I’ve had a pleasantly escapist reading week, started on my Christmas reads and found lots of new books to look forward to..

Here’s what I’ve read and bought this week and what’s up next.

---

This was a mixed week for reading. I set two good thrillers aside, binged on a collection of twenty-four Alfred Hitchcock-inspired short stories, and was greatly amused by a Jane Austen novel I’d never read before.

A fifty-five-gallon drum washes up in the Malibu Lagoon stuffed with the corpse of Gene Dent, the key player in a bribery scandal that ensnared several local politicians. LASD detectives Eve Ronin and Duncan Pavone know the case—and all the likely suspects—well. Just as they begin their investigation, the sheriff publicly reveals evidence linking the crime to LA’s mayor.
But Eve and Duncan realize the bombshell allegation, true or not, arises from corruption within the sheriff’s own office…because they helped cover it up years ago. If the sheriff goes down, so will they.
Eve is agonizing over her moral dilemma when a helicopter crashes in the hillside below her Calabasas home. It’s not a coincidence. Eve soon discovers among the twisted wreckage and dead passengers shocking connections to her own past…and they lead straight to a fight for her life.

The Eve Ronin books are such fun. The story rolls out effortlessly. The humour works, The action is intense. The technical details are shared with a light, often humorous touch. The plot is serpentine and closely linked to earlier books.

In ‘Fallen Star’, Eve is worried that, subconsciously, she’s becoming too like the version of herself who stars in a TV crime show that she thinks is over the top. She’s concerned that her actions in real life are so on-brand for her TV show persona. The thing is, her actions in real life, no matter how reckless, are just Eve being Eve. Being Eve means she single-handedly frustrates a flash mob raid on a high-priced cosmetics store, is the first on the scene when a helicopter crashes, and finds herself setting a trap for a sniper.

Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her!
If only things were so simple . . .
It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint.
A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior surviving on inertia, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover.
As together they fend off a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when anything is possible . . .

I’m so glad that this wasn’t just a recycled version of ‘Legends & Lattes’. I loved that book, but I wanted something fresh and different. Fortunately, so did Travis Baldree. Fern’s story is not a repeat of Viv’s story. The previous books had Viv coming to terms with a new place. This has Fern travelling, initially accidentally, on a journey to an unknown destination and trying, along the way, to discover how to break through her own ennui. It was also an exciting adventure, filled with as much action as humour. And yes, it did manage to raise my spirits just as ‘Legends & Lattes’ did.

Eighteen passengers. Seven stops. One killer.
In the early hours of Christmas Eve, the sleeper train to the Highlands is derailed, along with the festive plans of its travellers. With the train stuck in snow in the middle of nowhere, a killer stalks its carriages, picking off passengers one by one. Those who sleep on the sleeper train may never wake again.
Can former Met detective Roz Parker find the killer before they kill again?
All aboard for . . . Murder on the Christmas Express.

For me, this book worked well as a murder mystery that kept me engaged and guessing and which also did a good job of confronting the impact of rape.

Just be aware that it’s not the cosy Christmas crime story that the title and the cover seem to market.

If this book came with trigger warnings, it would have to include:

• Emotional Abuse
• Physical Abuse
• Sexual Assault, including Rape.
• Sexual Harassment
• Stalking

My review is HERE

Old hatreds die hard. Old love dies harder. 
On the planet Rada, Meli Galdes’ family is of minor rank, and were relying on her marriage to Celino, the razor-smart, ruthless leader of the powerful Carvanna empire. When he abruptly breaks their engagement, he ruins her family and guarantees that Meli will never marry, as no suitor will oppose the rich and influential Carvannas. 
But Meli has a rare, secret, lethal – and valuable – talent. As a melder of energy, she’s capable of severing anything in her path. So she “leaves” her family and trains to become one of the best and most lethal of assassins, all the while covertly guarding her family’s interests. Now she’s ready to quit; but she has one more assignment. 
To kill the man who ruined her life. 

Ilona Andrews does it again: creating a whole universe in sixty-six pages, building a conflict between two fascinating character, adding violence and intrigue and spiced with sex. This was a clever, engaging story. I’m already looking forward to the next instalment.

My review is HERE

I’ve been hitting the sales this week, picking up 2-for-1 credit audiobooks and £0.99 Kindle novels. Three books are continuation of series. One is a bit of festive fun. One is a Sci Fi novel. The other two are crime thrillers.

Am I a murderer? You tell me . . .
You probably already know my name. Lucy Chase, the woman who doesn’t remember murdering her best friend.
Even though they couldn’t find enough evidence to charge me, I know you all think I did it. That’s OK. I realise being found wandering the streets the next day covered in her blood wasn’t a great look.
Believe me, I’m as frustrated as you are. I’d love to know if I’m a murderer – it’s the sort of thing you really should know about yourself, isn’t it?
And now, thanks to true-crime podcast Listen for the Lie, I finally have the chance to find out. But will I be able to live with myself if it turns out it was me?
And if it wasn’t, will digging into the secrets of the night I forgot make me the next target of whoever did?

This has been recommended to me by several people so, when I saw it in the sale I dcided to roll the dice and going with it. The premise sounds fun, even if the cover is eye-wateringly bright.

DI Ben Kitto needs a second chance. After ten years working for the murder squad in London, a traumatic event has left him grief-stricken. He’s tried to resign from his job, but his boss has persuaded him to take three months to reconsider.
Ben plans to work in his uncle’s boatyard on the tiny Scilly island of Bryher where he was born, hoping to mend his shattered nerves. His plans go awry when the body of a sixteen-year-old girl is found on the beach at Hell Bay. Her attacker must still be on the island because no ferries have sailed during the two-day storm. 
Everyone on the island is under suspicion. Dark secrets are about to resurface. And the murderer could strike again at any time . . .

This is the first book in a crime series set on a tiny Scilly island. If it work, I’ll have a new series to follow. If it doesn’t, well, it was my second choice in a 2-for-1 sale.

Two murders. Two decades apart.
One chance to get justice.
Hana Westerman has left Auckland and her career as a detective behind her. Settled in a quiet coastal town, all she wants is a fresh start.
The discovery of a skeleton in the dunes near her house changes everything. The remains are those of a young Maori woman who went missing four years before, and Hana has a connection to the case. Twenty years ago, a schoolfriend of hers was found buried in the exact same spot. Her killer died in prison, but did the police get the wrong man? And if he was innocent, then why did he plead guilty?
No longer part of the Criminal Investigation Branch, Hana turns to her ex-husband Jaye, a high-flying Detective Inspector, for help. But when he cuts her out of the investigation, she realises that she will have to find the answers she needs on her own.
But in digging deeper, she sets herself on a potentially fatal collision course with a killer.

‘Better The Blood’, the first book in this New Zealand crime series, is still in my TBR pile. Normally, I’d wait until I’d read it before I bought the second but this was on my wishlist and in a sale so…

This is an anthology edition of the Kinsmen Universe, which includes Silent Blade and Silver Shark, plus a new short story. 
One month to Christmas. One stressed-out sales manager. One Winter Wonderland that might just descend into chaos.
Charlotte Mitchell is determined to put Hedgelord Garden Centre at the heart of the community where it belongs. All she needs is the perfect festive season—lights, decorations, Santa, and the biggest Christmas display in town. But there’s just one problem: Jack Hartigan, her infuriatingly charming rival from Bloomers Garden Centre, has the same idea.
Christmas is a battlefield, and Charlotte needs to win.
She can handle lazy employees, manic elves, and a herd of out-of-control reindeer. She might even keep her legendary temper under wraps. But when an ill-advised decorating stunt hits the headlines for all the wrong reasons, Charlotte faces her biggest challenge yet.

‘Murder On The Christmas Express’ didn’t feed my need for Christmas books so I went looking for a replacement. This one definitely is about Christmas, it’s meant to be funny and I quite like the narrator so I bought it

Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is recovering from a bad year, and a traumatic back operation that has left her in the care of her ex husband and his new wife. 
But Hazel is lured back to work when a body is pulled from a nearby lake: a discovery that eerily mirrors a disturbing story printed in the local newspaper.
The author of the tale can’t be found, and when gruesome, taunting clues begin to arrive Hazel realises she’s dealing with a master manipulator, a crazed soul who knows her every move . . .

Earlier this year, I enjoyed ‘The Calling‘ the first book in this Canadian crime series, so I went looking for more. Although there are five books in the series, only the first three are avialable in a digital format in the UK. Still, I’ll take what I can get. I want to see what Hazel Micallef does next.

In a society where bionic enhancements are the epitome of wealth and power, scientific researcher Dr Rosio Arata threatens to topple the status quo with her pioneering organic enhancements. Yet when a horrific accident kills her daughter, Ro’s quest for answers leads her to becoming trapped in a twisted version of her life’s work.

In a bleak underground colony, sixteen year-old Ever is primed to rise through the ranks, gain selection and become a Saviour. It’s her dream to journey to the Surface and fight the army of Forms overwhelming the globe, catching up with the boy she loves in the process. Yet nothing in this world is what it seems and soon the secrets buried in her bunker begin to unravel, threatening the future of everything.

A debut speculative fiction novel with an intriguing premise on sale as an ebook for £0.79, why would I hesitate?

In the midst of a dangerously dry season, national park ranger Anna Pigeon has been posted to Cumberland Island off the Georgia coast for a monotonous, twenty-one-day fire watch. But her boredom is short-lived, for this remote and marshy place is a breeding ground to more than just the imperilled Loggerhead turtle; it also spawns eccentricity and secrets, greed, suspicion… and murder.
A small plane crashes into the palmetto thickets nearby. Anna and her crew arrive in time to control the blaze, but too late to save the pilot and his passenger, Cumberland’s sole law enforcement ranger. When the cause of the ‘accident’ is determined to be sabotage, Anna becomes entangled in an investigation that threatens to upset the very delicate balance of this fragile ecological preserve. For she is precariously close to exposing dark, clandestine crimes, both old and new, that someone has worked very diligently to conceal… and which makes Anna Pigeon the most endangered creature on the island.

This will be my fifth visit with Anna Pigeon. So far they’ve been fun mysteries. They have strong plots and they lt me visit American National Parks and the 1990s at the same time. So far I’ve only reached 1997.

This week, I’m reading an historical mystery that I’ve had on reserve from my local library for months and now have two weeks to read, the newly published sequel to ‘Legends & Lattes’ and the next book in my Jane Austen Binge Read Challenge.

Two weeks ago, Christine Sinclaire’s husband slipped off the roof while hanging Christmas lights and fell to his death on the front lawn.
Desperate to escape her guilt and her grief, Christine packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to the cabin they’d reserved deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.
It isn’t long before Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest. When she spots a horned figure watching from between frozen branches, Christine assumes it’s just a forest animal—a moose, maybe, since the property manager warned her about them, said they’d stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody’d find it ’til spring.
But moose don’t walk upright like the shadowy figure does.
They don’t call Christine’s name with her dead husband’s voice.

I enjoyed ‘Bless Your Heart‘, Lindy Ryan’s horror novel about a family funeral parlour dealing with the rising dead in Texas in 1999, so I took a look at her back catalogue and found this Christmas-themed novella, dealing with grief She published ‘Cold Snap’ last year but it was only released as an audiobook in April 2025. A Christmas horror about grief and loss may not feel seasonal but I think it calls out the dark side of the holiday.

One detective. One murderer. But which is which?
Remie Yorke has one shift left at the Mackinnon Hotel in the remote Scottish Highlands before she leaves for good. Then Storm Ezra hits.
As temperatures plummet and phone lines go down, an injured man stumbles inside. PC Don Gaines was in a terrible accident on the mountain road. The only other survivor: the prisoner his team was transporting.
When a second stranger arrives, Remie reluctantly lets him in from the blizzard. He, too, is hurt. He claims to be a police officer. His name is also Don Gaines.
Someone is lying and, with no means of escape, Remie must work out who. If the cold doesn’t kill her, one of these men will get there first…

‘The Second Stranger‘ (2023) was well received by book reviewers who I follow when it came out. It seems the hype hasn’t worn off. I listened to a sample and thought it sounded like fun – a sort of Golden Age premise in a modern setting. A remote Scottish hunting lodge turned hotel, only one member staff on duty, a major storm, an escapted prisoner, what’s not to like?

Time travellers…dark carnivals…living automata…and detectives? Honouring the 100th birthday of Ray Bradbury, renowned author of Fahrenheit 451, this new, definitive collection of the master’s less well-known crime fiction features classic stories and rare gems, a number of which became episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Ray Bradbury Theater, including the tale Bradbury called ‘one of the best stories in any field that I have ever written’.
Is it murder to destroy a robot if it looks and speaks and thinks and feels like a human being? Can a ventriloquist be incriminated by the testimony of his own dummy? Can a time traveller prevent his younger self from killing the woman they both loved? And can the survivor of a pair of Siamese twins investigate his own brother’s murder? No other writer has ever rivalled the imagination and narrative gifts of Ray Bradbury, and the 20 unforgettable stories in this collection demonstrate this singular writer’s extraordinary range, influence and emotional power.

I was a big fan of Ray Bradbury fifty or so years ago. The only thing I’ve read by him recently was ‘The Halloween Tree‘, which I reluctantly set aside at 65% because I couldn’t get my imagination to go where Bradbury was taking it. 

I didn’t want that to be my last experience of Bradbury, so I picked up ‘Killer, Come Back To Me’ as an ebook. I’ve been dipping into it for a while now. I’m happy to say that this is the Bradbury I remember: clever ideas that sometimes make the spine tingle, prose that’s lyrical without being overblown and people, flawed, imperfect, people who feel real. I expect to finish the collection over the next week 

In a distant, future world Kinsmen—small powerful groups of genetically and technologically advanced families—control vast financial empires. They are their own country, their own rulers, and their only limits are other Kinsmen. The struggle for power is a bloody, full-contact sport: in business, on the battlefield…and sometimes in the bedroom. 
Claire Shannon is a killer…and her weapon is her mind.
Born on a planet torn by war for over 300 years, Claire is a soldier: a psycher, with the ability to read, control, and destroy the minds of enemy psychers and to infiltrate the biological network where they battle to death.

This is the next story in the series after ‘Silent Blade‘. I’m hoping it’s just as good.

I’d meant to read this last week but I spent too much time having fun with ‘Northanger Abbey’ so, I’m running a week late on my JANE AUSTEN 250TH ANNIVERSARY BINGE READ.

Cancelled after a drunken, ill-advised post, TV-star Willow McKenzie is sent to Camp Castaway – a retreat in the woods where you hide from your mistakes.
Spoiler #1: there’s nowhere to hide.
That first night, fellow campers gather round a fire, telling ghost stories. And Willow hears the tale of Knock-Knock Nancy – a beheaded local woman whose spirit still roams the woods.
Spoiler #2: she takes her victim’s heads.
Willow doesn’t believe in ghosts – until next day, a camper vanishes. And, that evening, Willow hears it:
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Spoiler #3: It’s already too late . . .

I know the cover looks gory, but I think it’s gory in a fun way. After all, you can’t have slaughter without laughter, so I’m hoping this will make me smile rather than flinch.