50 Books Challenge 2026 Part Seven

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh thread of the 50 Books Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2026, 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 as this makes it much easier to keep track of books or authors that may appeal (or not appeal) to everyone else.

Some of us bring over our updated lists to the new thread. Again, this is up to you.

The first thread of the year is here the second thread here, the third thread here, the fourth thread here, the fifth thread here and the sixth thread here

Disobedient - Elizabeth Fremantle

Very good. Fremantle wrote Firebrand, with the life of Katherine Parr as a jumping off point, and has written similar excellent fiction based on the lives of various women in history.

This book is about Artemisia Gentilleschi, growing up with an alcoholic widowed artist for a father in Rome and finding her path as an artist. The book is vivid and convincing, especially about the impact of AG’s rape on her life. A bold.

58 . Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil by VE Schwab

In 16th Century Spain, young Maria encounters a widow, they will meet again and the meeting will have life changing consequences.

In 2019, Alice, who is Scottish, is trying to settle in to Harvard and testing out her sexuality, when she too has an unexpected encounter.

I really really enjoyed this lesbian vampire historical saga. I felt the history sections worked a lot better than the 2019 section which is really just a plot device. It was 530 pages but it flew by. Lesbians and/or vampires not really being my reading sweet spot didn’t really matter, it romped along. A bold.

I'm copying my books over from the last thread:

1 The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas
2 Hitler's People by Richard Evans
3 Malice by Keigo Higashino
4 The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
5 Never A Dull Moment 1971 by David Hepworth
6 Murder at Mount Fuji by Shizuko Natsuki
7 A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray
8 The Party by Tessa Hadley
9 Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd
10 Place Brugman by Alice Austen
11 A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto
12 Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto
13 Murder on Line One by Jeremy Vine
14 The Names by Florence Knapp
15 Point Zero by Seicho Matsumoto
16 Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
17 Imperium by Robert Harris
18 A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor
19 Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
20 Wise by Frank Tallis
21 The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski
22 Geneva by Richard Armitage
23 The Vipers by Katy Hay
24 The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke
25 The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer
26 The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
27 By Your Side by Ruth Jones
28 Felicia's Journey by William Trevor
29 The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler
30 Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
31 The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
32 YesterYear by Caro Claire Burke
33) Death on Gokumon Island by Seishi Yokomiso
34) Universality by Natasha Brown
35) The Cut Throat Trial by the Secret Barrister
36) The Truants by Kate Weinberg
Hitler, Stalking, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein
37) Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto
38) The Spy and the Traitor by Ben MacIntyre
39) In Sickness and in Health by Fiona Sussman
40) Silent Bones by Val McDermid
41) Fair Play by Louise Hegarty

And two more:

42) Story of a Murder - the Wives and Mistress and Doctor Crippen by Hallie Rubenfold
I loved this book. It gives so much detail of life for women in Edwardian England. Of course the story starts off in America - both the wives were American, as was Dr Crippen. I knew bits of the story but the background is incredibly interesting.

43) The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Much reviewed on here. I love everything Elizabeth Strout writes and this was no exception. I thought she started to get a bit self indulgent with the Trump stuff though.

Lies At Her Door - A A Abbott

I read this because it’s set in Bristol (near the suspension bridge), an area I know a bit. I therefore liked the setting, but the rest not so much. A skeleton is discovered when a sinkhole opens up near some houses, and it turns out to be the body of a young man that had been assumed to have drowned himself in France. The characters, particularly the baddy, are a bit of a caricature and the denouement was annoying (we find out whodunnit because the wrote it down in a diary. Who does that?!).

X - Sue Grafton

Sue obviously decided it would be better not to try and construct a murder story around a xylophone, so the title doesn’t follow the pattern of the other books in the series. The X here is a surname of a character. Kinsey is following up on a case a fellow PI was looking into before he was murdered (that happened in the last book). There’s also a sub plot about some CF neighbours. It was fine but I am glad I’m getting to the end of the series!

@SheilaFentiman thanks for that review. I have owned Disobedient for a couple of years now but haven't mustered up the courage to read it.

The Fair Botanists by Sara Sheridan

It's 1822 in Edinburgh and the Botanic Gardens are moving site and there are rumours the King is coming to visit (a big event since no monarch has been to Scotland since Charles II was crowned there in 1651). We meet Elizabeth, a widow who does botanic illustrations and is now living with her husband's aunt at Inverleith House next door to the new Botanic Garden. She meets Belle, a young lady who is interested in the use of botanics in perfume. They mix with the (real) great and good of Edinburgh. The story starts slowly and I wasn't sure if it was going to be a love story or a story about recovery from grief but about halfway through the pace picks up considerably and it turns into a
different type of story again. Great feminist fun and even better if you know Edinburgh well.

I’m definitely looking out Pachinko!

@SpunkyKhakiScroller – I read one of the Lissa Evans books out of sync and its annoying me that my library doesn’t have it. I’ve got Crooked Heart etc on my wish list and just hope that it’ll end up on a 99p special, just like V for Victory.

@InTheCludgie – well done to mini and I hope that all goes well for S5. I do feel that its such a jump for them.

@BestIsWest – The Perfect Couple was my first EH! All of EH’s I’ve read have been set on Nantucket, although her latest one that she cowrote with her daughter is set in a school, I’m assuming in Massachusetts, but I could be wrong.

96 The Salaryman’s Wife – Sujata Massey. Having finished the Perveen Mistry series, I looked up what else she has written and made a start on the Rei Shimura series. Rei is a 27 year old Japanese American woman teaching English in Tokyo. She happens to be on holiday when a suspicious death occurs and naturally gets involved. This was an Audible read for me and I’m afraid I stuggled to get past the dreadful Irish accent of the Scottish character. It really spoiled the book for me. So I wont be reading any more Rei Shimura, unless I can get a copy at the library or a 99p special.

Sue obviously decided it would be better not to try and construct a murder story around a xylophone

This made me laugh, @ChessieFL . And speculate about what the xylophone murder could be. Plinky plink aaaagh.

83. A Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall - i should have DNFed this when I asked about it earlier but 3 people in my book club urged me to keep going and that it would make me cry. Tears of rage at wasted time perhaps!! The first person narrator/ main character was insufferable and I hated being stuck in her head for the whole book. She starts as a teenager and the self absorbed melodrama we get from her stays with us in chapters where she is 30+. It is all about how she feels, she doesn't seem to think or introspect on her behaviour at all. We get passionate teenage romance, plenty of sex, misunderstandings, heartbreak, social climbing machinations, rebound romances, a terrible tragedy, a forbidden affair, another terrible tragedy and a happy ending. Just because it is written in a an asynchronous way does not make a melodrama literary! The book improved slightly in the places we actually got to see other people via dialogue, particularly Frank. But most of the time, we are trapped in the echo chamber of the narrator's mind. I could have accepted an unlikeable narrator if I felt the novel was reflecting or interrogating her behaviour, but instead we get only her perspective and it is claustrophobic.

"The grand 'mystery' is telegraphed so heavily that I found it entirely predictable. The only thing the book nearly gets right is the end. People behave as you would expect and the right things happen as a result. But then it wraps things up in a happy families way that is completely opposite to the grand tragedy it had built itself up to be. If you want to be a grand, tragic melodrama then be one properly!

@Tarragon123 thanks for the heads up on Sujata Massey's other books. I will avoid the audio for the Rei Shimura series.

Luckily my library has quite a few Lissa Evans books on Libby and physical books. I will ration them as I enjoy her writing so much.

44) The Lovers by Paolo Cognetti
What a beautiful find. Apparently this was a huge international best seller. Set in the Italian Alps it features a writer who has gone back to the area where he climbed as a boy with his father. He takes a job as a cook and falls into a relationship with the young waitress. The seasons change and both take different jobs. She goes to work and live in a high altitude mountain refuge and he works in the valley with the log cutters, climbing up to visit his lover, where the mountains are still covered in snow. Meanwhile he befriends a local who has a catastrophic accident. And the wolves come back.

This is a very short novel but it is packed full of beautiful writing. Very much a bold.

84. The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates - I feel this book should be required reading for everyone. I consider myself pretty tech savvy and aware of women's issues and I was shocked and appalled and terrified by the contents of this book.

The chapter on sex dolls made me feel sick about being part of the same species of people that create, market, and use these things. The chapter on deep fakes opened my eyes to how the victims of these crimes must feel. How they must feel to hear 'well it's AI, it's not real' when the harm done is very real.

The book made me want to stand up and do something about it. And it also made me afraid of what doing something about it might result in.

And that is my only complaint about the book - the chapter on solutions is too nebulous. I wanted more concrete steps. Now that the book has made me aware and angry, what can I as one person do to help? The book would have been better with a road map for its readers.

@Arran2024I noticed this week that Hallie Rubenhold is doing a talk about the Crippen case nearby soon. I’ve seen her before and something about her irritates me but I can’t deny her scholarship and storytelling.

Apologies for spamming the group, I finished three book today at different times and I tend to put my review here as soon as I finish. I will be quiet after this for a while as I read the next set.

85. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Vol 2 by Beth Brower - am happy to have discovered this lighthearted series. The audiobook is a delightful to listen to and I think the Georgette Heyer fans here would enjoy it. In this volume, many men enter the scene though how many will become love interests remain to be seen.

Now that work is more under control I plan to catch up on the thread over the Bank Holiday weekend but in the meantime here’s my list (not sure where I got up to so posting the full thing)and a few reviews now I’ve managed to start reading again.

1 Murder At Martingale Manor by Jodi Taylor
2 Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling
3 Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths
4 Black and British by David Olusoga
5 The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths
6 Queen Victoria’s Youngest Son. The Untold Story of Prince Leopold by Charlotte Zeepvat
7 The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths
8 The Witch’s Egg by Donya Todd
9 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
10 Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton
11 Stolen In The Night by Patricia MacDonald
12 Menopause. A Comic Treatment ed. MK Czerwiec
13 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
14 Helping You to Identify and Understand Autism Masking: The Truth Behind the Mask by Emma Kendall
15 In Lieu of You by Keith Pearson
16 When the Dust Settles by Lucy Easthope
17 Paper Cup by Karen Campbell
18 Path of Bones by LT Taylor
19 Last One at the Party by Bethany Clift
20 Flint in the Bones by Eva St John
21 The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer
22 It Ends With Her by Brianna Labuskes
23 In Memoriam by Alice Winn
24 The Time Machine by HG Wells
25 The Sleeper Lies by Andrea Mara
26 Matilda: Wife of the Conqueror First Queen of England by Tracy Borman
27 The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
28 The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin
29 Small Secrets by Lucy Goacher
30 Black in White by JC Andrijeski
31 The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths
32 Four Sisters. The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses by Helen Rappaport
33 The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths
34 Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler
35 Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
36 I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue
37 Babel by RF Kuang
38 The Racketeer by John Grisham
39 Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert George Jenkins
40 To Sir Phillip, With Love by Julia Quinn
41 We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker
42 Focus: Birth of a Time Traveler by Kendra Rumbugh
43 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
44 Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hiller
45 Fire in the Flint by Eva St John
46 The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard
47 The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
48 Killer Instincts by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
49 All In by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
50 Bad Blood by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
51 Dear Reader by Cathy Retzenbrink
52 Dear Ijeawele, Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
53 The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K Dick
54 Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez
55 Hot To Go by Kristen Bailey
56 Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham
57 The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick
58 The Pearl by John Steinbeck
59 Toward Yesterday by Paul Anthony Jones
60 By the Time You Read This by Brianna Labuskes
61 Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
62 Beneath Devil’s Bridge by Loreth Anne White
63 The Cipher by Isabella Maldonado
64 A Different Dawn by Isabella Maldonado
65 The Falcon by Isabella Maldonado
66 When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr
67 The Appeal by Janice Hallett
68 The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths
69 Kindred by Octavia Butler

70 The Ballad of Smallhope and Pennyroyal by Jodi Taylor
71 A Family Affair by Jodi Taylor

A re-listen of the first Smallhope and Pennyroyal books followed swiftly by the second. I loved the first one as much as I did the first time. The second one as pretty good too, but the constant hospital stays, mentions of “my friend Max thinks / says…” and Pennyroyal sodding off were a little irritating. Still I’m looking forward to the next one.

72 The Midnight King by Tariq Askanani

Dude (can’t remember names) comes back to his home town when his Dad committed suicide. Daddy dearest was not only a bestselling novelist, but also serial killer of children, a fact of which the dude, and his sister were fully aware. There’s a missing child, a best friend who is a PI investigating the child’s disappearance, and lots of terrible, distasteful twists. Free on kindle unlimited.

73 She Speaks by Yvette Cooper

A compilation of speeches by women throughout history. I enjoyed the speeches, some well-known (“the lady’s not for turning”) and others lesser known. The short introductions were really interesting too.

The Meeting Point by Lucy Caldwell
Ruth and Euan are Christians from a small community in Scotland. When they are given the opportunity to live in Bahrain for a few months they up sticks and go there with their two year old dd, Anna. Proselytizing is forbidden, although there is a small Christian community that is permitted to worship, but Euan reveals plans that alarm Ruth when they arrive.
Noor is an unhappy teenager, sent to stay with her Muslim father by her English mother after an incident at her school that we don’t fully learn about until later in the book. Full of self loathing, Noor grasps desperately to the distracted kindness she sees in Ruth and the comforting steadfastness of Evan’s faith.
Ruth has her head turned by a handsome cousin of Noor’s. This is the bit of the book I liked the least - the age difference, the likelihood of Farid being attracted to Ruth considering the sanctions he could face. It was all a bit overwrought.
The rest of it I enjoyed, as we see the perspectives of each character in turn, poor baby Anna caught in the middle and used as a prop for an affair etc. There are some beautiful descriptions of Bahrain, including the reality of places from faith such as the Tree Of Life.
It was a bit hokey, but I did enjoy the ending several years later, as I was rooting for Noor and at times wished the whole book could have been from her perspective as an unreliable narrator.

This is the Book Scratch Off Poster - Top 100 books I got for my birthday

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Atlas-Green-Poster-Scratch-Stickers/dp/B0FHBQJH1S?th=1

Some really strange choices on there for Top 100

The Thursday Murder Club
The Twilight Series
Fifty Shades Series

I’d read 63

Thanks Eine - as you say some interesting choices (and omissions) but I am always a sucker for a list. Think I have read 42 of the ones I could decipher!

56 The Covenant of Water - Abraham Verghese

Finally finished! It's a family saga following three generations set in Kerala starting in the 1900s with the marriage of a 12 year old girl to a 40 year old man (although he does wait until she is 16 to begin marital relations). At the same time, we follow Digby, a Glaswegian schoolboy, who will end up in India. This is a great story with some strong female characters - I slightly lost my way in the middle when I was less interested in the story of Philipose but it picked up again with a strong ending.

@StitchesInTime@MamaNewtNewt - I hadn't realised there was a new Smallhope and Pennyroyal book out. I really enjoyed the first one but may need to do a reread before reading the new one.

Last book of my teacher holiday, I'd imagine is Alice Jolly' s The Matchbox Girl.

This book takes an original look at WW2 through the eyes and voice (actually one feature is she doesn't speak) of a girl with Autism - Adelheid. This provides accounts of much historical interest about the 'discovery ' of autism and the disputes between American and Austrian doctors. The ideas of heroes and villains is generally ambiguous. A main featuring character is Hans Asperger but Jolly is sure to include an unsung figure - Sister Victorine (who I was pleased to find is real, as are Hansi and Feldner - a lovely story- and the Jewish doctor Frankl). There are many deeply troubling passages about the taking of children to Am Spiegelgrund. (she weaves in known stories of some of these dark cases) I knew Asperger had Nazi connections and has largely been discredited because of this (although the extent of his involvement is contested) but knew little detail of the horror of Am Spiegelgrund.

Jolly adopts a particular voice which is deliberately chaotic at times and can be hard to navigate. There are certain passages where I had no clue whatsoever what was happening - or whether it was. This is hard to describe : you'd have to experience it for yourself! Then Adelheid describes the weather and the sky, for example, in beautiful, poetic detail.

Overall, even with this obscuring of exact meaning it is worth reading.

Yes I’d say rereading the previous book first (or having it on hand at least) is a good idea.

Taylor does have a habit of including details and hanging plot lines from previous books, which can cause some confusion if the previous book isn’t fresh in the memory!

@StitchesInTime - you're right. I was so confused when I read the latest St Mary's book last year as to who was who and what had happened previously that I had to go back and re-read previous books.

My Name Is Mackenzie Bly by Lissa Evans
I knew this was short but didn’t expect it to finish suddenly on Kindle at 88%!
Never mind, I would read the Phone Book (dates me much?) if Lissa Evans wrote it. It sits neatly between her books for children (also fantastic) and her books for adults, concerning itself with the daily torments and mortifications of Philip, a 14 yr old boy. His best friend has moved to Australia, one of his Mums is a teacher at his school, he is taller and wider than the average boy his age.
It’s a hilarious litany of observations about his life with a slight whiff of Magic about it when he accidentally pockets a mysterious artefact while on work experience at the local museum. I loved the side character of Zeb, who can’t stop playing pranks, or talking, or being an arse but who finds an unlikely special interest thanks to Philip.
Much compared to Adrian Mole but confession time: I never found AM particularly funny and the ‘love interest’ in this book is miles better than Pandora.
A delightful bit of fluff to while away a couple of hours on the first day I’ve had to myself in months and a nice break from the rather heavy stuff I’ve been reading lately.
If anyone has a 12+ yr old and you don’t mind them reading swear words then I’d recommend this. There’s no sex (apart from Mum A attempting to sex a guinea pig ).

Got to 50 hurray. Never made it by August before.

49 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Read for bookclub. Surprised by how much I could remember from when I read it at university many years ago

50 Second Sight: Poems on Perception and Change - Carl Peach
A collection of poems I bought at its launch on Tuesday. Lovely collection though I do know the author.