hello! I had this newsletter half written and then on the last day of August my tiny cat started having seizures and spent the next 4 days in the ICU. She’s home now and doing okay, but as you might imagine it ruined me for getting anything done. But with the aid of strong anxiety pills, I am endeavoring to press on.

read: The Cornish Wedding Murder by Fiona Leitch, read by Zara Ramm (2022). After tiring myself out with coffee mysteries, I discovered Leitch’s Nosey Parker Mysteries, featuring an ex-London cop who leaves the force and moves home to Cornwall with her daughter. She’s a caterer by trade, which just so happens to mean she’s constantly finding herself at the scene of murders. These are breezy, funny, mysteries (I’ve read through A Cornish Christmas Murder now), and I quite like the audiobooks! Libro.fm audiobook.

snaps: I got my film back from my trip to the Pacific Northwest and am very pleased with both my new/old camera (a Minolta Freedom Zoom 90) and Kodak Ultramax, a 400 iso film I’d never used. I simply love the color and grain.

read: The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair, read by Sarah Nichols (2019). This is a mystery set in post-WWII London, which is not typically my time period of interest, but it’s quite good. Two women, one a former spy and the other an aristocratic war widow, meet at a wedding and discover they both have a talent for matchmaking. They decide to set up a marriage bureau but are soon solving other sorts of conundrums. I loved the cast of characters and am looking forward to reading more. Library audiobook.

watch: The Apothecary Diaries (2023-). Spent a day on a friend’s sofa watching the first half of the first season of this anime, went home and watched the second half. It’s excellent. The show follows Maomao, an apothecary from the slums in a time and place based-on-but-not-quite Tang Dynasty China, who finds herself in indentured servitude at the palace and despite a fervent desire to mind her own business and work away her debt cannot help solving problems involving medicine. She catches the eye of the man in charge of the inner palace, where the emperor’s consorts live, and is soon promoted to a position as a food taster. Which she loves, because she’s a freak. I’ve been away from the anime game for a long time, but this one got me. It’s funny and smart, with chewy mysteries and really good, complex women. I’ve since read all of the manga and will be returning to the anime.

read: The Mysterious Mr. Quin by Agatha Christie (1930). On a recent episode of Shedunnit (a favourite of mine), an unusual thing happened: I learned about an Agatha Christie detective who was entirely unknown to me. A series of short stories, the Harley Quin mysteries are fantastical, romantic, and very unlike the rest of Christie’s oeuvre. My library had an audiobook, so I listened to them and was entranced. Highly recommend if you’d like a diversion. (I listened to this one because it was available but wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. Hugh Fraser recorded one as well, which is probably better.) Library audiobook.

read: The Tell Tale by Clare Ashton, read by Lucy Rayner (2022). When I am in an audiobook mood, I will periodically check my libraries on Libby for any mystery that’s available immediately. This was available from the Queer Liberation Library, so I checked it out. Set in Wales in the 1980s, it follows a woman who returns to her tiny hometown with her daughter after her divorce, and gradually the truth of what happened to the girl she’d loved in her youth and the boy she supposedly ran off with is revealed. It’s beautifully written—sad and hopeful—but the setting was at times so suffocatingly misogynist that I nearly quit. But I stuck with it and was pleased by the end. Library audiobook.

film: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026). Loved this. In an age when fake usually means CGI i loved how this film was both very hollywoodland constructed and also sooooo tactile. The detail in all of the Camp Miasma merch was incredible, but the thing that really got me was the matte painted backgrounds with their painterly trees. A film both so unreal and heart-stoppingly real at the same time.

read: Second Helpings by Dylan Morrison (2026). This is a really delightful romance between two men who sort of ruined each other’s lives in high school and then find each other in adulthood and nearly do it again. It’s set in a deli and boy is that Dylan’s sweet spot. I love how he writes about food, and emotion, and food-and-emotion, and so much of that skill is on display here. Amazon ebook.

film: Summertime (1955). Another one from my syllabus, this bittersweet summer film is about Katharine Hepburn’s Jane Hudson, a Midwestern spinster, who finally takes the trip to Venice that she’s dreamed about. Determined to drink in the city, she instead finds herself surrounded by reminders of her own loneliness and too trapped by fear and morality to venture outside her proscribed role. Naturally a handsome man breaks through. This is a gorgeous film, even to someone who was unimpressed with Venice (me). David Lean doesn’t mess around with vistas and sadness.

read: Miss Beresford and the Beast by Mimi Matthews (2026). Mimi Matthews is the only writer of straight historical romance who I still keep up with, and it’s because she’s so good. She balances character and historical accuracy so well without toppling into cartoonishness. This is the beginning of a series that follows the third generation of two families she’s written about for years, which does feel a little unwieldy, but I’m still enjoying myself. Amazon ebook.

telly: Murders. Some tv I’ve caught up with: The Chelsea Detective (series 4) and Ellis (series 2). Love both of these WHY are they only 4 episodes a season!! Also checked out Cooper & Fry (series 1), which is about a city cop and a country cop detecting in the Peak District together. Each mystery ties into local folklore in some way, which gives them a fun monster-of-the-week sort of feel. Cooper and Fry themselves are constantly making so many bad decisions and chiding each other for them. Delightful dynamic tbh.

link: Worse on Purpose. I have become obsessed with this website, in which one man is endeavoring to track who owns what brands, where things are actually made, and what the quality of items from shoes to power tools actually are. The site includes deep dives on specific industries (I really enjoyed this one about cookware), as well as a database where you can look up specific brands.

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