This week I’m back in the cozy crime genre for my pick, and with a first in a series so I’m abiding by the rules (yes, those rules I set myself!).
And so the plot: Lena’s just landed a job as the assistant to her favourite writer, Camilla Graham and moved to a small town in Indiana. Lena has always wanted to be a writer and now she gets to learn from her idol. Lena’s best friend already lives in Blue Lake – in fact she’s the one who met Camilla first, but Lena quickly gets stuck into small town life and meeting the locals – including a notorious recluse and the chief detective. But when a body turns up on her boss’s land, and strange things start happening at the house Lena can’t help but start investigating…
This has a fairly classic cozy crime set up in many ways – small town, two potential love interests for the heroine and a developing group of friends. But the writing as a profession is fun and the actual murder plot is good and allows the development of Lena and Camilla’s working relationship as well as doing some world building work too. There’s also a secondary investigation going on that is setting up more for the series, so it feels quite action packed – and I mean that in a good way. At the moment Lena seems to be picking my least favourite of the two love interests but there’s plenty of scope for either him to grow on me or for her to change her mind. This is my first book by Julia Buckley, and there another five in this series and she has a couple of other series too so that’s something to look forward to, if I can just get the tbr under control…
I read this one in paperback, but it’s also available on Kindle and Kobo.
Autumn is new TV season, and the run up to Christmas (and THanksgiving in the US) is the big movie release season, so I thought this week I’d mention the books that are about to hit the screens of various sizes before the end of the year.
I’m starting with the one you’re most likely to have already seen a trailer for even before I put it here, and that’s Wicked. It’s based on the musical which is quite a long way away from Gregory Maguire’s novel, but as they’ve split it into two parts, it sounds like they have used more of the book material for the film – which makes sense because the second half of the musical is less obviously spectacular than the first and the most well known songs are in the first – including the iconic Defying Gravity which is the ending of the first half in the musical and has been so heavily featured in all the promotional material that it has to be in the first part!
Excitingly Interior Chinatown has a brand new trailer today – ahead of it’s release in the US in mid November. Charles Yu has adapted it himself from his novel, which is about an background character in a police procedural drama who longs to be the main character. It won a National Book award the year it came out and was nominated for a couple more prizes. I read it in 2020 and although it was not entirely my thing (as we know that’s not unusual for Award-winners) but I thought it was really clever, inventive and mind bending. It’s on the list of things I might be able to watch with Him Indoors. Or at least let him start watching it to see if I’ll be able to cope. I just need to get Disney+ again first!
Already out there in the US, but frustratingly still without a confirmed date in the UK is the Moonflower Murders. I did mention this the other week when I posted that there is going to be another book in the Atticus Pünd/Susan Ryeland series, but I don’t care, because I think these are so fun and clever and I’m looking forward to seeing how book two translates to the screen – I doubted Anthony Horowitz before the seeing the Magpie Murders and I’m not making that mistake again. I’m sort of expecting that this is going to be in the Christmas TV offerings, so I might still have two months to wait…
This one is a bit of a cheat on two fronts because it’s already out there *and* I haven’t read the book, but the trailer made me laugh so I’m going with it anywhere. I’ve read about half a dozen of Carl Hiassen’s books – but not Bad Monkey – and I am a little worried this is going to be a bit too violent for me on screen – the novels fall into the same sort of humours crime-thriller-adventure area as Stephanie Plum does, but with a lot more gore on the page. This one is on Apple TV+, which I hardly ever have, so it may be a while before I can set Him Indoors on it to check it for me.
And finally, this is the one that I have no clue how I would be able to watch as it’s a Hallmark Movie, but the book itself sounds intriguing: The Chicken Sisters. It’sabout two families feuding over whose restaurant serves the best fried chicken and two sisters who have ended up on opposite sites try to settle it by taking part in a TV cooking show. It’s at least partially set in Kansas too – so if I can get hold of a copy of that, it might help me with one of my harder to get states in the 50 states challenge…
Inspired by yesterday’s post about Small Miracles, I thought I’d write today’s recommendsday is a batch of books that are similarly gentle but uplifting, but it was harder than I expected.
So Small Miracles is blurbed by A J Pearce as in the Emmy Lake series – which have more sadness to them than these (or at least more on page sadness) but the first one Dear Mrs Bird is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so that’s fairly risk free if you’re a KU member.
It’s actually really hard to come up with something that feels really similar – but I think maybe The Diary of a Provincial Lady would work – it’s funnier and also nearly 100 now, but it has a similar gentle, low stakes feel to it. Which also made me think of Miss Buncle – another woman trying to get some money, although in this case because her dividends have failed and Ladies don’t have jobs.
There were a few things in the people also read/bought columns that looked promising Julietta Henderson’s The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman – still haven’t read but kept coming up as a suggestion when I was writing this – so maybe I should get around it to! Also popping up is Claire Pooley’s The People on Platform Five – which I don’t have, but is 99p at the moment, so it’s entirely within the realms of possibility that I’ll end up buying it after writing this post! Again, I haven’t read them, but I know my sister and my mum really like Rachel Joyce’s novels and I think they’re doing something similar too.
Oh, and I’ve pre-ordered the Small Miracle’s sequel…
Yes, today’s pick is the book that I stayed up late to finish on Sunday night. I have a lot of thoughts about it, not all of which I can mention here because: spoilers but it still makes it the book I want to talk about the most from last week’s reading!
It’s nearly ten years since magician Violet Volk disappeared – in the middle of her comeback show. In the intervening decade, her fans haven’t forgotten her – even if her sister Sasha wishes they would. Now with the anniversary approaching there is a fresh burst of publicity – including a hashtag where people are posting pictures of supposed sightings and a podcaster who keeps asking Sasha for an interview. Meanwhile Sasha’s daughter Quinn is doing some digging of her own around the aunt that she idolises and risks finding out some things her mother would rather stay hidden. And then there’s the fact that Sasha has started sleepwalking again. Told from Sasha’s point of view but also through transcripts of the podcast, emails and articles, you follow the run up to and aftermath of the tenth anniversary.
I have a lot of thoughts about this book – and I’m going to have to lend it to someone to read it as well so I can talk about it with them because I can’t say everything that I want to here. But the fact that I couldn’t go to sleep last night until I found out how it all ended says a lot about how engrossing it is. Margarita Montimore keeps you guessing about what was really going on with Violet and Sasha and their relationship and like the magic tricks that Violet was famous for you don’t quite know where it’s all going or who to trust. I’m going to front up and say that I didn’t love the ending, but I don’t quite know what I think would have been better!
Anyway despite that, I’m really glad that I spotted this in Foyles the other week and I don’t begrudge having paid more money than I usually do on a paperback on it – because I enjoyed reading it and I don’t think I would have come across it if it weren’t for that copy misplaced in the romance section. At least I assume it was misplaced – it’s not a romance, but I can see why the cover and format might have confused someone into shelving it there!
It’s also available on Kindle, Kobo (and on Kobo at time of writing it costs even more than my paperback did!) and audiobook which comes complete with multiple narrators to fit the different sections of the book – I had a listen to the sample and it sounds really good. I suspect you’ll need a fairly big bookshop to get a paperback copy – mine is a large format international edition and you don’t see a lot of those around usually.
As promised, here is part one of my favourite books of the year so far – and we’re starting with new releases. I’ve already read 200 books this year, so I’ve got plenty of books to chose from but it’s no surprise that I’ve already written about most of these at some length.
I haven’t read a lot of nonfiction this year and not much of it is new-new but I have read Stories I Might Regret Telling You by Martha Wainwright and it’s such a good one. As I said in my BotW review back in April, this is one of the most unvarnished memoirs I’ve read. Martha Wainwright is as clear eyed about her own faults and her life as you will find someone and is prepared to put it out there in a book. Even if you don’t know her msuic, this is well worth reading – especially if you’re interested in the effects of famous paretns and/or competitive siblings and/or life in the music industry and particularly life in the music industry as a woman. And it turns out to be easier to get hold of than I thought it would be.
On to fiction and most of my favourite reads (that aren’t in series) are either romance or romance adjacent. There is the fabulous and sunny Book Lovers by Emily Henry and the redemptive and ultimately hopefuly Mad About You by Mhairi MacFarlane. They have very different plots, but they also both have heroines who know what they want in life and what they deserve. Mad About You has darker moments than Book Lovers, but you will come away from both with a big happy smile on your face.
Then there are two books that I have read in the last couple of weeks. I actually finished Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E Smith one day apart and then had a massive book hangover from two of my favourite books of the year so far. Greta is this week’s Book of the Week so you can read all about that there, and Lessons in Chemistry was the top review in Quick Reviews yesterday – and wasn’t actually that quick a review.
And as I mentioned earlier – there have also been a few really good new entries in series that I like – there is The Prize Racket – the latest in Isabel Rogers’ Stockwell Park Orchestra Series, the latest Rivers of London book, Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch, and the latest Vinyl Detective novel Attack and Decay by Andrew Cartmel.
And lets finish with a couple of honourable mentions – all the books above got five stars from me on Goodreads, but there are a couple of really, really good books nipping at their heels – like Jill Shalvis’s The Family You Make and Harvey Fierstein’s memoir I Was Better Last Night which I still haven’t written about here but will undoubtedly figure in my long planned actor memoir recommendsday post, just as soon as I read the other actor memoirs I have on my shelf!
So that’s half a year done – fingers crossed that the new books in the second half of the year are as good. Tune in tomorrow for my favourite new-to-me books of 2022 so far!
So, I had a really hard time picking today’s choice, because I loved Lessons in Chemistry *and* The Unsinkable Greta James and I could only pick one. But as Lessons in Chemistry is all over the place – including in paperback at the airport – I thought I’d write about Great today because you might not already have heard of it.
Greta James is an indie music star. She’s had magazine covers and sold out gigs and a few hit songs. So why is she on a cruise around Alaska with her dad weeks before she’s due to be launching the always tricky second album? Her parents were meant to be taking the trip together for their fortieth wedding anniversary, but her mum died suddenly three months before the cruise. And at her first gig after her mother’s death, Greta had an onstage meltdown that went viral. So she’s on the trip with her dad, attempting to ignore what’s going on with her career and trying to improve her relationship with her dad. Because her mum was the supportive one – who encouraged her to follow her dreams and her dad was… not. Will this trip bring them closer together or drive them further apart than ever? Also on board the ship is author Ben Wilder – who is there to deliver a lecture about his book about Jack London’s Call of the Wild, but is struggling with writing his follow up…
I really enjoyed this. I do like a book about a musician (see Daisy Jones and the Six) and I love stories about family relationships (see Guinevere St Clair and Young Pretenders most recently) and it’s only a couple of weeks since I wrote a post about mysteries set on ships, so we know that I like them too. And this does everything that I was hoping it would do. Greta is passionate about her music and determined to succeed and her fractious relationship with her dad, her blossoming relationship with Ben and her grief and anxiety about the death of her mum add up to a fascinating leading character. And it’s a minor thing, but I really liked how explicit the book was about the work and the practice that had gone into Greta’s success – she plays her guitar, you hear about the hours she puts in to playing and composing. I feel like you don’t always get to hear about that in books about people in the arts – it’s portrayed like a magical thing that comes easily to people. And maybe to some people it does, but I think to a lot of musicians and other artists of various kinds it actually comes after thousands of hours of work and the first song you write (or painting you make, or book you write) isn’t the one that’s the big success – it’s the 5th or sixth or tenth or thirtieth.
I hate the term women’s fiction, but that’s the best I have got for this. It has a romantic plot strand but it’s not primarily a romance. And it’s much easier to read than literary fiction (another label I hate) tends to be. I read it across two evenings once the actual physical copy arrived chez moi after I bought this as part of my sample reading spree the other week. I’m not sure where I saw it recommended. I thought it was from Goodreads, maybe in their Anticipated Summer reads article, but no. So it could have been twitter or the algorithm because I can’t find it in any of my book-ish emails. Anyway this is the first Jennifer E Smith book that I’ve read and I shall keep my eyes out for more because it was a really delight.
I bought mine in hardback because after reading the sample I thought it might be one I would want to lend (and I think the prices for the physical copy vs the ebook were not that far apart on the day I bought it) and I have already sent it out on loan! I can’t see that it’s in stock in any of the Foyles stores so it may be one that you do have to order rather than pickup in a store, but it’s also available in Kindle and Kobo. The paperback is out early next year….
Long time readers of this blog will be aware of my fondness for Girls Own books – particularly those set in boarding schools. I’m fairly sure that I would have hated boarding school in reality but I love reading about them – particularly the ones set in the first half of the twentieth century. A result of this is that I do love an adult book set in a boarding school and showing the other side of things. So for recommendsday today, here are some adult books set in schools of various types.
Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie
Let’s start with a classic murder mystery. An exclusive girls school is thrown into chaos when an unpopular games mistress is found shot dead in the sports pavilion. This is a Hercule Poirot novel, but he actually only appears very late on in this – which has school politics and international espionage among the options for the motive for the murder. I remember first reading this as an early teenager – around the same time as I was reading all the Girls Own books and being sort of horrified at the idea of a murder at a boarding school. It’s a much later Poirot novel – for all that I didn’t realise that when I first read it and the TV version of it is really quite different because it had to be moved back to the 1930s. Worth’s look if you’ve never read it.
Poison for Teacher by Nancy Spain
It’s only a few weeks since I picked Death Goes on Skis for a Book of the Week, so it’s perhaps a bit naughty to be picking Nancy Spain again, but I think if anything I liked this even more. Miriam and Natasha find themselves undercover at a boarding school to try to work out who is trying to put the school out of business. But while they are there, a teacher is poisoned and it all gets complicated. This has awful children, horrible teachers, seething rivalries – professional and personal – and a staff play that causes nothing but trouble. It’s really, really funny.
Summer Half by Angela Thirkell
Also funny, but without any murders is Angela Thirkell ’s Summer Half, which I still think is one of the funniest of all of her Barsetshire books. It has a serious teacher getting himself engaged to featherbrained girl who is clearly going to cause him nothing but problems and everyone in the book is hoping that he’ll some how manage to escape. Schools – and teaching – has changed a lot since this was written but it’s all still recognisable.
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
Let’s jump forward to the more recent past. Preplis about a scholarship student at a fancy New England Boarding school. Yes, I wanted to smack some sense into Lee for at least the second half of the book, possibly longer but that may have been because I could see some of the elements of my own character in her – the ones that I try hardest to overcome and she’s making no effort to do so, (or because she doesn’t try and make the most of the opportunity that she made for herself) But this did feel like a very realistic and truthful portrait of what life in a modern (ish) co-ed boarding school might have been like – in the time immediately before computers and mobile communication took over. This was Sittenfeld’s debut, and although I’ve enjoyed other books of hers more (the first or hers I read was Eligible, I’ve read almost all of her backlist and buy the new stuff as it comes out) but if you haven’t read it it’s worth a look.
I recently read Charlotte Mendelson’s Almost English – which is about a scholarship girl at an English country boarding school – which wasn’t for me, but I think others will like it- my problems was around not liking any of the characters enough to go with them while they made stupid decisions all over the place! And to finish I’m going to throw a few mentions in to stuff I’ve written about recently that also fits in here: As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust from Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series, which sees our heroine stuck in a boarding school in Canada. And then there is Murder in the basement which was a BotW six months ago, and so I can’t really write about at length again – yet!
Yes I finished this on Monday. So yes, I’m cheating for the second week in a row. I make the rules, so I can break them if I want to. Anyway, you should all just be glad that I didn’t pick another mystery!
Maxine and Hazel meet on a USO tour in the last months of the Second World War. They meet again in New York in the 1950s when Maxine is an up and coming film star and Hazel is an aspiring playwright. Both living in the famous Chelsea Hotel, soon they’re working together on Hazel’s first play which is going to be staged on Broadway. But the red scare is well underway and the production and their careers are threatened by the witch hunt for communists turning its attention to the entertainment industry. As the pressure starts to build what will happen to the women and their friendship?
The Chelsea Girls follows a twenty year friendship between two women forged through a trauma in Italy, through the ups and downs of their careers. They’re both engaging and intriguing characters – Hazel’s mother is always comparing her to her brother who was killed in the war and finding her lacking, while Maxine is using the theatre to build a better life for her and her German immigrant grandmother. And as the red scare comes to Broadway, they both find themselves in the spotlight because of the actions of Hazel’s brother years before. And as well as being tense it’s also a wonderful portrait of the Chelsea Hotel – famously home to artists and bohemians, it becomes Hazel and Maxine’s refuge as they battle the outside forces trying to tear their lives apart.
I’ve been wanting to read this for ages. It came out two years ago and it’s been on my want to read list for about that long – so I’ve no idea where I even heard about it to start with. I read one of Fiona Davis’s other books a year or two back and liked the idea but didn’t love the execution, but this one really worked for me. It took me a day or two to properly get into it, but then I read 200 pages at a sitting because I wanted to see where it was going. I am fascinated with Old Hollywood, in fiction and non-fiction and this lives adjacent to that. I’ve written about some other books in this area before (like Trumbo and Karina Longworth’s Seduction) and this fitted right in to my wheelhouse. Well worth a look.
My copy came from the library, but it’s available now on Kindle and Kobo (and at time of writing is slightly cheaper on Kobo) as well as in paperback, although I’m not sure how easy that will be to get hold of in store – Foyles have stock to order, but not to click and collect.
As I said yesterday, there were two books in contention for this, and to be honest the only reason I dithered about this is because the cover fits in better with the covers of the other books in the Summer Reading post than the others do. But I have more to say about this than a round up post will allow, even if there is a slight hiccup about how easy The Guncle is to get hold of in the UK at the moment.
When Patrick is asked to look after his brother’s kids for the summer he thinks it’s a terrible idea. He likes spending time with then when they visit him in Palm Springs, he likes being Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP!) but he’s not cut out for being in charge of them full time for weeks on end. But the kids have just lost their mum and their dad has problems of his own he needs to deal with, so he says he’ll do it – mostly because his sister thinks he can’t do it. But it turns out that a summer with them might be exactly what he needs as well as what they need. He’s been drifting since the end of the TV show he starred in and this might be the kick he needs.
This is Steven Rowley’s third book and I absolutely loved it. Patrick is funny and a bit broken and infuriating and endearing. Maisie and Grant just about hit the sweet spot for children in books – funny but not sickly or too good to be true. The relationship that the three of them build is a wonderful blend of exasperated and snarky and loving. This is a book about dealing with grief but it’s also campy and funny. The cover really captures the feel of it all. I haven’t read any of Rowley’s other books – and although Lily and the octopus has great reviews it sounds a bit too much like it’s going to break me for me to want to read it at the moment – but although this did give me the sniffles, the death is already over by the start of the book and there’s enough funny bits to keep it from being a four alarm snot bomb.
My copy of The Guncle came from the library, but it seems like it’s a tricky one to get hold of in the UK – Amazon only have a hardback copy that is priced like it’s a real import or a library edition (which ditto on the price), and Foyles and Kobo aren’t listing it at all. They do have Steven Rowley’s other books though, which is perhaps a sign that it’ll come along at some point later this year – as both Lily and the Octopus and The Editor have Kindle editions.
As mentioned in yesterday’s BotW post, I had trouble choosing a book this week and so as a bonus, you get a Recommendsday post about my second choice. Yes it was that sort of a week and I’m that sort of person – when I find good books, I want to tell you about it! It’s also slightly confusing, because this has a different title depending on which part of the English-speaking world that you’re in – hence the fact that the title of the post is just Tuesday Mooney! If you’re looking for it on Goodreads, you’ll find it as Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts – which is what I listed it as on the Week in Books post and that’s what it’s called in the US, but in the UK Katie Racculia’s third novel is called Tuesday Mooney Wears Black. Now I’m not sure that either title really gives you a sense of what the book is really about, but I think the artwork on the US version is more indicative so that’s what I’ve gone with for the first picture.
Tuesday Mooney is a research wizard. She works at a hospital, digging into the lives of the rich to try and find the information to get them to donate money. But she has a secret. When she was a teenager, her best friend disappeared and she’s never really got over it. She’s a loner, who never really lets anyone in to her life – even her best from Dex (short for Poindexter). But she loves puzzles and secrets and when an eccentric millionaire drops dead at a fundraiser she’s working at, she’s drawn in to the Edgar Allen Poe-inspired contest he’s from beyond the grave to give away some of his fortune. She’s also drawn into the secrets and rivalries of two of Boston’s richest families and her life may never be the same again.
This is a gothic adventure caper with a prickly heroine and a set of secondary characters that just win you over. It’s also quite hard to describe without giving away spoilers and it doesn’t really sit in any one genre particularly easily. It’s a mystery, it’s an adventure, it’s a thriller. It’s got ghosts in one of its titles, but it isn’t really a paranormal or fantasy novel. It is clever and incredibly readable and I just loved it. I’ve never read Kate Racculia before, but I’ve just bought one of her earlier books because I liked this so much.
My copy of Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts/Wears Black came from the library, but it’s available on Kindle and Kobo for £2.99 as I write this. The paperback isn’t out in the UK until February, but you can preorder on Amazon, or buy it in hardback (on a different listing on Amazon) in the American edition.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 