I’ve been able to spend a lot of the week reading in my garden. I hope to get many more weeks like that.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve read and bought this week and what’s up next.
Another good reading week. I finished a long fantasy novel from Ilona Andrews, wolfed down an exceptional collection of time travel short stories, cleared my palette with a Cozy Mystery and started an Icelandic crime series.
When Maggie wakes up cold, filthy and naked in a gutter, it doesn’t take her long to recognize Kair Toren. It’s a city she knows intimately from the pages of a famously unfinished dark fantasy series – one she’s been obsessively reading and re-reading, while waiting years for the final novel.
Her only tools for navigating this gritty world of rival warlords, magic and mayhem? Her encyclopaedic knowledge of the plot, the setting and the characters’ ambitions and fates. But while she quickly discovers she cannot be killed (though many will try!), the same cannot be said for the living, breathing characters she’s coming to love.
Maggie joins a motley band that includes a former lady’s maid, a deadly assassin, various outrageous magical creatures and a dangerously appealing soldier. Soon, instead of trying to return home, she finds herself enmeshed in the schemes – and attentions – of duelling princes, dukes and villains. This all while trying to save them and the kingdom of Rellas from the ending she’s seen on the page: a cataclysmic war.
There were points when I didn’t love this book and wondered if I’d finish it.
The setup to the book was slow, careful, and cliché-free. I enjoyed it, but the pacing felt a little off. Sharing the content of the books that spawned the reality Maggie has woken up in often made the storytelling feel a little passive.
I carried on because some of the scenes were spectacular and exciting, and I immediately liked Maggie and wanted her to succeed. I liked the depth of the story and the application of a present day mindset to Maggie’s fantasy-become-reality experience. It also helped that Kristen Sieh’s narration was wonderful.
It was the violence that made me wonder if I would finish this book. The nobles in the Kingdom made the factions in ‘Game of Thrones‘ look like gentle pacifists. The violent acts, especially the detailed description of terrible things done to Maggie, were hard to take. There was nothing here that I’d have been surprised at in a GrimDark novel. I just didn’t expect it in an Iona Andrews novel.
I stuck with the story, and I’m glad I did. Here’s what I wrote when I was 90% through the novel:
“When you’re 20 hours through a book and you’re going ‘No! There can’t be only 90 minutes left. I need more.’ you know that the authors have worked magic to enthral your imagination.
I’ve just read a scene where Maggie forces a powerful man from her house with the force of her words and her personality. It was wonderful and very different to the kind of scene this sort of fantasy normally offers.”
The ending was spectacular. It managed both to tie up the many threads of the story and lay the foundation for the next book.
In the end, I gave this five stars. If the next book was already in print. I’d be starting it tomorrow.
Today is Owen Hunter’s first day in the coastal city of Costa Buena, California. He’s the new owner of Rockafellers, a vintage record store struggling to find customers. Much of that is due to Headbangers, a competitor with a better product mix and an aggressive owner.
There is also a local do-gooder group who wants Owen to fall in line with their vision for a kinder, gentler Costa Buena.
None of that worries Owen, though, because he is determined to be the number one used-music store on the boardwalk—even if that means stepping on a few toes. But when a murder occurs shortly after his arrival, he’s identified as prime suspect number one.
Owen Hunter must clear his name fast because he can’t afford to have a bunch of nosy cops poking around.
For Owen is a man with a secret that he must protect at all costs. The U.S. government has invested a lot to keep him safe, but his enemies will stop at nothing to find him.
Do prosperity and happiness await Owen in this coastal community?
Cozy Up To Murder’ (2020) was a smile. It followed a similar pattern to the first book, ‘Cozy Up To Death’, but this time, instead of a crime-novel focused bookshop in Maine, WitSec has placed our hero, now going by the name Owen Hunter, as the owner/manager of an oldies record store on the boardwalk of a small coastal town in California.
My review is HERE
Leave your preconceived notions at home as you embark on a mind-bending journey with six of today’s most visionary authors. Brimming with humor and heartache, this collection of short stories maps the roads we took to get here and the paths that lie ahead.
‘The Time Traveler’s Passport’ (2025) is an Amazon Original collection of six short stories about time travel, curated by John Joseph Adams, with stories by John Scalzi, R. F. Kuang, Peng Shepherd, Kaliane Bradley, Olivie Blake and P. Dejèli Clark. I strongly recommend the audiobook version that contains all six stories, rather the buying the stories one at a time.
The stories by Peng Shepherd and P. Dejèli Clark were spectacularly good. The others were well-crafted, original takes on the time travel theme. The humour in Olivie Blake’s story didn’t work for me, so I set it aside.
My review is HERE
Icelandic sisters Áróra and Ísafold live in different countries and aren‘t on speaking terms, but when their mother loses contact with Ísafold, Áróra reluctantly returns to Iceland to find her sister. But she soon realises that her sister isn’t avoiding her…she has disappeared.
As she confronts Ísafold’s abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend Björn and begins to probe her sister’s reclusive neighbours, Áróra is led into an ever-darker web of intrigue and manipulation. Baffled by the conflicting details of her sister’s life and blinded by the shivering bright midnight sun of the Icelandic summer, Áróra enlists the help of police officer Daníel, as she tries to track her sister’s movements and begins to tail Björn – but she isn’t the only one watching….
For most of the novel, it was the plot that sustained my interest. It was well constructed and went to interesting and surprising places, not by virtue of tricky plot twists, but because the motivations of the characters were not what they initially appeared to be.
I liked the examples of how Áróra’s mix of Icelandic and British culture sometimes left her feeling stranded between the two countries, feeling at home in neither.
The narrative style was initially too arms-length for me, but in the last third of the novel, I gained a better view inside Áróra’s head, which gave the novel some much-needed intimacy.
I’m hoping that Áróra’s character will develop in the subsequent books. I’m curious enough about her that I’ll be reading the second book, ‘Red As Blood’ (2020), later this year.
My review is HERE
I bought four books this week: two first-in-a-series Science Fiction novels, the first book in a new series by David Baldacci, and a German crime novel translated into English.
’Digital Divide‘ (2013) is the first book in a five-book series by K. B. Spengler about Rachel Peng, the first cyborg liaison officer to a near-future Washington Police Department. The premise interests me. The reviews seem solid. I’m hoping this is going to be one of those ‘Why isn’t this series better known?’ reads.
’Nash Falls’ (2025) is the first book in a new series by David Baldacci featuring Walter Nash, corporate manager and family man, coopted by the FBI. I was entertained by his recent Travis Divine series, starting with ‘The 6:20 Man’ (2022). Walter Nash sounds like an every-dad version of Divine, which might be fun or might stretch reality so fat that it snaps. I’m expecting a fast-paced, action-packed, didn’t-see-THAT-coming-didya? read. The second Walter Nash book, ‘Hope Rises’ came out last week.
I confess, I bought ‘Of Oracles and Sirens’ (2026) because I couldn’t pass by the cover, the title and the £0.77 price tag. I’m hoping for a humans vs alien overlords spaceship adventure with a heroine I can cheer for and a few twists along the way.
I’ve been meaning to get to ’The Sinner’ (1999), since I saw Jessica Biel in the 2017 TV adaptation of the novel. She was remarkable, and so was the story. I’m frustrated at how few German crime novels get translated into English. Only a couple of Petra Hammerfahr’s 20+ novels have been translated, so I’m starting with this one even though I know the TV version of the story.
Rachel Peng misses the Army. Her old life in Criminal Investigation Command hadn’t been easy, but she had enjoyed it.
Now, as the first cyborg liaison to the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police, Rachel is usually either bored senseless or is fighting off harassment from her coworkers.
When she and her partner, Detective Raul Santino, stumble into a murder investigation with ties to Rachel and the other cyborgs, she realizes their many enemies will not allow them to quietly pick up the pieces of their lives.
Renata Garver Soto has never understood why humanity surrendered its colony ship to an alien species. The Pod rule from the shadows, control every critical system, and demand only obedience in return for survival. Most people have learned to live with that.
Ren hasn’t.
When rumors spread of children vanishing from the ship’s tightly monitored corridors, Ren begins asking questions no one else wants answered. Her search for proof ends the same way the rumors do—with her disappearance.
What she uncovers is far worse than kidnapping. The Pod’s leader is reshaping human minds, quietly and deliberately, and resistance comes at a terrible cost. With her friends now in danger and no one left she can fully trust, Ren is forced into a game of espionage, deception, and psychological warfare against an enemy that can pry into her very memories.
To free the ship, Ren will have to risk more than her life. She’ll have to risk her mind.
Walter Nash is a mild-mannered, happy and successful businessman with a loving family. He has never lifted a weight or fired a gun in anger, and he has no special physical or investigatory skills. The dark world is not a place he knows – until the FBI comes calling on the very day of his estranged Vietnam veteran father’s funeral. They tell him that the company he works for is actually a criminal organization. And they need his help in a risky endeavour to bring it all down.
In doing so, Nash’s perfect world is destroyed. And in seeking justice and revenge, Nash must become someone else: a man of violence and physicality who must find traction and purpose in the same dark world that invaded and crushed everything near and dear to him. Can Walter Nash reinvent himself into a weapon of righteousness and justice? The odds are not with him.
But bet against Walter Nash at your peril . . .
Cora Bender killed a man. But why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local police it was an open-and-shut case. Cora confessed; there was no shortage of proof or witnesses. But Police Commissioner Rudolf Grovian refused to close the file and began his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unraveling of Cora’s past, a harrowing descent into a woman’s private hell.
This week, I’m reading a two novels from my TBR that are finalists for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novel and an (I hope) humorous Women Who Kill novel.
Dr Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings and securing the school’s boundaries from demonic incursions.
Walden is good at her job – no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. But it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from . . . is herself.
‘The Incandescent’ (2025) has been in my TBR pile since December. When I saw that it was a Hugo Award finalist, I dragged it to the top of the pile.
I’ve made a start on it already. What I like most about it so far this itat it’s a fantasy novel about a boardingschool for young magicians where the school, the students and teachers feel real and ordinary, except they can all do magic; there’s a powerful demon that’s been invading the campus and eating people at intervals for centuries, magic is taught in same dryly academic tone of any A level subject but with riskier practical sessions and the school has sword-carrying, magic-wielding demon-killing, Marshals.
I think this is going to be fun in a very British way.
There’s a dead body in my living room.
I’ve not called the police because it was I who stabbed him. Seven times in all. The truth is, it’s surprisingly difficult to dispatch someone with a vegetable knife.
In case you’re wondering, the dead man is not my husband. I do resent our pitiful sex life and his woeful lack of ambition, but I wouldn’t murder him for it. Not yet, anyway.
Right now, I have far more pressing concerns: scheming to get my daughter into the perfect school; buying my dream home in Hampstead; and disposing of a corpse.
A woman’s work is never done. I’ve created the perfect life – and I’ll kill to keep it.
‘’A Sociopath’s Guide To A Sucessful Marriage’ Cold As Hell’ (2025) is a roll of the dice. It’s a debut novel with a great cover, the marketing might of Simon & Schuster behind it and a title that says ‘read me with an evil grin on your face’.
If the humour works for me, this should be my kind of book.
An impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air – abducted from his quarters in a building whose entrances and exits are all sealed.
The brilliant and mercurial investigator, Ana Dolabra, and her assistant Dinios Kol have been called in to crack the case.
Before long, Ana discovers that they’re actually investigating a murder. Worse, the adversary seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.
Ana’s solved impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and the investigators seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, has Ana finally met an enemy she can’t defeat?
‘A Drop of Corruption’ (2025) is the sequel to ‘The Tainted Cup’, (2024) which won the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and was one of my favourite reads last year. I’m hoping that this will be an equally rich reading (and listening) experience.
Mike Finn's Fiction 