Please help me find something light to read/listen to.

[StanfordPines]

I love reading crime fiction normally and have a print book and an audio book on the go most of the time.
But I’m rather stressed at work at the moment and I’m feeling that two different murder mysteries is not good for me right now!

Can anyone recommend something easy and light?
Thanks.

I'm reading the Cazalet Chronicles after someone on MN said how good it was.

I normally read sci fi, crime and horror, but now I really look forward to going to bed for my half hour of Cazalets 😊

When you're back in the mood for a crime book The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. I really enjoyed it. Very light hearted.

@iklboogeymum

When you're back in the mood for a crime book The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. I really enjoyed it. Very light hearted.

I’ve listened to that one. I agree that it’s great.

One of the Nancy Mitford books?

Jenny Colman’s The Little Shop of Happy Ever After made me laugh out loud a couple of times.

Coglan sorry not Colman

Any of Milly Johnson's books. The Yorkshire Pudding Club is the first one.

Thank you all. I shall look into these.

Bloody hell, it’s Jenny Colgan not Coglan!

Have you read any of the Bryant & May detective stories? Quite light yet engaging with a dollop of London history

Oh I’ve heard of them but not read them.

Ohh the first Bryant and May book is available from the library!

As a download I meant to add.

Or the “Rivers of London” books. I like a bit of whimsy in my life.

Georgette Heyer is my go-to for stories about nice people, which is how I categorise "light to read". She wrote hordes of historical novels, mainly Regency, and a handful of crime novels, which generally have a romance as a sub-plot.

For the historical, my favourites vary but I would especially recommend Arabella or Frederica. For mystery, Detection Unlimited is fun - but avoid Penhallow! Definitely NOT light.

@AuntieDolly

Or the “Rivers of London” books. I like a bit of whimsy in my life.

I tried so hard to like the Rivers of London books. I’ve read about 5 of them now and get bored about 3/4 of the way through.

You’ve done well to get that far! They are a bit marmite 🙂

I love crime fiction and read lots of other things too, but if you can't resist straying back into stories of murder investigations, Elly Griffiths has written 3 series, totalling 19 books for adults,

• Ruth Galloway (12 books, #13 coming in February) - a mixt an academic and archaeologist who becomes a single mum early in the series and a cast of friends who are in most/all of the books, including police detectives, academic colleagues, a druid and close friend

• a historical series set in and around 20th century Brighton where the author lives - the series characters include theatrical types and police detectives

• Harbinder Kaur is a police detective in 21st century Sussex, and is the recurring main character but with lots of others who play key roles in The Stranger Diaries and The Postscript Murders. She is a single Sikh woman who lives at home with her parents, and worries that she'll never meet anyone special and tell her parents etc as she is a lesbian. Stranger Diaries was originally written as a standalone but I think readers wanted to see this as just the first of another series....

There are also 2 books featuring Justice Jones, sent to a 30s boarding school in Sussex by her dad. She was mostly home educated until her mum's recent death, and of course she's an investigator....

Under her real name, Domenica da Rosa also published 4 contemporary novels before turning to crime. I've read two and enjoiyed them and might well read the others soon to sustain me between Elly Griffiths books.

I also like Frances Brody's series about a 1920s private investigator, Kate Shackleton. I read the first because she lives in Headingley, Leeds where I and all my siblings were brought up (several decades later of course!). There is murder of course but by my standards the series is much more escapist than a lot of non crime books I would read! But never fluffy or silly. She has also written some historical novels set in Leeds under her real name, Frances McNeill.