My new reading year has been what might politely be called ‘unfocused’. I’ve started a lot of things but finished only a few of them. I’m enjoying my reading but I feel sluggish. I’ve been taking stock of my TBR and I already feel that there arenn’t enough days in the year to read all the things I’d like to read. Even, so I’m still finding new books that entice me. Oddly, it’s not the audiobooks that are calling to me but the Kindles, particularly the reprints or the series that I missed when they came out. They’re temptingly cheap and I can read them at my own speed.
Any,way, here’s what this week’s been like and what’s planned for next week
This was not the reading week that I’d expected. It started with me setting aside a book I’d previously been keen to read and ended with me adding a book that had sat, almost forgotten, on my TBR shelves for a couple of years. Fortunately, the one book that was on my reading plan was excellent and cheerful and the one that I added was a fun low-key page-turner,
‘The Road To Roswell‘ (2024) was a great readl: funny, clever, original and upbeat. I strongly recommend the audiobook. Jesse Vilinsky’s performance was perfect, amplifying the fun and bringing the characters, especially the aliens alive. The novel is structured as a classic quest with a ragtag cast of (mostly) well-meaning eccentrics evading MIB style FEDs while helping an alien who looks like a tumbleweed find something that it’s unable to explain to them. It’s packed with references to just about every Western or Alien first contact movie I’ve ever seen. It takes all the tropes and makes them sparkle with humour and unexpected twists.
I hadn’t planned to read ‘Arcadia‘ (2022) this week. I arrived at it as a means of quieting the restless irritation that insomnia had gifted me in the early hours. None of my planned books were holding my attention so I searched my TBR like a junkie with the munchies staring into a fridge at 2:00 am. I’d forgotten about ‘Arcadia’. It’s the third book in Grainger’s quirky Willows and Lane series. I’d been impresseed with ‘Lane‘ the first book but a little less impressed by the second book ‘One-Way Tickets‘, so I’d bought the third book but had let it languish.
When I did finally open it, I was immediately drawn in by Grainger’s storytelling. The opening was almost gothic, laced with unexplained menace. Then it flipped back a month to something more mundane but necessary to ground the story. Then back and forth between the two in a way that kept me interested in both timelines. Soon I was immersed in a very plausible thriller that shouldered my planned reading aside and demanded to be finished.
I set ‘Maude Hortons’s Glorious Revenge‘ (2024) aside after 33% because, although it was well-written and well-researched, it was set in a time and place that was deeply unpleasant and featured characters with no redeaming qualities who were set upon a path of self-destructive revenge. It wasn’t something I wanted to fill my imagination with.
This has been a week I’ve bought three books by author’s who I’ve read before and one book that kick’s off a well-established fantasy series that I hadn’t been aware of. One book is part of a Nordic Noir series I’m following. The other three are all quirky takes and historical fiction and involve weirdwest werewolves, makers of magical watches and vampires you’ll know the names of but still be surprised by.
More than 150 years old, Billy Skillet looks back on his life existing between Native Americans and white men on the frontiers of a growing America, always on the edges of reality and unreality.
Born of a werewolf father and human mother from the Old Country, Billy is the only member of his family who survives a vicious attack. Found alive in the rubble of their homestead by a Comanche, Billy is taken in by the tribe. From there, he finds that—as a skinwalker—he is revered by the Native Americans, though reviled by the white man.
Battling powerful instincts and his own moral code, Billy embarks on his life’s never-ending journey, first learning the ways of the settlers at the hands of a brutal and drunken reverend, then with a charismatic con man peddling elixirs in a traveling show. He survives a lynching, becomes the manservant of a vampire, and battles one of his own kind, a beast consumed by evil ambition. He sees the rise and fall of legends, the births of his own children, and the deaths of his loved ones. And never far behind, Billy’s nemesis: a bounty hunter known as Witchfinder Jones, who, even now, may still be out there, willing to go to the ends of the earth to destroy him . . .
‘Walking Wolf‘ (1995) is the second Nancy Collins book I’ve bought this year. I think she’s a very underrated genre writer. I’m a fan of Weird West books so this novella, which combines Weird West with a Werewolf theme was too tempting to miss, especially when offered for £0.99.
In the first thaw of spring the body of a young woman surfaces in the River Torne in the far north of Sweden.
Rebecka Martinsson is working as a prosecutor in nearby Kiruna, her sleep troubled by visions of a shadowy, accusing figure. Could the body belong to the girl in her dream?
Joining forces with Police Inspector Anna-Maria Mella, Martinsson will need all her courage to face a killer who will kill again to keep the past buried under half a century of silent ice and snow.
‘Until Thy Wrath Be Past‘ (2008) is the fourth book in the six-book Rebecka Martinsson series which I’m reading at the rate of one a month. This one will be my February read.
India Steele is desperate. Her father is dead, her fiancé took her inheritance, and no one will employ her, despite years working for her watchmaker father. Indeed, the other London watchmakers seem frightened of her. Alone, poor, and at the end of her tether, India takes employment with the only person who’ll accept her – an enigmatic and mysterious man from America. A man who possesses a strange watch that rejuvenates him when he’s ill.
Matthew Glass must find a particular watchmaker, but he won’t tell India why any old one won’t do. Nor will he tell her what he does back home, and how he can afford to stay in a house in one of London’s best streets. So when she reads about an American outlaw known as the Dark Rider arriving in England, she suspects Mr. Glass is the fugitive. When danger comes to their door, she’s certain of it. But if she notifies the authorities, she’ll find herself unemployed and homeless again – and she will have betrayed the man who saved her life.
‘The Watchmaker’s Daughter’ (2016) is the first book in the thirteen-book YA series ‘Glass and Steele‘. This one is a roll of the dice. I’m hoping it’s one of those YA books that works for me. C. J. Archer has a huge fan base and this book was offered for free on Amazon so I thought it was worth taking a punt.
Los Angeles, 1967. Lucy Westenra and Bertha Mason – the forgotten women in Dracula and Jane Eyre – have been existing as undead immortals for centuries, unable to die and still tormented by the monsters that made them.
Lucy has long fought against Dracula’s intoxicating thrall, refusing his charismatic darkness and her ensuing appetite for blood. Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic, is still pursued from afar by Mr Rochester, who wants to add her to his collection of devoted female followers.
Then Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return in San Francisco. To finally write their own story, Lucy and Bertha must boldly reclaim their stories from the men who tried to erase them in this harrowing gothic tale of love, betrayal and coercion.
I saw this at my local library. I think they were promoting it because ‘Nosferatu‘ is currently on at the cinema. I liked the cover and the concept. I was surprised to find that it was by the author of ‘The Rust Maidens‘ but that gave me confidence that this will be well-written. I’m hoping for edgy humour and tripes twisted in creative ways.
What I want most from my reading in the upcoming week is relaxing entertainment. I’ve picked the first book in a light-hearted thriller series, a crime novel with an AI detective and an Agatha Christie standalone with supernatural elements.
CIA assassin Fortune Redding is about to undertake her most difficult mission ever – in Sinful, Louisiana. With a leak at the CIA and a price placed on her head by one of the world’s largest arms dealers, Fortune has to go off-grid, but she never expected to be this far out of her element. Posing as a former beauty queen turned librarian in a small bayou town seems worse than death to Fortune, but she’s determined to fly below the radar until her boss finds the leak and puts the arms dealer out of play.
Unfortunately, she hasn’t even unpacked a suitcase before her newly inherited dog digs up a human bone in her backyard. Thrust into the middle of a bayou murder mystery, Fortune teams up with a couple of seemingly sweet old ladies whose looks completely belie their hold on the little town. To top things off, the handsome local deputy is asking her too many questions. If she’s not careful, this investigation might blow her cover and get her killed. Armed with her considerable skills and a group of elderly ladies the locals dub the Geritol Mafia, Fortune has no choice but to solve the murder before it’s too late.
‘Louisiana Longshot‘ (2012) is a roll of the dice for me. It’s a comedy with a quirky premise and lots of old people. If I like it, then there are another twenty-seven books in the series that might entertain me.
In the UK, someone is reported missing every 90 seconds.
Just gone. Vanished. In the blink of an eye.
DCS Kat Frank knows all about loss. A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her instincts. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) Lock, Kat’s instincts come up against Lock’s logic. But when the two missing person’s cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help Kat when the case gets personal.
AI versus human experience.
Logic versus instinct.
With lives on the line can the pair work together before someone else becomes another statistic?
I have high hopes of ‘In The Blink Of An Eye’. It won the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel Of The Year 2024 and the CWA New Blood Dagger 2024. I’m intrigued by the idea of a human detective and an AI hologram detective partnership investigating a crime. There are now three books in this series about DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock, so I’m hoping to have a new series to follow.
To understand the strange goings on at The Pale Horse Inn, Mark Easterbrook knew he had to begin at the beginning. But where exactly was the beginning?
Was it the savage blow to the back of Father Gorman’s head? Or was it when the priest’s assailant searched him so roughly he tore the clergyman’s cassock? Or could it have been the priest’s visit, just minutes before, to a woman on her death bed?
Or was there a deeper significance to the violent squabble which Mark Easterbrook had himself witnessed earlier?
Wherever the beginning lies, Mark and his sidekick, Ginger Corrigan, may soon have cause to wish they’d never found it…
I’m reading the Agatha Christie books in order of publication at the rate of a book a month. January will take me into the 1960s with a standalone novel with supernatural themes. I’m listening to the audiobook version narrated by Hugh Fraser, He’s easy on the ear and a good fit for the Poirot books but sometimes isn’t the perfect choice for a standalone.
Mike Finn's Fiction 
I am addicted to the Miss Fortune mysteries, despite the multiple slapstick scenarios in each novel. I really like the protagonist and her eccentric sidekicks, and how her new friends and new life are helping her overcome personal trauma.
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Thank you. I started it today and I’m already smiling. It’s not easy to deliver something that has a relaxed, confident tone and yet delivers both humour and tension.
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