This Week in Books – 01-10-25

This Week in Books is a feature hosted by Lipsy at Lipsyy Lost and Found that allows bloggers to share:

• What they’ve recently finished reading
• What they are currently reading
• What they are planning to read next

A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words.

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I finished reading Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd which I really enjoyed. There’s a sequel coming early next year which I’m already looking forward to. I also managed to read The Burial Plot by Elizabeth Macneal. It was original, but I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I expected to although I think it’s a case of me, not the book.

The first in a sparkling new 1950s seaside mystery series, featuring sharp-eyed former nun Nora Breen.

In a house like Gulls Nest, curiosity might prove fatal . . .

After thirty years in a convent, Nora Breen has thrown off her habit. Her fellow sister Frieda has gone missing and it’s up to Nora to find her. Nora’s only clue is that Frieda was last seen at Gulls Nest boarding house. So she travels down to the seaside town of Gore-on-Sea, takes a room and settles in to watch and listen. Over dubious – and sometimes downright inedible – dinners, Nora gathers evidence about the other lodgers. At long last, she has found an outlet for her powers of observation and, well, nosiness.

When one of the lodgers is found dead, Nora decides she must find the murderer. Not least because she suspects the victim knew Frieda. Could solving this mystery help her to understand what has happened to her friend?

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She wants him. He’ll take Everything.

London, 1839. Bonnie is running from a terrible crime. She and her lover Crawford have gone too far this time, and now she needs to disappear.

When Crawford secures her a position as lady’s maid in a grand house on the Thames, Bonnie thinks she has found safety. But Endellion is a strange place, haunted by the recent death of its mistress. As Bonnie comes to understand the family who live here, she begins to question what secrets might be lying behind the house’s paper-thin walls. Because Crawford is watching, and perhaps he is plotting his greatest trick yet…

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I’m currently reading The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt.

From bestselling and award-winning author Patrick deWitt comes a novel about an ordinary man who thought life’s surprises were behind him – until a chance encounter changed everything

Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior centre that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, Bob begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed.

Behind Bob Comet’s straight man facade is the story of an unhappy child’s runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian’s vocation, and the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses.

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My next read is anyone’s guess. Maybe Of the Flesh, a collection of short horror stories from various authors.

Featuring stories from Susan Barker, J K Chukwu, Bridget Collins, Mariana Enríquez, Michel Faber, Lewis Hancox, Emilia Hart, Ainslie Hogarth, Robert Lautner, Adorah Nworah, Irenosen Okojie, Lucy Rose, Lionel Shriver, James Smythe, Lavie Tidhar, Francine Toon, Evie Wyld, and Louisa Young.

These stories from eighteen master storytellers will curdle your blood, haunt your dreams and redefine terror.

From a hungry young woman who is not what she seems, to a boy who has taken his mother’s advice a little too seriously; from disfigured girls willing to pay any price to fit in, to an immigrant who cannot escape his tormentor in his new home country; from a new home with a sinister secret, to the discovery that a long-dead parent’s corpse is perfectly preserved decades later; this collection plumbs the depths of the psyche and dredges up some very modern horrors.

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And that’s my week in books! What are you reading this week? Let me know in the comments! 😎