Floating Hotel: Grace Curtis

Summary from the back of the book:

Welcome to the Grand Abeona Hotel: home of the finest food, the sweetest service, and the very best views the galaxy has to offer. All year round it moves from planet to planet, system to system, pampering guests across the furthest reaches of the milky way. The last word in sub-orbital luxury—and an absolute magnet for intrigue. Intrigues such as: Why are there love poems in the lobby inbox? How many Imperial spies are currently on board? What is the true purpose of the Problem Solver's conference? And perhaps most pertinently—who is driving the ship?

This is another science fiction novel my son read first, then loaned to me. I am a sucker for novels set in hotels, so I was eager to read it. It starts out as a simple story about a ship that functions as a luxury hotel, going from planet to planet, with guests and occasionally employees taking time to visit the planet below. Eventually more and more facts about the ship and its visitors reveal that it may be much more than it seems to be. There is definitely a mystery at the core of the story, and there are even elements of espionage. 

Most of the chapters focus on a single character or in some cases a couple or a group of characters. The first chapter is about Carl, the manager of the hotel, who first boarded the ship as a stowaway at the age of twelve. There were a lot of characters, which can get confusing. I loved the way the story is gradually revealed, although even at the end I was still trying to figure out parts of it.

The  story is described as cozy science fiction, but initially I disagreed with that categorization. Not cozy at all. There is humor, but the story is serious, and a bit too much violence and villainy to be called cozy. 

I enjoyed this story; for me, it was a good read, and I rated it 5 stars. It had a lot of intrigue, and only 324 pages. I could easily read it again. First I will find some of Grace Curtis's other books to read.

Regarding the designation of this book as "cozy," I found an article at The Herrick District Library website titled "Cozy Sci-Fi: The Subgenre You Never Knew You Needed." In addition to explaining about this subgenre, it pointed to two series that fit that definition: The Wayfarers Series by Becky Chambers and The Murderbot Series by Martha Wells. That seemed reasonable to me, since I had read books from both series. 

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road: Stuart M. Kaminsky

The Toby Peters mystery series is set primarily in Hollywood, California. Each book in the series is centered around a celebrity. Toby is a perpetually down-on-his-luck private eye; the books are humorous and clever. There are 24 books in the series.

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road is set in 1940, and Judy Garland is one of the primary characters. Toby gets a call from Warren Hoff at M.G.M., who requests that he look into the death of a little person dressed up as a Munchkin. The body was found on an old set of The Wizard of Oz, which had come out the previous year. Toby soon meets Judy Garland, who had heard his name at a party recently and wants him to work on the case. In addition to the humor and the intricate mystery plot, this book also features cameos of Clark Gable and Raymond Chandler.

About the author:

Stuart M. Kaminsky (September 29, 1934 – October 9, 2009) was an American mystery writer and film professor. He is best known for the Toby Peters mysteries and the Inspector Rostnikov series set in Russia, consisting of 16 books. He received the 1989 Edgar Award for Best Novel for A Cold Red Sunrise, a novel in the Inspector Rostnikov series. He was a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and in 2006 received the Grand Master Award from that organization. 

Kaminsky also published two shorter series. The Abe Lieberman series of ten books is set in Chicago; Lieberman is a sixty-year-old Chicago police detective. The Lew Fonesca series is set in Sarasota, Florida. Fonesca is a process server who ends up investigating crimes. There are 6 books in the series.

I am a big fan of Kaminsky's mysteries. I have read all but the last book in the Inspector Rostnikov series. I would like to read all of the Toby Peters books, but I have to find out how many books I already own. I have read the first book in both of the other two series and I thought they were excellent. The series are all different. 

The City in the Middle of the Night: Charlie Jane Anders

My son read this book first. He liked it, with reservations. (More about that later.) The subject interested me, so I decided to read it also. It is science fiction, about life on a colonized planet, where half of the planet is perpetually cold and in the dark, and the other half is always in the light and hot. 

This summary is from the back of the edition I read:

Humanity clings to life on January–a colonized planet divided between permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other.

Two cities, built long ago in the meager temperate zone, serve as the last bastions of civilization–but life inside them is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside.

Sophie, a young student from the wrong side of Xiosphant city, is exiled into the dark after being part of a failed revolution. But she survives–with the help of a mysterious savior from beneath the ice.

The story takes place thousands of years in the future. The planet of January was populated by humans from earth and many nations worked together to create the ship that carried the people to January. The cooperation between the nations was not entirely successful (not surprising) and resulted in problems in setting up the cities for the settlers. There are two point of view characters: Sophie and Mouth. Sophie's sections are told in 1st person narrative; Mouth's sections are in third person. 

Sophie is the primary character in the book. She and Bianca are students in a school in Xiosphant city, but Sophie is lower class and won her place at the school with her intelligence. Bianca is from a rich family and is spoiled and manipulative; they are close friends, and Sophie has a strong attachment to Bianca.

Mouth is the last surviving member of a nomadic group called the Citizens, and was traumatized by losing her community at such a very young age. She feels like it is her duty to preserve their heritage. These things drive a lot of her behavior and decisions. When the story opens, Mouth is traveling with another nomadic group named the Resourceful Couriers, who carry contraband between the two major cities.

My thoughts:

• Overall, this was a good read. The pace was good, the story was good. It took me a good while to warm up to Mouth. Many of the characters were flawed, which is to be expected, but Sophie had a good heart to the end, so I hung on to find out how she weathered the vicissitudes she suffered. She and Mouth sort of balanced each other out.
• There were so many characters (besides the three I have mentioned), and most of them were interesting, with their own agendas and flaws, but it was hard to keep track of all of them. And I could have used a map.
• I think the book was too long although it was hard to say what could have been left out. The book was only 360 pages but I would have liked it to be closer to 300. But, this book has stuck in my mind since I finished it a month ago, and most books don't do that.
• The story goes in a weird direction in the last 80 pages. Very weird, and it would be too much of a spoiler to talk about it here. There are hints of this ending as the story progresses, but still I was very surprised. I liked the turn of events and I liked the way it was handled.

I asked my son what his one sentence review of The City in the Middle of the Night would be. He said it was "a well written book that doesn't quite know what it wants to be." He also thought it was longer than it should be.

The Ivy Tree: Mary Stewart

This story is about a young woman, Mary Grey, who bears a strong resemblance to the heiress to a fortune, Annabel Winslow, who disappeared several years before the story starts. Mary Grey lives in Canada but is visiting Scotland because her ancestors lived there. 

As soon as I read the first few pages of The Ivy Tree, by Mary Stewart, I was pulled into the story. It is rare that I get interested in the characters that early in a book. Partly it was the first person narration by Mary Grey, but also her encounter with Connor Winslow, in which he mistakes her for Annabel. He is convinced that Annabel has returned to the area so that she can take over the estate when her grandfather dies. Connor has been working as the manager of the estate, and believes that he should rightfully inherit it. Eventually she is persuaded to impersonate the heiress in a scheme to get the inheritance.

My Thoughts:

I was not sure if I would like the romantic suspense type of novel as much as I might have when I was younger. It ends up that I liked pretty much everything about The Ivy Tree. I was pulled into the impersonation story from the very beginning. I thought that the main character's voice was done very well. And the plot was very compelling and believable.

I usually don't like TV shows or movies where characters go undercover; the suspense is too much for me. And impersonation stories are very much the same type of thing. This one was very convincing and there were many tense moments for me. 

At about 50 percent into the 400-page book, there is a big surprise that changes everything, and it makes perfect sense. And then there was at least one more major twist at the end but I had pretty much guessed that last one. 

I just cannot say enough good things about this book. The ending was great, the suspense was great, and the writing was beautiful, especially regarding nature and the setting.

I had not realized that there was a connection to Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. The two books have similarities. I had read Brat Farrar when I was much younger, but I don't remember much about it. Brat Farrar was published in 1949 and The Ivy Tree was published 12 years later in 1961. Brat Farrar is mentioned in The Ivy Tree, as Connor's sister schools Mary Grey in all the facts she needs to know to play the part of Annabel. 

Also, the story begins as Mary Grey stands by a tree near Hadrian's Wall. That doesn't affect the plot much but there is a minor connection.

Also see two other reviews at Clothes in Books (by Moira) and Staircase Wit (by Constance).

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: Muriel Spark

 

Description at Goodreads:

'Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life...'

Passionate, free-thinking and unconventional, Miss Brodie is a teacher who exerts a powerful influence over her group of 'special girls' at Marcia Blaine School. They are the Brodie set, the crème de la crème, each famous for something - Monica for mathematics, Eunice for swimming, Rose for sex - who are initiated into a world of adult games and extracurricular activities they will never forget. But the price they pay is their undivided loyalty ...

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a brilliantly comic novel featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in all literature.

 

This book was my Classic Club Spin for Spin #41, from October 2025. I put off reading it, so only just finished it in February. It was first published in 1961, but the story is set in the years leading up to World War II. I read it in eBook format, which I don't do very often. This year I have a goal to read at least 12 books on my Kindle.

My thoughts:

I think I was prejudiced against this novel from the beginning because I dislike the idea of teachers with favorites or pet students, and I dislike cliques in academic situations (or anywhere I guess). I tried to let go of my assumptions before reading it, but from the beginning I was appalled by Miss Jean Brodie's behavior, and it became even more disturbing later in the story.

So, I did not enjoy reading this book at all. In retrospect, I can appreciate the good points of the book, especially the way the story was told. It has an interesting structure with shifts in time both backwards and forward, and the end result is interesting and sometimes confusing. 

But for me,  there was no one to like in this story at all. I can deal with unlikeable characters, but I need someone in the story to care about. The main character seems admirable at the beginning, trying to enlighten her students with new and different ideas. But she is revealed as a narcissist, only interested in controlling others. The school girls that she has chosen for her "set" of six proteges are of course only young girls; some are more perceptive than others. I gradually realized that most of them were not taking her ideas all that seriously, for various reasons.

One of the girls in the set, Sandy Stranger, was a very interesting character and a lot is revealed about her towards the end. I did not realize that so much emphasis was placed on her character until I read some other reviews. But in some ways she was as manipulative as Miss Brodie.

Even though I found the book distasteful, the end result is that I want to try more books by this author, and I hope that I will like them better. Most (maybe all?) of her books are short, novella length. 

Going to Beautiful: Anthony Bidulka

 

From the description at Goodreads:

International chef Jake Hardy has it all. Celebrity, thriving career, plenty of friends, a happy family and faithful dog. Until one day when a tragic accident tears it all apart. Struggling to recover, Hardy finds himself in a strange new world–a snow-swept prairie town that time forgot–a place where nothing makes sense. Cold is beautiful. Simple is complex. And doubts begin to surface about whether Jake's tragedy was truly an accident after all. As the sun sets in the Land of Living Skies, Hardy and his glamourous, seventy-eight-year-old transgender neighbour find themselves ensnared in multiple murders separated by decades. In Bidulka's love letter to life on the prairies he delivers a story of grief and loss that manages to burst with joy, tenderness and hope. Redolent of his earlier works, Going to Beautiful brings us unexpected, under-represented characters in settings that immediately feel familiar and beloved. Beautiful–a place where what you need may not be what you were looking for.

Praise for Going to Beautiful:

Going to Beautiful is poignant, often funny, always wise…the quiet joy and hopefulness of this novel are gifts readers will value for years to come.

--- Gail Bowen, author of the Joanne Kilbourn Shreve mystery series including An Image in the Lake

My thoughts:

It took me a while to get around to reading this book, and I am glad I finally did. It was a great experience for me. It was the 2023 winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime Novel. It is a mystery, but the overarching story is about a man working through his grief after his husband of thirty years dies, and I found it very compelling. The mystery plot sort of sneaks up on you. The story starts out in Toronto, but it is set mostly in Saskatchewan. 

After months of grieving the loss of his husband, Jake finds some information about where Eddie grew up while going through his papers. He decides to go to the town where Eddie lived and try to find more about his early life and why he left it behind. Baz, his transgender friend from Toronto, goes with him. 

The town where Eddie grew up was Beautiful, in the province of Saskatchewan. Most members of the community are of Ukrainian descent. The town is dying; it has nothing to offer its youth. But the loyalties and relationships among the variety of residents still living there is inspiring, and they offer their friendship to Jake and his friend Baz. Two of my favorite characters are Chung, the owner of Ming's Café, a gathering place in town, and Sister Genowefa, who is the last remaining nun at her convent. She is over 90 years old and when she dies, the beautiful convent will be sold.

Eddie never told Jake anything about the town of Beautiful or his family, and when he finally meets Eddie's family, Jake is surprised to find out that Eddie had a twin brother. Gradually Jake gets to know more about Eddie's family and truly appreciate the people in Beautiful. Along the way, he clears up some mysteries related to Eddie's death.

This book was a magical read. It is hard to explain why I enjoyed it so much. The story was moving and uplifting without being maudlin. And I learned so much more about Saskatchewan.  

 

I have only read one of the books in Bidulka's Russell Quant private detective series, but now I am going to go back and read more in that series. 

Murder of a Lady: Anthony Wynne

 

Description from the back of the book:

Duchlan Castle is a gloomy, forbidding place in the Scottish Highlands. Late one night the body of Mary Gregor, sister of the laird of Duchlan, is found in the castle. She has been stabbed to death in her bedroom -- but the room is locked from within and the windows are barred. The only tiny clue to the culprit is a silver fish's scale, left on the floor next to Mary's body. Inspector Dundas is dispatched to Duchlan to investigate the case. The Gregor family and their servants are quick -- perhaps too quick -- to explain that Mary was a kind and charitable woman.

An amateur sleuth, Dr. Eustace Hailey, is visiting in the area, and because of his reputation with solving crimes, was called in before Inspector Dundas arrived to check out the body and the scene of the crime. Dundas is not happy with that situation and does not wish to work on the crime with anyone else. Yet he doesn't make much progress with his investigation, and irritates the family and the people who live in the surrounding area. Eventually he changes his mind and asks Dr. Hailey for his help. 

From the first, the victim is presented as a saintly woman who was always trying to help people and was loved by all. Eventually this is debunked as the depth of the toxic family relationship between the laird of Duchlan and his sister Mary, and the younger members of the family, the Laird's son, his wife, and their young son, is revealed bit by bit.

Most of the book focuses on the locked-room aspect,  which is one of the problems I have with some locked-room stories. The search for the answer to who could have done the crime and who had the motivation, plus how the murderer could get into and out of the locked room, seemed very repetitive.

Although I had a negative attitude about reading this book when I found out that it was a locked-room mystery, I did not regret reading it. I would even read another in the Aubrey Heiling series if I could find one. There were some good points. I enjoyed the setting in a castle in Scotland in the early 1930s. The solution at the end was a big surprise to me and there was more variety than I realized because of the contrasting of the varied approaches and the skills used by the sleuths, both from the police and the amateur sleuth. Also, it has a gorgeous cover.

Old Filth: Jane Gardam

 

Description from the paperback edition I read...

Filth, in his heyday, was an international lawyer with a practice in the Far East. Now, only the oldest QCs and Silks can remember that his nickname stood for Failed In London Try Hong Kong. 

Long ago, Old Filth was a Raj orphan – one of the many young children sent 'home' from the East to be fostered and educated in England. Jane Gardam's new novel tells his story, from his birth in what was then Malaya to the extremities of his old age. In so doing, she not only encapsulates a whole period from the glory days of the British Empire, through the Second World War, to the present and beyond, but also illuminates the complexities of the character known variously as Eddie, The Judge, Fevvers, Filth, Master of the Inner Temple, Teddy and Sir Edward Feathers.

Teddy Feathers acquired the name "Old Filth" when he was in Hong Kong. FILTH is an acronym for Failed in London Try Hong Kong. When it first came into usage, it was an insult, but later did not have that negative connotation.

The story begins when Teddy is living in Dorset with Betty, his wife. They are both in their late 70s and live a very isolated life. The story jumps around, from his childhood in Wales living with a foster family, to the years that he spends in boarding school and then prep school. When World War II starts, Teddy's father has him evacuated to Singapore, at the age of eighteen, which he finds mortifying. The story covers very little of his time working in Singapore and later in London.

My Thoughts:

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Old Filth. Teddy Feathers is a wonderful character. He had a sad life, but the story is not depressing. 

I will admit that the hopping around to various times in his childhood was confusing for me at times. Normally, I like that format of story telling, but in this case it may have been a problem because I did not have much knowledge of the time before World War II in the UK, and the relationships between the UK and various Asian countries. As usual, that makes me want to read more about the period (and any suggestions are welcome). There is a 2nd book, The Man in the Wooden Hat, telling the story from his wife's point of view, and I look forward to reading that.

I also want to try more of Jane Gardam's books. In an interview at the Guardian, from 2011, Gardam said "that's what all my books are about, the end of empire," and I think that would be interesting reading. If you have any to recommend, let me know.

Short Story Wednesday: Christmas Stalkings, ed. Charlotte MacLeod

 

Christmas Stalkings, published in 1991, was the second Christmas short story anthology edited by Charlotte MacLeod. All of the stories in the book appeared in print for the first time in this book. This week I finished reading all the stories in that book. 

In my original post on several short stories in Christmas Stalkings, I noted that the stories in the book had been described as mostly dark. These two stories are on the lighter, cozier side and I enjoyed them very much.

"The Fabulous Nick" by Mickey Friedman

In this story, the real Santa Claus gets a letter from a child saying: "I hate you! Stay away from us!" It is signed by Jason T. McGuire. The address is in Greenwich Village in New York City. Nick, as Santa is called in this story, decides to go undercover in Jason's neighborhood and see why Jason hates him so much. It turns out that Jason's father was arrested for stealing valuable jewels in another apartment in the same building that they live in and is in jail. The family has no way to get him out on bail, so he will still be in jail over Christmas, although his family is sure he is innocent. Nick decides to investigate further. He introduces himself to Jason's mother as Nick Santos, a chimney specialist who has come to work on the chimneys in the apartment building. He then talks to several people who live in the building as he works on their chimneys. Santa Claus is a pretty good investigator in this story.

Mickey Friedman is a new author to me. Her mystery novels were published in the 1980s. There are reviews on Publisher's Weekly, and there was a review of Hurricane Season in 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller. (See this post at MysteryFile.) When I looked the author up on Fantastic Fiction, the mysteries attributed to Mickey Friedman showed up under another name, Michael Jan Friedman, along with a lot of science fiction novels. On Goodreads, the mystery novels show up under two names: Mickey Friedman and Michaela Thompson (which I believe is correct). If anyone else reading this has more information, I would love to hear about this author.

"Fruitcake, Mercy, and Black-eyed Peas" by Margaret Maron

I saved this story for last because it was one of my favorite stories in the book, AND because it can be considered a New Year's Day story, and I don't run into those very often. 

In this story, Marnolla Faison, a middle-aged black woman who lives in Dobbs, North Carolina, has been arrested for shoplifting, and not for the first time. She called Deborah Knott, a lawyer she has known for many years, to bail her out. She was arrested for stealing diapers and there are mitigating factors. Billy Tyson, owner of the Bigg Shopp where Marnolla had perpetrated her crime, is not in any mood to be talked out of pressing charges, as he had in the past. 

This story was the least-crime related in this book, if I remember correctly. Yes, there is a crime, but it is not serious. The story is more about the people involved in and connected to the shoplifting incident, and community relations.

In addition to the fact that this story addresses some social issues in a sensitive and humorous way, I love this story because it ends with a New Year's Day dinner featuring black-eyed peas. It is a tradition in the South to eat black-eyed peas on the first day of the year for luck during the coming year. My husband cooks Hoppin' John, a dish containing black-eyed peas, every year on New Year's Day.

Margaret Maron wrote two mystery series. My favorite books by her are from the Sigrid Harald series, about a female New York City police detective who has to deal with the obstacles of being a woman in a male profession in the 1980s. The first book, One Coffee With, was published in 1981. 

Maron's series starring Judge Deborah Knott was her most well-known series, and is set in North Carolina.  The story in this book features Deborah Knott before she became a judge, and was written before the first book in that series was published in 1992. 

Oh William!: Elizabeth Strout

I read this book in early October. I read Lucy by the Sea and Tell Me Everything, later books by Elizabeth Strout, in November. 

I have loved all the books that feature Lucy Barton. But I find it very hard to review them. For one thing, each story moves Lucy to a new place in her life, and that was why I read the books in order and did not read any reviews of the books until I had read the book. In My Name is Lucy Barton, Lucy tells of one event in her life while she is married to William, and I really disliked him in that story. In each succeeding novel about their relationship I grew to understand him and Lucy more. The books are all about relationships, and in this book and the next two books are also about relationships and aging.  

At the beginning of Oh William!, Lucy's second husband, David, had died about a year earlier. They had been married five years, and she misses him very much. Lucy talks about her marriage to David a bit, but most of the story focuses on her previous marriage to William, which lasted about twenty years, and their relationship since then. William was an only child, and very close to his mother. So Lucy and William and their two daughters spent a lot of time with her. After having a paternity test, William learns things about his mother that he did not know. 

The writing style that Elizabeth Strout uses in the books focused on Lucy Barton drew me into the story. It feels like Lucy is talking to the reader. Some of her other books are more a sequence of related stories, and the style in those seems different to me, although they are just as compelling to read.

If you liked My Name is Lucy Barton, you would probably like this too. Anything is Possible also has stories related to Lucy Barton.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Random House, 2022 (orig. publ. 2021)
Length:     240 pages
Format:    Trade Paperback
Series:     Amgash series
Setting:    USA
Genre:     Fiction
Source:    I purchased my copy in 2024.

The Satan Sampler: Victor Canning

This is the 6th book in a loose series called the Birdcage books. They were published between 1971 and 1985. They all revolve around a covert security group in the UK, a branch of the Ministry of Defense. The officials and the agents attached to the Birdcage group are generally amoral, although they believe that their mission is important to the welfare of the country.

Since this is a very difficult book to summarize, I am using the description on the dust jacket: 

On the death of his elder brother, Richard Seyton inherits the Seyton estate, which had been in the family since the fourteenth century. But the great Seyton Hall–showpiece of the estate–has been leased to an international charitable organization, the Felbeck Foundation for the Preservation of the Christian Heritage, which is not all that it seems to be. Determined to find a way to break the lease, Seyton is slowly enmeshed in a dangerous web of intrigue and underground politics, especially when the sinister intelligence organization know as Birdcage intrudes upon his affairs.

 

This story isn't quite as good as the earlier books. Some of the characterizations have less depth, and the spy story is very similar to the previous book. The evil practices and deceptions of the group are just as nefarious as ever, though. The story does feature several of the Birdcage characters from the previous two books, and I liked that. And the emphasis on the beauty of the countryside, the descriptions of the birds and animals, is still there. I loved the setting, the atmosphere, the use of nature. 

The Birdcage novels are usually somewhat of a downer in the end, which is realistic for spy fiction, but this one had a more upbeat ending than usual.

This quote is from the back flyleaf of the dust jacket of the first US hardback edition:

"For years now, Victor Canning has been moving into new directions with the suspense story. The spy thriller has become a novel of character with him. The doomsday book of fate intertwined with old family histories has moved into fresh insights of human foibles. The chase genre has been brought to three-dimensional life by the astute use of settings, where every bird and leaf become a part of the narrative." (Ed Hutshing, Book Editor, San Diego Union)

There are only two more books in the series, and I am looking forward to both of them.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   William Morrow and Co., 1980 (orig. pub. 1979)
Length:       233 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Birdcage books #6
Setting:      UK
Genre:       Espionage fiction
Source:      Purchased in December, 2024.

At the Table of Wolves: Kay Kenyon

 

For the 52 Book Club Challenge, I asked my son to suggest a genre for me to read (Prompt 37: Genre Chosen for you by someone else). He chose Alternate History as the genre, and suggested a fantasy to fit that category. So I ended up reading a very entertaining cross-genre novel with a strong female character in the lead role.

Description provided by the publisher:

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy meets Agent Carter meets X-Men in a classic British espionage story. A young woman must go undercover and use her superpowers to discover a secret Nazi plot and stop an invasion of England.

In 1936, there are paranormal abilities that have slowly seeped into the world, brought to the surface by the suffering of the Great War. The research to weaponize these abilities in England has lagged behind Germany, but now it's underway at an ultra-secret site called Monkton Hall.

This description of the book, especially the first paragraph, is misleading in my opinion. It sounds like the novel is an over-the-top spy story. The novel is a very good spy story, but it is more of an adventure than the quiet, somber stories written by John le Carré. It is set in an alternative version of the UK and Germany in the years leading up to World War II. Within the British government, there is strong support for an alliance between the UK and Germany and many think that a cooperative relationship between the two countries can be successful; some citizens support that view, others don't trust the German government. 

There are people with fantastical paranormal abilities in both countries; these powers started showing up after World War I. For the most part, the "superpowers" are not very obvious and people have to be trained to use them. 

The heroine of the story, Kim Tavistock, has such an ability, called the "spill." She is capable of influencing other people to reveal secrets to her. Her supervisor/trainer at Monkton Hall requests that she go undercover to a country house weekend party. There will be highly placed Germans at the party. She will try to get some information on what the Germans are planning. Kim and her supervisor are doing this on their own, with no backing, which puts her in danger at times. 

My thoughts:

I like the central female character. She has no training in espionage and her supervisor is not sufficiently knowledgeable in that area to guide her, but she is determined to be successful at her mission and willing to take chances. She is living with her father in England after having spent the previous ten years living with her mother in the US. Thus there is a strained relationship between her and her father, and they are keeping secrets from each other.

I liked the setting, both in time and place. Especially at the beginning, the action takes place in both England and Germany. I thought the depiction of the time period was very well done and convincing. Germany takes the new powers more seriously and invests heavily in experiments to test the ability to use them to take over other countries. 

I love reading espionage stories, realistic or not. This book has enough grounding in the history of the years prior to World War II and a story that moves at a swift pace, so I think it would appeal to a wider audience. And the paranormal parts are very well done without seeming over the top. 

This book is the first in a trilogy. However, the book does not end in a cliffhanger and has a satisfactory conclusion. I will be getting a copy of the 2nd book soon.

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea: Rebecca Thorne

 

I first saw this book when my son purchased it at the book sale. The copy he got was especially nice, with sprayed edges (in a nice turquoise color), and a lovely map. I was interested in the book shop theme and the description: "a cozy fantasy steeped with love." And since I love tea, "tea" in the title of the book pulled me in too. I wanted to read it immediately and my son let me read it first.

The story is about a lesbian couple who want to leave their current lives behind and open a bookstore in a remote location where no one can find them. The problem is that Reyna is a private guard to a powerful and cruel queen, and Kianthe is a powerful mage. Somehow they both manage to leave their responsibilities behind and move to a small town far from their previous lives to set up a book shop. 

Reyna and Kianthe have never had any extended time together before, and they use this time to adjust to their differences and see if they can make a life together. 

My Thoughts on the Book:

What is a cozy fantasy? I had not been aware previously that there was a subgenre of fantasy that is described as cozy fantasy.  I don't often read cozy mysteries, but like any other genre or subgenre, there is a wide range of books within the mystery genre categorized as cozy. Online there are many different descriptions of cozy fantasies, emphasizing community or familial relationships, and focusing on comfort and a sense of belonging.

This book had griffons and dragons. Griffons are new to me. Dragons are not, but I did begin to notice how differently dragons are described and used in various fantasy series. In the last ten years, I think the only dragons I have encountered in fiction were in the Dragonriders of Pern series. In the Tomes & Tea series dragons are monsters, the enemy that can burn down towns (at least at this point). I am currently reading Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett, a Discworld book, and dragons are summoned by evil forces and are attacking the city of Ankh-Morpork. The approach to dragons in the Discworld series seems entirely different.

The story was good and held my interest; it is a light-hearted tale, not too demanding, focused on community, sharing, being open to ideas. It has enough conflict to make it interesting.

I enjoyed the depiction of all the characters in the story, even the evil ones. The evil queen doesn't really get much time in the book until close to the end, but even in that case, her character is very well defined.

This book is not perfect. It was the author's first novel and in some ways it shows. Some behaviors and scenarios are used over and over. That may be realistic but in fiction it can get annoying. But I liked the story and the characters a lot and I am willing to try more books in the series to see how it develops.

#HYH25: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I read this book for Neeru's Hundred Years Hence challenge. The goal is to read one or more books that were published for the first time in 1925.  The challenge runs until the end of 2025.

Reading Mrs. Dalloway was a good experience for me. It was the first book I had read by Virginia Woolf, plus I had never read anything written in stream of consciousness style. It did take me a good while to adjust to that style of telling a story, and it got even more confusing when the story moves from Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts to various other people's ruminations.

The story is basically a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway. As she goes through her day she muses about her past and her future: her daughter; her daughter's friend, who she doesn't like; and her own relationships with men over the years. She is probably thinking about the men in her life because an old boyfriend will be visiting her soon. He has been out of the country (in India) and they haven't seen each other for a long time. 

The old boyfriend is Peter Walsh, and he still has feelings for Clarissa. Peter Walsh musings as he visits London and Clarissa are second focus of the book. There is another couple whose thoughts are shared in the book, although they have no real connection to Mrs. Dalloway other than proximity to her when she goes out on her morning walk, to pick up flowers for the party she will be giving in the evening. That couple, Septimus and Lucrezia Smith, have an interesting story and it is kind of a downer.

The edition I read had a Foreward by Jenny Offill and an Introduction by Elaine Showalter.

My Thoughts:

This book is just filled with lovely quotes, sad quotes, quotes to think about. But I had a difficult time reading it. So many characters are touched on that I got lost at times. Since it is told in stream of consciousness style, this makes perfect sense, but it still did not make for a pleasant read. There were many pages and sections that I had to reread to make any sense of. 

The story has a lot of depth to it. It is about a middle-aged woman, doubting herself as she gets older and her daughter nears adulthood. It takes place on one day in June in 1923, so the reader sees a picture of life 100 plus years ago, in London, written by someone living at that time. The story of Septimus and Lucrezia Smith involves the husband's mental illness due to his experiences in the Great War. 

One thing I noted while reading this novel and even more so afterward is how much difference it might make whether you read this novel for the first time when you are a teen, or thirty, or fifty, or like me, in your seventies. Jenny Offill expanded on this idea in her Foreword (although I recommend not reading the Foreword until after you have read the book for the first time).

Since I am not familiar with Virginia Woolf's novels and stories, I did not realize that the character of Mrs. Dalloway shows up in other writings by her. She appears in Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out, and in at least one short story, "Mrs. Dalloway of Bond Street." That makes me want to read more by Virginia Woolf (recommendations are welcome). 

I do hope to reread this book sometime to see what more I can get out of it on a second reading, when I am not distracted by the unusual structure.

Pesticide: Kim Hays

This summary is from Kim Hays' website:

In Pesticide, a street party in Bern morphs into a brutal riot. Hours later, with the medieval downtown a shambles, a young man is found beaten to death with a policeman’s club. That same day, twenty miles away, an organic farmer turns up on his land, dead and drenched in pesticide. Swiss homicide detective Giuliana Linder and her younger colleague Renzo Donatelli start out on two separate cases, but it doesn’t take long before they find links between their victims. Working together on what has become a single, puzzling case, the two can no longer ignore their attraction to each other.

 

Pesticide is the first book in the Linder and Donatelli series. When reading mysteries, I have a preference for police procedurals because they are more believable. Detective Giuliana Linder is an experienced homicide detective; she has worked with Investigator Renzo Donatelli before but this time they start out on different cases in very different locations. It is assumed that the death of the young man in Bern is drug-related, but soon officials realize that the elderly man who owns and works on an organic farm outside of Bern had business dealings with the younger victim and decide to combine the cases.

My thoughts

I like to read police procedurals set in countries other than the US, because I like to learn about how the various legal and law enforcement departments work in each country. The author of this book does a great job of showing all the different types of people working on the case, and in this novel, we get to see two groups of investigators coming together to solve two related cases. Although a lot of the focus was on the procedure of solving a crime, the pacing was good and the story never dragged.

Getting a peak at organic farming in this story is fascinating. I learned a lot about the mechanics of farming and the rules of organic farming. The story divides its time between the police in Bern and the community in the outlying rural area, where one of the crimes occurred.

I liked the characters in this story, both the main characters and secondary characters. The ending was very good; the  mystery was tied up well and realistically. I will definitely be reading the next book in the series.

For more details on the plot, please see Kevin Tipple's excellent review at Kevin's Corner.

Kim Hays has dual Swiss/American citizenship, and has lived in Bern with her husband for 37 years. She has a very nice website with information about Bern and Switzerland, in addition to descriptions of her books.

At Bertram's Hotel: Agatha Christie

 

Description at Goodreads:

Miss Jane Marple has checked into Bertram's Hotel in London for a much-needed vacation. The last thing she expects is that this elegant establishment, known for its service and old-world charm, could be embroiled in scandal. But after a series of strange events—including the disappearance of a fellow guest, the arrival of a notorious celebrity bad boy, and finally, a shocking murder—she finds herself drawn into a multifaceted mystery.

This portion of the description at Goodreads is an accurate description, but later there is an implication that Miss Marple gets involved in the investigation, which is not accurate. Miss Marple observes useful pieces of information, and along the way she does reveal her thoughts to the reader on many of the events. The real investigator in this mystery is Chief Inspector Fred Davy, who has noted the connection of many of the guests at the hotel to various crimes in the area, and the story works more as a police procedural than is usual in a Miss Marple novel. All of that worked very well for me and I had no complaint. Fred Davy was a great character.

There are a lot of coincidences in this story; for example, Miss Marple runs into various guests at the hotel in the city of London who seem to be in questionable relationships. 

At Bertram's Hotel is a later book in the Miss Marple series and it didn't measure up to other books in that series for me. However, it was a fun read, with some humor.  I like books set in hotels and Bertram's Hotel was lovely. There were several interesting characters, so overall I liked it and I plan to finish the series. 

Ninefox Gambit: Yoon Ha Lee

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee is the first book in the Machineries of Empire trilogy. This is the summary of the book at the author's website:

Kel Cheris, a disgraced captain of the hexarchate, is given the opportunity to redeem herself by recapturing the formidable Fortress of Scattered Needles from heretics. Cheris requests—and receives—a single devastating weapon to aid her in her task: the revived, near-immortal traitor, General Shuos Jedao. Feared throughout the stars and undefeated in battle, he is the perfect weapon. But Jedao is gripped by a madness that saw him massacre two armies in his first life—one of them his own. Preserved for his brilliance and tamed by his handlers, no one knows how long his good behaviour will last. Cheris must work with the mass murderer to destroy the heresy and save the hexarchate—before he destroys her…

A tale of math, madness, and massacres in outer space.

My Thoughts:

This is a science fiction book and specifically a military space opera. In many ways, it feels as much like fantasy as science fiction. Here the reader is dropped into a universe where the scientific laws that govern the universe are based on a "calendrical" mathematics system that seems more like magic. There are groups of heretics who refuse to follow the accepted mathematics systems. However, there is no attempt to explain all of this to the reader. For at least the first third of this book I had no idea what was going on.

On top of that, there were no characters that I cared about or could invest in. 

At the point that I was about to give up on the book, I read a review that called this book "brain-breaking" but also said to just hang in there and it would be worth it. That reviewer was right and it was worth reading. I finally caught onto the general idea of what was going on, and was hoping that the author was going to give me a satisfactory ending. And I did get it. I was invested in the two main characters; the ending was amazing. That is good, because I already have a copy of the second book in this series, Raven Strategy. 

So, if you like science fiction, you might want to try this series, or at least read a few reviews of the book to get other opinions.

Additional notes:

I have read military science fiction before; John Scalzi's Old Man's War series is an example. But those stories are remarkably easy to read compared to this one. 

Apparently there are a lot of science fiction books / series that start out like this series, throwing the reader into an imaginary setting with little explanation. Readers are divided on whether they like that or not. And now I can think of mystery novels (with sort of a science fiction or fantasy flavor) that are this way too. For example, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton.

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Publisher:   Solaris Books, 2016
Length:      384 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Series:       Machineries of Empire, #1
Setting:      Outer Space
Genre:       Science Fiction 
Source:      On my TBR since 2020.

Oona Out of Order: Margarita Montimore

This story starts on New Year's Eve 1982; at the stroke of midnight, Oona will turn 19. She expects to be making a decision about whether to go to school in London the next year or stay in Brooklyn and tour for a year with the band she and her boyfriend are in. But when midnight comes, Oona is jerked out of her current situation. She awakens in a lovely house, in her 51st year. She is appalled to see how old she is, and that she is overweight. 

Oona is living one year of her life at a time, but out of order (hence the title). She has awakened in 2015. Fortunately, there is a man waiting there for her to explain the situation, and she is living in a gorgeous home. The man is Kenzie and he introduces himself as her personal assistant and friend. She freaks out and he does his best to calm her down. 

After that, every year at midnight on New Year's Eve, the same thing happens; Oona either jumps ahead to a future year or goes back to an earlier year that she has not experienced before.  It makes poor Oona very cranky to be jerked off to a different year in her life every New Year's Eve.

This is a time travel book, but there is no explanation of why this phenomenon is happening to her, thus it is more fantasy than science fiction. I enjoyed this a lot while I was reading it; I gave it five stars, and I still think it deserves that rating, but I am pretty generous with my ratings. So as far as entertainment value goes, it did very well. 

Family is a recurring theme in this book. Of course, I loved that part of it. Most of the time I liked Oona's mother Madeleine and Kenzie better than I liked the lead character. Oona is often bratty and immature. She may look older at times but she hasn't had that many years of actual living to mature. 

I was frustrated that not that many years in Oona's life are covered. In a way, each year was approached as if it was a short story and you are getting a glimpse of her life. But because she has no memory of any year that she leaves behind... the reader sometimes knows more that she does. 

In summary, I liked the premise of this book and it was fun and the writing was well done. As with many time travel books, I was confused at times. It was 340 pages long and it was the rare book that I wish was much longer.

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Publisher:  Flatiron Books, 2020.
Length:      336 pages
Format:     Trade Paper
Setting:      New York City
Genre:       Fantasy / Time Travel
Source:     I purchased my copy in 2024.

The Burgess Boys: Elizabeth Strout

In a short prologue, the Burgess family is introduced, focusing mainly on the two boys, Jim and Bob. They both have legal careers and left their home town of Shirley Falls, Maine, to pursue their careers. Bob has always been the lesser brother, the one who plods along but did not succeed spectacularly like his older brother. But he also is the one who every one likes, who is nice and kind and thinks well of people.

Then an incident happens in Shirley Falls, Maine, where Susan, their sister, still lives. Susan's nineteen-year-old son, Zach, commits a crime and the Burgess boys feel like they have to go back to their home town to help her. Jim is going on a vacation with his wife and another couple and he drafts Bob to go and help. But Bob doesn't handle the situation very well and Jim is bent out of shape.

I like books about families and this is a very unusual family. There is a tragedy in their past which has affected all of the relationships in the family. The children's father was killed when they were all under ten years of age; although he was only four years old at the time, Bob was blamed for his father's death and it has affected his self-image, to put it mildly. The dynamics within the family are strange. Jim, the older brother, is needlessly cruel to his brother, taunting him mercilessly. Most of the time this just rolls off of Bob. Susan is Bob's twin, but she is also often disparaging of Bob and his abilities. 

The rest of the story is about how Zack's problems are handled, and the effects these events have on all of their lives.

My thoughts:

• I liked how parts of the story are told from the point of view of characters outside the main family:  Abdikarim Ahmed, a member of the Somali community in Shirley Falls, who testifies against Zack at his hearing; Bob's ex-wife, Pam, who left him because they could not have children;  and Helen Burgess, Jim's wife, who is having problems with an empty nest after her children leave home.
• The majority of the characters in this book are unlikable, but I continued to be interested in reading about all of them. This was partly due to the author's writing style, but also because I was sure that I was going to learn more about them and be able to figure out why they were so disagreeable or unappealing. 
• Coincidentally, the two fiction books I read prior to this one were kind of downers, and this one continued that trend. Unexpectedly, this book probably had a more optimistic outcome towards the end than those books. And certainly this one was more upbeat than the other books by Strout I have read (Olive Kitteridge, My Name is Lucy Barton, and Anything is Possible). 
• This was a compelling read but not an easy read. My description above leaves so much out. That is intentional, so as not to spoil the reading experience. The novel is very rich with important themes and topics.

John Grant wrote a very detailed review of this book in 2019, which can be read either at his blog, Noirish, or on Goodreads.

Death by Accident: Bill Crider

The Sheriff Dan Rhodes series by Bill Crider is set in a small town in Blacklin County, a fictional county in Texas. It is a cozy series; Sheriff Rhodes solves crime mostly with his intuition and avoids computers where possible. He and his second wife are in their fifties. He loves Dr. Pepper in glass bottles and junk food for lunch, which his wife disapproves of. Death by Accident was published in 1998.

Two men die mysteriously in or near Clearview, Texas – one explodes, and the other is found drowned in a swimming pool. Sheriff Dan Rhodes cannot prove that those occurrences are not accidents, but he can feel it in his bones. He quietly investigates this theory, talking to people who knew those who died. Not long after these deaths, a third man is killed in a hit and run. A hit and run is a crime, but the death could have been an accident. Nevertheless, three unexplained deaths in such a short time convinces Rhodes that he is on the right track.

Often these books have a subplot going on. In Death by Accident, there are issues related to the competition between two historical societies in Clearview – the Clearview Sons and Daughters of Texas and the Clearview Historical Society. The Sons and Daughters group maintains the site where the swimming pool-related death took place. The other group wants to physically remove a historic building from that site. Sheriff Rhodes doesn't really think that anyone in those two groups is plotting murder, but there is a lot of mayhem and subterfuge going on. Because Rhodes has only a small staff, all of this keeps him busy. Along the way in this story Rhodes adds a new dog to the family and acquires an Edsel that needs to be refurbished.

I only have 16 books to go to finish this series. The last book in the series was published in 2019, so I imagine that Rhodes has to start using computers sometime along the way. We'll see. But I continue to enjoy police procedurals and other mysteries that were written at a time when technology was not so prevalent. And Dan Rhodes is one of my favorite fictional sheriffs.

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Publisher:   St. Martin's Press, 1998
Length:      277 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Sheriff Dan Rhodes, #9
Setting:      Texas
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Dust jacket painting by Alan Dingman.