Tuesday, 16 June 2026

New Books

The raccoons in my neighbours yard have a lot to say this morning.

Because I went to the Rotary Club Book Sale last weekend and a few new books also showed up on my 'doorstep', I thought I'd do a quick 'New Books' update before I head off shopping. Jo is having a snooze so I won't disturb her. Let's go!

New Books

1. The Keeper of the Isis Light by Monica Hughes (Isis #1 / 1980). A new author for me.

"Olwen 16 lived her whole life alone on planet Isis with Guardian. To her more than a robot, he saw the danger to the human baby from such a harsh climate. When settlers come from Earth, she no longer needs to operate the Lighthouse. She and Mark 17 care deeply for each other, yet Guardian insists she wear a face mask and suit. Mark sees beneath and her world changes."

2. The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich (Mys / 1943). I'm enjoying exploring his work. I just completed The Bride Word Black.

"A panic-stricken young wife races against time to prove that her convicted husband did not murder his mistress. Writing in first person from her viewpoint, Woolrich makes us feel her love and anguish and desperation, as she becomes an avenging angel to rescue her husband from execution."




4. Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Shadows of the Apt #1 / 2008). I enjoyed Elder Race and want to explore his fantasy / Sci-Fi more. This was one of my Rotary Club (RC) purchases. $2.50 a book, good deal.

"The city states of the Lowlands have lived in peace for decades, bastions of civilization, prosperity and sophistication, protected by treaties, trade and a belief in the reasonable nature of their neighbours.

But meanwhile, in far-off corners, the Wasp Empire has been devouring city after city with its highly trained armies, its machines, its killing Art...And now its hunger for conquest and war has become insatiable.

Only the ageing Stenwold Maker, spymaster, artificer and statesman, can see that the long days of peace are over. It falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people, before a black-and-gold tide sweeps down over the Lowlands and burns away everything in its path.

But first he must stop himself becoming the Empire's latest victim."

5. The Golden Egg by Donna Leon (Commissario Brunetti #22 / 2013). The Brunetti series is one of my favorite mystery series. (RC)

"In The Golden Egg, as the first leaves of autumn begin to fall, Brunetti’s ambitious boss, Patta, asks him to look into a seemingly insignificant violation of public vending laws by a shopkeeper, who happens to be the future daughter-in-law of the Mayor. Brunetti, who has no interest in helping Patta enrich his political connections, has little choice but to ask around to see if the bribery could cause a scandal.

Then, Brunetti’s wife Paola comes to him with an unusual request of her own. The deaf, mentally disabled man who worked at their dry-cleaner has died of a sleeping-pill overdose, and Paola’s kind heart can’t take the idea that he lived and died without anyone noticing him, or helping him.

To please her, Brunetti begins to ask questions. He is surprised when he finds out the man left no official record: no birth certificate, no passport, no driver’s license, no credit cards. The man owns nothing, is registered nowhere. As far as the Italian government is concerned, the man never existed. It is even more surprising because, with his physical and mental handicaps, both he and his mother were entitled to financial support from the state. And yet, despite no official record of the man's life, there is his body.

Stranger still, the dead man’s mother is reluctant to speak to the police and claims that her son’s identification papers were stolen in a burglary. As clues stack up, Brunetti suspects that the Lembos, a family of aristocratic copper magnates, might be somehow connected to the death. But could anyone really want this sweet, simple-minded man dead?"

6. Minute for Murder by Nicholas Blake (Nigel Strangeways #8 / 1947). Strangeways is an interesting character. (RC)

"Wartime Britain: photos are stolen… a secretary is poisoned… a director is stabbed…

Who put the poison in blonde femme fatale Nita Prince’s coffee cup?

A hero returned from a secret mission visits his onetime colleagues (among them, Nigel Strangeways) at the Ministry of Morale. His former fiancĂ©e, the beautiful Nita, is now having an affair with the director, his brother-in-law…"

7. Tarzan and the Ant Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan #10 / 1924) I'm enjoying this series, but I need to read the next one. (RC)

"No man had ever penetrated the Great Thorn Forest until Tarzan of the Apes crashed his plane behind it on his first solo flight. Within lay a beautiful country. But in it lived the Alali, strange stone-age giants whose women regarded all men as less than slaves. And beyond the Alali lay the country of the Ant-Men - little people only eighteen inches tall. There, in Trohanadalmakus, Tarzan was an honored guest - until he was captured by the warriors of Veltopismakus in one of the ant-men's wars. They had their plans for the ape-man. By the advanced science of the little men, Tarzan was shrunk to their size and set to work as a quarry slave."

8. The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett (Dystopia / 1955). I've liked some of Brackett's books more than others but this sounded interesting and it was published on my birth year. So there you go. (RC)

"One of the original novels of post-nuclear holocaust America, The Long Tomorrow is considered by many to be one of the finest science fiction novels ever written on the subject. The story has inspired generations of new writers and is still as mesmerizing today as when it was originally written.

Len and Esau are young cousins living decades after a nuclear war has destroyed civilization as we know. The rulers of the post-war community have forbidden the existence of large towns and consider technology evil.

However Len and Esau long for more than their simple agrarian existence. Rumors of mythical Bartorstown, perhaps the last city in existence, encourage the boys to embark on a journey of discovery and adventure that will call into question not only firmly held beliefs, but the boys' own personal convictions."

9. Exit by Belinda Bauer (Mys / 2020). I've read a couple of Bauer's mysteries and she's great, kind of reminds me of Kate Atkinson and Minette Walters as a story teller. (RC)

"IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE MURDER ...Pensioner Felix Pink is about to find out that it’s never too late ... for life to go horribly wrong.

When Felix lets himself in to Number 3 Black Lane, he’s there to perform an act of kindness and charity: to keep a dying man company as he takes his final breath ... But just fifteen minutes later Felix is on the run from the police – after making the biggest mistake of his life.

Now his routine world is turned upside down as he tries to discover what went wrong, while staying one step ahead of the law."


10. The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon (CanLit / 2026). This was listed on the CBC web page as one of the 40 Canadian fiction books to check out this summer. The synopsis reminded me of In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune. It may be the next book I start.


"In a near future where even the smallest of appliances are sentient, a robotic vacuum sets out to save the humans of her house from a rising technological power


In a self-running, smart house, a young and sentient robotic vacuum listens as her owner, Harold, reads aloud to his dying wife, Edie. Mesmerized by To Kill a Mockingbird and craving the human connection she hears in Harold’s stories, the little vacuum renames herself Scout and embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

But when Edie passes away, Scout and her fellow sentient appliances discover that there are sinister forces in their midst. The omnipresent Grid monitors every household in the City, and it seeks to remove Harold from his home, where he’s lived for fifty years.

With the help of Adrian, a neighbourhood boy, as well as Kate, Harold’s formerly estranged daughter, the humans and the appliances must come together to outwit the all-controlling Grid lest they risk losing everything they hold dear."

11. Extinction Machine by Jonathan Maberry (Joe Ledger #5 / 2013). I just completed #4. It's a series with plenty of action and thrills and strange enemies.

"The President of the United States vanishes from the White House. A top-secret prototype stealth fighter is destroyed during a test flight. Witnesses on the ground say that it was shot down by a craft that immediately vanished at impossible speeds. All over the world reports of UFOs are increasing at an alarming rate. And in a remote fossil dig in China dinosaur hunters have found something that is definitely not of this earth. There are rumors of alien-human hybrids living among us. Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences rush headlong into the heat of the worlds strangest and deadliest arms race, because the global race to recover and retro-engineer alien technologies has just hit a snag. Someone or something--wants that technology back."

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