So a somewhat mixed week. On the one hand, I read two new release romances in the week that they came out, so only slightly behind in NetGalley terms. On the other I got completely distracted from reading other things by bingeing my way through the last three of a series so I didn’t finish any of the books I started last week and now the still reading list is huge again. Why do I do this to myself?
Happy Sunday everyone, and I’m continuing the run of theatre trips from the last few weekends with two other shows that I’ve seen recently and wanted to mention even though they’ve both finished their runs now.
I’ll start with Marie and Rosetta which had its last performance at Soho Place last night. This is a two-hander about Sister Rosetta Tharp and Marie Knight who were stars in the gospel world. This starts in 1946 when established star Rosetta has persuaded young newcomer Marie to join her on a tour in the segregated southern states of the US. Beverly Knight is Rosetta and Ntombizodwa Ndlovu is Marie and the two of them gave amazing performances that transended the material. For me the play itself was just fine – it was two hours including an interval and I thought it would have worked better as a 90 minute one acter, because the break killed any building tension that was going on. But the two performances – particularly when it came to the music and the singing were extraordinary and were worth going just to see them. It was also my first time in Soho Place – which is the newest West End theatre and I thought it was a great venue and I loved the in the round staging. I will be interested to go back and see something else there. And it should be noted that this was the final West End theatre that I hadn’t ever been in so it was nice to tick that off too – especially as I thought I’d completed the list when I saw Operation Mincemeat until I remembered that Soho Place had opened!
And the second show today is Jeffery Bernard is Unwell which had a run at the Coach and Horses on Sunday and Monday nights in March. Jeffery Bernard was a real life journalist and this play was written and originally staged in the 1980s when Bernard was still alive. Bernard wrote the “Low Life” column in The Spectator, and the title refers to the one line apology the paper would print on the column’s page when he was too drunk (or too hungover) to produce his copy and it was too late to find anything else to fill the gap! The play started as a star vehicle for Peter O’Toole with a supporting cast but was adapted into a one man show in 2019 to be performed at the Coach and Horses pub in Soho – which was Bernard’s regular drinking venue – by Robert Bathurst. This is the at least the third time that it has been brought back – to the same venue with the same star. It won a bunch of acclaim and awards and sold very, very well, so when I saw it pop back up I forked out full price (unusual for me!) for a seated ticket (as opposed to the cheaper standing option) to see it and found myself right opposite Bathurst’s main perforamce spot in the venue which was a delightful treat. It’s only an hour but it’s a hell of a performance feat – one man and a pub full of people and no where to hide if it goes wrong, which considering the climax includes a trick involving a glass of water, a matchbox and an egg is quite something. It was a late start (and so a late night on a work night) but it was totally worth it.
Happy Saturday everyone – here is the final installment from a bookish odyssey I took on a March weekend that saw me visit five bookshops and a book fair. You’ve already seen the fruits of this in my Spring Works update, the post about Kibworth Books and of my revisit to Quinns. Today, it’s the turn of the book fair.
First things first, this is a book fair of the type where you can buy direct from Indie authors and also buy bookish merch and crafts. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from it in terms of types of books that would be on sale, but at the Market Harborough event it was a mix of everything – there was historical romance, mystery, local history, childrens, fantasy and more. It was in a conference centre behind one of the town centre hotels and I don’t think they could have got any more stalls in without it seeming over crowded. There were loads of people in there when I got there (about an hour after opening, late morning) and all the vendors that I spoke to were friendly and not pushy.
I know your next question is going to be what did I buy, but you’ll have to wait for Books Incoming next week for all the details, but it was an eight book Saturday across the fair, Kibworth and Quinns, three of which came from the fair. What I will show you though are the gorgeous blind dates with a book I bought:
These are not only beautifully wrapped, but came with stickers and a bookmark each. I’ve had mixed fortunes with book blind dates because I have read so much and have ended up with stuff I’ve already read before, but the smart people behind Literary Luxe Designs had put codes on the back of them so that they could give you clues and would even check your Goodreads for you to see if you’d already marked something as read. Of course once they’d done that, I still wanted to know what they were – and they would tell you too – so I was happy with my choices and content to leave them wrapped up until I got home which meant I didn’t risk losing the stickers in the car!
The book fair was run by Rosie’s Retro Bazaar – who run them at venues across the Midlands. The next one is in May in Birmingham. They were also handing out flyers for Coventry Festival of Books in July which I will be keeping an eye on the line up for, although it is the weekend before Book Con 2026 so it might be one book event too many this summer unless the guest list is up my street!
Happy Friday everyone. For today’s post I wanted to point you all back at the Vinyl Detective series by Andrew Cartmel. It’s been nearly four years since I wrote my original series post and we’ve had two more books in the series since then so I thought I would come back around to it. These are mystery stories based around a never-named record collector and record hunter for hire and his group of friends and associates. Each book focuses on the hunt for one specific record in a different genre – so far we have done jazz, 1960s rock, World War II era big band, 1970s electronic folk, punk, death metal, electronic dance music and Italian movie sound track music. The EDM book is my least favourite, so I was pleased when the Italian film music one was a real return to form.
I came to this series because he was one of the Rivers of London graphic novel authors and worked with Ben Aaronovitch on Doctor Who and so I think if you like Aaronovitch’s writing, you will like these. So far this hasn’t hit any of the music genres that I have any real depth of knowledge on – but I’m hoping that it does soon (so either classic musicals or boybands of the late 1990s I guess?) so that I can look for hidden easter eggs of knowledge because I think there’s loads of insider jokes in there that I’m missing because I don’t know enough. I’m hoping we have more coming, but Cartmel also has second series going now with the Paperback Sleuth books and he could do a fourth in that series next – or something different altogether I guess. Anyway, these should be fairly easy to get hold of in any bookshop of a decent size or a decent crime section.
Kate Clayborn has consistently written some of my favourite books of any year that she has published a book, so it would be remiss of me not to mention that she has a new book out this week. It’s called The Paris Match and it’s about a woman who heads to Paris for her former sister-in-law’s wedding, where she accidentally gives the bride cold feet and ends up butting heads with the best man who wants her to fix it. I love the sound of this, and I love a book set in Paris. I had this pre-ordered in paperback (as you can maybe tell because of the photo!) and I’m planning on making this my post Easter reading treat. In the meantime, you can read my posts about The Other Side of Disappearing, Georgie, All Along, Love Lettering and the Chance of a Lifetime series.
It’s the second Wednesday in April and so it’s Kindle Offer day! Yay! Hide your wallets – mine took a bit of a hit while I wrote this I have to admit, despite my best efforts to the contrary.
Lets start with the new (or new-ish) releases that are on offer: there’s Rachel Joyce book that I mentioned in my post about Quinns, The Homemade God, which is 99p this month. I bought that, but I also bought the new Kate Quinn book The Astral Library which is a time travel novel with a hidden library and traveling inside books and which I’ve heard so much about since it came out in February.
The latest series of Bridgerton is a Cinderella retelling which neatly takes me to Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser which is 99p and moves me neatly into other fiction! Also on offer is Vianne by Joanne Harris aka the latest Chocolat novel, the thirteenth 44 Scotland Street book by Alexander McCall Smith The Peppermint Tea Chronicles, The second Cazalet ChronicleMarking Time is also on offer as is
It’s Tuesday so so here I am with another Book of the Week – and I’m back with the BritishLibrary’s Crime Classics series this week, making it two (albeit very different) murder mysteries in a row for my picks.
Brimberley is a peaceful village, where everyone knows everyone else and very little happens. That is until the lead tenor in the village choir is killed by an explosion at his house. Choir leader Liz, her son Tim (a former commando) and a retired general are soon investigating to try and work out what’s happened. This was first published in 1955 and the post-World War Two world is very evident here – there are lots of ex military men of various types and vintages who may or may not be involved in the murder – and may or may not still be involved with the military. Some of my favourite of the Miss Marple plots revolve around issues thrown up by the aftermath of the war – I’m thinking of Brian Eastley in 4.50 from Paddington or the food rationing and bartering in A Murder is Announced that mean people can’t tell the police everything they are up to (and also a mega plot spoiler that I can’t explain) – which may be why this worked so well for me despite feeling a bit far-fetched at times!
This was a Janurary 2026 release in the BLCC series and I was pleased to see it pop up in Kindle Unlimited already. I read and enjoyed Michael Gilbert’s Smallbone, Deceased a year or two back which drew on Gilbert’s experience as a solicitor, while this one captures small village life in the 1950s with classic murder mystery mixing with spy thriller in a really pleasing way. I’ve got another of Gilbert’s books on the shelf and I’m moving it up the list now because I enjoyed this so much.
As I mentioned, this is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment which means it isn’t on Kobo right now, but it is available in paperback from the British Library online shop where once again they are running their three for two offer.
Happy Bank Holiday Monday to everyone who is celebrating. Here the sun is out and I’m starting to think that we may be using up our quota of nice bank holiday weather! I had a two show week last week, but also the Easter weekend so the reading list is a reflection of that. And also of the fact that I was writing the Kindle Offers post and it was an expensive one as you will see on Wednesday! As for tomorrow’s pick, I sort of gave myself issues by using the French Bookshop Murder to solve last week’s difficulties so I do need to get back on a bit of an even keel. Oh and the re-read of A Case of Life and Limb was the audiobook as it was on offer – and it’s just as good as an audio as it was to read.
It’s Easter Sunday and if you have a long weekend I hope that it is going well so far, and not too encumbered by the sort of weather that a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK always seems to cause. For the third weekend in a row I have a theatre related post for you and to be honest, I don’t think it’s the end of the run of show posts because I’ve seen a lot of shows in the last six weeks – including two this week alone. But this week I’m going with another Sondheim show to join my posts about Here We Are and the Frogs, Merrily We Roll Along and Old Friends.
Into The Woods is Stephen Sondheim’s take on some of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, intertwining them to tell the story of a childless baker and his wife who try to life a curse that has been placed on them by a witch but finding her a series of items in the woods. This brings them into contact with other story book characters. We’re taken through the story by a narrator. I can’t really tell you much more about the plot than that without giving too much away, but the story takes the familiar fairy tale tropes and plays with them. Sondheim’s music is often tricky to perform – there are difficult harmonies and tunes that don’t go where you expect. Into The Woods has got repeating motifs that evolve through the show – you’ll come out humming snatches rather than having an earworm of one tune stuck in your head. The lyrics are brilliant – clever and often witty and even the spoken lines have a rhythm to them.
In the Stephen Sondheim canon, Into the Woods comes after Sunday in the Park with George and is the second of his three collaborations with James Lapine and is at the tail end of his run of what was probably his best work. I had seen the movie of Into the Woods, but this is the first production that I’ve seen in person – the last time it was in London was 2010 when I wasn’t seeing as much theatre for various real world reasons. That production had Hannah Waddingham and Jenna Russell, this one has Jamie Parker and Kate Fleetwood. Now when I (first) went to see it Jamie Parker got injured midway through the first act* and was replaced by his understudy, and there were also understudies on for The Baker’s Wife and Little Red. But I enjoyed it so much that I went back this week to try and catch some of the people that I missed before they leave (more on that later) and to get a different view of the stage.
And as you can see – I was higher up and further back but straight on and that means I could see a lot more detail of the set and the action behind. If you’re going to see this then try and be as front on as you can – I think probably ideally a level down from this seat in Gallery 2 but those seats are pricey – so for the money this was excellent. And I did get to see all of Jamie Parker this time with the original Baker’s Wife Katie Brayben. There were still a few understudies on though – including Little Red again but also Jennifer Hepburn as the Witch. All the performances were excellent, but I can imagine that when it’s the full main cast it is really quite something because I definitely have preferences having seen it twice. I can really see why it earned 11 nominations at the Oliviers – as I said in my Producers review last week I’m expecting the winners to come from this and Paddington. That said I’m expected possibly more Paddington given that Paddington took the Whats On Stage awards – although they are voted for by the public and the Oliviers are voted by the industry so there maybe a difference there. I haven’t seen Paddington because tickets are like gold dust until the summer so I can’t judge, but this is truly brilliant.
In fact it’s been such a success that the run at the Bridge has extended until the end of May, having been originally due to end on April 20th. There is a cast change that comes with that though – the details of which were announced last week and is the reason why I hurried back this week to try and catch Parker and Brayben before they left. The replacements are pretty good too – Rachel Tucker, John Owen Jones and Melanie Le Barrie are all names in their own right, and Hughie O’Donnell is who I saw take over as the Baker mid-performance and he was very good too. Not going to lie, I am tempted to go back again..
Happy Easter if you’re celebrating, happy Sunday if you’re not!
Happy Saturday everyone, and this is the third instalment from my bookish wander around Leicestershire the other Saturday. I’ve already covered the bargain book selection at The Works, and the beautifully curated selection at Kibworth. This week it’s a revisit to Quinns, where I was mostly looking at what they had picked out to put on the displays because I love seeing what booksellers have picked to highlight.
This is the mystery and thriller table in the window and I haven’t read a single one of them. Which is fascinating given how many mysteries I read! I know that the Asako Yuzuki and the Uketsu are too scary for me – as is so much of the stuff that’s got dark and moody covers. I have a Janice Hallet waiting to be read on the pile though and I’ve read Sophie Hannah’s Poirot continuations but not her own stuff, and I used to read Lisa Jewell when she was writing women’s fiction.
It’s a similar sort of story here. I have read all of Joanne Harris’s other Chocolate books so I have Vianne on the kindle waiting to be read and the same with the Gill Hornby, which is the latest of her books related to the Austen family. I saw The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry the other week as you know, so I was tempted by the Rachel Joyce which is about the daughters of a famous artist who has died in Italy and the masterpiece he went there to finish is missing. This is Jennie Godfrey’s second book – the first has been everywhere and it’s definitely on my list to try, if I can just get the pile down a little bit!
We’re back to authors who I have books waiting to be read on this table too – I’ve got one of Francis Spufford’s on the actual self and the same with Natasha Pulley. The Gregory Maguire is his new Wizard of z prequel hot on the heels of the success of Wicked – the book of which I didn’t manage to finish. The intruiguing one on this table though is Winterbourne, which I hadn’t seen before. It came out at the end of January and it’s about a librarian who goes to a remote Island off the coast of Scotland to catalogue the library of a grand house. It’s described as a chilling and unpredictable mystery and a reinvention of the Gothic genre, so who knows if I can deal with that – I’ll wait for the paperback!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 