Tag: Recommendsday

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Recommendsday: Books set in publishing

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As well as one of us is famous romances, the other theme of this summer’s romances (or at least the ones that I’ve read) seems to be romances where people work in publishing. So after the Neigbor Favor this week, The Seven Year Slip the week before, and Business or Pleasure the one before that (!) here are a few more books where at least one of the main characters works in publishing. I’m going to start with romances because hey that’s the trend, but there are also a couple of books in other genres I want to mention too.

Lets start with the obvious one on the romance front- which may also be the one which started the trend (or at least accelerated it) Emily Henry’s Book Lovers. I did a post about it last year when it came out, so you can read that for more details, but it sees a high powered literary agent find herself on holiday at the same place as her work nemesis only to discover that they might have more in common than they think.

Business or Pleasure features a disillusioned ghost writer – and if you haven’t already, Ashley Poston’s (as in Seven Year Slip) previous novel, the Dead Romantics also featured a ghostwriter – this time one with a deadline she can’t make and a family emergency she can’t avoid. And as you might remember when I was writing about Seven Year Slip, it’s playing with ghosts – ghost writer and actual ghosts get it! And a late entry because I finished it this week – Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game, which is about two coworkers at a publishing company who really, really hate each other and are fighting for the same promotion. Now I have some caveats: I have a few issues with it but in the end they actually weren’t about what I was expecting – which was that their work rivalry would push my buttons for unprofessional pranks, but it actually didn’t because they didn’t sabotage each other. Lucinda does freak out a lot though and that did get on my nerves a bit so your mileage may vary – Goodreads tells me most people adore it and it’s also been turned into a film!

On to crime now and I’ve mentioned Anthony Horowitz’s Susan Ryeland books – aka The Magpie Murders and The Moonflower Murders a few times now (and I’m still hoping for a third book) and there’s also the Hawthorne series of even more meta mysteries from Horowitz. But there’s also Judith Flanders’ A Murder of Magpies. I read it back in 2015 back in the early days of this blog, when I was also reviewing for Novelicious – and wrote about it there rather than here so I’ll give you a quick review. Our detective is Sam, an editor at a London publishing house who thinks her biggest problem is that the new manuscript from her star author is unpublishable – until a police officer turns up asking about a parcel addressed to her. It’s not quite as cosy as the cover might make you expect but it is totally engrossing and has a clever and inventive solution (albeit one that this humanities grad had to read a couple of times). There is a great cast of supporting characters being set up for the series. I read it back when it was released – and there are now four in the series so I may have to get hold of some of the others as I had completely forgotten about how much I’d enjoyed it until I started checking my lists for this post!

I’m absolutely positive that I’ve forgotten something that I should have included, but hopefully it’ll come back to me at somepoint.

Happy Humpday everyone!

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Recommendsday: Kindle Offers

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It’s that time of the month again, but this time it’s a tricky one as we have prime day offers going on on the ‘Zon so it’s a bit of a lottery which of these are going to last all month… but I have to say it is a really good month for deals on the recent releases.

It’s Wimbledon, so it’s maybe apt that Carrie Soto is Back is 99p at the moment – it’s also out in paperback now if you want a physical copy of the former BotW. Ali Hazelwood’s Love on the Brain came out last summer and is 99p – I assume to encourage people to buy the new one. One of my favourite not-new books of the year (oops, that’s a spoiler!) Nora Goes Off Script is 99p, again because I assume the new one is out. Once More With Feeling is also 99p which is a total bargain for Elissa Sussman’s latest and one of my favourites of the year so far. Incredibly recent BotW Mrs Nash’s Ashes is also 99p as is Fake Dates and Mooncakes. And let’s not leave of Jenn McKinlay’s Summer Reading – also 99p

I have You and Me on Vacation waiting to be read – but if you’ve read some of Emily Henry’s others – like Happy Place and Book Lovers, then fill in a gap! Also waiting to be read is the new Sarah Morgan, Summer Wedding, which is 99p. I’ve read a couple of Sarah Adam’s romances and found them too New Adult for me – but I know they’re super popular so the fact that the latest Practice Makes Perfect is 99p will be good news for them. In historical detective novels, the latest in Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey series Dear Little Corpses is £1.99.

I read it a long time ago now, but Nick Spalding’s Bricking It is £1 – as are a bunch of his other books (some are also in Kindle Unlimited). Also from quite a long time ago but on offer is Libby Page’s The Lido, while Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham is £1.99. And in non fiction Caitlin Doherty’s From Here to Eternity is 99p as is former BotW The Traitor King, which is really, really worth a read.

If you’re collecting series, the Bridgerton-adjacent The Further Observations of Lady Whistledown is 99p as is the non-Bridgerton Julia Quinn The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy. In other things you can find on Netflix, if you’ve watched their Wham documentary, Andrew Ridgely’s memoir Wham! George and Me is 99p.

This month’s Peter Wimsey is the brilliant Murder Must Advertise, complete with one of the best cricket matches in a book and a fascinating look at the advertising business in the 1930s. There are a couple of M C Beaton’s Agatha Raisin books on offer including one od the most recent ones – Agatha Raisin Down the Hatch and there are some Hamish MacBeth’s too – including Death of a Bore. In classic stuff, there’s a Jeeves and Wooster omnibus for 99p, as is The Color Purple, which was one of my A Level set texts back in the day. Amy Lea’s Exes and Ohs is 99p,

I bought David Sedaris’s Happy Go Lucky while writing this post, as well as Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop, Bad Pop. And if that’s not enough books for you, I don’t know what is.

Happy Humpday everyone!

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Recommendsday: June Quick Reviews

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As I said on Sunday, I’ve already written about so many books this month that I don’t have much left to tell you about. But I’ve managed to write a few sentences about a couple more books from the June pile for you!

Jean Tours a Hospital by Doreen Swinburne

I’m starting with something completely left field that I’m not expecting any of you will ever read. This was one of my purchases at Book Conference last summer and as the title suggests is a career book encouraging girls into nursing for a profession. It’s not a great work of literature, but it is a fascinating look at what nursing was like in the 1950s – lots of cleaning, nothing disposable, lots of people on bedrest and not a drop of blood insight on Jean’s tour! Of course nursing is for girls and doctoring is for boys and there is the usual suggestion that if you’re a good girl you might get to marry a doctor but there’s also some interesting (for the time) ideas from the Matron about nursing becoming a degree subject. Not a masterpiece, but fun half hour for what I paid for it!

Final Acts ed Martin Edwards

This is another collection of classic crime short stories all set in or around theatres. I know I mention the BLCC stuff a lot – but usually in the context of the novels (see last week’s BotW for example) because I find the short story collections can be a bit patchy. But this one is a good one, with some big names you’ll recognise including Dorothy L Sayers doing a not Wimsey story and Ngaio Marsh Alleyn short, and some smaller names you may have read full length novels from like Christianna Brand. I do like a theatre-set story (be it murder mysteries or romances) so maybe that biased me, but it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment so worth a look.

Piece of Cake by Mary Hollis Huddleston and Asher Fogle Paul*

This is a contemporary romance set in Nashville about a woman working at a struggling wedding magazine who has to work with a social media star on a video series that they hope will secure the magazine’s future. I read the previous book from these authors (borrowed it from the library) and liked the premise but thought that there was too much going on and that the romantic element was unsatisfying because all the options had issues. So I read this to see how the authors managed to redeem Claire – who was the villain of the piece in the last book. And the answer is: they didn’t really. And therein lies the problem. If you haven’t read the previous book, you spend a lot of the time wondering how bad she could really have been – and then when you find out what she did, I assume you lose any sympathy you have left for her – if you’ve managed to keep any with the “oh I’m so poor” thing, whilst living in a flat of her own and driving an expensive car. But, on the plus side – this has less plot elements and there is only one romantic option and he seems like an OK kind of guy – it’s just the heroine that’s the problem. So all in all, I think this is probably a sign that these authors are not for me. But it may work better for other people as these things often do and so I mention it anyway.

And that’s your lot. As I said on Monday, we have half year review posts coming, but a quick reminder of the Books of the Month from June: A Calamity of Mannerings, The True Love Experiment, Mrs Nash’s Ashes and Twice Around the Clock. And don’t forget there was also a new Summer Romance round up and Romances with heroes with kids too if you need a reminder of why I had so few options for this month’s quick reviews!

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Recommendsday: Romances with heroes with children

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Well after writing my post about great dads in literature and with last week’s BotW featuring a a divorced dad, I thought I’d make this week’s Recommendsday some more romances featuring heroes with kids. I did originally call this single dad romances – but single parent usually implies that they’re not getting any help from the other parent at all, and that’s not always the case on this list.

One of the reasons I widened the scope of this post was that I started thinking “which is the Tessa Dare book with the doll funerals, because that’s a great one” and then when I reminded myself of the plot of The Governess Game I remembered that Chase is their guardian not their dad. Anyway the heroine is the governess trying to tame the wild orphans and it’s got great dialogue, forced proximity, the aforementioned doll funerals and a great romantic ending.

If you want your dad with kids to come as part of a big, melodramatic historical romance that’s pretty Old School (but not rapey like the Old School romances tended to be) then try Kerrigan Byrne’s The Highlander, where you have Great Big Giant Super Strong Scottish Laird paired with an English governess with a secret. It’s not 100 percent my novel – because it’s so dramatic and quite violent, but I know that there are a lot of people who really, really love this series. Also in books that I didn’t love but that other people have is the book zero in Eloisa James’s Wilds of Lindow Castle series – My Last Duchess. It has a Cinderella-y runaway plot with a hero with eight kids and a heroine with one and a potential wicked stepmother. This was actually published after the first few books in the series, so if you’d read those you already knew the couple and maybe gave it a bit of a pass on some of the bits that I didn’t like -I can see lots and lots of 4 plus star reviews.

Lets finish with historical romances with another one of my favourites: To Sir Philip, With Love – from the Bridgerton series. This is Eloise’s story and I really, really love it. Eloise has been writing letters to the widower of her cousin for years and then when things in London get too much for herself she finds herself on her way to marry him. Except that neither of them are what the other expects. I’ve said before that I don’t know how they’re going to work this for the Netflix series, so we’ll see how they pull that off given the way they’ve been adjusting the timelines.

To contemporary romances now, and I’m starting with a novella – Melissa Blue’s Grumpy Jake. Yes, it was a book of the week, but that was two and a half years ago, so it’s allowed. Bailey is a teacher, Jake the Rake is the single dad who has dated most of the single members of staff and whose kid has just hit her class. It’s lots of fun. Then there’s Happy Singles Day by Anne Marie Walker. It’s a sweet, fluffy holiday romance with a widowed hero with a B&B he’s not running and the professional organiser who visits for an out of season holiday.

Also a previous BotW, there is Jill Shalvis’s Forever and a Day from her Lucky Harbor series. It’s a small town contemporary with an overworked single dad and a former career girl reassessing her future, then this might well scratch that itch. The Lucky Harbor books come in groups of three – and this is the last of its trio, so if you’ve read any of the other two you’ve had glimpses of this in those before you get to this happy ending. In Rachel Lynn Soloman’s Weather Girl, Russell has a 12 year old daughter, and one of the reasons why he’s hesitant about relationships is because he doesn’t want to disrupt her life any more. This isn’t however the centre of the plot – which is a fake relationship type thing to try and get another couple back together to help the hero and heroine’s careers.

And that’s your lot for today – happy Humpday!

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Recommendsday: World War Two-set novels

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After having such a lovely time reading Mrs Porter Calling last week, this week’s Recommendsday features some more World War Two-set books that will give you a similar feel. And I had to think long and hard about it – because so many books that sprang to mind at first were Great War books – and that’s a whole other post!

I’m going to start with Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet series, even though I’ve already written a Series I Love post about them. They start in the 1930s, so if you just want the war period you could just start at book two – The Light Years. I mean I don’t recommend it because you won’t get the full impact of it all but you could if you want to. The Emmy Lake books are first person and just follow Emmy and these have a much wider group they follow, but in terms of the mixture of warmth and tears, they are right up there.

Next up: Mary Wesley’s The Camomile Lawn. It has more sex than Emmy Lake, but if you want the Home Front, it has that – people trying to carry on in the most dangerous and uncertain times. It has that sense of normal rules being suspended because the world might be about to end and people doing things that they wouldn’t normally have done.

It’s set in 1946, but Jojo Moyes Ship of Brides is all about the wartime brides heading over to their unknown futures with the soldiers they have married. There are no massive surprises (or at least I don’t remember any big twists, but it’s been a decade!) but you really get to know the women on the boat and care about what happens to them.

If you want mysteries set in this period, may I please nudge you again at Maisie Dobbs. There are lots of bad series set inWW2 (no I won’t name them here) but once this series actually gets to the Second World War (at Book 13 – In This Grave Hour) it is one of the best.

It’s much older and the first section is much grimmer, but I want to give an extra mention to Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice. I’ve mentioned it before but you follow Jean from her life as an English woman living in Malaysia, through her capture by the Japanese and the death march she was put on to her post war new beginning thanks to an inheritance. I like the Alice section best because it is a strong woman paying something forward, but I know that that may be unusual. It is a little of its time, but I’ve loved it for so long I find it hard to be rational about it.

Happy Wednesday!

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Recommendsday: Non Fiction round up

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Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe

Patrick Radden Keefe is best known (at the moment anyway) for his Empire of Pain, about the opioid epidemic in the US, but this brings together some of his best investigative essays for the New Yorker – covering gangsters, drug barons, terrorism and more including his essay on the late Anthony Bourdain. I sped through some of them (Bourdain, fake wine, Mark Burnett) but found others harder going but that was probably more about my interests and state of mind at the time than anything else. Worth a look if you want some narrative non fiction but not an entire book on the same subject.

The Plantagenets by Dan Jones

I listened to this on audiobook and although it’s long it’s a really well written and understandable look at the Plantagenets – their rise, influence and power. This is an era of English history that doesn’t really get taught at school (there’s often not a lot taught between the Norman conquest and the Tudors) but the Plantagenet dynasty also held extensive lands in France for long periods so even if you do know the basics of the English end of things there is plenty on that here too. I enjoyed it so much I went straight on to Jones’s book on the Wars of the Roses, which picks up where this leaves off.

The Mountbattens by Andrew Lownie

So I read this because as you may remember I read and really enjoyed reading Lownie’s Traitor King a couple of years ago – and it has the same readable writing style, but this is ultimately a less satisfying read. The characters are fascinating – and you’re probably not going to like them much for quite a lot of the time – and their relationship unconventional to say the least. But although this sets out all the controversies and the debates around Mountbatten’s public life and actions – although it drops one major revelation in *very* late – it doesn’t really come to any conclusions, which makes it ultimately more than a bit frustrating. But it is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment – so if you’re interested it’s much more affordable than books like this often are.

Happy Wednesday everyone

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Recommendsday: May Kindle Offers

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Slightly later than usual because I like to keep you all guessing, but here’s this month’s Kindle offers, as lovingly researched and selected by moi.

Cover of No Life for a Lady

Lets start with stuff I’ve talked about recently and Hannah Dolby’s No Life for a Lady is 99p at the moment – or free if you’re in Kindle Unlimited, which is a total bargain. If the Coronation wasn’t enough Royal content for you this month, A Three Dog Problem from the HM The Queen Investigates series is 99p, Stacy Halls‘ Mrs England is on offer again. Much less recently, but still recommended is Jasper Fforde’s A Constant Rabbit – also 99p as is V for Victory by Lissa Evans

There’s also an all time children’s classic on offer because the film comes out shortly – Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. I’ve been listening to Dan Jones on audiobook recently, and the next one I have cued up to listen to Power and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages is 99p at the moment. He’s a very good narrator if you get the audio book, but if you find it easier to do monster history books in written form, this is a bargain. Rachel Lynn Solomon has a new book out soon, but one of her older ones, The Ex Talk is 99p – I prefer Weather Girl but if you’re not a journalist, you may be able to ignore the massive ethics violation in this – I know lots of other people have loved it.

If you’re collecting series, the Pratchett offers this month are The Truth (one of my favourites), Eric and The Science of Discworld III; the Julia Quinn is What Happens in London which is not a Bridgerton book but was my first ever of hers; the Wimseys are Five Red Herrings (which I listened to just last week) and the first one, Whose Body at 99p and Unnatural Death at £1.69 although that does look like a weird edition. Talisman Ring is the only Georgette Heyer on offer at 99p, but there are a few at £1.99 including Devil’s Cub.

And finally, here’s the books I bought whilst writing this post section: The Secret Barrister’s Nothing But the Truth which is 99p to mark it’s paperback release; TJ Klune’s Under the Whispering Door which I’ve been wiating to come down in price for ages and I think must be because of the release of In the Lives of Puppets; Africa Is Not A Country by Diplo Faloyin; Circling Back to You by Julie Tieu and The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Rich People Problems – Fiction edition

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Given that I’ve talked twice in the last week about how much I like books about Rich People Problems, I thought it was finally time for me to finish that post about that sort of novel – given that it’s more than a year since my round up of non-fiction books about the same sort of thing.

Firstly, what do I mean when I say Rich People Problems? Well it’s hard to put my finger on exactly, but I’m talking about the sort of novel where the characters are living the sort of lives that most of us can only dream of – and the problems they have are less imminent risk of death or destruction and more can’t afford a summer house in the fashionable resort any more/why is it so hard to be rich. Often you’re looking at their lives through the prism of an outsider – or a newly arrived person in the group, like you are with Sasha in Pineapple Street.

That’s also the case with Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, which is probably the book in this category that most people have heard of (or watched the film of) where Rachel Chu heads off to Singapore to go to a wedding with her boyfriend, only to discover that he’s a member of one of the richest families in the city state and part of a whole hierarchy of old money/new money rivalries that she’s got to try and navigate. It’s a trilogy and although the first one is my favourite, they’re all brilliant for reading on a sunlounger (which is one of my favourite times to read this sort of book!). It’s success spawned a whole host of other similar books of which I’ve read a few (including Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho) but you could also probably say Dial A for Aunties is adjacent to this, as the billionaire wedding that they’re catering is for a very similar sort of family to the ones Rachel meets in Singapore.

The people in it aren’t as rich as the Singapore set, but Emma Straub’s Modern Lovers is also a Rich People Problems novel, except all the rich people in it are Hipsters. This is about a group of friends who were in a band together in their youth but as their kids leave home, their lives start to unravel and long buried secrets start to come to light. If books about people who can afford to privately educate their kids despite not always having a job annoy you, then maybe don’t read this. If you do like that sort of thing (and you can tell from this post that I do!) then fill your boots with this! See also Straub’s other novel The Vacationers, which sees a family summer in Mallorca go not entirely according to plan. Where’d You Go Bernadette could probably also go on this list, although it’s sort of hard to explain why without spoiling the plot of the book – but it’s definitely not the sort of life that most of us have.

In YA, Katherine McGee’s American Royals probably fits into this genre too – the premise is that when American gained independence, they set up their own royal family, and you’re following the latest generation as they try to grapple with their inheritance. It’s much broader in characterisation than some of the other books I’ve mentioned here – and importantly – it is the first in a series and doesn’t have a resolution to any of the major strands so read at your peril/depending on your preferences on that front. Also in YA, as I said in my BotW post about it back in 2020, Meg Rosoff’s The Great Godden is Rich people Problems adjacent.

And there you are – that’s your lot today. I’ve stuck to contemporary novels rather than historical stuff – I mean you could basically count any historical romance as Rich People Problems in a way. And I’ve resisted the urge to recommend Eligible again (oops) although you could probably pick a Pride and Prejudice retelling of your choice in here too, and this has reminded me of a bunch of stuff I have waiting on the shelves to be read that could fit this post – so there may yet be a part two!

Happy Reading!

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Recommendsday: April Kindle offers

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It’s that time again – summon up your willpower (or not) because I’m about to round up the best kindle deals I could find on books or authors I like!

Lets start with the fact that very recent BotW and one of my favourites of the year, Funny You Should Ask is 99p. I wrote about the London Highwaymen pair of novels in the autumn and The Queer Principles of Kit Webb and The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes are both £1.99 again. Christina Lauren’s The Unhoneymooners is 99p – it’s a fake relationship enemies to lovers sort of story that I really enjoyed back in 2019 and obviously I’ve recommended several more of Christina Lauren’s books since then. Side note, they also seem to be getting reissues of their novels with new covers, so watch out for that if you’re the sort of person that remembers if you’ve read something based on the cover.

I mentioned Before the Coffee Gets Cold and its sequel in a Quick Reviews post back in 2021 – there are now four in the series about a cafe in Japan where you can travel back in time for the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, but the first is 99p at the moment. Dear Mrs Bird is 99p at the moment – its sequel Yours Cheerfully was another 2021 BotW and the third in the series is out next month and I have a copy so will try and report back. Brit Bennet’s The Vanishing Half is 99p at the moment – it was one of my favourite books of 2020, and my mum has recently borrowed it off me and really enjoyed it as well. And In the Name of the Rose is 99p – I mentioned it in passing in my post about Mysteries with Vicars, but it’s a medieval murder mystery set among a community of monks with a famous document collection.

Just one non-fiction to mention – Paperback Crush is £1.62 – this history of teen fictions in the 80s and 90s was a BotW back in 2018, if you read through any of the era it’s worth a look. In books I have but haven’t read yet, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers is 99p at the moment

And then in the series that people might be collecting of the Wimsey‘s Whose Body and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club are 99p, while Unnatural Death is (the very weird price of) £1.28. The World of Blandings – which is the first two novels and some short stories – is 99p. Only one 99p Georgette Heyer this month and it’s April Lady which I really like, but there are a lot that are £1.99 – including some of my favourites like Devil’s Cub and Lady of Quality. Moving Pictures is this month’s cheap Discworld book and I’ve bought it while writing this because it’s been years since I read it and I want to see if my thoughts on it have changed (it wasn’t one of my favourites originally).

Happy reading everyone!

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Recommendsday: March Quick Reviews

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And this months quick reviews are all books that came out in the last month or so, which is a record for me I think, and conincidentally several are books that I flagged to you on release day that I’m now reporting back on, which is also a record for me. Savour it for it may never happen again!

Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by K J Charles*

Well this is really good. Smugglers! Marshes! Beetles! Recovering legal clerks! A big noisy family! Awful family! Genuine peril! If you ever read The Unknown Ajax and thought “well this is good but I want more of the smuggling, less rich people problems and lots of walking on the very atmospheric marsh” then this might be the very thing – as long as you don’t want closed door of course, because maybe don’t read this on public transport. Gareth and Joss have plenty of issues to work through but they both grow and come into their own as they find a way though everything. Lovely.

No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby*

Cover of No Life for a Lady

From one extreme to the other in some ways – in the KJ Charles there is a lot of… bedroom action whereas in Hannah Dolby’s debut our heroine is delightfully clueless about sex and the like as she tries to figure out what happened to her mother who disappeared a decade earlier. This is charming as well as witty and I’m hoping that it’s going to turn out to be the first in a series. Hopefully enough people will buy it to make that happen because we have Savvy lady sleuths but not so many of the slightly bewildered by the the range of human behaviour ones and I would like more!

What Happens in the Ballroom by Sabrina Jeffries*

Like the Hellions of Halstead Hall series, this has a mix of high society and earning money. In this case the series is based on a trio of women who have started a party planning business to avoid being governesses. I’ll leave you to decide how realistic you think that is, but I’m happy to go with it, because I like my heroines independent and finding ways to have some choices and control over their lives. Anyway, this is the second book in the series and our heroine is Eliza, a military widow who is building herself a future after the death of her husband. Our hero is her husband’s best friend, who asks for her company’s help to help another young widow find a new husband. Eliza is puzzled about why Nathaniel is taking such an interest in the young woman and her child, but goes along with it. She is burned from the way her marriage unfolded (as well as her parents marriage) and he has secrets that he’s hiding. Can they find a happily ever after? Of course they can. This is a fun and easy read – I guessed a few of the secrets that were going on, but not all, and I enjoyed watching Eliza and Nat grope their way towards a happily ever after. Steamy, but in line with what you would expect from Jeffries. I think.

And that is your lot – what a great month of reading March was. Really and truly I read some really, really good new stuff as well as revisiting some favourite authors and series.