Tag: series

historical, mystery, series

Mystery Series: County Guides

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Happy Friday everyone, it’s very, very cold where I am in the UK* and I’m seriously starting to think about starting Christmas shopping. I know. It’s still November. Anyway, after a romance series last week, here is a murder mystery one for you.

It’s the 1930s and the County Guides books follow “the People’s Professor” Swanton Morley around the UK as he writes a series of guidebooks. It is seem from the point of view of his newly recruited (at the start of book one) secretary Stephen Sefton, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War who has a slightly shady past. Also travelling with them is Morley’s daughter Miriam. Everywhere they they stumble across a body and this – and Morley’s attitude – makes them unpopular with locals and the authorities alike.

As you know I really like a historical mystery series and the 1930s are one of my real sweet spots for that. And the fact that each book moves to a different part of the country makes for a good way of varying the setting and giving opportunities for new characters to be introduced each book without expanding the core group and leaving hanging threads for the next book.

These are very much in the books where I love the premise but sometimes find the reality disappointing. This is mostly because Morley is set up as deeply irritating and at times Stephen can be too and that leaves you with no one to really root for – you share the exasperation of the locals with these annoying people who are telling them how to solve a murder! But that said, I liked them enough that I followed them through all five books in the series – even though it has taken me a while and they got harder to find.

I got the first few of these from NetGalley, a couple from the library and then bought the final one on Kindle. I have occasionally seen paperbacks in the shops – new and secondhand but I suspect at this point Kindle or Kobo will be the easiest way to get hold of these, although, neither Kindle or Kobo have managed to link the five books together as a series which is both annoying and weird because it makes it hard to give you a proper link to click and so all I can do is link you to the list of Ian Sansom ebooks and tell you that the order is: The Norfolk Mystery, Death in Devon, Westmorland Alone, Essex Poison and The Sussex Murders.

Have a great weekend everyone.

*although obviously as nothing to winter in some places, but the UK is not made for the cold.

series

Mystery Series: HM The Queen Investigates

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In Wednesday’s Recommendsday, I wrote about From Russia With Love which is a spy adventure with the Cold War and Russia as a key protagonist. This week also saw the release of the latest H M The Queen Investigates novel which is also venturing into Cold War spying Territory – with a title that evokes John Le Carré. I mentioned The Queen Who Came in from the Cold back in January in my series releases post, and I think it’s the last book from that post to be released (that hasn’t been bumped back into 2025*). In this book it’s 1961 and the Royal Yacht is heading for Italy for a state visit, but on board the Queen and her private secretary are investigating a possible murder that someone thinks they saw from the Royal Train. I really like this series as you know and I’ve been looking forward to this for more than a year so I’m hoping it will live up to that. I think it’s a sensible decision to move the series back in time, but I remain sceptical about how many scenarios there actually are to keep this series going. But given that I thought similar about the Royal Spyness books and they’re still going I may be surprised! If you haven’t read any of this series, do go back and check out my series post about them – the first is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and the other three are at sensible prices on Kindle as well.

*there are two of them that have slid back into 2026 – the final Thursday Next book which should have been this month but which I sort of half expected to slide given how long we’ve been waiting already and the now final Phryne Fisher book, which presumably was slowed down by Kerry Greenwood‘s final illness.

Fantasy, series

Series: Midnight, Texas

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For the last couple of years around Halloween I’ve written a series post about a Charlaine Harris book and this year I’m completing the set with the the last series in what turn out to be the connected worlds of her paranormal books.

In Midnight Crossroad, Manfred Bernardo has just arrived in town looking for somewhere quiet to live and work. But the seemingly quiet one stop light town has secrets hidden behind its doors and he’s about to discover what they are. If you’ve read Harris’s Harper Connelly series, you’ll have met Manfred (and his grandmother) there and if you’ve read Lily Bard you’ll have met fellow Midnight resident Bobo in those books and these are not the only points were the books crossover with other Harris worlds. Midnight and its environs are populated by vampires, were-creatures and the supernatural and given that Manfred himself is a psychic, he’s soon drawn into the drama that is going on.

In fact looking back at my BotW post for Midnight Crossroad I remember how hard it was to describe the plot there – and the trilogy as a whole is like that too. Although each book does have a plot of its own, it’s all very much building towards the climax in book three. Which is where my problem with the series was – because after all that build up, the ending was actually a bit anti-climatic – more of a whimper than a bang although the references back to other series in the final book are good. And given that Harris hasn’t returned to this extended universe since – she’s written six books in a YA series called Gunnie Rose that is set in an alternative history magical US – it’s a shame that that is the final moment and not something more explosive. But then there’s a bit of a history of the last books in Harris series being a bit of a disappointment to fans – see the brouhaha when the final Sookie Stackhouse book was published!

Any way, if you’re a Harris reader they’re worth a look and if you saw the TV series based on the books back when that was around (or have watched it on a streamer since) then it’s interesting to see what they did or didn’t change.

Have a great Halloween.

Children's books, children's books, series

Children’s series: Taylor and Rose mysteries

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Happy Friday everyone, and it’s another mystery series today, but this one aimed at middle grade readers. And I do love a good middle grade book. And sometimes a bad one if you look at some of the terrible lesser known Girl’s Own books I’ve read over the years!

So the Taylor and Rose series is the follow on to Katherine Woodfine’s Sinclair Mysteries and features the same main characters, Sophie and Lillian, who are running a detective agency but also doing work on the side for the secret service agency. It’s in the years running up to (but not reaching) the First World War and the overarching plot that runs across the series is around a shadowy organisation who are trying to disrupt the world order and even maybe start a way by sowing discord between nations. Thus means there is plenty of scope for international travel as you can see from the titles of the books.

I really enjoyed the original series and this is a great continuation, that widens the world out and feels like it’s for slightly older readers in the same way that the main characters are slightly older. These are adventure capers more than mysteries and probably do need to read these in order to get the most out of them because of the over arching storyline with the secret society. I read the first two a couple of years ago and the last two over the last month or so and it worked really well.

You should be able to get these really easily in bookshops with children’s sections – and the first one (or even the set!) would make a great Christmas book for the 10-12 year old in your life.

Have a great weekend!

series

Mystery Series: Shady Hollow

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Happy Friday everyone, and today I’m back with a post about a slightly unconventional mystery series – the Shady Hollow books by Juneau Black because book six, Mockingbird Court, came out on Tuesday.

This is a cozy crime series with a difference – it’s set in a small town with all the usual small businesses and our detective is a newcomer to the town who has just started a job as a reporter at the local paper. But the difference is that everyone in the town is a woodland creature – Vera Vixen the reporter is a fox, police deputy Orville Braun is a bear, there’s a Owl who runs the bookshop, a panda who runs a restaurant. You get the idea and if you think about it too much, none of it makes sense. But as someone who grew up playing with Sylvanian Families toys, I can totally get on board with it.

Apart from the whole talking animals thing, they follow the cozy crime series pattern in a fairly standard way – each book has a different murder, there’s a running story line with a romance for Vera and there are friendships and tensions in the community that develop as the series goes on. Juneau Black (who is a pen name for a duo of authors) have created a of belief system for the animals that plays a role in their lives and creates events for the animals to focus on – and for murders to occur at. And like so many non animal cozy crimes, being a reporter gives Vera a reason to be digging into crimes and – spoiler alert – dating a police officer provides her with more details than she could get alone creates tension when it needs to when she’s butting up against the officials.

The new book is Mockingbird Court and is set in the run up to the town’s Harvest Festival. According to the blurb, a famous author who is suspected of murder back in the big city sneaks into town, claiming to be innocent. Vera starts investigating, but finds that she may even be implicated herself. I’ve enjoyed reading the five previous books in the series and I’m looking forward to reading this one when the Kindle price drops to something sensible!

These are available on Kindle and Kobo as well as in paperback, although I’ve never seen the paperbacks in the shops in the UK but that might be different in the US

Have a great weekend everyone.

cozy crime, crime, detective, mystery, series

Mystery Series: Canon Clement

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The TV adaptation of Reverend Richard Coles’ first novel in the Daniel Clement series arrives on TV soon so I thought now was a good time to write a series post about them, although I’ve already written a few bits about them in other posts.

Lets start with a reminder of the set up: It’s the late 1980s and Daniel Clement is Canon of the parish of Champton, a seemingly quiet and sleepy village (albeit a fairly large village judging by the number of shops it has!) where secrets are hiding below the surface. Murder Before Evensong sees battle lines being drawn in the village over a proposal for a lavatory in the church. You wouldn’t think that could lead to murder, but when it comes to parish rivalries, anything is possible! Trust me, I’ve seen things. One of the things that I like about the books is the fact that I can recognise a lot of the processes and ceremonies of the church as very similar to the ones that were happening in the parish church that I went to as a child.

There are four books and a Christmas novella in the series now and so far Coles has managed to find different places and set ups to put Daniel in so that Champton doesn’t quite feel like the St Mary Mead or Cabot Cove of the Midlands. So in book two he’s in a neighbouring parish that is being merged with Champton. In book three he’s taken a sabbatical from his day job to go back to the monastery where he trained and in book four there’s a movie crew filming at Champton House.

As you can see from the trailer above, the adaptation has Matthew Lewis aka Neville Longbottom as Daniel and Amanda Redman as his mother Audrey. It’s going out on Channel Five, which means it could go either way for me: I really liked the first couple of series of their All Creatures Great and Small adaptation, but I haven’t had a lot of luck with their other mystery series. But I remain hopeful and I may yet report back…

Have a great weekend everyone!

romantic comedy, Series I love

Series I Love: Spoiler Alert

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Happy Friday everyone and I have a romance series for you this week, because all three of these are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and so now is an ideal time to read them if you haven’t already.

So Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert series is three connected romances featuring cast members from a TV show that is somewhat Game of Thrones inspired. God of the Gates has been wildly popular but some of the actors (and the fans!) aren’t happy with the turn that the plots have taken. In Spoiler Alert, one of the stars is taking out his frustration with that by anonymously writing fan fiction, which is how he meets April although of course she doesn’t know who he really is. Then – both unknowingly – they meet in real life when Marcus asks April out after one of her fan costumes goes viral because she is plus size. When they start dating, he realises who she is and how is he going to detangle that one. All the Feels was a BotW, so there’s a full review of that already but it sees Alex assigned a minder by the show runners to keep him out of trouble until the final season airs. And Shipwrecked finds two actors who had a one night stand who find themselves co-stars and stuck filming together on a remote island for the duration of the series (because their characters are shipwrecked there) and so really need to not do anything that could end up in them hating each other and still having to work together. But when the series ends, they finally give in – but the trouble is they both have very different plans for the future.

You don’t really need to read these in order – but they do all take place at basically the same time (or at least parts of them take place at the same time) which makes for a really fun experience if you do read them all even if not in the proper order. Olivia Dade writes rom coms – these are funny as well as sexy and I like her characters who aren’t cookie cutter romances heroes and heroines. She was one of the first romance authors who I read who was regularly writing plus sized heroines or slightly older couples, by which at this point I mean in their 30s or up*, and I appreciate that too. I think I’ve re-read the first two twice each now – and probably the only reason I haven’t re-read Shipwrecked is because I own it in paperback so it’s not handy on my Kindle in the same way. They make great sunlounger books, so if you’re planning a late summer trip, these might be a good choice for you.

These are available in paperback as well as on Kindle Unlimited, and surprisingly given they are in KU at the moment, they are still on Kobo, although they are somewhat pricey there and they aren’t linked together as a series, so here is Spoiler Alert, All The Feels and Shipwrecked over there too.

*which given the amount of romances that have early 20s or college age characters at the moment is very welcome to me. New Adult seems to have subsumed the who genre.

bingeable series, series

Mystery Series: Miss Dimont

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Happy Friday everyone, it’s nearly the weekend, so nearly and I’m back with a post about a historical mystery series.

It’s the 1950s in the town of Temple Regis on the coast of Devon, where Judy Dimont is a reporter at the local newspaper, The Riviera Express. Across the course of the series she finds herself not just reporting on murders in the town, but also investigating them because the local police are inclined to play things down and rule every thing death they can as an accident to protect the resorts image and keep the tourist trippers flooding in.

The first book in the series was a Book of the Week back in 2017 and I stand by what I said then: Judy has an excuse to be rootling around in murder investigations and the portrait of an English seaside town with delusions of grandeur is excellent. Over the course of the four books the secondary characters are developed as well as Judy’s backstory, which involves mysterious doings in the Second World War. I read these out of order – with the second one in 2019 and then coming back through for the other two last month and neither the gap nor the out of order-ness messed with my enjoyment of the books. As it’s been six years since the last one, I think we can probably assume that this is a completed series now, which is a shame since I would happily read more of them.

I got the first and fourth from NetGalley but bought myself the middle two when they were on offer at some point in the unspecified past. You can get them in Kindle or Kobo and they did come out in paperback, but I suspect they’ll be hard to track down (new at least).

Have a great weekend everyone!

detective, series, Series I love

Mystery series: Flaxborough

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Happy Friday everyone, it’s the last working day of August and I’m back with a classic and amusing mystery series.

Flaxborough is a sleepy English market town, in the sort of Lincolnshire-East Anglia part of the world. Our detective is Walter Pirbright, a CID inspector who is polite and decent and solid, if not the cleverest and most exciting detective you will ever read. But his down to earth normalcy means that there can be some quite outlandish happenings that go on around him without it seeming ludicrous. As you go through the series other regulars join him – including Miss Teatime, who arrives as a conwoman but nearly gets herself murders and yet still decides to stay in town. They also do a nice line in split point of view which means that the reader knows more than the police do, which is a lot of fun. Colin Watson apparently took a lot of inspiration from real people who lived in his town and if you’ve ever lived in a small town (or large village) you’ll be familiar with the idea of the local characters complete with their idiosyncrasies- and here they are amped up to eleven!

The first of these was originally published in the 1950s and the last in the 1980s, but I don’t think the same amount of time passes in the books! They were reissued a few years back at which point I read all of them as they came out, mainly from NetGalley but enjoying them so much I bought the ones I was missing, which tells you something about how much I enjoyed these. The twelfth and final one is 99p at the moment, but don’t start the series there – most of the rest are not £2.99 so go have a read of the blurbs and pick one that appeals if you don’t want to read them in order, although the first one is good so you could totally start there.

My favourites included Lonelyheart 4122, where middle aged women start disappearing after signing up to a lonely hearts agency; Charity Ends at Home which is a fun romp through charitable works turned vengeful and murderous; One Man’s Meat where a private investigator finds himself in over his head at a pet food company where the MD’s marriage is falling apart.

These are all available on Kindle and Kobo and I think I saw some in paperback when they first came out. But haven’t recently.

Happy Reading!

romance, series

Romance series: Heartbreaker Bay

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It’s Friday and I’m back with another romance series for this week’s series post. This time another Jill Shalvis series – I’ve already written about her Lucky Harbor series and recommended a few of her others in recommendsday posts too.

Heartbreaker Bay is a series of eight connected romance novels centered around a renovated building in San Francisco, with characters coming from the residents of the building and employees of the businesses in it or nearby. In the centre of the building is a courtyard with a fountain, and the legend is that if you wish on the fountain you will find love. You know where this is going! You don’t have to read them in order – in fact I read them radically out of order because I borrowed loads of them from the library and read them over a fairly extended period. Half of the series are Christmas books and there are fill in novellas as well.

I was trying to pick a favourite of these but was struggling – by ratings it’s either Accidentally on Purpose or Chasing Christmas Eve, but I read them a while ago and who can tell if I’d still rate them above the ones I’ve read more recently. What I will say about all of these is that the characters have proper backstories, often with some trauma and have reasons for being wary of relationships and that often makes for the most satisfying romance novels for me. So maybe just start at the beginning and go from there!

These are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so the time is ripe for you to read them if you’re interest – that’s what finally got me to finish off the series now my local library and its hours are unpredictable…

Happy Friday everyone!