happy reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 7 – October 13

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I’m having one of those spells where I’m finding it hard to settle down and read some of the things on the list – but instead bingeing through something else. In this case, it’s manifesting in Patti Benning novellas and some Charlaine Harris. Who can tell the mysterious ways my mind works, I certainly can’t. Anyway, the weather has been awful, it’s proper sit inside and read weather – I feel like my feet have been on the edge of being damp for about a month now it’s been so wet. Hey ho.

Read:

Autumn Chills by Agatha Christie

Mis-Steak-n Identity by Patti Benning

Steered Wrong by Patti Benning

Coroners Pidgin by Margery Allingham

Bite Moves by Patti Benning

Shakespeare’s Landlord by Charlaine Harris

Shakespeare’s Champion by Charlaine Harris

Shakespeare’s Christmas by Charlaine Harris

Started:

Unruly by David Mitchell

Still reading:

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

Haunted Ever After by Jen DeLuca

Astor by Anderson Cooper

Well, as usual in kindle offers week, a few ebooks bought – and I still have some samples left to read for other things so potentially more to come there. Two books in Foyles which you’ve already seen and a couple more ordered (but not yet arrived)

Bonus picture: some Art at the Outernet last week – it’s very cool but it makes my head hurt quite quickly!

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

Book of the Week, Forgotten books, mystery

Book of the Week: Tour de Force

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Once again my attempts to get another British Library Crime Classics post written is thwarted by picking one as a BotW. Hey ho. These things happen.

Inspector Cockerill is on holiday. He’s already regretting leaving Britain on a package tour by the time the plan lands in Italy, but by the time the tour group make it to a tiny island off the Italian coast the whole tour group is consumed with tension and rivalries. And then one of them is murdered in the hotel. Cockerill believes the killer must be one of the people who was on the beach with him and sets out to try and figure out who is responsible before the local police pick who they think is the culprit.

This is the sixth mystery featuring Inspector Cockerill and was first published in 1955. It contains some of the attitudes to foreign people that you often spot in British books of this era, but the difference between this and say, Shirley Flight – Air Hostess, is that I’m fairly sure Christianna Brand is doing that as satire – or at least for humorous reasons. The actual murder itself is a really cleverly constructed “impossible crime” and there are certainly plenty of people with motives for it. And when the solution is unravelled you see that all the clues were there and you just missed them. It’s pretty good.

This only came out in July – and it’s currently in Kindle Unlimited, which means you won’t be able to get it on Kobo at the moment. But the BLCC have published several other Christianna Brand books and some of them are not in KU at the moment so you should be able to get hold of those on Kobo if you want – and they’re petty good too. Green for Danger was a BotW as well and I’ve reviewed Suddenly at His Residence as well.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 30 – October 6

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The mornings are getting darker, we’re into October and it’s the final quarter of the year. Whatever happened to 2024? Anyway, a fairly ok week in books – not quite as much finished as I wanted, but there was a lot going on in the world.

Read:

The Hippopotamus Pool by Elizabeth Peters

Tour de Force by Christianna Brand

Dead End Street by Sheila Connolly

Nemesis by Agatha Christie

Death at the Dinner Party by Ellie Alexander

A View to A Grill by Patti Benning

Nose Knows by Patti Benning

Started:

Haunted Ever After by Jen DeLuca

Astor by Anderson Cooper

Still reading:

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

Well I started writing the Kindle Offers post so you know how that goes. But I didn’t buy any physical books so that’s something!

Bonus picture: misty mornings on the train continue…

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

Book of the Week, new releases, non-fiction

Book of the Week: Kingmaker

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As I said yesterday, it was a pretty easy choice this week. And this was actually the first book I finished last week – I didn’t manage to get it finished in time for the previous week’s list, and it would probably have been BotW last week instead of The Man Who Didn’t Fly (because there’s always a BLCC post in progress somewhere where I could write about that. But actually this works better in a way as this js somewhat Truman Capote adjacent and he would have been 100 yesterday, so sort of points to me on the timing of this review!

Pamela Harriman has crossed my reading path a couple of times in the past – most often as one of Truman Capote’s slightly more tangential Swans – namely the one who came and stole Slim Keith’s Husband and whose amorous exploits were among those featured in Capote’s notorious La Cote Basque 1965. Anway, Pamela’s reputation was as a modern courtesan, but in this book, Sonia Purnell sets out to re-examine Harriman’s life and legacy and position her as a secret political power player who learnt how to exercise soft power as Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law and took those lessons on to the rest of her life – to help Gianni Agnelli while they were lovers and then later to help the Democratic Party back to life in the late 1980s and early 1990s, culminating in her appointment as Ambassador to Paris by Bill Clinton and a role in American involvement in the Balkan conflict.

Considering that Harriman is most often referred to as a courtesan, or as someone who made a study of rich men’s ceilings, this is quite a reappraisal. But Purnell makes a strong case for Pamela as a woman who used the skills and talents that she had in the ways that were permitted as a woman at whatever the given time was, and then seeking to improve and better herself and her education throughout her life. I look forward to what I’m sure will be a number of articles in response to this to see what the response is but Purnell has had access to a wealth of papers and interviews to write the book and in her telling the story of Harriman’s life is remarkable and compelling – and hard to find parallels to.

My copy of Kingmaker came via NetGalley, but it came out in hardback about two weeks ago and so hopefully should be in the bookshops now. And of course it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: September 23 – September 29

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A total mix of reading this week – non-fiction, fiction, children’s fiction, murder mysteries, new stuff, old stuff. And it’s been a real mixed bag although it was fairly easy to decide what to write about tomorrow! And tomorrow is the start of a new month too, so there’ll be all the usual bits and pieces this week as well.

Read:

Kingmaker by Sonia Purnell*

Hitchcock’s Blondes by Laurence Leamer

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

Sniffed Out by Patti Benning

Ruff Stuff by Patti Benning

Worrals goes East by W E Johns

Rocking It by Patti Benning

High Style and Homicide by Kathleen Bridge*

Started:

Dead End Street by Sheila Connolly

Still reading:

Tour de Force by Christianna Brand

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

No books bought. A minor miracle.

Bonus picture: it has been so wet this week. It feels like it hasn’t really stopped raining, although of course it has. This is a photo from outside town at the start of the week (thanks dad!) – basically you shouldn’t be able to see any water here – the brook runs between the trees to the right – and is usually well out of sight.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

Book of the Week, detective, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: The Man Who Didn’t Fly

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It’s been a while since I picked a British Library Crime classic, but I’m back with another one this week because it’s really good.

So, four men are due to fly on a plane to Dublin, but only three board. When it goes down in the Irish Sea, there are no bodies and the police have no idea who the man was who didn’t board the plane. And so they turn to the Wade family, who knew the four men due to fly, and question them to find out. Over the course of the book we find out about the dynamics of the household and try to work out who on earth was the man who didn’t fly.

According to the introduction it was the first novel to be nominated for the both the Golden Dagger and its American equivalent – and I can see why. For perspective also nominated for the Golden Dagger (then called the crossed red herring) that year was Ngaio Marsh’s Scales of Justice. The following year it was won by previous BotW pick The Colour of Murder. It is not a conventional murder mystery and I’m going to warn you now: there are a lot of unlikeable characters in this one. But it’s so good. I read it in basically an evening and I didn’t care if it ended up making me go to sleep late. It’s that sort of book.

My copy came from a friend – who left a stack of secondhand BLCC’s with me because her bags were too full – but as with the others in the series it’s also on Kindle and I’m sure sooner or later it will turn up in their KU selection.

Happy Reading!