Music to my Ears

This week’s post is literally about music – but another kind of music to my ears is readers’ early reactions to my new novel, launched last Saturday, and now available in ebook, paperback, hardback and audiobook.

Death at the Village Christmas Fair is the third in the Cotswold Curiosity Shop cosy mystery series, a festive edition launching in midsummer, because that’s the way the publishing industry works – operating a season ahead of reality, just like the fashion industry!

I’m delighted by how many readers are already getting stuck into this story when the weather in the northern hemisphere, where I am, is far from wintry! Some readers have told me they prefer reading wintry books in hot weather to cool them down. So maybe Death at the Village Christmas Fair, with its snowy cover, is really the perfect beach read

Here’s the blurb for the book to whet your appetite:

It’s been a busy year for Alice Carroll, with her Curiosity Shop opening for business, and not one but two murders shaking things up in her quaint Cotswold village. She’s looking forward to her first countryside Christmas, complete with traditional Christmas Fair and Santa Run.

But her hopes for innocent festive fun are thwarted when one of the Santa Runners steals something from her mum’s knitting stall. His festive outfit makes him hard to spot, until he’s found fatally injured outside the village hall with the stolen item.

Despite what the police say, Alice suspects there’s more to his murder than meets the eye. She’s determined to solve the mystery – including why, once more, a stranger thought something from her Curiosity Shop was worth killing for.

With the help of her charming neighbour Robert Praed, can Alice find the killer before the bells ring out this Christmas?

Perfect for fans of Fiona Leitch, Faith Martin and Agatha Christie.

Here is what early reviewers have said about it so far:

‘A nice easily enjoyable cosy crime story with a smashing ending’ – Alyson Reads‘A cosy mystery full of mystery and intrigue, and is my favourite of the series’ – StaceyWH100‘A brilliant page-turner readers will devour in a single sitting’ – Bookish Jottings

To order your copy online now, click here.

Now onto a different kind of music to my ears: Caroline Sanderson’s new memoir, Listen with Father: How I Learned to Love Classical Music…

For the Love of Music

The photo of the vintage reel-to-reel tape recorder on the cover of Caroline Sanderson’s new memoir, Listen with Father, made me realise how much our access to recorded music has changed during my lifetime.

My first memory of listening to records is via a wind-up record player when I was three years old. I’m not as ancient as that suggests, but the previous owner of the house we moved into had left it behind, and my brother and sister and I were allowed to treat it as a toy.

Then came a reel-to-reel tape player, like the one on Caroline’s book, followed by a fancy radiogram, housing an analogue radio and a turntable in a classic mid-century design, its wide, low cabinet on spindly legs. Its turntable had three speeds: 33rpm for LPs (long-playing records), 45rpm for singles, and 78rpm for any discs left over from the days of wind-up gramophones.

Not long after I started secondary school, compact cassette players were on my friends’ Christmas wish lists. Others favoured 8-track cartridge players, with the figure-of-eight set-up of the tape allowing non-stop music.

By the end of the Seventies, many music buffs aspired to a sleek stacking hi-fi system, with separate layers for records, cassettes and radio tuners. My university friend Tim was proud of his shiny new hi-fi until his confession that he had only two records, one of which was Supertramp, cued merciless teasing.

My stereo at this time was much more modest – a tiny turntable and diminutive speakers encased in bright orange plastic. Well, it was the Seventies.

By the time I was earning my living, the Sony Walkman, first for cassettes, then with newfangled CDs, was every commuter’s must-have accessory. These compact devices look huge and unwieldy compared to their successor: the tiny, lightweight iPods with no moving parts.

Now that we all stream music on our smartphones and smart speakers—and in my husband’s case, to his hearing aids – our family’s old iPods, in seaside-rock pink and vivid lime green, look like museum pieces.

Whatever next? Tiny receiver chips embedded in our heads? Douglas Adams’ Babel fish—a live fish dropped into the ear to act as an instant translator—seems less fantastical now than when it first appeared in The Hitchhiker’s’ Guide to the Galaxy, published in 1978 (the year I bought my orange stereo).

While afficionados argue the case for which recording format produces the better listening experience, to my mind none of them beats hearing music live.

Although a live performance lacks studio edits and polish, no recording can reproduce the excitement of watching a musician physically present, complete with body language, facial expressions, and emotions.

That’s one reason why it’s been such a joy to attend this summer’s Badminton Benefice Music Festival events – three down…

 

two still to come…

The immediacy adds an extra dimension, as does the glorious setting of our ancient Cotswold parish churches.

Plus, the concerts are free to attend, with free parking and complimentary refreshments, so no-one is priced out of the pleasure.

That includes families with children or grandchildren. The concerts provide the perfect way to enthuse young people about live music. They may even encourage them to take up an instrument or singing lessons themselves—or to do more practice, if they’re already learning. In an age where young people’s opportunities to learn and play music are diminishing, we’re lucky to have access to so many live, free music events on our home turf.

So, let’s turn off the tech for what’s left of the summer, and enjoy the original source of all music: the human being, in real life, in real time.

(This article first appeared in the August 2025 edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News.)

WHAT I’VE READ THIS WEEK

As you may know, I’m a course tutor for Jericho Writers. and I try to read as many of my students books as possible. This one was a real treat-to-self – and the first in Kalyn’s series was a great read too.

For the Love of Mark Twain: A Cozy Academia Friends-to-Lovers Story by Kalyn Gensic
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a great read for back-to-school time! I very much enjoyed reading this gentle, slow-burn romance between likeable characters on the staff of a small American university, a setting I wasn’t familiar with, so that added extra interest and enjoyment for me. Well written, witty, and engaging, with a cast of well-drawn and endearing supporting characters, this is a cosy read to linger over and make it last. Highly recommended.