Happy Thursday everyone, and I have another new book out today that I wanted to talk about. So we have a big trend of Cowboy and ranch romances at the moment, but Night Rider is adding in the famous person and normal person trope in this case a a cowboy and a Hollywood starlet. But. But. Look at this cover: Pastel colours, illustrations. Yes there is the word suspense in the Bailey Hannah quote, but does this look like a romantic suspense novel? Because this is the final line of the description:
But that dream is threatened when Nina’s past catches up with her. And when an unlikely predator strikes, she and Maverick must make a choice: to let each other go or face the world together.
So. I have a copy of this via NetGalley because I am behind with the Cowboy/Ranch trend and I wanted to get in on it, but when I was picking it out, I didn’t really peg it as being as Romantic Suspense as the Amazon page says it is. So I’m going to read it, and see how romantic suspense it is, and then go and find some more cowboys to see if they’re all actually romantic suspense and cover signalling has gone even more out the window than I previously thought!
The latest Marlow Murder club mystery is out this week and so I thought now was a good time to point you back at my post about the series last year – which you can find here. This new books is The Mysterious Affair of Judith Potts centres on a secret from Judith’s past. She’s always been a bit of an enigma, but it looks like we might be about to get some answers as someone from her past appears in town. On top of that, there’s two dead local celebrities for the ladies to investigate. I really enjoy these – actually more than the TV versions of them as the adaptation seems much more played for laughs/humour than it reads to me as a book. The new one is in hardback and should be pretty easy to find in shops as well as in ebook and audiobook from all the usual sources. And if you haven’t read the earlier books yet, the first is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and all the others are on offer for £2.99.
Happy Thursday everyone, and having mentioned one of the Christmas Notch books in my Not-New Christmas Recommendsday, I wanted to flag that Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy have a new book out today, The Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl. This is set in a college town and has a professor for the hero and a new lecturer in town for the heroine. I’m looking forward to reading it, but have a few reservations about the conflict of interest situation here because as you know I’m all about the competent heroines. However given that they’ve managed to handle similar stuff quite well in Christmas Notch I’m prepared to go with it and give it a try!
Now we’re into December the new releases have really slowed down because all the stuff that was hoping for big sales in the run up to Christmas is already out there and we’re now into the counter programming. For context, the list that I usually look at for new releases has December bundled in with November instead of having a separate page. And most of them are November books, believe me, I checked. So today I wanted to mention a new book from an author that I really like, but in a series of hers that I haven’t read: Catriona McPherson’s Last Ditch series. I’ve read McPherson’s Dandy Gilver books and one of her 1950s set Helen Crowther books, but not any from this contemporary and (mostly) California set series with a Scottish Heroine. Scots Eggs has some missing tourists and a potential double murder and the whole series sounds a lot of fun. Don’t be surprised if you see the first in the series pop up on the reading list in a few weeks, just as soon as I’ve got the Dakotas sorted out on the 50 states list…
By the time you read this, my final* pre-order of the year will have dropped through my front door because Olivia Dade’s Second Chance Romance is out in the world. I ordered this back in March, but I’ve been waiting to see what Karl the Baker’s deal is since I read the first Harlots Bay book At First Spite back in February last year. According to my reading plan, I’m meant to be reading Christmas books this month but there is a fairly high chance that this will be jumping right to the top of my to-read list.
In Wednesday’s Recommendsday, I wrote about From Russia With Love which is a spy adventure with the Cold War and Russia as a key protagonist. This week also saw the release of the latest H M The Queen Investigates novel which is also venturing into Cold War spying Territory – with a title that evokes John Le Carré. I mentioned The Queen Who Came in from the Cold back in January in my series releases post, and I think it’s the last book from that post to be released (that hasn’t been bumped back into 2025*). In this book it’s 1961 and the Royal Yacht is heading for Italy for a state visit, but on board the Queen and her private secretary are investigating a possible murder that someone thinks they saw from the Royal Train. I really like this series as you know and I’ve been looking forward to this for more than a year so I’m hoping it will live up to that. I think it’s a sensible decision to move the series back in time, but I remain sceptical about how many scenarios there actually are to keep this series going. But given that I thought similar about the Royal Spyness books and they’re still going I may be surprised! If you haven’t read any of this series, do go back and check out my series post about them – the first is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and the other three are at sensible prices on Kindle as well.
*there are two of them that have slid back into 2026 – the final Thursday Next book which should have been this month but which I sort of half expected to slide given how long we’ve been waiting already and the now final Phryne Fisher book, which presumably was slowed down by Kerry Greenwood‘s final illness.
I’m a big fan of Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock series, so it would be remiss of me not to mention that Thomas has a new book out this week, even if it’s not another instalment in the adventures of Charlotte Holmes. The Librarians is a neither historical nor a romance – per the cover it’s “A Novel”. Those words can sometimes strike terror into my heart when it’s an author that I’ve enjoyed in other genres, but the blurb is promising. It’s set in Austen, Texas with four librarians whose secrets are threat to come out into the open when two bodies are found in the library after a murder mystery themed games night. This one looks like it’s only out in hardback in the UK, no Kindle version, so I may have to wait a while to read it, but I will be keeping my eyes peeled for it in the shops.
We are in the thick of the autumn releases now, and I’ve already written about some of thebig hitters coming ahead of this Christmas, so today I wanted to mention a slightly more under the radar one: You Had To Be There by Jodie Harsh. The subtitle is An Odyessy through Noughties London, One Night At a Time. If you weren’t around in the early years of the 21st century, Jodie Harsh is a DJ, nightclub promoter and drag queen who was popping up all over the place in the pre-social media era of glossy celeb magazines because of her nightclub nights. Before Ru Paul’s Drag Race appeared, she was probably one of a handful of drag queens that people in the UK might have been able to name.
A lot has changed in London’s nightlife scene since the early noughties. While pubs and clubs across the country have struggled, the London nightclub and gay scene has been particularly badly hit – whether it’s all the venues that disappeared as a result of the construction of Crossrail (now known as the Elizabeth Line) around Tottenham Court Road Station or the masses of redevelopments that have happened in Soho which have seen small venues disappear because of construction work, rising rents or licencing issues because of the bougie new apartment buildings. I was never much of a club goer, but I was (and still am) a theatre goer who was on the perifery of some of these changes as well as an avid readers of the sort of magazines that featured stories about London nightlife, so I’m really looking forward to reading this.
After last week’s look at the non-fiction, this week I’m using Recommendsday to talk abou the big fiction releases of the autumn as we hurtle towards Christmas.
I’ve already written about the new Dan Brown which came out on the 9th, but tomorrow sees the other biggie September with the arrival of the new Richard Osman. After taking a break from the Thursday Murder Club last year with We Solve Murders, he’s back with the fifth in the series The Impossible Fortune, which sees the residents of Coopers Chase back on the case. You’re going to want to have read the previous book because there was a Big Plot Development at the end of The Last Devil to Die.
Also out this week is the new novel from Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You. This is inspired by Lockwood’s own experiences suffering the effects of Long Covid on her memory and promises to be a slightly trippy and inventive read. I read Lockwood’s memoir Priestdaddy years ago and still need to read her first novel before I get around to this one, even if I was ready to start reading books set during Covid. Which I’m not sure I am yet!
The new R F Kuang, Katabasis is already out and completely everywhere. This is Kuang’s first book since Yellowface and is a return to speculative fiction. If you are a reader of Literary Fiction, there are lots of the Big Authors who have books out this autumn – from Salman Rushdie with The Eleventh Hour on November 4, to Ian McEwan’s “literary thriller and love story” What We Can Know (which came out last week) and William Boyd’s historical spy novel The Predicament which is his second book featuring Gabriel Dax (the first being Gabriel’s Moon).
There are also new books from some of the mega thriller writers: John Grisham has The Widow (October 21) which is being described as his first whodunnit as well as being a legal thriller. Jeffery Archer also has a new thriller out this week with End Game. In (other) books that are Not For Verity there is also the Nicholas Sparks and M Night Shyamalan book Remain
But what am I waiting for, I hear you ask. Well my autumn pre-orders include Olivia Dade’s Second Chance Romance. This is the second book in the Harlot’s Bay series, and I’ve had it pre-ordered since March, because that is how I roll. If you read At First Spite, this is Karl the Baker’s story, and the heroine is an audiobook narrator who moved away from town after high school. I can’t wait. It’s out at the end of November. I’ve also got the paperback of Katherine Center’s Love Haters ordered – the ebook came out at the start of the summer, but for some reason Past Verity went for the paperback and a longer wait!
The fifth H M The Queen Presents book, The Queen Who Came in from the Cold is out the same day – it’s the early 1960s, and The Queen is getting ready to go to Italy on the Royal Yacht when someone claims to have seen a murder from the Royal Train. There is another Sophie Hannah Poirot novel coming this autumn too – The Last Death of the Year – which sees Poirot arriving on a Greek island for New Year. These can go either way for me – I’ve liked two, disliked two and just picked up the one I haven’t read on offer to see how that one suits me.
And finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Stephen Rowley, author of The Celebrants and The Guncle, has a new one coming in mid October. Just a warning though that The Dogs of Venice is a novella – it’s already available on Audible and only lasts 80 minutes, so it’s quite pricey as a £20 hardback (no matter how much I love him).
You may remember Sarah Sigal’s Socialite Spy, which was a BotW back in 2023. Well this week Sigal’s new book is out – and it’s another novel featuring Lady Pamela Moore. We re-join her in 1938, and she is still using her work as a society columnist as cover. This time she’s trying to infiltrate the Parisian circles where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are encountering fascists and Nazi sympathisers. I really enjoyed the first book, and I love a story that features Edward and Mrs Simpson, so I’m really looking forward to reading this. It’s in Kindle Unlimited, so hopefully I’ll get to it sooner rather than later!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 