The last week of September made a brave attempt to bring back the summer, but I can feel that’s over now. The mornings are cooler, the nights are longer, and I find myself seeking small spaces where I can read with a coffee close at hand. This is the final month of Halloween Bingo. I have ten books left to read, and I’m looking forward to all of them.
Anyway, here’s what I read and bought this week and what’s coming up next.
This week, I read two books and a short story and set one book aside. My favourite reads were Megan O’Keefe’s Space Opera about an unusual space pirate and a not-quite-human navigator she falls in love with, and John Marrs’ gleefully dark short story about attempts to victimise someone who isn’t the harmless grandmother she appears to be. Ashley Capes’ Australian horror, featuring a giant kangaroo, kept me entertained, but Dorothy Sayers’ epistolary crime novel didn’t keep my attention.
Deep in the Australian forests, something dark is stirring.
When wildlife ranger Lisa Thomas finds a pile of animal entrails on her doorstep she immediately suspects her abusive ex, but the sudden spate of deaths that follow seem beyond even Ben’s vindictiveness.
Worse, her father’s health is deteriorating fast and when the harassment and deaths continue, it only fuels her feelings of powerlessness. To add confusion to growing fear, Lisa must also investigate reports of a giant white kangaroo, reports that suggest the creature is no mere hoax.
Yet the mysterious kangaroo is impossible to track down and the more Lisa searches the more she’s sure an even greater threat lurks in the wilderness…
As it says on the cover, ‘Crossings‘ is a supernatural suspense novel. It’s strong on atmosphere, has vivid visuals, real people and some wild ideas. I liked that the first half of the novel was grounded in everyday human evil caused by the violent anger of an abusive man, but always had behind it a sense of something malevolent and not human working unnoticed because of the noise the man was making.
The supernatural was front and centre for the second half of the book, which heightened rather than plateaued the tension, but it was amplified by the realities of a huge wildfire.
I liked that not everything was neatly explained and labelled by the end of the book. The main character, Lisa Thomas, still wasn’t sure of how much of what she saw was real, although the body count was unarguable.
Bitter Amandine and her pirate crew have plundered the stars around Votive City for decades, building a fearsome reputation. But after two decades of near-death experiences, they’re getting too old for this shit. They’re willing to hang up their blasters, retire, and finally get some rest . . . after one last job.
When Amandine hears that an old rival is planning to kidnap a highly protected Navigator, she decides to swoop in, stage a rescue and press her for a reward, But the navigator has other plans. She turns the tables on Amandine and reveals that she was hoping the infamous pirate would catch wind of the meeting and interfere. She wants a ride to The Clutch, a graveyard for the ships of an extinct alien race, to chase down her missing mentor. What they discover will change the whole galaxy forever.
If you want an exciting, complex, original standalone Space Opera, pick up ‘The Two Lies of Faven Sythe‘. It’s a thriller with a sense of fun. The world universe it imagines is vast, complex and chilling. The two women at the heart of the story – a pirate who doesn’t like killing people and a navigator with almost goddess-like powers who is slowly becoming aware that she’s been lied to for her whole life are engaging and credible. The plot unfolds with the grace of an origami flower and is full of surprises.
Then there’s the joy of Megan O’Keefe’s writing. I love that, in a dramatic scene with space pirates being pursued by killer robots, Megan O’Keefe gives the fleeing heroine this gem of an interior monologue:
“Maybe it was grief making her reckless, or perhaps it was loneliness, which was just a different kind of grief.”
Brenda lives quietly in a picture-perfect English village. She looks after her grandchildren, restores old furniture, and keeps herself to herself. She’s the sort of neighbour people feel comfortable judging.
And judge they do. Because villages notice everything. The shopping. The visitors. The hours kept behind closed doors. And when the local WhatsAppgroup begins to turn its attention to Brenda, curiosity hardens into suspicion, and gossip becomes a sport.
As scrutiny tightens, Brenda finds herself navigating busybodies, moral crusaders and a community that believes it knows best.
What they don’t know is that Brenda has spent a lifetime solving problems discreetly. Methodically. Permanently. And she is very good at it.
The village may come to regret not minding its own business.
If you enjoy dark humour, twisty plots, amoral heroines, and you don’t mind having a few bodies sliced and diced along the way, ‘Warm Bodies‘ will keep you entertained for an afternoon. I read this 107 page short story in one sitting and had a smile on my face for most of it.
My review is HERE
After the respectable George Harrison, a middle-aged mycologist, is unexpectedly found dead at his dining table with a plate of wild mushrooms before him, his passing is initially deemed a tragic accident. But Harrison’s son, Paul, struggles to accept this verdict. As he begins to investigate further, it appears that this was no fatal mistake by an amateur forager, but something far more complex, calculating and ruthless.
Through a series of letters, personal accounts and legal documents, Paul begins to unravel the chilling truth behind what happened.
I had high hopes of this but I ended up setting it aside at 15%. It felt experimental to me. I liked the idea but the book wasn’t holding my attention. I had little sympathy for any of the characters. Their voices were well done but everything felt too contrived and too knowing.
This week, I bought six books: a twentieth-century American classic, the second book by a promising Irish author, a mystery with a Park Ranger as the sleuth, two fantasy novels and a dark comedy.
‘I Think We Should Kill Other People‘ (2025) is a British dark comedy about a reality TV show that goes lethally wrong. I was pulled in by the title and captured by the opening paragraphs from the main character, who asks:
“What is it about airports that turns people into arseholes?
It’s like something in their brain snaps the second they set foot in a terminal, and the simplest things, like the ability to wait in line, empty a water bottle or display the tiniest crumb of human decency, go out the window.
‘Black Bear Alibi’ (2019) is a roll of the dice. It’s the first book in a Park Ranger mystery series that I hope will work out. And the bear on the cover looks cool.
‘All the Pretty Horses‘ (1992) is me following through on my recently discovered passion for Cormac McCarthy books.
‘City of Masks‘ (2016) is the first book in a six-book fantasy series by Australian author Ashley Capes. I bought it because I enjoyed his horror novel ‘Crossings’ this week.
‘Snow Birds’ (2026) by Irish author Roisin Maguire is the sequel to her wonderful debut ‘Night Swimmers’.
‘Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter’ (2013) is an omnibus of twelve fantasy novellas featuring the magic-wielding, demon-hunting immortal offspring of Jonathan Harker and Mina Miller, set in modern-day North Carolina. How could I resist that?
Philip Russell, a U.S. Park Ranger for a small island in the Pacific Northwest has stumbled across a body in the woods. Unsure if the dead woman is a local or someone from the mainland, the new female sheriff is called in to find out if the community has anything to fear.
Eager to help solve the mystery, both instantly find themselves at odds with each other. Philip, defending the people he’s known his whole life, and Sheriff Lane, giving no one the benefit of the doubt…not even Philip.
Together the investigation progresses and both quickly realize that on this sleepy island not everyone is who they pretend to be…and possibly, one of their fellow islanders is a killer.
1949.
At sixteen years-old, John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
Sofia is a failure. The sentient magical mask with the power to compel, the Greatmask, refuses to choose her as its successor. Without it, the mask-carver will never succeed her father or have the power to protect her city. When palace conspiracies place a tyrant on the throne and lead to her father’s disappearance, her only choice is to hide.
Notch wants revenge. After escaping imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit, the grizzled old mercenary is more determined than ever to kill the king of Anaskar. It might have been impossible, until he stumbles across Sofia with her Greatmask and decides to protect her—his best shot at vengeance.
Taking Anaskar back from the tyrant is no simple task. With an uncooperative Greatmask and royal assassins hunting them down, staying alive is half the battle. Can they survive long enough to save their city, or will Sofia’s shortcomings and Notch’s need for retribution doom them all?
Standing on the edge of the icy Irish sea, the village of Ballybrady typically has a warm embrace for locals and a cold shoulder for outsiders. So when corporate interests threaten the nearby island colony of rare birds, all-weather swimmer Grace – usually so keen to do things on her own – is alarmed to find that her allies in the fight are the Duckie Divers Swimming Club, a raft of city women with expensive gear and good intentions.
Grace reluctantly joins forces with the Duckies to mount an audacious fundraising event that will draw in villagers and city folk alike. As she teaches them the art of the cold swim, she finds herself softening in their company, learning that each woman has her own powerful reason to commit to their cause.
Hazel and Marc were paired together on revolutionary new reality TV show Love Synced, in which AI matches hopeful lovers based on its perceptive algorithms.
But when it came time to say I Do on camera, Hazel couldn’t go through with it, leaving her perfect match at the altar, his family furious and the whole TV production in jeopardy.
Now all she wants to do is fly home. Instead, she’s trapped in an isolated airport that’s been ground to a halt by a snow storm… with her ex and his obnoxiously rich family. But when they start turning up dead, a jilted lover is the least of Hazel’s worries – there’s a serial killer to catch first.
He’s the ass-kicking, wise-cracking, hard-drinking demon hunter you never knew you needed. He’s Quincy Harker, and he’s here to save your ass whether you want it or not. The immortal magic-wielding son of Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray from the classic novel Dracula, Harker now lives in North Carolina hunting down demons and sending them back to Hell.
This Omnibus Edition collects the first 12 novellas in the Quincy Harker series.
My books this week have been chosen to fit Halloween Bingo squares.I have the second book in a Weird West series about a cursed revolver, a closed-room mystery that kicks off an historical mystery series, a book about a too-good-to-be-true American gated communinty, a cosy Science Fiction story and Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’.
The second book in the epic, magic-clad Devil’s Revolver series follows Hettie and her sister south of the Wall into Mexico, where they must unmake Hettie’s infernal mage gun while confronting a magic- and land-hungry army and a monster from hell drawn to the powers of the weapon.
Hettie wants nothing more than to break her bond to the cursed Devil’s Revolver and find a way to keep her sister safe — but Abby’s indigo powers are growing stronger, and in the gated, walled village where they take refuge, nothing is exactly as it seems.
Pursued by the Pinkertons, left without allies or guardians, Hettie has to rely on her own grit and determination to do the right thing, no matter the cost.
I read ‘The Devil’s Revolver‘ in 2019 and loved its Weird West vibe. I’d meant to get to the sequel much soon but mine are seldom the best laid plans and the road to hell…etc.
Anyway, it’s at the top of my TBR pile now and I’m looking forward to an action-packed ride.
Cornwall, 1910.
On a remote tidal island, the Viscount of Tithe Hall is absorbed in feverish preparations for the apocalypse that he believes will accompany the passing of Halley’s Comet. The Hall must be sealed from top to bottom – every window, chimney and keyhole closed off before night falls. But what the pompous, dishonest Viscount has failed to take into account is the danger that lies within… By morning, he will be dead in his sealed study, murdered by his own ancestral crossbow.
All eyes turn to Steven Pike, Tithe Hall’s newest under-butler. Fresh out of Borstal for a crime he didn’t commit, he is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. His unlikely ally? Miss Decima Stockingham, the foul-mouthed, sharp as a tack, 80-year-old family matriarch. Fearless and unconventional, she relishes chaos and puzzles alike, and a murder is just the thrill she’s been waiting for.
Together, this mismatched duo must navigate secret passages, buried grudges and rising terror to unmask the killer before it’s too late…
I bought this when it came out in January this year. The cover and the title suggested something determinedly retro and liked the idea of a locked room mystery that also kicked off a new series. With unusual self-control, I tucked this away for Halloween Bingo, certain that I’d make it fit somewhere.
If this is as much fun as I’m hoping, I’ll be picking up the next book, ‘The Shadows of Kensington Gore‘ in January.
Welcome to Serenity Falls – the most idyllic, and safest, town in the US – a place to grow up, grow your family and grow old together. For Dan and his daughter, Sadie, it’s the perfect relocation option. A fresh start, thousands of miles from their troubled past in the UK.
But their idyll is shattered when they find a dead body in the swimming pool of their new house – a house Dan’s late mother kept secret from him all his life.
It’s just the start of a series of disturbing discoveries. Abandoned houses where people have seemingly just upped and left. The strange woman Sadie sees around town putting up ‘missing’ posters for a child who drowned almost thirty years ago. An ice cream van that drives arund at night making sure residents are asleep…
As plans gear up to celebrate Serenity Falls’ fiftieth anniversary, something is stirring beneath the surface of the blissful façade. Is Serenity Falls really the perfect town or is it founded on something far darker? And is someone so desperate to keep its secrets that they’d resort to anything to preserve them?
I didn’t know C. J. Tudor had published another book until I heard her being interviewed on Radio 4 this week. I loved ‘The Burning Girls‘ and ‘The Gathering ‘, so I’d have been buying this book anyway, but when I heard that it had a spooky ice cream van driving slowly through the streets of a perfect (but curfewed) American gated community at night, I had to have it right away.
I’m halfway through it now, and it’s everything I’d hoped it would be.
In a self-running smart house, a young sentient hoover listens as her owner, Harold, reads aloud to his dying wife, Edie. Mesmerized by To Kill a Mockingbird and craving human connection, the little vacuum renames herself Scout and embarks on a journey of self-discovery
But when Edie passes away, Scout and her fellow appliances discover that the omnipresent Grid, which monitors every household in the City, wants to displace Harold from the home he’s lived in for fifty years.
With the help of a neighbourhood boy, and Harold and Edie’s daughter, the humans and the appliances must come together to outwit the Grid before they lose everything they hold dear. . .
I was looking for a book for Halloween Bingo that features “robots/AI/ cyberpunk/ future-technology, a techno-thriller, techno-horror, or is set in (or about) a high-tech future.”
I have lots of those, but as I went through them, I realised I didn’t want another forecast of a dark future, so I looked for something gentle and hopeful. This seemed to fit the bill.
Having started it, I can see that I should have paid attention to the ‘Sadness’ in the title. I think this will be a lunmp-in-the-throat read.
Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, hunt Dracula and, in the end, kill him.
This is my second attempt at ‘Dracula‘ this year.
My first attempt was with Dracula Daily, which sent me the documents in the novel in their date order, on the same day they were dated rather than the order they appeared in the novel.
This was fun, but I realised that it wasn’t the best way to read the novel for the first time, so I dropped out.
Even reading the book in that disjointed way, I was surprised at how modern and how vivid the writing was. So, I’m starting again, this time reading everything in the order that Bram Stoker intended.
