I’ve completed my Halloween Bingo reeding, so I’m free to read some new releases and plan my books for the rest of the year. I’ve already picked out ten books to read me into Christmas. I’m going to end October with a vampire and horror bunge read.
Anyway, here’s what I read and bought this week and what’s coming up next.
This week, I read a Weird West novel about young woman bonded to a demomically possessed revolver that never misses but takes a year of her life in payment for every death, another episode in the life of a young American woman who inherits a wool and yarn shop in Oxford and discovers she’s a witch and she’s living above a nest of vampires addocted to knitting, the first Adam Dalgleish novel, which was a kind of locked room mystery, and a cosyish mystery about a killer who uses text messages as a poison pen letters and then kills the person they’ve exposed.
The second book in the epic, magic-clad Devil’s Revolver series follows Hettie and her sister south of the Wall into Mexico, where they must unmake Hettie’s infernal mage gun while confronting a magic- and land-hungry army and a monster from hell drawn to the powers of the weapon. Hettie wants nothing more than to break her bond to the cursed Devil’s Revolver and find a way to keep her sister safe — but Abby’s indigo powers are growing stronger, and in the gated, walled village where they take refuge, nothing is exactly as it seems. Pursued by the Pinkertons, left without allies or guardians, Hettie has to rely on her own grit and determination to do the right thing, no matter the cost.
‘The Devil’s Standoff’ is the second book in the Weird West series, about a demon-possessed gun in an alternative Wild West where magic is just another tool. I read and enjoyed the first book, ‘The Devil’s Revolver’ in 2019 and immediately bought the sequel. I wish I hadn’t left it in my TBR pile for seven years before continuing with the series. It turned out that the second book was better than the first. The first book established the characters and the magic systems and delivered an action-packed adventure.
The second book was also action-packed, with the action taking place in Mexico this time, but had more character development, especially of the two Alabama sisters at the heart of the story. I had fun with its mix of magic and Western tropes, and I admired how the relationship between Hattie and the cursed revolver evolved. I’m now keen to read the remaining two books in the series.
Romance is in the air on Harrington Street, Oxford. Detective Inspector Ian Chisholm is finally showing interest in Lucy, though the members of the vampire knitting club aren’t too thrilled to have the police hanging around so close to Cardinal Woolsey’s yarn shop. Up the street at Frogg Books, shop assistant Alice is in love with her bookish boss, Charlie, who doesn’t seem to notice.
Lucy’s trying to become more proficient as a witch and when her cousin Violet talks her into brewing up a love potion to bring Alice and Charlie together, it seems like a harmless way to improve her craft.
Until someone dies. Is Lucy’s love potion more deadly than cupid’s arrow? Or is there a killer on the loose?
My wife and I listened to the fifth book in the Vampire Knitting Club as we drove to the South Coast through the first named storm of the season to hit the UK. It’s the perfect comfort read for a car journey.
The writing was effortlessly intimate and engaging; the humour light but not silly, the magic systems worked, and the story arcs of the ensemble cast moved along just enough to give the series a sense of progression and growth. It seems to me that plots get better with each book.
This one involved chaos being caused by a love potion going awry against a backdrop of Oxford students rehearsing for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Lots of confused lovers, a dead body, a missing woman and of course our heroine finds herself at the centre of it all.
When the body of Sally Jupp is discovered in her bedroom – the door bolted from the inside – the occupants of Martingale House are sure that the blame for this unthinkable crime will fall on an unknown intruder. But each of the household is hiding a secret that could shed light on the murder.
And there’s only one man who can sift through the layers of deceit and pretence to unmask the truth: Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgleish.
‘Cover Her Face‘ (1962) was P.D. James’ debut novel and the first book in the fourteen-book Adam Dalgliesh series. This was my first time reading P.D. James, and I was impressed. I loved the calm cadence of her language. The story provided a wonderful contemporary window into village life in England in 1960. My first impression was that if Barbara Pym had written a mystery novel, it might have opened like this.
The plot was a variant of a locked room mystery, but the attention was less on the mechanics of the murder than on the motive for it.Investigating the lives of the suspect pool gave an insight into the changing class structure of post-World War II England. I liked the inclusion of a suspect who was perfectly respectable but was also, thanks to his work as a spy in France during the war, an experienced killer and torture survivor. The taken-for-granted nature of this in a contemporary novel highlighted a seldom commented on societal legacy of the war.
Dalgliesh’s remorseless patience was quite intimidating. I thought the Poirot-style gather-everyone-in-the-library denouement might spoil the book, but P.D. James pulled it off. I’ll be back for more.
May Morrigan is in her bookshop one morning when she—and everyone else in the shop—receives an anonymous text. It contains a reference to a Shakespeare quotation—and seems to be aimed at the vicar and his partner, Juan. The next morning, one of them is dead.
Meanwhile, May’s elderly mother, Minty, is staying with her, her old friend Fletcher, and her two dogs. To her dismay, Minty is quite preoccupied with death herself lately. She also keeps reminiscing about her past in ways that make May wonder what secrets she’s hiding.
As disturbing texts continue to arrive, the Blackheath residents are threatened with further revelations and titillations.
Then Fletcher becomes the focus of the tormenting texter… and barely escapes an attempt on his life.
It’s time for May to send a strong message—and block this killer permanently…
This is the sequel to ‘A Most Unusual Demise’, It adds a generation to the cast with the arrival of May Morrigan’s mother, who has come home to die, preferably at her daughter’s hands. Using the messaging app as a form of poison pen letter was a clever touch. The charm of this series hangs on making May and Fletch likeable while still presenting May as someone who is ready to use murder to solve problems. I was impressed that the story still managed to be quite upbeat.
This week, I bought five books: four Christmas-themed thrillers/mysteries and the first book in a cosy mystery series.
‘The Perfect Christmas‘ (2026) sees the Christmas plans of a woman with an obsessive need for perfection and an absolute need for control, undermined by a shadowy external threat.
‘The Last Chritmas Eve‘ (2026) has all the makings of festive psychological thriller, a family hiding secrets, a fierce blizzard, a blood-soaked woman at the door…
‘Merry Little Lies‘ (2026) turns a traditional family Christmas with all the trimmings, including a gothic house, into a psychological thriller with a body count.
‘Jay to the World‘ (2026) is this year’s Meg Langslow Christmas mystery. Listening to Bernadette Dunne telling us of the latest murders in Caerphilly, Virginia has become a Christmas tradition in our house. This will be our fifth Christmas visit with Meg and her family.
I’ve enjoyed Olivia Blacke’s Ruby and Cordelia Mysteries so I searched her back catalogue and the had my eye caught by fthe snappy title Vinyl Resting Place’ (2022) the first book in the Record Shop cosy mystey trilogy.
Nothing matters more to Lorelai than creating the perfect Christmas. The house must look beautiful, the food must be spectacular and everything must be magical for her family.
But this year, things won’t go to plan.
At first, Lorelai convinces herself she’s imagining things. She’s exhausted and determined not to let anything ruin the festive season. But when a chilling threat is delivered, it becomes clear that a figure at the window was never a figment of her imagination.
Someone is watching her.
As disturbing events begin to escalate, and her carefully controlled life starts to unravel, Lorelai realises the danger isn’t just outside her home… it’s buried deep within her past.
It’s Christmas Eve and Holly Martin is bringing her new boyfriend home to meet the family. But from the moment they arrive, it’s clear the Martins are far from picture perfect. Secrets linger in every room of the house, and nobody wants to talk about what happened years before.
Then there’s a knock at the door. And standing outside in the snow is a young woman covered in blood.
With the blizzard raging and no way to call for help, the family have no choice but to bring the stranger inside. But as the hours tick towards midnight, somebody is determined to make sure this is the family’s final holiday together.
Because in this house, everyone is lying… but not everyone will live to see Christmas Day.
At Lazarus House, Christmas is done properly: candles, old silver, roaring fires, snow on the lawns and a family determined to carry on as normal.
Eloise Hart has been welcomed into that family as Sebastian Lazarus’s devoted girlfriend. Since the accident that left him in a coma, she has stayed by his bedside, supported his mother and become part of the household.
But Sebastian’s sister, Imogen, doesn’t trust her. She thinks the woman everyone calls loyal may be something far more dangerous.
Then a member of the family vanishes during a Boxing Day blizzard.
As the search spreads across the frozen grounds, Lazarus House begins to reveal what it has been hiding. Because the Lazarus family has secrets of its own.
Someone at Lazarus House has lied.
Someone has killed.
And once they discover the truth, they will make sure no one else ever does…
The Christmas season is underway in Caerphilly. The members of the Hollingsworth clan, Meg’s mother’s family, are beginning to arrive in force, and Mother has several special projects underway this year. One is the playhouse she’s having built for Brynn, her two-year-old granddaughter. Brynn is a bright, lively child who loves animals, especially a wounded jay that she and Meg are trying to rehabilitate. She’s also hoping to play matchmaker and set up her cousin with an old friend of hers who was recently widowed.
But all is not going smoothly in Caerphilly. Someone vandalizes the playhouse and sets a dangerous trap that injures and could have killed Mother. She reveals that she has been getting nasty anonymous letters, and it’s obvious that someone is targeting her. Meg realizes she has to do something to figure out who could possibly have it in for her mom.
Meg juggles holiday preparations and celebrations while investigating these potential enemies – not to mention helping repair the damaged playhouse, taking her turn at nursing the wounded jay, and trying to coax Mother’s elderly cousin into a reunion with his long-lost love. When one of Meg’s suspects is found dead under suspicious circumstances, the family rejoices that Mother is out of danger. But Meg isn’t quite sure they’re out of the woods just yet.
When Juni Jessup and her sisters Tansy and Maggie put all their beans in one basket to open Sip & Spin Records, a record-slash-coffee shop in Cedar River, Texas, they knew there could be some scratches on the track, but no one was expecting to find a body deader than disco in the supply closet.
Family is everything to the Jessups, so when their uncle is arrested by Juni’s heartbreaking ex on suspicion of murder, the sisters don’t skip a beat putting Sip & Spin up for bail collateral. But their tune changes abruptly when Uncle Calvin disappears, leaving them in a grind. With their uncle’s freedom and the future of their small business on the line, it’s up to Juni and her sisters to get in the groove and figure out whodunit before the killer’s trail—and the coffee—goes cold.
Music and mocha seem like a blend that should be “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” but caught up in a murder investigation with her family and their life savings on the line, Juni wonders if she might be on the “Highway to Hell” instead.
In the run up to Halloween, I’m reading three books about vampires and one book about human brutality that makes the vampires look like cuddfly kittens. ‘Show Me Your Teeth’ is a stylish sapphic vampire novella; ‘Dawn’s Envoy’ is the fourth book in the series about Aileen Travers, a reluctant vampire. ‘I Travel By Night’ and ‘Last Train from Perdition’ are Weird West vampire novellas. ‘Fantasticland’ is an epistolary novel about a descent into tribal violence.
A little over a year after the company retreat that saw the end of the Beyer Corporation, paranoia begins a slow climb up Anna’s back. She wants to leave Dublin before hunters catch up with her and Michaela, but the familiar twinge of hunger adds a layer of difficulty she’d thought she’d dealt with. Not only that, but Anna reconnects with an old friend at the wrong time, drawing the attention of hunters.
And, at long last, the woman she can’t get out of her head.
Reconnecting with Saira seems wonderful on the surface, but it comes with a price. Anna finds herself firmly on the hunter’s radar and the only way out seems to be a path no vampire has dared tread in a century. But Anna isn’t one to back down from a fight, and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t destroy them first.
This is the sequel to ‘We’re All Monsters Here’ , a fast, fun, sometimes gory, often amusing and surprisingly romantic vampire novella. I was charmed by Anna. She was a ruthless, lethal predator, but she was still the nicest person at the corporate retreat that turned into killzone, so I want to see what she does next.
A favor owed, a hunt like no other.
A courier for the shadow world no more, Aileen’s former protection is gone. Alone but still defiant, she survives one night at a time. Sure, working a dead-end job isn’t part of every young vampire’s dreams, but it pays the bills.
When the darkly seductive Liam calls in a favor, she’ll find her carefully constructed world tilting on its axis as he draws her into a dangerous game against a wily enemy. The High Fey – creatures as powerful and beautiful as they are deadly – have come to town, their motivations unclear as lines are drawn and shadowy alliances made.
And with them, they bring their Wild Hunt where everyone is either predator or prey. Betrayed and marked as its quarry, Aileen will find surviving until dawn has never been this hard.
The only thing that might save her – are the vampires she doesn’t trust.
I read the first three books in the seven-book Aileen Travers series last year and I’ve been meaning to get back to for months now. I enjoy Aileen’s reluctance to become part of the supernatural world and her refusal to do any of the things expected of a newly turned vampire. I admire T.A. White’s ability to build complex plots around Aileen’s attitudes that place her at the centre of conflicts in the communities she doesn’t want to be a part of.
Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where “Fun is Guaranteed!” But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares. How could a group of survivors, mostly teenagers, commit such terrible acts?
Presented as a fact-finding investigation and a series of first-person interviews, FantasticLand pieces together the grisly series of events. Park policy was that the mostly college-aged employees surrender their electronic devices to preserve the authenticity of the FantasticLand experience. Cut off from the world and left on their own, the teenagers soon form rival tribes who viciously compete for food, medicine, social dominance, and even human flesh. This new social network divides the ravaged dreamland into territories ruled by the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, and the Mole People. If meticulously curated online personas can replace private identities, what takes over when those constructs are lost?
I’ve started‘FantasticLand’ (2016), and I’m deeply impressed. The language is wonderful, and the narration is perfect. The content is grim, violent, saddening and horribly believable.
Two short novels featuring the vampiric gunslinger who seeks vengeance and justice across the Old West.
He was once a husband, father, lawyer, and Civil War soldier. Now he is a vampire struggling to hold onto his last thread of humanity—and to destroy the one who made him.
In I Travel by Night, Trevor Lawson handles matters from his lair at the Hotel Sanctuaire in New Orleans. When a prominent lumber man comes to him for help—to find and free his kidnapped daughter—Trevor senses a trap, for the man who signed the ransom note is one he knows too well. Traveling towards a ghost town in the dark of the swamps, Trevor soon finds himself preparing for a final showdown against the purest form of evil in existence: the Dark Society and its bloodthirsty queen.
With his new sidekick, Ann Kingsley, Trevor travels to Montana in Last Train from Perdition. When they try to free a young man from an outlaw gang, an innocent woman is caught in the crossfire. To save her life—and bring their captured fugitives to justice—Trevor and Ann take the train to Helena, never expecting the ambush that awaits them. For an army of the undead has gathered in the snowy darkness with a very special surprise for Ann: a reunion with her father and sister, who no longer resemble the humans she once loved.
I’m developing a taste for Weird West tales. I think it’s partly that the Wild West is largely a folklore/fantasy setting rather than an historical one, so adding a supernatural element isn’t much of a strech.
These two novellas are a roll of the dice. I’m hoping they’ll make me smile.
