July 2026 Reading

July for me is usually split in two as far as reading goes. There are the first three weeks that are "normal" and there is the last week when I am usually out of range for much of wifi and the internet. So I usually combine July and August into one (very long) post. This time I'm switching things up and doing most of July in this post and will include the books I read during the last week of July in my August post. 

I recently decided that I wanted to start visiting the library in person rather than mainly getting books through Libby. I belong to two separate library systems so I have a good choice of branches to seek out (and of course I could always order books from the central locations if I really wanted to). Because some of the branches are small I decided I would visit a different branch each time to see what was on their "new fiction" shelves and what books the staff at that branch chose to highlight. I've only managed to visit two branches so far but it has worked out pretty well.  

These are the books I finished in July.

Mysteries

Holy Island by LJ Ross

This was something I found on the "new mysteries" shelf at the library. Despite the fact that it said on the front of the book that she was "the Multi-Million Copy Selling Author"  I had never heard of her. Looking at the copyright page it seems that she self-published this on Amazon UK back in 2015 and it was picked up by a publisher to be "reprinted" in hard copy in 2026. Since 2015 she has written at least 23 sequels to this series plus a couple of other series. Not to denigrate self publishing, but putting out that many books in 10 years makes one wonder about the quality. If she originally tried to get this published in the traditional way I can see why it was rejected, it definitely needed some editorial advice. But I guess you can't argue with success if you simply want to make money. This novel, the "first" in the DCI Ryan mystery series, is (as are most mysteries) plot driven. She introduces DCI Ryan who is a fairly uninteresting detective. She tries to give him a tragic back story but mostly it sounds like a writer giving a character a tragic back story. He does a lot of yelling, especially at the love interest the author gives him, Dr. Anna Taylor. Their  story is written like a romance novel (lots of arguments followed by make-up sex, although it is not particularly spicy).  All of which would be ok, but she also introduces secret satanic sects operating on Holy Island (which, by the way, only has 200 residents so it seems hard to believe that they could really be kept secret). In order to make her plot work she relies on a whole lot of coincidences occurring. There's more I could say but I think I've made my point.  Not recommended. 

A Bitter Cut by Anna Lee Huber

The latest in Huber's Lady Darby mystery series set in the 1830's, this installment finds Lady Darby at her father-in-law's estate together with her husband and baby. It is a country house party and Lady Darby, who has much social anxiety, is expected to hostess. Included in the party is the family of her brother's "intended" although they are not formally engaged. Unfortunately, this is a very difficult family. When the private secretary of one of the guests is found murdered, suspicion falls on this family. The mystery must be solved! I always love a country house party setting and enjoyed the story. I suspected the solution to the mystery early but wasn't sure until the end. These novels can be read alone but are better if you start at the beginning. 

Murder in Belgravia by Lynn Brittney

This was a serendipity pick from my trip to the library. It was labeled as a "Mayfair 100" mystery and was the first in what I supposed was or would be a series.  The blurb said it took place during WWI and I am a sucker for anything set during WWI. It turns out that "Mayfair 100" is a telephone number.  A murder has occurred (of course) and detective inspector Beech is fairly sure that the wife is innocent. But she won't talk to any man or be examined by a male doctor. So, Beech calls on his friend Dr. Caroline Allardyce at the Women's Hospital to assist. He then explains to his superior that, given the fact that the war has caused London to be filled with women holding down jobs and doing duties that before the war were done by men, crimes involving women have increased and they need women to assist the police (no women are allowed to join the police). His superior agrees to an "off the books" team that Beech assembles to solve the crime, including Dr. Allardyce and his longtime friend and war widow Victoria Ellingham, who studied law for three years before her marriage. Their base of operations (since they can't use a police station) is Victoria's mother's home in Mayfair (hence the telephone number).  I enjoyed this book. Although the author had previously written children's and young adult books, this was her first adult novel and she did a decent job. She is a good writer and her plot made sense and had a lot of action and tension (involving brothels, gangs and the underworld).  My only complaint is that she decided that all the peripheral characters who were poor and powerless should get a happy ending, which is completely unrealistic. So I guess you could class this as a cozy mystery even though most of it isn't particularly cozy.  I see that the library has one sequel which I will eventually read. 

Five Found Dead by Sulari Gentill

Another library serendipity find. I'm a big fan of Sulari Gentill's Rowland Sinclair mystery series so I was willing to try one of her stand-alone novels and this was (I think) her latest. Gentill is an Australian mystery writer and in this mystery the story is told in the first person by Meredith Penvale, an Australian lawyer who has stepped away from her practice for a year or so to take care of her twin brother Joe while he went through cancer treatment. Joe is a best selling mystery writer and, now that he is on the mend, she is taking him on the trip of a lifetime aboard the Orient Express. Things don't go well however as there is a new Covid variant on the rise in Paris and shortly after the train leaves it is determined that a number of passengers tested positive and have to be quarantined in a separate car.  Then the man in the compartment next to Joe and Meredith disappears, presumed dead because of the blood that is all over his compartment. Then other murders begin to occur. Joe and Meredith join with a number of other passengers to try to solve these modern day Murders on the Orient Express while Joe uses the events as the start of a new novel. I enjoyed this novel even though I found it completely unrealistic. Because of the COVID positive tests the train is not allowed to continue to Venice and is forced to return to Paris (at gunpoint) but they are stopped at the France border because the borders have closed due to the variant and fear of the passengers on the train. In the original Murder on the Orient Express the train is isolated due to heavy snowfall so Gentill had to think of a reason for this train to be isolated. But a few years after 2020 it makes no sense that the authorities would not simply transport the COVID positive people off the train to be quarantined and treated somewhere. It makes even less sense that France would not allow the train to return to Paris since the variant started in Paris - it's not like they are bringing something NEW into France. There were other issues, but none of them really mattered. It was a fun read especially if you know Agatha Christie. 

Literary Fiction

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

In 1944, during the London Blitz, a bomb falls on the Woolworth's in Bexford High Street obliterating all the people inside, including five school age children. Apparently this concept is based on a real event. Spufford takes this as his starting point and imagines if these five children were NOT killed by a bomb. What would their lives be like? He picks up their story a couple of years later and then throughout the novel makes 15 year jumps to show us where they are in life. I am a big fan of Spufford's writing at the sentence level. He has the ability to put into words complex ideas in simple language. As I've said before, he has a way with a perfectly ordinary phrase that doesn't seem at all special and yet completely sets the scene or describes the character.  This novel is no different. He also has the ability to create fully developed worlds, historical and otherwise.  In this novel the readers can immerse themselves in the London of many different time periods. He also develops the five characters very well. Where this novel didn't completely work for me was in the story and that's mostly a result of my personal reading preferences. I don't particularly like short stories and I seldom like novels that are linked short stories. While that is not exactly what this novel is in form, it is in result. Each section (corresponding to a time period) is made up of separate chapters about each character. The characters seldom interact. Each section is like a set of short stories about the characters. For me, this structure lacks propulsion and I found myself putting the book down and forgetting to pick it up again or picking it up again because I felt I "ought to".  If I had to rank Spufford novels I would put this one last behind Golden Hill, Cahokia Jazz and Nonesuch all of which I've written about. My thoughts on those are linked.

Vigil by George Saunders

Jill "Doll" Blaine may have died but she still has a job. 343 times she has ushered souls into the afterlife, usually bringing them comfort. But her latest charge, a multi-millionaire oil tycoon, is turning out to be a bit of a challenge. She cannot console him because he regrets nothing.  And that challenge is making her consider her life (or her former life) more than she has in the past. The blurb for this novel all seem to focus on K.J. Boone, the dying man and tell us that this is a tale of corporate greed and global warming and capitalism. But this novel really isn't, in my opinion, about Boone; it is about Doll who must consider life and death and the question of atonement. This is a very short novel, written exquisitely. The subject matter may not be for some people. Personally, I liked Lincoln in the Bardo better but this is a good companion piece. 

General Fiction

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau by Kristin Harmel

This was a choice by my book club. By all rights this is a novel that I shouldn't have liked all that much. It is (partly) set during WWII and I'm not wild about WWII novels. It is also one of those novels that takes place in two time periods (2018 and WWII) and the author switches back and forth in each chapter between time periods. I am so tired of this structure and wish that publishers would tell authors to get beyond it. Surprisingly, however, I did enjoy the novel despite the structure. The saving grace here is that the character in each time period is the same: Colette Marceau. We meet Colette in Boston in  2018 when she is an elderly woman. Colette is interesting because the world sees her as a sweet old lady but in reality she is a jewel thief. She learned to steal jewels from her mother Annabel but there are rules: steal only from bad people and use the proceeds to help those in need. Colette has anonymously used proceeds from some of the jewels to found a center for the remembrance of Holocaust victims, although Colette herself is not Jewish. We learn early on that, during the War, Colette lost her mother (killed by the Nazis) and her little four year old sister (found dead floating in the Seine). She has been searching for answers about her sister's murder for her entire life. A novel utilizing this structure can often, in my opinion, lack propulsion as the story switches between time periods. But since this is completely Colette's story Harmel does create a propulsive plot. Those people who only like historical fiction if it is a page turner would probably be fine with this novel. She also creates very interesting characters.  Harmel is a competent writer but there is nothing particularly special about her writing and it takes, in my opinion, a large suspension of disbelief to find that the ending hangs together. It's not the kind of ending I enjoy but I also know that what isn't for me often works for other people.  

June 2026 Reading

 

June was an unusual reading month for me. I wasn't really in the mood to read, and I had less time to read, because it was summer and I had other things to do. Also, what is going on in the world is distracting to say the least. But I ended up reading 11 books this month which is about the number of books that I read each month on average. I think the fact that I read a few literary fiction books that I really liked and a few mysteries that were fast paced helped with the totals. 

These are the books I finished in June.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

A beloved high school history teacher, in a long term happy marriage and with a loved son, comes to realize that he is lonely and frustrated with his life. Then something happens to him, and a long time secret is revealed to him, both of which make him re-think his outlook on life. As usual, Elizabeth Strout digs right into the psyche of her main character in accessible prose. My Quick Take is here. Recommended. 

The Star from Calcutta by Sujata Massey

The sixth in the Purveen Mistry series, set in 1920's Bombay, this mystery novel finds Purveen and her father taking on the legal representation of an Indian film company. Almost immediately this turns into a murder investigation when a guest at a preview showing of the latest film is murdered and then the star disappears. Purveen as usual has to deal with the sexism of the Indian Police who find it hard to believe she is a solicitor (lawyer). It is interesting that I've now read two mysteries this year, each set in 1920's India (one in Calcutta and one in Bombay), that involved the Indian film industry and took as their inspiration, among other things, Merle Oberon. I like this series and recommend it. While this novel could easily be read on its own I always recommend starting with the first in a series. 

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Sybil Van Antwerp would rather write letters than talk to people in person. She even prefers letters over emails although she will email when necessary. So she writes lots of letters and we learn all about her through her letters. This novel had been recommended to me by so many people I was slightly worried it wouldn't live up to the hype. But I enjoyed it tremendously. Evans managed to create letters that sounded like a real person wrote them not as if they were written by an author wanting to write an epistolary novel. My Quick Take is here.  It has since won the Women's Prize for Fiction, awarded annually to a woman author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the UK. Highly Recommended.

A Lesson in Dying by Ann Cleves
A Bird in the Hand by Ann Cleves

Before Ann Cleves wrote the Vera series or the Shetland series she wrote two other series: the George and Molly Palmer-Jones series and the Inspector Ramsay series.  These were re-issued last year and I found them under new books on my Libby app.  Each starts with a forward by Cleves explaining where she was in life when she wrote the books. A Bird in the Hand was the first mystery she wrote and her "detectives" are a couple called George and Molly Palmer-Jones.  Molly is a retired therapist and George is a retired something (something to do with the Home Office and perhaps the police force, it's very vague). In their free time they are bird watchers. When a well known bird watcher (called a Twitcher) is found murdered in Norfolk they are asked, informally, to solve the case. In her forward she admits that since this was her first book she can see where she might have done better. While I enjoyed it and think it was a good first-time effort, I don't think she stuck the landing. But it won't stop me from trying others in the series if they are available. 

A Lesson in Dying is set in Northumberland and is the first book in the Inspector Ramsay series although he is not a main character. Cleves explains that this is similar to the first Vera book in which Vera is not the main character. The headmaster of a local school is found murdered and, when his wife is arrested for the murder (by Inspector Ramsay), an old school friend of hers decides to prove she is innocent. It turns out the schoolmaster was universally despised so there is no shortage of suspects. I enjoyed this novel even though I thought it had a few loose ends at the end. 

In both cases, I think she got better with her plotting as she got older. 

Last One Out by Jane Harper

This is the fourth or fifth novel by Harper that I've read and I've enjoyed each of them. Set in New South Wales, this novel involves a missing person, Sam, who disappeared five years ago without a trace. It also involves a village that was once an idyllic place to live but has now turned into a nightmare because a big mining operation has destroyed it. Sam's mother and father split up after Sam's disappearance. His father stayed on and his mother moved to Sydney. But each year she returns on the anniversary of her son's disappearance. She has gone over and over the "evidence" of his disappearance, convinced that they all must have missed something and they will learn the truth of what happened to Sam. This is a good mystery but even better at character development and the exploration of different kinds of grief. My Quick Take is here.  Recommended.

Dark of the Moon by John Sandford

This is the first in the Virgil Flowers mystery series (which I understand is a spinoff from Sandford's Prey series, which I've never read).  Virgil works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal apprehension (BCA) and is on assignment in the small town of Bluestem where an elderly couple, a doctor and his wife, were murdered in cold blood. But before Flowers can even get to Bluestem another elderly man is tied up in his basement, doused with gasoline and the whole house is set on fire.  It seems the homicides might be related, and this is just the beginning. I chose this mystery for the setting (I love Minnesota based mysteries) and that didn't disappoint. The plot was well plotted and kept the pages turning. My biggest problem was that all of the men involved, including Flowers, couldn't say anything about women without treating them like a piece of meat and the women all were stereotypes. I know this is a popular series and I might give another book a try to see if Sandford toned down the sexism as the series progressed but as of this point I can't recommend it. 

Walk by Courtney Conley, DC and Milica McDowell, MS, DPT

I don't remember where I heard about this book but I put it on my library reserve list because I've been doing physical therapy to improve my walking (I have osteoarthritis). In some ways it didn't tell me anything I didn't know - I already do backwards walking and sideways walking and I already do a lot of the foot/ankle exercises. But for anyone not in physical therapy it probably would be informative. These authors are really into getting people to work their way eventually into walking in "barefoot" shoes (they call them something else but that's what they are) which doesn't appeal to me at all.  They are very against, it seems, any form of padding or support in your shoes but realize you have to work up to that. But as an aside they said that when one of them went to New York and walked on the hard pavement and the hard floors of museums she wished she had some padding. Uh, yes?  Apparently they are out west and like to walk on natural trails unlike those of us who live in cities. I personally don't like the trend of VERY padded shoes but I need a slight bit of padding in my shoes since I walk on hard surfaces. So I had these criticisms about the book, but the book is otherwise full of good information. As an aside, I borrowed the audio version because I thought it would be great to listen to while walking.  I didn't realize that it had lots of charts etc. that would be read aloud, so I don't recommend the audiobook version of this book. Also, there is a PDF that comes with the audiobook that didn't come with my library borrow, so I couldn't look at the pictures. 

Meet me at the Museum by Anne Youngson

Tina Hopgood, an English farm wife, and Anders Larsen, the curator of a museum in Denmark, begin a correspondence. Each is suffering the loss of someone important to them and each feels that they are at a turning point in their life but don't know where to turn. Over the course of this epistolary novel each describes in detail their families and their personal relationships so that we feel we know those other people even though we only see them through the eyes of Tina and Anders. This is a novel about two people finding themselves because they find each other through the written word. I enjoyed this novel but it probably would have been better if I had not read it the same month that I read The Correspondent, another epistolary novel. One of the joys of The Correspondent was that the letters sounded like letters that a person would actually write (and they weren't always answered).  The letters in this novel sound like letters that someone who wants to tell a story through letters would write. There is nothing inherently wrong with that but I found it distracting.  My Quick Take is here. 

Moonlight Murder by Uzma Jalaluddin

Jalaluddin is back with the second installment in her mystery series featuring middle aged Kauser Khan as her intrepid "Detective Aunty".  This is a cozy mystery and as with most cozy mysteries it requires a certain suspension of disbelief but if you are looking for relaxing reads in these trying times you couldn't do better than trying the Detective Aunty mysteries. One thing I love these days is the featuring of middle aged women in these type of novels. Kauser Khan doesn't even drive (she knows how but her youngest son was killed in a hit and run and so she can't bring herself to drive) and she takes the bus and the subway. It's good that Toronto seems to have reliable public transportation. In this mystery Kauser, at the request of her granddaughter, is looking into the death of a high school student.  At the same time she continues to try to determine who was the driver of the vehicle that killed her son 18 years ago.  The ending required suspension of disbelief but otherwise the writing is good and Kauser is a delightful character. 

Men Like Ours by Bindu Bansinath

This is a debut novel that was well reviewed recently in the New York Times. so I thought I would give it a try. The story centers around the residents of Willow Road, a street in a south Asian enclave in New Jersey, who are in upheaval over the mysterious death of their friend Matthew Pillai. The two main characters are Anita Sharma and her daughter Leila. It was Anita's husband, a work colleague of Matthew, who introduced him to the neighborhood, with strange consequences. After his death the neighbors all gossip about him, Anita and Leila. Only we, the reader, know what their relationship was really like. Bansinath is very good at capturing the dynamics of a neighborhood, closely knit mostly by virtue of a shared ethnic background. This was billed as a darkly comic novel and it was darker than I expected and less funny than I expected. But that may be due to my own deficiencies in appreciating black comedy. Bansinath writes well but this did not make me want to read any more of her novels. 

Last One Out

The Book:  Carralon Ridge, a village in New South Wales, was once a great place to set down roots and raise a family. But then ten years ago a big mining operation moved in down the road and began buying up properties. Now Carralon Ridge, covered in mine dust and with the constant drumming of the mine in the air, is little more than a ghost town with only a few residents hanging on. Ro has returned to the town to be with her ex-husband and daughter for the five year anniversary of the disappearance of her son Sam. Sam disappeared without a trace on his 21st birthday, while on a break from college, leaving only a rental car on the side of a road leading to some abandoned houses. After his disappearance his family fell apart. His father was committed to staying in Carralon Ridge, where he grew up, but his mother, Ro, moved away to Sydney. Now on the five year anniversary of Sam's disappearance, Ro wonders if they will ever learn what happened to Sam. She has gone over and over all the "evidence" from his case for the past 5 years, convinced that they are missing something.  But what?   

The Author: Jane Harper

Genre: Mystery

Length: 583 pp (ipad mini e-reader)

One good thing:  While Harper writes a good mystery, the joy of this novel is in her character development and representation of grief. There is the grief over missing Sam. There is grief over a failed marriage. Most of all there is the grief of the remaining villagers who have lost the community they once cherished. 

One not-so-great thing: Once the mystery comes to a climax, Harper goes back in time to show the reader what happened. This is one of my least favorite ways to end a mystery, I don't need a picture I just need someone to solve it. Other people may not find this a problem.

Four Doorways*: Story; Characters; Setting; Language  

This novel has a propulsive plot that kept me turning the page to find out what happened to Sam but it also is very much a character driven novel. Harper develops not only the main characters (Ro, her ex-husband and daughter) but many of the remaining characters in the village. I think that lovers of mysteries and lovers of character driven novels would enjoy this. 

While the village is very much a character in this novel I don't see the setting in Australia as particularly important. I kept forgetting it was Australia because it could just as easily have been a town in the American west. 

Harper is a very good writer. While there is nothing in the particular language or structure of this novel that is unique, Harper keeps the story flowing and her descriptions are vivid. 

"It seems to me that all works of fiction and narrative nonfiction are broadly made up of four experiential elements: story, character, setting, and language. I call these “doorways,” because when we open a book, read the first few pages, and choose to go on, we enter the world of that book. And I’ve come to believe we can help readers better choose their next book by looking at the proportion of these four elements."  Nancy Pearl on the Four Doorways.

    

  

May 2026 Reading

May was a good month for reading. One of the books I finished will surely go on my year end list of favorite books. I also re-read a classic novel and enjoyed it tremendously. This month I read three mysteries (I enjoyed all of them) and stretched myself by also reading  more general fiction and one memoir. 

These are the books I finished in May.

The Gospel of Orla by Eoghan Walls

Orla is a young, teenage girl in England grieving the death of her mother from cancer. Left with her father, who drinks too much, and her much younger sister Lily, Orla feels detached from the world including her school friends. She wants, more than anything, to escape and she plans to run away to her aunt's home in Ireland. She thinks she has all the logistics worked out but then she runs into (literally) a homeless man who says he is Jesus. And ... maybe he is. Eoghan Walls is a poet from Northern Ireland and this is his debut novel. While I didn't think it held together completely at the end, I did find it an engrossing read. Walls wrote in the first person as Orla, in the manner that a young, not too well educated 14 year old would write. There is punctuation missing and he uses run-on sentences. And that style works, revealing Orla's character bit by bit. There is a plot to this novel but it is mostly a novel based on Orla's character. Although the plot of the novel does include a journey across England toward Liverpool, there isn't much of a sense of place. My Quick Take is here. 

Murder at World's End by Ross Montgomery

This is an historical mystery set in Cornwall in 1910 (I seem to be on a bit of a Cornwall kick, unintentionally) during a time when Halley's Comet is making an appearance.  Stephen Pike has arrived at a manor house called World's End set on an island off the coast. Stephen has just been released from prison and has been recommended for the job of a second footman. When he arrives he finds the house in an uproar because the owner is convinced the tail of the comet will wipe out life unless every crack is sealed and the residents wear oxygen masks. Stephen is assigned to assist Miss Decima Stockingham, an 80 year old, irascible, foul mouthed aunt of the owner. By morning the owner is dead, apparently killed by a cross bolt in a room locked on the inside. As an ex-con all eyes are on Stephen as the murderer so he and Miss Decima must solve the crime. Yes, this is another locked room mystery but I found it more enjoyable than the last one that I read, possible because there is some humor in this mystery. And Stephen and Miss Decima make quite a team. I suspect this is the first of a series. 

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

One day a man named Theo arrives in the small college town of Golden, Georgia. He is very mysterious, never telling anyone his last name or his whole story (except for one man in town who he hires as an advisor and from whom he rents an apartment). In the local coffee shop he notices that the walls are filled with the art of a local artist - portraits of local people who frequent the coffee shop and its surroundings. Theo begins to buy the portraits and present them to the subjects, learning about their lives. I admit that, on my own I would never have picked up this book and if I had I probably would have DNF'd it, but it was chosen by my bookclub. This is a very "southern" book, it meanders along, the characters (most of them) are nice and it almost seems beside the point to find out who Theo is and why he came to that town. In some ways, reading this novel reminded me of reading Jan Karon, whose books I like. But Karon keeps her books to a shorter length and while she introduces loads of small town characters she doesn't tell their stories in narrative as much as in action. In this book we get a lot of narrative. (A LOT of narrative.) For a while it seemed that each chapter was Theo meeting a new person and hearing their story. In some ways parts of the novel were like a series of short stories and as I was reading I kept thinking that the entire novel would have made a better short story.  Frankly at about the 50% mark I was bored by it although it did pick up shortly thereafter and had a surprising ending. I know this book is popular with many readers, including some in my book club, but it really wasn't for me.  

Every Good Boy Does Fine by Jeremy Denk

Jeremy Denk is a classical pianist and this is a memoir about his piano education - basically about all the piano lessons he took in his life. You might not think he or his life have much in common with Barbra Streisand but his memoir very much reminded me of hers. In each the author seemed to remember every moment of their lives and were determined to tell us about each of them. In Denk's case he seemed to remember every detail of every piano lesson he ever took.  In both of their cases they remembered every compliment (and every criticism) they ever received. Thank goodness Jeremy Denk is much younger than Barbra and this memoir mostly ends (except for the Coda) at about the age of 30. I listened to this on audiobook. I like to listen to memoirs on audiobook because I often feel that the author is speaking directly to me. Occasionally this backfires if it sounds like the author is reading and not talking, but mostly it works. I sometimes feel that hearing the author on an audiobook tells me even more about the author than just the words the author wrote. But in the case of this memoir, I think I would have been better off reading the written word because I think I would have appreciated the wordplay and Denk's wry humor better. Hearing him tell his story I didn't find myself amused. At a few points in his story he said that other students thought he was insufferable and I thought - yes, you ARE insufferable. (I sought out a Terry Gross interview after finishing this and he didn't sound as insufferable when he was answering her questions as he did narrating the audiobook.) I like classical music and at one point I played the piano so I found most of this memoir interesting even though I found his telling of it annoying. But unless you are VERY interested in classical music and piano lessons, I don't recommend this. If you are interested, I recommend you read it and don't listen to it. (Although the one benefit of the audiobook was that at certain points he would actually play passages on the piano.)

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex

In the early 1970's three lighthouse keepers in a tower lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall (yet another Cornwall book) mysteriously disappear. The lighthouse is spotless and the door is locked from the inside but they are nowhere to be found. Years later, in the 1990's, a writer of seafaring adventure stories decides to figure out what happened and write a book about it. The portions of this novel that take place in the 1970's are written in the third person. The portions written in the 1990's are partly written as transcripts of the responses of the people the researcher interviews - the wives and girlfriend of the men at the lighthouse. This novel is fictional but the author points out that she had inspiration from a true story from 1900 when three lighthouse keepers disappeared from a remote rock light light in the Outer Hebrides. This novel really kept my attention and made me turn the pages. The characters are well drawn and are interesting. The descriptions of the lighthouse made me want to see a lighthouse. Recommended. 

The Framed Women of Ardmore House by Brandy Schillace

At first I wasn't sure I would like this novel. The main character, Jo Jones, is an American who has inherited an estate in Yorkshire with a crumbling manor house and a cottage on the grounds where she decides to live. Then, almost immediately, she finds a dead man in the cottage and the local police are investigating the murder and her. The setup really appealed to me but in the first 50 pages I was constantly annoyed by the main character, her actions and the way she phrased things. Turns out she is neurodivergent, which explained a lot. I found this novel to be a real page turner and I liked all of the peripheral characters. I eventually liked Jo Jones. The plot is, perhaps, a little unbelievable in certain places (as these kind of stories involving crumbling manor houses often are). I do wish they had explained the main character's neurodivergence a little earlier in the story but my frustration with her at the beginning made me relate to the characters in the novel who are frustrated by her.  Recommended. 

John of John by Douglas Stuart

I feel fairly certain that this novel will go on my list of favorite novels of 2026. The main character, Cal McLeod, has returned to the island of Harris, off the west coast of Scotland, after failing to find a job following graduation from art school. He is to assist his conservative father with sheep farming and the weaving of "Harris Tweed" wool. Cal feels stifled partly because he feels he must keep his sexual identity as a gay man a secret from his father and the community or risk being ostracized. But his father and his grandmother have their secrets too, in fact the whole community has secrets. I was incredibly impressed by Stuart's writing. He evokes the island of Harris in all of its harshness and beauty and he creates multi-dimensional characters.  And he manages to make all the strands of the story come together in a believable way by the end.  My short take is here. Highly Recommended. 

Persuasion by Jane Austen

This novel was the May readalong with the Blue Sky Book Club. Technically, for me it was a re-read because I read the novel a long time ago (maybe 40ish years ago). But since I remembered almost nothing about it, it was all new to me. The main character, Anne Eliott, is the daughter of a baronet and lives in a country house with her father and her elder sister Elizabeth. Austen makes clear from the start that Anne is not the favorite daughter (that would be Elizabeth). There is a third sister, Mary, who is the youngest and does not live at home during any of the important points in the novel (either being away at school or being married). Eight years earlier Anne had fallen in love with Frederick Wentworth, a naval captain with little money. Her snobbish father and sister felt he was an unworthy match. Lady Russell, a close friend of Anne's deceased mother and a kind of surrogate mother to Anne, persuaded Anne to turn down Captain Wentworth's proposal. It is clear that Anne always regretted this. Now, eight years later, the Eliotts have fallen on hard times and are forced to let their country estate and take up residence in Bath.  Before joining them in Bath Anne makes an extended visit to her married, younger sister Mary, whose family lives nearby. It turns out that the couple who lease the Eliott estate are related to Captain Wentworth, who comes to visit, so he and Anne are thrown together. Much tension ensues as it isn't clear whether or not Frederick and Anne will end up together (although, c'mon, this is Jane Austen.) This is not a long book (compared to other Austen novels) and Anne is much more mature than other Austen heroines. As with many novels, if the characters would only TALK to each other they would solve a lot of problems, but then there would be no story. I enjoyed this novel very much and am very glad to have re-read it. Recommended. 

A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz

This is the 6th book in the Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery series that features the author, Anthony Horowitz, as a character in his own books. Hawthorne is a private detective, kicked out of the police service, who is a sort of grungy Sherlock Holmes type to whom Horowitz, grudgingly, plays his Dr. Watson. In this installment, the first novel in the series is being adapted into a movie and a death occurs on the filming location. Hawthorne is called on to help solve the crime and Horowitz tags along in the hope it will make another good book. Along the way Horowitz learns more about the mysterious background of Hawthorne. I like this series and recommend it but it definitely needs to be read from the beginning. 

March 2026 Reading

This was a TERRIBLE reading month for me. I managed to keep up with my two-month group read of Bleak House but that was about it for me in terms of motivation. Every time I would start a book I would very quickly DNF it. In the end I only finished three books this month and two of those were in the last week of the month. 

These are the (very few) books that I finished in March.

The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

Winspear is the author of the very successful Maisie Dobbs series which I enjoyed very much, although I liked the earlier post-WWI stories better than the later WWII stories.  This is a standalone novel set during WWI, so I assumed I would enjoy it. However, I found that the plot meandered too much for me. I started this novel at least two years ago and would read it sporadically on my e-reader. It became the book I would read when I was stuck somewhere with nothing to read. If it hadn't been written by Winspear I probably would have DNF'd it long ago. The main characters are two young women who make very different life choices. One is a suffragette and the other is a former teacher who marries and becomes a farm wife. WWI then intrudes. While I think Winspear did capture life in Britain, especially rural Britain, right before and during the first year of the war, the characters did not come to life for me. If you want to be transported to WWI Britain (and a bit of France) you may enjoy this book, but I did not think it was one of her best. My Quick Take is here. 

Nonesuch by Francis Spufford

An historical fantasy set in London in the first year of WWII, the plot involves Iris Hawkins, a secretary at a financial firm in The City of London. Iris is trying to manage her career (she's ambitious), her love life, and the Blitz. But on top of that, she has been chosen by some otherworldly beings to save Britain from the British fascists who want to go back in time and change the course of history. I really liked this novel despite the fact that I didn't really understand (until the end) why the fantasy portion of the novel was at all necessary.  f you are looking for a well drawn character living in a well evoked time and place, you will like this novel, even if you don't usually read fantasy. My Quick Take is here. 

A Slowly Dying Cause by Elizabeth George

The latest in the Inspector Lynley mystery series, this novel finds Lynley and Havers in Cornwall where Lynley is dealing with maintenance issues on his family estate. Havers is dealing with the death of her mother (and with being a guest in a Great House). Lynley's ex-girlfriend Daidre is also in Cornwall. But none of them get to Cornwall immediately because the first part of the novel is concerned with the murder of a local citizen and we see very little of our principal characters. Once they get to Cornwall, however, they are caught up in the investigation. The mystery portion was good enough, she keeps you guessing on the whodunnit. I don't think there was enough Lynley/Havers in this novel but I did like finding out more about Daidre's family dynamics. This could be read as a stand alone novel, but as always I recommend you start at the beginning of the series. My Quick Take is here. 

A Slowly Dying Cause

 

The Book:  Michael Lobb has been found dead, murdered in his Cornwall workshop. The suspects are many and DI Beatrice Hannaford is having trouble sorting things out until one of them confesses. But did that person actually do the crime? In the meantime, Detective Inspector  Thomas Lynley (also known as the Earl of Asherton, a title he seldom uses) has headed down to Cornwall to take care of some maintenance issues on his family estate and he brings along his partner, DS Havers, because she is on a week of forced bereavement leave (her mother has just died) and doesn't know what to do with herself. Also in the area is Daidre, who has recently told Lynley she doesn't want to see him anymore. Of course Lynley and Havers get caught up in solving the crime. This is a continuation of the DI Lynley series which now exceeds 20 novels. 

The Author: Elizabeth George

Genre: Mystery

Length: 640 pp (hardback)

One good thing:  It was fun to see Lynley's family home and see how they were struggling to pay for the upkeep of the Great House. It was especially fun to see Havers have to deal with being a guest in a Great House. It reminded me a lot of the YouTube channel "Mapperton Live" which is hosted by the Earl and Countess of Sandwich, who are very down to earth and up front about how expensive their house is to maintain. 

One not-so-great thing: About every third or fourth chapter there was a chapter written by the dead man. There was no explanation (at least until the end) as to why we are getting his point of view and how he was doing it beyond the grave. I found this annoying in the extreme and as the novel wore on I found myself gritting my teeth whenever I came to a "Michael" chapter. I also found him about as reliable as Humbert Humbert which was not a bad thing in Nabokov's novel but is not good in a mystery novel. 

Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways":

    Story: This is a mystery novel so it is plot driven by its very nature. As I said above, I thought the "Michael" chapters were annoying and in my case they stopped the flow of the story. But others may not be bothered by them. On the whole I thought it was a well structured mystery and the perpetrator is not immediately guessable.

    Characters:  One of the main reasons to read a mystery series is because you are already invested in the characters and want to see more of them and find out how they are getting on. This story focused quite a bit on Daidre and her family but Lynley and Havers do have arcs for their characters.  

    Setting:  I love a novel set in Cornwall and as usual this made me want to go back. Having visited Cornwall, I thought that George captured it beautifully. 

    Writing:  I didn't care much for the structure of this book (especially the "Michael" chapters that were interspersed with no explanation). But George is more than a competent writer and she kept my interest by developing her characters well and keeping me guessing as to who the murderer was.  

February 2026 Reading

What a strange month of reading this has been: lots of audiobooks (which is odd for me) and fewer "hard" books.  This was also the month of the Winter Olympics and I found myself engrossed by them. What a nice break from reality; but that left less time for reading. 

The reason for all the audiobooks was that I spent the first week of this month traveling, including a 12 hour car ride to the place I was going and a 12 hour car ride back. So, I downloaded  audiobooks for the drive. We listened to two of them during the drives and I finished the others once I got home. All the audiobooks I finished were memoirs read by their authors. I generally like memoirs read by their authors because is sounds as if the author is telling you, the reader, the story of their life directly. 

These are the books I finished in February. 

Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker

This is the audiobook I listened to on my way down to the Gulf Coast. It was not what I expected, which is on me and not on the book. A memoir by the actress Mary-Louise Parker told as a series of letters to men (some real, some fictional), it was, interestingly, not much about  her career as an actress. She might mention that she was in NY to do a play but that was about it. It was almost completely about her personal life including her kids, her health and her love life. She has a very dry sense of humor and we chuckled along with some of her stories. On the whole, not the best memoir I've ever read but entertaining enough.

What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci

This was the audiobook I listened to on the way home. This is essentially a diary that Stanley Tucci kept over a year journaling the food he made for himself and/or his family and what he ate (whether made at home or in a restaurant). He includes recipes (you need to like pasta). Along the way he talks about certain projects he was working on beginning with the filming of Conclave. He also talks about the death of his first wife, which is sad. He also talks about the celebrities he had dinner with throughout the year. It took me a long while to figure out that his second wife, Felicity, is the sister of actress Emily Blunt (maybe he said that early on and I just missed it).  He can be very funny and I enjoyed listening although I did get a bit tired of hearing about pasta. And I don't recommend you listen to it if you are hungry. But I think listening to this book made me appreciate the little spots he did for NBC during the Olympics about Italian food in the Milan area. 

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

The third audiobook memoir that I checked out of the library for my trip turned out to be something I didn't want to listen to in the car. Read by the author, it was a very quiet book and I needed something that would keep me awake. But I did listen when I arrived home. Geraldine Brooks (the author of Horse, among other novels) was married for 35 years to Tony Horowitz, a Pulitzer prize-winning author. In 2019, while he was on a book tour, he dropped dead suddenly while he was walking down a street in Washington DC.  This memoir is the story of Brooks' grief journey.  A few years after his death she retreated to Flinders Island in Australia (she is Australian) to consider what happened and work through her grief. The memoir is partly a memoir of her time on the island and partly a memoir of the time immediately following his death. It is not a long book but I found myself very affected at points. (I'm glad I didn't listen to it while driving.) There were also parts where I found myself as angry as the author - for instance when she discovered that the family's health insurance had been canceled the day after Tony's death without any notice to her. Or when she had to apply for all new credit cards because she had never thought to establish credit under her own name prior to his death. And especially when she received the call from the hospital unexpectedly telling her that her husband had died but the doctor was finishing her shift and couldn't take the time to answer questions. I hope the administration at GW Hospital read this and made some changes. 

The Book of I by David Grieg

If you have ever wanted to read a comic novel about slaughter by Vikings then this is the book for you. The island of Iona was often a target of Vikings and the novel begins in the year 825 A.D. with the landing of a Viking hoard and the slaughter of all but two of the residents - a monk who hid in a latrine and the wife of the smith who made such good mead from local honey that she is spared. The Vikings also leave behind one of their own, believing him to be dead. This is the story of the following year in the life of the three on the island. Although this is a very short novel, each of the characters has an arc. It examines issues of faith, love, and loyalty, all the while in language that is humorous. I have no idea if the end of the novel is historically accurate but it was satisfying. 

The Burning Grounds by Abir Mukherjee

The next installment of the Wyndham and Banerjee series set in Calcutta in the 1920's, this novel is set a few years after the end of the last novel. Banerjee has returned from a stint in Europe but does not want to go back into the police force, he is working for Indian independence. Wyndham is still clean from his drug addiction but he drinks too much.  And he has lost the faith of the police force so he hasn't been assigned any good murders to investigate in a long time. The two come together again when Banerjee's cousin disappears at the same time that a rich local man is murdered. I always enjoy this series and you could read this without reading the previous novels, but of course it would be better if you started at the beginning. 

Helm by Sarah Hall

This is an historical novel about the only wind in the British Isles that has a name: Held.  Held is a character in the novel. There are also many other characters who observe Held through the ages.  In my Quick Take I said that if you like short stories you may like this, as this novel is more like a collection of related short stories but not told linearly.  For me, that slowed down the narrative arc of the whole novel. Despite that, I did like this novel and was very impressed by what Hall accomplished in anthropomorphizing Held. 

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

The last of the audiobook memoirs I got from the library. Levy is a staff writer for The New Yorker and she writes with The New Yorker style. You know.  Start the essay with something really personal that will grab the reader, then go into whatever it is you are intending to write about and at the end go back to the personal story. I don't have a problem with this form of essay - I am a subscriber to The New Yorker. But in my opinion this style works better for essays than for books.  And probably works better when read on the page rather than heard in audiobook form. This memoir starts with the description of a horrible moment in Levy's life without any explanation about how she got there and then goes back to the beginning of her life. This memoir did not grab me. It's not that Levy didn't have an interesting life; it was as interesting as any other woman who wants a career and a marital life and a baby.  Her's might even be slightly more interesting because she was in a same sex marriage that had issues with fidelity and heavy drinking. I usually like audiobook memoirs read by the author because it usually sounds as if the author is telling YOU the story personally. I think the problem with this audiobook is that Levy wasn't great at doing the reading and it often sounded like she was angry when I think it would have worked better if she had sounded ironic. Maybe I would have liked it more if I had read a hard copy of the book. 

The Hideaway by Nikki Allen

Full disclosure, Nikki Allen is married to a distant cousin of mine and I met her one time a number of years ago.

This thriller is part of the oevre of "country house murders" where a group of strangers are stranded together in a house where they can't escape and someone is a murderer. But in this novel, the "country house' is a house in Costa Rica and the group of five strangers end up lost in the rain forest. The action of the novel is related in third person omniscient, with the chapters alternating between the points of view of the different characters. (Regular readers will know this is not my favorite structure for a novel, but it didn't bother me too much here.)  Each character has come to the retreat in Costa Rica because they are dealing with personal issues (traumas?) and they want to get their life together and come back changed. In real life Nikki has worked as a therapist and she is very good at representing the various issues that each character is dealing with. In fact, the strength of this novel is the development of the characters. As far as plot, this is of course a thriller/mystery and it's pretty good but I thought it lost a little bit of momentum in the later chapters where there was a lot of narrative and less action (the opposite of what you would expect - although in the old murder mysteries the detective DID do a lot of narrative at the end explaining what happened). I thought it was an enjoyable book, the kind to  take on vacation. As a first novel it was promising and I do look forward to her future books. 

My 2025 Reading Wrap Up

It's that time of year again. Time to count up the books I read in 2025 and try to make some sense of my reading year. These tend to be long posts, maybe too long for a reader. But part of the reason I do these is to help myself remember each year.

Except for specific categories (explained below) I do not set myself a yearly goal of a total number of books to read, I just look for books that I think I will enjoy or that I feel I should read at some time in my life. 

Goals and Statistics

Each of the past couple of years, since I retired, I set a goal to read more non-fiction and poetry. I arbitrarily set a goal for each of 6 books. That's a book every two months which seemed manageable. I also have had the goal to read more classic novels but I didn't set any particular number for myself. I, in general, wanted to re-visit some favorite books by re-reading them but didn't have any particular list. Finally, I wanted to reduce the number of mysteries that I read as a percentage of all the fiction I read. But mysteries are my comfort read and 2025 was a year in which I needed a whole lot of comfort reads! So I decided early in the year to ignore that goal.  

This year I read a total of 130 books which is more than my total of 100 books in 2024 and my total of 73 books in 2023. Of those, six (6) were nonfiction (4.6%), four (4) were poetry (3%) and the remainder was fiction (92.4%). Of the fiction I read, 72 books were mysteries (60%) which is much higher than the 42% I read in 2024. Within the category of fiction, 54 books (45%) were historical (either historical mysteries or historical fiction). My fiction also included 7 classics (5.8%). I appear to have only re-read one book this year.  

87 of the books (67%) were books I borrowed from a library. According to my libraries I saved $2,231.80 this year by using their libraries. We should all support public libraries!

I have already posted a list of my favorite books of 2025 so I won't repeat myself here, I encourage you to read that post separately. In putting together this post I did not worry about including every book I read. If I didn't really enjoy a book and didn't feel it was a book that would interest many people I omitted it from this post. (Admittedly there were only a few books that fell into this category.) I have linked each book to the post in which I originally wrote about it. 

Poetry

I read four books of poetry this year, which was fewer than the six I intended to read (one collection every other month). Unlike in previous years, I didn't particularly enjoy some of the poetry I chose this year and none of them really stood out to me in thinking about them at the end of the year. Water, Water by Billy Collins was how I started the year and although I usually like Collins I did not think this was one of his best collections. In March I finished Frank: Sonnets by Dianne Seuss which I found depressing. In April I read Double Negative by Vona Groarke, which contained many poems about aging which I related to. But, in the end, none of them stayed with me. In August, on vacation, I read Poems by Ann Michaels, a Canadian poet who had written a novel that I enjoyed last year. I liked her work the best of the poetry I read this year but was not blown away by it. At that point I think I just gave up for the year and didn't read any more poetry collections. 

Non-Fiction

I read six works of non-fiction this year, which met my goal for the year (surprisingly, I forgot I had read that many). In January I finished How Sondheim Can Change Your Life by Richard Schoch which I was very disappointed in. I read two books by the historian Michael John Witgen about native American history. The first, Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America, I very much enjoyed. The second, Great Lakes Creoles: A French Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, was almost as interesting. However, unless you are really into the history of Great Lakes Indian tribes you probably wouldn't rush out to get either of them. It's Easier Than You Think was recommended on a podcast I listen to. It turned out to be, basically, a beginner book about Buddhism and while I enjoyed it I didn't think it was really worth my time. 

The highlight of my year in non-fiction was Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Air we Breathe by Carl Zimmer, which made my list of favorites. My most unexpected find was Parallel Lives: A Love Story from a Lost Continent by Iain Pears, the unlikely story of how two art historians met, fell in love and married despite one of them being in the Soviet Union. I truly enjoyed reading about them. 

Mysteries

I read 72 mysteries this year which was 55% of my total reads and 60% of my fiction reads. As I said above, this was a year in which I needed a lot of comfort reads. 

Mystery Series (New to me)

I love a good mystery series so, first, let's talk about a few new (to me) mystery series that I discovered this year. The best thing about this annus horribilis was that it made me search out many new authors in search of a new mystery series to distract me. Fortunately most are by authors who are still writing, so we will hopefully get more books in these series in the future. 

A friend on BlueSky recommended the Rowland Sinclair historical mystery series by Sulari Gentill and I raced through all the available books, truly enjoying them. Set (mostly) in Australia in the years before WWII, Rowland is a wealthy artistic type with non-wealthy, very liberal, artistic friends. And, yes, they solve murder mysteries. Gentill sets her stories amongst the growth of fascism in Australia and in Germany and other countries where Rowland and his friends travel to. Sometimes the fascism part hit a little too close to home. But despite that, I enjoyed this series and hope for more books. The series begins with A Few Right Thinking Men and goes on from there for many volumes, all of which I read. 

I've enjoyed Vaseem Kahn's Baby Ganesh Agency mysteries and this year I read the most recent book published in that series, A Bad Day at the Vulture Club. I always enjoy that series which features a baby elephant called Ganesha who helps solve crimes. But I was happy to find that Kahn is now writing another series, this time a historical series set in Bombay just after Indian independence: The Persis Wadia series. The main character, Persis Wadia, is the first woman policeman in Bombay. Shunted off to the district office where they send all the losers (in her case because they don't know what to do with a woman policeman) this is sort of a Slow Horses set in India. I raced through all the books I could find in the series including the first book Midnight at the Malabar House, and hope he continues it. 

Martin Edwards, a British author, has written a series called the Lake District Mysteries set in the present time and in which the main characters are a historian and a police woman in charge of cold cases. I like the locale of these mysteries although the plots are sometimes a little too melodramatic for my taste. He also has another series and I read the first book, Gallows Court.  It was a real page turner but  ... strange.  I remember thinking I would definitely read more in the series but when it came down to it I chose the Lake District Mysteries first. Edwards is also an editor of the British Library Crime Collection Series, of which I have read a few over the years. This year I read three from that collection, two of which were books of short stories that were edited by him.  Capital Crimes: London Mysteries was a book of short stories set in London.  Short stories are never my favorite type of read, but in this case had a couple of very good ones that I enjoyed. Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries was another book of short stories edited by Edwards. I took it on vacation because each mystery occurred while the detective was on vacation. Again, I'm not really a short story reader but there were a few good ones in the collection. Finally, I read Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story by J. Jefferson Farjeon, for which Edwards wrote the forward. This was the last of the BLCC books that I inhereited from my mom and I saved it to read for Christmas. It was a story that reminded me of something a young Alfred Hitchcock would film. 

Julia Spencer-Fleming writes the Russ Van Alstyne/Claire Ferguson Series set in upstate New York. The mysteries are solved by the local chief of police and the local Episcopal Priest (who is a woman). I like the different viewpoints they bring to situations although sometimes the situations that Spencer-Fleming puts them in makes me roll my eyes. The first book is In the Bleak Midwinter which is set in the 1990's. The others followed every few years. The latest in the series, At Midnight Comes the Cry, was released in time for Christmas this year which was appropriate since it encompassed the Christmas season. 

If you had told me I would enjoy a series where a cryptozoologist solves mysteries involving mythical creatures I would have thought you were crazy. But I have enjoyed Annelise Ryan's Monster Hunter Series set in Northern Wisconsin despite the wacky premises. I read  A Death in Door County, Death in the Dark Woods and Beast of the North Woods. Despite the "monster" premise, the mysteries all have (so far) perfectly rational solutions.

A new novel I read, which is the beginning of a new series, was Rob Osler's The Case of the Missing Maid. Set in Chicago in the late 1800's the main character is a woman detective who has to prove herself. If you are familiar with the neighborhoods of Chicago, it makes it extra fun to read. The next book will be released in January. 

Another new author for me was Nev March whose novel Murder in Old Bombay won a First Crime Novel Award a few years ago. I enjoyed it despite its length but I think you might need to be interested in a lot of Indian history to get through it. It is the first in a series and I will probably get around to reading the others. 

Detective Aunty by Uzma Jalaluddin is a first time mystery by an established romance writer and was a very good start for her. Set in Canada (mainly Toronto) the main character is a Muslim widow who, in this book, is called on to prove that her daughter did not commit a murder. The process drags up issues from her past that she must come to terms with. I liked the older main character and want to read more about her.

I picked up The Shell House Detectives by Emylia Hall before I left for vacation based solely on the fact that it was set in Cornwall. The main character, Ally Bright, is a widow in her sixties (I love this new trend of having older main characters).  She joins up with a young newcomer to Cornwall to solve the mystery of a missing woman and a man who fell or was thrown from a cliff. This was a perfect summer read and I will read more in the series.  

Laura Lippman is one of my favorite mystery writers and I was excited to read her latest, Murder Takes a Vacation, which I believe is the start of a new series for her. I loved her Tess Monaghan series and the main character in this novel, Muriel Blossom, at one time worked for Tess (who has a cameo in this novel). Muriel and a friend are taking a river cruise in Europe (something I've always wanted to do, but single supplements are outrageous). Murder occurs (of course) and Muriel must solve it. You don't have to know much more than that. I found it somewhat hard to believe that Muriel was as naive about travel as she was at the beginning, but she caught on and hopefully will be a pro at it in the next book. 

Mystery Series (Continuations)

In addition to new authors, many of the series that I have been following for years had new installments issued (or I found installments that I had missed in previous years). One reason I like to recap the reading year is so I have a place to look to see what mystery series I've been reading so I can see if there are new books. 

This year I read the last two books in Lindsey Davis' Flavia Albia series set in Ancient Rome: Death on the Tiber ,which I did not care for much because I thought the pacing was off, and There Will be Bodies, which I very much enjoyed. Davis clearly does a lot of research for her novels and I have felt for a few years that the research has gotten in the way of the pacing. She seems to want to give the reader a lot of background narrative, all of which is interesting but does not move the story along. I felt that she remedied that in There Will be Bodies which takes place near Herculaneum in the years after the eruption of Vesuvius. I very much enjoyed that novel and hope she is back on track since she has always been one of my favorite mystery writers. 

Kate Atkinson put out her first Jackson Brodie mystery after five years, Death at the Sign of the Rook. I enjoyed it but wouldn't place it at the top of my list of Kate Atkinson books.

I read the Louise Penny novel The Grey Wolf  in January. The latest in her Three Pines series I had saved it to savor after the holidays but was a bit disappointed in it. Later in the year I read her follow up novel, The Black Wolf, which I liked better. In an afterword she admits that her fans wish she would go back to solving "Three Pines" mysteries and while I don't particularly care if the stories stay in Three Pines, I'm not really interested in international thrillers (which the last two books have bordered on). I'm looking for murder mysteries.  

Jane Pek published The Rivals as a follow up to her first novel. I had originally assumed she intended to write a series of mysteries featuring the cast of characters she created in her first novel in which they investigate the backgrounds of people on dating apps but she seems to have planned a trilogy with a beginning, middle and end. The plot involves a conspiracy involving AI - and reality seems to have caught up with the plot. I enjoyed this novel but I do think it helps if you've read her first novel. 

I began Stephen Spotswood's Pentecost and Parker historical series last year and this year I caught up with it. Set in post-WWII New York, Pentecost is the most famous woman detective in NYC and her associate, Parker, is a former circus performer. This year I read Murder Under Her Skin, Secrets Typed in Blood, Murder Crossed Her Mind, and  Dead in the Frame. The last two books focus on Pentecost and her mysterious past and it looks like the next book will too. 

Alison Montclair writes the Sparks and Bainbridge mystery series and I am slowly making my way through those books. Set in 1940's post-war London it involves a woman owned detective agency. I read A Rogue's Company and The Unkept Woman in March. The plots of this series always require a certain suspension of disbelief but the two main characters are so enjoyable that I don't mind. 

Anna Lee Huber writes two mystery series that I read. The Verity Kent series, set in the 1920's, is usually my favorite but the latest two books in that series have been set in Dublin during the fight for Irish independence and I haven't enjoyed them as much as the earlier novels. It was a very violent time in real life (essentially a war zone) and, perhaps because of my Irish background, I find it difficult to read about. I read The Cold Light of Day in March and then I read the latest, A Moment's Shadow, later in the year. Huber's other series is the Lady Darby series, set in pre-Victorian Britain. At first I thought these stories, while enjoyable, were a little too pat, but the series has grown on me more and more as she incorporates true historical situations into the plots. I caught up with it this year and read A Fatal Illusion in March and A Tarnished Canvass in July, both of which are based on true stories. I especially found the second one very interesting from a plot point of view.   

This year C.S. Harris published Who Will Remember, the 20th installment in the Sebastien St. Cyr series. This is one of my very favorite series and Harris always delivers. Set in the years immediately following the Napoleanic Wars, it is a period I wasn't too familiar with before I started this series and was happy to learn more about. I constantly recommend this series to everyone who will listen. You can read them of course in any order but I always recommend starting with the first in the series due to the continuing evolvement of St. Cyr's personality and life story. 

The Wrexford and Sloane mystery series is set in about the same time period as the Sebastian St. Cyr series. What differentiates it is that Andrea Penrose likes to incorporate a scientific discovery or invention that is being worked on at the time into the mystery. Murder at Somerset House involves the attempt to build what will eventually become the telegraph machine. It also goes (deeply) into the workings of the London Stock Exchange.

The Edinburgh Murders by Catriona McPherson is the second in a series set in post-WWII Edinburgh and featuring a social worker (which was a new concept at the time). In this mystery there is a dead body, boiled to death in a bath house. Very gruesome. I've enjoyed both novels in this series and hope she continues it. 

It always surprises me that I am a fan of C.J. Box's Joe Picket series, but I am.  This year I read his latest, Battle Mountain. The plot was just as eye-rolling as all of the Joe Picket plots but it still swept me along. And, as usual, in real life Joe would be dead but as usual he is saved. I believe it is the setting that really captivates me. Box really captures the beauty of the mountains. 

Apostle's Cove was the latest mystery by William Kent Krueger in his Cork O'Connor mystery series. This series is mostly set in Minnesota in the Boundary Waters region, not far from where I vacation each year and I enjoy it almost as much for its sense of place as its characters. This installment in the series has Cork looking back on the first murder he solved long ago when he was the chief of police. Did he get it wrong?

I'm a big fan of Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club mysteries and The Impossible Fortune was released this year. The gang is back together solving mysteries, this time with Joyce's daughter. The mystery is never really the point with these novels. The point is that old age doesn't mean that you can't still be living your best life. 

One of my very favorite mystery series is the Inspector Rutledge series by Charles Todd. The author is actually a pen name for a mother/son writing team. Unfortunately the mother died a few years ago and the son has been tied up in estate issues (let that be a lesson to authors - be sure to have your estate planning up to date). A Christmas Witness is the first story issued since her death and it is really a novella. I found it very disappointing. It should have been a short story, it was extremely padded to bring it to novella length. A full length novel is to be released in 2026, so we'll see if he can write alone without his mother. 

Ann Cleves writes so many excellent mysteries. When she finished with her Shetland Series I thought we had seen the end of Jimmy Perez. He was heading off to Orkney with his pregnant girlfriend/boss. But she has now picked up his story in Orkney with The Killing Stones and she is still in good form. Orkney is a place I've always wanted to visit so I loved her evocation of place in this novel. 

Back in 2023 I read the first novel of a proposed new historical mystery series set in Fiji during World War I. This year the second book, A Shipwreck in Fiji by Nilima Rao,was released. The main character is a Police Sergeant named Akal Sing, who is a Sikh from India. As an outsider we learn about Fiji through his eyes. If you read for a sense of place, you would enjoy this. The mystery was fine but the characters other than Sing could use a little more development. 

Standalone Mysteries

Surprisingly, I did not read many stand alone mysteries this year. 

The Lake House by Kate Morton was a stand-alone mystery that I had on my shelf for many years. I finally read it this year. This is a dual timeline novel in which a modern day detective on leave in Cornwall tries to solve the mystery of a missing child that occurred many years earlier. Sometimes dual timeline novels slow the pacing of the novel down, in my opinion, but Morton made it work very well and the structure didn't bother me as much as it has with other author's writings.  

I assume that Guilty by Definition by Suzie Dent is a standalone novel. The main character works for a (thinly disguised) Oxford English Dictionary and is trying to determine what happened to her sister who went missing ten years earlier. The mystery was good and the characters were well drawn. 

I intensely disliked Venetian Vespers by John Banville. Set in Venice in the late 1800's the first person narrator is a pompous ass who is also too stupid to figure out what is happening. I figured out most of the mystery very early on and didn't find the characters that interesting (mainly because we see them through the narrator's eyes). Not recommended. 

The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson is the story of Hannah Cole, a widow who operates a confectioner's shop in London in the 1700s. The business is failing because her husband's estate is tied up in probate pending the resolution of the investigation into his death by murder. But one day a stranger introduces her to "iced creams" and this new concept increases her business. Is the stranger to be trusted, however? This book has a very (VERY!) complicated plot but not as complicated as her last novel. And I did not see the end coming. I'm not even sure I should categorize this as a mystery because it isn't your usual mystery, but I think this is where it belongs. 

Fiction

Historical Fiction

My favorite kind of fiction is historical fiction (you will notice that even my favorite mystery series include a lot of historical fiction). This year I read quite a bit of historical fiction, probably because it was a way to avoid thinking about what was going on in the present day. As I said in my Favorite Books of 2025 post, I read a lot of books that I enjoyed but that did not make by favorites list, mostly because they just didn't stay with me after I put them down. I'll try to note the ones that I didn't like, and why. 

The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane is set in the southern Australia Outback in the 1800's where a family (a whole town really) is living from day-to-day trying to raise sheep and grow wheat, all of which is dependent on the weather. One day a six year old boy wanders away in a dust storm and the town is called out to find him. 

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry is set in Idaho in the 1800's. Most of the characters are Irish or Cornish immigrants. A mail order bride arrives but ends up running off with another man in town. Her jilted husband puts together a posse to find them. I didn't particularly like this novel, which was nominated for many prizes, but it had the advantage for me of being short. 

I never knew that Belfast suffered a Blitz during WWII until I read These Days by Lucy Caldwell.  There are three nights of bombings and the novel is divided into three parts, basically following the fates of one family and their domestic servants. I thought it was very good.

Radio Girls by Sarah Jane Stratford is the story of the early days of  BBC radio including the story of Hilda Matheson, the real head of "Talks" programming of BBC radio in those early days. The story is fictional, not a biography, and is told from the point of view of a fictional assistant. The BBC was one of the few places that a woman could get ahead in the job market in those days. 

The Joseph O'Connor novel, My Father's House, made my list of favorites this year and I wanted to read more novels by him. His 2020 Walter Scott Prize winning novel Shadowplay is the story of Bram Stoker before he wrote Dracula, when he managed a London theater and was the personal assistant to a famous actor. I think the only reason I did not put this on my list of favorite books of 2025 was because I liked My Father's House slightly better and didn't want to include two books by the same author. 

I very much enjoyed each of the two Robert Harris novels that I have read and I wanted to read more Harris so I picked up Precipice. This novel involved the true story of a love affair during WWI of the British Prime Minister and a much younger London socialite and the rash way that he told her about state secrets in his letters (all of which she kept but never disclosed). I very much enjoyed it. After finishing Precipice I wanted to read another Harris novel and chose Conclave, which had been made into a film last year that I had never seen. I liked this one even more that Precipice. It involves the selection of a new pope (which was a very appropriate theme this year) and is excellent. Whereas Precipice sometimes gets too much in the weeds about WWI which might lose some readers (not me), I think anyone could read and enjoy Conclave. Each of his novels that I have read takes place in a different time period with plots that are completely different. At this point I think I'm going to become a Harris completist and search out all of his novels. 

A Long Way from Home by Peter Carey was the story of a 1950's car race around the entire continent of Australia. A husband and wife team enter and take their neighbor as navigator. The novel explores relationships between men and women as well as white people and aborigines. What was disappointing to me was that it, surprisingly, didn't really have much of a sense of place.

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams was chosen by my book group to read a couple of years ago but since I was going to miss that meeting I did not read it. It sat on my shelf for two years until I picked it up this year, and I was glad I did. It is the story of Esme and her growth from childhood to womanhood, but it is also the story of the birth of the Oxford English Dictionary which was just as fascinating. 

The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry involves a child who goes missing during WWII. Her older sister, years later, is shocked to find a children's book that contains the story she made up for the missing sister years ago. Thus begins a search for the now grown child. This novel had a good premise and the author was very good at capturing the plight of children evacuated during the Blitz, but there were too many "coincidences" for my taste. 

Strangers in Time by David Baldacci was a pick by my book group that I unexpectedly liked very much. I compared it to an adult Enid Blyton book in terms of style and (a bit) in subject matter. The two main characters are teenagers living through the Blitz who are taken in by a friendly bookseller. 

Love Forms by Claire Adam is a delightful book about a woman who grew up in Trinidad and Tobbago and gave up a child for adoption after she got pregnant as a teenager. As an adult she is searching for that child she gave up 40 years earlier and remembering her life when she was young. I didn't know much about the history of those islands and I found it interesting. 

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood almost made my list of favorites this year. Set in the 1950's, Thomas is a "shanker", he scrapes for shrimp along the coast using a horse drawn cart. His life is a life of drudgery as he supports himself and his mother. He is secretly learning to play the guitar and longs to be a folk musician. He is too shy to ask out the girl he admires. Then one day a Hollywood film director comes to town looking for a location for his next film and Thomas' life begins to change.

Flashlight by Susan Choi is the story of a family. The father is Korean but was raised in Japan during WWII. He marries an American woman. One day he and his daughter take a walk along the shore. She is found unconscious, he is presumed dead by drowning. The main point of this story was a true historical event that happened in Japan after WWII. This book was a favorite of many people and while I appreciated the history in the book, I felt it was too expository even when the exposition was being shown through what happened to different characters.  

The winner of the Walter Scott prize this year was The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It is a very good novel set in the early 1960's during a famously cold winter. The story involves two couples. One husband operates a farm, the other is the town doctor. Both wives are pregnant. This is in some ways a "slice of life" novel.  Although there is a plot the real interest lies in the characters and the evocation of time and place. I think the reason it did not make my list of favorites (even though I've thought of it since I read it) was that it was set during my lifetime and that makes me feel old. But I very much recommend it.

Other Fiction

My favorite novel in 2024 was James by Percival Everett, so I decided I needed to read more books by him. The Trees is hard to describe. It starts as a murder mystery, evolves into a zombie story and is also incredibly funny. It is set in the town of Money, Mississippi which is the town where Emmett Till was lynched.  And that is the lynchpin (get it?) of the story. I almost put this novel on my list of favorite novels for the year but I didn't feel that I thought enough about it after I read it.

I enjoyed The Wedding People by Alison Espach enough that I recommended it to my book club to read and they seemed to enjoy it too. The main character, Phoebe, finds herself staying at an inn at which every other guest is part of a Wedding Party. Phoebe, who is in the midst of a deep depression, gets to know the bride-to-be (who is a likeable Bridezilla) and other guests and it helps her put her own life in perspective. This makes the novel sound serious but it is written in a fairly light manner that makes it easy to read. I hesitate to call it a beach read but you could certainly read it on a beach. 

If you are looking for a really good beach read, try Sandwich by Catherine Newman. Set literally at a beach house it is a story of three generations of a family that come together each year in the same rented house. Similar to The Fortnight in September (see below) but set in modern times, this would be especially enjoyable for you if you have been vacationing at the same rental house for many years. 

I read a couple of books this summer simply because many people were discussing them and not because their premises necessarily appealed to me. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar is a novel about Cyrus, an Iranian immigrant who is an addict and a poet who is obsessed with the idea of martyrdom. I thought this novel was very well written but I never really felt connected to the main character. Similarly, All Fours by Miranda July, did not work for me. A woman sets out on a cross country trip but basically only makes it to the suburbs of Los Angeles where she checks into a motel, redecorates the motel room and has an affair. I never related to the main character and didn't particularly care what happened to her. 

Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano is a funny book about a divorced writer who gets mistaken for a hit man. The premise is absurd but the book is funny. I would classify this as a beach read. I will be surprised if it isn't picked up to be a film on a streaming service. 

 Flesh by David Szalay was the 2025 Booker Prize winner. It didn't appeal to me although I admit that the author created very realistic dialog, albeit by an uncurious, monosyllabic man. 

Audition by Katie Kitamura was on the Booker Prize shortlist and on many people's list of favorite novels in 2025. The structure of the novel is interesting (albeit slightly confusing) but to me it read more like an exercise in writing than a fully completed novel. I never attached to any of the characters. 

Universality by Natasha Brown was on the Booker Prize longlist and so I read it. I'm not a big fan of satire (mostly because I don't usually "get" satire) and this was a satire of the present day.  It's hard to satirize the present day because the present day is so absurd all on its own. 

Classic Fiction

I probably would not have read as much Classic Fiction if it were not for the BlueSky Book Club. I should say that I use a pretty broad definition of Classic Fiction - basically anything really old that I always felt I should have read. 

The Fortnight in September by RC Sherrif was a delightful book that I discovered through someone on BlueSky who listed it as a favorite book from last year. This 1931 novel is about an ordinary British family that goes on a two week holiday to the shore as they do every year but this year they are all aware that it may be the last because the children are now grown. 

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This was a BlueSky Book Club readalong. I tired of the constant themes of pedophilia, incest and rape and did not particularly enjoy this read.  

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.  Another BlueSky Book Club readalong, this was in part a 1,000 line poem and in part the "notes" to the poem (which are really what comprises the novel). This was, to say the least, an odd book. I didn't really enjoy it but I might have enjoyed it more if I had read it in one or two sittings rather than slowly over a month.

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Yet another BlueSky Book Club readalong, this novel was a complete success for me. The writing in this book is brilliant. Highsmith made me care about what happened to Tom Ripley even though I didn't like him. 

The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges was another BlueSky Book Club readalong. The group actually chose short stores by Borges that were included in this book and others but I only made it through this book. Short stories are not my favorite type of reading and while I appreciated Borges' writing I did not particularly enjoy the stories. 

I picked up a copy of The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham last year after reading a novel that featured Maugham as a side character. Set during a cholera epidemic in China, Maugham is great at evoking a true sense of place. The main character is a woman whose husband, a doctor, finds out she is cheating on him so he takes her with him to the cholera ravaged region perhaps in the hope that she will die. Although this sounds depressing I did not find it so. It is a short, beautifully written novel. 

I'm not sure if What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies counts as a classic but I will put it here. More people need to read Robertson Davies, a Canadian author. This novel is the story of Francis Cornish, a talented artist from a wealthy Canadian family who trains to be an art restorer but his career is interrupted by WWII. The novel is a fascinating look at art restoration and asks the question "what makes great art" but in a way you won't expect. This was a re-read for me, my only re-read of the year. 

I can't remember why I picked up The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald but it ended up not being for me. It is historical fiction about a German poet I had never heard of.  It did not make me want to find his poetry. 

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton was another BlueSky Book Club readalong and I am so glad that I participated. The story is set in the late 1800's in New York. The main character, Newland Archer, is engaged to the lovely, traditional May but enamored of her more non-traditional cousin Ellen. This is really a story of how people are trapped by the manners of the day. What surprised me so much was that Wharton was so funny! This ended up being a very easy read. 

Finally, last but certainly not least, I participated in a Blue Sky Book Club year-long read of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. I chose the translation by Edith Grossman. We also tried to watch the lectures of a Yale professor about the novel that was available on YouTube (although I still have not finished that).  Many of the people who started the novel dropped out through the year but I am so pleased that I finished it. It is a true classic and surprisingly modern. Divided into two "books", I admit I enjoyed Book 1 more than Book 2.