Book review #37 for 2024 is Colin Dexter's The Wench is Dead. While recuperating from surgery, Morse finds his mind engaged in a murder that happened 140 years earlier. Morse concludes that the wrong persons were hung for the death of Joanna Franks. This is now at least in my top 10 favorite mysteries. ☕☕☕☕☕ review. @bookstodon@bookstodon@books#ColinDexter#books#bookreview#mystery
Book review #36 for 2024 is Colin Dexter's The Secret of Annexe 3. Another Inspector Morse case to solve. To me, it is one of the more complex plots of the series. And, until the end, if you think you know who did it, you don't! ☕☕☕review @bookstodon@books@bookstodon#ColinDexter#Mystery#books#bookreview
#35 Kelly Oliver's Villainy in Vienna. This is the third and final book in Oliver's inaugural series, the "Fiona Figg Mystery" series. This time Fiona is off behind enemy lines to Vienna (who is on Germany's side in WW1) to catch her nemesis, Fredrick Fredricks, the dashing German spy. The dry humor that comes through the conflict with the various characters is one of the highlights of this series. ☕☕☕☕review @bookstodon@books@bookstodon#books#bookreview#kellyoliver#mystery
LAYERS OF TREACHERY IN PARADISE—or as close to Paradise as the California coast and a whole lot of money can take you—abound in this brilliant and bitingly satirical riff on both The Stepford Wives and Herodotus. B PLUS
My #bookreview is brief/won't spoil, to spread good, great, & spectacular #horror#books far & wide.
THE TRUEST SENSE showcases Laura Keating's unique & deftly scary stories: some sneak up quietly- some gleefully go full-throttle into nightmares- but all 15 tales are atmospheric & vivid, with an aura of permeating horror that provides an imaginative, satisfying journey into the Weird.
Why do some people live like there's no tomorrow? Shouldn't you strive to be the kind of ancestor your community will be proud of in 50, 100, or 500 years? Humans clearly have the capacity for long-term thinking, how do we reorient our society for epic planning?
LIFE IS MORE THAN GENDER for Zoë Bossiere, whose tale of a hardscrabble, hard-luck boyhood on the outskirts of Tucson winds through androgyny and young womanhood into a place of self-acceptance as a genderfluid writer and teacher. B PLUS
“But the four men who rode atop the wave of the Gilded Age were Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan. Their business activities during the final four decades of the nineteenth century drove America’s ascension into the most powerful industrial nation on the planet. And they shaped the rules that governed the US economy for decades to come.”
New review: Fun, fascinating, and always with one eye firmly on the facts, Eat, Poop, Die shows how animals shape ecosystems through their everyday activities.
After being blown away by The Saint of Bright Doors, I'm very very eager to read Vajra Chandrasekera's next book, Rakesfall--and not least because of @chloroform_tea 's very favourable review on Nerds of a Feather!
Highlights were a most unusual read in Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, getting to review Going Zero by Andrew McCarten and starting in on a couple of excellent #AusCrime books - one part of a series, the other a debut.
AN EXTRAVAGANT, SPRAWLING PICARESQUE set in Zaire in the last years of the Mobutu regime is a symphony of voices from every walk of life, from tough street kids to the secret police to high society. Vivid and fascinating. B PLUS