I travelled up to Bedford this week, so I’ve used a picture of the embankment along the River Great Ouse as the background for this week’s graphic. It was still very hot, so we were grateful for the shade from these trees. My reading was dominated by two short story collections, one of which was also responsible for half the books I bought this week. Anyway, here’s what I read and bought this week and what I’m planning to read next week.
My reading went off-piste this week. ’The Vampire Knitting Club’ was the only book from my planned reading that I got to this week, and that’s because I selected it as ear-candy for our drive to Bedford and back. ‘Magic & Mystery ’, a collection of Audible Original Stories that I’d forgotten I’d pre-ordered, dropped into my library at the start of the week, and the stories were so good that I read them one after another. ‘Change of Command’ was a catch-up read from the week before; I’d intended to sample the stories in the ‘Vengence’ collection over several weeks, but I was having too much fun to read the collection slowly.
At a crossroads between a cringe-worthy past (Todd the Toad) and an uncertain future (she’s not exactly homeless, but it’s close), Lucy Swift travels to Oxford to visit her grandmother. With Gran’s undying love to count on and Cardinal Woolsey’s, Gran’s knitting shop, to keep her busy, Lucy can catch her breath and figure out what she’s going to do.
Except it turns out that Gran is the undying. Or at least, the undead. But there’s a death certificate. And a will, leaving the knitting shop to Lucy. And a lot of people going in and out who never use the door – including Gran, who is just as loving as ever, and prone to knitting sweaters at warp speed, late at night. What exactly is going on?
When Lucy discovers that Gran did not die peacefully in her sleep, but was murdered, she has to bring the killer to justice without tipping off the law that there’s no body in the grave. Between a hot 500-year-old vampire and a dishy detective inspector, both of whom always seem to be there for her, Lucy finds her life getting more complicated than a triple cable cardigan. The only one who seems to know what’s going on is her cat…or is it…her familiar?
This was fun: murder, intrigue, evil property developers, knitting vampires and a witch who didn’t know she had any powers all wrapped up in a cosy mystery with picturesque Oxford as its setting. I enjoyed the humour and the plot held my attention, although our heroine was frustratingly slow to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The denouement was surprising, mostly because it was so improbable. I was going, ‘Seriously, I listened to this for hours, thinking it through and THAT’S who turns out to be the murderer?‘
Still, it was an entertaining book to listen to as I drove, and I’m planning on listening to the next book on my drive north in August, which is just as well, as I bought the first three books in a bundle.
In our dangerous world, offenders cannot always be brought down by the justice system. They must be stopped by someone outside the law. Some call them vigilantes; others claim they are just another brand of criminal.
In Dennis Lehane’s “The Consumers”, a suburban woman hires a hit man to target her husband, who has committed a terrible crime.
In Karin Slaughter’s “The Unremarkable Heart”, a dying woman learns the truth about a dark family secret.
In Michael Connelly’s “A Fine Mist of Blood”, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch discovers a witness who will lead him to the doorstep of a hardened killer.
And in Lee Child’s “The Hollywood I Remember”, an assassin gets his long overdue comeuppance.
‘Vengeance’ is a collection of twenty-one short stories, ten selected by Lee Child, one written by Lee Child and ten selected from anonymised submissions from members of Mystery Writers of America.
I’ve been dipping into the collection for the past couple of weeks and it’s kept me well entertained.
My favourite story and probably the nastiest in the collection was from Karin Slaughter. It reminded me to pull her novel, ‘We Are All Guilty Here’, to the top of my TBR pile.
I gave another seven stories four stars. Only four stories got less than three stars.
I use collections like these to look for writers I haven’t read before. This time, I added books by five authors to my TBR pile:
‘Fake’ by Twist Phelan,
‘The Downside’ by Mike Cooper,
‘Sweet Ladies of Death’ by Steve Liskow,
‘Legitimate Business’ by Michael Niemann,
and ‘Old Wounds and New’ by Darrell James.
I’ll be looking for more Mystery Writers of America Presents collections.
I’ve rated and commented on each of the twenty-one stories in my review HERE.
After the suppression of the New Texas barbarians, Esmay Suiza and Barin Serrano hoped for a respite to develop their relationship. But there is time for neither rest nor pleasure as events around the galaxy push all the great powers towards war.
There were some very strong scenes in this book, and the plot moved smoothly between multiple points of view. There was a startlingly relevant (for a book first published in 1999) description of how one power-hungry but fundamentally incompetent man can implement a plan to appoint cronies to turn a democracy into a dictatorship. Despite some memorable moments, the book as a whole felt like a transitional thing aimed at setting up the next and final book in the series.
I bought this collection because I’d already read more than half of the authors and I was intrigued to see what they’d do with the Magin & Mystery theme.
The only story that didn’t work for me was by Scott Lynch, and that was mostly because it was pitching a type of humour I don’t enjoy. Travis Baldree’s story was a smile. Sarah Beth Durst’s story was a charming cozy offering. Tananarive Due’s story was an exciting piece of historical fiction with Weird West riffs. The stories by Robert Jackson Bennett, Heather Fawcett and J M Miro were wonderful and very different from one another.
I’ve commented on each story later in this post.
I bought an audiobook version that bundled all seven stories together for one Audible credit. They’re also available as individual volumes in ebook and audiobook format.
My review, with comments on each of the seven stories is HERE
This week, I bought seven books. Four of them are books by writers whose stories I liked in ‘Vengeance’, the short story collection I read last week. Two of the four are short story collections. I also bought a trilogy of humorous werewolf novels for Halloween Bingo, a newly published Dark Academia novel and a mainstream short story collection.
A dead woman thumbs a ride on a rainy night. A woman who can read lips sees two men plotting a murder. A blues singer gets even with the man who done her wrong. A female golfer has a wicked slice. An unhappy wife finds her true self under the light of the silvery moon.
The sweet ladies of Death are sometimes funny, often beautiful, always resourceful, and usually deadly. They haunt your wildest dreams, from the magic of childhood wishes to your worst nightmares, and they straddle the lines between crime, supernatural, sci-fi, romance, and dark comedy.
These ladies come to life in Steve Liskow’s award-winning stories. And, yes, they make their own rules.
Ritu Roy, a constable with an all-female United Nations peacekeeping unit in Darfur, Sudan, has been shot dead.
Her superiors call it a random shooting. Her best friend thinks otherwise. She’s found a bullet casing from a sniper’s rifle, an uncommon weapon in the refugee camp.
The case remains closed until Valentin Vermeulen arrives to conduct a routine audit. As an investigator with the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, his job is to ferret out fraud. The casing is the first clue that Ritu may have stumbled onto a major criminal operation.
Solving the mystery of Ritu’s death leads Vermeulen down a perilous path. With the help of journalist Tessa Bishonga, he visits the hidden camp of a notorious rebel leader.
On the streets of Port Sudan he dodges a parade of shady characters. In the end, Vermeulen must expose the players in the not so “legitimate” business of supplying weapons to Sudan … before they can hunt him down.
In this superb collection James offers-up his best yet, as he reconnects with his most intriguing characters from his many short stories and novels.
Frank Falconet from the novel Nazareth Child and Purgatory Key returns in a dark, psychological suspense leaving Frank with uncertainties about his past and future.
Fremont and Lougie conjure yet another grand scheme for getting rich off of other people’s money.
And Little Earl and his blind dog Melon face their most dangerous quest to date in Dead To Right, a novella that takes them once again into the mean streets of L.A., this time to find out what happened to the homeless old Vietnam Vet, Seefus, where money is the motive for murder, and justice depends on the loyalty of an aged old hound named Riddles.
Lucia Berlin’s stories in A Manual for Cleaning Women make for one of the most remarkable unsung collections in twentieth-century American fiction.
With extraordinary honesty and magnetism, Lucia Berlin invites us into her rich, itinerant life: the drink and the mess and the pain and the beauty and the moments of surprise and of grace, with a voice is witty, anarchic, compassionate, and completely unique.
In an age of cybercrime Finn is a thief with a unique specialty: He only steals big things.
Fresh out of prison, he is faced with his biggest steal yet: breaking out fifty million dollars’ worth of rhodium. To do so, Finn calls in the team that put him in prison.
But things get twisty when Finn navigates the betrayals of double-crossing partners, a corrupt billionaire, and the ambiguous proposals of a woman.
The Mortons are a modern day, old money dynasty with impeccable taste, from exquisite cocktails and expertly tailored vintage garments to stone cold murder.
Jessica is their golden child, a perfectly crafted apprentice to the Morton legacy. She has always excelled, and now, having committed her first kill whilst at elite college Helshire, she can finally stake her claim as a fully blooded Morton. This is her moment, her honour.
She has trained for this since birth, but in a family built on the bones of their secrets, where failure means erasure, can loyalty always come above care?
All three of the hilariously bloody and action-packed werewolf novels in one collection!
It all starts with Wolf Hunt where we meet George and Lou, thugs for hire. The kind of intimidating, yet friendly guys who will break your thumbs, but be polite about it.
Their latest assignment is to drive across Florida to deliver some precious cargo to a crime lord. The cargo: a man in a cage. Though Ivan seems perfectly human, they’re warned that he is, in fact, a bloodthirsty werewolf.
August is the last month of my Sci Fi Summer 2026 reading challenge, so I’m focusing on SF novels next week.
The galactic order has been shattered, and amidst the chaos heroes will rise…and fall—as Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Moon brings her stellar Familias Regnant saga to a spectacular conclusion.
This is the seventh and final book in The Serrano Legacy series. The sixth book was mostly spent setting this one up. I’m hoping for a satisfying and exciting end to the series.
Book 3 of the thrilling The Shadow of the Leviathan series, where Ana and Din unravel another hair-raising, deadly mystery.
I’ve pre-ordered this so that I can dive straight into when it’s released on Tuesday 4th August.
Mike Finn's Fiction 