Best Books of 2025

Hello – I’m back.

I was going to launch into this year with a review of last year and resolutions for 2026. However, since last year was a bad one for a variety of reasons, and this year really hasn’t started well, I’ve decided to skip over the whole ruminating on the year just past and focus instead on the small pleasures in life – namely, books.

As always I keep a running tally on the books I read every year through Goodreads. I fell short of my goal of 60 books in a year – I managed 55. Of those, only three of them earned a five star rating, and I’m listing those below.

Fire and Bones – Kathy Reichs. I’ve been reading this series since the first one was released back in 1997. Kathy Reichs remains one of my favourite authors, and I enjoy all of the books, but more recent releases have been getting more consistently a four-star rating from me. This one, though – the 23rd book in the adventures of forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan – gets a solid five stars.

We Live Here Now – Sarah Pinborough. I know Sarah; we run into each other at conventions on occasion, and I’ve been a fan of her work for years. The last few I’ve read have been psychological thrillers, which often have a supernatural leaning. But this one is very much a ghost story, and it’s a genuinely creepy read. I didn’t want to put it down, and with all the books I read, that really doesn’t happen very often.

Death Under a Little Sky – Stig Abell. This author is a recent discovery for me, and I came across this one by chance, browsing the book shop. The premise sounded intriguing – the tale of a former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Jackson, escaping a failed marriage and the end of his career by moving into the remote property bequeathed to him by his late Uncle Arthur. The house is very literally in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity, no phone, no internet, and no running water. The house does have, however, wood burning fireplaces and a vast library full of crime fiction. It turns out to be the retreat Jake needs, and as he gets used to his new life getting closer to nature and the peace of being disconnected from the world, the character really grew on me. However, it turns out that you can’t take the urge to detect out of the detective and Jake soon gets involved in investigating a local murder. Engaging characters and some really descriptive writing got me hooked on this series, and I’ve since been catching up with the rest of Jake’s adventures.

For this year I’ve chickened out of an ambitious goal and set the bar at 55, the number of books I managed to read last year, but I’m hoping to exceed that. Although I have no desire to follow Jake’s example and cut myself off completely from the modern world, I do hope to disconnect a bit more often and spend more time in fictional worlds rather than the real one.

And I do hope to blog a bit more often.

Starting Over

I knew this site had been neglected for a while. Coming back to it I was a bit dismayed to discover the last post was nearly two years ago.

The last couple of years have been a bit difficult for a variety of reasons, and the writing really hasn’t been happening. In fact there got to a point when I thought I could no longer call myself a writer. That was a difficult thing to get past, as I’ve always felt that my reason for being is to write. If I don’t have that, then I have nothing to justify my existence.

Coming into 2025, I decided that I have to change that. But here we are, nearly at the end of February, and we’re far too late to make this a ‘Happy New Year’ post.

|However, I do have a few resolutions on the writing front I’m hoping to stick to. Firstly, I’m going to relaunch the Shara Summers series. The first two books in this series have been published before, and when the last publisher of them went under, I decided to self-publish them. But they never sold very well. I also discovered, in trying to submit this series again, that publishers aren’t particularly interested in picking up a series in the middle of it, and they also aren’t interested in picking up previously-published or self-published novels unless they’ve got a proven sales track record.

So I have decided that the only way to get Shara out there again is to take on the series myself. The first two books don’t need too much work, but they will need new covers for re-launch. Books 3 and 4, however, are completed but need to go in front of a good editor. At least I have already put the wheels in motion on that score.

I also have the sequel to OUTPOST H311 – entitled OUTPOST: ARMAGEDDON – which is technically finished but it stalled when I had trouble finding beta readers. However, this is a project I need to get back to – though again, it’s a sequel of a previously-published novel that hasn’t had mega-sales (although OUTPOST H311 is my best-selling book, it’s hardly raking in the cash) so self-publishing the sequel might once more prove to be my only option.

In any case, I am pledging more writing this year, and more regular blog posts. About writing, about books, and about other stuff going on in my life.

I also promise there’ll be new books released, so I do hope you’ll stick with me.