The weather is dull, damp and becoming cold. Reading, playing Halloween Bingo and a trip to the cinema to see ‘Better Days’ a surprisingly uplifting French movie about women in rehab for alcoholism, have been the bright points in the week.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve read and bought this week and what’s up next.

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I finished one exceptional and one very good book this week and am part way through three others. The exceptional book has been on my shelves since the start of the decade and I’m kicking myself for not having read it earlier. The very good book is unusual in that it’s the second book in an Urban Fantasy series and I think it’s stronger than the first one.

The dead are rising. They’re even on Facebook.
If we don’t stop this fast, we’ll be knee-deep in zombies before you can say mmm, brains.
The problem? We don’t know who started it, why it’s happening, or how to stop it.
But G & C London, Private Investigators, are on the case — right after we handle disapproving reapers, cranky magicians, zombie-fied chickens, and a small case of personal undeadness.
Trust us.

I enjoyed ‘Gobbelino London and a Scourge of Pleasanties‘ but I didn’t get why so many of the people I know who are reading Kim Watt’s series, have this series as a favourite. I think I get it now. I found this story much more engaging, not just because it was about zombies rising rather than Lovecraftian tentacles rending space time, but because I got to see more of how Gobbelino London think and I got a better understanding of his relationship with his human.

Larger than life characters, lots of beautifully choreographed action scenes, gentle humour and a sense that, even with zombies rising, there are people in the world who are born to help others – they’re just not the people you might have expectd to fill that slot and quite a few of them are not human.

This was great fun. i’m ready for the next one now.

But things are about to get exciting for the Basic Bigfoot Society. Dr. Marcus Bernard, the country’s foremost Bigfoot “expert,” approaches them with a proposition that seems almost too good to be true: to join their next expedition, along with an ambitious young documentarian, Vicky Xu. Thankfully, Vergil’s daughter Rye is home from college, and decides to tag along in order to make sure her dad and Jute aren’t made fools of. Once in the woods, strange things begin to happen to them that seem to defy rational explanation. Is this a hoax? Or are they on the precipice of the greatest anthropological discovery ever?For 40 years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia’s home. On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days – until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community…but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention of leaving. A population of one.

With everything she needs to sustain her, and her independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start life over – for the first time on her own terms: free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others. But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of first contact finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again – in ways she could never have imagined…

This was wonderful. One of the best Science Fiction books I’ve read.

I loved the tone of the storytelling: unrushed, deeply observant, aware of things left unsaid. Despite, or perhaps because of, the unhurried pace of the storytelling, I found the plot compelling and propulsive.

Ofelia is a masterful creation. It was great to see a science fiction protagonist who is realistically old but far from helpless. It was even better to find that she was so deeply imagined. She anchored the story so that her humanity and her eccentricities provide a scale against which the aliens can be measured. . The details of Oelia’s life alone and her encounters with the aliens built into an immersive story that feels real and relatable. So much so that, when more humans arrived, they were the ones who felt like a threat and who also failed to measure up to the standards that Ofelia had set.

The ending surprised and pleased me. It’s how I wanted things to end, I just hadn’t been able to see a way to get there.

The audiobook, narrated by Suzanne Toren, was a joy to listen to.

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I made three impulse buys this week: the debut novel of an English writer who I think should be more widely read. the first book in an new Fantasy series that I have high hopes of, and the first book in a Sherlock Holmes pastiche series.

Together yet alone, the Misses Bede occupy the central crossroads of parish life. Harriet, plump, elegant and jolly, likes nothing better than to make a fuss of new curates, secure in the knowledge that Count Ricardo Bianco will propose to her yet again this year. Belinda, meanwhile, has harboured sober feelings of devotion towards Archdeacon Hoccleve for thirty years.

Then into their quiet, comfortable lives comes a famous librarian, Nathaniel Mold, and a bishop from Africa, Theodore Grote – who each takes to calling on the sisters for rather more unsettling reasons.

I first read Barbara Pym in 1983 when I read ‘Excellent Women‘ (1952) and ‘A Glass Of Blessings'(1958) back to back. At the time, they struck me as beautifully written, gentle, low-key pieces that described a world that had already faded away from the London I was living in. I re-read ‘Excellent Women‘ in 2019 and was reminded that it’s impossible to step into the same book twice. It was still beautifully written, gentle and low-key, but the first time around, I’d rather underestimated the main character and missed the whole theme of the rehabilitation of spinsterhood, which was arguably the main point of the novel.

So, when Amazon offered me Barbara Pym’s debut novel, ‘Some Tame Gazelle‘, written mostly during the Second World War but published in 1950, for £0.99, I had to check it out. I pressed BUY as soon as I read the first paragraph. I thought it was glorious. Here it is:

“The new curate seemed quite a nice young man, but what a pity it was that his combinations showed, tucked carelessly into his socks, when he sat down. Belinda had noticed it when they had met him for the first time at the vicarage last week and had felt quite embarrassed. Perhaps Harriet could say something to him about it. Her blunt jolly manner could carry off these little awkwardnesses much better than Belinda’s timidity. Of course he might think it none of their business, as indeed it was not, but Belinda rather doubted whether he thought at all, if one were to judge by the quality of his first sermon.”

Is it just me, or could that paragraph have been written by the ghost of Jane Austen?

n a world where everything magical is bought up and controlled by the super rich – Stephen Oakwood has inherited a natural talent for magic. Plunged by his father’s disappearance into a glittering world of scheming dynasties, warring patriarchs and vicious scions, Stephen must navigate magical high society and learn to control his gifts.

Dangerous enemies await the Oakwood heir, and even more dangerous allies: if Stephen cannot master his magic quickly and learn to distinguish friend from foe, his name may end up on the missing persons list, just like his father.

I read the first Alex Verus novel, ‘Fated‘ (2012) for the 2024 Halloween Bingo and decided that it was one of those series I should have read much earlier. When I went looking for the second book, ‘Cursed’ (2012) to read during 2025 Halloween Bingo, I saw that Benedicr Jacka had started a new fantasy series in 2023, with three books already in print. I decided to give the new series a try instead of reading ‘Cursed’. I cant’ fit it into 2025 Halloween Bingo but I’ll get to it soon, I hope.

It is November 1890 and London is gripped by a merciless winter. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are enjoying tea by the fire when an agitated gentleman arrives unannounced at 221b Baker Street. He begs Holmes for help, telling the unnerving story of a scar-faced man with piercing eyes who has stalked him in recent weeks. Intrigued by the man’s tale, Holmes and Watson find themselves swiftly drawn into a series of puzzling and sinister events, stretching from the gas-lit streets of London to the teeming criminal underworld of Boston. As the pair delve deeper into the case, they stumble across a whispered phrase ‘the House of Silk’: a mysterious entity and foe more deadly than any Holmes has encountered, and a conspiracy that threatens to tear apart the very fabric of society itself. With devilish plotting and excellent characterisation, bestselling author Anthony Horowitz delivers a first-rate Sherlock Holmes mystery for a modern readership whilst remaining utterly true to the spirit of the original Conan Doyle books. Sherlock Holmes is back with all the nuance, pace and powers of deduction that make him the world’s greatest and most celebrated detective.

I enjoyed the couple of Alex Rider books that I’ve read. I’ve never gotten around to Anthony Horowitz’s mysteries (although I have two of them on my shelves) but I have a fondness for Sherlock Holmes pastiches and the audiobook is narrated by Derek Jacobi, so I decided to give it a try.

My wife and I are listening to it together. We’re almost halfway through and I pleased to say that it’s a good read. I like that, as with the original books, the story is told from Watson’s point of view. The twist is that Watson is writing after Holmes’ death and is looking back at an old case that he did not feel free to write about at the time.

I like Anthony Horowitz’s version of the older, more reflective Watson and I’m enjoying Derek Jacobi’s narration. Click on the Youtube link below to hear a sample.

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This week, I have a moderately gory book about a sea monster in contemporary Scotland, a murder mystery in the Canadian mountains and an interdimensional war against the Earth that it will take magic to win. It should be fun week.

Muriel McAuley has lived in the Scottish fishing village of Witchaven all her life. She was born there, and she intends to die there.

But when an overseas property developer threatens to evict the residents from their homes and raze Witchaven to the ground in the name of progress, all seems lost . . . until the day a mysterious fog bank creeps inland.

THE HAAR
To some it brings redemption . . . to others, it brings only madness and death. What macabre secrets lie within . . .

THE HAAR

I’m halfway through this. I like the way it takes a contemporary setting, a Scottish fishing village, and a modern theme, an American billionaire muscling the locals out of the way to build a golf course, and adds an ancient sea monster (it prefers the term sea creature. Sea monster suggests it’s evil. It doesn’t see itself that way. Just because it eats people doesn’t make it bad.) The situation feels real. The violence is graphic and bloody, even when the sea monster creature isn’t involved. I’m being carried forward by the hope the billioaire and his minions are headed for a violent death.

Sebastian Synard doesn’t want any more trouble than he already has. But when he leads a group of tourists along the cliffs of St. John’s harbour, one of them ends up dead. Not only is there a murderer in his tour group, but the cop assigned to the case is sleeping with Sebastian’s ex-wife. It seems like things can’t get any worse, but as he’s enlisted to help flush out the perpetrator, the trail leads deeper than expected, and Sebastian finds himself on the edge.

I picked this up because it featured in the reading list for a recent ‘Murders Across Canada’ reading challenge. It’s the first book in a five-book series and it’s a good fit for the Mysterious Mountains squre.

We are at war. The interdimensional invasion brought us unimaginable suffering, but it also awoke talents slumbering deep within us, a means to repel and destroy our enemy. Every day new gates open, leading to breaches filled with monsters and valuable resources. If you are a Talent, your country needs you. The world needs you. Be the hero you were born to be.

Adaline is a Talent. Ten years ago, she had a happy marriage and a job she loved. The invasion shattered both. Now she works for the government, searching the breaches for magic metals and medicine to help Earth repel an interdimensional enemy. Two kids, one cat, bills, benefits, mortgage and school tuition…Risking her life became routine.

She had gone into the dimensional gates hundreds of times. She was always well protected. This time everything goes wrong. Now Ada is trapped in the labyrinth of alien caves unlike any other. Her only companion is a scared German Shepherd named Bear. Together they must uncover the breach’s secrets and escape, because Ada promised her children that she will come home.

The future of humanity depends on it.

I only learned this week that Ilona Andrews had published a new series. I bought a copy of the first book at once. It’s based on a story they’ve been serialising on their blog. It looks like a fun mix of Fantasy and Science Fiction so I decided to use it in the Lost In Space Halloween Bingo square. It’s a good fit and I get to read it immediately.

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This has been a strange Halloween Bingo. Usually, I plod my way through the books in whatever order suits me and then wait for the squares to be called, which always seems to take forever. This year, I’ve been getting squares called faster than I can read the books. That means my reading is chasing called squares, which feels quite different.

I need to read a little faster if I’m going to claim a Blackout Bingo by Halloween but I’m having fun, so I don’t mind if I miss a square or two.

Anyway, here’s thestatus of my card:

Reading: 5, Called: 19, Read: 16, Read and Called: 14, Bingo: 1.