Tag: Recommendsday

Book previews, book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: New Autumn Fiction

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After last week’s look at the non-fiction, this week I’m using Recommendsday to talk abou the big fiction releases of the autumn as we hurtle towards Christmas.

I’ve already written about the new Dan Brown which came out on the 9th, but tomorrow sees the other biggie September with the arrival of the new Richard Osman. After taking a break from the Thursday Murder Club last year with We Solve Murders, he’s back with the fifth in the series The Impossible Fortune, which sees the residents of Coopers Chase back on the case. You’re going to want to have read the previous book because there was a Big Plot Development at the end of The Last Devil to Die.

Also out this week is the new novel from Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You. This is inspired by Lockwood’s own experiences suffering the effects of Long Covid on her memory and promises to be a slightly trippy and inventive read. I read Lockwood’s memoir Priestdaddy years ago and still need to read her first novel before I get around to this one, even if I was ready to start reading books set during Covid. Which I’m not sure I am yet!

The new R F Kuang, Katabasis is already out and completely everywhere. This is Kuang’s first book since Yellowface and is a return to speculative fiction. If you are a reader of Literary Fiction, there are lots of the Big Authors who have books out this autumn – from Salman Rushdie with The Eleventh Hour on November 4, to Ian McEwan’s “literary thriller and love story” What We Can Know (which came out last week) and William Boyd’s historical spy novel The Predicament which is his second book featuring Gabriel Dax (the first being Gabriel’s Moon).

There are also new books from some of the mega thriller writers: John Grisham has The Widow (October 21) which is being described as his first whodunnit as well as being a legal thriller. Jeffery Archer also has a new thriller out this week with End Game. In (other) books that are Not For Verity there is also the Nicholas Sparks and M Night Shyamalan book Remain

But what am I waiting for, I hear you ask. Well my autumn pre-orders include Olivia Dade’s Second Chance Romance. This is the second book in the Harlot’s Bay series, and I’ve had it pre-ordered since March, because that is how I roll. If you read At First Spite, this is Karl the Baker’s story, and the heroine is an audiobook narrator who moved away from town after high school. I can’t wait. It’s out at the end of November. I’ve also got the paperback of Katherine Center’s Love Haters ordered – the ebook came out at the start of the summer, but for some reason Past Verity went for the paperback and a longer wait!

The fifth H M The Queen Presents book, The Queen Who Came in from the Cold is out the same day – it’s the early 1960s, and The Queen is getting ready to go to Italy on the Royal Yacht when someone claims to have seen a murder from the Royal Train. There is another Sophie Hannah Poirot novel coming this autumn too – The Last Death of the Year – which sees Poirot arriving on a Greek island for New Year. These can go either way for me – I’ve liked two, disliked two and just picked up the one I haven’t read on offer to see how that one suits me.

And finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Stephen Rowley, author of The Celebrants and The Guncle, has a new one coming in mid October. Just a warning though that The Dogs of Venice is a novella – it’s already available on Audible and only lasts 80 minutes, so it’s quite pricey as a £20 hardback (no matter how much I love him).

Book previews, book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: New Autumn non-fiction

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September is the start of the mega Christmas release schedule and as ever there is a shedload of celebrity memoirs and non fiction coming out this Christmas season. SO this week I thought I’d mention the ones that I am particularly looking forward to.

Let’s start with Tim Curry’s Vagabond which comes out in mid October. Curry has had a long and successful career – you’re likely to know him either as Frank-n-Furter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pennywise in the original It, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, or the voice of Nigel Thornberry in The Wild Thornberrys. He’s always been a somewhat private person and he’s been largely out of the spotlight and only doing voice work since he had a major stroke in 2012. So I’m really excited to find out what he’s got to say about his career (because I’m not expecting any revelations about his personal life) and as he’s reading the audiobook, I think I may well consume it that way so I can listen to his wonderful voice.

The other big actor memoir that I’ve seen this autumn is Michael J Fox’s Future Boy which is specifically about the period in the 1980s where he was making both the Back to the Future films and the sitcom Family Ties. That’s out in mid October. The week before that there’s Ozzy Osborne’s Last Rites, which takes you (apparently) right though his life to that final gig just a few weeks before he died in July.

But the other book on my list is Making Mary Poppins by Todd James Pierce. Mary Poppins is one of my very favourite ever movies and as you know I love stories of behind the scenes in Hollywood. I’ve already read both of Julie Andrews’s memoirs so I’ve heard about the filming from her, but I’m sure there is much more to find out.

The Big Political Book this autumn is Kamala Harris’s 107 Days, which is out next week and looks at her very brief campaign to become President, starting from when Joe Biden announced that he would no longer seek reelection.

Talking of American politics, not a memoir per se, but Michelle Obama has a new book out in early November – The Look is an examination of her evolving style over the years and the impact that fashion and style can have on you. And there’s also a new cookbook from Samin Nosrat whose Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat won a bunch of awards back in around 2017. Good Things is recipes to cook – 125 of them in fact. Padma Lakshmi also has a new cookbook out – All American – with recipes from all the many cultures she’s come across during her decades travelling in the US.

I’m really interested to have a look at Cory Doctrow’s Enshittification, which is looking at why so many things in tech and online start off being good and then go downhill as it is monetised and the impact that this has on everything in our lives. That’s out in mid October. In a similar sort of area, I’m also interested in Streaming Wars by Charlotte Henry, which is about the changes in the media industry that streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, Spotify and the like have caused, and what happens next. That’s out at the start of October.

I won’t be the only person out there who studied The Handmaid’s Tale at A Level, even if I’ve only read one (maybe two?) of Margaret Atwood’s other novels in the years since (more if you count her graphic novel series AngelCatbird). But she has a memoir out this autumn The Book of Lives out in early November. In other notable prize winning authors, Zadie Smith has Dead and Alive, an essay collection, out at the very end of October and Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me is already in the shops.

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Recommendsday: September Kindle Offers

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After breaking my own rules yesterday, I’m back with the pattern today, and as it’s the second Wednesday of September,it’s time for this month’s Kindle Offers.

The most recent in Rev Richard Coles’s Daniel Clement series, A Death on Location, is 99p – I mentioned this in my Recommendsday about mysteries and film sets. The Maid is also on offer again, I think ahead of the paperback release of the third in Nita Prose‘s series. If you’re working your way through the Dr Ruth Galloway series, the final book The Last Remains is on offer too. The tenth Rivers of London book came out at the start of July and that is very much still priced as a hardback release, but the second, Moon over Soho, is on offer. Holly Stars’s Murder in the Dressing Room is on offer too, as is recent BotW Catriona McPherson‘s The Edinburgh Murders.

Moving away from mysteries, former BotW The Lido is on offer, as is the second in my beloved Cazalets books, Marking Time, and one of my favourite Katie Fforde‘s Stately Pursuits. Jen DeLuca‘s Haunted Ever After is on offer – Boneyard Key 2, Ghost Business comes out on Thursday. Sarah Waters’s The Night Watch, Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence, and Mary Roach’s Grunt is 99p, presumably because she has a new book Replaceable You out at the start of October.

In stuff I own but haven’t read yet, there’s The Whalebone Theatre and Kevin Kwan’s Lies and Weddings. And finally in stuff I don’t own (yet), there’s the second in Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brody series, One Good Turn, the fifth in C J Sansom’s Shardlake series, Heartstone (although I did buy this one while writing this!), the novelisation of the recent TV series Bookish, Ali Hazelwood’s Bride and Uzma Jalaluddin’s Detective Aunty. And finally, if you’re of a certain age, you’ll almost certainly have read some of Terry Deary’s Horrible History books, and his adult history book A History of Britain in Ten Enemies is 99p.

Happy Humpday!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: August Quick Reviews

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It’s a bit of a NetGalley special this month, with all three reviews coming from there albeit some more recently than others because oh boy I’m so behind. And every month I say I’ll do better, but every month I’m choosing between making the physical pile smaller or reducing the NetGalley list, and the actual pile is in my eyeline from the sofa and so… well. Maybe this month is the month. Anyway, to the reviews.

A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor*

Let’s start here, because this one came out in the US yesterday (it came out here in the UK back in June). This is a murder mystery set at and around a girls boarding school during the tail end of World War Two. One of the teachers left school for the holidays and never came back – the school thinks she’s done a flit, but actually she’s dead and her ghost is lingering around the grounds trying to find out who murdered her and how to expose her killer. I’ve read and enjoyed books in Taylor’s Marwood and Lovett series, and enjoy both murder mysteries and school stories so I was hopeful that this would be in my reading wheelhouse. However I found it quite hard to get into, with very slow pacing and a large cast of pretty unlikable characters to try and get to grips with. I kept going because I did want to find out who the murderer was, but by the end I was more frustrated than satisfied – for reasons which are pretty hard to describe without giving spoilers. So I’m chalking this up as a not for me, more than anything else, although I find myself thinking back on it with more fondness than I had when I was actually reading it!

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann*

Agnes and her friends live in Sunset Hall, as a sort of commune of old people pooling resources so they can stay independent. At the start of the book one of the residents is dead in the garden and just as they’re figuring out what to do about it, a policeman turns up because one of their neighbours has been shot. So they decide the solution to their dead body is to work out who killed their neighbour and pin the murder on them. Except it’s really a lot harder to do than they expect. I finally got around to reading it after seeing the sequel in a bookshop last week and nearly buying it before I remembered I’m not meant to be buying sequels when I haven’t read the first one yet and pulling my finger out. And… I liked the blurb for it more than I enjoyed reading it. I found the writing style really hard to get into and I don’t know if that was the translation (it was originally in German) or just the author’s style, but that combined with the shifting point of view and uncertainty about what was real and what wasn’t just made it a not for me. Which is sad because a group of feisty senior citizens and a murder has often been a thing that I have enjoyed. Hey ho.

Any Trope But You by Victoria Levine*

Romance author Margot’s career has just exploded with the leak of her secret alternative unhappy endings that she has written for all of her novels. She decides she’s going to reinvent herself as a crime writer, and her sister books her into a wilderness retreat to try and get her started. But when Margot arrives in Alaska she finds the ranch is run by a handsome doctor who has given up his cancer research to return home and care for his injured father – it’s like she’s walked straight into a romance novel… This is leaning into romance tropes by amping them up to 11. And I respect that. For me my issues with it fell into two categories: the exaggeration of the trends made the heroine really really annoying to me (she is willfully and wildly unprepared for her trip to Alaska and really refuses to take instructions or listen almost to a too-stupid-to-live level), and I wanted there to be more fun in the fact that this is happening. I wanted it to be more of a fun romp but actually it’s taking itself quite seriously. And given how many of the current crop of romance novels seem to be writing exaggerated tropes with a completely straight face, that meant it didn’t really seem that different to everything else to me. But it did tick Alaska off my 50 states challenge for the year!

And finally, a quick reminder of the Books of the Week this month which were The Celebrants, The Art of Catching Feelings, A Star is Bored and The Wombles at Work, and the Recommendsdays which were Norfolk-set books and Short Stories.

Happy Humpday.

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Short Stories

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Happy Wednesday everyone, this week I thought I’d do a whistle stop tour through some of the short stories and short story collections I’ve read recently.

The Ex-Wives Club by Sally Hepworth

I’m starting with my favourite – Sally Hepworth’s story about a celebrity chef and restaurateur who is found dead in his walk-in freezer the evening after his three ex-wives dine at his restaurant. There are plenty of reasons why each woman would have wanted him dead and the shifting perspective reveals the secrets that are below the surface. It’s only about 80 pages and very easy to read in one gulp. It’s part of the Alibis short story series, which is by authors of psychological suspense but this felt more like a domestic drama to me – the rest of the series definitely looks too scary for me though!

Sinister Spring by Agatha Christie

Another of the seasonal collection of Christie short stories, again featuring all the names you would hope for – Miss Marple, Poirot, Tommy and Tuppence and Parker Pyne. It’s got a good mix of stories and although I found some easier to solve than others, there are a couple of really good ones here. As with the other three seasons, this is rotating in and out of Kindle Unlimited, and if you spot it while it’s in, it’s worth a read.

Abscond by Abraham Verghese

And finally, a change of pace with a short story about an Indian American teenager in 1967 who is caught between the expectations of his parents that he will become a doctor and the fact that he is a tennis prodigy who wants to turn professional. Then, suddenly, everything changes. This is really beautifully written and packs a lot of emotional punch for something that is under 40 pages long. I haven’t read any Abraham Verghese before and I’m glad I picked this one up.

Happy Humpday!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Books set in Norfolk

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Having spent a couple of days last week wandering around Norfolk, for this week’s Recommendsday it seemed like an obvious choice to talk about books set in the county.

I’m starting with the most obvious books – because they’re the ones I’ve read/binged the most recently: the Dr Ruth Galloway series. They’re mostly set around north Norfolk – up around Kings Lynn and Hunstanton (which we visited on our trip) as well as Norwich (and occasionally further afield). And as I’ve also written about them in two other posts, so this is all you’re getting on Ruth today.

I have got another mystery novel set though: The Norfolk Mystery by Ian Sansom. It’s the late 1930s and Spanish Civil War veteran Stephen Sefton gets a job as secretary for Swanton Morely “the People’s Professor”. Morely is planning to write a series of guides to the different counties of England and the first stop is Norfolk. Accompanying them on this trip is his daughter Miriam, but the trip soon turns into a murder investigation. This is the first in a series set and suffers a bit from needing to set up the premise and the characters (who aren’t always that sympathetic!) but I liked it enough that I went on to read the next three books in the series too, although I’m still to read the fifth and seemingly final one.

I’m not going to miss an opportunity to recommend some Laurie Graham, and Future Homemakers of America is set on and around a US Airforce base in the early 1950s. The future homemakers of the title are five wives of US servicemen stationed in Norfolk who initially seem to have very little in common except that their husbands are all in 96th Bomber Wing. The book opens with the death of George V when the women meet Kath, a local, when they go to watch the funeral train go by. It’s been years since I read this, but writing about it has made me want to read it – and its sequel The Early Birds again.

Also in line for a re-read at some point are the Arthur Ransome’s set in the Norfolk Broads. I don’t think I’ve read Coot Club in 30 years – it’s one of the ones that doesn’t have the Swallows and Amazons in it, just Dick and Dorothea from the previous book in the series Winter Holiday. Ramsome was smart to expand the series out beyond the original characters, but Child Verity didn’t appreciate that at all! Anyway, as well as Coot Club, Big Six is also set in Norfolk – and that is one of the ones that I don’t own and in fact I’m not 100 percent convinced I did actually read it even back then!

Still in the classic children’s books area of my reading is Margaret Finds a Future by Mabel Esther Allen*. Margaret is an orphan and at the start of the book the aunt who was her guardian has died leaving behind debts which mean she can no longer stay at her boarding school in Wales. Instead she moves to a stately home in Norfolk (described one of the most famous in Norfolk besides Holkham and Blickling) where another aunt is a custodian. This was one of my early forays into career books (as opposed to boarding school books) and it’s a bit old fashioned, but I enjoyed reading it – and in fact read about 75 pages of it again while I was writing this post – and it has some atmospheric descriptions of Norfolk too.

And finally to end, as you may have noticed, I don’t often read award-nominated books but Rose Tremain’s Restoration is one of the ones that I have read. It tells the rise and fall of Robert Merivel in Stuart England. He starts as a medical student, gains the patronage of the King and is given an estate in Norfolk when he performs a service to the King. And when he falls from favour, he finds work in Norwich. I don’t want to spoil the plot too much, but if you like historical literary fiction you should read it.

Happy Humpday!

*Who also wrote my beloved Drina series as Jean Estoril

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Recommendsday: Mysteries set on film sets

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A few weeks back I wrote about the 18th Royal Spyness mystery, which featured a movie being filmed at Georgie’s house, and that got me thinking about other mystery books that are set on or around movie sets.

Of course the most recent one that I’ve read is the latest Daniel Clement mystery, A Death on Location. This sees a movie crew take over Champton to film a historical epic and many of the locals sign up to appear as supporting artists – aka extras. But when one of them dies after filming a ball scene Daniel finds himself caught up in another murder investigation with Neil. I actually had the culprit for this one spotted early doors, but not the reason why so I enjoyed finding out the why of it all (and if I was right obviously). I continue to find this series very readable, but I’m not sure how many more scenarios Richard Coles will be able to come up to put Daniel in the way of bodies!

Going back to May, I read A Knife to Remember by Jill Churchill, which is the fifth book in the Jane Jeffries series, which is a 1990s written series. In this there’s a crew filming in the field behind Jane’s house and is using her backyard as part of the behind the scenes. The visitors seem to be riven with rivalries and then the set designer is found murdered and it goes from there. I really like this series, they are very easy reads and shorter than the average cozy these days which always leaves me wanting more. Unlike the Goldy Schulz series, these don’t seem to have been picked up for Kindle, so I’m having to resort to the second hand sellers to try and get some more at reasonable prices.

The fourth Flavia De Luce I am Half Sick of Shadows sees Flavia’s home invaded by a film crew in the run up to Christmas, and a snow storm trapping villagers there too. Flavia ends up investigating the death of one of the film contingent as well as whether Father Christmas really exists. I had a few moments with the early Flavia books, and I also read them out of order which I don’t think helped, but Flavia in this one is an engaging mix of innocence and omnipotence which works really well.

I’m sure there are more that I can’t remember at the moment, but that’s ok – I can always do a second post!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Books set in Hotels

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Happy Wednesday everyone! After a week in a hotel, with a sense of serendipity between life and reading, I’m back with a post about books set in hotels.

The Listeners by Maggie Steifvater*

So this is the book that first got me thinking about this post. As I mentioned on my preview post, this is set in a West Virginia hotel that’s been commandeered to hold Axis diplomats in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. It covers the staff as they try to deal with providing luxurious accommodation to people who are part of the enemy, but in particular the hotel’s manager June and FBI agent Tucker. For me this was a case of the blurb being better than the book itself. The pacing of this was too slow for me, and the magical realism elements didn’t ever seem to come to fruition the way that I was expecting them too. But it inspired the rest of this post so that it something!

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

I read this a lot longer ago, but there’s a reason that this has been adapted for TV, made into a film and was nominated for the Booker Prize when it came out. Mrs Palfrey moves into the Claremont after the death of her husband. The characters are really well drawn and the picture of life presented is so vivid that you really can imagine the inmates of the Claremont going about their lives. The ending is somewhat melancholy – but not entirely unexpected. THis was my first Elizabeth Taylor when I read it and I have gone on to read more – including At Mrs Lippencote’s, which I wrote about not that long ago.

Bellweather Rhapsody by Katie Racculia

Hundreds of students have gathered at the Bellweather hotel for a statewide festival. Among the attendees is Minnie Graves, who 15 years ago was at the hotel when a notorious murder-suicide took place. She’s back to face her demons, but when a music prodigy disappears from the same room that the tragedy took place in, the hotel is once again the scene of an investigation. I didn’t like this as much as I did Racculia’s Tuesday Mooney, but it’s a bit like a Wes Anderson film but in a book. The cast is quirky, the plot is twisty and it’s funny as well as mysterious. Also it’s six years now since Racculia’s last novel, so I do hope there’s another one soon.

I’m currently revisiting Agatha Christie’s At Bertram’s Hotel for the first time in probably 20 years and for the first time as an audiobook, which is also a lot of fun especially as I’ve watched the TV adaptation a bunch of times and it’s fun remembering what the differences are. And of course The Body at the Library, which also features a hotel as a major part of the plot and there’s also Nita Prose’s The Maid and its sequels (which I still need to read).

If you’ve got any more books with hotels as a major plot point (and I’ve read A Gentleman in Moscow already) do put them in the comments!

Happy Reading!

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Recommendsday: July Kindle Offers

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Happy Wednesday everyone, it’s the second Wednesday of July and so it’s time for the Kindle offers post. There seems to be a bit of a dearth of 99p offers at the moment – I was hoping they were saving them for Prime day deals (that runs until Friday) but nothing much seemed to have changed when I checked back in after the deals started…

Lets start with Fiction. Cathy Yardley’s Do Me a Favour is 99p, this was a BotW basically this time last year and Yardley’s previous book Role Playing was a bonus review – that one is £1.99. And both of them are also in Kindle Unlimited. Kate Claybourn’s most recent book The Other Side of Disappearing is £2.99, but there are also £1.99 deals on a few of her earlier books too. The new Annabel Monaghan It’s a Love Story is 99p, as is Christina Lauren‘s The Soulmate Equation. The second in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, Tales from the Cafe, is 99p as well.

In other stuff I’ve written about there’s the third Canon Clement mystery, Murder at the Monastery, the first Shardlake mystery Dissolution, Gabriele Gamez‘s The Next Best Thing, which as I said didn’t really work for me, but clearly has for other people. There are also quite a lot of deals on Alexis Hall books, ranging from £1.99 to £3.99 but also with quite a few of them – and others – in Kindle Unlimited. I haven’t really seen this happen before, so I’m just going to leave the list here so you can have a look and see what the options are. There’s also the fourth Robert Langdon mystery Inferno,

On the non-fiction front, Mary S Lovell’s The Mitford Girls is 99p, I assume because the TV series is out because Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love is also 99p and the complete omnibus of Jessica Fellowes’ Mitford Murders series is £3.99. There are also offers (albeit not quite as good) on a couple of Lovell’s other books, I have enjoyed The Riviera Set (it’s on my hardback non-fiction shelf in fact) and Straight on Till Morning. David Mitchelll‘s Unruly is £1.99, and Philippa Gregory‘s Normal Women is 99p.

If you’re a Pratchett reader, Mort and Eric from the Discworld series are on offer for 99p this month, as is the first in the Johnny Maxwell series for kids, Only You Can Save Mankind. The Georgette Heyer on offer is My Lord John, which is her novel set in the Wars of the Roses and is one of the few of hers that I’ve never managed to get to the end of (the other two are Simon the Coldheart and Royal Escape). The first in Simon Brett’s new series Major Brickett’s and the Circus Corpse is 99p too, I read this when it came out, and it’s not my end of the Brett oeuvre but it may work for other people better than it did to me.

In things I bought while writing the post, there’s The Last Word, which is the fourth in Elly Griffiths Harbinder Kaur series is 99p, but sadly the deal on one of the books that I bought seems to have been a really short term one – the new Emily Henry Great Big Beautiful Life was £1.99 briefly but is now back up to £9.99. It wasn’t marked as a one day only just a limited time deal but the limited time appears to have been less than three days. Sorry guys. In stuff I haven’t read yet, the latest Eloisa James, Hardly a Gentleman is 99p, as is Ali Hazelwood’s The Deep End, as is Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, which has been nominated for a bunch of awards. The second in the Assistant to the Villan series, Apprentice to the Villain, is 99p. I need to try and read the first one to see if I like it before I can take advantage of this offer! Also on the pile waiting to be read is Victoria Levine’s Any Trope But You. And my willpower to resist the Alicia Thompson cover is wavering, as Never Been Shipped is also 99p!

The Formula One season is in full swing at the moment – it was the British Grand Prix just a few miles from my house (even if I wasn’t in it at the time) last weekend and there are are a few motorsport romances on offer: there’s the second in Simone Soltani’s Lights Out F1 driver romance series, this one is called Ride With Me – I still have the first one Cross the Line waiting on the pile to be read. There’s also Slipstream by Madge Maril and Racing into Love by Laney Kate at 99p, and Pole Position by Rebecca J Caffrey and Offtrack by Esha Patel at £1.99 ( Esha Patel’s Overdrive is £2.99 as well).

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

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: June Quick Reviews

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It’s July so I’m back with the quick reviews from last month.

The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

I love the way that Barbara Pym looks at slices of normal (or normal-ish) women’s lives and relationships in ways that are witty and also sad. Leonora is a middle-aged woman who is attractive and knows it. She’s got a collection of male admirers, but her latest are an antiques dealer and his nephew. She prefers the nephew, James, although the uncle (Humphrey) is more “suitable” and plays the two of them off against each other, whilst trying to detach James from his other relationships. It’s darker than some of Pym’s earlier novels, but it’s very good.

Copper Script by K J Charles

The new book from K J Charles has Aaron, a Met Police Sergeant, who is trying to figure out how Graphologist Joel is able to tell people’s lives and personalities from their handwriting. Aaron is convinced it’s a con, but Joel’s skills are very real. And soon the two of them are trying to solve some crime. I read this in single day and enjoyed it a lot. If you like K J Charles, this will probably work for you.

The Chow Maniac by Vivian Chien

I read the first two in this series a few years back (I bought the first one back when I was in Washington) and spotted this eleventh and most recent in the series in Foyles last week so took the opportunity to check in again as they’re quite hard to get hold of over here. And Lana’s life has moved on quite a bit – she’s still got the boyfriend but she’s much more established in her sleuthing. This sees her investigating whether a series of deaths among the Asian community in Cleveland might actually be murder, and connected to a secret society. Lana is still verging on too stupid to life, but I enjoyed reading it.

And that’s your lot this month