Books Read 2025

JANUARY 2025

Edited by Martin Edwards - Lessons in Crime. Crime Fiction Short Stories. (British Library Crime Classics republished 2024) These 15  stories are all set in schools or university and range from Arthur Conan Doyle to a surprise modern story from Jacqueline Wilson.

Sylvia Townsend Warner - Winter in the Air. Fiction. Short Stories (Originally Published 1955) Some of these stories are so short and very weird.

Elizabeth Anthony - Dramatic Murder. Crime Fiction ( Originally Published 1948. BLCC Reprint 2024) Playwright Dimpsie McCabe has invited all his friends from the theatre world to join him at his castle in Scotland for Christmas. However, the festivities haven't even started when two latecomers find Dimpsie dead amongst the branches of his Christmas tree that he had been decorating. The death seems to be accidental caused by faulty electrics but when another member of the party dies a few weeks later the police and some of Dimpsie's friends become suspicious.

Edited by Vaseem Khan - Murder in Harrogate; Stories inspired by the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival. Crime Fiction. Short Stories. (Published 2024) All these stories are by modern crime writers and are set in Harrogate in Yorkshire. Some are set in the early part of the twentieth century and others are up to date.

Evie Woods - The Story Collector. Fiction (Published 2024) In 1911 Ireland, Anna, a young farm girl, volunteers to help an intriguing American visitor translate the old stories of the fairy world for his university studies. In 2011Sarah Harper boards a plane for the west coast of Ireland, she was supposed to be heading to her parents home in Boston - running away from sadness and a failed marriage.

Candace Robb -A Snake in the Barley. Crime Fiction. (Published 2024). The 15th in a series featuring Owen Archer and his Apothecary wife Lucy, and set in 14th Century York. Tom Merchet, taverner and good friend has been missing for five days, his wife Bess is frantic. As Owen hunts for clues, Bess visits the lodgings of a mystery woman that Tom was seen visiting. The hunt sends Owen to Beverly in Yorkshire.

Catherine Aird - Inheritance Tracks. Crime Fiction. (Published 2019) A Sloan and Crosby police mystery. Five strangers attend the solicitor, they don't know each other but it turns out they are all due to inherit from from a distant relative, but not until another relative is found. Then one of the group is murdered.

Ann Granger - Death on the Prowl. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) This is a Campbell and Carter mystery - the 8th in this police series. When the cleaners of a remote Cotswold cottage find a body the police aren't sure who is laying dead, but a neighbour identifies him as Jerry Harrison, the man who inherited the cottage from an aunt but never mixes with other people and lets out the cottage every summer. There are no witnesses and no information so it takes a while to get to the answer.

Lettice Cooper - Tea on Sunday. Crime Fiction (Originally Published 1973, reprinted BLCC 2024) . On a cold winter day in London Alberta Mansbridge sets the tea table with 9 cups ready to welcome eight guests she knows well for Sunday afternoon tea. But when the guests arrive they get no response and the police find her dead, strangled. She wouldn't have let anyone in that she didn't know so all the eight guests are the suspects. Although this was written in 1970 it's written in vintage murder mode. A good story.

Kristin Hannah - The Nightingale. Fiction (Published 2015) Info from Amazon-   This story is about what it was like to be a woman during World War II, when women’s stories were all too often forgotten or overlooked . . . Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac are two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals and passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path towards survival, love and freedom in war-torn France.          Really good well written story which might be made into a film sometime.

Arthur Ransome - Winter Holiday. Children's Fiction. (Published 1933) Another story of the Swallows and Amazons. This time two other children are staying in the Lake District with their old nanny while their parents are away abroad. The children set up a way of signalling to each other and as the lake freezes over they plan all sorts of adventures. Then Nancy goes down with mumps and the winter holiday is extended.

Claire Keegan - Walk the Blue Fields. Fiction Short Stories (Published 2007) Short stories all set in Ireland some are based on old folk tales.

12 Books Read in January

2 Older Crime Fiction ( 1 Short Stories)

4 Fiction ( 2 Short Stories)

5 Recently Written Crime Fiction (1 Short Stories)

1 Children's Book

FEBRUARY

• Clare Chase - Mystery at Apple Tree Cottage. Crime Fiction (Published 2020) A Slightly cosy crime, the second in a series. Easy reading but one of those books where the main character, Eve Mallow - an obituary writer - gets too involved with a murder in the village.
• Daniel Smith -The Spade as Mighty as the Sword;The story of the Dig for Victory campaign during WWII. Non Fiction. (Published 2011) .This looks at publications, people and news report of how the Dig for Victory campaign persuaded so many people and organisations to grow much needed vegetables  and grains etc to replace the food which had previously been imported.
• Alex Pine - The Winter Killer. Crime Fiction.(Published 2022) As the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, DI James Walker receives a phone call that puts paid to his Christmas break. During the wedding of the year at a lakeside hotel, the bride's sister has vanished. Before the wedding night is out, the lake is being searched for a body.
• Kristin Hannah - True Colours. Fiction. (Published 2009).Covering thirty years in the lives of three sisters growing up on a horse and cattle ranch with their widowed and unhappy Father. Winona is the eldest, and becomes an intelligent lawyer, but feels a failure. Aurora is married with two children - she tries to be the peacemaker but the story is really about the youngest- beautiful and popular Vivi-Ann. When a stranger - Dallas Rainbird - Native American is hired as a ranch hand everything changes.
• Robin Blake - Spoiler's Prey. Crime Fiction.(Published 2024) This is the 9th book in a series set in 1700's with Coroner Titus Cragg and his doctor friend Luke Fidelis. Titus is called to a remote village where he finds turmoil due to the Squires plans to enclose land worked in the old way by the villagers. After a riot a man is found dead on the steps of the village cross and Titus has to work out exactly what happened.
• Francis Duncan - So Pretty a Problem. Crime Fiction (Originally published 1950. Reprinted 2016.When Artist Adrian Carthallow is found dead his wife owns up to killing him - accidently. Although all doesn't seem so straightforward so it's lucky for Inspector Penrose that amateur sleuth Mordecai Tremaine is holidaying in the area and knows the family and their friends.

3 Recently Written Crime Fiction

1 Older Crime Fiction

1 Fiction

1 Non Fiction

6 Books Read in February

MARCH

• Molly Clavering -Yoked With a Lamb. Fiction. ( Originally Published 1938. Reprinted by DSP 2021). The townsfolk of Haystoun on the Scottish Borders are in a tizzy because Andrew and Lucy Lockhart are returning to their home to restart their marriage, several years after Andrew ran off with another woman. Andrew's cousin Kate Heron is brought in to help with refurbishing the house for their return. There are an array of characters in this gentle book including Mrs Anstruther, her nephew Robin, others of Kates family and awful Aunt Charlotte.
• Jim Eldridge -Murder at Lord's Station. Crime Fiction. (Published 2024). This is another of this series featuring DCI Coburg and Sergeant Lampson and set in London during the 1941 Blitz. The body of a man has been found at the disused Lord's Underground Station. He is soon recognised as a Jamaican serving in the Forces here and associated with the Empire XI cricket team due to play a team from Britain. A complicated case where various crimes overlap.
• Edited by Cecily Gayford -  Murder by Candlelight. Short Crime Stories (Published 2024) There are ten short stories in this book dating from early C20. Authors include Catherine Aird, Cyril Hare and Simon Brett. 
• Patrick Grant - Less. Non Fiction. (Published 2024) His story of working with clothes, the cost to the planet etc.
• Rory Clements - A Cold Wind From Moscow. Crime Fiction ( Published 2025) MI5 has a mole, who is it. The boss Freya Bentall can't trust anyone except Tom Wilde to find out. He was hoping to return to his quiet life as a Professor of History in Cambridge but when a man is murdered in his university rooms he is soon draw back to help find the person spreading the secrets of Atomic Bomb making to Russia. 8th in this series. 
• Cecily Gayford - editor. - Murder in a Heatwave. Crime Fiction Short Stories(Published 2023). This book contains 10 short stories, all set in summer, dating back to Conan-Doyle and more recent Ian Rankin.
• Carol Carnac - Murder as a Fine Art. Crime Fiction ( Published BLCC 2025.Originally 1953). A civil servant at the newly formed Ministry of Fine Arts is crushed beneath a gigantic marble bust which he'd previously said he would like to see toppled. Inspector Julian Rivers has to work out the how and the why and exactly which member of the ministry did it while negotiating through a department with lots of grievances about modern art and rumours of forgeries.
• Rowena Farre - A Time From the World. Non Fiction. (Published 1962 Reprinted 2013). Rowena's story of her time spent in the 1950's travelling and working with Gypsy families. (A re-reading)

1 Fiction

2 Recently Written Crime Fiction.

3 Older Crime Stories (2 Short Stories)

2 Non Fiction