books, stats

May Stats

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Books read this month: 32*

New books: 13

Re-reads: 19 (5 audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 6

NetGalley books read: 1

Kindle Unlimited read: 6

Ebooks: 13

Audiobooks: 5

Non-fiction books: 0

Favourite book: of the new things that I read, probably On Turpentine Lane.

Most read author: Ann Granger with 14 (!) books (re)read – see below

Books bought: still too many – especially given that I had to buy the Mitchell and Markby‘s because I had borrowed them from a friend when I read them the first time.

Books read in 2025: 156

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 793

After finishing the Ruth Galloway binge last month, I have gone on an even more intensive binge re-reading the Mitchell and Markby books after I bought that one at Baddesley Clinton despite everything else that was demanding to be read. This is why the NetGalley total is so measly – just the one, right at the start of the month before the binge started – and explains the lack of non-fiction too. The good news here (I guess) is that I’ve only got a couple left to read before I’ve finished the series and then I’ll have to read other things. But it probably says something about where my head is at at the moment that I’ve retreated into cosy murder mystery re-reads.

Bonus picture: Despite the re-reading last month, I am ahead of schedule on my beat the TBR pile bookcase. Of course some of this is due to the Elly Griffiths binge – check out all those dark green books – but there’s basically just a lot of murder mystery in my first five months of physical book reading!

*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including this month!

Book previews

Out this Week: The Listeners

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Maggie Stiefvater’s adult debut came out this week – The Listeners is set in an Appalachian hotel commandeered by the authorities in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. The Avalon has a sweet water spring and a reputation for unrivalled luxury. But when 300 diplomats and Nazi sympathisers arrive, the delicate balance at the hotel is threatened. You might have noticed that this one is already on my reading list, but I just keep getting distracted by the Mitchell and Markbys, but so far so good.

Recommendsday

Reccommendsday: June Quick Reviews

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Lets be honest, in a month that was dominated by my massive re-read binge through the Mitchell and Markby series I’m surprised and pleased that there was enough other stuff on the reading list that I had books for a quick reviews post at all, considering at times I was having to force myself to stop reading about Meredith and Alan in order to have something for Book of the Week! And yet here we are. I did it.

Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary

Julian Clary’s new murder mystery centres on a death that happens on stage during a performance the first night of a new play at the London Palladium. We know from the start about the murder – but the first half of the book follows the show on it’s initial provincial tour so you can see the dynamics and the tensions building before the fatal moment. Our main character is Jayne, a dresser for the show, but Julian has written a version of himself into the show as a friend of hers – and the show is told in extracts from Jane’s diary, commentary from Julian, snippets from a WhatsApp group with the actors, posts from a theatre blog, newspaper headlines, police interviews etc. I saw a couple of the twists coming – but I think you were meant to because Jayne is quite a naive character in some ways and she balances out the cynicism and bitchiness of Julian’s commentary!

Death at the Playhouses by Stuart Douglas

This is the second in the Lowe and Le Breton series – I read the first at the back end of last year and made it a BotW so I thought I’d report back in on the follow up as well. This sees Edward and John accepting roles in a regional production of Shakespeare during the gap between filming of their sitcom. But when the actor that John replaced turns up dead, they find themselves caught up in another murder investigation, this time with links to John’s past. This is fun – but it’s a bit over long and there’s one big continuity mistake (or at least confusion in the chronology) that really lifted me out of the story. But I continue to like the characters and will happily read a third in the series should it materialise.

The Beast of Littleton Woods by T E Kinsey

Astonishingly we have reached the twelfth in the Edwardian mystery series set in a very murderous patch of Gloucestershire. This time Lady Hardcastle and Florence are investigating rumours of a panther stalking the neighbourhood after a sheep is mauled to death. They’re convinced that there must be a rational explanation – but then a local man is seemingly torn to shreds and the villagers start to get really scared. Can they figure out what is going on before someone else dies? As is sometimes the case with these, I had the solution figured out relatively early, but I don’t really mind because I like the characters and the setting so much. This has got plenty of action with the village in it as well as a bit of a knowing wink going on about the death rate in Littleton Cotterell too which is a nice touch. While these continue to be in Kindle Unlimited (and I have a subscription) I will continue to read them!

And that’s your lot this month – a reminder that the Books of the Week in May were Tea on Sunday, Underscore, A Farewell to Yarns and On Turpentine Lane and the recommendsdays were Brighton-set books and Struggling Wives.

Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week, detective, mystery

Book of the Week: Swan Song

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After a break last week for a book that wasn’t strictly a mystery, this week I’m firmly back in the mystery world – not just with today’s pick but with basically everything in tomorrow’s Quick Reviews too. Because basically almost everything I haven’t already told you about from last month is murder mystery because that’s the sort of month it was, and June continues the same way (I finished this on Sunday!)

The Second World War is over, and on Oxford preparations are underway for the first postwar production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. It is not a happy company because one of the singers, Edwin Shorthouse, was already unpopular before he started throwing his weight around and behaving badly at rehearsals. So when he is found dead, few of the company are upset, until it starts to look like it may be murder and not a suicide and one of their number may be responsible. Gervase Fen has a challenge on his hands.

I am slowly (and out of order) working my way through Edmund Crispin’s series about the eccentric Oxford Don, and this is a really good one. I love a theatre-set mystery and this is a perplexing locked room puzzle, and those are always good too. This has a dash of the absurd about it as well as the eccentricities of Fen and it’s very easy to read and the solution fits with that.

This is available in all the usual ways including Kindle and Kobo and there have been enough recent editions that you maybe able to pick it up second hand too.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: May 25 – June 1

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We’re into June and I’m still playing outfit roulette in the mornings because the weather just can’t seem to sort itself out. But on the bright side, we’ve started to get the summer releases through. And on the even brighter side, I’ve finally finished that Cher Memoir. Admittedly there are still other long runner on that list I haven’t finished, but that’s the one that’s been sitting there the longest, so it’s definitely progress.

Read:

Beneath These Stones by Ann Granger

Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary

Shades of Murder by Ann Granger

A Restless Evil by Ann Granger

It’s a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan

The Bookstore Family by Alice Hoffman

The June Paintings by Maggie Shipstead

Swan Song by Edmund Crispin

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

Started:

Nine Lessons 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

Two pre-orders arrived, two ebooks bought and a second hand paperback.

Bonus picture: I’m annoyed I didn’t take a screen grab on day 1500 exactly, but still it’s pretty impressive.

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

film, not a book

Not a Book: The Phoenician Scheme

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Happy Sunday everyone, I hope you’ve all had a good weekend so far, and I’m back with another suggestion of something to watch – this time at the cinemas because it only came out last week.

The Phoenician Scheme is the latest film from Wes Anderson. Written by Anderson and from a story by him and Roman Coppola, it’s a black comedy about a wealthy businessman who appoints his daughter as his heir after the latest of (many) assassination attempts against him sees his plane crash (again). The two of them set off to try and save his latest business venture where they are targeted by more assassins, tycoons and terrorists.

Anderson is known for his distinctive visual style and ensemble casts featuring regular players as well as the dark comedy, nostalgia-inspired worlds and quirkiness. My first Wes Anderson was The Life Aquatic, which I saw at the cinema in my year in France. Now that is not one of his more critically acclaimed movies, but which I really enjoyed – because of that crazy aesthetic and style. I loved Grand Budapest Hotel when that came out and have been to the last couple at the cinema because I like seeing them on the big screen. I’ve never had a bad time watching them – but some of them I think I will definitely watch again when they come around on the TV and others I probably won’t. This one I think is in the former category – whereas Asteroid City is probably the latter. But his films can be a bit of divisive – I’ve put Mark Kermode’s review here because he explains the situation very well.

Have a lovely Sunday everyone.

Book previews, bookshops

Books in the Wild: New Releases

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I’ve been wandering the bookshops again in search of new books to add to the ever expanding want to read list on Goodreads, and I’m back with my results. The good news is that they’re all hardbacks, so I was able to resist buying them because of a) price and b) the fact that hardbacks impulse buys sit on my shelves for a lot longer than paperbacks. And paperbacks can sit there for a long time…

Honestly non-fiction hardbacks are the hardest thing for me to resist, but also the things that take me longest to read. Here you can see the new Hallie Rubenhold which I mentioned in my 2025 preview back in January, but also Edward White’s Dianaworld which I hadn’t heard about until I saw it in the store – and then came home to find a review of it in the latest Literary Review which only made me want to read it more. I also hadn’t come across The Fall of the House of Montague before and that looks right up my street too – it’s all about the collapse of the fortunes of the Dukes and Earls of Manchester across four generations. I’m also tempted by The Dream Factory, but given that I already have at least four books about Shakespeare (or his plays) on the bookshelf waiting to be read I didn’t even let myself pick it up!

This selection of hardback fiction was facing the entrance – I really want to read the Emily Henry but I’m restraining myself because I’m fairly convinced there will be an airport paperback version of this that I can buy next time I fly somewhere, if there isn’t a deal on the ebook first. Open Heaven is described as “heartrending” and I think we know I’m not in the market for that, the Isabel Allende sounds interesting, but I still have at least one of hers on the Kindle waiting to be read but the Sayaka Murata sounds interesting – about a world where most babies are conceived by artificial insemination and marriages are sexless – but also I’m still not in the market for dystopian future stories!

And then finally we’ve got Julie Chan is Dead in the wild, The Marble Hall Murders – which like the Emily Henry I’m hoping will have an airport paperback version (although it is huge and possibly unmanageable as a physical copy), and the new S J Parris which is the start of a new series and which I have on my kindle waiting for me to read. Apart from that we have a few thrillers that are clearly too scary for me and Fair Play by Louise Hegarty which is a murder mystery where two thirds of the blurb sounds like I would like it and then the final sentence makes me wonder: Louise Hegarty’s Fair Play is the puzzle-box story that brilliantly lays bare the real truth of life – the terrifying mystery of grief.

That’s your lot today – have a lovely weekend.

series

Series Redux: Su Lin Mysteries

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I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I wrote about Ovidia Yu’s Su Lin mysteries, also known as the Crown Colony series, but it has because there is a new one out next week! I am still stuck at number six – because number seven hasn’t gone into KU yet or dropped to a price that falls into my Kindle range. But I do own number eight because that has. But I’m stubborn and I’m refusing to go out of order because I’ve done everything else in order. Also and this is also related, be warned: if you’re behind in the series, do not read the blurb for the upcoming ninth book The Rose Apple Tree because it’s got a huge spoiler in it for something that has clearly happened in one of those two previous books – it’s hard to tell because book 7 doesn’t have a plot summary attached to it in the blurb at all, just “The next title in the Mystery Tree series, exploring Singapore after the Japanese retreat and in the aftermath of WWII” and book 8 is tagged as being set in 1949 and book 9 in 1947. And i am not reading the samples to find out because: spoilers.

Any way, I have really enjoyed reading these Singapore-set murder mysteries which have taken us from the Abdication crisis through to the end of the Second World War, from Su Lin’s teenage years to adulthood as she straddles the line between the Singaporean community and foreigners in power – which started as the British and then changed to the Japanese during the war.

The first six are still in Kindle Unlimited and they’re well worth a look, and as you can see, you can also find them in some of the bookshops with larger mystery sections.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Book previews

Out Today: New K J Charles

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We have a bit of a surprise new release today – I only found out about this one about ten days ago when Amazon sent me one of those “new release from an author you like” emails and was surprised to see it was a new release coming very soon. Anyway, K J Charles‘ latest is Copper Script which is set in the 1920s and features a Metropolitan Police Detective and a graphologist who can work out people’s lives and personalities from their handwriting with freakish accuracy. I pre-ordered this off the back of that email – so I have a copy dropped onto my Kindle just waiting to be read once I’ve finished the current Mitchell and Markby….

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Struggling Wives

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Happy Wednesday everyone, and yes, this is the second Recommensday inspired by reading At Mrs Lippencote’s! The first one back at Easter was about unhappy marriages, and this one is about Struggling Wives of various types.

Paperback copy of At Mrs Lippencote's

Julia in At Mrs Lippencote’s is the wife of an RAF officer who finds the social expectations of her frustrating and can’t ever quite get to grips with what she ought to be doing and what she wants to do. In Mrs Tim of the Regiment – Hester is also a military wife, but she’s not struggling with her relationship with her husband like Julia is – it’s everything else that’s causing her headaches. Her husband is away, and she’s been moved to a new area and has a lot on her plate: a new group to fit into, a friend with a romantic entanglement and some one chasing after her too. This is written as a diary and part of the fun of it is Hester’s obliviousness to the various men who are sniffing around her. In The Diary of a Provincial Lady, our heroine is also struggling – but in her case it’s mostly to keep the house from falling into chaos whilst also trying to keep up appearances in the neighbourhood. This is not the first time I have recommended this and I continue to love it and empathise with an inability to plant bulbs when you’re meant to!

In Marghanita Laski’s To Bed With Grand Music, Deborah is struggling in a different way: to be faithful to her husband who has left for Egypt (why always Egypt?) and who she promises to be faithful to despite the fact that he says he can’t promise to be. She up sticks for London, abandoning her son and takes lover after lover. Deborah is an awful person – and a terrible failure as a wife and mother – but it makes for great reading. and finally In Guard Your Daughters the daughters are the centre of the plot but their mother is absolutely a struggling wife. She’s not living in the real world or actually participating in the household and you could say it’s the root of all the problems in that household.

I have plenty of books that suggest they might be in a similar vein on the shelf to be read: like Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins, An Academic Question by Barbara Pym and Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple, so there may yet be a follow up-follow up post!

Happy Humpday!