A Reading Update, A New Book and the Science Fiction Novel - Deborah Harkness

Ok, let's see. I'm sitting in the den with Clyde. Bonnie is lying at the door because she doesn't really trust that I won't step on her if I get up quickly. (Silly girl). Jo is relaxing upstairs catching up on some Archer's conversations (The BBC radio show, not the animated TV show) It being the 1st of April, I think I'll provide the synopses of the books with which I'm starting off the month. I received one book in the mail a couple of days ago. I'm wondering how the mail service will be impacted nowadays. I've got 3 or 4 on order but will just have to wait patiently to see if they arrive. 

I'm here to pick up my order.. What's the password?

What else? I went out briefly today to pick up some dog food and Bonnie's meds. Basically I ordered and paid via phone and then showed up at the Pet Food store and later at the vets, knocked on the door and they unlocked and gave me my purchases. All very nice and tidy. There were a few more people at the grocery store but they seem to have traffic organized to minimize contact, but I still felt uncomfortable, trying not to pass people, that sort of thing. Nice to see that the clerks were behind plexiglass. I'm sure they feel a bit more secure. Interesting thing at the cash I went through. After the clerk served me, the supervisor told him it was time to go and wash his hands again. Little things like that part of the new norm, I guess.

Well, anyway back to books. These are the five books I'm starting April with, two are carry-overs from March.

Currently Reading

1. The Devil You Know by Mike Carey (Felix Castor #1). Enjoying this. It reminds me somewhat of the Dresden Files books.










"Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stamping ground. It may seem like a good ghostbuster can charge what he likes and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle--but there's a risk: Sooner or later he's going to take on a spirit that's too strong for him. While trying to back out of this ill-conceived career, Castor accepts a seemingly simple ghost-hunting case at a museum in the shadowy heart of London--just to pay the bills, you understand. But what should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize. That's OK: Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It's the living who piss him off..."

2. Return to Lesbos by Valerie Taylor. I've previously read two other of Taylor's books.

"This treasure from the golden age of lesbian pulp fiction picks up where "Stranger on Lesbos" left off. Deserted by her butch lover, Frances struggles to reintegrate into conventional married life. Against the drama-filled backdrop of the 1960s gay world, Frances' passion for the boyish Erika threatens to shatter the dull security of her role as Mrs. William Ollenfield."

3. Open Secret by Deryn Collier (Bern Fortin #1). Only two books written in this Canadian mystery series... so far anyway.










"On a fall day in Kootenay Landing, a local man abandons his van at a remote border crossing and disappears into the bush. Hours later and miles away another man, known to be a small-time drug dealer, is shot in the forehead along a popular hiking trail. On the surface, the two incidents seem unrelated. And yet the two men have been best friends since elementary school.

As Bern Fortin works alongside police constable Maddie Schilling to connect the two cases, they discover secrets with roots buried deep in the past. Why did Gary Dowd disappear? Who shot Seymour Melnychuk? Why was Dr. Sinclair already on the scene? Who really controls the hills and forests around Kootenay Landing? Amidst the chaos of the case, a reporter shows up, asking disturbing questions about Bern’s military past. Everyone has something to hide, and no one in Kootenay Landing seems willing to talk. But Bern Fortin is well aware that no secret can remain buried forever—not even his own."

4. The Anodyne Necklace by Martha Grimes (Inspector Jury #3). I've enjoyed a few of this series. I've only recently started from the beginning.

"A spinster whose passion was bird-watching, a dotty peer who pinched pennies, and a baffling murder made the tiny village of Littlebourne a most extraordinary place. And a severed finger made a ghastly clue in the killing that led local constables from a corpse to a boggy footpath to a beautiful lady’s mansion.

But Richard Jury refused, preferring to take the less traveled route to a slightly disreputable pub, the Anodyne Necklace. There, drinks all around loosened enough tongues to link a London mugging with the Littlebourne murder and a treasure map that would chart the way to yet another chilling crime."

5. The Sculptress by Minette Walters. Walters is one of my favorites for standalone mysteries.








"In prison, they call her the Sculptress for the strange figurines she carves - symbols of the day she hacked her mother and sister to pieces and reassembled them in a blood-drenched jigsaw. Sullen, menacing, grotesquely fat, Olive Martin is burned-out journalist Rosalind Leigh's only hope of getting a new book published.

But as she interviews Olive, in her cell, Roz finds flaws in the Sculptress's confession. Is she really guilty as she insists? Drawn into Olive's world of obsessional lies and love, nothing can stop Roz's pursuit of the chilling, convoluted truth. Not the tidy suburbanites who'd rather forget the murders, not a volatile ex-policeman and her own erotic response to him, not an attack on her life.

Not even the thought of what might happen if the Sculptress went free..."

New Books

1. Women's Barracks by Tereska Torres (1950).

"Originally published in 1950, this account of life among female Free French soldiers in a London barracks during World War II sold four million copies in the United States alone and many more millions worldwide.

The novel is based on the real-life experiences of the author, Tereska Torres, who escaped from occupied France. She arrived as a refugee in London and joined other exiles enlisting in Charles de Gaulle’s army, then stationed in Britain awaiting an invasion of their homeland by Allied forces. But Women’s Barracks is no ordinary war story.

As the Blitz rains down over London, taboos are broken, affairs start and stop and hearts are won and lost. Women’s Barracks was banned for obscenity in several states. It was also denounced by the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials in 1952 as an example of how the paperback industry was “promoting moral degeneracy.” But in spite of such efforts—or perhaps, in part, because of them—the novel became a record-breaking bestseller and inspired a whole new genre: lesbian pulp."

The Science Fiction Novel - Deborah Harkness

Deborah Harkness

I'm getting to the end of my list of authors / books from the Fantasy / Sci-Fi genre. More of these authors will be new to me but that just adds to the anticipation for me.

Deborah Harkness is an American scholar and novelist born in Philadelpha, Pennsylvania. I first heard of her when Jo and I enjoyed the first season of A Discovery of Witches, an excellent fantasy series. I decided to buy the first book in her All Souls trilogy. I've got it sitting on my bookshelf and look forward to finally trying it.

a. A Discovery of Witches (2011).

"A world of witches, daemons and vampires. A manuscript which holds the secrets of their past and the key to their future. Diana and Matthew - the forbidden love at the heart of it.

When historian Diana Bishop opens an alchemical manuscript in the Bodleian Library, it's an unwelcome intrusion of magic into her carefully ordered life. Though Diana is a witch of impeccable lineage, the violent death of her parents while she was still a child convinced her that human fear is more potent than any witchcraft. Now Diana has unwittingly exposed herself to a world she's kept at bay for years; one of powerful witches, creative, destructive daemons and long-lived vampires. Sensing the significance of Diana's discovery, the creatures gather in Oxford, among them the enigmatic Matthew Clairmont, a vampire geneticist. Diana is inexplicably drawn to Matthew and, in a shadowy world of half-truths and old enmities, ties herself to him without fully understanding the ancient line they are crossing. As they begin to unlock the secrets of the manuscript and their feelings for each other deepen, so the fragile balance of peace unravels..."

The other two books in the series are -
a. Shadow of Night (2012)
b. The Book of Life (2014)

Well, there you go friends. Enjoy your April reading. See you tomorrow.