As the title says – there is a new Phryne Fisher book! Murder in Williamstown came out in Australia and New Zealand this week. It doesn’t have a UK release date yet – in fact Amazon.co.uk doesn’t even admit it exists at the moment, but it’s a great opportunity to remind you of how much I love Kerry Greenwood’s 1920s Lady Detective via my recent Phryne reread post as well as my original series I love post. Enjoy!
October Stats
Books read this month: 31*
New books: 25
Re-reads: 6 (all books)
Books from the to-read pile: 7
NetGalley books read: 5
Kindle Unlimited read: 7
Ebooks: 11
Library books: 0
Audiobooks: 0
Non-fiction books: 2
Favourite book this month: Probably Killers of a Certain Age
Most read author: Charlaine Harris – because of the Harper Connelly reread
Books bought: 6 ebooks plus another ebook preorder, and about 3 actual books
Books read in 2022: 320
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 652
A month that started with a holiday and plenty of reading time and had a rocky patch in reading terms in the middle but got back on track at the end of the month with a weekend away in Kent and some extra reading time! Interestingly I only realised putting this together that although I have listened to several audio books this month, they’re all ones that I’ve already counted once this year…
Bonus picture: a two holiday/trip month – here’s another picture from Sicily at the start of October!
*Usually includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – although this month it doesn’t!
Recommendsday: October Quick Reviews
As promised yesterday, here is this month’s batch of quick reviews – and stay til the end for the links to the other bits and bobs from this month.
The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Croft
The first of two British Library Crime Classics novels this month, this features a really intriguing series of disappearances. The Hog’s back of the title is a ridge in the North Downs near where Dr James Earl and his wife live. When the doctor disappears from his home, initially it seems like a domestic affair – with a husband giving up on an unhappy marriage, but then other people disappear mysteriously – including one of his house guests. Yesterday I mentioned that the suspense element of When Stars Collide doesn’t follow the rules of mysteries – well this not only follows the rules, at the end when Inspector French is talking you through his solution, it gives you the page numbers for the clues!
Death in the Tunnel by Miles Burton
The second BLCC is a variation on the locked room mystery – with the victim in a compartment on a moving train when he is shot. At first it seems like Sir Wilfred Saxonby has shot him self, but there’s no motive and soon inconsistencies appear and a murder investigation is underway. I had the solution- or most of the solution worked out before the end of this but it was still a good read, although if you’re only going to read one of these, maybe make it Hogs Back because that’s a totally baffling one for a long time.
The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatio Sancho by Paterson Joseph*
This was the very last book I finished in October and definitely deserves its mention here. This fits into the fictionalised real lives genre – in this case the life of a black writer and composer who lived in Regency London. As you might expect there are significant challenges facing him – and they are presented in this in the guise of a diary designed for his son to read when he is older (and it is suggested that Sancho will not be around to tell him them himself). Sancho was born on a slave ship and was given as a gift to three sisters who brought him up to be their servant before he escaped from them. I won’t say much more than that because it gives too much away – maybe I have already. The author is the actor Paterson Joseph who has spent two decades researching the life of his main character which he turned into a play before he wrote this novel.
And there’s a stack of other books I’ve written about – including older lady killers and other adventure stories, plenty of Halloween options if you still want spooky reading but also a really moving memoir and four series to get into
Happy Humpday!
Book of the Week: When Stars Collide
We’ve made it to November – the year is nearly over. And I’ve got all the usual goodies this week for the end of the month – quick reviews tomorrow, stats later in the week and book of the week today when I’m back in my happy place of romance.
When Stars Collide is the latest in the Chicago Stars series – about players at a (fictional) NFL team in the Windy City. I’ve mentioned these before – as many of them are variants on my favourite enemies to lovers trope and this is no exception. And there’s no actual football in this really as all the action takes off in the off season.
Our football player is Thad, the team’s back up quarterback, who has had been sent out on a publicity tour for a luxury watch brand who sponsor the team. Unfortunately, there is someone else on the tour too: Olivia, an internationally renowned opera singer. He thinks she’s a diva, she thinks he’s an uncultured jock and has a grudge against him. But of course over the course of the tour things change. Because this is a romance!
This has got a bit of a suspense plot line to it – maybe more minor peril than actual romantic suspense but it adds a little extra something to the romance plot, although I would say don’t expect it to follow the Rules of mystery stories if that makes sense and isn’t too much of a spoiler. I really liked that Thad was never rude about opera – in fact he likes Olivia’s singing right from first hearing it – and that both of their careers are taken equally seriously. I’m fed up with romances where one or other of the partnership abandons all their long held career dreams because: love. This is definitely not that. What it is is a well put together romance with an interesting hero and heroine with just enough obstacles in their way for the reader to understand why it takes them a whole book to get together.
When Stars Collide is currently £1.99 on Kindle and Kobo. I suspect you probably won’t be able to get hold of it in a shop without ordering it it as it’s order only on Foyles website and has a two week lead time. But it should be orderable from your local if you want it.
Happy reading!
The Week in Books: October 24 – October 30
So as you’ll see, there is a massive Harper Connelly binge as the start of the week and a weekend away at the end of it. And I still managed to get some other stuff read and made progress on the long runners even if you can’t tell that from the list. So it’s a net yay me. And this is the end of October, so we have all the usual things coming up this week for your delectation.
Read:
Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris
Grave Surprise by Charlaine Harris
Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris
Grave Secret by Charlaine Harris
The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Willis Crofts
Rooted in Deceit by Wendy Tyson
Some Hauntings Never Go Out of Fashion by Rose Betancourt
When Stars Collide by Susan Elizabeth Philips
Started:
Snowed in for Christmas by Sarah Morgan*
Dashing through the Snowbirds by Donna Andrews
Still reading:
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Going With the Boys by Judith Mackrell
Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra*
Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Inverts by Crystal Jeans
The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatio Sancho by Paterson Joseph*
The Empire by Michael Ball*
One book bought – but I was going on holiday so it’s practically a requirement!
Bonus photo: some monastic ruins and historic buildings out the back of Canterbury Cathedral cloister. I love a good cathedral.
An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Not a Book: Addams Family movies
I’m finishing the Halloween-y themed posts with two of my favourite films of the early 90s that also happen to be very weird and the perfect films to watch at this time of year – whether you’re an adult or a kid.
So the films in question are the early 1990s live action Addams family movies, which I think are pretty much the perfect kids scary movies where there is something for the adults too. My favourite is Addams Family Values, for reasons which I will come to but they are both pretty blooming brilliant. I had watched some of the black and white TV series (although I think I had seen more of the Munsters than the Addams) but never read any of the actual cartoon strips so the characters existed to me already – but these movies are the way I see them in my head. Angélica Huston and Raul Julia are Morticia and Gomez to me and their relationship is a perfect alchemy of creepy and nuts about each other.
The plot of the first film sees the reappearance of Gomez’s long lost brother Fester – or is he? He’s in train with two con artists who have designs on the Addams’ house and wealth. I nearly said that the plot is quite thin, and that it does a lot of establishing of the characters, but there is actually quite a lot of plot it just doesn’t always seem to hang together very well, but it does keep you guessing about whether “Fester” is or isn’t the long lost brother.
Now to the sequel, and first the plot: Morticia has had a new baby and brings in a nanny to help. Uncle Fester falls in love with the nanny, but is she all she seems? Each strand of this is great – Fester and Debbie, Debbie and the kids, the kids at summer camp. I prefer the sequel partly because it has a better plot and I think it has better one liners, but also because I think the holiday camp section is just brilliant – it does everything you could want if you have ever read a book about an American summer camp (or watched the Hayley Mills Parent Trap). I defy anyone to come away from this without having laughed at something.
These are on tv fairly regularly – and I think they will be in the next few days, but you can rent them from some of the steaming services too. You won’t regret it. And here’s some summer camp to show you what I mean!
Books in the Wild: Sainsbury’s Colchester
Did I do a sweep of the supermarket book selection when I was in Essex last week. Of course I did. Was it super weird that the Sainsbury’s I used to shop in was knocked down a decade ago and there’s a completely new one a little bit across and they’ve completely rearranged all the roads at the retail park I used to go to on the way home from work? Absolutely. Did I feel really old? Yes. Did I also recreate my old commute by playing the music I used to have in my CD player back then? Ummmm. Does this mean I have had There Once Was A Man from The Pajama Game stuck in my head for more than a week? Yes.
Let’s start with the Christmas memoirs – which is basically what the hardback section is at the moment – including the Richard E Grant I read on holiday and the Alan Rickman that I’m torn about whether I want to read or not – although to be fair there’s also the Big Name Fiction, including the Michael Ball that I’m reading at the moment.
That mix of celeb Christmas book and other stuff sort of carries on in this one – which isn’t even the adjacent case but I’m going with it. I mean the organisation of this is all not great – but here’s a couple of my favourite books of the year again – Lessons in Chemistry and Murder Before Evensong – but also Carrie Soto which I really need to finish… and then the new Rukmini Iyer cookbook which is on my Christmas list!
I’m including this one because it has The Dead Romantics in it, which is one of my favourite books from this month, but also a much older Trisha Ashley in what I think must be at least it’s second rerelease/rejacketing because it was a rerelease when I bought it back in my later post-Colchester Essex era.
And finally here’s the paperback fiction and the rest of the cookbooks. Love on the Brain, Book Lovers and Malibu Rising would all make good Christmas present books – if (like me) you don’t buy only Christmas themed books for festive gifts.
And that’s your lot today. I leave you with the only video I could find of Kelli O’Hara and Harry Connick doing There Once Was A Man, which isn’t the same as the cast recording version as it’s much more jazzy, but it is still excellent.
Have an amazing Saturday everyone.
Bingeable series: Harper Connelly
Continuing with the Halloween-y theme from the Recommendsday post, this week’s series is Charlaine Harris’s Harper Connelly series, which as I mentioned in the kindle offers posts, is mostly on offer this month.
So the set up here: Harper was struck by lightning as a child, and she has been left with the ability to sense dead people and see the last moments of their lives. She makes her living helping track down bodies – and across the course of the series she tackles four jobs that get her in more trouble than usual. She’s accompanied by her stepbrother Tolliver – who is her best friend and business manager and Definitely Not Her Blood Relation. Tolliver’s dad married Harper’s mum, blended their existing families and had two more kids together. The parents were also drug addicts and Harper and her sister Cameron along with Tolliver did a lot of the work to bring up the babies, while their older brother Mark moved out and tried to earn money to help. All this came crashing down when Cameron when missing. Eight years on, Harper is still searching for her sister’s body.
I’ve actually tested the bingeable nature of this series this week – because once I started rereading the first one at the start of the week ahead of writing this post, I ended up reading all four of them back to back. If that doesn’t make them bingeable what does. Yes I still have some resignations about the turn the series takes in romance terms – although on the reread the signposting is clearer – and the first sex scene remains not great – but I got sucked back into the individual cases and really into that overarching story of the series.
Aside from Harper’s special ability, there’s not a lot of other paranormal or supernatural action in this – in fact a lot of the time Harper meets with extreme scepticism about her abilities and her job lands her in both trouble and danger quite a lot. But there’s also a connection to one of Harris’s other series: Manfred Barnado appears in this in increasing frequency through the books and of course he’s the main character in the Midnight, Texas series where it becomes clear that Harris is working in an extended universe type situation, which adds to the Halloween appropriate-ness of it all.
Anyway, they’re very readable, and as I mentioned in the Kindle deals post the other day, three of the four are 99p at the moment, so although you will have to pay more for the first one, you can get the whole lot for less than £9, so the average price is pretty good
Have a great weekend everyone.
Out Today: Christmas Sarah Morgan!
Yes, it came out in the US last month, but here in the UK today is the day for the Christmas Sarah Morgan novel – this year’s is called Snowed in for Christmas. This is somewhere between a contemporary romance and a women’s fiction novel – yes I know, I’m not a fan of that as a term, but I don’t think there’s another shorthand that works as well – it has a romance at the heart of it but it’s not just a romance, and it feels like it’s not quite the same as Morgan’s previous romances – although you’re still going to get a happy ending. Or at least I hope you are – I haven’t finished it yet!
Recommendsday: Halloween-y reading
Pumpkins and skeletons are everywhere now, and even the Great British Bake-off has done a Halloween episode (even if it was a week early) so the time is clearly right for some Halloween-y reading recommendations. And by Halloween-y I mean featuring witches, magic, ghosts or the supernatural in some way, set around Halloween or just creepy. But I don’t read a lot of creepy as you know.
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
If you haven’t read this already, you should. And not just because it’s been turned into a TV series (with a second season coming!). This is Pratchett and Gaiman’s take on the end of the world – as prophesied by Agnes Nutter (witch), complete with a fussy angel and a reckless demon and a missing antichrist. It’s bonkers and funny and a nice way into both authors if you haven’t read any of them and don’t know where to go. And did I mention the TV series?
Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Katie Racculia
I was delighted to realise that this is out of the statute of limitations and I can talk about this again. This is the story of an Edgar Allen Poe inspired treasure hunt, set by an eccentric billionaire. The Tuesday of the title is trying to solve the mystery, along with her self-appointed best friends, but there’s also more than a little mystery in Tuesday and her friends’ backstories too. It’s a gothic adventure caper -and it’s lots of fun. Also: writing this has made me realise that there isn’t another book from Katie Racculia yet – I hope she’s got one in the works, because Bellweather Rhapsody was really good too. NB: this is called Tuesday Mooney Wore Black in the UK.
Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale
This is a really readable non-fiction story about a ghost hunter who investigates the case of a woman who says she is being haunted by a poltergeist. It’s the late 1930s, the tail end of an era where there was a craze for spiritualism and mediums (as frequently seen in murder mysteries of the era) and this follows Nandor Fodor as he tries to work out what exactly is going on with Alma. Because it’s non fiction, it’s not tidy, but it is fascinating.
And finally, there are a few things I’ve already recommended within the last year that would work for Halloween too: recent book of the the week The Dead Romantics, The Ex Hex and bingeable series Sookie Stackhouse.
Happy Wednesday everyone
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 