Category Archives: 5

August 8, 2026 · 2:04 pm

The Madness of Crowds (Gamache #17) – Louise Penny

The Madness of Crowds - Louise Penny It shows an aerial view of a red car driving through a snowy landscape
The Madness of Crowds – Louise Penny

As I have now finished the 17th Gamache novel, I think it is clear that I am a fan. I think there is 20 with a new one due out soon.

Here’s the blurb …

You’re a coward. 

Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache. 

It starts innocently enough. 

While the residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request. 

He’s asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting Professor of Statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university. 

While he is perplexed as to why the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec would be assigned this task, it sounds easy enough. That is until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture.

They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson’s views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. So that truth and fact, reality and delusion are so confused it’s near impossible to tell them apart.

Discussions become debates, debates become arguments, which turn into fights. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold. 

Abigail Robinson promises that, if they follow her, ça va bien aller. All will be well. But not, Gamache and his team know, for everyone.

When a murder is committed it falls to Armand Gamache, his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and their team to investigate the crime as well as this extraordinary popular delusion.

And the madness of crowds.

This one was set just after the pandemic, which is the first one I can pin down in time. It takes a while to get to the murder, although there is an attempted murder and an almost riot before that. Once again, the delightful community of Three Pines is involved (there is even a joke made about the number of murders in Three Pines!). Reine-Marie has a bigger role in this one, which I enjoyed and I hope to see again. Jean-Guy struggles with his feelings about being the parent of a disabled child – a major plot point is mercy killings – removing the elderly and inform to leave more resources for everyone else).

It’s winter and Penny does a fabulous job of describing the bitter coldness, but also the joys of hot chocolate.

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August 5, 2026 · 3:12 pm

Handiwork – Sara Baume

Cover of Handiwork by Sara Baume
handiwork – Sara Baume

I can’t remember where I first heard about this book, but I do like a ‘craft memoir’.

Here’s the blurb …

handiwork is a contemplative short narrative from acclaimed writer and visual artist Sara Baume. It charts her daily process of making and writing, exploring what it is to create and to live as an artist. handiwork offers observations at once gentle and devastating, on the nature of art, grief and a life lived well. Baume’s first work of non-fiction offers readers a glimpse into the process of one Ireland’s best writers, written with the keen eye for nature and beauty as well as the extraordinary versatility Sara Baume’s fans have come to expect.

This is beautifully written – I will have to read more of Ms Baum’s work. It’s also a very personal account of making things, family, collections of objects, and out space – how we fill it and how we use it.

I do this too – knitting or stitching in front of the TV.

The television flickers and I listen to it. In most cases, a story can be followed from sound alone, but I glance up every now and again in order to identify speakers, in order to maintain some kind of visual momentum through each programme.

This too withe post its

[…] several post-its glued to the window frame – they are luminous pink, green and yellow; they are measurements and calculations, instructions and reminders; they are mantras, spells, codes.

Surely all craft’s people know this

it is not always a case of finishing one thing and going on to the next.’

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July 29, 2026 · 4:31 pm

A Tale for the Time Being – Ruth Ozeki

A Tale for the Time Being – Ruth Ozeki

I don’t know where I first heard about this novel. I think it was one of the Lit Hub Recommends emails, which is a fabulous resource.

Here is the blurb …

Nao lives in Tokyo. She is sixteen, and has decided to write a diary before she kills herself, she particularly wants to chronicle the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun. Ruth lives on the Pacific coast of Canada. A few months after the 2010 tsunami she finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore.

This is a beautiful, enchanting novel. Like Ruth, I wanted to keep reading Nao’s story. The structure is fabulous, we switch between Nao’s and Ruth’s perspective. Learning about their lives both inner and outer. Who knew that Japanese school children could be so brutal?

A review

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July 24, 2026 · 5:17 pm

The Matchbox Girl – Alice Jolly

The Matchbox Girl – Alice Jolly

All I knew about this novel was that it had won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. I love historical fiction, so I bought both a digital and audio copy (instant gratification!).

Here’s the blurb …

Adelheid Brunner does not speak. She writes and draws instead and her ambition is to own one thousand matchboxes. Her grandmother cannot make sense of this, but Adelheid will stop at nothing to achieve her dream. She makes herself invisible, hiding in cupboards with her pet rat, Franz Joseph, listening in on conversations she can’t fully comprehend.

Then she meets Dr Asperger, a man who lets children play all day and who recognises the importance of matchboxes. He invites Adelheid to come and live at the Vienna paediatric clinic, where she and other children like herself will live under observation.

But the date is 1938 and the place is Vienna – a city of political instability, a place of increasing fear and violence. When the Nazis march into the city, a new world is created and difficult choices must be made.

Why are the clinic’s children disappearing, and where do they go? Adelheid starts to suspect that some of Dr Asperger’s games are played for the highest stakes. In order to survive, she must play a game whose rules she cannot yet understand.

I listened to it – this version – the narrator is fabulous. I didn’t even read the blurb, so I went into this novel completely cold. It took me ages to realise who Doctor A was! It is beautifully written, Adelheid is a fabulous character (I enjoyed being in her head). Ms Jolly must have done a huge amount of research, but the novel wears it lightly – it just felt like someone was telling me a story about Vienna, neurodivergence, and the children’s hospital. I didn’t know anything about the history of autism (despite being a neurodivergent family), so that was all fascinating (and horrifying when the Nazis got involved).

It’s a wonderful way to learn history – Vienna during the war, autism research, and the treatment of neurodivergent children. I hope all children have a Sister Viktorine in their lives.

A review

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July 3, 2026 · 10:05 am

John of John – Douglas Stuart

John of John – Douglas Stuart

Someone recommended this online and I immediately downloaded the Audible book.

Here’s the blurb …

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.

While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.

I have been having a bit of a Scottish islands thing – this novel, and the movie The Road Damce. This is my first Douglas Stuart novel, but it won’t be my last. I loved this story of religion, family, community, and forbidden love. The writing is beautiful – I particularly enjoyed all of the references to colour. John is a weaver (as well as a farmer) and he and Cal have an extraordinary eye for colour. The descriptions of the landscape and the farming practices are brilliant. It is a small, poor, very religious community with not a lot to keep the young people at home – fishing and farming. Cal is gay, openly on the mainland, but not out at home. His community is presbyterian (of the old sort) and he would be demembered if anyone knew. However, his father, who leads the singing at church, has a secret.

John, with his casual violence, would be a monster, but we see things from his point of view and can appreciate his struggle between faith and love.

This is the story of many remote communities where the living is hard, money scarce and opportunities few. Yet it is not depressing to read and in the end there is hope for a better future.

A review.

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June 28, 2026 · 1:49 pm

Whistler – Ann Patchett

Whistler – Ann Patchett

I listened to this one – it is narrated by Ann Patchett!

Here’s the blurb …

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

This was a lovely story – no one had evil intent – it was about ordinary people doing the best they could. It’s about family, forbidden love, sibling relationships, and societal expectations. I do like to read a story where the author is kind to the characters – shows multiple sides so we can understand their behavior.

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June 14, 2026 · 3:46 pm

Slough House – Mick Herron (Slough House #7)

Slough House – Mick Herron

I accidentally skipped this one – I realised while reading Bad Actors, so I have gone back to listen to it.

Here’s the blurb …

A year after a calamitous blunder by the Russian secret service left a British citizen dead from novichok poisoning, Diana Taverner is on the warpath. What seems a gutless response from the government has pushed the Service’s First Desk into mounting her own counter-offensive – but she’s had to make a deal with the devil first. And given that the devil in question is arch-manipulator Peter Judd, she could be about to lose control of everything she’s fought for.

Meanwhile, still reeling from recent losses, the slow horses are worried they’ve been pushed further into the cold. Slough House has been wiped from Service records, and fatal accidents keep happening. No wonder Jackson Lamb’s crew are feeling paranoid. But have they actually been targeted?

With a new populist movement taking a grip on London’s streets, and the old order ensuring that everything’s for sale to the highest bidder, the world’s an uncomfortable place for those deemed surplus to requirements. The wise move would be to find a safe place and wait for the troubles to pass.

But the slow horses aren’t famed for making wise decisions.

I am always completely horrified by the machinations between people who are meant to be on the same side. Lady Di in particular.

Lamb was awful, Catherine Standish sensible and resolute, Dander impulsive, River heroic, Roddy as useless and useful as ever, and Louisa and Lech just trying to get by. The pace is fast, and some of their ‘on their feet’ thinking is hilarious (Lech describing a dead person as pretending to be a corpse for sexual reasons). The descriptions are great, and this one is very current.

I think there is only one more to go – Clown Town.

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June 10, 2026 · 1:34 pm

All the Devils are Here (Gamache #16) – Louise Penny

All the Devils are Here – Louise Penny

I love Gamache novels. I am restricting myself so I don’t run out.

Here’s the blurb for this one …

On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand’s godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man’s life. 

When a strange key is found in Stephen’s possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the S ret , Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d’Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art. 

It sends them deep into the secrets Armand’s godfather has kept for decades. 

A gruesome discovery in Stephen’s Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized. 

Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family. 

For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide.

I wondered, after I finished the last book, how things would progress with Jean-Guy and Annie in Paris. But I didn’t need to worry because the action moved to Paris!

This book has a lot going on – conspiracy theorists would be in seventh heaven, but, as per usual, I liked the relationships (particularly between Armand and Daniel), not to mention the Paris scenery. The crime is complicated and many people are involved in solving it – it gets very tense at times. Who can be trusted? And why does Stephen have two nickels glued together? And how can Daniel afford a new appartement and to send his girls to an elite Parisian private school?

It’s so good! And now I need to pause before reading/listening to the next one.

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May 14, 2026 · 2:09 pm

Holding – Graham Norton

Holding – Graham Norton

I started listening to this one on a road trip and finished it later at home. It’s narrated by Graham Norton! This is the second of his novels that I have read – I have also listened to A Keeper.

Here’s the blurb …

From Graham Norton—the BAFTA-award-winning and hugely popular BBC America television host—comes a charming debut novel set in an idyllic Irish village where a bumbling investigator has to sort through decades of gossip and secrets to solve a mysterious crime. “With its tale of provincial life, gimlet-eyed spinsters, and thwarted love…it feels almost like a Miss Marple mystery written by Colm Tóibín” (New York Times).

The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama, and yet its inhabitants are troubled: Sergeant P.J. Collins hasn’t always been this overweight; Brid Riordan, a mother of two, hasn’t always been an alcoholic; and elegant Evelyn Ross hasn’t always felt that her life was a total waste.

So when human remains—suspected to be those of Tommy Burke, a former lover of both Brid and Evelyn—are discovered on an old farm, the village’s dark past begins to unravel. As a frustrated P.J. struggles to solve a genuine case for the first time in his professional life, he unearths a community’s worth of anger and resentments, secrets and regrets.

Darkly comic, at times profoundly sad, and “especially inviting because of its tongue-in-cheek wit” (Kirkus Reviews), Holding is a masterful debut. Graham Norton employs his acerbic humor to breathe life into a host of lovable characters, and explore—with searing honesty—the complexities and contradictions that make us human.

This was great – witty and moving with a lot of insightful observations about small towns, relationships, etc.

How is it possible for people to be so talented in a number of fields? His talk show is fabulous and now he is a wonderful author. Although, I suspect his ability to engage with people makes him good at both.

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May 13, 2026 · 2:09 pm

Nonesuch – Francis Spufford

Nonesuch – Francis Spufford

I have read two other Spufford books – Golden Hill and Light Perpetual, and I liked them both. So when a friend said she had this one, I was keen to read it.

Here’s the blurb …

It’s the summer of 1939. London is on the brink of catastrophic war. Iris Hawkins, an ambitious young woman in the stuffy world of City finance, has a chance encounter with Geoff, a technical whizz at the BBC’s nascent television unit.

What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into an adventure of otherworldly pursuit – into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned, and history hangs by a thread. Soon there are Nazi planes overhead. But Iris has more to contend with than the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand.

And only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.

Mr Spufford has such a wonderful way with words. His descriptions, in particular, are fabulous. I could see the cluttered attic, Iris’s flat in Chelsea, etc. I also think Iris and Geoff’s relationship is lovely – a grownup relationship with ups and downs and doubts.

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