The Not So New 2024 50 Books a Year - Thread 2

I think ‘Seven Deaths’ would make a better TV series than it is a book! I’m surprised no one has done it - business opportunity for us ladies?

SueDonim

No 29. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. I gave up a third of the way through this and just read the last chapter. I’m not very good with magical realism!

I gave up on this too.

#82. The New Wife by JP Delaney.

I have been out of the loop with this thread for a while and have lost count of the number of books I have read. At present, I am reading the fourth out of a set of six Inspector Ramsay books, an early series by Ann Cleeves, which I am very much enjoying. I think this will be book number forty.

Taking note of opinions from Sue Donin and Maggiemaybe re. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, it's off my "to be read pile" I trust your judgements and thanks. I don't want to waste the time, I don't think it will be one for me.

Book 50: Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him by Tracy Borman. This is a book less about Henry's wives . It looks at the manipulative men who often pulled his strings. I really enjoyed it!

Oh yes, I gave up on this one as well, SueDonim. It just wasn’t my sort of thing at all. If I remember correctly, it went down well with the other members of my reading group though.

No 29. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. I gave up a third of the way through this and just read the last chapter. I’m not very good with magical realism!

97-2 Sisters Detective Agency-James Patterson and Candice Fox. When attorney Rhonda Bird's father dies, she discovers she has a 13 year old half-sister and he had accumulated an enormous stash of money. As she hadn't heard from him in over 20 years this was all a big surprise.

#49 Not Till We Are Lost Dennis E Taylor.
Number 5 in the Bobiverse series. I still enjoy this unusual sci-fi series but it has gone a bit downhill. I hope the next installment will be better.

#81. Believe Me by JP Delaney.

96-Under a Greek Moon-Carol Kirkwood. I didn't know our favourite weather lady had written books, so was curious when I found this one in the swap kiosk. A very nice romance story with a bit of glamour thrown in.

63 The Woman on the Ledge - Ruth Mancini

I'd recommend this to readers who enjoy a good revenge thriller, this has all the ingredients of a first class multi layered crime classic. The book open in part 1, on the twenty fifth floor roof terrace of a bank, it's the Christmas party and the main character, improbably named temp, Tate Kinsella (female) has come up there for a smoke and a breath of fresh air. There she meets, teetering on the edge, the woman of the title, about to fling herself off. Tate manages to talk her down. Only to find at a later stage a woman's body is found on the pavement below and Tate is the main suspect for her murder, murder of a woman she has only just met! As her lawyer tries to build her defence case, it becomes apparent her story is shot full of holes and nothing is quite what it seems. I'd say there is an element of suspending belief to get to grips with the back story, which is multi layered and goes back quite a while into Tate's formative years, but the plot, that is certainly complex drives the book along at a rapid pace and I was hooked as to where it was going in the subsequent parts of the book. Without giving too much away, definitely a page turner.

51. An Extra Pair of Hands, Kate Mosse

The respected author wrote this account of her own experience of caring for her parents and her mother-in-law, much of which took place during the pandemic lockdowns. Often moving, sometimes amusing, above all thought-provoking, this book makes for an interesting read for those of us (the majority) who’ve ever been involved in any way with caring, particularly for the older generation.

Book 167, The White Knight, by Scott Mariani. Another in the Ben Hope series. I liked it, but not as much as the last one.

No. 66 The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths
No. 67 Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths

These 2 books are from EG's other series about the detective Harpinder Kaur. They are a good read and full of the humour she showed in her much-loved Ruth Galloway/Nelson series.

#80. The Man In Black & Other Stories by Elly Griffiths.

Book 166, The Tudor Deception, by Scott Mariani, a bloomin` good read!
Diggingdoris, I love the Amos Decker series, but I also love everything I`ve read by David Baldacci.

#48 Unruly David Mitchell.
I 'read' this as an audiobook narrated by the author. Much as I enjoy David Mitchell as a comedian I don't enjoy his voice for extended periods. However, the book about England's kings and queens from Arthur (he didn't exist) to Elizabeth I is very good. Funny, irreverent and educational, I enjoyed it.

95-Memory Man-David Baldacci. This is the first of the Amos Decker series, and I can't wait to read the next one.
Amos has hyperthymesia which means he never forgets anything, so when he's told that someone has admitted they killed his family 16 months ago, he is desperate to meet this man.
What a great story this is, unputdownable!

Will let you know if Unravelling Oliver is worth a read, I had never come across her until your review of Strange Sally Diamond, which as you state was a brilliant novel.

Thanks for the feedback Bridie, Since reading Strange Sally Diamond, which was outstanding, I've thought, I must read another of hers. However, possibly that one received the accolades and acclaim it did because of how good it was. I'd never heard of her before, I'll give her another go though but with the thought that previous books may not be as engaging, she set a high bar with that one.

Lying in wait...by Liz Nugent, disappointing, I love her novel Strange Sally Diamond, this was just run of the mill with a few twists, I picked up Unravelling Oliver also by her at the charity shop... hoping that's a better read.

Book 56
The Memory of Animals - Claire Fuller
Love Claire Fullers writing, but this one wasn’t really for me.
A pandemic sweeps the world, far more devastating than Covid, and a unit is opened to test an experimental vaccine.
The Guinea pigs become seriously ill, and the unit is abandoned.
Our main character Neffy, tells her story through an experimental machine brought into the unit by one of the other volunteers, which takes her back to different times in her life.
She also writes letters to a octopus, it just didn’t do it for me, disappointing.

No 28 Sisters by a River by Barbara Comyns. This is an autobiographical novel about the author’s childhood in a family of six girls, with a cast of startling characters and even more startling events, such as her father taking pot shots at her mother with his rifle but her mother being unaware because she was deaf!