This is quite a short post this week, because I’ve been busy with those #Noirville entries, but what could be more up my street than a Victorian-set adventure mystery with a feisty teen girl as a heroine? Not a lot, and that’s why Y S Lee’s A Spy in the House is this week’s BotW pick!
Mary Quinn is rescued from the gallows by a school for girls that’s actually cover for a female spy agency. At 17 she gets her chance to prove herself when she’s sent to help with an investigation by taking a job as a paid companion to the daughter of a shipping magnate. Once she’s in the house though she ends up getting more involved than she’s meant to and soon she may be in over her head. On top of all this, there are secrets in Mary’s past which seem like they may be linked to the mystery.
Mary is an interesting and feisty heroine and the story is fast-paced and exciting. I think this is aimed at a YA audience and it would make a great next step for teens who’ve outgrown (or want the next step) from the Wells and Wong series or the Sinclair mysteries and who aren’t quite ready for full on-adult mysteries yet. This has a developing love interest, but nothing too full on or adult-contenty if you know what I mean.
This is the first in a series and I’ll definitely be looking out for the others. You should be able to get hold of a copy from all the usual sources (like Big Green Bookshop)- and it’s available on Kindle and Kobo too.
I officially have too many books on the go at once. Admittedly some of them are hardbacks and I’ve been staying away from home a lot, but some of them are books I’ve started and not got into and ended up leaving in favour of something else. So this week I’m going to try and do something about that – either finish some of them or give up and cull them. And I’ve still got more #Noirville entries to read too…
Read:
Holiday Wishes by Jill Shalvis
Altered to Death by Christina Freeburn
A Spy in the House by Y S Lee
The Deep End by Julie Mulhern
Paper Girls Vol 3 by Brian K Vaughan et al
The Very First Damned Thing by Jodi Taylor
The Great St Mary’s Day out by Jodi Taylor
Started:
Imprudence by Gail Carriger
Clouds in my Coffee by Julie Mulhern
Still reading:
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
China Court by Rumer Godden
Mystery in White by J Jefferson Farjeon
Marling Hall by Angela Thirkell
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
No books bought at all – although 2 pre-orders did arrive on my Kindle.
Plenty of late night train journeys for reading this week and some progress down the pile. Some excellent books, some… not, but it was all enjoyable on some level.
Read:
First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones
Kidnappers at Elmhurst School by Betty Laws
Second Chance Summer by Jill Shalvis
To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski (writing as Sarah Russell)
My house has furniture again! More importantly my books are back – as you’ll know if you’ve read my new State of the Pile post. But all the unpacking means that I haven’t read as many books as I was hoping for this week – although I have started making inroads into the newly returned backlog!
Read:
Moonlight over Manhattan by Sarah Morgan
Fireworks in Paradise by Kathi Daley
Margaret finds a Future by Mabel Esther Allen
Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich
Blue Ridge Sunrise by Denise Hunter
Started:
The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
China Court by Rumer Godden
Murder is Binding by Lorna Barrett
Still reading:
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Days of Anna Madrigal by Armistead Maupin
And given the state of the aforementioned pile, I’m redoubling my efforts not to buy books and so I have been newly virtuous and haven’t bought anything this week. Lets see how long that lasts…
A week off work – where we should have been going on holiday, but ended up working on the house. So not as much reading time as I would have had had I been on the beach. But the list is deceptive – I’ve also read my 30+ first round submissions for #Noirville and I can’t wait to tell you about my favourites!
Read:
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
The Ninja’s Illusion by Gigi Pandian
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
In the Market for Murder by TE Kinsey
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
Started:
The Days of Anna Madrigal by Armistead Maupin
Still reading:
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Moonlight over Manhattan by Sarah Morgan
I may have bought a few books – but then I was on holiday and what’s a girl to do? You’ve got to have a holiday book or two!*
*NB actually six – two ebooks and four actual books.
I realised earlier that my next post would be my 500th and it seemed a shame for it to go by without being marked and just be a normal Week in Books. So instead a little bonus post looking at what we’ve discovered in 500 posts…
I think, if we’re being honest we could sum most of my reading up as falling into one of three categories: romance, crime and history. To be honest, sometimes it hits all three…
Romance
A selection of my favourites
Back in the very early days I wrote about my abiding love of Georgette Heyer so it would be remiss of me not to mention her here (especially as some do hit that trifecta – Masqueraders, Talisman Ring, Unknown Ajax for example) but it’s not just about Regency romances. I already loved Trisha Ashley, but while I’ve been writing the blog I’ve become a massive fan of Sarah Morgan and Jill Shalvis who both wrote contemporary romances, which a couple of years ago I would have told you that I don’t really read unless they’re romantic comedies. Romantic comedies have become harder to find over the years, but they’re still there if you look hard enough – like Kirsty Greenwood, my old editor at Novelicious who is funny and a little bit rude.*
Crime
The four books that feature Peter and Harriet
The only way to start this section is with Lord Peter Wimsey. I still love these stories as much as I did when I wrote that post. I still listen to the audiobooks and radio plays with Ian Carmichael monthly. They’re a sure fire way to make me relax at the end of a long day and my favourite of all the Golden Age crime. One of the greatest things about the ebook revolution is the reappearance of some more forgotten classics like Edmund Crispin and a lot of the British Library Crime classics. Another great thing about ebooks are the smaller presses – if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you’ll know about my love for Fahrenheit Press because I’ve gone on about it so much over the last 18+ months. And then there’s the cozy crime. My favourites are the ones with a sense of humour – like Meg Langslow and the Royal Spyness series.
History
Gone with the Windsors by Laurie Graham
This is actually quite a broad category – I’m using it to cover straight up nonfiction history books, like The Greedy Queen, and fiction set in the past like Deanna Raybourn and Lauren Willig’s books. A lot of my reading is set in the past in one way or another, which perhaps isn’t surprising given that I’m a history graduate. I’ve learned more about Ancient Egypt and the Victorian rush to excavate it through Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series. I tend to stick to books set after 1600, but I do venture back further if something catches my eye. I have a love for the interwar period – non fiction books like Flappers and Queen Bees and novels – like one of my all-time favourites Gone With The Windsors, or mystery series (overlap!) like Daisy Dalrymple and Phryne Fisher, both of which are overdue for new novels too.
And all this hadn’t even touched on my love of boarding school stories – new and old – or ballet books, and classic children’s books in general. Or the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett. Or Gail Carriger’s supernatural world. Or Charlaine Harris’s. Or the Janet Evanovich obsession. And just writing this has made me realise how many great books I’ve read and written about for this blog.
One of the aims of Verity Reads Books was to try to reduce my to-read pile I don’t think we can really count that as a success as the pile took up three boxes when it went into storage. But I do think I think more before buying books and NetGalley means I get advance copies of things now, which don’t take up actual space, but obviously mean I have less time to read Books from the pile. But really, there’s no such thing as too many books! Plus I really like writing about what I’ve been reading and chatting to people about what I’ve been reading on various social media platforms, so that’s been a total bonus.
Thanks for reading my ramblings, and here’s to whatever I discover in the next 500 posts!
Happy Reading.
* Kirsty’s Big Sexy Love is 99p on Kindle at the moment and you should totally buy it!
The home renovations continue – and once again my reading time is down. And I’m not expecting the book count to go up a lot in the next few weeks because I’m expecting the Fahrenheit #Noirville entries to arrive soon and then I’ll be reading them instead! Exciting times.
Read:
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
Nadiya’s British Food Adventure (sampler) by Nadiya Hussain
The Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell
The New Deadwardians by Dan Abnett
Die Like an Eagle by Donna Andrews
Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides
Started:
Moonlight over Manhattan by Sarah Morgan
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
The Ninja’s Illusion by Gigi Pandian
Still reading:
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
On the brightside, I didn’t buy any books last week. Which as we all know is a real achievement for me!
As the deadline for Fahrenheit’s #Noirville competition draws ever closer – you’ve only got three days to go people, three days – I’ve been trying to clear the decks a bit so that I’m ready to read the entries. So I thought I’d mention a few books this Recommendsday that I’ve read recently but haven’t chatted about. It’s a bit eclectic, but that’s just how I roll and I know you won’t mind!
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Ever wondered what Queen Victoria ate? Annie Gray has the answers. As well as looking at what Victoria ate across the course of her reign, it looks at how the kitchens worked, who worked there and who else they were feeding as well as the Queen. It jumps backwards and forwards in the timeline a little bit, but I came away feeling like I’d learned a lot about upper class dining in the nineteenth century. ITV’s TV series Victoria is back on screen at the moment – and although the Victoria in that is very much the young queen, this would still make a nice companion read for people who want to know a bit more about the Queen’s life and her household.
Wise Children by Angela Carter
Meet Nora and Dora Chance – former musical all stars, illegitimate twin daughters of a pillar of the theatrical establishment – on their 75th birthday, which by coincidence is also their father’s 100th birthday. Join them as Dora tells you the story of their lives before they head to the (televised) party. This is a whirling, magical realist journey through the world of the theatre – legitimate and otherwise – full of Shakespeare references and sets of twins galore. I found it enjoyably bonkers although it took a little while before I got my head around it all – there is a big old cast of characters here – and I’m still thinking about it a couple of weeks later.
True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop by Annie Darling
You may remember me raving about the Little Bookshope of Lonely Hearts last year – and now it has a sequel. The good news is that this is not the sort of sequel that breaks up the couple that you’ve invested so much in in the first book and then getting them back together. This sees one of the other girls who works in the bookshop get her happily ever after. I always find it slightly weird to read books where the main character has my name, but I liked Verity Love so much that I got over that quite quickly. This Verity is an Austen mad introvert, who invents a boyfriend to keep her friends off her back and then ends up with a real life fake boyfriend. I had a few issues with Johnny’s back story – and insufficient grovelling at the end – but was mostly swept away by this – I do love a relationship of convenience story.
Right, that’s your lot for now, but I hope there’s something in here that’s tickled your fancy and might help you fill a reading gap while I’m off reading all those Noirville entries.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 