Rising Sun by Michael Crichton
There is a place way down in Los Angeles they call the Nakamota Tower! And it been the ruin of one woman, and now I can’t think of a rhyme. Anyway, Michael Crichton is a moralizing asshole a lot of the time. It would be one thing if the novels would just speak for themselves. They’re incredibly one note already, but he often ends them with a chiding epilogue that tsks tsks us into taking a problem he sees seriously. In this novel it’s […]
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Thirtysomething Nora Seed has failed at everything in life. None of the careers she’d envisioned for herself have panned out. Her relationships have faltered and fizzled out. Her cat has died. Her brother is no longer speaking to her. Shortly before midnight she decides to end her life but instead of heaven or hell, Nora finds herself in a large library, where it’s midnight forever and every book offers a look into what-if: what if Nora had kept up her rigorous swimming training? What if […]
Small Game by Blair Braverman
I’ve usually got so much to read that I don’t really bother with NetGalley in an effort to get my hands on ARCs. Better that they go to people who do have time to read them, and may also actually review them. But I’ve been following Blair Braverman, writer and dogsledder, on Twitter for years now and have read both her memoir, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, and her Tough Love column for Outside magazine; obviously I have also loved her many Twitter threads about her […]
Glass Houses by Louise Penny
Dare I hope that I will continue enjoying the later Gamache books much more than the early ones? This series has really been touch and go for me since the beginning, but I’ve enjoyed most of the later ones quite a bit. Glass Houses was no exception, even with a plot that’s ludicrous even by Louise Penny standards (in addition to the weapons of mass destruction from a few books ago, the town of Three Pines is now also [SPOILER] the #1 location on the Canadian/U.S. border […]
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Perfect Prey by Helen Fields
The Thursday Murder Club (Richard Osman) ** Perfect Prey (Helen Fields) ***½ Somewhere, in a very British and very sedate retirement village, a group of seniors get together in the jigsaw room where they solve unsolved crimes. They’re pushing eighty, they have opinions on which type of cake is better (walnut). They are Ron (former commie rabblerouser, scourge of the Thatcher era), Elizabeth (former detective with a fantabulous past full of the sort of intrigue James Bond could only have dreamed of), Ibrahim (former psychiatrist […]
The Bone Orchard by Sara A Mueller
Charm is a bone witch, a prisoner, and a whore. Alongside the boneghosts that she grew in her laboratory, she runs a brothel at Orchard House. When her keeper the old emperor lies dying, poisoned, he charges her with safeguarding the empire and finding out which of his sons was his killer. Firstly, that cover is utterly beautiful. Now that this important matter is acknowledged, let us go on into the story. I saw a lot of complaints that it was difficult to understand, for […]
