Series I love

Series I Love: Dandy Gilver

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Back with another Series I Love post because last week I read another Dandy Gilver book and realised that I haven’t written about them here for a while. I’ve already written a Recommendsday about them (but it was five years ago!) and there is a BotW from 2018, so I’ve mostly focused on a more general look at the series – which as you can see has had several different cover and title styles over the years which is deeply annoying to me in its own special way.

These are historical mystery – usually murder mystery – stories set in Scotland in the 1920s and 1930s. At the start of the series, Dandy is a fairly well to do married lady with too much time on her hands, with two sons at boarding school and a disinterested husband. Her detective career starts with a jewel theft that turns into a murder that she wants to solve to clear the name of the dead women’s fiancé – Alec. Alec becomes her side kick and the two of them start a discreet private investigations business, which her husband wouldn’t put up with if it wasn’t for the fact that it brings in useful money and running a Scottish estate is getting harder to do on the money has.

There are fifteen books in the series and I have read all bar one. and I think I should mention more that these are not cosy historicals in the way that say the Daisy Dalrymple series tended to be. They’re not country house type stories and the solutions to these are often darker and creepier. In my opinion the series had a few teething issues on books 3 and 4, but then the really get going again, and are quite inventive at the situations they put Dandy into – dance halls, schools, fishing villages and more.

Unusually for me, I don’t think you necessarily need to start this series at the beginning – they’ve evolved a fair bit and there’s not a running plot that’s going to get spoilt if you read out of order like if for example you go for Daisy Dalrymple or Royal Spyness out of sequence – or in fact any cozy with a running romantic subplot, except perhaps Steph Plum which has a love triangle which I don’t see how it can *ever* resolve (or even evolve). My recommendation is to start with either Dandy Dalrymple and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom or Dandy Dalrymple and a Most Misleading Habit and see how they take you and go from there.

Have a great weekend!

books, stats

February Stats

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Books read this month: 29*

New books: 18

Re-reads: 11 (8 audiobooks, 3 books)

Books from the to-read pile: 8

NetGalley books read: 4

Kindle Unlimited read: 2

Ebooks: 6

Library books: 1 (all ebooks)

Audiobooks: 8

Non-fiction books: 1

Favourite book this month: Playing for Love or Well Matched

Most read author: Charlaine Harris – 3 Sookie Stackhouse novels and the short story collection

Books bought: 13 including pre-orders

Books read in 2022: 62

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 632

A fairly steady month, dominated again by re-reads I think.

Bonus picture: Map update!

*Includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels (2 this month)

book round-ups

Recommendsday: February Quick Reviews

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This was quite a hard post to write this week because February is a short month, I have already written about so many books and have also done so many rereads. What a problem to have. Anyway, here are a couple of quick reviews to end the February content!

Well Matched by Jen De Luca

This is the third in book in Jen DeLuca’s series about the people who work at a Renaissance fair in Maryland – and yes I know this is the second time this month I’ve mentioned this series. This time our heroine is April – the single mom elder sister of Emily from Well Met and Mitch, the hot guy in the kilt who teaches high school gym during the months of the year when he’s not working the Ren Faire. This is a fake relationship and older woman and younger man romance but also deals with April trying to figure out what she wants her life to look like having spent years focusing on the idea that as soon as her daughter goes to college she’s moving away from their small town. It’s a delight and it was a lot of fun watching the two of them – even if I did sometimes wonder why April was being so stupid!

Death by Intermission by Alexis Morgan

So one of the things that happens when I try to do the fifty states challenge is that I try a lot of different cozy crime series that are available on Kindle Unlimited as they’re set all over the place. Anyway the next two both fall under that. Death by Intermission is the fourth book in the series – and is the first one from the series that I’ve read – as it is the one that was in KU. Anyway our heroine is Abby and our corpse is a local insurance agent who is found dead in his deckchair as Abby is helping tidy up after an open air cinema screening. Her mum’s beau is one of the suspects so of course Abby starts investigating. This is an idea is good, execution is a bit patchy, mostly when it comes to the relationship between Abby and her mum which is very angry and shouty and escalates fast. But the solution to the murder was neat and I liked Abby’s boyfriend Tripp, although there were a few too many ex-special forces soldiers around for my general liking.

Prologue to Murder by Lauren Elliott

Another cozy crime, another good idea with less good execution. Addie runs a bookstore in a seaside town in New England where the locals are bizarrely and incredibly rudely hostile. When the local librarian is found dead, Addie investigates to try and clear her name because the local newspaper gossip column keeps hinting that she is responsible. This is the second in the series and I felt like I’d really missed out because I hadn’t read the first to understand why the whole town hates Addie so much. It’s a little bit high school mean girls and not enough cozy mystery of that makes sense. Which is a shame, because the eight book in the series comes out in April so I could have had a good binge!

Anyway this three is your lot for this month – stats coming up tomorrow and a Series I Love post on Friday.

Happy hump day!

Book of the Week, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: Silver Street

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I said yesterday that I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about today – and here’s the answer – I finished this on Monday evening, so it’s a bit of a cheat but hey you’re used to that now!

Ann Stafford’s Silver Street follows a group of people from Armistice Day in 1918 through til 1932. Although initially unconnected, by the end their lives have all intertwined, mostly because of Alice Gedge a former ladies maid who ended the war as a supervisor of a group of clerks at a Ministry but who, when the men return becomes a “treasure” – aka a rather superior sort of daily maid to the residents of a building in Silver Street. Over the years the tenants include an elderly woman who likes to hold court for her birthday, a spinster who works as a social worker, two independent young women, a newly married couple and a single young man. And on top of that there’s Alice’s husband and her two children.

This is quite an every day story of normal people and normal lives – where there is no huge drama, I mean except your future happiness, but not death or peril if that makes sense. It’s not comic, but it’s not tragic – it’s closer to Barbara Pym than Miss Buncle but it’s another example of a novel by a women, first published in 1935 and now a bit forgotten and as such was right in my wheelhouse. And yes I know that Barbara Pam isn’t forgotten, but you know what I mean. I read it in two sittings – and it would have been finished for last week’s list if we hadn’t gone out for the day on Sunday and I didn’t have space in my bag to take it with me – even if I hadn’t borrowed it from someone and not wanted to mess it up!

My copy is on loan from a friend and this is going to be one of the harder books to get hold of I’m afraid – as it’s published by a small house and there is no ebook version. So if you want to read it, please buy it from Greyladies here. And mum, if you’re still reading and haven’t already messaged me to ask, yes, you can borrow it.

Happy Reading!

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: February 21 – February 27

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Well. It really was quite a week wasn’t it. I mean so much going on. So very, very much. And as you might be able to tell, I’ve plunged into a massive Sookie Stackhouse re-read to deal with it all as well as listening to Georgette Heyer and Amelia Peabody. It’s been delightful, but I have actually no idea what I’m going to write about tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll work it out though.

Read:

Death by Intermission by Alexis Morgan

Pat’s Pantry by Rhoda Baxter

The Case of the Late Pig by Margery Allingham

Dead until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer

The Ape Who Guards the Balance by Elizabeth Peters

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

Started:

Silver Street by Ann Stafford

The Start of Something by Miranda Dickinson*

Still reading:

The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky*

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser*

Paper Lion by George Plimpton

Sex Cult Nun by Faith Jones

Fire Court by Andrew Taylor*

Bonus photo: We went to London on Sunday for a day out and so here is a picture of Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Memorial looking delightful in the wintry sunshine, just after the Changing of the Guard finished.

Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Memorial on Sunday Morning

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, Uncategorized

Not a Book: LulaRich

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Oh we’re back in the weird American stuff corner of my world this week. I’m on a big documentary kick at the moment by the way and it’s taking some effort on my part to spread out the posts about all of them!

LuLaRich is about the rapid rise and the somewhat fall of Lularoe, a multilevel marketing firm based out of Utah. In case you’ve never heard of them, they rose to fame for their “buttery soft” leggings and the collapse came when they had some…quality issues. If you haven’t already, there are a lot of articles about it – Stephanie McNeal (then of Buzzfeed) wrote this one and it won’t spoil your enjoyment of the documentary if you read it first.

And I know that might sound strange, but that’s because the big selling point about this doc (or at least it was for me) is that it has interviews with the founders DeeAnn Brady and her husband Mark Stidham so you can see what they have to say about it all. And it’s also got plenty of people who were involved in selling Lularoe too. It’s really quite something.

MLMs are such a peculiarly American thing too – I mean I remember my mum going to Tupperware and weekenders parties and buying stuff from Avon when I was little, but its by no means the same thing as in the states – I’ve seen people talking about having to run a gauntlet of MLM vendors at church, there are several reality TV stars who seem to make their main income from selling MLM products online (like Meri Brown from Sister Wives who is a Lularoe seller – and one of the top tier) so stuff like this fascinates and horrifies me in equal measure. I watched all four parts of this in one sitting with my sister the other week and it sort of blew my mind.

Anyway, if you’ve got any more good documentary series suggestions for me, please put them in the comments. I don’t want gore or sexual violence, I want more stuff like this or like the Man Who Stole Cricket about Alan Stanford. Thanking you!

bookshelfies

Bookshelfie: Mostly Mystery?!

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I had no idea what to call this shelf. Let’s start though with the fact that there’s almost nothing on this shelf that I haven’t already written about! There are Series I Love posts about Thursday Next, Rivers of London and Tales of the City. Death of an Angel, Death at Dukes Halt, Crooked Heart, Old Baggage and V for Victory were Books of the Week. But what do they have in common? Ummmm. Well they’re all books I like to keep handy downstairs but I’m not going to lie, this started as a shelf of mystery books with the Thursday Nexts and Nursery Crime books, the Rivers of Londons and the Peter Wimseys. But that was five Rivers of Londons ago and they didn’t fit on one shelf any more and I hate splitting series across shelves. So then it was a question of what do I have that has pretty covers that takes about the right amount of space. So the Tales of the City books got moved along with Crooked Heart and a few stray romances. And as the other books in that trilogy came out they got added and the other romances moved. So not the most logical but I think it looks pretty – and it doesn’t offend my principles of book organisation even if it is hard to figure out what to call it!

Happy weekend!

Series I love

Series I love: Master list

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Well hasn’t this been a bit of a week so far. Real life is interfering madly with all of my plans for writing posts, so instead for this Friday I humbly offer you a master list of series I love posts so far…

Golden Age Crime:

Peter Wimsey

Albert Campion

Roderick Alleyn

Historical Mystery

Amelia Peabody

Phryne Fisher

Daisy Dalrymple

Royal Spyness

Veronica Speedwell

Pink Carnation

Murder Mystery

Charles Paris

Cupcake Bakery

Fantasy

Parasolverse

Rivers of London

Thursday Next

Other Fiction

Miss Buncle

Barsetshire

Cazalets

Tales of the City

Blessings

previews

Squee: New Taylor Jenkins Reid coming!

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Do you remember when I said the other day in my preorder post that hopefully the release calendar would start to fill up soon? Well days later, just days later, guess what? Taylor Jenkins Reid announced she has a new book coming this summer!

And as you can see from the Instagram post, it’s tangentially related to Malibu Rising – in that it’s about someone that we met in that book – albeit some years later. I am *very* excited. But I will admit I haven’t preordered it yet – because I’m waiting to see if there is a signed edition coming somewhere or if she’s going to do any in person events for it because as you may remember, back in the beforetimes, I went to see her talk about Daisy Jones and the Six in the basement of Waterstones in Gower Street in March 2019 – I even paid money to go!

I do sort of love the idea that it’s the TJR universe and that the people in her books could run into each other. But that’s because I love it in romance series where you get to see the couple from the previous books pop up and being happy! Anyway, I suspect that this time if there is a tour it may be in a slightly bigger place – and again, I’ll happily pay money for it – especially if there’s a chance of getting some weird merch with it – the fake festival bracelet I got for Daisy is on one of my shelves next to my home office desk – along with my collection of bookish badges and postcards and the like.

Book of the Week, book round-ups, romance

Recommendsday: Secret identity/double identity romances

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Off the back of yesterday’s book of the week, today we’re talking romances where one (or both) partners are living a double life or have a secret identity

Let’s start with Georgette Heyer – because she has a few of these of various types. The Masqueraders has a cross dressing brother and sister who are trying to lie low after the Jacobite rebellion, False Colours has one twin pretending to be his missing brother and These Old Shades – one of my all time favourites has Leon the page who is actually Leonie. And that’s before you get to The Corinthian (girl runs away from home dressed as a boy and drops out of the window into the hero’s arms), and Arabella (heroine pretending to be a great heiress). Is it any wonder I love this trope so much?

Duchess by Night was my first Eloisa James – and I picked it up at the library because it mentioned the heroine in disguise. Now it’s much, much more steamy than Heyer – but as all you get in Heyer is a kiss, then that’s not a surprise. This’ll anyway, our heroine dresses up as a man to sneak into the house of a notorious rake to see what his debauched parties are actually like. You see where this is going (and why it’s not closed door!). Anyway, as an introduction to the series it was great – although I haven’t reread it in a few years so I hope it holds up!

I came to Eloisa James after discovering Julia Quinn and after James I moved in to Sarah MacLean who I have now written about a lot but has a secret identity type – but telling you what it is is a spoiler and a reveal and you need to have read the rest of the series to get the most out of it. I had to go back and read the Rules of Scandals series again after the shock twist at the end of No Good Duke Goes Unpunished because I was so convinced that MacLean must have slipped up at some point and she hadn’t. It is a master stroke.

Let’s go contemporary! And Jen De Luca’s Well Played which has a heroine who has been emailing back and forth with someone all year who actually turns out to be someone else. It just about manages to stay on the Cyrano side rather than the catfishing, the latter of which is the risk in all the modern day twists on this and obviously I love the Ren Fair setting because I made the first book in the series a BotW – and I read Well Matched (which is the third book) in two giant gulps last week. And maybe the aforementioned catfishing situation is why I can’t think of any other contemporaries to include here – it’s hard to come up with a twist on this that doesn’t create an insurmountable issue on the romance. Which is maybe why I was so impressed with Playing with Love! So please – if you have more, put them in the comments!

Happy hump day!