I know it's only Tuesday but Jo is at work and Bonnie is at the vet so Clyde and I are alone and I figure I might as well get a post done. I've done my chores too, in case you were wondering. No. Thought not. 😎😎
So a quick reading update is in order and I'll update any new books, the normal stuff.
Just Finished
"Since the early 2000's, I've discovered and enjoyed a few police procedural mystery series, notably the Commander Gideon series by JJ Marric, set in London and the 87th Precinct series set in a fictional US city, by Ed McBain. Unexpected Death by Dell Shannon is a new series for me, this being the 18th book in the Lt Mendoza police procedural series. The series was written in the 60s / early 80s and is set in Los Angeles, with Lt Mendoza in charge of his precincts Murder Squad.
Basically, this story (I don't know about the others yet, but I presume they are similar) follows the squad in a week or two of investigation as they look into a number of cases. They work on cases that happened earlier and continue to investigate and also as new cases crop up each day, they take those on as well. It's the daily grind, basically, the interrogations, the foot work, the paper work, the meetings over lunch at the local pub / restaurant, the family life of each and the conversations at home. It's a microcosm of a police squad.
No matter how seemingly trivial, each case is examined nicely and worked thoroughly, ideas brought up, rejected, people questioned, miles of footwork put down.. You have the woman raped and murdered in her bedroom (was it her husband? a stranger? a family friend?). You have the 5 children, whose parents are away, who all die. What happened? Food poisoning? You've got the young woman, in the green cocktail dress, whose body is found in an alley, a case that gets under Mendoza's skin. And various other cases that the squad looks into.
It's a fascinating story, sometimes confusing as we jump from detective to detective, from case to case, but the story is interesting, the people, both squad, their families and the victims, are all interesting. It's down to earth and realistic. A most enjoyable, entertaining read. I'm searching for more books in the series now. Woo hoo! (4.0 stars)"
"The Enola Holmes YA mystery series featuring the younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes was written by Nancy Springer. A French graphic artist, Serena Blasco, took the first six books and turned them into graphic novels. I haven't read the books yet, but based on my enjoyment of the graphics, I've now got the first two books on my shelf.
Enola Holmes: The Graphic Novels: The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan, The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline, and The Case of Baker Street Station is the 2nd book in the graphic series and features the 4 - 6 books in the series. As in the other Omnibus, Enola continues to avoid her brothers and search for clues about her missing mother. In the first book, Mycroft indicated he wanted to send Enola, then 14, to a girl's boarding school. Enola 'escaped' to London and now resides with a lovely lady, Mrs. Tupper, who offers the motherly love and support that Enola now misses.
There are three cases in which Enola is involved in this book. In the first she competes with Sherlock to try and find Lady Cecily who has disappeared from her home. It seems that Cecily is being forced into a wedding against her wishes. In the 2nd story, Mrs. Tupper has been abducted and it seems to relate to her time in the Crimea and an acquaintanceship with the Lady of the Lamp, Florence Nightingale. In the 3rd story, both Mycroft and Sherlock help Enola find the wife of a Spanish noble, who disappeared down the Baker Street tube station.
The cases are all interesting. Enola is a wonderful, spunky character. She's as good at disguises as her older brother Sherlock. She has a knack for figuring out codes and you get various one displayed in the each case. Her search for her mother will be resolved. Her relationship with her brothers will continue to progress. The artwork is excellent and the stories are entertaining. Get your children to check them out. You'll enjoy as well. (3.5 stars)"
"I discovered Canadian Sci-Fi author Phyllis Gotlieb in the early 2000's. Over the course of her life, she wrote 12 novels, including the Starcats trilogy, the Dahlgren duology and the Flesh and Gold trilogy, plus standalones. Since that time I've enjoyed the Starcats very much and O Master Caliban, the first of Dahlgren, plus Sunburst. Gotlieb has a unique Sci-Fi vision and I love how she tells a story. I only recently discovered that O Master Caliban had a sequel, Heart of Red Iron.
It's been over 10 years since I read O Master Caliban so it took me a bit to get into the characters and the flow of the story but once I did, I enjoyed it very much. Sven Dahlgren returns to planet Barrazin V with his wife, Ardagh, his robot 'clone' Mod Sven, a group of scientists led by Sir Frederick Havergal (married to Sven's mother), two groups of colonists for other alien worlds, the Meshar and the Yefni, plus other scientists and technical staff.
Sven was born (created more correctly) by his father on Barrazin V many years before. Sven is human but also has 4 arms. He and Ardagh escaped Barrazin V when the Erds (sentient robots) went berserk and killed the humans trying to colonize the planet. Now Sven returns as part of a scientific group to see if the planet is suitable for colonization by the Meshar and Yefni. Sir Frederic also has ulterior motives for coming to the planet.
Besides these people, there are other aspects to this rich story. A group of crystalloids, led by Prima, have crash landed on the planet and are stuck in a lava field. They are only able to communicate with a brain-damaged girl. Besides them are a rogue group of Erds, seeking to join humanity.
It's a complex plot with neat characters, an uninviting planet and lots of action. The story focuses on many of the characters. The more the story develops, the more tension there is. I enjoyed how the plot built and the characters grew. It was a fascinating Sci-Fi story and a very satisfactory ending to a duology. I highly recommend. (4.0 stars)"
Currently Reading
"On a planet whose very nature is a mystery, a massive decrepit city is pulled along a massive railway track, laying the line down before it as it progresses into the wilderness. The society within toils under an oppressive regime, its structures always on the point of collapse, the lives of its individuals lived in misery."
"In this volume we’ll see the Heartstopper gang go on a school trip to Paris! Not only are Nick and Charlie navigating a new city, but also telling more people about their relationship AND learning more about the challenges each other are facing in private…
Meanwhile Tao and Elle will face their feelings for each other, Tara and Darcy share more about their relationship origin story, and the teachers supervising the trip seem… rather close…?"
Life at South Pines High School is changing fast, as new romances blossom, and hidden truths are revealed.
Amy tries to put her suspicions on hold, and enjoy the homecoming dance, only to discover the secrets she’s been searching for have been right under her nose. And deep in space, the Arno closes in on its destination…the mysterious object known only as The Artifact.
A sci-fi drama of a high school aged girl who belongs in a different time, a boy possessed by emptiness as deep as space, an alien artifact, mysterious murder, and a love that crosses light years.
Collects Stephen McCranie’s Space Boy volumes 7–9."
Eve Singer needs death. With her career as a TV crime reporter flagging, she’ll do anything to satisfy her ghoulish audience.
The killer needs death too. He even advertises his macabre public performances, where he hopes to show the whole world the beauty of dying.
When he contacts Eve, she welcomes the chance to be first with the news from every gory scene. Until she realizes that the killer has two obsessions.
One is public murder.
And the other one is her . . ."
The Complete Orsinia gathers for the first time the entire body of work set in the imaginary central European nation of Orsinia: the early novel Malafrena, begun in the 1950s but not published until 1979, the related stories originally published in Orsinian Tales (1976), and additional stories and songs. In a new introduction written for this volume, Le Guin describes the breakthrough that led to her first novel: “Most of what I read drew me to write about Europe; but I knew it was foolhardy to write fiction set in Europe if I’d never been there. At last it occurred to me that I might get away with it by writing about a part of Europe where nobody had been but me.” So Orsinia was established, a country, like its near neighbors Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania, with a long and vivid history of oppression, art, and revolution.
An epic meditation on the meaning of hope and freedom, love and duty, Malafrena takes place from 1825 to 1830, when Orsinia is a part of the Austrian empire. Itale Sorde, the idealistic heir to Val Malafrena, an estate in the rural western provinces, leaves home against his father’s wishes to work as a journalist in the cosmopolitan capital city of Krasnoy, where he plays an integral part in the revolutionary politics that are roiling Europe.
Thirteen additional stories trace the history of Orsinia from the twelfth century, when it first emerges as an independent kingdom, to 1989, when its repressive Stalinist government falls in an Orsinian Velvet Revolution. The poem “Folksong from the Montayna Province,” Le Guin’s first published work, joins two never before published songs in the Orsinian language.
The volume also features a newly researched chronology of Le Guin’s life and career, and detailed notes. The beautiful full-color endpaper map of Orsinia is drawn by Le Guin herself."
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| Ellis Peters |
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| My Cadfael collection in the den. |
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