Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times No. 9

I am participating in the Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times meme, hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness. Again I am looking at one of the shelves containing my books, in this case mostly mysteries. If you click on the image of the shelf, you will be able to read more of the titles.

Near the top of the stacked books, there is Chasing the Devil's Tail by David Fulmer, first published in 2001.

Why do I have this book? My husband bought it at the Planned Parenthood sale, over ten years ago at least. He passed it on to me to read and it is still sitting on the shelf.

Setting and characters:
1907, in the Storyville district of New Orleans, an area where prostitution was tolerated and kept under control. This is at the beginning of the jazz age, and real-life characters are included, such as Jelly Roll Morton and Buddy Bolden. Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr is the protagonist, working for Tom Anderson, a political boss.

I don't know much about this book. It is the beginning of a seven book series, and it has gotten good reviews. If anyone knows more, let me know.

Right below that is Nemesis by Jo Nesbo, originally published in Norwegian in 2002, translated to English in 2008.

Setting and characters:
Oslo, Norway. Harry Hole is the main character, a police detective. He has many of the typical problems of policemen in contemporary mysteries; he struggles with alcohol and smoking, depression, and has difficulty taking orders and dealing with co-workers.

It has been eight years since I read The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo. The Redbreast was the third book in the series and I have not read books 1 and 2, which have now been translated into English. I still plan to move on to Nemesis and hope I remember enough to enjoy the book (or that it works well as a standalone).

I hope to read this book this year for the European Reading Challenge.


Towards the left of the photo is The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi, the first book in a science fiction trilogy, published in 2017, about an empire of worlds connected by travel via The Flow.

From the book description on the hardcover dust jacket...

Our universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible—until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars. 

Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war—and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

This book is first in a trilogy, and Richard Robinson at Tip the Wink has read all of the books. See his posts here and here.

I am currently reading this book, just started it today.