This is an adaptation of something I saw on Twitter – people were posting 26 books in 26 days, each title beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. Don’t worry – I’m planning on taking around 26 months to get to Z. Each month I’ll post a newish book I’ve enjoyed, plus a children’s book and an older book.

This time, it’s the ‘I’ books:

Bea Davenport and I go all the way back to 2013, when our first books were published within a few weeks of each other and we did various bookshop and library events together. In Too Deep tells the story of Maura, who flees her home and her past. Maura’s best friend Kim is dead – did Maura help to kill her, as she thinks? I’m a huge fan of Bea Davenport’s writing. As well as crime fiction, she also writes children’s and YA books. All highly recommended!

In the High Valley by Susan Coolidge is the fifth and last of the ‘Katy’ books: What Katy Did, What Katy Did at School, and What Katy Did Next are the better-known ones, and are followed by Clover and In the High Valley. The first three were favourites when I was a child, so I was pleased to learn, years later, that another two existed.

I Leap Over the Wall by Monica Baldwin is my ‘older book’ choice. In 1914, aged twenty-one, Monica Baldwin entered a convent (she writes about this in The Called And The Chosen). Twenty-eight years later, she leaves, and has to get to grips with daily life outside of her enclosed order. Meanwhile, the world is now at the height of the Second World War. Both are fascinating books.

Coming next month: the ‘J’ books.