Tag: series

detective, series

Mystery series: PI Grace Smith

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Happy Friday everyone, and to tie in with the theme this week, I’ve got a mystery series set not in Brighton but in the fictional town of Seatoun, somewhere on the south coast within easy reach of London, so you can see why it might fit my seaside-y vibes this week!

Grace is a former police officer, who left the force under something of a cloud, and who now works as a private detective in the town where she used to be a cop – trying to avoid her former colleagues as far as possible. Her career as a PI isn’t really going anywhere – and the cases she gets tend towards the mundane and the ridiculous. Less dead humans, more dead animals or missing people.

At this point it should be noted that I’ve read all but one of the five books in the series in their original late 1990s paperback form. And yes I know there’s only four in the photo (and in two different covers styles) but I couldn’t find a copy of Who Killed Marilyn Monroe on my shelves and there’s a chance I found it on the shelves at one of the hostels that I stay at. But anyway, these days they have been retitled and reissued on Kindle and that’s how I read book three. Now I read these all fairly well spaced out, so I can’t say for certain, but I didn’t notice any major re-working or rewriting between the two versions – just the radical change in title and design.

The new covers look much darker and more thriller-y than the previous ones. But don’t be deceived. Like Ruth Galloway, these are not as scary as the covers would have you expect. Obviously these are books written 20 years ago – so mobile phones are much less common and research is all done in person in archives and not on the internet – but that really works for a mystery series. And as I can remember this era from growing up – and cassette tapes machines, smoking in bars, a time before smart phones – there’s a nostalgia factor here for me too.

Only five are on Kindle at the moment, but they are all in Kindle Unlimited. One of them – with yet another different cover and the original title is available on Kobo. But I have managed to pick up most of these in second handbook shops or book exchanges so the paperbacks are not as hard to find as you might think.

Have a great weekend.

bingeable series, fiction, Series I love

Series Redux: Cazalet Chronicles

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We’ve had events marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day this week, and so I thought I would mention one of my favourite series that’s set at least partially during the Second World War today – and that’s Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet series. I wrote a full post about the books back in 2020 and you can read that here.

The end of the war comes during the third book and as I love the children’s stories (or at least they were children at the start) the third and the fourth books are my favourites of the series in many ways. Here’s a bit from Archie and Clary’s VE Day celebrations

Showers of golden stars from rockets occurred in the crocus-mauve sky and the Palace was floodlit, and round the statue of Queen Victoria an enormous snake of people were dancing the hokey-cokey, singing and stamping their feet, and beyond, near the railings, people were chanting, shouting for the King. There were thousands of them, so many indeed and sometimes so tightly packed that they had held hands all evening in order not to get parted, and sometimes they had to shout to each other to be heard, but sometimes they simply sang whatever everyone else round them was singing: ’Land of Hope and Glory’, ’God Save the King’ and bits of the hokey-cokey.

Confusion by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Anyway, I love them, they’re wonderful and if you haven’t read them, you should. They always seem to be in print and I own them in paperback, ebook and also some on audio. That should give a sense of how dear to me they are. And as they’re not short, if you like them you have about 2,000 pages of them to enjoy.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

books, historical, series, Series I love

Series I Love Redux: Dandy Gilver

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After reading Catriona McPherson’s new book last week, I went back and checked where I was at with the Dandy Gilver series – and lo and behold there was a sixteenth book in the series out in paperback for me to read to complete the set. It’s been three years since I last wrote about Dandy – at which point I was one down on the then fifteen books in the series. We’ve now followed Dandy’s adventures from 1923 all the way through until 1939 and seen her go from a bored wife at home with her boys away at school through to a grandmother worrying about the likelihood of her sons being killed up to fight in another war. And given that there are a bunch of throwbacks her first case in this one, it does feel like this could be the last book in the series, but who knows. I would definitely read about Dandy taking on the Home Front, but I don’t want her boys to be killed – so maybe it’s best to stop? Anyway, you can go back and read my previous posts about the series – consistently darker than you expect them to be, and with far too many different cover designs!

Have a great weekend.

bingeable series, series, Series I love

Mystery series: Fetherings

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The twenty-second book in Simon Brett’s Fetherings series came out this week – and I am nearly up to date with the series at this point, so it seemed like a good point to revisit them.

Our detective duo in this series are Carole and Jude, next door neighbours, very different personalities but unlikely friends. I really love the groups of characters that Brett creates – whether it’s Charles Paris, his bottle of Bells and on off relationship with his wife, or Mrs Pargiter pretending she doesn’t know about her late husband’s criminal activities. In the case of Carole and Jude, it’s the friction between the incredibly uptight Carole – who would secretly love to be less repressed if only she could figure out how – and the much more chilled Jude who has a more open minded attitude towards life but who has people floating in and out of her life but never really staying.

And the small town life of Fetherings means there are plenty of different locations for murders without it seeming repetitive. We’ve had museums, cafes, stables, tennis clubs, boat clubs and when needed nearby towns too. Accoding to the blurb, In Death in the Dressing Room the murder happens on stage during a stage version of a popular sitcom. Given Brett’s knowledge of the workings of TV and Radio I think that this has potential to be a lot of fun, so I’m looking forward to reading it when it’s at a sensible price.

If you haven’t read any of these yet, the first six are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment which would give you a good sense of the series – and the next six are all under £3. You can find them on Amazon here.

Have a great weekend

reviews, romance, series

Romance Series: Women Who Dare

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Happy Friday everyone, another week, another romance series for you today.

Beverly Jenkins’s Women Who Dare trilogy is three books set in the aftermath of the Civil War in the United States. First there is Rebel, which is set in New Orleans in the aftermath of the Civil War. Our heroine is Valinda, a transplant from New York in town to teach the newly emancipated community while she waits for her fiancé to return from abroad. Our hero is Drake LeVeq, an architect and son of an old New Orleans family descended from pirates. Second is Wild Rain which is set in Wyoming and is that rare thing: a western historical romance that I liked – so much so that I made it a BotW! And finally To Catch a Raven – which is set back in New Orleans and has a hero and heroine who are forced together in order to reclaim a stolen copy of the Declaration of Independence. Raven comes from a family of grifters, Braxton emphatically does not and as they fake marriage as part of the job they start to discover that perhaps they’re more suited to each other than it seems.

I don’t read a lot of American-set historical romances but I will always make an exception for Ms Beverly Jenkins. I love her writing and characterisation – her Blessings contemporary series is one of my favourites as you know – and she brings all that to the historicals but with interesting settings and premises that you don’t see a lot in the genre. I don’t think you have to read these in order to appreciate them – I didn’t – but you’ll probably get a better experience if you do.

They used to be quite hard to get hold of – but they’re all on kindle now, and they seem to rotate on offer fairly regularly so you can pick up the set.

Have a great weekend everyone!

romance, series

Romance series: Puffin Island Trilogy

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It was the first day of spring this week and weather has really picked up to coincide with it, so this week for the series post, I’m writing about a romance series set on a windswept island in Maine*.

This is called the Puffin Island trilogy, although there is a 0.5 (which I haven’t read) which is a Harlequin Presents book in the UK and doesn’t seem to be obiviously set on the island or linked to the other three. But the trilogy itself is centered around three friends who each use the same cottage on the island when times in their life get tough.

Book one, First Time in Forever, features Emily who is hiding out on the island with her niece whose mum has just died in a plane crash, and her romance with Ryan, charismatic yacht club owner and former journalist. In Some Kind of Wonderful it’s Brittany, back on the island after a decade away only to discover the ex-husband who ditched her ten days after the wedding is back there too. And in Christmas Ever After, it’s Skylar and Alec who have been fighting in the background for the previous two books and who finally work things out between them.

Now obviously this is the wrong time of year for many people to be reading a Christmas novel, but I’m pretty sure if you read the first two you’ll end up reading the third anyway, even if it’s not Christmas reading season. Because individually these are great romances, but when you read them back to back they build as well and make you want to see what happens next. And of course as always Sarah Morgan’s great at creating places that feel like they’re real and people that you want to hang out and be friends with – see also the Snow Crystal/O’Neil Brothers books.

There are coming up on a decade old now, so I don’t know how easy they’re going to be to get hold of in paperback, but it’s on Kindle and Kobo too – and Christmas Ever After is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment

*why is Maine so popular as a setting for romance and mystery books? Is there something in the water?

Sarah Morgan three books, read them all

Series I love

Series I Love: Discworld

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My brain can’t quite get it’s head around it, but Wednesday just gone marked ten years since Terry Pratchett died, and I couldn’t let that pass without writing something about the Discworld and my enduring love for it.

— Terry Pratchett & Rob Wilkins (@terryandrob.bsky.social) 2025-03-12T10:15:15.279Z

I’d like to start by pointing you at my Where to Start with Terry Pratchett post for my suggestions about not starting at the beginning of the series unless you’re a frequent fantasy reader, but actually starting with one of the mini-series within the Discworld. It’s six or so years since I wrote that, and since then I think I’ve re-read most of my favourite sub-series, but not the series as a whole. And I think I’ve re-read or re-listen the first two Moist von Lipwig books and The Truth every year – and helped by the fact that there have been fresh audiobooks released I’ve also added in the early watch books, which were a very hard listen on the digital transfer of the original Nigel Planer recordings – or at least they were so hard a listen on Guards! Guards! that I never bought any others and just stuck to the ones that were narrated by Stephen Baxter.

Discworld hardcovers

I love the way that Pratchett skewers the modern world and the things that he picks out to create an alternative version of. I do wish we had got the Moist takes on the Tax system that was hinted at in the final stages of Making Money, but Raising Steam was fun instead. Basically I wish we had more. I wish so the Embuggrance hadn’t happened and we had another ten PTerry books by now rather than only having the old ones to re-read.

I’m also really glad that I went to see him and Rob Wilkins at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 2011 to talk about Snuff. Because I’m an electronic hoarder I went back and checked my emails – and the event was to mark the fact that snuff was his 50th book – but I know that I went because I wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to be able to do events and I wanted to hear him speak. It was four or so years since he’d made the dementia diagnosis public at that point, Rob did the reading from the book and Terry had already stopped signing books – he was stamping instead. My only regret from that night is that I didn’t queue up to get the book stamped and meet him – but it was a work night, it was already after 10pm when it finished and I had come from one 12 hour shift and had another one the next morning. But I went, it was great and I was right – there weren’t many more chances, because I didn’t manage to do another one.

And I really respect the job that Rob and Terry’s daughter Rhianna have done looking after the Pratchett estate – they’ve been really thoughtful and careful about what they do with it and tried to follow his wishes – right down to steamrollering his hard-drives so that nothing else could come out that he hadn’t approved. And judging by Rhianna’s post this week, hopefully we may have a new adaptation of something coming at some point in the relatively near future.

Anyways, I’m off to think about whether I should but some more of the pretty hardbacks, which will lead to me looking at the Discworld Emporium website and then maybe do a Discworld jigsaw under my framed picture of Errol the Dragon. I’ll leave you with the links my original tribute post and my BotW post for Shepherd’s Crown – which I still haven’t been able to re-read.

GNU Sir Terry.

Series I love

Series I Love: Lady Julia Grey

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Deanna Raybourn’s sequel to Killers of a Certain Age came out this week, and when I was planning content for the blog for March I realised that I have never written a proper series post about Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey series. I know. I was as surprised as you are. I’ve written about Veronica Speedwell, and I’ve done a few reviews of books in the series and mentioned them in Recommendsday posts, but never an actual series post. So in honour of the release of Kills Well With Others, this Friday I’m putting that right!

Books from the Lady Julia series

At the start of Silent in the Grave, Sir Edward Grey collapses and dies in front of his wife Julia and a house full of guests. Julia is initially prepared to accept that it’s an accident, but the private inquiry agent her husband had hired to investigate a series of threatening letters is not. And soon Julia too is convinced and the two of them try to work out who was behind the death and sees Julia caught up in a dark

As I’ve mentioned before, Silent in the Grave has a fabulous opening that really sets the tone for the series: “To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching on the floor.” I’m struggling to believe while I’m writing this that it came out nearly twenty years ago, and I first read it a decade ago. But I think if you like the tone of Veronica Speedwell, you will also like this. There are a couple of standalone Raybourns that have a slightly different feel, but this has the banter and the mystery and the slow burn romance that she has built on in the (even slower burn in some ways) Speedwell books, but just set in the Victorian rather than the Edwardian era.

And the even better news is that they’re all on some form of offer at the moment on Kindle – you can get Silent in the Grave for 99p as you can with books three and four, with books two and five at £1.99 so basically you can get the whole series for under £7. The picture on Kobo is somewhat similar – although they don’t seem to have book three as far as I can see. Either way, it’s cheaper than trying to buy hard copies because it looks like they’re somewhat out of print. I’m also somewhat annoyed that I could only track down three of the five for the photo because I know I own them all, and it bugs me when I can’t track books down on my shelves when I want to!

Happy Reading!

series

Bingeable series: Once Upon a Bookstore

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Does it count as a series when it’s three novellas? Well it does now. But it’s definitely bingeable because I read the first two back to back and then had to tap my foot and wait for the third!

The Once Upon a Time Bookstore of the title is on an island in Maine. In the first book we meet Isabel who ran away from the island as soon as she could to escape from sad memories. Her sister Sophie hasn’t spoken to her since but when Isabel gets a mysterious letter, she heads home. Each entry in the series returns to the island and a different moment in the lives of Isabel and Sophie. There are three at the moment – with the latest out this week, and a fourth has now appeared for pre-sale that’s due to arrive in May.

These are a little more tear-jerky that I usually read, but the length really helped with that. Over the years I’ve discovered that I don’t really want to read 300 pages of self-discovery through tragedy, but I do like a little bit of it – and it seems about 50 pages an instalment with a very clear focus on one specific issue and a definite conclusion is the sweet spot for me! The algorithm suggested the first one to me and I went straight on to the second – and would have read the third if it had been available. Luckily I was reading them close to release date for book three because as it turns out that there were years long gaps between them all and we all know I’m terrible at remembering to come back to things!

Anyway these are in Kindle Unlimited which was perfect for me because I’m not sure the page length to cost ratio would have worked otherwise, but it does mean they’re not on Kobo.

Have a great weekend everyone.

book round-ups, books

Romance series: Master link post!

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Happy Friday everyone, it occurred to me that I haven’t done a round up of all the various series posts I’ve done for a while. But there’s so many of them now that I’ve actually just done the romance ones for you today because it’s February and it’s Valentine’s Day the other week. And I’ve tried to categorise them a little bit for you.

Small Town romance

Lucky Harbor

Happily, Inc

Willow Creek/Well Met

Bright Falls

Chance of a Lifetime

Blessings

Lancashire

Showbiz/showbiz adjacent

London Celebrities

Centre Stage

Cowboys of California

Sports romance

Chicago Stars

O’Neil Brothers/Snow Crystal

Paranormal

Sookie Stackhouse

Historical romance

Rule of Scoundrels

Survivors Club

Hellions of Halstead Hall

Desperate Duchesses

Bridgerton

Novella series

Under the Mistletoe

Holidays with the Wongs