What’s new on my bedside table . . . ?

Photo by Tatiana Syrikova on Pexels.com

Two days to go and it is officially winter – although it feels like it has already arrived as it is an icy cold and stormy day today. We lost power for a little while this morning, so I went to my cousin’s for coffee as there was still power on her side of town. There is quite a bit of water on the roads which are also littered with broken branches.

Six new ARCs dropped into my inbox in the past week, one more than last week.

This is Why We Lied by Karin Slaughter was the first. It is #12 in the Will Trent series.

One toxic family. Eight suspicious guests. Everyone is guilty. But who is a killer?

Welcome to the McAlpine Lodge: a secluded mountain getaway, it’s the height of escapist luxury living.

Except that everyone here is lying. Lying about their past. Lying to their family. Lying to themselves.

Then one night, Mercy McAlpine – until now the good daughter – threatens to expose everybody’s secrets. Just hours later, Mercy is dead.

In an area this remote, it’s easy to get away with murder. But Will Trent and Sara Linton – investigator and medical examiner for the GBI – are here on their honeymoon.

And now, with the killer poised to strike again, the holiday of a lifetime becomes a race against the clock…

Michael Wood’s new title, Vengeance is Mine, is a standalone thriller.

A GRUESOME MURDER

Twenty years ago, a young girl vanished from a quiet street in Northumberland. When her body was found in an attic close to her home, the whole neighbourhood was shocked.

A DEVASTATING SECRET

For her entire life, Dawn Shephard has never known her father. But when news breaks that a murderer is about to be released from prison, her mother has no choice but to reveal his identity.

THE ORIGINS OF EVIL

As Dawn digs into her father’s history, she lands on a chilling connection. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes. Just how far will she go to discover if a killer’s blood runs through her veins?

Sarah Easter Collins is a new author to me, but she comes highly recommended by Karin Slaughter who describes Things Don’t Break on Their Own as ‘A captivating, haunting, and twisty story’.

She could be anyone. She could be you.

Nobody ever found out what happened to Laika Martenwood, the girl who vanished without a trace on her way to school one morning. But for her sister Willa, life shattered into tiny pieces that day, and she has never been able to put them back together again.

Willa sees Laika everywhere: on buses, at parties, in busy streets. It’s been twenty-five years, and the only thing that has kept her going is her belief that her sister is alive, somewhere. 

But when a dinner party conversation about childhood memories spirals out of control, a shattering revelation from one of the guests forces Willa to rethink everything she thought she knew about her past. And, out of the debris of that explosive evening, the truth of what really happened begins to emerge. Piece by piece.

It was the title that got me – you have to love English village names – with The Murders in Great Diddling by Katarina Bivald, another new-to-me author.

The best stories are the ones we didn’t know needed to be told

The small, rundown village of Great Diddling is full of stories—author Berit Gardner can feel it. The way the villagers avoid outsiders, the furtive stares and whispers in the presence of newcomers… Berit can sense the edge of a story waiting to be unraveled, and she’s just the person to do it. In fact, with a book deadline looming over her and no manuscript (not even the idea for a manuscript, truth be told), Berit doesn’t just want this story. She needs it.

Then, while attending a village tea party, Berit becomes part of the action herself. An explosion in the library of the village’s grand manor kills a local man, and the resulting investigation and influx of outsiders sends the quiet, rundown community into chaos. The residents of Great Diddling, each one more eccentric and interesting than any character Berit could have invented, rewrite their own narrative and transform the death of one of their own from a tragedy into a new beginning. Taking advantage of Great Diddling’s new notoriety, the villagers band together to start a book and murder festival designed to bring desperately needed tourists to their town. What they couldn’t have predicted is how the new story they’ve begun to tell will change all their lives forever.

Just About Coping is a memoir about training to be a psychotherapist by Dr Natalie Cawley.

At the psychologist’s clinic of an NHS hospital, Noah needs help with procrastination, Bill compulsively lies, Steph is coping with rejection and their therapist, Dr Natalie Cawley, is dealing with her own emotional crisis, breathing into a paper bag between patient sessions.

In this honest, often poignant and frequently funny memoir about training to be a psychotherapist, we meet the patients grappling with mental health issues, from OCD and addiction to self-deception and toxic relationships, and see how Dr Natalie helps them understand and change these attempts to self-soothe.

Full of lightbulb moments, Just About Coping is a journey into our inner worlds, where the drama of our break-ups, breakdowns and breakthroughs takes place. In times of stress and suffering, Dr Natalie reveals, we are all just about coping. None of us is immune – not even your therapist.

And, lastly, I received a widget this morning for Talking to Strangers by Fiona Barton whose previous novels I have adored.

Three women. One Killer.
Talking to strangers has never been more dangerous…

When the body of forty-four-year-old Karen Simmons is found abandoned in remote woodland, journalist Kiki Nunn is determined this will be the big break she so desperately needs.

Because she has a head start on all the other reporters. Just a week before Karen was killed, Kiki interviewed her about the highs and lows of mid-life romance. Karen told her all about kissing strangers on the beach under the stars, expensive meals, roses. About the scammers, the creeps, the man who followed her home the other night…

While the police appear to be focusing on local suspects, Kiki sets out to write the definitive piece on one woman’s fatal search for love. But she will soon learn that the search for truth can be just as deadly…

There’s not a lot of light reading arrived this week, is there!

I have increased my reading load by three books overall from last week. There are now 525 books on my NetGalley shelf and I have 16 pending requests, one up from last week. But I have two books I should finish reading today, so that will make it not quite so bad. And yes, I am still hanging on quite tenuously to my 72% feedback ratio.

I have so far read 110 books this year of my target of 225, and I am on track to finish another 3 or 4 books before the end of the month. I am at 49% of my target and 19 books ahead of where I should be, which is good – I like to have a little wriggle room.

I completed the All About Books readathon last weekend, but was we had a very social weekend, my total pages read for the three days was only 544 pages, which I can often read/listen to in one day.

I have so far listened to 24 audiobooks this year.

I have read or listened to 16 books which from my backlist, i.e. have been on my shelves for over twelve months.

I have read or listened to 30 books from my local library.

I have read 80/150 NetGalley titles for my NetGalley Addicts reading challenge, and the same for my NetGalley Readers chllenge, 13% ahead of schedule.

I hope to finish Wind in the Wires by Joy Dettman (Woody Creek #4) today which will complete my Aussie Readers May Challenge. I have selected all my books but one for the June challenge.

I have finished 11/13 books for my Aussie Readers Autumn challenge and am almost halfway through #12. I have until midnight Friday to read #13 so I should scrape in! I have also selected all but two books for the Winter challenge.

I will post my selections for these challenges in the coming weeks.

I have completed 7 of 24 categories for the World Book Day reading challenge in The Perks of a Reading Addict Goodreads group challenge.

Beanstack – I have clocked up 1465 reading minutes in the past week bringing my total minutes read since I joined to 9,052, and I have completed reading 27 titles. I have completed 7 activities on my Bingo card and another will be added when I finish Wind in the Wires.

That’s my end of month Challenge round up!

Now I’m going to go throw another log on the fire and heat up some homemade chili tomato soup for a late lunch. That should warm me up! We haven’t even hit double digits in the temperature yet today and are unlikely to do so. I think reading in front of the fire sounds like a good way to spend the remainder of the day.

Happy reading!💕📚

Watching what I’m reading . . .

Here we are at the end of autumn and winter staring us in the face in the southern hemisphere. It is a wintery day today with sudden showers accompanied by equally sudden drops in temperature, cold winds and only the odd, brief glimpse of the sun. It’s definitely time for me to pack away my summer clothes and to bring out my winter woolies.

I have signed up for the Goodreads Aussie Readers Winter Challenge, and I will post about that later in the week.

What am I currently reading?

Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks is a title from my 2018 NetGalley backlist which I am finding fascinating reading.

Here is Paris as you have never seen it before – a city in which every building seems to hold the echo of an unacknowledged past, the shadows of Vichy and Algeria.

American postdoctoral researcher Hannah and runaway Moroccan teenager Tariq have little in common, yet both are susceptible to the daylight ghosts of Paris. Hannah listens to the extraordinary witness of women who were present under the German Occupation; in her desire to understand their lives, and through them her own, she finds a city bursting with clues and connections. Out in the migrant suburbs, Tariq is searching for a mother he barely knew. For him in his innocence, each boulevard, Métro station and street corner is a source of surprise.

The first in a new series (The Village Detective) is The Art of Murder by Fiona Walker. If you are looking for a humorous and light-hearted cosy-mystery, this will definitely fit the bill!

Welcome to the beautiful English village of Inkbury. Tucked deep in the North Wessex Downs, its only claim to fame is the picturesque riverside that once appeared in a Richard Curtis movie. That is, until the murder…

Former stand-up comic Juno Mulligan has been suffering a serious sense-of-humour failure. Not only has she lost the love of her life, but she’s having to relocate to the (admittedly idyllic) village of Inkbury to watch out for her elderly mother, who she’s genuinely worried might be marrying a wife-killer.

She hopes that her old friend, disgraced-journalist-turned-novelist Phoebe Fredericks can help her crack the case of whether her mother’s perma-tanned, iceberg-smiled, three-times-a-widower fiancé is hiding a murderous past.

But before they have a chance, the local art dealer washes up distinctly dead in the village’s famous river. His lover is in the frame, but Juno and Phoebe suspect that there is a deeper secret… One that relates to Phoebe’s own past and Juno’s present.

Will the unofficial Village Detective Agency solve the mystery before the killer strikes again? In sleepy Inkbury, as they soon discover, living one’s best midlife can be murder.

This is the last of my reads needed to complete my Aussie Readers May Challenge. It is book #4 in Joy Dettman’s Woody Creek series – Wind in the Wires.

The wind is whispering in Woody Creek…Change is in the air

It’s 1958 and Woody Creek is being dragged kicking and screaming into the swinging sixties.

Jenny’s daughters, Cara and Georgie, are now young women. They have inherited their mother’s hands, but that is where their similarity ends. Raised separately, they have never met.
A mistake from Cara’s teenage years looms over her future, but she believes emphatically in the white wedding and happily ever after myth. Georgie has seen enough of marriage and motherhood. She plans to live her life as her grandmother did, independent of a man.

But life for the Morrison girls has never been easy, and once the sisters are in each other’s lives, long-buried secrets are bound to be unearthed, the dramatic consequences of which no-one could have predicted…

I have four reads for review scheduled this week. They are:

Feels Like Summer (Oh, how I wish it did!) by Wendy Francis a new-to-me author.

For three sisters, this Memorial Day weekend is a much-anticipated reunion—and a sizzling escape—where secrets, lovers, and betrayals collide in a small coastal town.

It’s Memorial Day weekend, the annual kickoff to summer for the Lancaster sisters. But the festivities take a deep dive when a mysterious boating accident occurs off their seaside town, sparking questions about how well the sisters know their neighbors—and each other.

Kate, whip smart and rich, lives a charmed life—if only her lawyer husband wasn’t always disappearing for his next big case. Older sister Shelby, when not selling houses, is falling hard for an on-again, off-again lover. He’s perfect for Shelby in many ways, and so wrong in others. And Bree, the youngest, is reeling from a recent breakup and in desperate need of her sisters. They’ve always been there for each other, but as secrets arise and gossip spreads like wildfire, the idyllic weekend takes a dramatic tailspin. Will this summer’s troubles change their bond before their sisterhood is righted again?

Goyhood by Reuven Fenton, another new-to-me author.

When Mayer (née Marty) Belkin fled small town Georgia for Brooklyn nearly thirty years ago, he thought he’d left his wasted youth behind. Now he’s a Talmud scholar married into one of the greatest rabbinical families in the world – a dirt poor country boy reinvented in the image of God.

But his mother’s untimely death brings a shocking revelation: Mayer and his ne’er-do-well twin brother David aren’t, in fact, Jewish. Traumatized and spiritually bereft, Mayer’s only recourse is to convert to Judaism. But the earliest date he can get is a week from now. What are two estranged brothers to do in the interim?

So begins the Belkins’ Rumspringa through America’s Deep South with Mom’s ashes in tow, plus two tagalongs: an insightful Instagram influencer named Charlayne Valentine and Popeye, a one-eyed dog. As the crew gets tangled up in a series of increasingly surreal adventures, Mayer grapples with a God who betrayed him and an emotionally withdrawn wife in Brooklyn who has yet to learn her husband is a counterfeit Jew.

Guilty Mothers by Angela Marsons is #20 in the Kim Stone series, every book of which I have loved! So you know where my reading journey for the coming week is going to start, don’t you!

She lies on the floor, her blue eyes wide and unseeing, arms outstretched as if begging for help. Kneeling next to her, wearing a purple sequinned ballgown and holding a knife in shaking hands, is her daughter…

In a quiet kitchen, where two mugs wait by the kettle to be filled, Sheryl Hawne lies in a pool of blood. Her only daughter, Katie, is found at her side, still clutching the murder weapon and apparently incapable of speech. To Detective Kim Stone, the case seems open and shut. But Katie is in no state to be questioned, so Kim and the team must dig deep to understand what triggered this brutal act.

Soon, they learn that Katie participated in beauty pageants as a child, and her mother kept a shrine to her achievements. As Kim gazes at the golden trophies and shiny rosettes, she is forced to wonder if this was what set Katie on the path to murder…

But then Kim receives a shocking call. Another woman is dead. And with Katie safely locked up, she cannot be the killer. The second victim also entered her daughter in pageants, and a broken tiara is found thrust down her throat. Someone clearly feels that these mothers are guilty – and that they deserve to die. Forcing back the memories of her own monstrous mother, Kim vows to find justice for these women, no matter what pain they caused.

Now more than a day behind their killer, Kim races to learn more about a competitive world where appearances are everything and mothers will go to any lengths to ensure their daughters triumph. Buried somewhere in this dark past is the key to unlocking the case… but will Kim be able to find it before another family is destroyed forever?

My final read is also by a new-to-me author, Australian Phillipa Nefri Clark.

Ivy Ross left Rivers End ten years ago, vowing never to return. Her heart broken, her trust gone, the father she adored behind bars. But when her sister Jody begs Ivy to return to finalise their inheritance, the majestic Fairview House, she is drawn home. And when she finds a collection of heartfelt letters hidden in her father’s library, everything she thought she knew is called into question.

The anonymous letters reveal a heartbreaking love story that force Ivy to rethink the terrible night that tore her family apart. And when Ivy meets Leo, the man whose life was also devastated by her father’s crime, she realises that it’s time to uncover the truth. But that’s not the only secret waiting for them in Fairview. Can facing up to her shocking family history lead Ivy to a future she could never have imagined…?

Are any of these books on your reading radar? Let me know!

Have a great week and happy reading!💕📚

The Lantern Men (Ruth Galloway #12) by Elly Griffiths

EXCERPT: ‘The lantern men. It’s an old legend round these parts. Mysterious figures carrying lanterns that haunt the fens and the marshes. If you follow their lights, you’re doomed. They can knock you down and leave you for dead.’

ABOUT THIS BOOK: Everything has changed for Dr Ruth Galloway. She has a new job, a new home and partner, and is no longer North Norfolk Police’s resident forensic archaeologist. That is, until convicted murderer Ivor March offers to make DCI Nelson a deal.
Nelson was always sure that March killed more women than he was charged with. Now March has confirmed this and offered to show Nelson where the bodies are buried – but only if Ruth will do the digging.
Curious, but wary, Ruth agrees. March tells Ruth that he killed two more women and that their bodies are buried near a village bordering the fens, said to be haunted by the Lantern Men, mysterious figures holding lights that lure travellers to their deaths.
Is Ivor March himself a Lantern Man, luring Ruth back to Norfolk? What is his plan, and why is she so crucial to it? And are the killings really over?

MY THOUGHTS: I love this series and always eagerly await the publication of a new book in this series. I love following Ruth’s on again/off again relationship with Nelson, whom I don’t envy at all. It seems to me that he is caught between a rock and a hard place by his love for both Michelle and Ruth. And I admire Michelle enormously. She handles the situation with far more maturity and dignity than I am sure I would ever be able to do. I do have to wonder though, if she ever took up with anyone else, just how well Nelson would react? Would he see it as his escape route to being able to be with Ruth? Or would his jealousy run rampant? But I digress.

We are two years on from the end of the previous book. Ruth and Kate have moved to Cambridge where Ruth is a professor at one of the colleges. They are living with Frank, the American introduced to us in The Stone Circle. I quite liked him initially, but I started to see another side of him, not so likeable, in The Lantern Men. He really is not a good fit for Ruth.

The Lantern Men has, as always with this series, an intriguing plot. Ivor March has been jailed for the murders of two young women. There was plenty of forensic evidence. And yet there’s a strong body of people, Cathbad included, that believe him to be innocent. Nelson is not one of them. He is totally convinced of March’s guilt and believes that he is also guilty of the murders of two more young women whose bodies have never been found. Then the body of another young woman is found murdered. Is it a copycat? It can’t have been Ivor – he is securely held in prison. Or is Ivor indeed innocent?

Now I thought – no, more than thought – I was convinced that I knew the answer, that I had it all figured out. 😂🤣😂🤣 I didn’t. Wasn’t even close….

Griffiths supporting characters are, as usual, varied, but all quite wonderful. From the serene Crissy Martin, ex-wife of the convicted murderer, to the enigmatic Chantal, Ivor’s lover, and the assortment of men, some decidedly creepy, who orbited the charismatic Ivor March and his women, this diverse cast of characters provides plenty of surprises.

Another excellent addition to this series which, I hope, still has many books to come.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I have reread The Lantern Men November 2023 – I am reading the whole series from beginning to end – and have upgraded my rating from 4.4 to five stars. I am loving this whole series even more second time around.

One of my favorite lines: The loo in the waiting area had a sign on it saying, ‘Patient Toilet.’ Well, the WC must be the only thing around here not feeling frustrated. (Patience is definitely not Nelson’s strong point!)

THE AUTHOR: Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway novels take for their inspiration Elly’s husband, who gave up a city job to train as an archaeologist, and her aunt who lives on the Norfolk coast and who filled her niece’s head with the myths and legends of that area. Elly has two children and lives near Brighton.

DISCLOSURE: Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of the Lantern Men by Elly Griffiths for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.