#BookishThoughts Top Five Books With People On The Cover

This book prompt is bought to you by the fabulous Devouring Books who has made a return to blogging, after a deeply unpleasant experience, which she discusses on the afore mentioned link. I am so happy to see Mandy return, her passion for books and the bookish community is second to none.

Top 5 Saturdays challenges readers to come up with a favourite five titles on a particular theme (today’s being people on the covers).

I am really looking forward to seeing how this is interpreted!

The upcoming schedule is as follows-

August 28th-Covers with people on them

September 4th-Intimidating Books

September 11th-Hyped Books

September 18th-Fast paced Books

September 25th-Illustrated Covers

October 2nd- Magical Books

Please feel free to join in and share what your choices would be!

I don’t really mind if there are real people on book covers, it only irks my ridiculous aversion to film/tv tie in editions (absolutely no idea why , it’s just one of my *things* to buy books without the ‘as seen…’ badges on them)

Here are mine, in no particular order-

1)Tennison by Lynda La Plante

It has been 30 years since Prime Suspect was first broadcast in the UK, spanning 7 seasons it broke every police procedural rule and stomped them down hard. Leading her first murder investigation, Jane Tennison is keenly aware of not only the responsibility to the victims of crime, but also her place as a female detective in a painfully male and sexist world.

In her, Lynda La Plante has created one of the most famous female cultural icons-she is unapologetically herself and her dogged determination in the face of professional knockbacks, and even victims of crime who don’t realise that she is leading the investigations. And when Prime Suspect ended, viewers and readers clamoured for more.

Ms La Plante obliged, by returning to the 1970’s and showing the process which made Jane the woman we first met back in 1991.

The series begins with Tennison, and currently has seven instalments to date, the most recent being 2021’s ‘Unholy Murder’.

Crime Reads has a fantastic essay on the impact of Jane’s position in police procedural pantheons here

2) Riders by Jilly Cooper

Technically, this is just a bum and a hand, but you get the gist, and that this is not merely a disembodied bottom!

The first in the outrageously successful (and pure outrageous) Rutshire Chronicles, Riders was published in 1985 to shocked and appalled readers who, read all the dirty bits to make sure they complained to each other about how filthy that Rupert Campbell-Black and Jake Lovell were. Even though they were actually lapping up the bedhopping antics of the upper classes as they explored a world so far removed from their own-the higher echelons of the show jumping arena.

Bawdy and rude, unapologetically so, Rupert Campbell-Black and his various animals and associates have been entertaining readers for over 30 years, and still provide this reader with the best slump breaking experiences going. I know if I cannot read Riders, then something is very, very wrong…

3) The Ex-Girlfriend by Nicola Moriarty

Who doesn’t love a twisty, turny, psychological thriller? Not this reader! In The Ex-Girlfriend, Georgia and Luke have the most fantastic relationship.

Each thinks they have found the soul mate they have always hoped for, and never found.

Except…his ex just won’t leave them alone. Why is she so insistent on breaking up a relationship that really has nothing to do with her?

And when things start going very wrong for Georgia, maybe, the appropriately named Cadence is a little more than a jealous ex. She seems to be bringing Georgia’s well maintained life down around her ears, but who is the real villain in this tale which will resonate with anyone who had an ex who just wouldn’t take no for an answer…

4) Bestseller By Olivia Goldsmith

Oh I LOVE  this book! As part of my late teens, after eagerly chomping my way through Shirley Conran, Jilly Cooper, Danielle Steel and Jackie Collins, I was looking for something just as plot driven, but a little, let’s say, salacious.

In Bestseller, the world of publishing is turned upside down and inside out through the machinations of a New York based publishing house-5 books will be published, but which will be the bestseller?

And who will stop at nothing to make sure that it is them?

Not just a face paced thriller which peeks into the dark and murky practices that massive conglomerates use to push and inflate sales, this was published in 1996, where the wrong gossip in the right ear could break a reputation. I loved it, it is like a publishing version of Valley Of The Dolls! 

5) Trace Of Evil by Alice Blanchard

Now this one, I haven’t actually read yet, I bought it in July based on how much I enjoyed Alice’s novel for Titan Books-‘A Breath After Drowning’.

Eager to read more by her, I thought I would start at the beginning of her Natalie Lockhart series with ‘Trace Of Evil, which was published in 2019.

A small town with dark secrets, a detective with her own unsolved murder case in the family closet, and a larger than usual number of missing homeless people.

From the cover-

There’s something wicked in Burning Lake…

Natalie Lockhart is a rookie detective in Burning Lake, New York, an isolated town known for its dark past. Tasked with uncovering the whereabouts of nine missing transients who have disappeared over the years, Natalie wrestles with the town’s troubled history – and the scars left by her sister’s unsolved murder years ago.

Then Daisy Buckner, a beloved schoolteacher, is found dead on her kitchen floor, and a suspect immediately comes to mind. But it’s not that simple. The suspect is in a coma, collapsed only hours after the teacher’s death, and it turns out Daisy had secrets of her own. Natalie knows there is more to the case, but as the investigation deepens, even she cannot predict the far-reaching consequences – for the victim, for the missing of Burning Lake, and for herself.

Cannot wait to start reading this one, I get the feeling it is going to be a firm favourite.

Follow the tag #Top5Saturday OR #TopFiveSaturday on Twitter to see what other people have chosen-here’s hoping everyone has a lovely weekend with lots of reading, especially in the UK where we have the last Bank Holiday before Christmas

Join me next week when I try to figure out which books intimidate me, and whether I can bear to read them…