I’ve been feeling in need of distractoin this week, so I added a lighter read to my list, just to take my mind off things.

I’m on vacation next week, so I’m hoping to read a lot of books and I’ve been enjoying picking them out.

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

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This week, I set one Science Fiction book aside and was deeply immersed in another. I read a light-weight Young Adultish thriller that kept me entertained, and I finally finished this month’s Stephen King novel.

When Dan Davis is crossed in love and stabbed in the back by his business associates, the immediate future doesn’t look too bright for him and Pete, his independent-minded tomcat. Suddenly, the lure of suspended animation, the Long Sleep, becomes irresistible and Dan wakes up 30 years later in the 21st century, a time very much to his liking.

The discovery that the robot household appliances he invented have been mass produced is no surprise, but the realization that, far from having been stolen from him, they have, mysteriously, been patented in his name is. There’s only one thing for it. Dan somehow has to travel back in time to investigate. 

He may even find Pete … and the girl he really loves.

I picked up ‘The Door Into Summer’ because it was published in the year I was born and it was a Heinlein book I hadn’t come across before.

The premise sounded interesting but I ended up setting the book aside at 30% because I strongly disliked the main character, Dan Davis. The whole book is told from his arrogant, chauvinistic, whiny, beligerent, wisearce point of view. I wasn’t willing to spend any more time with him.

My review is HERE

Bear Logan escaped a life of espionage, severing ties with all but his adopted teen daughter, Mandy. But Mandy isn’t a regular teen. Her family dead or estranged, raised with Bear and Jack Noble. She knows how to survive.

Relocated to a sleepy town in upstate New York, Bear and Mandy try to blend in. But when Bear unearths human remains in their backyard, unwanted attention is soon thrust upon him.

Working with the local sheriff, Josephine McKinnon, they discover there’s more going on in the town than anyone realized. A long history of families falling sick and dying plagues the area. As the mystery unfolds, Bear, Mandy, and McKinnon find themselves in the middle of a decades old conspiracy and cover up. And Bear is their number one target.

Now, facing a corporate giant trying to correct the sins of its past, Bear must step out of the shadows to deliver justice for the town, even if it means his life.

L. T. Ryan has published more than 100 thrillers since 2012, many of them, like this one, she co-authored. This was my first book by her. It’s the first in a series that’s a spinoff of a spinoff, but that didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment of the book. I bought it because the first three books in the series were offered as a bundled edition for £0.99.

Anyway, this week, when the world seems full of bad things, it was exactly the kind of distraction I was looking for. At less than 300 pages, it was the sort of book I could gulp down in a day. 

The plot was simple, linear and packed with well-written action scenes. Bear Logan is the typical black ops uber-competent guy trying unsuccessfully to retire to a quiet, below-the-radar life, except the quiet life he’s trying to make includes his adopted teen daughter, Mandy. Both Bear and Mandy seem to have complex, violence-strewn histories that I would probably have known about if I’d read the Jack Noble or Bear Logan series. Having Mandy in the mix added some plot twists that I enjoyed, and made the book feel a little more Young Adultish.

This is wish-fulfilment stuff, where you know the good guys are going to win in the end and that while violence may not be the answer to all problems, it’s always an important part of the solution. It was good, escapist fun. 

When Patrick Udo is offered a job at NumberCorp, he packs his bags and goes to the Valley. After all, the 2030s are a difficult time, and jobs are rare. Little does he know that he’s joining one of the most ambitious undertakings of his time or any other.
NumberCorp, crunchingthrough vast amounts of social network data, is building a new society – one where everyone’s social circles are examined, their activities quantified, and their importance distilled into the all-powerful Number. A society where everything from your home to your education to entry at the local nightclub depends on an app that states exactly how important you are. As NumberCorp rises in power and in influence, the questions start coming in. What would you do to build the perfect state? And how far is too far?

I was impressed by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne’s mindbending novel ‘The Salvage Crew’ (2020), so I decided to try his debut novel ‘Numbercaste‘ (2017). 

This was a very different read from the life and death struggles of ‘The Salvage Crew‘, but I enjoyed it just as much.

‘Numbercaste‘ was a quietly propulsive novel that captures the tone of a real tech start-up memoir, which somehow gave it an air of foreboding and regret while cranking up my curiosity.

I found this book about a single number that expresses a person’s value to society, based on ubiquitous data gathering, quietly scary because it could so easily come true. 

The tone of the story remains calm, almost resigned, as the main character looks back on events, but the events themselves become darker and darker. I found that the darker things got, the more the book felt like a prophecy. 

‘Salem’s Lot is a small New England town with white clapboard houses, tree-lined streets and solid church steeples. Of course there are tales of strange happenings – but no more than in any other such town.

Ben Mears has returned to the Lot to write a novel and exorcise the terrors that have haunted him since childhood – since the event he witnessed at the Marsten House.

He finds the house has been rented by a newcomer, a man who causes Ben some unease. And then things start to happen: a child disappears, a dog is brutally killed – nothing unusual, except the list keeps growing…

”Salem’s Lot’ was the first book in my Stephen King 2026 Reading Challenge. It was published in 1975 and was his second novel. I was fascinated to see how his writing has progressed since then. 

For me, this was a book with that there was lots to like about but lots that didn’t work as well as it should.

It seemed to me that Stephen King couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted this book to be THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL à la ‘Empire Falls‘ or whether he wanted it to make the case for evil as something lying latent in a small town, just waiting for the right reagent to activate it.

Much of the writing was fine, if sometimes a little self-consciously so. People’s lives were displayed in unforgiving detail, revealing a taint of vulgarity, venality, weakness and pain that had the potential to catalyse into overwhelming evil. 

Yet, I often felt that I was wading through a book that I might lose the desire to finish. It had the self-indulgent lack of discipline and arrogantly slow pace of a late John Irving novel.

I thought Chapter 10, which started:”The town knew about darkness” and treated the Lot as if it were sentient, was impressive, but it was also a demonstration of the uneven pacing. 

Even so, this was a great example of how a single vampire might take over a whole village in Maine.

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This week, I’ve bought two books in an Appalachian Noir series, a speculative fiction novel, a horror novel with a retro 80s flavour and pre-ordered the first book in a new historical fiction mystery series.

I read and enjoyed the first two books in this series ‘The Killing Hills’ and ‘Shifty’s Boys’ in 2023. I stumbled across the fourth book this week and thought it was time to go back to the series and get some more Kentucky Appalachian noir.

Decades from now, two women sit beside a campfire and reflect on their life stories.

Activist Lucy’s earliest memories are of living with her grandparents during the 2020 pandemic and discovering her grandmother’s love of birds. Filmmaker Hester was born on the day of the Chornobyl explosion and visits the site years later to film its feral dogs in the Exclusion Zone. Here she meets Lux, the wolf dog who will give her life meaning.

Over half a century, their journeys take them from London to the Highlands to Somerset, through protests, family rifts, and personal tragedy. Lucy joins the fight to restore Britain’s depleted natural habitats and revive the species who once shared the island, whilst Hester strives to give a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves.

What can I say? I liked the cover, the title and the premise, so I bought the book.

On his 59th birthday, Tyson Parks—a famous, but struggling, horror writer—receives an ornate antiquarian desk in the hopes it will rekindle his creative juices. Perhaps inspire him to write another best-selling book and prove his best years aren’t behind him…
As Tyson begins to use the new desk, he finds himself writing copy at an unfathomable speed, becomes so focused on writing that he binges on all-night, all-day sessions that take a serious physical and psychological toll.
Soon, Tyson begins acting strange. Violent.
Meanwhile, a mysterious woman, Diana Montresor, is making inquiries with her sources around the globe for the whereabouts of a certain artifact she, and her family, have been hunting for centuries.
As forces converge on Tyson’s world, he faces the hardest choice of his life: Does he let go of his new muse, allow it to be taken back to the void of history where it belongs? Or does he continue to live as the desk’s mouthpiece, not only regaining his glory days as a famous writer, but achieving levels of success he’s only dreamed of?
As the desk—and the force that lives inside it—grows stronger, he must choose.
Before it’s too late.

I was impressed with ‘The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre‘ so I checked out Philip Fracassi’s back catalogue and found ‘Gothic’. I love the premise and the 80s horror feel of the book. I want to get to this one soon.

1890. The New Mexico Territory is a lawless frontier where criminals steal money and land alike with impunity. Everyone wears a six-gun and is ready and willing to draw it.
In the new city of Montaña Roja, Fred Harvey’s growing empire is threatened by the robberies plaguing his newest Harvey House restaurant. To get justice, he needs a skilled detective to go undercover and procure answers to questions the law will not ask.
The assignment falls to Clare Wright, a young Pinkerton agent. Disguised as one of Harvey’s famous hostesses, Clare travels west where she risks being exposed at every step of her investigation. To get answers – and to get out alive – there are only two things she can trust: her instincts, and her derringer.

‘The Harvey Girl’ won’t be published until 5th March but I was so excited to see Dana Stabenow starting a new series that I’ve pre-ordered it.

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I’m going to on vacation for the next week so I’m hoping to get more than my average amount of reading done. I’ve picked out five books: a cat-centric cozy mystery, an early Stephen King novel, the penultimate Agatha Christie novel, the final novel in a Sherlock Holmes with a twist trilogy and a Science Fiction psychological thriller that was recently made into a film.

When Willow Brown was seven, she had her first vision. Her death played out like a movie. Her second vision came along shortly after that, when she predicted her father’s cancer diagnosis. 
Her mother always wanted her to hide her gift away. That’s what she called it, a gift. 
It was never a gift. 
In one of Willow’s more recent visions, she saw her great aunt dying peacefully. What she couldn’t predicate was that Aunt Cora would leave her a house in Florida and a cat, forcing Willow to go back to her hometown to sort out affairs. 
But it turns out Aunt Cora is a little less dead than anyone thought. The old psychic inhabits the body and mind of the cat – and she’s hellbent on teaching Willow how to properly use her psychic gifts.
When Willow’s childhood best friend is murdered, she has no choice but to get involved, putting her on a collision course with the vision she’s been running away from all her life.

I was looking for something to listen to on a long drive that we have coming up and I found this. It’s just under five hours long, the audio sample sounded fine and the subject matter seems light and may be amusing. If we like it then the second book in the series has already been published (although there’s no audiobook version yet).

You’re a firestarter honey….just one big zippo lighter’

A year ago, he was an upstanding instructor of English at Harrison State College. Now Andy is on the run with his daughter. A pigtailed girl named Charlie. A girl with an unimaginably terrifying gift.

A gift which could be useful to corrupt authorities. Soon Charlie will be caught up in the menace of a fateful drug experiment and a sinister government ploy . . .

‘Firestarter‘ (1980) is the second book in my 2026 Stephen King Reading Challenge. It was Stephen King’s first speculative fiction novels, a genre in which I think he excels. I saw the themovie adaptaion starring a very young Drew Barrymore when it came out in 1984, but I haven’t watched the 2022 adaptation starring Ryan Kiera Armstrong but I may get to it once I’ve read the book. I’m listening to the audiobook narrated Dennis Boutsikaris.

The house guests at Styles seemed perfectly pleasant to Captain Hastings; there was his own daughter Judith, an inoffensive ornithologist called Norton, dashing Mr Allerton, brittle Miss Cole, Doctor Franklin and his fragile wife Barbara , Nurse Craven, Colonel Luttrell and his charming wife, Daisy, and the charismatic Boyd-Carrington.
So Hastings was shocked to learn from Hercule Poirot’s declaration that one of them was a five-times murderer. True, the ageing detective was crippled with arthritis, but had his deductive instincts finally deserted him?…

In 2020, I joined on online group that was setting out to read the Christie novels in chronological order at the rate of one book a month, starting with the first Poirot book, ‘The Mysterious Affair At Styles‘ which Christie wrote in 1916 and published in 1920. We’ve now reached Christie’s penultimate book and final Poirot book, ‘Curtain’ published in 1975 almost sixty years after the twenty-six year old Agatha Christie invented Herculé Poirot. In this final book, Poirot, now a very different man, returns to Styles. I’m looking forward to reading Christie’s farewell to Poirot.

The London Borough of Hackney is run by the crime syndicate Bai Ze. One night an expensive horse carriage arrives at their headquarters. Behind the carriage is the leader of the Bai Ze, Mr. Quin, hanging at the end of a bloody rope. The journey here has stripped him of his clothes and shredded most of his skin off him. He rasps one final word to his second in command: ‘Mogwai’. It’s the Cantonese word for the devil. In London the normal order of the criminal syndicates has been broken and a new dangerous villain is playing to win the entire game.

It is also ruining the business of the Bohemia – the secret underworld club. The members are being killed and club owner, Irene Adler, must seek the help of the only person who can solve these mysterious murders – Sherlock Holmes.

Somewhere at the other end of all these murders lies the truth about Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty.

This is the final book of the ‘Becoming Sherlock’ trilogy. After reading ‘Becoming Sherlock: The Red Circle’ and ‘Becoming Sherlock: The Irregulars‘ I’m keen to see what finally happens to this unusual, near-future Sherlock Holmes.

Watch what you wish for… Some inheritances are literally death.
My life has been turned upside down by my inheritance, but my only complaint is the cat that came along with the new house.
I swear he’s judging me as I settle in and try to make new friends in my new small-town Louisiana neighborhood.
And just when I start to settle into my new job and get back to reading my classic novels, I’m pulled chapters deep into a mystery.
The Beauty Queen in the town has been offed. Someone has killed the darling.
Wouldn’t you know it? An innocent man has been framed.
I shouldn’t get involved, but somehow, my cat seems to have a way with finding clues in some of my favorite stories. Not that any of that makes sense.
Why would it?
The cat is the sleuth, I’m the amateur, and we have alligators in the backyard.
Throw in a dead body, a book club that’s filled with suspicious characters, and you have my new life.
And I thought being a librarian in Louisiana was going to be dull.

Amazon were offering this book for free, I assume in the hopes that I’ll buy the next two books in the series. I love the title, the cover, the cheeky use of so many cozy mystery tropes in one book, and the fact that part of the story is told from the cat’s point of view. I have great hopes for this.

You think you know everything about your life.

 Long-married couple Junior and Henrietta live a quiet, solitary life on their farm, where they work at the local feed mill and raise chickens. Their lives are simple, straightforward, uncomplicated.

Until everything you think you know collapses.

Until the day a stranger arrives at their door with alarming news: Junior has been chosen to take an extraordinary journey, a journey across both time and distance, while Hen remains at home. Junior will be gone for years. But Hen won’t be left alone.

Who can you trust if you can’t even trust yourself?

As the time for his departure draws nearer, Junior finds himself questioning everything about his life – even whether it’s really his life at all.

Canadian writer, Iain Reid’s ‘We Spread‘ (2022) was a five-star read for me in 2023, so I’ve picked up one of his earlier novels, ‘Foe‘ (2018). In 2023 it was adapted to become a movie starring Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal, and Aaron Pierre.