Book previews

Out This Week: New Kayla Olsen

After including The Reunion as one of my favourite Not New books of 2024, it would be remiss of me not to mention that her next novel is out on Kindle today. The Lodge is about a writer who snags the job of ghosting the memoir of a former boyband member. The blurb says that she moves to a penthouse in Vermont to get the job done, but while she’s combing through her clients voicemails and documents to try and work out what happened to one of his bandmates who went missing, she starts taking skiing lessons with a handsome instructor called Tyler. As I said in the best of the year post, The Reunion was bang in the current trend for books about former teen stars – and there also seems to be a trend starting for books about ghost writers. It’s described as a cozy rom-com so I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens.

Book previews

Out this Week: Something Extraordinary

It’s the end of the year and there aren’t a lot of books being published at the moment, but Alexis Hall has a new one out this week so here we are. Something Extraordinary is the third in Hall’s Something Fabulous series and I have somewhat mixed views here. I really like a lot of Hall’s modern set books like Boyfriend Material but I really disliked the first in this series to the point where I nearly didn’t finish it. And I didn’t finish the follow up to Rosaline Palmer Takes The Cake. But these are now in KU and this one has a marriage of convenience (which is a trope I like) and Highwaymen (which I can also quite like) so I may give the series a second chance…

Book previews

Out This Week: Not In My Book

I was trying to get this finished in time for today, but I totally failed because: theatre and reading challenge completion attempts. But if you’re in the US, you can get your hands on this now. It’s comped as The Hating Game meets Beach Read, one of which I loved – the other triggered some of my issues with people behaving unprofessionally. So far this is skirting on the edge of them being too awful to each other for redemption, but I’m only a third of the way through. I will report back…

Book previews

Out this week: New Campbell and Carter

I finally got myself up to date with Ann Granger‘s Campbell and Carter books earlier this year – and now we have an eight in the series. Death on the Prowl is out in hardback today and despite the December release date, doesn’t look like it’s set at Christmas – or at least if it is it’s not mentioned in the blurb! It sees Jess and Ian investigating the murder of an unpopular man who inherited a cottage in a Cotswold village after his aunt’s tragic death and who is still seen as an outsider by the locals. I’m looking forward to reading it – although I’ll probably wait until the paperback in May on account of my matching set issue – and I am very glad that Granger has added to this series (and Mitchell and Markby the other year) as well as continuing to write her historical murder mysteries.

Here’s the link to the Kindle and Kobo editions – and I’m hoping the physical copies will show up in shops, they certainly usually do at the bigger stores like Waterstones Gower Street and Piccadilly or Foyles on Charing Cross Road.

Book previews

Out This Week: Under the Mistletoe Collection

This is one of those Amazon collections that are free if you’re in Kindle Unlimited and features five novellas from some of the big name romance novels at the moment. So there are stories from Ali Hazelwood, Tessa Bailey, Olivia Dade, Alexandria Bellefleur and Alexis Daria all around a Christmas or holiday theme. Olivia Dade is one of my favourites – and I’ve written about Hazelwood and Bellefleur before, so I’m looking forward to reading these – hopefully at some point in the run up to Christmas – and I’ll try to remember to report back!

books

Out This Week: The Author’s Guide to Murder

The new novel from Lauren Willig, Karen White and Beatriz Williams has come out this week – and part of the blurb describes it as Murder, She Wrote meets Agatha Christie which is absolutely something I can get on board with. As I said in the autumn preview post this has got a big name author being murdered on a remote island in the Scottish Highlands, with three authors among the suspects.

When I came to write this post, I was convinced that there was more than one novel this Christmas that has got an author being murdered on an island (even an island in Scotland(, but I thought I must just have been remembering being excited about this one, which is hilarious. And then when I was in Foyles the other week I spotted this years BLCC Christmas release in the wild, which is about the murder of a well known playwright at his castle on a private island off Scotland – so I was right, there is more than one, it’s just the BLCC one was first published in 1948 and has been forgotten since then. So I wasn’t going mad, and I had actually remembered something real. Anyway this seems to be a break from their previous books as a trio because as far as I can tell this one only has one strand and it’s set in the present day. The blurb describes it as a pointed satire about the literary world, which is definitely a new development for these three, so I’m excited to see what they’ve written – if I can find a copy which is always a challenge…

Book previews

Out Today: Return to the Dallergut Dream Department store

I’m going to start with the fact that I have no idea why this is coming out on a Friday, when Thursday is the usual book release day in the UK and Tuesday in the US. But that’s what the bookshop websites say, so I’m going with it as it enabled me to post about the new TJR yesterday, even if I then found copies on sale in Foyles yesterday evening on my way to the theatre. And yes. I checked the release date again and it still said preorder on the book sites.

Anyway, this is the sequel to Mi-ye Lee’s The DallerGut Dream Department Store, which came out this time last year (and which has been sitting on my tbr shelf for almost that long) and has been one of the translated fiction books you’ll have seen in the bookshops this year. In the first book we meet Penny, a new employee at the store which sells dreams, in book two she is continuing to learn about the dream industry – and discovers the people who make complaints about their dreams and tries to work out why some people never come back to the shop.

Will this be the push I need to read the first book, for the sake of my TBR pile we can only hope it is…

Book News

New H M The Queen Investigates coming!

Now while I was writing yesterday’s Kindle offers post and discovering that there’s a Her Majesty the Queen investigates book on offer this month, I also discovered that there’s a fifth in the series coming! The Queen who came in from the Cold is out in the UK in hardback first (and Kindle) on Feb 6th. The blurb says the Queen is planning her trip to Italy on the Royal Yacht Britannia when someone claims to have seen a brutal murder on the Royal Train. The Queen and her private secretary get to work – and as the title suggests there are meant to be spies and Cold War skullduggery. I can’t wait!

Book previews

Out today: New Richard Osman

The Thursday Murder Club series has featured a fair bit on this blog, but after the last one came out Richard Osman said he was taking a break from writing the series to write something different – and today is the day that that something different comes out. It’s called We Solve Murders and it’s got a detective duo who are father-in-law and daughter-in-law. He’s retired, she’s a private security officer and from the blub it sounds like an adventure caper with murders. So I’m hoping for something that’s a bit early Steph Plum maybe, because Osman does humour in his mysteries. I’m hoping to pick up a copy of this at the airport next time we go on holiday, because once again it’s a hardback first release, and I’m bad at waiting. So watch this space!

Book previews

Out This Week: Prime Time Romance

Our heroine is Brynn, newly divorced and with a new roommate, Josh, to help her pay the bills. On her birthday she makes a wish on a cake that mysteriously appears on their doorstep and the next morning she wakes up inside her favourite 90s soap Carson’s Cove – and Josh is there too – he’s the bad boy and she’s the sweetheart. The blurb is promising a rom com with 90s nostalgia – and this is one of those where I feel like it’s either really, really going to work for me – or somehow not. But I’m always an optimist in these preview posts, which is why I picked it out of the new releases this week to highlight! Prime Time Romance came out on Tuesday if you’re in the US or today (Thursday) if you’re in the UK and it’s a Penguin release so it should be available pretty widely.