The sequel to Haunted Ever After is out today in the UK, (and came out on Tuesday in the US). Ghost Business features Sophie, who runs the ghost tour we came across in book one (if you’ve read it) who is faced with a new rival, Tristan, who works for a company who runs ghost tours across a bunch of cities. After a row between the two of them goes viral, they agree that whoever is the most successful at the end of the summer gets to stay…
I loved the first book and I’m looking forward to reading this one, albeit not as excited as I am about Jen DeLuca’s next book which is another in the Renn Faire series!
So I said yesterday I don’t know what I was going to do for BotW today, and I kept thinking about it and I still didn’t and I couldn’t come up with any enthusiasm for any of the new things I read last week so I decided to do something different because…
The Autumn new book deluge has really started now because today we had the arrival of the new Dan Brown book, the sixth in the Robert Langdon series. It’s been eight years since the last installment in the series, Origin, and I’m sure there were other people who, like me, thought that that might be it for the series. But no, he’s back and I think this may be the biggest print run of the books out this autumn – the announcement doesn’t say how big it is, but it’s a simultaneous release in 17 territories and the man has 250 million books in print. That is a lot of books.
I’ve read the first two Langtons, back at the original height of Da Vinci Code Mania 20 years ago and I also read his standalone Digital Fortress at around the same time. When the third book came out I had a go at it and then gave up on it and haven’t gone back. When I was reading the first two back I was in France and was borrowing any English books I could get my hands on and I don’t think I had the same motivation for them once I was back in the UK with free reign on anything I wanted to read. But there’s no doubt that he’s one of the authors who will shift big units – they’re the sort of books that people who don’t read many books per year will pick up at the airport. And I don’t say that as a derogatory thing – I do exactly the same with Richard Osman. And his new book is out in a few weeks too…
It’s nearly the weekend everyone, and it’s almost the end of August and more new books are starting to appear again. There are loads out this week but the ones I’m most interested in (I think) are two Agatha Christie adjacent novels.
Let’s start with Amanda Chapman’s Mrs Christie at the Guild Library because it’s a debut. The blurb promises an old money New York book conservator, a woman claiming to be Agatha Christie and the suspicious death of a talent agent. It also mentions a snarky librarian, a child computer prodigy and a badly dressed police detective and has a beautiful cover so it’s going on my list to read the sample for and see if it can go on the long list for the Christmas book options!
And the second is Sulari Gentill’s Five Found Dead. This is set on the Orient Express where a crime fiction writer and his twin sister are taking a trip as a reward after he’s finished medical treatment. But then they wake up to a bloody crime scene in the cabin next door, but no body and so of course they start investigating. And then a steward is murdered. I’ve read a couple in Gentill’s Roland Sinclair historical mystery series but has now branched out into standalone mysteries that seem to be more towards the thriller end of the genre (although not so thriller that they made it onto the thriller section of the new books list that I look at!) and so may possibly be too scary for me – but I will be checking it out if I spot it in the shops!
Back in February, The Fan Who Knew Too Much was a Book of the Week, so I wanted to mention that the sequel, Lies and Dolls, came out on Tuesday. The blurb for this promises Kit and Binfire en route to Lincolnshire to see undiscovered tapes of Vixens of the Void and promises missing action figures that lead to murder. I thought the first one could have been a bit tighter, but that was possibly because it was doing the world building work – so I’m looking forward to seeing what Nev Fountain has got planned and how it’s all developed. As you can see, I had the paperback pre-ordered – but given the state of the pile at the moment, who knows how long it will take for me to get to it!
There’s clearly something in the water with books set on islands this year. After Sarah MacLean’s book set on a private island, Beatriz Williams’s latest is back on Winthrop Island, which featured in The Beach at Summerley a couple of year ago. This is another time slip novel with one strand set in 1846 and the other set in what sounds like the present day. There is a cache of paintings, a movie star, a chef and a steam ship disaster across the two threads and it sounds great. I continue to be really annoyed that Williams most recent novels haven’t been getting kindle releases over here – I’m now about three books behind because they just don’t seem to turn up in the shops and there’s no kindle option. All of which is annoying because I really like her writing.
The first book featuring Sally Smith’s barrister and (very) reluctant detective Gabriel Ward was a BotW back in April and as the sequel is out today and I read it as soon as I could after finishing that first one, today I have a bonus review of it for you.
We rejoin Gabriel in the run up to Christmas 1901 where he is about to tackle a difficult libel case, representing an actress who says that a tabloid has impugned her reputation. But then a mummified hand is delivered to the Temple’s treasurer and Gabriel is once again pressed into service to try and find out what is happening without inviting the police into the Inner Temple. And as more body parts arrive – including one with a fatal consequence – it becomes clear that someone has got a grudge against the Inner Temple itself.
Sally Smith has come up with another twisty and intriguing mystery and has also continued to build out the world that she created in the first book. Gabriel’s world and circle continues to expand, and his cloistered and sheltered life is a great device to enable her to explain the background to things and the rules of the world without it feeling like an info dump. And Gabriel’s growing friendship with Constable Wright makes for a great unlikely duo who actually compliment each other really well.
I would have read another one of these straight away had that been an option, so the sooner Sally Smith can write a third one the better – and hopefully enough people will buy this to get in on our shelves this time next year. My copy came from NetGalley, but my paperback copy of the first book came from a bookshop so I’m hoping this one will be findable in stores too. I’ll certainly be looking out for it. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too.
Happy New Rivers of London Week! Book 10 in Ben Aaronovitch’s series, Stone and Sky, is out today and I am very, very excited! It’s three years since we last had a full length novel in the series – since Amongst Our Weapons in 2022 we’ve had two novellas, both set in the US but one in the present day with Agent Reynolds, and one in the past with Nightingale in Jazz Age New York. Now they were both great, but I am so excited to see what’s happening to Peter. We’ve had a few hints in the graphic novels because the last three have been beyond the end of Amongst Our Gifts, but it’s not the same as a proper novel. My copy has already arrived – early in fact, except I was staying in London (and it was hot hot hot) and so the only problem is I’m off on a trip for work tomorrow and I don’t dare start it because I’m not sure I’ll get it finished before I have to leave and I don’t want to trek it away with me part finished and when I know I’ll buy books at the airport…
This week I wanted to mention that there’s a new Sarah Adler out. According to the blurb, Nina is suddenly single, unemployed and back living with her parents. Quentin was her childhood crush and is also back in town. He wants to resume their treasure hunt from years ago – and both of them could use the reward. But the treasure hunt is the reason the two of them fell out in the first place, so their shared past may not be able to stay hidden.
Both Mrs Nash’s Ashes and Happy Medium were books of the week so I’m looking forward to reading this one – and I have a preorder waiting for me when I get home!
Welcome to Glorious Tuga was a book of the week almost a year ago, and today the sequel is out. It’s planned as a trilogy, so don’t go expecting everything to be resolved at the end of this one but the blurb is promising the arrival on the island of Charlotte’s mother, determined to drag her daughter back home to England and the career Lucinda thinks her daughter ought to have. I loved the characters as well as the setting when I read the first book, so I’m looking forward where we go next. I’m hoping that the angst level stays pretty low (similar levels to book one please) because that’s what I need in my reading at the moment! I saw the first book in a bunch of shops last year so I’m hoping this one should be fairly easy to find.
Side note: you’ll noticee that we’ve got a new cover style since last year – the first one got a redesign with the arrival of the paperback and the sequel has followed that. I think it’s really pretty but it’s bad news for those who have the first in hardback and like a matching set…
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.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 