Most read author: tough to tell – two Jill Churchill books, two Tom Mead, but also some quite long non-fiction which might be more than both!
Books read in 2025: 284
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 803
A pretty slow start to the month, but a solid month in reading in the end because of the holiday and more than four hours on the plane to Gran Canaria and back. I’m particularly pleased with the number of books from the NetGalley list this month – I’m still way behind, but it’s my best month in ages on that front, so I’m going to try and keep that going if I can, although the actual physical pile is worryingly huge at the moment so I need to try and get that down too!
Bonus picture: some more sunshine and palm trees from my reading spot on holiday!
*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – but not this month!
I’m a big fan of Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock series, so it would be remiss of me not to mention that Thomas has a new book out this week, even if it’s not another instalment in the adventures of Charlotte Holmes. The Librarians is a neither historical nor a romance – per the cover it’s “A Novel”. Those words can sometimes strike terror into my heart when it’s an author that I’ve enjoyed in other genres, but the blurb is promising. It’s set in Austen, Texas with four librarians whose secrets are threat to come out into the open when two bodies are found in the library after a murder mystery themed games night. This one looks like it’s only out in hardback in the UK, no Kindle version, so I may have to wait a while to read it, but I will be keeping my eyes peeled for it in the shops.
It’s the start of October today, so I’m back with the Quick reviews for September, and stats will pop up later in the week. And September was quite a ride on the reading front. It really has. I’ve read some good stuff and some less good stuff, I’ve struggled with books for BotW at some points, but I’ve ended up at the end of the month with plenty of books on the list to chose from to talk about here, but I’ve decided that this month it’s a follow up special…
Chris at the Kennels by Patricia Baldwin
It’s been a while since I did a Girl’s Own book, and a year since I did my post about Girl’s Own career’s books, and so I’m popping this one in here as a follow up. This is another evangelical career book – so Chris finds God while she carries out an apprenticeship at a kennels. Because in the 1960s it seems that breeding dogs and showing them and doing a little bit of boarding for other people’s dogs was enough to pay two salaries as well as supporting the owner. Chris is a twin and grew up on a farm, but instead of staying on at school and trying to get into university she wants to leave and work with dogs. I have no idea how accurate this is on a life of a kennel maid front, but I enjoyed seeing what drama Baldwin had found to keep the plot moving and break up the dog care info! Additionally, unusually for the Baldwins that I’ve read, Chris’s religious awakening happens from reading the Bible and from the other kennel maid’s scepticism about religion, rather than a religious person coming in and converting her!
Island Calling by Francesca Segal*
I mentioned that this was coming out back in June and now I’ve read it, I am reporting back. I really think you need to have read the first one to make the most of this but it is part two of a trilogy, so that’s not really a surprise. But for me, having enjoyed Welcome to Glorious Tuga, it was lovely treat to return to the characters and the great setting and get another slice of island life. This time we have the addition of Charlotte’s bossy mother unexpectedly arriving on the island. There is some peril here, but it never feels too awful so it’s a charming and relaxing read. As far as I can tell there’s no news yet on a date for part three, but if it follows the pattern of this one, it should be next summer sometime.
The Paris Spy by Sarah Sigal*
And I’m also reporting back in on this one which came out a couple of weeks ago. The follow up to The Socialite Spy takes Lady Pamela More to Paris on the eve of WW2, and back into the orbit of Wallis Simpson, now Duchess of Windsor. I didn’t think this was as successful as the first book because it has a less defined task for Pamela to do, and it also covers a much wider and more chaotic time. It continues to follow fairly closely to what I have read about the antics of the Windsors after the abdication, so it feels pretty accurate on a history front, I just think it’s trying to do too much and doesn’t always resolve things as successfully as you want, although I suspect there’s a third book in mind… and I did enjoy this enough that I would read it though if there was!
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!
So as you saw on Saturday I’ve been on holiday, and so the list is appropriately holiday-y. My goal for the holiday was to read the same number of books from NetGalley as other books and across the week and a bit I basically did that (once you exclude the audiobooks) so I’m pretty pleased with that. Go me. For once a target I achieved!
Happy Sunday everyone, I hope everyone is making the most of the weekend, and that it hasn’t turned too-too cold and wet where you are. I’m back with another podcast today, which is the next series from the presenter of Scamanda, the podcast that inspired the documentary series that featured in a previous Not a Book.
Unicorn Girl is about the rise and fall of Candace Rivera, a divorced single mum in Utah, who built an online community based around her successes as a nurse and a CEO of multi-million dollar companies. But as you can probably guess, all wasn’t quite what she wanted you to think it was. Over the course of nine episodes, Charlie Webster tries to work out what was actually going on and who Candace really was. The first episode of this dropped into the Scamanda feed in mid-August, I listened to it and then went straight over to the Unicorn Girl feed to listen to episode two. And then I got Apple Plus so that I could listen to the rest of the series straight away rather than having to wait for a new episode each week.
Now that was partly because I have poor impulse control, but also because early on Charlie says that there’ll be times when you’re listening when nothing seems to add up, but by the end of the series it will all make sense. And that’s a brave thing to say (in my opinion!) when you’re trying to get people to keep listening, but it also intrigued me. And she’s not wrong. Candace’s con (so to speak) is a lot more complicated than Amanda’s was. In Scamanda, Charlie jumps backwards and forwards in time a bit but Amanda is really just doing the same con more than once. But Candace has got a lot of things going on and is juggling a lot of balls and that all makes it a lot more difficult to follow.
It must be really hard to follow up a series as successful as Scamanda, because so much is depending on finding the right story – the world of podcasts is littered with attempts to follow up something great that haven’t quite come off. It needs to be similar enough that your previous audience will still be interested, but not so similar that it feels like a total retread. And Candace’s story has got a lot going for it on that front, not least interviews with loads of the women who were working for or friends with Candance as well as Candace’s own voice from her social media posts. But there’s just so much going on. However, without wanting to give too much of a spoiler, this has more resolution to it than Scamanda did when I first listened to it (although no more than the documentary series had by the time that it came out).
I hope that doesn’t sound too negative – because make no mistake, I binged this podcast – listening to all nine episodes in less than three days as well as obviously signing up to a subscription service to be able to do that. I do think Scamanda is better, but if you’re interested in the same sort of Utah/Mormon-adjacent/religion-adjacent sort of things that I am (and I’ve written about enough of them at this point) then it’s worth a look. I’ve even held onto this post for a few weeks so that almost all the series is available without having to subscribe to anything! You’re welcome.
Happy Saturday everyone! I’ve been on holiday – and so I’ve been at the airport bookshop again. And please note, these were not taken this week – so they’re pre-Richard Osman release, which I’m expecting to be dominating from this week on.
But let’s start with the “biggest books” of the week which continue to be Coleen Hoover, Frieda McFadden and Sarah J Maas with a spattering of other books in silimar ends of their genres like Elsie Silver and Rebecca Yarros.
Lots of familiar names here too – last year’s Osman now in small paperback, Liane Moriarty, Lisa Jewell, Jojo Moyes, Harlan Coben but I’m really pleased to see how often Bob Mortimer is popping up in these displays now. I don’t think he’s my thing but I will give one a go at some point because I’ve heard good things about them being smart and funny. And we need more smart and funny.
I was a bit disappointed with the non-fiction paperbacks – I was hoping for more stuff I hadn’t seen or at least more stuff that wasn’t self help or podcast tie-in books. I’ve picked up some interesting stuff from this very bookshop before (Going Infinite for example) that was a bit different.
And now on to the airport exclusives aka the stuff that’s only in hardback everywhere else. And we have some more of the same names from the biggest books display but also the latest Emily Henry, the very new R F Kuang, and the new Adam Kay (as in This is Going to Hurt) murder mystery. But surprisingly not Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
And it should be noted that I clearly missed a display somewhere because one of my airport purchases was Entitled, the new Andrew Lownie about the Duke and Duchess of York and I cannot find it in any of my pictures, but the other was Fast Money – seen on the bottoms row here about the finances of Formula One.
And finally because I can hear you wondering about Dan Brown and yes, they did have the new Robert Langdon but and this is a big bit – only in hardback, not as the large format paperback which I found really interesting – and not many of them which given the big ad they had for it may well mean they had sold a fair few copies!
The TV adaptation of Reverend Richard Coles’ first novel in the Daniel Clement series arrives on TV soon so I thought now was a good time to write a series post about them, although I’ve already written a few bits about them in other posts.
Lets start with a reminder of the set up: It’s the late 1980s and Daniel Clement is Canon of the parish of Champton, a seemingly quiet and sleepy village (albeit a fairly large village judging by the number of shops it has!) where secrets are hiding below the surface. Murder Before Evensong sees battle lines being drawn in the village over a proposal for a lavatory in the church. You wouldn’t think that could lead to murder, but when it comes to parish rivalries, anything is possible! Trust me, I’ve seen things. One of the things that I like about the books is the fact that I can recognise a lot of the processes and ceremonies of the church as very similar to the ones that were happening in the parish church that I went to as a child.
There are four books and a Christmas novella in the series now and so far Coles has managed to find different places and set ups to put Daniel in so that Champton doesn’t quite feel like the St Mary Mead or Cabot Cove of the Midlands. So in book two he’s in a neighbouring parish that is being merged with Champton. In book three he’s taken a sabbatical from his day job to go back to the monastery where he trained and in book four there’s a movie crew filming at Champton House.
As you can see from the trailer above, the adaptation has Matthew Lewis aka Neville Longbottom as Daniel and Amanda Redman as his mother Audrey. It’s going out on Channel Five, which means it could go either way for me: I really liked the first couple of series of their All Creatures Great and Small adaptation, but I haven’t had a lot of luck with their other mystery series. But I remain hopeful and I may yet report back…
We are in the thick of the autumn releases now, and I’ve already written about some of thebig hitters coming ahead of this Christmas, so today I wanted to mention a slightly more under the radar one: You Had To Be There by Jodie Harsh. The subtitle is An Odyessy through Noughties London, One Night At a Time. If you weren’t around in the early years of the 21st century, Jodie Harsh is a DJ, nightclub promoter and drag queen who was popping up all over the place in the pre-social media era of glossy celeb magazines because of her nightclub nights. Before Ru Paul’s Drag Race appeared, she was probably one of a handful of drag queens that people in the UK might have been able to name.
A lot has changed in London’s nightlife scene since the early noughties. While pubs and clubs across the country have struggled, the London nightclub and gay scene has been particularly badly hit – whether it’s all the venues that disappeared as a result of the construction of Crossrail (now known as the Elizabeth Line) around Tottenham Court Road Station or the masses of redevelopments that have happened in Soho which have seen small venues disappear because of construction work, rising rents or licencing issues because of the bougie new apartment buildings. I was never much of a club goer, but I was (and still am) a theatre goer who was on the perifery of some of these changes as well as an avid readers of the sort of magazines that featured stories about London nightlife, so I’m really looking forward to reading this.
After last week’s look at the non-fiction, this week I’m using Recommendsday to talk abou the big fiction releases of the autumn as we hurtle towards Christmas.
I’ve already written about the new Dan Brown which came out on the 9th, but tomorrow sees the other biggie September with the arrival of the new Richard Osman. After taking a break from the Thursday Murder Club last year with We Solve Murders, he’s back with the fifth in the series The Impossible Fortune, which sees the residents of Coopers Chase back on the case. You’re going to want to have read the previous book because there was a Big Plot Development at the end of The Last Devil to Die.
Also out this week is the new novel from Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You. This is inspired by Lockwood’s own experiences suffering the effects of Long Covid on her memory and promises to be a slightly trippy and inventive read. I read Lockwood’s memoir Priestdaddy years ago and still need to read her first novel before I get around to this one, even if I was ready to start reading books set during Covid. Which I’m not sure I am yet!
The new R F Kuang, Katabasis is already out and completely everywhere. This is Kuang’s first book since Yellowface and is a return to speculative fiction. If you are a reader of Literary Fiction, there are lots of the Big Authors who have books out this autumn – from Salman Rushdie with The Eleventh Hour on November 4, to Ian McEwan’s “literary thriller and love story” What We Can Know (which came out last week) and William Boyd’s historical spy novel The Predicament which is his second book featuring Gabriel Dax (the first being Gabriel’s Moon).
There are also new books from some of the mega thriller writers: John Grisham has The Widow (October 21) which is being described as his first whodunnit as well as being a legal thriller. Jeffery Archer also has a new thriller out this week with End Game. In (other) books that are Not For Verity there is also the Nicholas Sparks and M Night Shyamalan book Remain
But what am I waiting for, I hear you ask. Well my autumn pre-orders include Olivia Dade’s Second Chance Romance. This is the second book in the Harlot’s Bay series, and I’ve had it pre-ordered since March, because that is how I roll. If you read At First Spite, this is Karl the Baker’s story, and the heroine is an audiobook narrator who moved away from town after high school. I can’t wait. It’s out at the end of November. I’ve also got the paperback of Katherine Center’s Love Haters ordered – the ebook came out at the start of the summer, but for some reason Past Verity went for the paperback and a longer wait!
The fifth H M The Queen Presents book, The Queen Who Came in from the Cold is out the same day – it’s the early 1960s, and The Queen is getting ready to go to Italy on the Royal Yacht when someone claims to have seen a murder from the Royal Train. There is another Sophie Hannah Poirot novel coming this autumn too – The Last Death of the Year – which sees Poirot arriving on a Greek island for New Year. These can go either way for me – I’ve liked two, disliked two and just picked up the one I haven’t read on offer to see how that one suits me.
And finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Stephen Rowley, author of The Celebrants and The Guncle, has a new one coming in mid October. Just a warning though that The Dogs of Venice is a novella – it’s already available on Audible and only lasts 80 minutes, so it’s quite pricey as a £20 hardback (no matter how much I love him).
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 