books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: June 9 – June 15

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So I got two long runners off the list, but at the cost of not finishing two more that I started last week. So the Still reading list remains at four. Just not the same four. Other than that, I’ve been trying to pick my reading from the NetGalley lists because that’s one backlog I really should be trying to get down and that I can do when away from home, and I’ve got all sorts of genres on there so I really should be able to find something to suit my mood there.

Read:

Death on the Prowl by Ann Granger

A Murder for Miss Hortense by Mel Pennant*

The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

A Body at the Book Fair by Ellie Alexander*

Iced in Iowa by Patti Benning

Wish You Were Here by Jess K Hardy*

Trick or Treat by Kerry Greenwood

Started:

Helle and Death by Oskar Jensen*

Still reading:

A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor*

Sorry for the Dead by Nicola Upson

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater*

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Two books bought at a book fair.

Bonus picture: filming happening in Fitzroy Square on Thursday afternoon.

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

not a book, streaming, tv

Not a Book: Signora Volpe

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Back with a TV/streaming recommendation today, for those of you who like a murder mystery series at the gentle end of the spectrum.

Our set up is this: in episode one Sylvia Fox, a British spy, is off to Italy for her niece’s wedding. Then someone turns up dead and the groom goes missing so she starts to investigate. There’s a hot Carabinieri officer and by the end of the first episode she’s solved the crime, decided to take a career break and bought a house to do up. There are two more two hour mysteries for her to solve in series one and another three in series two. And I really do hope we get a series three.

For all that Sylvia is an ex spy, these are pretty chill mysteries – there’s not a lot of blood, no jump scares and until the last episode of series two not a lot of peril. And by the time you get to that final episode you’re fairly sure it will all work out ok in the end. There’s lots of beautiful scenery and I want Sylvia’s house, wardrobe and defensive driving skills. I’ve been watching Emilia Fox in things since she was Georgiana in Pride and Prejudice and she’s always very watchable and in this she makes a nice duo with Tara Fitzgerald as her sister.

There are a few occasions in series one why you wonder why the Italian characters are speaking English to each other rather than Italian, but that’s mostly sorted out in season two. The romantic strand is very slow moving – and more long looks and brooding stares than anything else (so far) but Capitano Riva does a very good brooding stares than anything so I forgive it and just hope that we get a bit of progress if we get a series three!

These have just been shown on U and Drama in the UK, and are on their streaming service at the moment, elsewhere in the world they are available through Britbox.

Enjoy!

The pile

Books Incoming: Mid-June edition

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It’s that time again, and this month I have done much better on the restraint front.

So here we have this month’s haul: two pre-orders, one charity shop acquisition, two from Upper Street Books and one pre-holiday purchase. The preorders are the new Taylor Jenkins Reid Atmosphere (special Waterstones edition, signed by the author) and the new Annabel Monaghan It’s a Love Story, which is already read and off the pile. The Upper Street Books acquisitions are the two non-fiction books, A Waiter in Paris and Sovietistan. The charity shop purchase is The 7-10 Split which was recommended to me as an option for the 50 states challenge at the back end of last year. And the holiday book is the new Plum Sykes Wives Like Us, which I picked because I thought I could pass it on to my sister (also on the trip) after I finished it.

Have a great weekend!

series

Series Redux: Mary Russell Mysteries

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Happy Friday everyone – and this week we had a new book out in the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. I’ve written about this series a couple of times, and while I retain my reservations about the massive age gap between Mary and Sherlock, I really enjoy the mysteries and the way that they weave all sorts of threads together. I will freely admit that I have read more books inspired by Sherlock Holmes than I have of the original Conan Doyle books, so if you’re more of a Holmes afficianado than I am, your mileage may vary.

My original series post for these came after after Castle Shade, which was the seventeenth in the series and the new one is book 19. In Knave of Diamonds Mary’s uncle reappears in her life after a long absence to ask for her help with his problems, one of which is his involvment in the disappearance of the Irish Crown Jewels, which is why his family disowned him in the first place. After a couple of books on the continent (Romania in Castle Shade and France in the Lanterns Dance) it looks like this one may see Mary and Sherlock head across the Irish Sea. I’m looking forward to reading it when I can get hold of it.

This latest is a hardback release so prices on the Kindle edition of Knave of Diamonds is commensurate with that. But the first two in the series are in Kindle Unlimited and the next three are £1.79 before the price jumps to £5.99 and then £7.99. But these are fairly easy to find in the shops new and used so there are options here if you want to try the series out.

Have a great weekend!

Book previews

Out today: A Murder for Miss Hortense

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This week’s theme may be older lady detectives – because after Vera Wong on Tuesday, today we have Miss Hortense. She’s a retired nurse who lives in a Birmingham suburb and who came to the UK from Jamaica in 1960. When a body turns up in the home of one of her acquaintances, she is drawn into investigating. I’m looking forward to reading this one – not just because Miss Hortense sounds great but also because it’s been ages since I read a book set in Birmingham.

Happy Reading!

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: June Kindle Offers

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We are in the sixth month of the year, so this month I have leant into the holiday books end of the kindle offers. I was going to say that for me holiday books are romantic fiction and light crime, but that’s a lot of what I read when I’m not on holiday too. But for the purpose of buying in advance, that’s what I’m after. I’ll do you a post in a few weeks of what I’m looking to buy at the airport this year, because those are slightly different things! Anyway, to the offers.

Last year’s Emily Henry Funny Story is 99p, as is this year’s Mhairi McPharlane Cover Story, which I haven’t read yet but which sounds a lot of fun (people who can’t stand each other forced to pretend they’re in a fake relationship to save an undercover investigation). Christina Laurens’ The Paradise Problem is also 99p – I loved this when I read it earlier this year. There’s also Victoria Hislop’s The Island, which I read years ago and enjoyed, and Sarah Adams’s When In Rome about a burnt out popstar in a small town, which was once of the first of the crop of Taylor Swift-inflected romances I read. And the new Rachel Lynn Solomon What Happens in Amsterdam is 99p too (I bought it while writing this!)

If you’re a bit higher brow than me for your sun lounger books, then Tracy Chevalier’s The Glass Maker is 99p – I have this waiting to be read on the Kindle but just haven’t got to it yet because I’m still in that world of wanting to know going in that I’m going to get a resolution, preferably happy at the end of books. If you want some Romantasy, then Stephanie Garber’s Once Upon a Broken Heart is 99p – this is the first in a completed trilogy so you can read straight through to the end if you like it or there is Rebecca Ross’s Divine Rivals, which is the first of two – and it should be noted that I haven’t read any of these!

Moving on to the regular author check in: we’re still in a world of the Georgette Heyer murder mysteries being the ones on offer – this time it’s Footsteps in the Dark, the Discworld offer this month is Equal Rites and Borrower of the Night, the first in Elizabeth Peters’s Vicky Bliss series is 99p too.

And that’s your lot this month – enjoy!

Book of the Week, books, cozy crime, crime

Book of the Week: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

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So a bit of a strange one this week – because I started this literal years ago and couldn’t get into it, gave up and then came back to it this weekend, started again and read it all in evening. So here we are.

Vera Wong is the 60-year-old proprietor of a tea shop. She likes to match make and meddle in her son’s life. But one day she finds a dead body in her shop and switches her focus to finding out who killed him – because she doesn’t think the police are trying hard enough. But it turns out that she likes her chief suspects a lot more than the victim and soon it’s all getting a bit messy.

So as I said, I didn’t get into this first time around at all and it did take a while to get into it the second time too. But I really liked Julia and Emma when they arrived and the effect that Vera had on their lives and that’s where I started to get into it and after that something clicked. The solution is clever and something I hadn’t spotted as well.

I do have a bit of a mixed record with Sutanto – I liked Dial A for Aunties, but didn’t enjoy the sequel and haven’t read the third yet, although I probably will for the sake of completeness because I am that person. There is a sequel to this, but given my prior experience who knows what I might make of that!

My copy of this one came from NetGalley an eon ago, but it should be fairly easy to get hold of if you want to – I’ve seen it in paperback in the big bookshops and of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: June 2 – June 8

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It’s June and we’ve been down to the seaside, so of course there were flash floods. British summertime everyone. Anyway, on the reading front I finished the Mitchell and Markby reread and then had to figure out what to read next. Which turned out to be more murder mysteries. I mean it almost always does turn out to be more murder mysteries at the moment, it just depends on what type.

Read:

That Way Murder Lies by Ann Granger

These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer

Nine Lessons by Nicola Upson

Deadly Company by Ann Granger

The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie

Copper Script by K J Charles

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q Sutanto*

Started:

A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor*

Sorry for the Dead by Nicola Upson

Still reading:

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater*

The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

Wish You Were Here by Jess K Hardy*

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

One bought, one preorder arrived – the new Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Bonus picture: Bournemouth pier in June…

*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 adjacent, not a book, theatre

Book Adjacent: Giant

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Back at the theatre this week – and I was going to say for a play rather than a musical, but then I had a bit of a look back and realised that actually I mostly write about plays (and comedians) here rather than musicals, despite the fact that I think of myself as more of a musicals person than a play one.

Giant is a dramatisation of a moment in Roald Dahl’s life in the 1980s. He’s just about to publish The Witches, but is in the middle of a storm of criticism about a review he wrote of a picture book is deemed anti-Semitic. (If you want to read the review, it’s on the Literary Review website here, it’s paywalled, but you can see one of the key points). The play creates a fictional meeting at Dahl’s house (under renovation by his new wife) between the Dahls, his British agent and a representative of his American publisher. The American is an invented character, but Tom Maschler is real – a major figure in publishing (here’s his obituary from the Guardian if you want to know more about him) who escaped Vienna as a child after the Anschluss. The aim of the meeting is to try to get Dahl to apologise, but no-one seems willing to take Dahl on directly for various reasons.

This won three Olivier awards – best play, best actor and best supporting actor – for it’s original run at the Royal Court and has now transferred into the West End for a summer run. John Lithgow’s Dahl is towering in stature but starts as a charming old man before anger transforms him but the other performances are just as strong and the play itself is all the more remarkable for the fact that it is the author’s first. It’s the first time for a long time that I’ve heard a whole audience gasp in a theatre – and in my view deserves all the plaudits it has received both at the Royal Court and now for the transfer.

Giant is at the Harold Pinter Theatre until August 2.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Upper Street Bookshop

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Happy Saturday everyone, I’ve been to a new bookshop!

I was in Angel for an event and took the chance to dive into Upper Street bookshop on my way back to Central London, and of course I bought books…

Let’s start with the fact that I really liked the selection of books. They had the popular stuff that I was expecting but alongside some stuff I hadn’t seen before too.

I’m particularly talking about the non-fiction selection where there was some really interesting stuff that I hadn’t seen anywhere else. I mean I’m sure they had it, but just not on the first table inside the door. And yes this is the selection where I found the books bought!

I love a blind date with a book stand too – and outside is great. I have so many books that I don’t dare buy them though because when I have I always get a book I already have! I had a lovely time wandering around, if I have a criticism, it’s that I would like a better romance selection and more crime and mystery books (that aren’t in the blind date section) but I could say that about a lot of bookshops and I get that they have to stock what they sell.

Have a great weekend everyone.