Verity Reads Books (lots of them)
In which our heroine attempts to tame the to-read pile
We’re a week out from Christmas and I’m about to get deep into holiday novellas, so I thought for today I’d remind you about Jackie Lau’s Holidays with the Wongs. OK only one of these is a Christmas book, but they’re a lot of fun and all of them have a meddling family trying to set people up. You can find my original post here.
Have a great weekend!
The movie comes out next week and we’ve got a little over a month to go until the release of book five, The Impossible Fortune, so it seemed like to point you at my posts about Richard Osman’s series about a group of crime solving group of pensioners from a retirement complex in the south of England. You can find my review of book one here, and my series post here. Of course this series has also spawned a gagillion lookalike covers and books – you can read Smart Bitches Trashy Books’ post about the covers here and listen to Sarah’s conversation with Kayleigh Donaldson about them here. And no I don’t know where my copies of the first and second ones are. Probably on loan somewhere. I think. I hope.
Have a great weekend!
Happy Friday everyone – and this week we had a new book out in the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. I’ve written about this series a couple of times, and while I retain my reservations about the massive age gap between Mary and Sherlock, I really enjoy the mysteries and the way that they weave all sorts of threads together. I will freely admit that I have read more books inspired by Sherlock Holmes than I have of the original Conan Doyle books, so if you’re more of a Holmes afficianado than I am, your mileage may vary.
My original series post for these came after after Castle Shade, which was the seventeenth in the series and the new one is book 19. In Knave of Diamonds Mary’s uncle reappears in her life after a long absence to ask for her help with his problems, one of which is his involvment in the disappearance of the Irish Crown Jewels, which is why his family disowned him in the first place. After a couple of books on the continent (Romania in Castle Shade and France in the Lanterns Dance) it looks like this one may see Mary and Sherlock head across the Irish Sea. I’m looking forward to reading it when I can get hold of it.
This latest is a hardback release so prices on the Kindle edition of Knave of Diamonds is commensurate with that. But the first two in the series are in Kindle Unlimited and the next three are £1.79 before the price jumps to £5.99 and then £7.99. But these are fairly easy to find in the shops new and used so there are options here if you want to try the series out.
Have a great weekend!
I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I wrote about Ovidia Yu’s Su Lin mysteries, also known as the Crown Colony series, but it has because there is a new one out next week! I am still stuck at number six – because number seven hasn’t gone into KU yet or dropped to a price that falls into my Kindle range. But I do own number eight because that has. But I’m stubborn and I’m refusing to go out of order because I’ve done everything else in order. Also and this is also related, be warned: if you’re behind in the series, do not read the blurb for the upcoming ninth book The Rose Apple Tree because it’s got a huge spoiler in it for something that has clearly happened in one of those two previous books – it’s hard to tell because book 7 doesn’t have a plot summary attached to it in the blurb at all, just “The next title in the Mystery Tree series, exploring Singapore after the Japanese retreat and in the aftermath of WWII” and book 8 is tagged as being set in 1949 and book 9 in 1947. And i am not reading the samples to find out because: spoilers.
Any way, I have really enjoyed reading these Singapore-set murder mysteries which have taken us from the Abdication crisis through to the end of the Second World War, from Su Lin’s teenage years to adulthood as she straddles the line between the Singaporean community and foreigners in power – which started as the British and then changed to the Japanese during the war.
The first six are still in Kindle Unlimited and they’re well worth a look, and as you can see, you can also find them in some of the bookshops with larger mystery sections.
Have a great weekend everyone.
The eighteenth in the Lady Emily series came out this week, so it’s an ideal time for me to point you back at my series post about Tasha Alexander’s (very) late Victorian and early Edwardian sleuth and ancient history enthusiast. I’m still a couple of books behind – I’ve actually only read one more than I had back when I wrote that last post, because the later books remain a right pain to try and get hold of and mostly in hardback to boot an you know the state of my to-read pile so you can see my issue. Anyway, book 18 sees Emily and Colin in the Bavarian Alps, staying within sight of Mad King Ludwig’s castle and solving a mystery with its roots in the past.
One of my new arrivals last week was the new Willig, White and Williams in paperback and it’s Bastille Day today – aka the day the French celebrate the start of the French Revolution- so I’m taking the opportunity today to remind you of Lauren Willig’s Secret History of the Pink Carnation series – if you want spies and derring do in revolutionary France with a side of present day (or present day when the series started) action then these are for you. This goes double if you’ve enjoyed The Three Musketeers in any of its forms – including the recent movie!
Happy Friday everyone!
This is a week late, but I’m blaming it on the fact that my preordered copy didn’t get delivered on time (don’t get me started), but the latest Rivers of London novella is out so this seems like a good time to point you at my series I love post about everyone’s favourite police wizard, Peter Grant. Except that the new novella is actually not a Peter PoV story – it’s Agent Reynolds and I’m very excited to read it. I’m planning on it being my treat this weekend…
It’s Easter weekend everyone and if you’re looking for something to watch – and in the UK – the Magpie Murders is being shown on TV at last. The second episode is on this evening but the whole series is on the iPlayer already. I hadn’t realised this was happening until I saw a trailer for it before Match of the Day last weekend, so apologies for the slightly late notice. I wrote about the adaptation of Anthony Horowitz’s book last year when it was on BritBox – you can read that review here.
Have a great weekend everyone.
It’s Easter this weekend so I’m taking the opportunity to remind you of Beverly Jenkins’ Blessings series which are very good small town romances with a great cast of characters and which have a strong inspirational/religious element to them. It’s nearly four years since I wrote this Series I Love post about them and I stand by it all. There is an eleventh in the series but it’s not available here in the UK, but I do have it preordered for whenever it does appear. Happy Easter everyone!
I feel like March is the month of new books from authors I really like. And as I mentioned yesterday, this week saw a new standalone book from Jacqueline Winspear. So I’m taking the opportunity to point you at my series I love post about her Maisie Dobbs series – there are plenty of them and I’m actually up to date with the series now which is a miracle given that it’s me we’re talking about. But if you haven’t read them all yet, here’s a reminder of why they’re so good. Bonus: here’s my BotW post for the first in the series.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 