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.
So I’ve read another couple of books in the Fetherings series recently, and it’s another series that’s really easy to read at this time of year – small town murder mysteries at the seaside make for perfect autumnal reading somehow. So this is another Simon Brett series – and has the same sort of humour and murder mix that you get in Charles Paris and Mrs Pargeter but this time with a duo at the centre in neighbours Carole and Jude and their contrasting personalities. I’m about a dozen into the series now and the setting are still pretty varied but with enough call backs to previous books and developments to make them fun if you’re binging, but not so many that you can’t just pick them up and carry on.
They’re also very bingeable – so if you can get hold of them it’s very easy to run through them at speed, but they do sometimes have a bit of a price issue – I can read them in a couple of hours and that effects how much I’m willing to pay!
It’s forty years today (24th November) since the very first Discworld book, The Colour of Magic was picked so for today’s Friday series post returning to one of my absolute all time favourites.
✨️ 40 years of Discworld magic ✨️
Four decades ago, on November 24th 1983, Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic published.
One day doesn't seem quite enough to celebrate, does it? So, today marks the start of our Year of Discworld.
So I will admit that the early books of the series aren’t my favourites . Yes, I’ve reread them all, but I haven’t gone back to the first few any where near as many times as I have say, Going Postal or Guards, Guards. And if you’ve never read them, I do of course have a post for that – go and read my Where to Start with Discworld post. But that first book does introduce Rincewind, the incompetent “wizzard”, and the most famous trunk in literature, the Luggage. And although the social satire develops over the series, it’s here in embryonic form, as Twoflower introduces in-sewer-ants to Ankh Morpork, shortly followed by the first case of insurance fraud!
40 years ago our world changed when it met the Discworld. In the beginning there was the word… How many countless unsuspecting eyes have scanned these immortal lines, unaware of the journey to come? Thank you, Terry, for making this world a better place by giving it your own. pic.twitter.com/5AlogCAzDx
Book Four, Mort, is where I think it all kicks into gear as death and his white horse ride into the picture and in book six it’s the arrival of the witches and Granny Weatherwax. I’ve said before that the city-based and later books are my favourites, but really I find it hard to chose because they’re all old friends.
Back in the day, my sister and I used to fight to be the one who bought dad the new Discworld book for his Christmas book, and then we’d often read if before he did once it was unwrapped. And although it’s eight years since Sir Terry died, we have some new Discworld content this Christmas, because his daughter Rhianna and Gabrielle Kent have written Tiffany Aching’s Guide to being a Witch, which I haven’t seen yet but which I will probably buy at some point soon because I know what I’m like! Tiffany and the Wee Free Men were one of the brilliant final gifts Athert end of the series, and I’m interested to see what Rhianna has done with it all.
But basically the message of this is go read some Discworld, please and thank you!
Small town romance bonkers premise. Well we’re getting close to Christmas and I’ve started thinking Christmassy recommendations and as I was doing that ended up on a bit of a tangent and I realised that I haven’t written about Susan Mallery’s happily Inc series, so today I’m remedying that!
So this is a small town romance series, set in California and the twist here (because what is a romance series without a gimmick or a twist) is that the small town in question is a wedding destination town. Now bear with me, I know that sounds bonkers, but it does work. The heroine of the first book in the series, Pallas, runs a. Venue called Weddings in a Box, but it is struggling. If she can’t make it work she’ll have to give in to her mum and take a job at the family bank (again, Brits bear with me, small banks are a thing in the States). Nick is the venue’s new carpenter (they need one to assemble the wedding spaces) but he’s actually doing the job between sculpting gigs because he’s an artist from a family of artist s. Which means books two and three are his brothers and by the time you’ve done that you’ve got a bunch of established side characters to follow for books five and six.
I’ve written about Mallery’s Fool’s Gold series before and if you liked those, these are doing a similar thing but with more gimmicks. Like a royalties. And a (small) herd of giraffes. Yes it’s alla bit bonkers, but it’s the fun sort of romance novel bonkers where all the other characters don’t bat an eyelid at whatever revelation anyone throws at them and everyone gets a happily ever after.
And I’ve of the best things about doing this now is that several of them are on offer for either 99p or £1.99, which is nice although they’ve been recovered so I nearly bought a couple that I’d already read again! Anyway, here’s the links to the Kindle page for the series and the Kobo one.
I know. I’ve already written about Beverly Jenkins Blessings series more than once, but the latest book in the series came out here this week – after a gap of three and a half years so how could I not!
You can find my first post about the people of Henry Adams here, but the basic plot is that when she divorces her rich but cheating husband, Bernadine Brown uses part of her divorce settlement to buy a historically black town in Kansas on eBay. Over the course of the series you can see Henry Adams come back to life and flourish. There’s a regular cast of characters who cover multiple generations, there’s always a romantic element – although it’s not always the main focus – as well as whatever is happening in the town. It’s strongly influenced by faith – after her divorce Bernadine wants God to tell her what her purpose should be after being so fortunate as to get so much money – and buying the town is what she feels that he wants her to do. And the latest in the series is mostly focusing on Reverend Paula and the new guy in town.
I realise I’ve got this far without really talking about the narrative structure – which is that it moves around from character to character looking at the different strands of the story. Its a bit like Tales of the City – although Blessings isn’t written to be read in episodes and the overarching plot is more connected together than TotC tends to be.
Anyway, A Christmas to Remember came out this week, I had it pre-ordered and had finished it within two days despite all my efforts at moderation (and it would have been less except that I had to work and also had theatre tickets). Last week I mentioned Sweet Mercies and if you’ve read that or Small Miracles, the first book about the Sisters of St Philomena, this has lots of similar vibes – although those have less romance than these do and maybe a bit more God. Or at least a different way of dealing with God. And the narrative moves around in a similar way.
Ms Bev writes brilliant historical romances as well – I’ve written about a couple of them – so there’s plenty to go at in her back catalogue if you read one of these and like it.
It’s the run up to Halloween, so I was thinking that I probably ought to try and do a spooky or vampire-y series post at some point this month. Trouble is, I don’t read a lot of books with spooky or supernatural stuff in them. I’ve already written about Sookie Stackhouse (vampires! werewolves! all sorts!) and I’ve put more links to Terry Pratchett recently than I can shake a stick at (but I’ll throw you somemore). But tangential thinking takes me to another Charlaine Harris series – albeit one that doesn’t have any supernatural shenanigans.
When we meet Aurora Teagarden in the first book, she’s a librarian in Lawrenceston, Georgia. Along with some of her friends, she’s part of a Real Murder club – who meet every month to discuss and analyse famous true crimes. Her mum doesn’t approve, but Aurora doesn’t see any harm in it until a member gets murdered – and the other group members are suspects. Of course she solves the murder, but it’s just the start because over the course of ten books she just keeps stumbling across bodies and murderers!
If you like cozy crime and you like Charlaine Harris, these will really work for you. I find Harris incredibly easy to read and her mystery plots are pretty solid. I can sometimes figure out who did it, but not always, and not usually particularly early in the book, and you can’t say that about everyone! Aurora is an engaging heroine and she manages not to fall into the too-stupid-to-live trap too often – and I like the slightly antagonistic relationship she has with the local police because it’s not *just* about the fact that she keeps poking her nose into their investigations – although that is also a factor. Sidenote: some series are better at managing the amateur and the police relationships than others – some go too cozy (why aren’t they bothered this person is inserting themselves?) or some too antagonistic (which is just anxiety inducing for the reader and not what I come to cozy crime for).
Anyway, I have one proviso to mention with this series; and that’s that the final two books were written after a considerable gap and are… perhaps not one hundred percent consistent with some aspects of the earlier stories but that’s probably only something oyu would notice if you really did binge-read these from start to finish. As to why there was such a big gap – or rather why Charlaine Harris came back to the series, well I would point the finger at the success of the Hallmark Movie versions of the books – which again, are not entirely consistent with the books but are among the better cozy crime TV adaptations that I’ve watched (and I’ve watched a few) and you can pretty much just see them as a separate thing.
They should be fairly easy to get hold of on Kindle, and there were definitely fairly comprehensive paperback releases of the first eight in the series (because that’s how i read them – from the works or the library) and the kindles have new covers now which suggests there may have also been a release at some point.
The second book in Robin Stevens’ new series is out this week, so I’m taking the opportunity to talk about her Wells and Wong middle grade mystery series this Friday.
So Hazel Wong and Daisy Wells meet at Deepdean School for Girls in the 1930s. In the first book, Murder Most Unladylike, they’re desperate for adventure and form their own secret detective agency in the hope of excitement, but it’s all pretty boring until one of their teachers is found dead in the gym and they start to investigate. And then across the next nine books they keep stumbling across bodies and intrigue in a variety of settings inspired by the best Golden Age mysteries. It’s doing Agatha Christie crossed with Enid Blyton.
I read these as they came out – and various of them were reviewed here at the time. I think my favourites are First Class Murder (Daisy and Hazel do Murder on the Orient Express), A Spoonful of Murder (Hazel on getting home advantage over Daisy in Hong Kong) and Death in the Spotlight (Daisy and Hazel do an Inspector Alleyn theatre mystery) but the books are a lot of fun and I think if I’d read them at the right age (if you know what I mean) it would have been a delightful gateway to Agatha Christie and Peter Wimsey. As it was, I went straight to Miss Marple when I was about eleven and loved it right up until the point I scared myself! I’ve bought these as gifts for the middle graders in my life – and loaned them out to the middle graders in my work colleague’s lives (although I’m still not sure how I ended up with Jolly Foul Play in ebook *and* paperback!
By the end of the series, Daisy and Hazel are almost grownups and it gets a little bit melodramatic in the Death on the Nile Homage, but I forgave it because I had enjoyed the series so much – and it was also setting up the Ministry of Unladylike Activity series, which you can also see in the picture above, where the new main character is Hazel’s little sister May.
I’ve read both of the new series too – which are World War Two-set spy adventures. I liked the first one better than the second but I think the premise of the new series is fundamentally a little harder for an adult to get on board with than the first series is. But if you are looking for a Christmas book for an older primary age child this Christmas (and they’ve already read Wells and Wong) they would be a safe bet. And they have cameos from Daisy and Hazel too.
You should be able to get these basically anywhere with a children’s section because they’ve been hugely successful – and the ebooks go on offer from time to time too.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 