I’ve been trying to escape into books this week. It hasn’t always worked. A part of my mind can’t stop thinking through the consequences for Europe of America being in the hands of fascists carrying a cross wrapped in the flag. It’s not going to be good.
BUT, there is almost nothing I can do about it so I’m reading fiction to distract me from my helplessness and to prevent me being consumed by my anger.
If I ever needed proof that my subconscious has a dry sense of humour, it would be confirmed how inapproptiate this week’s books were as a means of escaping gloom.
One was about a white supremicist group trying to overthrow the US government. One was a comic-but-serious piece about how hard it is to stop the outside world from shattering your serenity. One was about being trapped deep below the surface of a frigid lake. One was about an isolated, homeless young woman, scarred by extreme abuse, who finally finds a place of safety with people who could be found-family only to have it all threatened by an autocrat who smiles in public and threatens in private.
The good part was that these were all books worth reading.
This was probably the best Travis Devine novel so far. The storytelling was a nice mix of mystery and almost cute character-building, spiced with intermittent explosions of violence that Devine has to find a way to survive. It helped that I like Devine. He’s a rule follower with empathy and a strong protective streak but without any of Reacher’s weirdness. ‘To Die For‘ was great entertainment but, after Trump’s election, it felt atavistic for the FBI and Homeland Security to be chasing after white supremicists rather then guarding them in the White House.
My full review is HERE
If you’re looking for a short story that will make you smile, make you think and maybe even offer you a little hope, ‘The Answer Is No’ is for you.
My full review is HERE
‘William‘ is full of quiet menance that erodes the confidence of the people in the story. It triggers fears that are so deep and so irrational that the first response is to deny that you are afraid until denial is no longer possible and frantic, helpless despair pushes to take its place.
It’s about an AI and a Smart House that turns against its creator. It’s about the hubris and frailty of its makers, It’s about intelligence that defines freedom as the ability to kill.
It’s delicious in a way that is almost shameful. I’ve almost finished it. I made myself stop reading in the early hours of the morning so that I csn savour the ending today.
‘A Superior Death’ is the second book featuring Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. It’s set in Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior, an environment that is almost the opposite of the Texas desert that ‘Track Of The Cat‘ took place in. This time, instead of trekking through waterless mountains to find the bad guys, Anna has to dive deep into the cold, dark, deedly waters of Lake Superior.
I’m about halfway through. As with the last book, I’m enjoying getting to know Anna and seeing the National Park through her eyes as much as the mystery.
‘Fear University‘ kicks off an original, violent, emotionally-charged Urban Fantasy series that is more New Adult than Young Adult fiction. Ollie Andrews, the young woman who is telling this story, is a great creation, She carries more scars than most Urban Fantasy heroines and she trusts no one. The story is a compelling mix of intrigue, violence, hormones, haunted pasts and relentless tension. I’ve already downloaded the next book in the series.
My full review is HERE
This week, I only bought the same number of books as I read. I’m counting that as a TBR pile victory. Two of the books continue series I’m following, one was free and one was a Carnegie Medal winning children’s book about trying to find hope when drowning in grief and loss.
At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting– he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. it
I don’t read many children’s books but the premise of ‘A Monster Calls‘ (2011) appeals to me. I’ve seen nothing but positive reviews. It won a clutch of awards, including the Carnegie Medal. It has an unusual provenance. GoodReads says that Patrick Ness based it on “the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd– whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself.”
The only other Patrick Ness both that I’ve read, the quirky ‘The Rest Of Us Just Live Here‘, was a four-star read so I’m hoping this will be just as good.
A call from an old colleague has DI Adams off her patch and out of her depth, investigating a mysterious new beer with unexpected side effects. Side effects far more dangerous than a simple hangover.
Deadly brewers. Super-powered DJs. Raging florists.
And it’s not just them. Half the police in Yorkshire have fallen for the beer’s spell, and Adams is barely keeping a step ahead. If she doesn’t figure this out before festival opening night the whole county will be under the influence of Niddered Ale, and there’ll be no sobering up from it.
Not ever.
I’ve been binge reading Kim Watt’s books since I discovered them earlier this year. The DI Adams books are my favourite. They’re a little harder edged than the others and I like that DI Adams is a reluctant (and mostly unimpressed) participant in the overlap between the human and supernatural worlds. I’m keen to read this latest instalment, especially as it’s set in a town I used to know well.
Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.
Until she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to sit the entrance exam for somewhere very few have heard of – Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah.
Lennon has been chosen because – like everyone else at the school – she is special. She possesses the innate gift of persuasion: the ability to wield her will like a weapon and to use it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.
After passing the gruelling exam, Lennon must now learn how to master this devastating power.
While persuasion takes a heavy toll on her body and her mind, she is captivated by all that surrounds her – her studies, Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus, her brilliant classmates and, most of all, by Dante, the charismatic adviser who both intimidates and enamours her.
But as Lennon becomes more adept at wielding her uncanny abilities, she uncovers more about the unsettling history of Drayton and Dante’s tragic and violent past, and is increasingly disturbed by what she finds.
For it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption and darkness . . . and it’s a test she’s terrified she is going to fail.
This is being heavily pushed at the moment so, perversely, I delayed buying it. I’ve now picked it up several times, listened to a sample and read an extract. It was time to buy or move on. I bought in the hope that this will be the Dark Academia for magic users that I^’ve been waiting for.
Wyatt robs banks and payroll vans. Most men like him are dead or in jail, but Wyatt stamps a cold, pitiless style on his heists and has never been caught. Now his funds are low and his luck is running out – until the day Anna Reid explains about the kickback in her partner’s safe.
But other players are involved.
In Wyatt’s world, there is no yielding, no redemption, and when he’s crossed, the outcome is inevitable.
‘Kickback‘ (1991) is the first book of a popular nine-book series about Wyatt, a clever thief, based in Australia, who pulls off complex robberies. I’m starting right at the beginning, even though this is a nineties novel, whixh means it’s likely to feel more like a period piecethan a novel from the thirties because absence of technolgy seems so jarring. Still, ‘Kickback‘ is included in my Audible membership making it effectively free, so it seemed like a good place to start.
Tn the far Alaskan north, there are places the winter sun cannot reach. Places where light won’t shine for months. These are the places we hunt the monsters who feed on fear.
So begins the Killing Season.
For the next 65 days, we will face the darkness. Some will hunt the aswangs in the ever-night, but I, Ollie Andrews, am here for one purpose: to search for answers to my past.
They told us to fear the arctic tundra and the monsters hiding in the deep, dark shadows. But, locked inside a base known for driving even the best hunters mad, I fear it’s not the outside we should worry about, but the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves.
The real monsters are within.
When a brutal murder brings with it the secrets of Fear University – and the threat of an unknown killer on the loose – we all must fight to stay alive. But with madness and paranoia setting in during a whiteout snowstorm, all we can do is hope we don’t destroy ourselves before the sun finally rises again. Because no matter how hard we fight, reality will always threaten to tear us apart.
And when faced with the most terrible of truths, even the strongest break.
After reading ‘Fear Unuversity’, I was hungry for more so I bought the second book in the series. It’s set in the endless night of a North Alaska winter so it should be a good seasonal read.
Three of my next reads have been chosen to try and lift my mood. The final one continues a Nordic Noir series which fits in with the oncoming winter.
When age makes you invisible, secrets are easier to hide
Lydia imagines her new job running a Senior Citizen’s Social Club three afternoons a week will involve drinking tea while playing gentle games of cards, listening to The Beatles and reminiscing about food rationing and The Blitz.
She does not expect to find a failed actor addicted to shoplifting, a woman who’s been hiding from a mysterious and very chequered past, and a prolific yarn-bomber. It turns out that their ideas about how to spend their afternoons are very different.
After a tragic accident means the council threatens to sell the community centre, the Social Club, aided by their friends in the nursery next door and a geriatric orphaned dog, set out to save it.
They might not be able to save the hall, but they might just save each other – if their pasts don’t catch up with them first…
Books about old people refusing to live up to the expecations society has of them (usually to be nice harmless people and frail old dears) usually make me smile. That’s certainly the target this book is aiming at and it’s combined the subversive old folks with the very young and rebellious.
Sometimes simply staying alive is the best that life can offer…
Teenager Benji Hammerton has gone quiet. Worryingly so. Fearing the worst, his parents turn to the one person who might be able to help – Agatha Pleasant, an ageing secret agent who operates largely in the shadows, unburdened by rules and regulations. As luck would have it, Agatha has a batch of new recruits at her disposal. Untapped potential desperately in need of work experience.
Enter her Nearly Dearly Departed Club.
Their search takes them to Stainmouth, a grim Northern town with little to offer except bitter winds and a toxic atmosphere. With a life hanging in the balance, they hunt tirelessly for the missing boy. They make friends along the way, but also enemies. The kind of enemies who think nothing of taking a life if the need arises. As tensions mount, and the risks start to outweigh the rewards, the team question their involvement. Their purpose. Their future. Is any of it really worth dying for?
Especially when you’re dead already…
The quirkyness of this called to me. I’m hoping for a decent crime story amplified by an unusual take on life after death. It’s the first book in a series so, if I like it, there are two more books already in print for me to read.
Charlie Garner has a bad feeling. His ex-wife, Meg, has been missing for over a week and one quick peek into her home shows all her possessions packed up in boxes. Neighbors claim she’s running from bill collectors, but Charlie suspects something more sinister is afoot. Meg was last seen working at the local donut shop, a business run by a shadow group most refer to as ‘The Saucer People’; a space-age, evangelist cult who believe their compound to be the site of an extraterrestrial Second Coming.
Along with his brother, Felix, and beautiful, randy journalist Amelia “Scrappy” Moon, Charlie uncovers strange and frightening details about the compound (read: a massive, doomsday storehouse of weapons, a leashed chimpanzee!) When the body of their key informer is found dead with his arms ripped out of their sockets, Charlie knows he’s in danger but remains dogged in his quest to rescue Meg.
I’m aJoe Lansdale fan. I like that his stories start with real people who are firmly rooted in East Texas and put them into stressful situations. I enjoy the humour in his stories. It feels like an alternative to despair – as my parents used to say: *You’ve gotta laugh or you’d cry.”. When I saw that he’d written a book about a Saucer People cult, I had to have it.
The murder of a female priest sends shockwaves through the isolated community of Kiruna. A crime that has terrifying echoes of another.
Lawyer Rebecka Martinsson returns to Kiruna to help the police, and is soon drawn into the dead woman’s world. A world of hurt and healing, sin and sexuality, and above all, of lethal sacrifice.
Can Rebecka find the truth before she is consumed by it?
I had a good time with ‘The Savage Altar‘ so I’m planning on reading the rest of the Rebecka Martinsson books. The dark themes in this one appeal to me.
Mike Finn's Fiction 