We’re really into the run in to Christmas now and new releases are getting a little thin, so I was surprised to see that the sequel to Nita Prose’s buzzy hit The Maid was coming out in the US this week, but it is – although if you’re in the UK you have to wait until January. In The Mystery Guest, Molly is now head maid at the Regency Grand, but murder comes back into her life again when a famous author drops dead in his hotel suite and the hotel staff comes under suspicion. When I read The Maid last year, I thought that Molly was an interesting narrator, where the reader can see things that she doesn’t, and I was relieved when she was still the same person at the end of the book (if that makes sense), so I’ll be interested to see if that can translate into a sequel. The Maid got a really wide release, so I suspect this one will be easy to find if you want it.
I’ve been reading Alexa Martin since I heard her interviewed on Smart Bitches Trashy Books’s podcast when I was walking around a shopping outlet in Maryland five years ago. Then she was writing romances with NFL playing heroes – informed by her own time as an NFL wife, now she’s writing standalones. So this is a book that I would have preordered, ready to drop on to my kindle on release day, even if it wasn’t adjacent to one of my current obsessions – home renovation. Adjacent because Next Door Nemesis is about two people fighting to become president of a home owners association – a thing that exists mostly in my head as a problem for people renovating homes because of the rules about what you can do to the outside of your home, and the fees you have to pay. Is sounds like a really fun concept for an enemies to lovers romance and I can’t wait to read it!
We’re definitely in to the run in to Christmas now and the new books are starting to thin out, but one of (the last of?) this autumn’s buzzy romance releases came out this week. We’re in a bit of a phase of romances set around weddings, and Julie Tieu’s Fancy Meeting You Here has a heroine who is both bridesmaid and florist at three of her friends’ weddings over just a few months and a hero who is a caterer. I had it pre-ordered and I’m looking forward to reading it!
Just a quick post today to mark the fact that Sweet Mercies, the sequel to recent BotW Small Miracles, is out today. It’s a Christmas book and I’ve started it, but not finished it yet because of that whole reading mojo slightly awol thing that I mentioned on Monday. I will get there though and it is on track to be my first Christmas novel of the season!
Last week it was the Christmas memoirs starting to appear, now it’s the Christmas-themed novels. And how could I not mention that the new Meg Langslow has arrived this week. Birder, She Wrote was a great title, but I think Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow! may be the best Christmas-themed pun of the year. Anyway, everyone’s favourite blacksmith, mum and super-organiser and her family are back and it’s promising actual weapon forging as well as the return of Faulk and Ragnar. I’m really looking forward to reading it. Also book 35 has a title now too – Between a Flock and a Hard Place. Honestly I don’t know who comes up with Donna Andrews’s titles – Donna or her team – but I salute whoever it is.
This Thursday I wanted to mention one of this week’s new releases – because the second (and final?!) book in K J Charles’s The Doomsday Books series* is out. A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel is another landowner and a smuggler romance – this time it’s a former soldier who has unexpectedly become an earl and the son of a notorious smuggling clan that operates in his newly inherited patch. Our smuggler is Luke, who we met in the first book, The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, in circumstances that I can’t really go into without giving away a lot of plot, but which do mean that I suspect that if you’ve read that book you’ll have a more satisfying experience with this, beyond just potential glimpses of previous couples if you know what I mean! Anyway, I’m looking forward to reading it once I can get my grubby hands on it!
*is it a series if it’s only two books? A duology? What if you don’t know if there’ll be a third or not?
So I missed this being announced about ten days ago – but we have a date and a cover for the next Emily Henrynovel. The blurb is out as well and has a heroine who is starting over after her fiancé realised he was actually in love with his childhood best friend and a hero who is the ex of that childhood best friend. They end up as roommates and decide to stage photos of themselves together for revenge on their mutual exes, just for show of course, definitely no real feelings involved…
Fake relationships are totally my cup of tea as you know, so this sounds delightful – if only I didn’t have to wait until April for it! But it is already pre-orderable on Kindle and Waterstones have a signed hardback edition up for preorder too.
Back in January I did an anticipated books post here – and almost all the ones that i mentioned have now been published. So I’m coming back around for the stuff that’s still to come this year!
There is a new Alexis Hall coming in October, the cover is very Boyfriend Material-sque but it’s don’t let that fool you – Ten Things That Never Happened has a new couple and has a fake amnesia plot line… Staying with contemporary romance, I love a theatre-set book, so I’m looking forward to Amelia Jones’s The Stage Kiss which comes out in December. And they’re closer to inspirational than plain romance, but the next in Beverly Jenkin’s Blessings series, A Christmas to Remember finally arrives in mid-October. I haven’t read Love in the Time of Serial Killers yet, but Alicia Thomson’s next book is out in a couple of weeks at the start of August – With Love, from Cold World is about two workers at a Florida tourist destination where it’s always winter.
Moving to historical, and Sarah Vaughn has written a Regency-era graphic novel called Ruined about a marriage of convenience, and I love a marriage of convenience story (although I realise I still haven’t finished that recommendsday post about them I’ve been writing for years so have a link to the one about fake relationships instead ) so I’m really looking forward to reading that – it’s out in at the end of November. Staying with historical fiction, Mary Jo Putney has a new historical romance series set in Cornwall starting with Silver Lady which comes out at the end of November. It’s promising swashbuckling adventure – and the first one also has an amnesia plot although I’m not sure she’s faking it in this one! I think it’s already out in the US, but here in the UK we have to wait until the end of August for A Lady’s Guide to Scandal which is the sequel to Sophie Irwin’s A Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting, which I really enjoyed last year.
There’s a few series with autumn releases – like the fourth in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, The Last Devil to Die, which arrives in mid September. Then there is the seventh book in the Vanderbeeker series also arriving in September. It’s called The Vanderbeekers Ever After and as the title suggests it’s the final book in the series. Luckily (!) for me the sixth book isn’t out in paperback here yet, so I’m going to be able to make the series last a little longer despite that. There’s a new Sarah Maclean – Knockout is the third in the Hells Belles series. And unexpectedly there is another Shades of Magic novel coming too. I thought VE Schwab was done with the world at the end of the trilogy, but The Fragile Threads of Power is taking it to the next generation as well as giving you another look at the original characters. And there’s a fourth in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series too – called Before We Say Goodbye.
There are always a slew of memoirs in the run up to Christmas – the one I’m excited about this year is Patrick Stewart’s, but I’m going to need to read some more of the ones I already have before I buy it. And finally there is of course the Lucy Parker – which I mentioned in that post at the start of the year – Codename Charming arrives on Kindle next month (the paperback doesn’t hit the UK until September). I may reread Battle Royal to prepare!
Hilariously, given that my pre-ordered copy of The Bodyguard arrived less than a week ago, Katherine Centre’s new book is already out! I’d been waiting for the Bodyguard to come out in the UK for about a year – and now they’ve timed the release of Hello Stranger to match the US one. Bonkers. Anyway, the new one is out, and it’s got a heroine suffering from face blindness after an operation and trying to save her career as a portrait photographer. This sounds intriguing to me – although I only liked not loved The Bodyguard over the weekend so I may not buy it straight away!
A bunch of Beatriz’ Williams’s books have featured on the blog over the years. I’m enough of a fan of hers that I was on her mailing list, back in the time when authors had actual, physical lists and still sent stuff to readers abroad – so I have a postcard from her for the release of A Certain Age. Her Last Flight and A Hundred Summers were Books of the Week and a couple of others have featured in various recommendsdays and roundups. And of course she also writes books with Lauren Willig and Karen White. Her earlier books tended to be interlinked, but more recently they’re more standalone. And The Beach at Summerleys looks like it’s a standalone-y one. The blurb is promising Cold War intrigue, New England rich people and secrets and a split timeline between 1946 and 1954. I’m also really interest that the cover art is quite different to her other novels – in colours and design so I’m wondering if that’s indicating a change too. I’m looking forward to reading it – when I can justify getting my hands on it!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 