50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Three

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.
The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2025, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

If possible, please can you embolden your titles and maybe authors as well of books you've read or going to read? It makes it much easier to keep track, especially when the threads move quickly at this time of the year.

The first thread of the year is here and the second thread here.

It starts in India and there's a cholera epidemic that kills her parents.

I’m guessing you’ve read Vera and Shetland @EineReiseDurchDieZeit and Jackson Brodie..

Bad Actors by Mick Herron

I thought this was great. Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings appear as very thinly disguised caricatures and one of them has something enjoyable happen to him (by enjoyable, I mean enjoyable for any reader who thinks the pair of them should be hung up by a sensitive part of their respectively revolting anatomies for a long and painful time).

There’s a fabulous scene with Shirley and an unexpected hero.

I’ve fallen a bit in love with Lech. This worries me because it probably means he’s going to die horribly at some point.

Eine have you read Tim Weaver’s David Raker series? Bit different as he’s a missing person investigator rather than a detective but I really like them.

Noooo

I'm very very new to the Crime Series Genre so far only Maeve Kerrigan and Ruth Galloway

I have read the Kate Atkinsons (except the new one)

I haven't @ChessieFL thanks!

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie – yes! I’m still not over the death of a certain someone from book 6. I read that the tv adaptations are running books 6 and 7 together. I wonder if they will change any of the deaths? I feel that we are almost in Game of Thrones territory lol. I’m pleased to hear that one of the dreadful ones has some comeuppance!

@highlandcoo – excellent! I attended a book event last year where both Lynne McEwan and Marion Todd appeared together. Both seemed as lovely as Elly Griffiths.

Marion Todd’s DI Clare Mackay are set in St Andrews. You probably don’t need anymore encouragement lol. @EineReiseDurchDieZeit – you’ve already had Lynne McEwan recommended, I’d add Marion Todd too. Also, I cant remember if you have read Elly Griffith’s Harbinder Kaur books? Only 4 or 5 of them. I prefer Harbinder to Ruth.

@Tarragon123 Things may remain rather enigmatic in that direction. It’s a mystery, wrapped inside an enigma, wrapped inside one of Lamb’s discarded takeaway boxes, and covered in secrecy, lies, damned lies and the subtle aftermath of one of Lamb’s farts.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit The Patricia Cornwell books are good. They're about Kay Scarpetta who is a medical examiner. While she is responsible for conducting the autopsies, she works alongside the police to uncover the back stories of some of the people who end up on her table.

I found these fascinating and had many enjoyable breaks at work or quiet afternoons with a bottle of plonk reading them.

I had a couple left and was waiting for them to become available in the library and forgot all about them. All these years later, I have found out that Cornwell continued writing, and there are so many more books for me to read 😁

Today I have started to read The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths. I got through a couple of chapters and realised I have read this series.

Does anyone have any suggestions on similar books please?

Due to being mentioned on here, I have been looking through the Booker Prize winners and there are a number I wish to pick up.

@LuckyMauveReader

Have you done Maeve Kerrigan?

Posted too soon yes I read the Patricia Cornwell books as a teenager they go off the boil in the end, get very silly.

@Tarragon123

Are they the Brighton ones

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit Unfortunately, I lost my love of reading as a teen until my mid to late twenties. I have a great deal of catching up to do.

Maeve Kerrigan's books look appealing with some interesting storylines. Thanks for the suggestion.

Looking through the list of Elly Griffith books, it appears that I have only read a few and not in the correct order, so I will revisit them also.

@LuckyMauveReader

I joined the thread 5 years ago to get me out of a slump where I hadn't read a book in 2 years it's certainly worked!

While I've always loved books, some years I have read non-stop, nothing particularly cultured, or I have read only a handful.

Joining this thread has inspired me and I have read more in 2 months than I have done for the previous 2-3 years combined. I am also albeit tentatively trying different genres. Wandering around Waterstones yesterday did nothing to help with deciding what to read next as I wanted a pile of at least thirty books so came out without any at all. I just simply couldn't choose 1.

I felt it best to come on here instead.

Oh no @SheilaFentiman, you've got me bang to rights guv'nor and no mistake!

I did not, in fact, read The Secret Garden last year. I actually read Tom's Midnight Garden and it was in 2020!!!!!!! So now I'd better read The Secret Garden.

I definitely did read Annie Bot though, I didn't make that up.

No, those are a different series again, are based around a stage magician from the forties. The Harbinder Kaur ones are set on the South coast to begin but I don’t think it’s Brighton.

Also, a lovely cosy series that this thread got me into a few years ago is Hazel Holt’s Mrs Mallory.

I'm reading Annie Bot at the moment, it's raising a few eyebrows but I'm enjoying reading it if that's the right word. I'd recommend it.

I've also just enjoyed the short book (180 pages) If cats disappeared from the world by Genki Kawamura and would recommend it.

Two more for my list:

7 Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan. This was popular on the thread last year and I can see why. It is in two parts - in the first half, a group of young men from Glasgow in their late teens and very early 20s spend a weekend in Manchester in the 1980s, going to gigs, soaking up the music scene and establishing a lifelong friendship. The second half takes place 30 years later and one of the men has just been diagnosed with cancer. This is very evocative of a time and a place, and tells a lovely story of male friendship.

8 On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back by Stacey Dooley. This book focuses on some of the women featured in Dooley's documentaries in countries including the US, Turkey, Iraq and Japan. The women's stories are interesting and important and I have a lot of respect for Dooley, but I think her straightforward, no-nonsense communication style may be better suited to television than a book. I would have preferred to read something slightly more reflective.

There are a whole bunch of Lucy Clarke books in the 99p daily deals today. 'Travel mysteries' I would call them - a woman or group of women goes on holiday, something happens, sometimes someone dies, general peril and puzzlement until all is solved. I devoured them all on a holiday... so if anyone is feeling uninspired about reading, maybe try one!

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit – yes and no. Certainly two of the books are set in Brighton, but they aren’t the Brighton Mystery Series, which are set in post war Brighton. I havent read the Brighton Mysteries, but I may once I've read the Maeve Kerrigan series.

@LuckyMauveReader – I love this thread for inspiring me and finding new authors/books.

@inaptonym it is for the same course. It's an OU English literature module. The block they are part of is about literature and the imagination

27 Paper Cup – Karen Campbell (library). Much loved and recommended on her and rightly so, I loved this. Brimming with empathy, it’s the story of Kelly, a homeless woman who decides to return a lost engagement ring to a stranger. Kelly travels from Glasgow to Galloway, with little money and fighting her demons on the way.

28 The Dutch House – Ann Patchett (Audible) This is my first Ann Patchett book and I wanted to really like it. The story is of Danny, a young boy who lives in the Dutch House with his beloved big sister Maeve and his father. Their mother has left. All is fine until his father remarries and then dies. It’s a long, meandering tale, but I’m just not sure about it. It goes on until Danny is in his 40s/50s. I don’t know what the point was. The best thing about it was the Tom Hanks narration.