I’ve set ‘Thicker Than Water‘ aside for now. I was reading it for the WHEN MOTHER NATURE STRIKES square but, as I got into the book, I realised that it wasn’t a good enough fit for the square because the flooding that turned all the characters into refugees happened six years earlier.

I’ll finish this after Halloween Bingo is over

Stehen King’s novella ‘The Mist’ turned out to be a good fit for WHEN MOTHER NATURE STRIKES. It was also a really good read. my review is HERE.

I read ‘4.50 From Paddington‘ for the AMATEUR SLEUTH square.

I think Agatha Christie had fun writing this Jane Marple mystery. It has an improbably elaborate plot involving a murder on a train, a hidden body, family secrets, and a divisive will that poisons a family. To me, the complexity read as a playful parade of red herrings. The final solution was quite simple. I loved that, while Jane Marple remains the architect of the investigation and provides the key insights to unmask the killer, she hands all the work over to two energetic younger people, Lucy Eylesbarrow, a competent, independent young woman with a sharp mind and an openminded Scotland Yard detective.

I read ‘ForNevermore – season one‘ for the GENRE HORROR square.

It’s a book about a teenage girl who has been diagnosed as having had a psychotic break that made her dreams seem to reach into her real life. It turns out that her dreams ARE reaching into her real life and not in a benign way.

This was an entertaining Young Adult novel, written like a TV series. It’s the first book in a longer series and the ending felt like a TV season finale designed to make the next season a Must Watch item.

My review is HERE

I read ‘Road To Ruin‘ for the DYSTOPIAN HELLSCAPE square.

I set it aside at 55% because I wasn’t engaged with the characters. The plot was well thought through. The world-building worked. The dynamics of the world reminded me of Sheri Tepper’s brand of Science Fiction. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feel any tension and I realised I kept putting off picking up the book, rather than rushing to see what would happen next.

I pulled ‘All The Murmuring Bones‘ from my TBR pile to read for the MONSTER square. I’ve already read and enjoyed four of Angela Slatter’s books so I know that her stories have a wide range of styles and that her writing always works for me. This has a slow, thoughtful start that invites the reader to pull up a chair and settle in for a good story. I’m enjoying listening to Aoife McMahon’s calm but engaging narration.

How could I resist a book called, ‘I Was A Teenage Slasher‘ especially when it’s written by Stepen Graham Jones?

I played_The Tell-Tale Heart Wild Card to convert the SWORD AND SORCERY square into one that I can claim by reading a book by a favourite author once the original square is called.

I’ve just started this. It’s living up to its slasher name in terms of gore but there’s more to it than that. Stephen Graham Jones has given the story a twist by having the story by a narrator looking back seventeen years his seventeen-year-old self and adopting a fatalist persepctive that abandons agency but embraces nostalgia and a sort of wry regret.

Even though the content may be distressing, I bought ‘Kill Your Darling‘ after I read the first six paragraphs. Here they are:

“They wrapped a whole roll of duct tape around his head. Really layered him up good and thick, all the way down to the cardboard spool.

Whoever suffocated my son sealed him inside his own pressure-sensitive shell. No light, no sound. Sure as hell wasn’t any air. Billy would’ve been breathing in polyethylene for those last few minutes of his life, the thrum of his own jackrabbit heartbeat pounding against his eardrums.

His eyelids were glued against the adhesive side of the tape. Couldn’t blink without pulling his eyelashes out. Soaked in his own sweat. Trapped in that skull-sized sauna.

The surface of the tape bubbled with each muffled scream. Nothing but these pockets of trapped carbon dioxide blistering around his head, pulsing in odd spots. Every exhale was looking for an escape, not finding one.

Here’s the real kicker: Across the surface, directly over top of Billy’s own eyes, were two black circles. Whoever did this to him pulled out a permanent marker and laced the taped-over craters of Billy’s sockets with a pair of uneven eyes.

Cartoon things, really. The left circle was larger than the right. No irises, no retinas. Just two sloppy, lopsided ovals staring blankly out at nothing. A child’s drawing. On my fifteen-year-old son.”

I read Upfield’s ‘Death Of A Swagman’ last year. I enjoyed the humour and the way it gave me a window into an Australia that’s not there any more. I’d been thinking about reading another book from this series. The Halloween Bingo review of ‘An Author Bites The Dust‘ prompted me to try this one.

I’m in the mood for something a little silly to help me beat back the encroaching dark of autumn and ‘The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society‘ seems to fit the bill. I love the idea of a small town librarian who solves a lot of murders, Jessica Fletcher style, and then begins to wonder why her small town has so many muders.