what I've been reading

I’m surprised I have 10 books on my review list since I last published what I’ve been reading. I thought surely some of these I had already published but according to my archives, it’s been three months. Here’s the first five. 

Order Of Swans by Jude Deverauz - sci fi fantasy. Unknown to Kaley her mother was from another planet, Bellis where people have extraordinary abilities. When Kaley was three years old Jobi, family friend who had sensed that Kaley would be important to the survival of his people and planet, effected Graceen’s ‘death’ and put her on the ship back to Bellis leaving Kaley behind to be raised by her Earth father and grandparents. Jobi had a plan and returned when Kaley was 26 to train her and bring her back to Bellis although without telling her she would be traveling to another planet. When Kaley’s dissertation on fairy tales was rejected by her advisor Jobi used that to trick her into visiting his home for the summer, a trip that actually takes three years, putting her into a deep sleep for the journey. Once on Bellis she meets Tanek, a Swansman who is tasked with being her guide on a different island so Kaley can collect the tales from Bellis. Accompanying them is Sojee, her bodyguard since the island they are going to is men only (the women live on a different island). In actuality, the mission is to find the kings errant son and bring him back for an alliance marriage. From the beginning Kaley exhibits powers of her own and encounters real life fairy tales while her and Tanek’s relationship evolves from antagonism to love. There’s so much more to the story. It ends on a cliffhanger and dammit, nowhere on the cover or the inside flap did it say that this was part one of two. So now I have to wait and see how everything resolves.

The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins - Famous artist Vanessa Chapman died of cancer and left her estate to the Fairburn Foundation created by her estranged galleriest Douglas Lennox, naming her companion Grace as executor of her estate. While most of Vanessa’s paintings and ceramics and sculptures and diaries have been turned over, Grace has held back some resulting in years of acrimonious charges involving lawyers. When Douglas is killed in a hunting accident and one of Vanessa’s sculptures on display at a museum is found to contain a human bone his son Sebastian sends James Becker, their art expert and specifically an expert on Vanessa Chapman, an artist he has been enamored of since he was a child and his mother bought one of her small paintings, to Eris Island, Vanessa’s home and studio that is only accessible at low tide, and now the home of Grace, to deal with Grace, to determine more about the bone before the assemblage is dismantled and the bone tested, and to get the remaining bits of Vanessa’s estate. Becker’s approach is to make friends with Grace since the threats of the previous years did not resolve the standoff but the more Becker digs, questions arise concerning the disappearance of Vanessa’s husband and her cancellation of a show days before the opening, and Grace’s secrets start to emerge. Hawkins is an engaging storyteller, this is the third book of hers I’ve read, and I enjoyed this one even though it didn’t end the way I would have wanted.

Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi - set in 15th century West Africa. Ododo, a young woman, is a member of the blacksmith guild in Timbuktu where she has lived all her life, daughter of the head of the guild. Being a blacksmith, or a witch as the rest of the population calls them, is the last refuge of unwanted women, turned away by the men in their lives or their family. In Ododo’s mother’s case, raped and pregnant as a teen. Ododo makes flowers that she sells in the market and on this particular day, a new warrior king has conquered the city and incorporated it into his vast kingdom. Also on this particular day she is making a flower and singing in the back court when a raggedy man stops to talk to her and she gifts him the flower. The next day she is kidnapped and taken to the capitol city of Sangote where she learns that she is to be the bride of the Alaafin, the king of Yorubaland and that raggedy man was none other than him. She is smothered with luxuries and raised to high status but not everyone is happy with the king’s choice. Ododo has no intention of being sent back to her previous miserable existence and must learn to navigate the currents in the royal city, making allies, determined to be more than just a wife, which she considers another form of subjugation, and finds the power of influence and advisor to the king too much to resist. I’ll leave it at that. I really liked this book and the last few pages surprised me.

Pitch Dark by Paul Doiron - One of the wardens calls Mike Bowditch, a game warden investigator in Maine, about a possible missing person and whether or not to institute a search. The possible missing person, a man named Ammond who is asking around about a man and his 11 year old daughter who might be hiding out in the wilds of Maine has rented an ATV and hasn’t been heard from in two days during some really bad weather. Mike makes some calls and learns there is a man with a daughter, Mike and Cady Redmon, who is building a cabin in a remote part of the woods and makes plans to visit him and find out if he knows the man that is looking for him. When Mike and his father in law Charles are flown to the site by Josie, for whom the cabin is being built, all seems fine and well at first. But Mike feels something is wrong and as his questions get more pointed, the room gets fussier, and he wakes up to find the three of them bound to trees, stripped of their weapons, while the Redmons make their escape into the wilds of the Maine woods. When Josie dies from the drug, Mike takes off after the Redmons determined to catch them armed only with a flare gun and a pocket knife before they can cross into Canada. Mark and Cady both are deadly adversaries and are not who they claimed to be.

The Witches Of El Paso by Luis Jaramillo - Nena, the youngest of three sisters, suffers from visions and premonitions. At 18, she spends her days in El Paso TX taking care of her sisters’ two children and wishes for more from life. One night Nena is drawn outside where she is somehow transported back in time to El Paso del Norte in colonial Mexico where Sister Benedicta has come to fetch her. Nena is taken to the convent where she learns that some of the nuns also experience La Vista, the force or magic that underlies the power of existence. She joins their aquelarre where she learns to control La Vista instead of it controlling her and the enchantos or songs that call La Vista to them. Mostly what Nena wants is to return home back to her time but when smallpox runs through the convent and El Paso del Norte, she is expelled from the convent, sent to heal Sister Benedicta’s brother with the brebaje, a sort of magical food, that Nena caused to be made at the meeting of the aquelarre because the other nuns feared Nena’s power would draw unwelcome attention to the convent. The story shifts back and forth in time, from Nena’s childhood to her days in El Paso del Norte to her return to her time, and the present when now an old woman, Nena enlists the aid of her great niece to open the door to El Paso del Norte one last time. 

 

house cleaning and book reports

We’re finally getting some rain today, kind of slow and steady, some thunder rumbling now and then, enough to set the dog off into her neurotic response to rain and thunder. Thank all the powers that be no lightning. 

Since the yard has been put in order I’m clearing off surfaces and cleaning house this week pre-party. Not just sweeping or vacuuming or a quick wipe of dust but cleaning hard to get to window sills and baseboards, wiping down every piece of art on the walls, all the tchotchkes, daddy long leg wispy webs in the corners of the ceiling. A real spring cleaning, something I rarely do as I have a high tolerance for the detritus of life. The only thing I’m not doing is oiling all the wood furniture. No time for that but maybe I’ll do that after the party. Or not. Monday and Tuesday I did my bedroom and the big work room/in house studio/office. 

Today I start on the rest of the house, bathrooms on Saturday. So since that’s all I’m doing and I doubt anyone wants to read a blow by blow here’s the report on the last six books I’ve read. Not going to mention how long it took me to read six books.

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley - Francesca and her twin older brothers are the grandchildren of the last lord of Tome Manor in the English countryside where they vacation every summer. When they are 16 Frankie ‘adopts’ a girl as her best friend for the summer whose family vacations at the nearby caravan park after meeting her on the beach and who she calls Sparrow. Frankie and her brothers are not nice people. Fast forward 15 years and Frankie, now Francesca, has remade herself and the Manor after inheriting it from her grandfather. The Manor is now a high end organic spiritual retreat hotel and she is married to the architect who made her vision a reality but things are not as calm as they seem. The locals, who Francesca detests as being beneath her, are not happy about her attempt to privatize the woods and the beach, the woods where legend has it there are mysterious avenging creatures, The Birds, that exact justice when needed. Opening night during the Solstice is sold out but during the Midnight Feast celebration things are not going the way she planned. There are intrusions, a body is unearthed, the guests are acting strangely, there’s a fire and it’s up to Detective Walker the next day to unravel the events of the night that unfolded, rooted in that summer 15 years previous. It took me awhile to get invested in the story but when things started happening, I stayed up late into the night to finish the book.

The Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz - if I didn’t know Koontz wrote this book I would never have guessed. It’s written in a light hearted unserious style with the story teller injecting now and then suggestions for discussions if being read in a book club. It’s the story of Benny, a 23 year old high real estate agent who shows up for work one day to be patted on the back and told to clear out his desk with no real explanation, his girlfriend dumps him, his attempts at reaching out to other real estate companies ignored. On the same day he receives the shipment of a casket sized box with a letter about the gift/contents from an unknown uncle who appears not to exist when Benny tries to contact him. When Benny goes to breakfast with his PI friend Bob, but before his girlfriend dumps him, he meets Harper, the waitress and as it turns out Bob’s assistant and PI in training. When Benny’s kitchen is trashed the next morning he calls Bob who shows up with Harper. While Bob is investigating the garage and the crate, Benny and Harper discover what was in the crate, a 7’ muscular supernatural being whose sole purpose in life is to protect and set aright Benny’s life from those who would destroy him because he is too ’nice’. As Benny and Harper and Spike set out to find those responsible for Benny’s plight and rectify things, Benny’s story is revealed from childhood to adulthood as memories that come to him during the night. Benny did not have a normal life. I don’t know if I recommend this one or not. It started out entertaining enough but I lost interest about halfway through, sat down finally to just plow through it and thought the ending was pretty good. It is not a typical Koontz book.

Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits edited by J. Michael Straczynski - I mentioned that Ellison was one of my favorite authors back when I was reading science fiction almost exclusively. Some of these stories I have read and some I had not, at least I don’t remember them. One I skipped over almost completely after a few pages because I found it tiresome. Oddly enough it did not include A Boy and His Dog, a glaring omission to me.

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig - I read The Midnight Library by this author which I liked so thought I would like this one. Nope. The premise is an alien presence hidden in the sea grass off the coast of Ibiza that heals those it reaches out to who venture under the water near it and gives them extrasensory perceptions like mind reading and is also a sort of portal to that alien world. The island itself and its protected ecosystems are under attack by a developer. A 72 year old woman retired math teacher whose only child died in an accident at 12 and whose husband is recently deceased inherits a house in Ibiza which changes her life as she helps to save the island from the developer. Eighty percent of this book is filler...lectures, preaching, whining about being a useless person, lots of repetition. It got to the point where I would just skim over stuff until the writer got around to advancing the story. 

Things Don’t Break On Their Own by Sarah Easter Collins - It’s been a long time since I picked a book from the library that grabbed me immediately and read in (what counts for me these days) record time. Twelve pages in I already liked this one way more than the entire previous book. It’s the story of three women, two sisters and a best friend of one of them. Willa, the perfect golden girl in her father’s eyes, is 3 years older than Laika, headstrong and is abused and berated. Willa learned early how to avoid their father’s wrath, Laika refused. One morning on the first day of school 16 year old Willa is anxious to get there and see her friends while Laika is dragging so although they always walk to school together, this day they don’t. Thirteen year old Laika leaves for school, never arrives, and is never seen or heard from again. Her sister’s disappearance devastates Willa and to avoid the constant press and the pity of her friends her parents send her to a boarding school where she meets Robyn. Willa and Robyn are each other’s first love. The relationship doesn’t last but they remain friends and Robin supports her friend in her efforts over the years to find Laika whom everyone assumes is dead. Twenty three years later Willa attends a dinner party being given by Robyn and her wife Cat. Their brothers are in town at the same time and they are anxious to meet Cat’s brother’s new French girlfriend who he talks about constantly. I don’t want to say too much more. It’s a great story and I highly recommend it.

Return To Blood by Michael Bennett - The second book featuring Hana Westerman. Set in New Zealand Maori ex-detective Hana has returned home to start a new life (I have not read the first but I gather it’s the story of her last case and why she quit the police force in Auckland). Two decades previous the body of a young woman was found buried in the dunes and now the skeleton of another young woman who went missing four years ago is uncovered in the same area, discovered by Hana’s daughter Allison. Allison sets out to learn more about the young woman Kiri while Hana can’t leave her talents behind and conducts her own unofficial investigation and thinks she has uncovered who committed both murders. There’s a twist at the end. 

7 book reviews

The Cabinet Of Dr. Leng by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - The latest in the FBI Special Agent Pendergast novels. At the end of the last book, Constance, rebuffed by Pendergast, uses the time machine to go in the past of an alternate universe/timeline to save her siblings Mary and Joe and kill the evil Dr. Leng, destroying the machine in the process so that Pendergast cannot follow her. But he has other plans and locates a man brilliant enough to be able to reconstruct it and enlists the aid of friend and sometimes partner D’Agosta to help him save Constance from a mission doomed to failure. I really like these books and read it fairly quickly and got to the last page and dammit…to be continued. Now I have to wait til the end of August when the conclusion is released.

The Guest by B. A. Paris - Iris and Gabriel return home to find their friend Laure, wife of Pierre and their best friends who live in Paris, has moved into their home in London while they were gone for a hopefully romantic weekend. Laure and Pierre are childless by choice while Iris and Gabriel have a 20 year old daughter. They met at a resort during a first anniversary vacation for Iris and Gabriel and a honeymoon for Laure and Pierre and hit it off immediately and became fast friends. Laure had left Pierre when he confesses he just found out he has a daughter from a one night stand years ago while they were married. Pierre refuses all communication from best friend Gabriel, Laure overstays her welcome by months and gets involved with the part-time gardener Joseph and disappears after Iris heard them arguing. A murder mystery when a search finds Laure dead and the investigation proceeds. It’s an engaging story which kept me guessing until the end when the murderer reveals all musing about the past four months.

Dirty Thirty by Janet Evanovich - The further adventures of Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter and her sidekick Lula and the two men in her life Morelli and Ranger. Typical fun read with an ending I did not expect.

She’s Not Sorry by Mary Kubica - The way this is written it’s as if it’s a straight timeline but it actually jumps back and forth between the recent past and the present which doesn’t become apparent until near the end. Meghan, a nurse, is a divorced single mom of a 16 year old daughter, Sienna. Meghan is assigned to a woman, an apparent attempted suicide from jumping off a bridge and miraculously survived and who is in a coma, in the ICU where she works and it’s doubtful the woman, Caitlin, will survive. One day Meghan, who is something of a bleeding heart, runs into a friend, Natalie, from high school who needs rescuing from an abusive husband and Meghan responds, caring for Nat and confiding in her her own secrets. Things start to unravel as these two story lines eventually merge. Was Caitlin pushed, is Meghan being targeted? Then one day, Caitlin opens her eyes.

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters - Joe and Ruthie are the youngest of five siblings from the M’ic Maw indigenous in Canada. Every summer the family travels to the blueberry fields in Maine to pick berries. The summer Joe is six and Ruthie is four and the rest of the family is out of sight elsewhere, Ruthie is sitting on a big rock not far from their small cabin eating her sandwich while Joe wanders down to the lake out of sight of Ruthie. When Joe comes back, Ruthie is gone. The family searches but she is never found. In Maine, Norma is growing up the only child of a very restrictive but loving mother and father, not allowed out to play, who dreams for years of another mother and another life until they finally start to fade. The story is told alternately by Joe and Norma as they grow up and reminisce, Joe who carries the guilt of Ruthie’s disappearance and how it affected his life and Norma who comes to realize that there is a family secret that she eventually thinks she knows until she learns the full truth. This is a really good book, the story well told and I really enjoyed it.

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawson - Martha Ballard is a midwife and healer in her 50s in a small community in Maine on the Kennebek River in the late 1700s and as such she is privy to the lives and secrets of the townspeople which she records in her daily diary. One November a body is discovered in the frozen river. It is hacked out and brought into town and Martha is called to come examine the body. She declares him murdered, beaten, hung, and thrown in the still running part of the river where it floated downstream until it became caught at the bend and encased in the ice. The new Harvard educated doctor in town disagrees with her assessment, calls it accidental drowning, no investigation is begun. When a local woman accuses the dead man and the leading citizen and judge in town of rape, Martha becomes an important witness to the injuries and is determined that justice be done. Her insistence puts herself in danger as well as a member of her family as she investigates the murder and rape on her own. I really liked this book as Martha relates the births in the town, the herbal remedies she provides, the flashbacks of her own life, the lives of the women in a society ruled by men and the laws that punish women but rarely men. 

Angel Of Vengeance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - the conclusion to The Cabinet Of Dr. Leng. Just as it seems Constance, Pendergast, and D’Agosta have failed with Leng having killed her sister Mary and abducted Joe and her younger self, Pendergast’s evil brother Diogenes, who they all thought had dies when Constance pushed him into a volcano, walks through the door claiming to be their salvation. He informs them that the man who reworked the time machine has come through and got himself arrested, that Diogenes was the last to come through as it self destructed having been left on maximum for too long. Constance, Pendergast, D’Agosta, and Diogenes, seemingly trapped forever in the past of this alternate timeline, plot to deprive Leng of his victims and kill Leng in the process and then once again all seems lost. I’m going to stop here in case you are a fan of these books.

 

book reviews

I’ve accumulated 11 books since my last book review post and since I have nothing new to write about since Monday here are the first five. I’ll post the next six later.

Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin - Vivvy is the daughter of a psychic and has visions of her own that come unbidden when touches pictures, things, people. When she was 10 she started having dreams of a blue horse killing a boy, Mike, at her school and took to hanging around outside his house. One day she pushes him out of the way of a blue Mustang about to run him down. Grown now, Vivvy has gone off to college and become an astrophysicist, Mike has become a cop who believes in Vivvy’s visions and asks her to come in after hours and go through files of cases to see if she comes up with anything helpful, a success rate of about 42%. This day though, Mike has asked her to come in and review a file of a case belonging to Jesse Sharp, a skeptic but when Vivvy pulls a photo of a charm bracelet out of the file telling him it doesn’t belong and that the missing girl the file is about is alive he keeps his eye on her as she conducts her own investigation to find the child and the kidnapper. I’m not going to say anymore about this story, it’s worth a read. There’s the relationship with her mother, recently dead from a brain tumor, with her sister Brig, with Mike, and ultimately with Sharp, and attempts to reconcile her visions with her scientist mind.

The Institute by Stephen King - 12 year old Luke Ellis is extremely intelligent, he absorbs knowledge like a sponge absorbs water only he never becomes saturated like a sponge does and he remembers everything he reads. He doesn’t just remember, he understands everything he reads. He is also capable of very weak telekinesis. One night his parents are murdered and he is drugged and kidnapped and wakes up in a room that is exactly like his except for no window where there should be a window, a prisoner at the Institute, a secrete installation in the woods of Maine. He meets the other kids and learn that they too were kidnapped for telekinesis and telepathy and the kids stay in Front Half for several weeks being tested and given injections to enhance their abilities before being sent to Back Half from which no one returns and no one knows what happens there. Then 10 year old Avery arrives who has very high telepathic ability. When Luke escapes, a team is sent to capture or kill him, his friends are sent to Back Half who try to hold onto their sanity hoping Luke will find someone who will believe his story and bring help. When the kids in Back Half finally figure out what they are being used for and discover their true power they start wreaking havoc in Back Half but their revolt is doomed unless Luke gets there in time. I had stopped reading Stephen King for reasons which aren’t important but I enjoyed this one. It’s a good story and he’s a good storyteller but I could have used a little less detail on how train yards work. But that’s just me.

We Are All The Same In The Dark by Julia Heaberlin - When Odette was 16 she went to Wyatt’s house for their scrabble date. Wyatt met her at the door, told her to run and never come back. He had blood on his clothes. She left and in her panic rolled her car and nearly died and by the time she was found had to have one of her legs amputated. Wyatt’s sister Trumanell, the darling of their small town, and their father were missing, her bloody handprint on the door, and Wyatt was found wandering out of his mind in the fields. The town accuses Wyatt of their murders but no bodies are ever found and no proof. Odette graduates and leaves for college and returns five years later and joins the police force, obsessed with Trumanells’ disappearance ten years earlier. Then Wyatt sees a young girl with one eye laying in a field. He stops and brings her home to protect her. Odette gets wind of it and shows up at Wyatt’s house and tries to shield him from the town’s conviction that he is a murderer and whisks the girl to a safe house run by her cousin, daughter of her Baptist preacher uncle, brother to her dead revered cop father. Odette is desperate to solve Trumanell’s murder and uncover the shocking truth of that night and clear her ex-boyfriend as well as the mystery of this young girl with one eye who refuses to talk and who Odette feels will somehow help to uncover the truth in this twisty psychological thriller. It’s a good story, well written.

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods - I’m not really sure how to write about what this book is about so here’s the blurb on the back…”On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found…For too long Opaline, Martha, and Henry have been the side characters in their lives. But when a vanishing bookstore casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. By unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder…where nothing is as it seems.” It intrigued me enough to check it out. The story is told in the first person by the three characters. Opaline’s story begins in 1921 in London when she flees to Paris and then again to Dublin to escape from a forced marriage. In Dublin she finds safe harbor taking over a nostalgia shop after its owner had died, adding books to the inventory. The nostalgia shop was originally a library in a remote Italian village which had the extraordinary ability to direct the visitor to the one book that would change and set their lives on a new path. The villagers wanted to burn it down, spooked by its uncanniness. Instead a man from London had it dismantled and shipped to Dublin where he had it rebuilt for his nostalgia shop. Martha’s story starts in the modern day when she flees her Irish village and her abusive and violent husband ending up in Dublin and getting a job and a home as a ladies housekeeper for Madam Bowden. Henry’s story also starts in the modern day. A literary researcher convinced that Emily Bronte was writing a second novel, he meets Martha while looking for the lost bookshop run by Opaline that he thinks is the key to this lost manuscript and that should be next door to Madam Bowden’s house but isn’t. As Martha and Henry search for more information about Opaline, who seems to have dropped off the face of the earth when her brother finds her once again, their own stories become intertwined. I don’t want to say much more but it’s a good book full of magic and self discovery and I enjoyed it.

Shoot The Moon by Isa Arsen - Annie is the only child of the only couple with a child in her neighborhood in Santa Fe whose residents live there because they are nuclear scientists working at the nearby facility. Annie finds little things under her mother’s rose bush in the back garden, inexplicably there. In 1948 when Annie is 8 years old a little girl appears in her backyard, she’s just visiting she says and is gone a few minutes later. When Annie is 15, her father, who she adored, died and Annie represses her memories in order to repress the pain of her father’s death, represses the need to love things that will leave her. Annie is brilliant and after high school she leaves for college and a double degree in physics. After graduation, inexplicably drawn to the moon, Annie heads to Houston and NASA where she gets hired as a secretary, leaving her artist girlfriend Evelyn behind. After correcting mistaken calculations from one of the engineers working on the moon shot/landing she confronts him and is eventually brought to the attention of the director who promotes her to the computer room/programming suite. As her relationship with the engineer, Norm, blooms, Annie discovers an anomaly in the back corner amongst the massive computer banks. Things that fall onto a certain spot disappear and then reappear 6 minutes later, a discovery that completely changes the course of Annie’s life. I’m not going to reveal any more, it’s a good story told by jumping back and forth from the past to the present, just that Annie must learn to let love in her life even though that comes sometimes with loss and that she must learn to reign in the single minded curiosity of her brilliant mind to let that happen. I liked this one a lot.

winter? spring? reading list

My quarterly book reviews have fallen by the wayside mostly because I just haven’t had time to sit and read. I used to read two books every two to three weeks. If I get one book read a month these days I’m doing good. Spending too much time online or on my device playing games or streaming something in the evenings and now with spring I’m spending a lot of time outside working in the yard. Anyway, here’s the last six books I’ve read.

The Choice by Nora Roberts – the third in the Dragon Heart Legacy trilogy. I skimmed over probably about the first third of this final volume because it was basically repetitive stuff aimed at anyone who hadn't read the first two. Breen, Daughter of the Fey and granddaughter of the evil god Odran, has come into her powers but still spends her days training in Talamh  with Keegan, her lover and the taoiseach of Talamh, in the afternoons and writing her book in her cottage in Ireland in the mornings with her best friend Marco, all human, who has also been embraced by the Fey in Talamh. Odran is building an army of dark warriors to take over and burn Talamh. capture Breen so as to suck all her powers, make him god of all worlds and rain chaos and horror over all the worlds. He launches his attack on the summer solstice, a day of glorious celebration in Talamh but the Fey and Keegan and Breen are ready for him and the battle ensues. And of course good triumphs over evil.

Things In Jars by Jess Kidd – This is the second book of hers I've read and I really liked it. I just wish I had had longer spells for reading than the 15 or 20 minute time spans in which I did read it. I may even check it out again and reread it, something I rarely, almost never, do. Set in the late 1800's London during the Cabinet of Curiosities fad, Bridie is a street waif whose protector, Gan, provided dead bodies for doctors and medical students. Bridie is quick and intelligent and so impressed a local surgeon when she was somewhere between 8 and 10 that he bought her for a guinea to train her as an apprentice. Now grown, Bridie lives alone, her mythical husband dead, she provides for herself by conducting domestic investigations and minor surgery. Bridie is retained to find the kidnapped 6 year old daughter of Sir Edmund Berwick, Christabel, around which there is much mystery. Christabel is not an ordinary child. Early in Bridie's investigtion she encounters a ghost, Ruby, who attaches himself to her, unable to move on until she remembers him, and who assists her in her search for the child. Bridie is determined to find and rescue the Christabel before she ends up with a Collector or in a circus sideshow. I don't want to reveal too much but I do recommend it. 

An Evil Heart by Linda Castillo – another Chief of Police Kate Burkholder murder mystery set in the English/Amish community of Painter's Mill. Amish Aden Karn is found on the road murdered and the weapon appeared to be a crossbow. The community is devastated, especially the young Amish girl he was courting, because Aden was clearly loved by everyone as the kindest, gentlest, most helpful, funny young man. Who would want to kill Aden? Days later the body of a young English woman is discovered and Kate is convinced the two murders are related. Kate sets out to learn as much as she can about Aden by questioning everyone who knew him, especially the young men that hang out at an abandoned gas station. The more Kate learns, the more she suspects that Aden was not who people think he was and when a young Amish girl comes forward with a horrible tale, Kate is even more convinced the two murders are connected. As Kate's own wedding day approaches, as she gets closer and closer to the truth, she comes face to face with the murderer and nearly loses her own life. 

Starling House by Alex E. Harrow - Opal and her younger brother Jasper were orphaned when Opal was 14 and her mother’s car suddenly swerved off the road and into the river where she drowned. Opal nearly drowned herself but woke up on the river bank. Since then she has lied, cheated, and stolen to support herself and her very talented and smart brother with the one goal of getting Jasper out of Eden, the small town where they live in room 12 of a motel. Eden, a snakebite town if ever there was one where tragedy frequently visits, was founded as a coal town and is controlled by the Gravely’s and their power plant and shadowed by the immense mysterious Starling house behind always locked gates. There are many stories about Starling house and Eleanor Starling who married the eldest Gravely who turned up dead the day after their wedding and who used his fortune to build the sprawling house. Eleanor eventually disappeared and a new Starling showed up to maintain the house and so it went decade after decade. Opal has dreamed about the house since she was a child, sometimes nightmares, sometimes not. Now in her mid-20s one day she passes by the gates and they open for her and she knocks on the door where she meets the current Warden of Starling House, Arthur. Arthur tells her to leave and never come back. When she refuses he hires her as a housekeeper and Opal sets about cleaning and painting and making small repairs to the dirty dilapidated house. Eventually she learns that there are beasts that come from Underland over which Starling House was built and which only the Warden can see and fight to keep them from the town to commit mayhem and tragedy. Arthur is determined to be the last Warden whatever that takes and Opal joins him in the fight as they descend into Underland to take the battle to the beasts where Opal encounters the vengeful ghost of Eleanor Starling. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. I did enjoy the book though and I have, of course, left a lot out. It has small illustrations and two full page illustrations scattered throughout and also 22 footnotes the purpose of which I’m not sure and we do get the various stories about Starling House, it’s history. 

Book of Night by Holly Black - Charlie never met a bad idea she didn’t like or a bad decision she didn’t make. In this world of shadow magic where gloamists, magicians, manipulated shadows by changing their shapes for aesthetic reasons or, more dangerously, giving them the power to do the bidding of their owners, an underground of magic books exists which are highly prized by gloamists so as to increase their powers, Charlie has worked for them as a thief for half her life. After ending up in the hospital after one such job she decides she needs to change her ways and gets a job as a bartender. She’s doing her best to keep from being pulled back into that world and pay for her younger sister’s college when she reluctantly agrees to find a friend’s boyfriend, Adam, who has gone missing. When she locates him she steals one of those magic books she finds in his possession. When she is subsequently attacked by a shadow in the bar, her boyfriend Vince comes to her rescue and she discovers that he has been lying to her about who he really is and how he is connected to an evil person from her past, which evil person has now given her a deadline to find a particular book or else he will send a shadow to crack her open like a spatchcocked chicken. Charlie sets out to find the book, save herself and Vince and boy I did not expect the ending.

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh - the twins read this book and passed it on to me wanting to know what I thought of it. here’s what I think…don’t bother. It’s 260 pages of monologue by an older woman recounting her late childhood and early adulthood whose mother is deceased, the caretaker of her ex-cop alcoholic father with dementia who works at the prison for boys with plans to leave it all behind. She paints herself as an unappealing and envious person with no hope or future, filling her time with pretend interactions and conversations in her head and sexual obsessions when she’s not getting drunk with her father. When the new counselor at the boy’s prison becomes obsessed with one of the inmates, she draws Eileen into her obsession and hounding of the boy’s mother and which event finally precipitates Eileen’s flight from her home and life and that’s the end, she leaves, there is no what comes after. The blurb on the back called it “creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny”. Creepy, somewhat. Mesmerizing, if mesmerizing means boring. Sublimely funny, uh, no.

 

spring/summer reading list part 2

Here's the second half.

The House At The End Of The World by Dean Kootnz – Katie loses her parents and daughters in a gang attack on the ice cream shop in which they are sitting. There is no justice because the father of one of the punks is highly connected but she pursues it anyway. And then her husband is killed in a hit and run and as he is dying extracts a promise from Katie to live, live for him and their two girls. Katie buys an island, Jacob's Ladder, at the end of an archipelago in an enormous lake arming herself and stocking up with a two year supply of food and goods. One day intense activity occurs on and around the nearby island of Ringrock reported to be a secret government installation. Soon after two secret government men come to Katie's island looking for an escapee and then all hell starts to break loose. That evening 14 year old Libby who has barely escaped with her life from the other near island, Oak Haven, is standing on Jacob's Ladder knocking on Katie's door. Libby's parents are the lead scientists on Ringrock and one day she gained access to her father's computer and learned that an alien life form was discovered and has been studied and has now escaped and threatens the very existence of life on Earth if not stopped. Katie and Libby must escape Jacob's Ladder for the mainland, escaping not only the alien life form but also the government men trying to silence them permanently.

The Little Shop Of Found Things by Paula Brackston – I had no idea what this book was about when I asked the library to get it for me through the lend program with other country libraries but the title intrigued me. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't what I read. Flora, newly divorced, and her 20 something daughter Xanthe (really?) have just bought an old antique store in the town of Marlborough whose previous proprietor had died. Xanthe has a talent for getting glimpses of an object's past when she holds it, psychometry, and at auction she holds a chatelaine, a set of short chains that the mistress of the house wore from which dangled various objects she needed close to hand, and got the strongest reaction she had ever experienced and so bought it. In the yard behind the shop Xanthe uncovers a rounded stone hut, a blind house, used to hold prisoners until they can be transferred to court. There she encounters ghost Margaret who tells her to use the chatelaine to go back to the 17^th century to save her wrongly accused daughter, ladies maid Alice, of theft whereupon she dissolves and finds herself in the barn of the great house in which Alice worked and sets about to clear Alice's name after she becomes a kitchen servant to give her access to the house to search for the missing items. Little Shop is the first of four books, each involving a different adventure for Xanthe as she travels back in time with the aid of a different object. I liked it well enough but I'm not sure I liked it enough to order the next in the series.

A World Of Curiosities by Louise Penny – another in her series about Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec Armand Gamache and Special Agent Jean-Guy Beauvior and the little village of Three Pines where Gamache lives. The story spans decades involving the murder of a prostitute that was pimping out her two damaged children, Fiona and Sam, and the escape of a heinous serial killer from prison intent on revenge against Gamache. The children are now grown, the daughter having been taken under Gamache's wing, and receiving her engineer's degree, Fiona and Sam return to Three Pines for the graduation party of another resident, Harriet. A mysterious letter, a hidden room discovered, a copy of a famous painting with modern changes all raise Gamache's hackles as he tries to understand what it all means and protect his family. It's a good story, she's a good writer, and this is the first book I've read in a while that I had a hard time putting down.

Wake by Shelley Burr – A once thriving farming community, the small town Nannine in Australia has a claim to fame, the unsolved disappearance of the child Evelyn McCreery nineteen years previous from her parents' isolated farm. Her older sister Mina spends her days sectioning out an area and searching it for her sister's body. Lane Holland as a teen was working the 'guess your weight' attraction at the fair the night Evelyn disappeared. His abusive father had been fired and ordered off the grounds. Now grown, Lane makes his living cracking cold disappearance cases and when he learns that his father is due to be released from prison, he is determined to do whatever it takes to protect his younger sister by proving that his suspicion about his father and Evelyn are true. He shows up on Mina's doorstep and gradually earns her trust by tracking down another disappeared child. However, the day the elder Holland is released, Lane meets him outside the prison determined to force his father to take them to the spot where he buried Evelyn and when Mina gets drawn in inadvertently both their lives are in danger. A little twist at the end. I just could not get drawn into this book until the very end when all is revealed, not because it is poorly written, could not settle down with it which I'm sure it had more to do with me that the quality of the story.

The Spite House by Johnny Compton – Eric and his two daughters are on the run, constantly moving and moving on, Eric taking jobs that paid under the table so they couldn't be tracked down. Eric and 17 year old Dess are very protective of Stacy, never leaving her alone or out of their sight. They are in Degener, Texas en route to Odessa where Eric grew up when Eric sees an ad placed by Eunice Houghton, the last living Houghton, for a job to stay in the Masson House aka the Spite House and record any phenomenon he might hear or observe for an enormous amount of money that was enough to set the three of them up for life somewhere they couldn't be found. The house is, of course, haunted with a backstory generations old involving two families, the Massons and the Houghtons, betrayal and murder. A Houghton betrayed 12 innocent people during the Civil War that caused them to be hanged and their ghosts haunted the Houghtons. They gave Peter Masson's father, the last living descendent of the 12, land and a house hoping to lift the curse. It did not. When Peter went to war during WWI, he died and his mangled body was shipped home and buried. A year or so later Peter returned to Degener furious that his brother had sold the family home to an orphanage and built the spite house overlooking it. Turns out Eric's grandfather was supposed to have died in the fire that burned down the family home but one day he came strolling back to get his revenge on those he blamed for the fire and we find out that Stacy had also died and been buried and showed up one day about a year later, all three having no memory of having died. So Eric is invested in staying in the house that steals people's souls and bodies in some cases looking for answers. It all comes to a head but nothing is resolved, no answers are found, the last Houghton dies, and Eric is split with half himself remaining in the house and the other depleted half moving on with his girls and the money. I've told too much of the story because it's dumb and not very well put together and I don't recommend wasting your time.

spring/summer reading list part 1

When I sat down to write my report on my then most recently finished book I realized I failed to publish my spring reading list for March, April, and May. I was well into the summer quarter so I just decided to wait and publish the spring and summer reading lists together. I can't tell you where spring left off and summer began but I haven't been reading very much this summer. Ten books over six months. Ten is kind of a long list so I'm going to split it into two posts.

The Limpopo Academy Of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith – some of you might remember I started this series and wanted to read them in order and it has been a long time since one appeared on my book reviews. The reason for that is that while the library said they had to next in the series and that it was indeed in the library, I could never find it until a couple of weeks ago. Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi meet Clovis Anderson, the author of their private detection bible; save the matron of the orphan farm's job, Charlie saves Fanwell from being wrongly imprisoned, and the cheating by the builder of Rra Rhadiphuti and Mma Makutsi's new house is discovered. I did not enjoy this one as much as the others, too much repetition. A character would say something and the person they were talking to would repeat it and it seemed longer than all the other ones I've read.

Fractured by Karin Slaughter – a Will Trent novel. Abigail Campano comes home after her tennis game to find a body lying in a pool of blood that she assumes is her teenage daughter and is charged by a young man holding a knife. They struggle, fall down the stairs and Abigail in her fury strangles the young man to death. Atlanta police respond but Abigail's father is insanely wealthy and uses his pull and contacts to get the Georgia Bureau of Investigation on the case and Will Trent's boss sends him because 'he sees things no one else sees'. When Paul Campano gets home he notices right away that the body on the floor is not his daughter Emma but that of her best friend and their daughter is missing. Will examines the scene and realizes that Emma has been kidnapped and, with his newly appointed partner Faith, the race is on to find the person or persons that killed Kayla and took Emma before it's too late to save her.

Undone by Karin Slaughter – next in the Will Trent series. Henry and Judith are driving home when a naked woman steps out in front of their car and they hit her. Another car passing by stops and one of the men is a EMT who provides aid on the scene until the ambulance arrives and transports the woman to the hospital where Will has taken his partner Faith after she passed out in the a parking lot. Will learns from the ER doctor that the woman's injuries are far worse than those sustained by being hit by a car, she's been starved and tortured, and so while Faith is being examined he goes to the site of the crash and tries to start his own unwelcome by the local cops investigation. As he turns to leave he discovers a shaft leading to an underground torture chamber the woman had been kept in where he finds evidence of a second victim who was found after a search of the surrounding forest only this woman did not survive. Now two more women have gone missing and Will and Faith are convinced they have been taken by the same perpetrator. In a race against time their investigation seems to be going nowhere until pieces finally start falling into place and both Faith and Will find themselves in separate life threatening situations as they confront the family they think holds the key.

The Lost Kings by Tyrell Johnson – Jeanie King and her twin Jaime live with their aunt and uncle in California after their mother dies when their car hits an elk while their father is deployed overseas. One day their father returns, damaged the way war damages men emotionally, and moves his family to a cabin in the wilds of Washington state where Jeanie and Jaime meet Maddox and they spend their summer exploring the forest and the coast. When Jeanie is 14 her father comes home one night with blood on his hands and tells Jeanie that he is leaving. The same night her brother Jaime disappears and Jeanie is left alone until a teacher from school finds her and she is sent back to live with her aunt and uncle. Twenty years later Jeanie is living in Oxford England where her mother was from with serious commitment issues and seeing a therapist when Maddox shows up unexpectedly telling Jeanie he has found her father hiding out in a remote area of New York. Now she must decide if she wants to confront her father, not only about his abandonment of her but also about Jaime's disappearance. The story is told in sections of then and now and Jeanie had developed into a not particularly likable person and I wasn't particularly liking where the story was going toward the end when an unexpected twist or two changed everything.

Broken by Karin Slaughter – the next in the Will Trent series. When a 911 call leads to the discovery of the body of a young woman weighed down in a lake, the local police botch the investigation that causes an officer to be near fatally stabbed. The suspect, Tommy, is coerced into a confession of the murder of the young woman. When Tommy commits suicide in his cell, Will is called in to investigate not only the murder of the young woman, Allison, but also the officers on the case. He knows they are hiding evidence and lying and when Allison's boyfriend is found murdered by the same perpetrator, exonerating Tommy, things really heat up.

winter reading list

Fairy Tale by Stephen King – Back when I got bit by the copperhead and since all 7 books of the Dark Tower were out, I decided that I would read them while I was laid up. So I did. And when I was done I swore I would never read another of his books again, it pissed me off that much. I slogged through those books to get to the end and dammit if it wasn't just Groundhog Day. And I haven't until I decided to read this one because everyone was saying it was good. Don't get me wrong, I used to like King. Salem's Lot is probably the scariest book I've ever read. And I think The Green Mile is one of the best stories ever told. I've liked a lot of his books but he seemed to peter out to me. Anyway, I read this one and I liked it well enough but I think it would have been a better book without the weird referencing to fairy tales like Rumplestiltskin and not just fairy tales but fables like The Three Little Pigs and nursery rhymes like The Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe and stories of other places like Oz and I think even Star Wars and writers like Edgar Allen Poe. The main character would see something and make the connection in his mind and I'm going What? No! Sometimes the connection was so slender as to be contrived. And especially when the most obvious one, to me, in the whole book was never made...See no evil, Speak no evil, Hear no evil. I understand the point I think, but still. Anyway, after this long introduction to the book in which each chapter begins with an illustration: The main character Charlie, 17 year old athletic student whose mother died when he was a child, whose father became a drunk and then got sober, who made a promise to whatever god that he would not shy from the task given so long as his father remained sober. Charlie finds his reclusive angry old man neighbor and dog in need of aid and befriends them while being his caretaker during the man's recovery from a fall off a ladder and ultimately is told of a passage into another world as a result of the friendship. Charlie has an objective for going there, to turn the clock back for his dying dog, but in the process he becomes the Promised Prince that brings about the restoration of the ruined fair world of Empris and restores the rightful rulers after vanquishing the monstrous enemy who usurped the throne and turned the country and people to ruin. I don't feel like I'm giving anything away because it is a fairy tale in its own right and isn't that how fairy tales go?

Strange Weather by Joe Hill – Let me start out by saying I really like the way he writes. This is a collection of four short novels and each story begins and ends with an illustration. I like that.
     Snapshot is about 14 year Michael who helps his neighbor suffering from dementia to get back home when she warns him not to let the 'polaroid man' take his picture because he steals memories. Michael later has a disturbing encounter with the man with the camera and sets out to protect his neighbor, the woman who was his caretaker growing up and the current victim of the Phoenician, from the memory snatching polaroid. He discovers how much this woman loved him and the story culminates in Michael's final act of caring for her.
     Loaded is the story of a violent and angry man whose wife divorced him and has a restraining order against him and who is no longer allowed to own or possess guns and who works in a mall as a security guard. Regardless, he has obtained a gun from a friend and the day a woman shot and killed her lover at the store where they worked, he responded and four other people ended up dead. Hailed as a hero, his story of the shootings starts to unravel when a local reporter starts digging up his past and he does not react well.
     Aloft is the story of Aubrey, a man who agrees to skydive to impress a women he is in love with who does not love him. The jump does not go as planned when he lands on a semi-solid cloud with no way down. The cloud responds to his wishes for comfort and other desires but he is stranded with no food or water and knows he will eventually die up there unless he can find a way down.
     Rain is the story of Honeysuckle, a lesbian waiting for her girlfriend to arrive in Boulder to begin their life together. Just as Yolanda arrives a sudden rain bursts that isn't water but sharp crystal needles that kill everyone who had the bad luck to be outside when it happened. More crystal rains fall spreading out over the country and world as Honeysuckle tries to find her way in this new environment, avoiding the crazy nihilists out to get her, while the world falls apart and she discovers how it all began.

The Night Ship by Jess Kidd – This is the third book in a row that has an illustration at the beginning of each chapter, not an illustration so much as a graphic, and if this is a new trend in publishing, I like it. Why shouldn't adult books have illustrations? Anyway, this the story of the shipwrecked Batavia, en route to the Dutch East Indies from Holland. On board is 9 year old Mayken whose mother has died and she is being sent to a father she has never met. She spends the months of the voyage going on 'misadventures above and below the deck' hunting for a mythical monster she is sure is haunting the ship. One night during a storm, getting separated from the rest of the flotilla, the Batavia runs aground on a coral reef, the ship is abandoned, the survivors are stranded on an atoll from which a boat is launched to go for help. While they struggle to survive waiting for rescue, Mayken learns that the true monsters are all around her. Three hundred and sixty one years later, after the death of his mother, 9 year old Gil is sent to live with a grandfather he barely remembers on the same island that the survivors of the Batavia were stranded on which is now the base for fishermen during the season. Gil is a lost and lonely boy left to his own devices, and his own entertainment, while his taciturn grandfather is out on the boat. He finds himself in the middle of a feud between his grandfather Joss and the dominant family on the island and his strangeness ignites hard feelings into violence. I've barely touched on the stories of these two children, told intertwined in alternating chapters, and what becomes of them. It's a good book, well told, easy reading. I'm going to see if the library has anymore of her work.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave – Sarah and Andrew take a free weekend at a resort in Nigeria to try and save their marriage. They decide to take a walk down the beach, leaving the safety of the resort and run into two girls being chased by mercenaries as they flee the destruction of their village and the murder of their people by an oil company who wants to drill there. The hunters catch up with them as they run towards Andrew and Sarah. The hunters give Andrew and Sarah a chance to save one of the girls by cutting off a finger and so Sarah does and then both girls are dragged away. Little bee is released and makes her way to a port where she sneaks aboard a ship to London and is turned into a detention center. She is kept there for two years before being released illegally and makes her way to Sarah's house. The rest of the book is about the relationship they develop and what to do about Little Bee. The story is told alternately from Little Bee's viewpoint and Sarah's. I didn't care for the ending personally but it does reflect what happens in real life.

French Braid by Anne Tyler – I have no idea why she titled this book French Braid because the reference to that happened only once at the very end of the book as in what was the name of that braid she used to wear? The story opens with Serena and her boyfriend from college catching the train to meet his parents and she sees a man she thinks is her cousin Nicholas. She's not quite sure and doesn't speak to him. Her boyfriend thinks that's weird and can't believe her family is so unconnected that she wasn't even sure the man was her cousin. Then it segues to Serena's grandparents and their three children, Alice, Lily, and David, and tells the family's story through three generations and doesn't get back to Serena until the very end and then only peripherally and it's at least a decade later. I enjoyed it well enough.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman – There is London above and London below. We all know London above, few know London below where magic and creatures and people live and haunt and struggle. Door is being chased by two hunters sent to kill her. She's exhausted. Every door she creates or opens, they follow and it has drained her. She is wounded and needs sleep and reaches out mentally for one last door to open to someplace safe and falls through a brick wall at the feet of Richard and his fiance Jessica, late for dinner with her boss in London above. Richard stops despite Jessica's urging to leave the girl be and come on. And so Richard is drawn into the world of London below when he helps Door escape her pursuers and then finds that he has become invisible to the world of London above. In London below, Door's family has been murdered and she is on a quest to not only not be killed as well but find out who and why her entire family has been. She acquires the hapless hero Richard because he has nowhere else to go, the marquis de Carabas for his help and information, and the bodyguard Hunter to protect her on her mission. I really like Gaiman's storytelling and he weaves a tale with a very satisfying ending.