2026 - 50 Books a Year Challenge

25. From Russia with Love Ian Fleming

This is the first Bond book I've read. Started it yesterday afternoon at 4 and delayed dinner tonight to finish it. My turn to cook so other half not very happy but loved the book and couldn't put it down.

28-The Old Ducks Club-Maddie Please
I read this some years ago, but as I'd recently picked up 2 more of this series from a charity shop I thought I'd give this another look to refresh my memory of the characters. Lots of laughs, perfect holiday read.

Just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

This is a great read. I started yesterday afternoon and I've just finished it. Fabulous book. I just couldn't put it down. It covers the modern Afghan wars including the Mujahadeen, the Taliban and the West but not focussing on the wars themselves but more on the impact of one family.

I found A Thousand Splendid Suns so upsetting and depressing to read, and cried several times over it. It's a great book, as you say, stewaris but incredibly sad and moving.

Book 25 The Night Watch by Sarah Waters.

Ok, but nothing special in my view.

I know what you mean Sparklefizz. I thought the bit where Laila persuaded her daughter to go to an orphanage to reduce the mouths to fed really distressing. It was really sad and makes you appreciate the life we have.

stewaris

#24 The Take Martina Cole

This is the first Martina Cole book I've read. I found it a bit hard to get into but once I'd got into it it was really good. It's a gangster book set in London and not something I usually read.

I’ve read a few Martina Cole books, they are mostly about East London gangland. Some are quite disturbing.

J52 I don't know if I would read anymore of her books as this one was seriously disturbing. Part of it was a father who was probably/possibly a psychopath and didn't make it in the underworld due to his tendencies. Had a son who was a sociopath who killed his rabbit by tying a plastic bag about his neck, then his younger cousin by the same method and then his mother (family assumed it was suicide) the same way and slitting her wrists into the bargain. He then went out and killed a young lad witnessed and reported to the police. A bit too dark for me!

#32. Cry Baby by Mark Billingham.

29-The Various Haunts of Men-Susan Hill
I've had this book on my shelf for ages and was put off starting it as it's well over 500 pages long. But I'm so pleased I started it and shall be looking for more of her books.

When a woman vanishes in the fog, the police are not alarmed as people usually disappear for their own reasons, but when others go missing in the same area they realise they have a big problem.

Book 13: Report for Murder by Val McDermid- The first in her Lindsay Gordon series. Enjoyable but a bit dated.

10 The Last Page Café by Kate Storey

Enjoyable book, easy reading but a fairly predictable ending.

So many books seem to be centred around cafés or bookshops at the moment!

#25 The Darkness and the Deep by Aline Templeton
The wreck of the Knockhaven lifeboat with the loss of all 3 crew is a hard blow for the small Scottish town. It’s harder still when police realise it wasn’t simply a tragic accident. Was it the act of vandals, or linked to the drugs trade which has been affecting the town, or maybe someone was so determined to kill one person that they were prepared to kill another 2? If so, who was the intended victim? DI Marjory Fleming and her team are under pressure from their bosses and the entire community to find out who the killer is.
This book didn’t start well, the first 70 or so pages were so full of unnecessary descriptions of each character and their lives as they were introduced that I had to make myself keep going. It was worth it though. Once the lifeboat went down, the book improved significantly and I was gripped. I was reading it on a train and it was lucky I was going to the terminus as I didn’t notice we had arrived in Edinburgh Waverley and everyone was getting off! 7/10

30-The Summer of Serendipity-Ali McNamara
This is an unusual storyline set in the west coast of Ireland. When a property hunter goes to Ballykiltara, she falls in love with the area and learns about the history and legend of the town. But that is not all she discovers. A mystical, magical story!

London Falling - Patrick Radden Keefe

I am just over half way through this long detailed description of the events surrounding the death of teenager Zac Brettler in 2019.

This is a detailed account of an actual event which happened against a background of the underworld of large scale crime and corruption, centred in London.

I have been drawn more and more to non-fiction over the years but I am well aware that this book would not appeal to everyone.

I've ordered London Falling from my library Magenta . On a waiting list but sounds an interesting read.

14. The Zig-Zag Girl, Elly Griffiths

A detective investigates when a dismembered body is found. Other deaths follow, and they all seem to be connected to magicians’ acts. I particularly enjoyed the story being set in the post war era, and the nostalgia that came with it.

15. Witch Trial, Harriet Tyce

A definite contender for the best book I’ve read this year. There’ve been a couple of dishonourable mentions of the author on the thread and I wasn’t sure whether to download it, but having watched Harriet Tyce on The Traitors I was curious about her writing. Even then I nearly missed out when I considered abandoning it half way through, as themes of witchcraft and the supernatural aren’t really to my taste. I’m so glad I persevered. By the end of this book I found it fiendishly clever, amusing, and very different.

27 The Purple Plain HE Bates
An old book left over from my dad's extensive stock of books after he died. I was surprised about how good it was. It covers the war in Burma but from the point of view of one pilot whose wife had died in a bombing raid on London the night they were married and how he dealt with the aftermath in Burma and had a happy ending.
PS A Thousand Splendid Suns was 26 just forgot to add the number to my post.

stewaris I think H E Bates was a very good writer and although he is not much read now and only really remembered for 'The Darling Buds of May', he was rightly very popular at one time. Perhaps he is due for rediscovery.

I hope so Magenta8. I really enjoyed it and it had a happyish ending so that was good too. Definitely will have a root around through his books and see if there is anything else by HE Bates.

24 The Perfect Child - Lucinda Berry (Audible)

Book club choice. A bit of a misery thriller, although quite tense. Christopher and Hannah have most of the good things in life, a happy marriage, accomplished in their careers and a nice home. Lacking only in the longed for child. Quite by accident, into their lives comes Janie who they first foster and then adopt. At first on the surface she is the perfect child, although it soon becomes apparent that Janie is very damaged through childhood trauma as her manipulative and at times very cruel side comes to the fore, driving a massive wedge between the couple as their lives disintegrate. Unexpectedly, after years of trying Hannah becomes pregnant, when baby Cole finally arrives it is into a divided household where parental delusion has set in and Hannah has come to know Janie is a child that she can never turn her back on and matters go from bad to worse. Annoyingly, the ending was inconclusive and all in all quite a horrifying tale.

I'm currently reading one of your books Maggiemaybe, Witch Trial.

I am currently re-reading 'Wild Swans' by Jung Chang.

It covers the lives of 3 generations of Chinese women, starting with her grandmother who was a concubine, then her mother and finally Jung Chang herself.

Parts of it are completely horrifying, and it makes me sad that all three women endured such terrible lives, because of the country and the time in which they were born.

There are occasional bits that made me smile, such as when she was at primary school and 'lessons went on as normal, except for the period when we had to produce steel.'

Jung Chang now lives in London.

Just the last few pages to go to complete “Wuthering Heights” which I read for the first time as a young teenager.

At the time I thought Heathcliffe to be such a romantic figure, but reading it now I realise that he was a violent, manipulative, sadistic bastard.

Not keen on Emily Brontë either tbh. I read that she tortured her dogs and there are a number of instances in the book where dogs are deliberately treated very cruelly.

#33. A Secret To Die For by Jack Cartwright.

31-You Belong to Me-Mary Higgins Clark
43 year old Regina Clausen travels alone on a luxury liner, but disappears when she disembarks in Hong Kong.
Three years later a clue sets off an investigation to find out what happened to her.
Lots of characters in this story and I kept getting Donald and Douglas muddled up. I wish writers would not use similar names! A great story though with a surprise ending.