Happy Friday everyone! Here in the UK it’s a bank holiday for Good Friday so I’m taking the opportunity to write about a murder mystery series featuring a vicar!
Max is a former MI5 agent turned vicar, who is now parish priest in an idyllic village on the south-west coast of England. He was hoping to escape his past, but he’s still attracting more attention than he would like from his female parishioners. The ex-spy situation gives Max a really good reason to be involved in investigating deaths, including ones where he doesn’t stumble across the body himself. Across the course of eight books Max has found his place in the village and started a family of his own, which poses its own challenges too.
I really like Max as a character and the options for stories that his backstory provides. Plus the secondary characters are interesting and the setting is charming. They’re often a little darker than some other cosy mysteries, but there’s the solutions aren’t usually as unexpectedly dark as, say, the Dandy Gilver series often turn out to be. I haven’t read the latest book because, well you’ve seen the state of the tbr pile, and I haven’t seen it in a store yet, and you all know that’s when I find it hardest to resist buying books!
If you want more cosy crime mysteries that are vicar adjacent, you might want to check out the ministry is murder series, although they added a little harder to get hold of than Max Tudor is, as the latest Max book came out last year. And they don’t have vicars, but G M Malliet has a couple of other series that you can check out too.
Today for the series post, I’m coming back to a series I mentioned on my book from in the Thanksgiving books post back in November, but now I’ve read the whole lot so it’s time to talk in more depth!
Our heroine is Tj, a high school teacher and sports coach in Paradise Nevada, who lives on her family’s resort with her two much younger half sisters. Their mum is dead and Tj has taken over as their parental figure. As with most of these series, Tj has a love interest and a solid group of secondary characters around her to keep things interesting and provide her with sidekicks for her sleuthing. Despite the fact that someone dies in every book, Paradise seems like a pretty nice place to live, and Tj herself is a fun, not too stupid to live heroine, even though she’s quite young in the grand scheme of things.
There are ten books in the series and they move through the seasons with the resort – so there are summer and winter weather books as well as books around the various seasonal festivals (Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas) so it doesn’t seem to much like there are bodies falling out of every corner at Tj and her friends. I found these incredibly easy to read – I started reading them via NetGalley when Henery Press had their books on there and were going through a pretty reliable period. And since then I’ve been able to pick off the rest of them either via Kindle Unlimited or as a bargain deal and the good news is that they’re all in KU at the moment. So if you fancy a solid murder mystery that’s not too gory, these are a pretty good way to pass a couple of hours. Kathi Daley has written a couple of other series – but I haven’t had a chance to read any of them yet, but they are on the list!
It’s just over a year since the first book in this series was Book of the Week, and now I’ve read nearly all the books in the series that I can get at a sensible price, so it seemed like a good time to write a series post about them!
At the start of the series, Goldy is a recently divorced single mum running a one woman catering business in a town in Colorado. Her biggest problem is her ex-husband, John Robert Korman aka the Jerk (so named for his initials), gynaecologist and wife beater. In the first book Goldy’s former father in law drops dead at a wake that she is catering and she becomes a suspect. And this is just the first murder Goldy stumbles across in the course of her catering business. They’re not always under suspicion of being poisoned by her food, but in a fair number of cases they could have been – at least initially!
In my BotW post for that first book, Catering to Nobody, I noted my annoyance that the series title gives away a future plot development in the series – aka that Goldy has a different surname and that she gets married again (and to someone you meet in that first book), and I appreciate that I am doing the same here, but that’s how you’re going to find them easiest. And finding these is some of the challenge, because this is a series that started in 1990…
I bought everything I could on Kindle – but as you can see from this picture, of the seventeen books only six of them are on Kindle (in the UK at least) and then the rest I have acquired second hand. And that’s where I have come undone – because some of them are super expensive or impossible to get. I’ve read 13 of the 17, and have one more in the post on the way. But as I’ve read the last book in the series – or at least I assume it’s the last because it came out more than a decade ago – so I’m going for the series post now.
And what I really like about these is the group of regular characters that pop up – as well as Goldy and her son Arch, there is also Tom who she marries, Julian who is almost an adopted son and then Marla, the Jerk’s other ex wife. Between Goldy and the side characters there are plenty of ways to be involved in murders and to get information about them. Also it has recipes. And some of them are recipes that you might want to cook, and actually be able to cook even with the American measurements! I was trying to think of a series to compare them to, but I struggled a little bit – they’re not necessarily funny or witty like some of the other mystery series I like, but they’re not super scary or thriller-y either. I’ll keep thinking!
As I said, these can be a bit of a challenge to get hold of, but here’s the link to the Kindle series list to get you started.
So this week I’m adding the the graphic novel series that I’ve written about in my series posts – with Fence – a series I’ve been reading for years and hope goes on for more years to come.
Fence is the story of the members of a fencing team at the prestigious Kings Row boarding school. The main characters are Nicolas – the illegitimate son of a legendary fencer but keeping that secret, at the school on a scholarship and having had very little formal training but with bags of potential – and Seiji Katayama a hugely talented but deeply mysterious fencer whose presence at Kings Row is a bit of a surprise to the fencing world, who thought he would be at a better school. Because Kings Row is good – but it’s not championship winning good at the moment, so could this year’s team be the ones to change that? There are other members of the team and we see their stories too, but the Nick and Seiji strands are the main ones.
We’ve got to six collected editions now – and we’ve see the guys at school, at practice, in matches and most recently at a training camp with all of their main rivals. The boarding school element is what drew me to it originally – my love of Girls Own boarding school stories is well known here, but the rivalry aspect and the art just spoke to me. And the art has been consistently really good through the whole series so far – there are various different people doing different things here and there and although the styles vary, like with Lumberjanes they’re consistent in their own way and all really nice too look at.
There’s also a couple of novels now – I’ve read the first but not the second and they get more into the other members of the team and away from Nick and Seiji and I’ve enjoyed that as well. My only gripe really is that there is so long between each book. But then that’s a fairly common gripe for me with graphic novels – but I know they take a long time to draw and that they come out in single editions first so I cope!
You should be able to get Fence from any good comic book shop – they’re on Kindle as well and the first one is at a really reasonable price – although my experience with reading graphic novels on Kindle is distinctly mixed so your mileage may vary.
I’ve been saving writing about this series until after Volume five – because at the end of the fourth book it said five would be the last. Except that it’s not – and as there was a two year gap between four and five because Alice Oseman was working on the Netflix series, I’m not going to wait until after book six!
Heartstopper is the story of Charlie and Nick. They both attend the same grammar school but they’re in different years and their school experience has been very different. Charlie is an anxious over-thinker who has been bullied because he’s openly gay, while Nick is the star of the rugby team and friends with everyone. But when they meet they become friends and both of their lives start to change.
And I don’t really want to say much more because: spoilers ahoy and it all takes a while to develop, but over the course of the five volumes so far we’ve seen the gang experience first love, navigate relationships, deal with school bullies, take exams, go on school trips and in Volume five it’s time to look at universities. I love the art, I love the characters – and I recognise some of their experiences from when I was at school – and I definitely wouldn’t want to be back in a secondary school. And as I mentioned, it’s also been turned into a Netflix series – so here’s the trailer for the first series if you want more of an idea about what’s going on:
I’m not going to lie – I haven’t watched the show yet, because I wanted to wait for the books to be finished first, but that was when I thought it was one book to go. So now who knows what I’ll do – there are two series and series three finished filming at the end of last year. One of my friends *loves* the series and I know he’ll be waiting anxiously for the next one. But if you’ve watch the series and haven’t read the books I can recommend them too. You should be able to buy the books pretty much everywhere – I get mine from the Comic Book Store because I like to support them, but they’re in all the bookshops – and as I discovered the other week the new one is in The Works too!
Happy Friday everyone, it’s nearly the weekend and today I’m looking at this year’s Amazon original story offer for Valentine’s Day – the Improbable Meet Cute series of short stories.
So the idea behind these is finding love when you least expect it, and they feature improbable first encounters that lead to a special connection, each one written by a different best selling author (or duo in the case of Christina Lauren). I would say I really like fifty percent of the authors here, and have a… more mixed relationship with the other half. So I thought it would be fun to read them all and read them in order and see what I thought.
And the answer was I really liked the ones by the authors that I usually like – Christina Lauren, Ashley Poston and Sally Thorne – andwas agreeably surprised by Abbie Jiminez’s story. The Sariah Wilson was my least favourite – which wasn’t a surprise because I didn’t really like the full length novel of hers I had previously read, and this featured royals which I always have a mixed record with.
But overall, it’s a nice collection with something for most people and they don’t take too long to read as and they’re all around the fifty page mark. And if you have Kindle Unlimited they’re free.
I said yesterday that I was going to try and resist buying the new Mary Russell mystery if I could – and so far the main reason I could is because I had pre-ordered the latest Chicago Stars book and it dropped onto the Kindle on Tuesday morning, just in time for my post Super Bowl slump- and so I’m taking the opportunity to write about them today!
So this is a series of connected romance novels what the characters are linked to the (fictional) Chicago Stars NFL team. Susan Elizabeth Phillips has been writing these for a while now (twenty-ish years) so we’ve been through a generation (in sports terms) of players at this point, but I think that’s a good thing! What thus series specialises in is feisty women and men who are used to having it all their own way – and’s that’s a dynamic I can really get on board with. I’ve written about couple of the other books in the series already, so I’m going to focus on the latest one next.
Simply the Best is the story of Rory, half sister of the Stars’ quarterback and Brett, a hot shot sports agent. They definitely shouldn’t have hooked up at a party, but even worse they’re now having to work together to try and track down a missing football player and solve a murder. There’s tones of snark and banter – and I loved the addition of a mystery to the plot. The last couple of books in the series, I’ve thought they might be the last one, but I’m fairly optimistic that there is going to be another one after this one at some point!
For this Friday’s post, I have the very definition of a bingeable series – as I read them back to back to back. I have reservations – which I will explain; but the fact remains that I read the lot
Our heroine is Flora, when we meet her she’s doing a job she hates and boyfriend has been cheating on her. So with the help of some cash from her aunt, she decides to change her life and become a house flipper instead. The house she buys is in a small town in Kentucky (hello 50 states challenge) and soon she’s making friends in her new home – but also stumbling over bodies left right and centre.
At which point we come to my first minor issue: the whole series covers the renovation of this one house. So that’s a lot of bodies in one small town in not a hugely long period. I’d you thought Jessica Fletcher had corpses following her around, she is nothing to Flora. And because each instalment is only 100 – 120 pages long, there is not a lot of complexity to the plot. If you think you know who did it quite early on, you’re probably right. And yet, as I said, I read the lot. There is just something about them that makes them slightly addictive. And they’re in kindle unlimited and so you just tap straight on to the next one. As a publishing model it’s pretty clever – and I fell for it hook line and sinker. I’m not proud of myself, but Patti Benning has other series so I’ll probably do it again.
I can’t however forgive her for the fact that despite using the same cover design for each book but with the house slowly getting renovated, I couldn’t get the scale to match to do a composite image for the main one on this post. I tried both ways too:
I know. I said I wasn’t going to do this, but I’m justifying it because I’ve given you the non- series stuff last week – so this week I feel like I can give you the update on which of my favourite series have new books coming up this year…
Let’s go a bit chronologically because hey, I’m in charge. So in February we have the next in Jenn McKinlay’s Library Lovers series, which has reached number 15 with Fatal First Edition. And let’s keep authors together – so Fondant Fumble, the sixteenth in McKinklay’s Cupcake Bakery series is out early June. Keeping it mystery, but this time historical, we have a new Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes on the 13th – The Lantern’s Dance is book 18 in Laurie R King’s series. Also in February is the fifth and final book in Martha Waters’ Regency Vows series, To Woo and to Wed.
In March we have the next Veronica Speedwell – A Grave Robbery is book nine in the series and the blurb is promising Madame Tussaud’s meets Frankenstein but is also giving me strong thoughts of the Peter Wimsey short story with the very, very lifelike sculpture. If you know, you know. And before it comes out I need to read book 8 – which finally dropped to a price I was able to justify the other week. Also, while I’m talking about Deanna Raybourn, she’s announced a sequel to Killers of a Certain Age – but we have to wait until Spring 2025 for that I’m afraid!
I mentioned it last week but the next after that is the new Vinyl Detective novel, which is out in early April, so I’ll skip over that
No news on another Kate Shackleton, but Frances Brody does have a second book set in Brackerley Prison called Six Motives for Murder coming out in May, which really means I should get around to reading the first one which is in the pile in front of the pile. Also in May is another baseball-set story from Cat Sebastian. She’s not saying it’s a sequel to We Could Be So Good, just that You Should Be So Lucky is set in the same universe – so it probably should have gone in last week’s post – except that she only announced it on Tuesday this week. Hot off the press indeed – I’ve already preordered it.
Having mentioned one Sherlock Holmes inspired series; I should probably nod to the other, even though I also mentioned that last week Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock number 9 is due in June – A Ruse of Shadows looks like it’s going back to Lord Ingram’s family for the main mystery.
I’ve only just read Birder, She Wrote and haven’t read Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow! yet, but we already have the names and dates for this year’s two Meg Langslow’s from Donna Andrews: Between a Flock and a Hard Place is out in early August and Rockin’ Around the Chickadee arrives in mid-October. I continue to be in awe of whoever it is who keeps coming up with these title puns and long may they continue!
The fourth in Sarah MacLean’s Hell’s Belles series doesn’t even have name yet (or at least not that has been publicly announced!) but we do know it’s out in mid-September. And September also sees the long awaited Nightingale novella in the Rivers of London series. It’s called The Masquerades of Spring and you all know how much I’ve been looking forward to this – since Ben Aaronovitch mentioned it at an event for a previous book in the series.
I think that’s pretty much it – or at least all that I know about at the moment.
Happy Friday everyone, the good news is it’s time for the first series post of the year. The bad news is that I’m going to have to find another book to read for Ohio in next year’s 50 States Challenge – if I do it again next year, which is never a given despite the fact that 2024 is year five!
Anyway, today I’m talking about Emilie Richards’s Ministry is Murder series, about Aggie Sloan Wilcox, a minister’s wife in the small town of Emerald Springs, Ohio. Aggie isn’t a traditional minister’s wife – not just because she keeps stumbling across murders (although she does do that) but because she’s not going to make her husband’s job her full time job, no matter what the parishioners think – she’s got children to raise and being a minister doesn’t pay that well. But being a minister’s wife does mean than when she stumbles across bodies she has reason to be some what involved – especially if they’re parishioners!
They’re cozy mysteries – so relatively blood and gore-less, and the murdered person is usually someone you don’t like (or like less the more you know about them) and although the church and the church community is the setting for them, they’re not overly religious or preachy – I mean there’s no bible quotes popping up left right and centre. They’re really easy to read and very soothing in their way – despite the murders!
There are five books in there series and I wish there were more, because I think there could have been more plots – the house flipping strand, kid schools, rival churches all could have been exploited more. But as the last one came out in 2010, clearly I’m hoping in vain! Still Emilie Richards has written a lot of other books, so hopefully there’s something else in her catalogue that I’ll enjoy.
I bought the four I have secondhand – because that seemed to be the only way to get them. I read the first one as an ebook, but I can’t find them anywhere to buy anymore so not quite sure what the deal with that is. But if you spot them out and about they’re worth a look.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 