I've been organizing my books as I decide my 2022 Reading Challenges. I think I've got them pretty well sorted out, my challenges that is. In this post, I'll look at what used to be called the 12 + 4 Reading Group Challenge. I belong to a new Goodreads Reading group now. They've decided to call the challenge the 1st Annual Reading Challenge (it being the first year of the group).
For my challenge, I'm focusing on new series. I'll read the 1st book in 16 series that I've yet to start (I do have quite a few waiting my attention. The first 8 will be the first book I've had on my shelves the longest. The last 8 will be those I've purchased most recently. This group may change if any newer books arrive prior to year's end. But for now, here is my list.
The Dusty Eight
"Nobody likes The Complaints - they're the cops who investigate other cops. It's where Malcolm Fox works. He's just had a result, and should be feeling good about himself. But he's a man with problems of his own. In the midst of an aggressive Edinburgh winter, the reluctant Fox is given a new task - investigate Jamie Breck."
"My name is Kvothe.
I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned
down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left
with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a
younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight
that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved
women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.
You may have heard of me.
So begins a tale unequaled in fantasy literature--the story of a hero told in his own voice. It is a tale of sorrow, a tale of survival, a tale of one man's search for meaning in his universe, and how that search, and the indomitable will that drove it, gave birth to a legend."
"In his first
feature-length adventure, it's up to Cabrillo and his crew of expert
intelligence and Naval men to put Tibet back in the hands of the Dalai
Lama by striking a deal with the Russians and the Chinese. His gambling
chip is a golden Buddha containing records of vast oil reserves in the
disputed land.
But first, he'll have to locate—and steal—the
all-important artifact. And there are certain people who would do
anything in their power to see him fail..."
"India 1942: everything is in flux. World War II has shown that the British are not invincible and the self-rule lobby is gaining many supporters. Against this background, Daphne Manners, a young English girl, is brutally raped in the Bibighat Gardens. The racism, brutality and hatred launched upon the head of her young Indian lover echo the dreadful violence perpetrated on Daphne and reveal the desperate state of Anglo-Indian relations."
"The corpse is missing its head and is dressed in American clothes. Found by a Tibetan prison work gang on a windy cliff, the grisly remains clearly belong to someone too important for Chinese authorities to bury and forget. So the case is handed to veteran police inspector Shan Tao Yun. Methodical, clever Shan is the best man for the job, but he too is a prisoner, deported to Tibet for offending someone high up in Beijing's power structure. Granted a temporary release, Shan is soon pulled into the Tibetan people's desperate fight for its sacred mountains and the Chinese regime's blood-soaked policies. Then, a Buddhist priest is arrested, a man Shan knows is innocent. Now time is running out for Shan to find the real killer."
"In Beatrice Prior's
dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each
dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest),
Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful),
and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all
sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the
rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with
her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes
a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.
During the
highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself
Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice
they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of
endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating
consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who
her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes
fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen.
But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because
she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and
growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society,
she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . .
. or it might destroy her."
"Bestselling novelist Daniel Silva (author of The Unlikely Spy) draws upon his experience as a foreign correspondent and a Washington journalist in The Mark of the Assassin. Set in London, Cairo, Amsterdam, and Washington, the story line follows CIA case agent Michael Osbourne as he attempts to locate the terrorists who shot down an airliner off the coast of Long Island. Osbourne has two main antagonists: Delaroche, a KGB-trained expert assassin ordered to kill the handful of people who know the truth, including Osbourne, and the corrupt political culture of Washington, which ominously stymies him at every turn. There's a love story at the core of this book, as well as a brave attempt by Osbourne to reconcile a mystery in his past with a present he has not fully accepted. The prose is slick, and readers will find themselves racing through these pages as the body count grows and the conclusion nears. The Mark of the Assassin is a worthy effort from a rising star."
"The Earth is dying.
Darrow
is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract
enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and
allow humans to live on it.
The Reds are humanity's last hope.
Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie.
That
Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class
of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down
on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to
death without a second thought. Until the day that Darrow, with the
help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and
infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors
from the inside.
But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda.
Break the chains.
Live for more."
The Shiny Newby Eight on my Bookshelf
(If I get any new books that start a series between now and midnight 31 Dec, they will be added to the end of the list and #9, #10, etc will be removed. As of today, 28 Dec, these are the 8 Newbys that I will be starting the year with)
"When Constance Kopp and
her sisters suffered a run-in with a ruthless, powerful crook,
Constance leaves her quiet country life to team up with the local
sheriff and exact justice. As a war of bricks, bullets, and threats
ensues, Constance realizes that this racketeer's history may be more
damning than she thought, but now that she's on the case, he won't get
away.
Quick-witted and full of madcap escapades, Girl Waits with
Gun is a story of one woman rallying the courage to stand up for and
grow into herself - with a little help from sisters and sheriffs along
the way."
"The Power-House is a novel by John Buchan, a thriller set in London, England. It was written in 1913, when it was serialized in Blackwood's Magazine, and it was published in book form in 1916. The narrator is the barrister and Tory MP Edward Leithen, who features in a number of Buchan's novels. The urban setting contrasts with that of its sequel, John Macnab, which is set in the Scottish Highlands. The Power-House of the title is an international anarchist organization led by a rich Englishman named Andrew Lumley. Its plan to destroy Western civilisation is thwarted by Leithen with the assistance of a burly Labour MP."
"When Lilith lyapo wakes
in a small white room with no doors or windows, she remembers a
devastating war, and a husband and child long lost to her. She finds
herself living among the Oankali, a strange race who intervened in the
fate of humanity hundreds of years before.
They spared those they
could from the ruined Earth, and suspended them in a long, deep sleep.
Over centuries, the Oankali learned from the past, cured disease and
healed the world. Now they want Lilith to lead her people back home.
But salvation comes at a price - to restore humanity, it must be changed forever..."
"Meet Detective Zaniel Havelock, a man with the special ability to communicate directly with angels. A former trained Angel speaker, he devoted his life to serving both the celestial beings and his fellow humans with his gift, but a terrible betrayal compelled him to leave that life behind. Now he’s a cop who is still working on the side of angels. But where there are angels, there are also demons. There’s no question that there’s evil at work when he’s called in to examine the murder scene of a college student—but is it just the evil that one human being can do to another, or is it something more? When demonic possession is a possibility, even angelic protection can only go so far. The race is on to stop a killer before he finds his next victim, as Zaniel is forced to confront his own very personal demons, and the past he never truly left behind."
"Flynne Fisher lives down a
country road, in a rural near-future America where jobs are scarce,
unless you count illegal drug manufacture, which she’s trying to avoid.
Her brother Burton lives, or tries to, on money from the Veterans
Administration, for neurological damage suffered in the Marines’ elite
Haptic Recon unit. Flynne earns what she can by assembling product at
the local 3D print shop. She made more as a combat scout in an online
game, playing for a rich man, but she’s had to let the shooter games go.
Wilf
Netherton lives in London, seventy-some years later, on the far side of
decades of slow-motion apocalypse. Things are pretty good now, for the
haves, and there aren’t many have-nots left. Wilf, a high-powered
publicist and celebrity-minder, fancies himself a romantic misfit, in a
society where reaching into the past is just another hobby.
Burton’s
been moonlighting online, secretly working security in some game
prototype, a virtual world that looks vaguely like London, but a lot
weirder. He’s got Flynne taking over shifts, promised her the game’s not
a shooter. Still, the crime she witnesses there is plenty bad.
Flynne
and Wilf are about to meet one another. Her world will be altered
utterly, irrevocably, and Wilf’s, for all its decadence and power, will
learn that some of these third-world types from the past can be badass."
"Anthony Burgess listed Robertson Davies' The Rebel Angels among the 99 best novels of our time and declared that Davies himself is "without doubt Nobel Prize material". With Murther & Walking Spirits Davies reconfirms his stature as an irresistibly erudite practitioner of the art of fiction. A man who is killed in the first sentence of the novel leads the reader on a tour of his afterlife."
"Kate Rokesmith's decision to go to the river changed the lives of many.
Her
murder shocked the nation. Her husband, never charged, moved abroad
under a cloud of suspicion. Her son, just four years old, grew up in a
loveless boarding school. And Detective Inspector Darnell, vowing to
leave no stone unturned in the search for her killer, began to lose his
only daughter. The young Stella Darnell grew to resent the dead Kate
Rokesmith.
Now, thirty years later, Stella is dutifully sorting
through her father's attic after his sudden death. The Rokesmith case
papers are in a corner, gathering dust: DI Darnell must have copied them
when he retired from the force. Stella knows she should destroy them.
Instead, she opens the box, and starts to read..."
"Ketterdam: a bustling
hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right
price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker.
Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich
beyond his wildest dreams. But he can't pull it off alone...
A convict with a thirst for revenge.
A sharpshooter who can't walk away from a wager.
A runaway with a privileged past.
A spy known as the Wraith.
A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums.
A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes.
Six
dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz's crew is the only thing
that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don't kill
each other first."
So there you go, my 16 series start-ups. See anything that interests you?
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