ShortBookandScribes October 2025 Reads, Book Post and Stats

Goodbye October, hello November. I don’t really know what happened to October, maybe I blinked and missed it. It was my 9 year blog anniversary on the 25^th – I’m not sure back in 2016 I thought I would still be blogging in 2025 but here I am, with no plans to stop. My blogging has changed over the years – sometimes I had so many blog tours I didn’t know if I was coming or going, whereas I’ve pretty much given them up now as I don’t want the pressure anymore.

I had a good month’s reading in October with 9 books finished (to match my blog years!). Here they are:

We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough

A couple move into a new home in the country but straightaway there is something off about the house. This is a really clever supernatural story but for some reason it didn’t really grab me.

 

A Wedding for the Home Front Girls by Susanna Bavin

This is book 4 in the series and it was my favourite so far as the girls from the salvage yard continue to navigate the war years.

 

Women of War by Louise Morrish

A fascinating story based on fact about a young suffragette who pretends to be a man and joins the army in WWI and the female doctors who treat her when she gets injured in France.

 

The Murder at World’s End by Ross Montgomery

A fun locked room mystery with unlikely crime-solving duo Stephen Pike and Miss Decima Stockingham trying to work out who killed the Viscount of Tithe Hall.

 

The Toll House by Carly Reagon (review to follow)

A house with history and a death mask hidden behind a wall made this a genuinely spine-chilling ghost story.

 

Hold the Dream by Barbara Taylor Bradford

The follow-up to A Woman of Substance and another re-read for me. The focus in this book is Paula, Emma Harte’s favourite granddaughter who she charged to ‘hold her dream’.

 

The Reckoning by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

The Devil’s Horse by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

The Poison Tree by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

The Morland Dynasty series can literally do no wrong for me. Napoleon is finally defeated, there is happiness and tragedy for the family, the age of steam brings a rise for the railways and cholera lurks.

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Book post received this month with thanks to the named publishers:

The 2026 proofs are really starting to roll in now.

The Barbecue at No. 9 by Jennie Godfrey (with fabulous green spredges) (sent by Hutchinson Heinemann)

Elizabeth and Marilyn by Julie Owen Moylan (sent by Michael Joseph)

The Shame Game by L.D. Smithson (sent by Transworld)

The Token by Sharon Bolton (sent by Orion)

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino (sent by Doubleday)

Nonesuch by Francis Spufford (sent by Faber)

Vivian Dies Again by C.E. Hulse (sent by Viper)

So, I Met This Guy by Alexandra Potter (sent by Pan Macmillan)

The Drowning Place by Sarah Hilary (sent by Harvill)

Based on a True Story by Sarah Vaughan (sent by Simon & Schuster)

Caller Unknown by Gillian McAllister (sent by Michael Joseph)

 

I also bought:

A Baby for the Home Front Girls by Susanna Bavin

Confessions of a Grammar Queen by Eliza Knight

Broken House by Louisa Scarr

Christmas at Hollybush Farm by Jo Thomas

A Twelfth Night Miracle by Callie Langridge

Love in Old Age by Hunter Davies

A few with spredges too (although three of these were delayed in getting to me and so should have been on the September round up):

The Elements by John Boyne

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife by Martin Edwards

The Scent of Oranges by Kathy George

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Finally, my Storygraph stats for October:

(it doesn’t actually take me 11 days to finish a book, it’s just that I’ve been reading two or three alongside each other which makes the average time longer.)