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)
• Ruby Ferguson -  Apricot Sky. Fiction. (Originally Published 1952. Reprinted DSP 2021) It is 1948 in Highland Scotland.Mr and Mrs MacAlvey have a house full for the summer. Their younger daughter Raine has just got engaged to the neighbouring framer. Their oldest daughter Cleo is back from 3 years working in America. They have three orphaned grandchildren with them and visiting are two other children. The descriptions of countryside and weather are good and although the story is really a romance there are many funny and witty parts as the summer ends with the wedding.

2 Fiction

2 Recently Written Crime Fiction.

3 Older Crime Stories (2 Short Stories)

2 Non Fiction

9 Books Read in March

APRIL

• M.W.Craven -Dead Ground. Crime Fiction (Published 2021) A new to me author, this is the 4th in a series about Washington Poe who works for the National Crime Agency. The story reaches back to Afghanistan war and looted treasure and is set while Security agencies are setting up protection for an international conference being held at a Cumbrian hotel. Poe is helped by Tilly Bradshaw a socially awkward but brilliant computer whizz and profiler.
• M.W.Craven - The Cutting Season. Crime Fiction Novella (Published 2022) A Short story featuring Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw.
• Jim Kelly - The Great Darkness. Crime Fiction. (Published 2018) 1939 in Cambridge and the first night of the blackout. D.I. Eden Brooke is a  wounded hero of the Great War and finds it impossible to sleep, he has lots of contacts around the city who are also awake during the night. By morning there are two bodies and Brooke has to investigate, what links these crimes and why were soldiers digging during the night. New-to-me-author who has 17 other books in 3 series.
• Jim Eldridge-Murder at Whitechapel Road Station. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) This is another in the Blitz detective series with DCI Coburg and Sergeant Lampson. A prostitute is found murdered in the station tunnels - brutally mutilated - a connection to Jack The Ripper? At the same time Coburg meets the King and Prime minister to look into the whereabouts of  a valet missing from the Palace. 
• Kate Webb - Hollow Grave. Crime Fiction. (Published 2024) In 1999 a group of archaeologists are excavating a Bronze Age burial site in the grounds of Trusloe Hall. Then suddenly one of the group disappears . There is no trace except for a sighting of her and a text message and the police stop looking. In 2020 her bag is discovered in the river that presents new evidence.  This is the third book featuring DI Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad.Did she really just leave or has someone been hiding knowledge for 20 years.
• Robert Peston - The Whistle Blower. Crime Fiction/Thriller  (Published 2021) It is 1997 and a desperate government clings to power in the run-up to the General Election. The opposition are just as desperate to win and political journalist Gil Peck watches. He is a respected commentator on politics and thinks he knows all the rules.
  But when his estranged older sister dies in a hit in run  he begins to believe it was no accident because Clare knew some of the more sensitive secrets in government and one of them might have got her killed.
• Katharine Stewart. - A Croft in the Hills. Non Fiction (First Published 1960) A simple description of what life was like for two townees and their young daughter when they moved to a croft high in the hills above Loch Ness. They kept cattle, sheep and hens and worked their croft with help from friendly neighbours and lived a self-sufficient life for several years. Now known as a classic book of Highland life in the late 1940s/50s. (This was a re-reading for me from many years ago)
• Tracy Chevalier- The Glass Maker. Fiction (Published 2024) Venice 1486, Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here - like the glass the islands maestros spend their lives learning to handle. Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men. But perfection may take a lifetime. Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss. The beads she creates will adorn the necks of empresses and courtesans from Paris to Vienna - but will she ever earn the respect of those closest to her?
• Alys Clare- The Chrysanthemum Tiger. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) The sixth in a series about country doctor and former ships surgeon Gabriel Taverner set in the early C17. He has gone back to sea and has been away for over a year, travelling to Japan where a mysterious encounter with the granddaughter of a vicious leader will change everything and lead to his family in Devon being at risk.
• Elif Shafak - There are Rivers in the Sky. Fiction (Published 2024) A magical story that brings together different times in history all linked by water. In ancient Ninevah hidden in the sand are fragments of a long lost poem. In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born on the mud banks of the Thames. In Turkey in 2014 Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the Tigris and her grandmother travel through war torn lands to reach the sacred valley of their people. In London in 2018,  Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames after the break up of her marriage.

7 Recently Written Crime Fiction (One novella)

2 Fiction

1 Non-Fiction

10 Books Read in April

MAY

• Jim Kelly - The Mathematical Bridge. Crime Fiction (Published 2019) Second in a series set in wartime Cambridge with D. I. Eden Brooke. Snow is falling when a college porter hears a cry from the river - it sounds like a child. The following night an Irish Republicans slogan  is found after an explosion at an electronic factory. There seems to be an Irish connection between the school boy, the church and the bombers.
• Geraldine McCaughrean -Under A Fire Red Sky. Teenage Fiction (Published 2025). 1939 and four young people sit on a train waiting to be evacuated from London while war is threatened. They decide they are too old to be sent out of the city and get off the train. What follows is two years of friendship and growing up with much time spent under the London blitz. Definitely teenage with more descriptions of the horrors of the London Blitz than a book for younger children would have.
• Mel Starr - A Polluted Font. Crime Fiction (Published 2023) The 16th Chronicle of Hugh De Singleton, Surgeon and Bailiff to Lord Gilbert. When Hugh and Kate's newborn is taken to the church to be baptized everyone is astounded to find the font empty- the font isn't leaking but the mystery turns nasty when Father Robert is found lying in the church in a pool of blood.
• Ken Smith -The Way of the Hermit.. Non Fiction (Published 2023) Ken Smith has spent 40 years living in wild places. This book is mainly about him building his own log cabin and his life by a loch in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands. He is a bit strange but good information about wildlife and weather.
• Jim Kelly -The Night Raids. Crime Fiction (Published 2020) Third in a series set in wartime Cambridge and featuring D.I.Eden Brooke. When the body of an elderly woman is found in the ruins of her bombed out house it's assumed she was killed by the bomb, but someone has removed her rings by cutting off her fingers. When the woman's granddaughter is reported missing the next day there is definitely a connection. 
• Francis Duncan- Murder Has a Motive. Crime Fiction (Originally Published 1947. Reprinted 2016) Amateur Sleuth and retired tobacconist Mordecai Tremaine arrives in Dalmering to stay with a friend. Murder is the last thing on his mind but when rehearsals for a village play by an unknown author seem to be causing problems he quickly starts to help the police find a murderer.
• Robert Barnard - The Habit of Widowhood. Crime Fiction. (Published 1996) Short crime stories all featuring murders by husbands and wives. Clever stories .

4 Recently Written Crime Fiction (1 Short Stories)

1 Older Crime Fiction

1 Teenage Fiction.

1 Non Fiction

7 Books Read in May

JUNE

• Nevil Shute - The Far Country. Fiction. (Published 1952)  Out in Australia the Dorman family have had an excellent pay check for the years wool production. Jane Dorman had moved away from England several years previously when she met her Australian husband-to-be after the war. Jane writes regularly to her Aunt, the only person who had supported her move. When she realises her Aunt is very poor she sends money.   The money arrives too late to help but Aunt Ethel gives the money to her granddaughter Jennifer .                                                                                  When Jennifer is left the money specifically to visit Australia she has the chance to leave drab post-war London. The comparisons between dull England and bright new Australia are so interesting to read about.
• Susie Dent - Guilty by Definition. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) This is such a clever and well written story set in the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary offices in Oxford, ( No doubt based on her work at the Oxford English Dictionary).
  In this story, her first novel, a cryptic anonymous coded letter arrives at the offices and seems to have a connection to Dictionary compiler Martha's sister Charlie who disappeared from Oxford 10 years earlier. Martha has just returned to Oxford after working in Berlin. More letters and postcards arrive sent to anyone who knew Charlie and even some who didn't. The team use their knowledge of the history of words to decipher the letters to find out exactly what happened.
  The book mentions all sorts of unusual and unknown words and their origins and makes for a really good story.
• Jim Eldridge - Murder at St. Pauls Cathedral. Crime Fiction ( Published 2025) 8th in a series set in wartime London and featuring DCI Coburg, Sergeant Lampson and Coburg's wife - Rosa Weeks- a well known pianist and singer. One of the senior choristers at the cathedral is found dead in the crypt. The dead man is far from popular and while the night watch strive to protect the cathedral from bombs and fires Coburg is also caught up in a murder at Ealing Studios where his wife has a part in a film for the first time. 
• Robert Peston - The Crash. Crime Fiction/Thriller. The second book featuring Gil Peck. He is now a  financial reporter, the man who first wrote about the banking collapse of 2008. In this book, set 10 years after the first book, his part time lover - a woman high up in the Bank of England - has killed herself. Gil doesn't believe it and soon he is caught up in something bigger and with dangerous people.
• Kate Morton -  Homecoming. Fiction (Published 2023) Two timelines of 2018 and 1959. Jess moved from Australia to London two decades ago but a phone call summons her back to Sydney, where her Grandmother , who brought her up, is seriously ill. A tragedy in the past has been hidden from Jess and as she reads a book about the police case she realises lies have been told to many people over the last 50 years.
• Chris Nickson - No Precious Truth. Crime Fiction. (Published 2025) This author has three series all set in Leeds at various times in history but this is the first of a new series set in WWII, featuring Cathy Marsden - a police sergeant who has been moved to the SIB, usually involved in finding army deserters and home front crimes involving the military. In this story she helps to track down a German spy who escaped from capture.
• Helen Simonson -  The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club. Fiction (Published 2024) It is 1919, the world is changing after the Great War. Constance has been managing a farm during the war but men now take preference over women after the war and she is now looking for a position so she can keep herself. She's sent as a lady's companion to an old family friend convalescing at a seaside hotel. Then she meets Poppy, the daughter of a woman also living at the hotel. Poppy is running a motorcycle taxi and courier business to employ other women who worked as motorcycle women during the war and Constance's  life is set to change in many ways. 

4 Recently Written Crime Fiction 

3 Fiction