I’ve been reading Julie Mulhern’s 1970s-set Country Club Murders series whenever they drop into a price band that I can justify, but this week she’s got a new book out which is the first in a new 1920s set series. Murder in Manhattan features Freddie, a female journalist in Prohibition New York who finds herself caught up in a murder investigation when someone she wrote about in her magazine column is found dead. The blurb says it’s inspired by the first female reporter at The New Yorker and also drops a load of famous names from the period so this could be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to reading it.
I had lofty plans for my reading for a Halloween post this year, because it’s been a couple of years since I have done a Halloween Recommendsday post. But due to my extreme flakiness when it comes to reading, I only finished one of the books that I was planning to read – and that was yesterday’s BotW. But I’m turning that to the good, and instead of giving you reviews, I’m going to tell you what I’ve got waiting to be read that fits a Halloween vibe, but appeals to me and my reading tastes.
I’m starting with Olivia Dade‘s ZomRomCom. I bought this at Saucy Books in the summer and I think the fact that it’s in paperback is the reason I haven’t read it yet – because I’ve been away from home so much. Anyway, as the name suggests this is a Zombie Romantic Comedy where two neighbours team up to try and prevent the Zombie apocalypse. I’m really looking forward to seeing how Dade’s style and sensibilities transfer over into a paranormal romance, if I can just find some time at home to read it…
Also in paranormal rom-coms, I have Rosie Danan‘s Fan Service on the pile. I mentioned this back in March when it came out, and it had a price drop this month so here I am with a Kindle edition of this novel about a star of a werewolf detective TV show who has just discovered that he might be a werewolf for real.
Among the books waiting on the monster to-read pile are three Virago Designer Classics that look beautiful, but that I’m a little afraid may be too scary for me. The first a book of Daphne DuMaurier’s Don’t Look Now, has five short stories that are described as “haunting and evocative” and the second is The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, where the problem is clearly in the name. Finally there is The Talented Mr Ripley, which I don’t think counts as Halloween-y, unless you count psychological thrillers as Halloween reading, and I’m pretty confident that that one is too scary for me, given that as as a teenager I failed to make it to the end of the movie version!
And finally, I’m confident that I will have finished TheMurder at World’s End by this time next week – but that of course is too late for this post. It’s got a remote mansion, the passing of Haley’s Comet, a seemingly impossible murder in a locked room and a new servant who arrives the day before the murder and finds himself in the sights of Scotland Yard. I’m not sure if it’s actually Halloween-y per se though – but it’s certainly mysterious, and from where I have got to so far (about a third of the way through at time of writing) it has good potential to get really creepy.
Have a great Halloween if that’s your thing, if it’s not I hope you manage to escape the madness and in case you haven’t read it yet this season, I present my second favourite* McSweeney’s article ever: It’s Decorative Gourd Season.
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…
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.
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.
Maggie Stiefvater’s adult debut came out this week – The Listeners is set in an Appalachian hotel commandeered by the authorities in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. The Avalon has a sweet water spring and a reputation for unrivalled luxury. But when 300 diplomats and Nazi sympathisers arrive, the delicate balance at the hotel is threatened. You might have noticed that this one is already on my reading list, but I just keep getting distracted by the Mitchell and Markbys, but so far so good.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 