A bit left field for this week’s new book because Alan Bennett is a legend. This officially comes out today, but the copy I pre-ordered for my little sister arrived on Tuesday. So you may already have your copy too. Enough Said is the fourth volume of Bennett’s diaries, taking you from 2016 – 2024 when Alan turned 90. He will be 92 in May and so every new thing at this point is a blessing and a treat. A Question of Attribution was on TV over Christmas, and I’m waiting for The Choral to pop up on a streaming service so I can catch up on that too.
Honestly I’m torn between excitement and fear for this one. Kids Wait Until You Hear This was one of the books I mentioned in my anticipated books post, and as I said in that her discipline in maintaining her public persona is iron clad – as you could see in the authorised documentary about her last year – that I’m dubious about whether there will be anything new here but if there is it will be fascinating. I’ve also been a little bit worried about the AI dance track that she contributed vocals to along with the uptick in content she’s been featuring in on her socials given how frail she looked on Drag Race and in her appearance at the Oscars a few years back, but hey, hopefully all of it is her choices. I have my copy pre-ordered anyway…
After a three year break, there is a new Perveen Mistry mystery out this week. These are murder mysteries set in 1920s India and our heroine/detective is Perveen, who happens to be Bombay’s only female solicitor. This new book is called The Star from Calcutta and sees her securing her biggest client yet – a Bollywood studio. She’s meant to be helping an actress who owns the studio with her director husband, who is caught up in a breach of contract dispute, but a body is found after a screening and the actress goes missing. I’ve read the first two in this series and really like Perveen as a character and the whole setting and set up and as you know I love a 1920s-set mystery. I have the third one waiting to be read, and as you know I try to read things in order so it may be a while before I get to this one, but if anything was going to tempt me to get going on the series it’s the prospect of a Bollywood-set book because I love a Hollywood-set book, particularly in the early years of the movie industry so this is right up my street.
With the skating over and the Winter Olympics coming to a close, I’m keeping the winter sport tangent going on for ever so slightly longer with a trilogy of romance novels set around a ski resort. Slightly tenuous, but I’m going with it and you can’t stop me!
This three novels are interconnected but not really interdependent (the last one is the question mark) romances set in the ski resort of Bluebird Basin. Come As You Are which was a BotW in 2023 and was about Madison the ex-rockstar and sober living home owner and Ashley who is fighting to keep control of her family’s ski hill. She’s in her mid 40s, he’s around a decade older and they both have baggage to overcome before they can get to their happily ever after. The second book is Lips Like Sugar which is about Mad’s bandmate Cole and Ashley’s best friend Mira who end up fake dating at Ashley and Madigan’s wedding because of Mira’s awful ex. But the fake date is the start of a real connection between the two of them even after Cole has headed back to Seattle.
And finally Wish You Were is the only one I haven’t written about here beforeand is the story of Kevin and Davis, who were a couple until Kevin relapsed into drug addiction. He’s back from rehab and wants to win Davis back, but she really doesn’t know if she can trust Kev again. And the resort is so small they can’t exactly never see each other. There are themes of addiction and recovery running through the first two stories but this one has addiction and recovery much more front and centre than those two did, which is a bit less in my regular reading wheelhouse. Like the others in the series this is a second chance romance, but this time the protagonists are a lot younger, and they are looking for their second chance after Kev’s relapse into drug addiction. It’s still really well written, and it’s really emotional and builds to a satisfying resolution but I think it was a bit too high on the angst scale for me at the time that I was reading it (and to be fair, I don’t think I’ve got any more emotionally resilient since, if anything the opposite). But if you do like that, I think it’s really going to work for you. But the first two with the older protagonists were much more my thing – they’re not quite the same as the Cathy Yardley older protagonist romances that I’ve loved, but they’re not too-too far away from that.
These are all in Kindle Unlimited at the moment- along with Jess K Hardy’s two space-set romances, which I haven’t read (yet).
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!
It’s the first day of 2026, and instead of doing the stats for last month, I’ve decided I’m doing my lookahead to the books that are being published this year that I’m looking forward to reading, many of which are already pre-ordered! There is no real order to this and I’m going to start with the standalone stuff, because as always there are loads of series books coming out but you know what I read in series, so I’m starting with the less predictable bits!
First up, is the one and only non fiction book in this post: Liza Minnelli’s memoir. It’s called Kids, Wait Til You Hear This! and it’s out in March just around the time that she turns 80. You may remember from my review of the documentary about her Liza: A Trully Terrific Absolutely True Story that Liza’s public persona is so ingrained in her that she doesn’t really show you anything behind that in the doc. And so I’m fascinated to see whether this is any different. But even if she’s still got the public face on, her life is still so incredible that I’m looking forward to reading about it in more depth. I pre-ordered this back in September and I can’t wait.
To the fiction: Emma Straub’s new book American Fantasy which is set on a cruise ship with all five members of a 90s boyband on board along with thousands of their fans. I’ve really enjoyed a bunch of books that have featured famous people and normies and this looks like it’s doing something similar but in a more lit-fic way than some of the ones I’ve read. The bar here is Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy though and that is high. This is out in April in the US and May in the UK.
Next up is Star Shipped which is Cat Sebastian’s first contemporary romance. This is an enemies to lovers deal about Simon and Charlie, two costars on a popular sci-fi TV show. As someone who was a massive Star Trek fan back in the day, I look forward to figuring out which shows (or franchises) this is pulling from as well as seeing what Sebastian’s writing looks like in a contemporary setting. This is out in early March in ebook and late April in paperback. Also in March is a new book from Sarah T Dubb. I loved Birding with Benefits which was one of my best books of 2024 and so I’m looking forward to Honey Bee Mine which has a bee keeper and a bad boy restauranteur who end up working together on a honey festival. Sounds sweet right? (sorry, terrible pun)
Another April release is Cherry Baby, the new Rainbow Rowell. This is about Cherry, whose husband has gone off to Hollywood to make a movie based on his comic strip which features a character based on her. However what no-one in her town knows is that he isn’t coming home leaving her to figure out who she is without him. But then on a night out to see a band she runs into someone who knew her way back when and even better – has never heard of the comic strip. I love a second chance romance and I like Rainbow Rowell so I’m really looking forward to this.
And now the series: the first to arrive is The Mysterious Affair Of Judith Potts, which is the fifth Marlow Murder Club Book from Robert Thorogood and is coming in two weeks time in mid January. We have a new Hawthorne and Horowitz coming in April. And A Deadly Episode sounds like it’s taking the series even more meta as the first book in this series (where a fictional version of the author is solving mysteries) is now being turned into a film and a murder takes place on set. I’m very interested to see how this works out! In July we have the next Three Dahlias mystery, Death on a Lively Sea, which sees Posy, Caro and Ros on a super yacht belonging to a billionaire who is convinced he’s going to be murdered! And there’s another Dahlia novel due in December – Murder on the Mistletoe Express.
The tenth Veronica Speedwell, A Ghastly Catastrophe, is out in March, There’s also a 14th Kate Shackleton book which allegedly is coming in April, but has already slid from March and still has no title, so I am fully expecting it to slide again! Away from murder mysteries, there is a sixth Before the Coffee Gets Cold book coming in May called Before I Knew I Loved You. We also have the sixth and final Heartstopper coming in July with Nick heading off to university – can he and Charlie make long distance work? There is also the series finale to Jen DeLuca’s Ren Faire series, Well Versed, which is out in September and Caitlin is the same age Emily was when she rushed home to help Caitlin and her mum in Well Met. This time it’s Caitlin who is back in her home town, back in her childhood bedroom and back at the Ren Faire where her teenage heart was broken – only to find that the guy who did the breaking is back too. I don’t want the series to be over, but one more visit to Willow Creek is better than no more.
And finally there is one book out in 2026 that I have been waiting a long, long time for. And that is Jasper Fforde’s Dark Reading Matter. The final Thursday Next book has been more than a decade in the waiting for. And I have been very patient and I mentioned this in last year’s anticipated books and the release date slid into 2026, and it’s slid again in the last few weeks to September, but I have it pre-ordered and so eventually it will turn up. I have faith.
And that’s your lot. It’s quite a bit isn’t it? And the good news is that the majority of them are either pre-ordered or I have copies already via NetGalley so the chances of me reporting back in on some of them is high!
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.
I’ve written about G M Malliet’s Max Tudor series before, but this week she has a new book out in her St Just series. I’ve read the first three in this series, but hadn’t realised that there had been more since then and this is actually book seven. This sees a film crew visiting Cambridge and the star of the movie turning up dead. It’s been a long time since I read those first three, but I have this one from NetGalley and I would say I will report back but that’s always tricky with later books in series so I can’t promise anything, or at least not necessarily in the immediate future!
A rare mention for a non-fiction book today, because this one sounds like a good one. 1929 is Andrew Ross Sorkin’s examination of the Wall Street Crash. I read more than my share of fiction set in and around this period and the Crash is often hovering around in the background of them – whether it’s a character whose family lost all their money in the crash in a 1930s set novel, or a knowing nod ahead in a 1920s set one to what is to become. But I’ve never really read about it in any depth and the only time it really came up in my history studies was in my GCSE module on America between 1929 and 1970 (ish) and that was very much an overview. It was much more indepth about the New Deal than it was about the reasons behind it. So this is going on to my list – although I may wait until the paperback appears…
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.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 