Magpie Murders

This book was actually a birthday present from sister-in-law, Patty, and I was excited about reading a mystery written by Anthony Horowitz, the creator of both the Foyle's War and Midsomer Murders series. That being said, I had to start this book 3 times before I finally got into it, even though it started out in lovely English cozy style and then on page 3 the narrator tells us that the story to come changed her life; she goes on to say "Unlike me, you have been warned."  Susan Ryeland is a book editor for a small London press, and specifically for one of their cash cow authors, mystery writer Alan Conway. She is all set to have a good read on a rainy weekend of the newest Conway script for his 9th book, but finds that the final chapters are missing. And then Alan Conway dies. It could have been an accident, or even suicide, but Susan begins to suspect murder. It is a story within a story, the first being the story in Conway's book, featuring his Hercule Poirot-like protagonist Atticus Pünd. Conway is planning to kill off his money-making character in this book, and that will turn out to be at the crux of solving the mystery surrounding Conway's own death. The stories are told with the expected expertly detailed English town and country settings as well as detailed character development. I did occasionally find the transitions between the two stories a little hard to follow, however. And the ending was a total surprise to me, so well-done on that score. 

Great review by The New York Times, USA Today, Kirkus, and NPR.

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La Belle Sauvage

I have been hearing about this new trilogy, "The Book of Dust," from Philip Pullman--of Golden Compass fame (published in England as Northern Lights)--and so jumped on Volume 1 when I got a gift card to Barnes and Noble. This is a prequel to the "His Dark Materials" trilogy; here, Lyra is a baby, being hidden from forces that want to destroy the child of Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter. She is being cared for in an obscure priory, just across the Thames from The Trout, a pub owned by the parents of Malcolm Polstead, the hero of this tale. Malcolm helps out in the pub, of course, and overhears lots of conversations since no one pays much attention to an 11-year-old boy. He also frequently runs errands for the nuns and, between these two sources, soon learns about their secret guest. He is besotted with Lyra and protective of her. When a menacing character with a 3-legged hyena as a daemon comes into the Trout asking about the baby, Malcolm is alarmed. There are strange goings-on everywhere and  Malcolm witnesses an apparent abduction, which eventually draws him into a spy network opposing The Magisterium, an organization of religious zealots with enormous political power. At one point he helps Lord Asriel surreptitiously visit his daughter at the priory, and in return, gets his little boat, La Belle Sauvage renovated. The masters of the River have made Malcolm's little boat seaworthy but also issued a warning of devastating rains and flooding to come. No one believes Malcolm when he tries to pass on the warning, however, so he becomes Lyra's rescuer when the rains come and the Thames River floods the nunnery,  sending Malcom and Lyra and the surly barmaid, Alice, on a surreal adventure in search of Lyra's father in London.
This is a totally engrossing tale from the first page and I can't wait for the next two volumes. No doubt I will have to re-read "His Dark Materials" when I finish.
Erudite review from The Guardian, which highlights the story's literary and political antecedents and underpinnings. Also a thoughtful review from the New York Times, Slate, and The Independent.

The Clock Work Dynasty

This is the newest book (2017) by our local (Portland, OR) science fiction/ alternative history writer Daniel H. Wilson, who has written several previous books, mostly robot related.  There is a good overview of what he has written on Wikipedia. He is certainly qualified with a PhD in robotics and masters degree in artificial intelligence. This novel alternates between an historical journey, beginning in 1700's Czarist Russia, and a present day Pacific Northwest thriller. The action begins with the revival of two human-like mechanical beings--a young girl and an adult man (Elena and Peter)--by the Czar's "mechanician." When Peter the Great dies, his wife, Catherine, vows to destroy these abominations and so begins their life on the run, so to speak.
In current day Oregon, June Stefanov is an academic anthropologist who studies these ancient machines and is about to make an astounding and life-threatening discovery. As these characters' lives collide, nothing less than the fate of the human race is at stake.
I felt the pace of the book was slow to get started, but eventually I was drawn into finding out the origin story of these mechanical beings, who continue to evolve themselves, and are hiding in plain sight. This review from Publishers Weekly pretty accurately sums up my reading experience. My curiosity is piqued now to check out some of his more futuristic novels such as Robopocalypse.
Positive review available from Kirkus, and excerpts from an interview on OPB.

The Little French Bistro

What a disappointment. I so enjoyed The Little Paris Bookstore, by Nina George, that I pleasantly anticipated reading this selection for our upcoming book group. The parallels to the first book are significant, a protagonist who has existed for decades without love suddenly realizes there is more to life during a journey of self-discovery. I almost never disagree with Kirkus reviews, who found this book to be "a satisfying virtual visit to the French Riviera," but I found the plot to be utterly predictable and the prose to be overblown. I would put that down to translation except that the first translated book was done by the same guy, Simon Pare.
Marianne is sick of her life and especially her unfathful and condescending husband. While with him on a tour in France, she sneaks away from dinner and attempts to drown herself in the Seine, only to be rescued by a homeless man and taken to a hospital, where her husband catches up with her and tells the doctor she is mentally ill.
Once again, Marianne makes her escape with suicide in mind and this time, inspired by a colorful ceramic tile she saw in the nurses' station, she heads for the coast to a tiny fishing village called Kerdruc, where she plans to walk into the sea. She is immediately adopted by an entangled group of locals (for more detail, see the NYTimes review) and made the chef's assistant at a local bistro. And of course she meets someone and falls in love. She has already fallen in love with the sea, the food, the countryside....and has begun playing the accordion again. Someone just happened to have a spare one lying around. She does not know what to do about her marital situation and chooses not to discuss it with anyone, until her husband makes a public appeal on TV and everyone recognizes her. She tries to run away again, this time from the people in Kerdruc, and go back to her husband. Realizing she has changed too much to make this possible, she returns to Kerdruc, her lover, and everyone else's romantic problems in the village are solved in the last chapter. Oh please spare me.
The reviewers all liked the book, however: Publishers Weekly, Washington Post, New York Times.

A Christmas Return

Apparently Anne Perry regularly writes a special mystery novella for the holidays and this is the 15th in her Victorian Christmas series. Certainly competent writing and a good plot. She is a prolific and accomplished author, but unless you are looking for something really light to read, not worth the investment of time. Apparently this is a character that has appeared in earlier novels, as has the character's granddaughter, Charlotte Pitt. Mariah Ellison is in her 80's and living with Charlotte and her husband when she receives a strange package--a Christmas pudding surrounding an antique cannon ball. She immediately recognizes it as the former property of a dear friend who died when a bookcase fell on him and the cannon ball hit his head. She hasn't had contact with his surviving wife in 20 years, but she resolves to make the trip and find out what prompted this unusual invitation. A cold case is being revived that threatens to dishonor the name of her deceased friend, and she is determined to save both his reputation and that of his wife. It is a proper detective story and enjoyable reading, but as I said, only if you have nothing better to do. 

Artemis

I am SO far behind on posting my books that I don't know if I will ever catch up, so I am starting with the most recent and working my way backwards. Just raced through this book by Andy Weir, author of the book, The Martian, which I did not read, although I saw and enjoyed the movie. Artemis has already been optioned for a movie. This was really a great plot, supported by interesting characters and lots of well thought out details about living on the moon. Yasmine (Jazz for short) is a 20 something wise-ass who has rebelled against her father's upbringing and his Muslim faith. She has lived on the moon in the small town of Artemis (pop. 2,000) since she was 6 years old and calls this home, although she was born in Saudi Arabia. She has had the same pen pal (e-mail pal, actually) since she was 9 years old and, since he now works as a loader at the main port for freight deliveries to the moon and Jazz is a delivery porter on the moon, they have set up a nice little smuggling operation for contraband like cigars, lighters, alcohol, etc. Then one of her customers, a very rich resident of Artemis, offers Jazz an enormous amount of money to help him take over the local aluminum smelter, which also produces all the oxygen for Artemis. She agrees, but only partially completes the job before he is murdered. There have been less than a handful of murders in Artemis in the entirety of its existence, so the population is shocked. And Jazz is even more disturbed to find that the killer is now after her. It turns out that the aluminum smelting company is actually owned by a criminal cartel back on earth who will stop at nothing to maintain their exclusive contract. Jazz needs to finish taking down the smelting operation if she is to have any chance of survival. Then she uncovers a complicated plot to take over the city of Artemis, and she is not going to stand by while that happens. She formulates a plan and rounds up some friends, some not so friendly acquaintances, and her father to help her execute the idea. Nothing ever goes quite to plan, but Jazz is resourceful and committed and wins through in the end. Jazz is an engaging character and her supporting cast is terrific. You don't need to be a science fiction fan to enjoy this one.
See reviews from The Guardian, Salon, and Publishers Weekly for more details.

Killing Custer

Another in Margaret Coel's "Wind River Mysteries" series (this is #17), set in Wyoming on the Wind River Reservation, shared by Arapahoe and Shoshone tribes. The setting, St. Francis Mission, is based on the actual St. Stephens Mission that has been there since 1884. The mystery here centers around the murder of a George Custer re-enactor during a pre-rodeo season parade. The man has come to Indian Country to flaunt the massacre of Indians by Custer and so the logical assumption is that some of the Indians riding in the parade shot him. In fact, Detective Madden has managed to threaten enough people on the reservation to get a supposed eye witness account to support that version of events. Neither Father John O'Malley nor attorney Vickie Holden believe either of the accused young Arapahoe men are capable of murder, but they are going to have to find convincing proof otherwise if they want to save them from jail. When there is a break-in at the office of a well-known lawyer in Lander and he appears to be missing, Vickie begins to wonder if there is a connection between the two events. The Indian woman who was secretary, and lover, to the missing attorney is brought in for questioning, Vickie initially serves as her attorney, but she is aware the young woman is holding back key information from her and tells her to find an attorney she can trust and confide in. When the young woman is subsequently murdered, Vickie holds herself responsible. Further, Vickie has already been contacted by the widow of the murdered Custer impersonator to find his missing money, so Vickie is unable to represent either of the two Arapahoes accused. She finds herself on the wrong side of a line she struggles to straddle. Her goal is to defend Native Americans and here she is stuck defending a white woman and, due to conflict of interest, unable to defend her fellow Indians. Each pursuing their own leads, Vickie and Father John eventually join forces to track down the missing attorney and maybe tie him to the murders, if they don't get killed first. As always, solid writing with lots of interesting history thrown in for good measure. Well constructed plot and loving portrayal of the setting. See my two earlier blogs on The Girl With Braided Hair, and Eagle Catcher by this same author.

Y is for Yesterday

Sue Grafton has taken the somewhat unusual road of setting all of her Kinsey Milhone novels in a short time period in the 1980's, and aging her protagonist only a few years, from 32 in A is for Alibi to 39 in this latest installment (what will happen when she reaches "Z" all her fans are wondering?!--maybe I will go back and start reading from the beginning ;-). The present stories start in the fall of 1989 but one of the threads is tied to events from the spring and summer of 1979, when a teenager, Sloan Stevens, was murdered by a classmate from a fancy private academy. Fritz McCabe, the one who actually pulled the trigger, has now been released from prison since he was convicted as a minor and has to be released on his 25th birthday. His parents have received a $25,000 blackmail demand in relation to a video tape Fritz and his buddies made in high school showing the sexual assault of a very drunk 14 year old classmate by Fritz and another boy, Troy. If the tape were sent to the DA, Fritz would go back to prison for statutory rape, for which there is no statute of limitations. The parents don't want to pay, and are advised not to pay by their attorney, who refers them to Kinsey. Kinsey delves into the past events surrounding the making of the tape, and the cheating scandal at Climping Academy that started the ball rolling and eventually resulted in Sloan's death. Fritz was just a pawn, and the emotional bully who ran the show back then, Austin Brown, disappeared before Fritz confessed and hasn't been seen in 10 years.
Meanwhile, the man who tried to kill Kinsey in the previous book, X, has returned; he is looking for the "souvenirs" he took from the series of young girls he murdered. He thinks either Kinsey or one of his ex-wives might have them, and he will do anything to get them back, including taking a second run at killing Kinsey--for good this time. Meanwhile, the usual cast of characters, Henry, Rosie, Cheney, and Anna are all around and dealing with their own personal dramas. As always, Kinsey's character is feisty and engaging, and the thinly veiled town of Santa Theresa (Montecito) is always fun to visit. The ending was a surprise to me, but then I am obligingly misled.

The Blackhouse

This novel by prolific and award-winning author Peter May is the first of the "Lewis Trilogy," a series of murder mysteries set on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The landscape is harsh and the living is hard on these islands and kids growing up there often cannot wait to get away. This was certainly true for Fin McLeod, who had extra incentive because his parents had died when he was young and he was raised by an aunt who had little time for him and expressed no sympathy or affection for the bereaved child. Still he had his friends, and a girl who liked him from the first grade, so it seemed not all bad. Until the eve of his departure for university, when his friend's father and Fin's tutor for college prep told Fin and Artair (his son and Fin's best friend) that the boys had been chosen to join the guga hunt--a right of passage that involves sailing across 50 miles of empty ocean to an island where seabirds nest and then killing and bringing back hundreds of the young birds as a delicacy for the islanders. It is an event decades old in tradition, held onto all the more firmly in the face of animal rights protesters. For Fin and Artair, it will be a turning point in their relationship and their lives.
Fin does indeed go off to university in Glasgow but can't engage and eventually becomes a detective with the Edinburgh CID. When a grisly murder is committed on the Isle of Lewis, identical in many details to one recently investigated in Edinburgh, Fin is the obvious choice--even though he has recently lost his only child. His return launches a story told alternately in the past and the present, with Fin's history being revealed a piece at a time while he continually confronts painful reunions in the present. This is a dark book and I wonder if living so far north, like the Scandinavians and the Scots do, focuses people on the darker corners of human nature. The ending of this book came as a total surprise to me. Don't read this book if you are looking for a happy ending. Do read it if you like noir detective stories.
Interestingly, this book was bought up by a French publisher after being turned down by numerous British publishers. Subsequently, it was bought by numerous publishers and has been translated into several languages. Glowing reviews from The New York Times, The Scotsman, the NY Journal of Books, and Publishers Weekly. It was also named one of Kirkus' "10 Best Crime Novels" for 2012. More info on Peter May at Wikipedia.

The Cafe by the Sea

This novel (also published under the English title, The Summer Seaside Kitchen) will not offer any surprises for those who have read other books by Jenny Colgan (see my post on The Bookshop on the Corner). She continues her love affair with Scotland, this time on a (fictitious) island, Mure, at the northern most point of the country. There will be two men: one who is clearly infatuated with our protagonist, Flora, and one who is cold, aloof, gorgeous, and unattainable--in this case, Joel, Flora's boss at a law firm in London. You will know the predictable outcome by the time you read a couple of chapters, but the journey is still enjoyable.
A few years ago, Flora fled her home island of Mure after her mother's death from cancer...too many memories and too many people who knew her and expected her to step in and fill her mother's shoes looking after her father and her three brothers on the MacKenzie Farm.  Now, through happenstance, a potentially very lucrative client project has come up on the island and Flora is tapped to go back to Mure and suss out the locals' attitudes about moving a proposed wind farm that will spoil the view of the client's posh resort on the north end of the island. Flora goes home to find everyone still mad at her for leaving, her father fading away, her brothers bitter about the slow decline of the farm and the small island population not at all favorably disposed toward the rich American who has bought up "The Rock"for his new resort but not hired any local labor or sourced any of his food locally. He also owns a small building in town that he has left vacant and they are cross about that, as well. As you might guess, Flora is charged with smoothing ruffled community feathers, especially those of the town council, and that includes putting a small cafe into the empty shop in town. Back on the farm, Flora finds that her brother, Fintan, who the rest of the family thinks is a laggard for not helping more with the farm, has secretly been working on making delicious cheese. She also uncovers her mother's old recipe book and quickly re-connects with her love of cooking and with happier memories of her mom. A light and enjoyable read with wonderful, rich descriptions of the island, which Colgan claims is an "amalgam" of several northern Scottish islands. Perfect escape reading!

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

This very meaty and somewhat grim crime mystery is the first novel from Matthew Sullivan; his previous work focused on award-winning short stories. He has also worked at the famous Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, and a differently named Denver bookstore, Bright Ideas, is the central setting of this story. Our protagonist, Lydia Smith, is in her late 20's and loves working at Bright Ideas, and is a friend to all the "Book Frogs"--as the staff call them--lonely souls who while away their days in the various sections of the bookstore or the cafe. When Lydia is closing up one night, she finds one of the younger Book Frogs, Joey, hanging from a rafter. Days later, Joey's landlady tracks her down and gives Lydia the message that Joey has left everything he owns, mostly a box of books, to Lydia. When Lydia examines the strange collection of titles, she discover that tiny holes have been cut in some of the pages. Intent on determining why Joey killed himself, Lydia sets out to decipher the clues Joey has left in the books. As Lydia begins to uncover the sad story of Joey's life in foster care and then in prison, we are also gradually introduced to Lydia's past and the terrible secret that keeps her in semi-hiding. While at a sleep-over, Lydia, who hid under the sink, aurally witnessed the murder of her best friend's family by "The Hammerman," murders that remain unsolved. The event changed the trajectory of her life as her father moved them to an isolated cabin in the mountains and basically abandoned Lydia to her night terrors while he took the only job he could find, working as a prison guard. This is a really twisty plot and the solution to both mysteries--murders and suicide--bring Lydia full circle to her childhood and her long-estranged father. The only aspect of the story that was totally unbelievable was how Joey managed to leave the messages in his mutilated books. But get past that, and you will be engrossed in this chilling tale. Decent review from Kirkus, and a short review from Publishers Weekly.

Red Rising

As with so many other books being published these days, this is the first of an intended trilogy (now completed) by Pierce Brown. Darrow is a young (16) miner under the surface of Mars. He and his equally young wife, Eo, are Reds. That is the human race is now divided into social class by color. The Golds of course are at the top of the pecking order, over and above Grays, Pinks, Greens, etc., each of which has their special function in society. The Reds are miners. They live underground on Mars mining for a mineral that will one day terraform the planet and make it livable for the rest of humanity. They are not well treated by their masters, often going short of food, medicine and other essentials as they are driven to compete for these items by competing with other tribes of Reds to meet mining quotas. Except that this is all a lie. When Eo martyrs herself in order to spur Darrow to take up the rebellion, he instead attempts to follow her to a place beyond death. Instead he is surreptitiously subjected to a fake death and shown the truth, that Mars is already a habitable planet and that Reds are just being kept enslaved to support the other colors. He is transformed through excruciating surgical and psychological procedures into a Gold, with the idea that he will infiltrate, move into the highest ranks, and bring down the Oppressors. It's a compelling tale once you get into it, as he is selected for a rigorous and often brutal selection process where groups of Gold students compete against one another in a simulated world (a la The Hunger Games) to become Primus. Darrow will up-end the whole constructed and corrupt arrangement, making friends with other non-mainstream students and using unconventional tactics to build loyalty among his followers. He has a lot of hard decisions to make if he is to fulfill his mission and the inner conflicts are convincingly portrayed. Reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today. A complete list of characters is provided at Wikipedia.

Dark Matter

Blake Crouch seems particularly adept at writing books that people want to make into movies or TV series: this book has been picked up by Sony Pictures, his Wayward Pines trilogy became a #1 Fox TV series, and his Letty Dobesh books are the basis for the TNT series. He has written lots of other books as well. This newest effort is a mix of quantum physics-focused science fiction and a provocative exploration of what makes life meaningful.
Physicist Jason Dessen lives a less than extraordinary life, teaching physics at the college, husband to would-be artist Daniela and a 15 year old son, Charlie. On one ordinary Chicago evening, he heads out to the local pub to help a former colleague celebrate having won a prestigious science prize. But this Jason never makes it home that night. He is kidnapped, driven to an abandoned factory, and drugged. When he awakens, he is surrounded by people he does not know but who seem to know him and who are desperate to know what he remembers from an apparent months-long absence. Jason escapes and tries to figure out whether or not he is losing his mind. Meanwhile, back at the Dessen home, Jason--or someone who looks and sounds very much like him, we'll call him Jason#2--has come home 3 hours late and resumes the life that Jason #1 has just lost.
It turns out that, if Jason #1 had made different choices, he would have gone on to discover revolutionary possibilities for parallel universes and won the science prize. But he would have lost Daniela and never had Charlie. The man he would have been has now stolen his life. This is a story about the mind-bending aspects of "what if all the 'what-if's' actually existed?" but also about the essential questions of what makes us unique. If we are an accumulation of all the choices we make, how do we define that, hang on to that, recover that when it is lost? Here is an interview with the author on NPR. Worthwhile reviews from Kirkus, NYT, and The Guardian.

Station Eleven

This book by Emily St. John Mandel was highly recommended by my walking friend, Kathy F. and several other members of the short-lived fantasy/ sci-fi book group, and it won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and numerous other accolades. It is indeed lovely writing. The premise is that a pandemic flu wipes out 99% of the world's population and we hear the stories of several of that small group left alive in North America. It is set primarily from Toronto down to the south end of Lake Michigan, with short jaunts to L.A. and British Columbia to fill in the characters' back stories. Two primary entities form the warp (weft?) of the connecting stories. The first is Arthur Leander, from a tiny island off the west coast of Canada who moves to Montreal, becomes an actor and then becomes a movie star. He marries 3 times, has one son, and dies of a heart attack on-stage while performing King Lear in Toronto, the same night the pandemic reaches N. America. His first two wives, his son, his closest friend Clark, and a child actress in the King Lear production, Kirsten, all have their own stories. The second is The Symphony, a group of traveling musicians and actors who travel in the post-pandemic world to surviving settlements along the shore of Lake Michigan performing classical music and putting on Shakespeare plays. Several characters, including Kirsten, are members of this group. The title comes from a tiny run of graphic novels created by Arthur's first wife, Miranda, about a space station/ planet which starts to break down when it passes through a worm hole, causing systems to malfunction and flood the planet. A group of survivors live in the settlement of Undersea and want to return to Earth and life as they knew it. You can see the connections to the "real" story, of course. It is a hopeful story in the end, although there is no end to the craziness, grief and loss--not just for people who died, but for an entire way of life.
Plenty of reviews available to fill in my short account: The Guardian, The New York Times, Kirkus, the Huffington Post, and The Independent.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

A memoir by J. D. Vance that does much to explain the mind set of a significant portion of the American population--the Scot-Irish immigrants to the Appalachians, who have become colloquially known as hillbillies. As always, when you look beneath the surface, the picture is infinitely more complicated and Vance spares no sympathy when calling out the dysfunctional and corrosive aspects of this culture. There is also no question that he loves the people he came from at the same time. His maternal grandparents joined a wave of immigration from Kentucky to the Rust Belt just after WWII, Ohio in Vance's case, looking for paying work and better lives. But they moved in such large numbers that their culture remained intact rather than being assimilated. They still often think first of violence as a way to solve problems, and blame others for their problems. Often fiercely loyal to family and country, they can also be abusive and embody the worst of learned helplessness mentality and behavior, including addictions and welfare dependence. Once exclusively Democratic, now they are largely Republican. Vance, a statistical anomaly for having "escaped" and become financially successful provides his personal and political (conservative) views about the problems facing this culture and America at large. Understanding this story offers insight into the current state of American politics. There is an excellent review in The New York Times, more at Kirkus and The Guardian, and this aptly titled article from the National Review, "What Hillbilly Elegy Reveals About Trump and America."

Dark Fever

Well, as an antidote to reading Orphan Master's Son, I dove into this supernatural fantasy thriller. Author Karen Marie Moning has written two series and this book is the first in the "Fever" series (Highlander being the other). The premise is that our protagonist, a carefree, 20-year old named MacKayla (or Mac for short) has her life turned upside down when her older sister, who has been attending university in Dublin, is brutally murdered. But when the Dublin police find no leads into identifying Alina's killer, this sheltered young woman from a small town in Georgia decides to take matters into her own hands. It's only weeks after the murder when Mac is able to retrieve a final disturbing message from Alina left on her cell phone:
“We’ve got to talk, Mac! There’s so much you don’t know. My God, you don’t even know what you are! There are so many things I should have told you, but I thought I could keep you out of it until things were safer for us. I’m going to try to make it home”—she broke off and laughed bitterly, a caustic sound totally unlike Alina—“but I don’t think he’ll let me out of the country. I’ll call you as soon—” More static. A gasp. “Oh, Mac, he’s coming!” Her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “Listen to me! We’ve got to find the”—her next word sounded garbled or foreign, something like shi-sadu, I thought. “Everything depends on it. We can’t let them have it! We’ve got to get to it first! He’s been lying to me all along. I know what it is now and I know where—”
When Mac arrives in Dublin, she is horrified to realize that she can see creatures that no one else does, effectively looking beneath the glamour of the Fae and viewing the real monsters or beauties that they are. Mac is out of her depth and so grasps at the help offered by ostensible bookstore owner Jericho Barrons. Barrons is out to get the book Alina mentioned, the Sinsar Dubh, for his own purposes and he will use Mac to help him find it; whether or not she survives is secondary to him.
Mac is an interesting character, driven by love of her dead sister but tortured with (appropriately) self-doubt about her ability to deal with this crazy situation. She spends a little too much time worrying about her appearance for my taste, but that won't stop me from seeking out the next book in the series, Bloodfever. Additional reviews from Publishers Weekly, and from Booklist (reprinted below).

MacKayla "Mac" Lane is a small-town southern girl living a life of suntans and shopping. All that changes when her sister dies in Ireland and a cryptic message on Mac's cell phone raises disturbing questions about the nature of her sister's death. Mac follows the lead to Dublin and the strange life her sister led, on to the darkly dangerous book-dealer Jericho Barrons, and a burgeoning war with deadly Fae that humankind doesn't even realize has begun. Time-travel-romance maven Moning reshapes her Celtic lore for a radically different and engaging new dark fantasy series. Mac's first-person narrative is more than point of view; it's a true recounting of how a sheltered young girl grows to accept the role fate has dealt her. And while moments of sexual awareness hint that a relationship between Mac and Jericho could complicate matters in the future, wisely there is no full-blown romance here to distract from the complex introduction to Moning's new world. Nina Davis
Copyright © American Library Association.

The Orphan Master's Son

 Holy cow was this a tough one. If it had not been a book for my book group, I am not sure I would have finished it. This novel by Adam Johnson, which won the 2013 Pulitzer for fiction, is an absolutely harrowing journey into the lives of people living in North Korea during the tenure of Kim Jong Il. The perspective is predominantly that of Jun Do (an allusion to John Doe?) who is raised in an orphanage run by his father. His journey through the crazy machinations of politics has him initially kidnapping people from Japan or S. Korea and returning them to N. Korea, being part of a mission to the United States to retrieve something the Dear Leader says was stolen from him, and  finally being put on a fishing boat to monitor radio communications from other countries. When Jun Do becomes part of a cover-up for a fellow crewman's defection, he eventually finds himself in one of the notorious mining prisons, from which people never return. But fate plays an ironic twist when he encounters General Ga, who has come to torture Jun Do but gets killed instead. Jun Do puts on his uniform and assumes Ga's identity. Everybody in authority knows he is not really General Ga, but reality is what the Dear Leader says it is, and right now he has need for the continued existence of General Ga. So Jun Do, walks out of the prison, returns to the home and family of General Ga, and begins making plans for them all to escape. We also have a storyline from one of the official torturers who begins to see the insanity of the system but not in time to save himself or one of his colleagues.

     This is simply a nightmarish or, as The New York Times calls it, "Kafkaesque" existence where any accusation of disloyalty can end your life. It turns parents and children against one another, or colleague against colleague in order to secure one's own safety. Propaganda is ubiquitous and nobody is truly safe, however. As one character notes, “Where we are from, stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he’d be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.”
Johnson based his story on actual testimony from N. Korean defectors, although he said he had to tone it down in places because the reality would be too shocking. Adam Johnson is also an English professor at Stanford University; there is a biography from Wikipedia here. Additional reviews from The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Telegraph.

Eagle Catcher

Having recently read a later book (The Girl with Braided Hair) by Margaret Coel set on the Wind River Reservation, I wanted to go back and start the series from the beginning. This book introduces "two intelligent, compassionate sleuths: Father John O'Malley, S.J., a history scholar and recovering alcoholic, exiled to an Indian mission on the Great Plains, and Vicky Holden, an attorney who, after ten years in the outside world, has returned to the reservation to help her people" (from the author's website).
The opening event is the murder of the tribal chairman of the Arapahoes at Wind River, and the immediate suspect is his nephew, Anthony, who was heard arguing with him the previous evening. Vicky takes Anthony's case while she and Father O'Malley undertake to discover who the real killer is. The motivation for the crime involves the early history of the Arapahoes when land was taken from them, and their current efforts to buy back pieces of that land through the profits from their oil (mineral rights). Of course Vicky and John make themselves targets when they start digging into past and present crimes against the tribe. Once again, this is well-written, tightly plotted, and informative, providing insights into historical and present situations and issues facing the Arapaho people. I would not hesitate to read more in the series.

The Girl with Braided Hair

One of the nicest kinds of surprise is when you discover an author, previously unknown to you, who pulls you into their stories, their characters, and their settings. Just by chance, going through the bag of "to be sold" books at my sister-in-law's house, I ran across this book by Margaret Coel. This is the 13th installment (of 16 total) in her series of mysteries based around the Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming. The two protagonists are Vicky Holden, an Indian rights lawyer, and Father John O'Malley, pastor at the St. Francis mission on the reservation.
Father John is called in when the skeleton of a young woman is uncovered; she was apparently murdered in the early 1970's--a time when AIM was active and many of the AIM leaders sought to hide from their federal pursuers on the reservation. Vicky gets involved when a group of tribe elders (women) ask her to move the investigation along so the skeleton can be identified and given a proper burial.  Vickie knows that a 30+ year-old case is not only low priority for law enforcement, but also that people on the reservation will never talk to a white sheriff, so she agrees to help. Pooling their networks and information, Vicky and Father John identify the young woman as Liz Plenty Horses, who apparently had a baby with her just before being murdered. They both want the murderer brought to justice and it quickly becomes apparent that this person is not only still around, but is willing to kill again to keep from being found. Vicky is his initial target, but everyone she talks to also becomes vulnerable. Determined, they forge on and Father John is very nearly killed in the process. The culprit is finally caught, the now-grown daughter of Liz is found, and the dead woman is laid to rest on the reservation.
It is so exciting that there are lots more books in this series to read and I will definitely go back and start from the beginning with The Eagle Catcher, so I can watch these characters and their relationship develop. Oh boy! Coel has been compared to Tony Hillerman in a favorable way and, based on my initial contact, that seems warranted. Good writing and compelling plot line complement the well-developed characters and settings. Positive reviews here from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. 

A Vision of Light

This first installment in the "Margaret of Ashbury" trilogy by Judith Merkle Riley is set in 14th C England, a time when women had no rights and, in fact, were considered less than men in their mental capacities. They were believed to be unable to think logically and it was a radical concept to consider learning to read for any but the most wealthy women. So imagine itinerant monk Brother Gregory's chagrin when the only work he can find is to write the life story of a merchant's wife. Margaret was born near the church of Ashbury and was married off to an elderly merchant when she was only 14. Her younger brother had been taken into the Church to be trained as a cleric; this was considered a stroke of real fortune for such a poor family. Only later does Margaret learn the real reasons behind that decision. But Margaret is physically and sexually abused in her marriage, and when the plague is decimating the population, the couple leave town to avoid contamination. However Margaret, who is pregnant, takes ill and her husband abandons her by the side of the road to die. When Margaret regains consciousness, we learn she has been saved by a mid-wife/ herbalist, Hilde. The baby died, however. Margaret agrees to learn the mid-wife's skills. Her near-death experience has brought her a gift, a vision of light, that allows her to see the life force in every being, to heal the sick, and to occasionally hear God. It is noteworthy that the author has chosen to give Margaret supernatural powers in a time when women had no temporal power.
Joining an acting troupe for a while, then settling finally in London, Margaret is able to start building a clientele of those needing herbal remedies or help with childbirth. When she is called to the bedside of a couple of wealthy patrons, however, jealousies are aroused and she is imprisoned for heresy. She escapes being burned at the stake only through the intervention of her brother, who is in service to the Priest heading the inquisition council. She is forbidden to practice her craft and one of her patients offers to marry her as a solution. The horrors of her earlier marriage make her reluctant, but Master Kendall, also a wealthy merchant, is not only kind and loving, but indulges Margaret's every whim, including agreeing to let her hire a copyist for her biography and to let her learn to read and write. Life seems finally to have smiled on Margaret until Kendall dies, and then a whole new set of problems arise. Again, marriage seems the only solution to having her house stolen out from under her. Certainly intriguing enough to want to read the rest of the trilogy!
Margaret is an admirable character and the historical setting is deftly rendered to create a vivid sense of time and place. Favorable review here from Kirkus.

A Simple Favor

This debut novel by Darcey Bell opens with an aside from one of the 3 main characters. "My mother used to say: Everyone has secrets. That's why you can never really know anyone else. Or trust anyone. It's why you can never know yourself. Sometimes we even keep secrets from ourselves. Growing up, I thought that was good advice...Later I discovered that Mom was speaking from personal experience. And I wonder if she was not just preparing me but programming me for secrecy and mistrust. Did she sense that I would grow up to have darker and more shameful secrets than anyone else's? Secrets I mostly manage to keep--even from myself?"
Stephanie, widowed for 2 years and living with her young son Miles, finds herself feeling lonely and so begins writing a blog for "Moms." What goes into the blog is a slightly altered version of the real Stepanie's life; her blog offers emotional honesty, unequivocal support for the challenges of being a mother, and a mostly sunny take on the world. When she is befriended by glamorous neighbor and mother of her son's best friend, she is thrilled at having found a kindred spirit--she thinks. Emily works as a publicist for a fashion designer in Manhattan, and is married to a handsome British financier on Wall Street. Due to their busy lives, Stephanie occasionally picks up their son, Nicky, and keeps him at her home until Emily or Sean can pick him up. On one particular occasion, when Sean is abroad on a business trip, Emily fails to show up. Stephanie thinks she must have misunderstood, but Emily is not answering her phone. After a couple of days, Stephanie is panicking and gets in touch with Sean, who doesn't initially seem too worried;  eventually, however, she and Sean go to the police, who also are not too worried. People not infrequently walk away from their families, after all. However, several weeks later, a body is discovered in a lake near Emily's old family cabin in Michigan, wearing Emily's ring, and matching Emily's DNA. It seems clear that Emily is dead. As Emily mourns her best friend, Sean mourns his wife, and Nicky struggles with the loss of his mother, the families become entangled. And then Nicky comes home from school one day, claiming to have seen his mother.
Apparently Stephanie did not take fully to heart her mother's advice and she continues to trust even after she learns of betrayal. She will do anything to get her best friend back, including betraying others in turn. You just know this is not going to end well.
A favorable review from Library Journal, and not so favorable reviews (which I share) from Publishers' Weekly and Kirkus.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

I went to hear Katherine Boo as part of our library's "Author! Author!" series and was just bowled over by her levels of compassion, commitment, dedication, and determination. If I had not gone to see and hear her, and if we had not selected this book for our book group read, I am not sure I could have finished this book. It was that hard. Boo had previously reported on some of the most disadvantaged communities in the U. S. winning a Pulitzer prize for her work. But after marrying an east Indian man, she felt she wanted to tell the story of the poor in that country (brief bio of Boo and her translators in the project are here). In spite of signficant health issues, she undertook this research in 2008. Boo spent 4+ years, for months at a time, in a small slum across from the Mumbai (India) airport, getting to know how the poorest people lived. Surrounded by towering luxury hotels, hidden behind billboards advertising flooring that would be "beautiful forever," the half acre of Annawadi was the center of life for over 3,000 human inhabitants, some goats, horses, pigs, and a lake of sewage. People survived by scavenging through garbage for recyclable materials, stealing, selling their bodies. Only a handful had regular jobs, and yet, according to government statistics, these people were not living in poverty. Many had no roof over their heads, never knew when they would eat next, could not rely on any government help, health care providers, or even so-called charities to offer them the most basic kinds of assistance. Not only did the rich prey on the poor, but so did the not so rich and the poor themselves. Boo was determined not to interfere in people's lives in her efforts to truthfully document was their existence was life and how they coped, but that meant she saw people (including children) beaten and sent to jail for crimes they did not commit, witnessed corruption at every level of government and in NGO's, and experienced the deaths of people she knew and had come to care about. It's not clear what separated those who chose to survive at any cost from those who gave up all hope and killed themselves by, for example, eating rat poison. Everyone should read this National Book Award winner, but be prepared for a painful journey.
Some great photos are on this website.
An interview with Boo was done on NPR.
There are numerous excellent reviews: Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Boston Globe, to name just a few.

Gratitude

This short little book is a collection of 4 previously published essays written in the last years of Oliver Sacks' life. Learn more about Oliver Sacks if you aren't familiar with him already. He has written some amazing books (e.g., Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat). Born in England and originally educated at Oxford, he got his medical training at Mt. Zion in San Francisco and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he was a practicing neurologist for 5 decades. Engaged until the very end of his life, his memoir was published just a few weeks before he died in August of 2015. The first essay, "Mercury," was written on the eve of his 80th birthday; mercury is element #80 in the periodic table. He loved the periodic table and had memorability made from appropriate elements commemorating various birthdays. The last 3 essays were written after learning that a rare melanoma had metastasized and would be fatal. He examines what it means to have lived a full life and to be grateful for that life.  From the book:
“My predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”
A fast read that provides an interlude for thought and is well worth pondering. 

The Outlaw Demon Wails

Obviously a take-off on the title of the old Clint Eastwood movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales, although I am at a loss to explain what connection there might be. Published originally in 2008, this is about the 10th installment in "The Hollows" series (there are about 2 dozen novels and novellas). I have read a couple of Kim Harrison's other books--a prior installment in "The Hollows" series, also a take-off on a Clint Eastwood title, For a Few Demons More; and one in her YA series, Something Deadly This Way Comes-- and really enjoyed them, but was little disappointed in this one and not exactly sure why. I usually love anything with kick-ass paranormal women protagonists, but witch Rachel just did not engage me this time. I like the pixie family, Jenks and brood, that lives in her converted church and graveyard. Rachel's vampire roommate, Ivy, seemed curiously flat as a character.
Rachel and her mom are shopping for enhancements to Rachel's planned Halloween costume--like a bust-enhancing charm--when the store explodes. Having crossed paths with the demon Algaliarept--Al for short--Rachel is shocked that he has escaped demon jail and is not only ready to break his promise not to harm her but is, in fact, out to kill her. She is trying to solve the murder of former boyfriend Kisten, which still torments her, but has to stay out of Al's grasp. She learns a few secrets about her spell casting mom, has a new love interest, etc. There is a more informative plot summary at the Love Vampires web site which has a favorable take on the book, but recommends reading them in order--which I have not done.

Leviathan Wakes

I'm not exactly sure what a "space opera" is supposed to be genre wise, but this is certainly good science fiction from James S. A. Corey (a pseudonym for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). Leviathan Awakes was nominated for the 2012 Hugo and Locus awards and is the first installment (a hefty one at just over 560 pages) in "The Expanse" series, which includes six novels, novellas and short stories and has been made into a TV series on SyFy. For a quick overview of the series, see the Wikipedia entry.
In this opening salvo, Humans have colonized Mars and several of the larger asteroids in our solar system, from which they mine minerals. They are also mining ice from the rings of Saturn, but as yet they have not gone further out to other star systems. When the captain of an ice freighter encounters a derelict ship, the Scopuli, the crew is thrust into a seemingly unfathomable scenario. The Scopuli's crew has vanished or been subsumed into an alien presence that will not stop with taking over one ship. In a soon-to-converge parallel storyline, Detective Miller of the Ceres police force on one of the larger asteroids, has been assigned to look for a missing woman, who could be anywhere in the solar system. But this young woman, Julie, comes from big money and the fact that money talks never seems to change. These two men will cross paths when it turns out that the missing Julie was aboard the Scopuli. As the race to find Julie and contain the alien threat go forward, there is also politics at play, with Earth, Mars, and the "Belters" vying for control and someone is using the alien being, Leviathan, to try and shift the balance of power. A civil war is almost inevitable. The characters are reasonably complex and interesting; you feel like you could meet them on the street. The particularities of this expanded human habitation seem feasible and well thought-out. I would definitely read more and will try and track down the TV series, as well. Kirkus and Publishers' Weekly offer fairly positive reviews, and I really thought the Wall Street Journal captured the flavor and grit of the book, so have attached it below (since it is subscription and you might not otherwise get to read it!)

 WSJ In Brief: Science Fiction (review, July 2, 2011)
This is the future the way it was supposed to be. From the Moon we'd step to Mars. Mars would become an industrial center, while the asteroid belt would supply hundreds of mountain-size rocks to be tunneled for habitats and mined for construction material. The gas-giant planets would remain gravitationally impossible for human life, but not their moons.
In James Corey's "Leviathan Wakes" this bustling interplanetary civilization has created a need for tourism centers, and the giant asteroid Ceres is one of them, up to a thousand ships a day docking to use its bars and casinos. "Belters" look different from Earthmen -- tall and skinny from being brought up in low gravity. They think different, too. Monkey with safety and you're out the airlock without a suit.
Mr. Corey's model isn't the now-common cyberpunk style. It's more like "L.A. Confidential" with fusion drives. One of Mr. Corey's two central figures is the tired cop, familiar from crime-noir fiction; the other is an Earthman from Montana, skippering a water-hauler. What he finds on one run, a hijacked spaceship with no survivors, sets off the latent hostility between Earthmen and Belters. But the discovery also suggests that humanity may have come into contact with a larger biosphere, something truly from the stars, something posthuman.
The story rips along, driven by two main characters who don't like each other, each of whom has his own uncompromising morality. Even more compelling than the pace, though, is the sense of possibility. Galactic empires, "Star Trek," "Star Wars": They aren't going to happen. Those futures have faded. This one, imagined in pixel-sharp detail -- it's still there.
Credit: By Tom Shippey

Shadow Catcher

Author James R. Hannibal (pseudomym) is a former Stealth pilot and a graduate of the Air Force Academy where he majored in Middle Eastern studies. So his bona fides for writing military thrillers are solid. What is surprising is that, in addition to writing this "Nick Baron series," he also writes a middle school series called "Section 13" (a list of his books is at Amazon).
The Triple Seven Chase team, led by Air Force major Nick Baron, is initially tasked with destroying a B-2 stealth bomber lying at the bottom of the Persian Gulf before enemies can get their hands on the technology. But then a message  intercepted by the CIA suggests that a solder thought to be dead years ago, may still be alive in China. The team, with a new member on board, must rely on the latest flight technology to rescue him. But this may all be a trap. Solid writing and good plot line. Engrossing read.

The Crossing

Hoo boy, I am WAY behind in posting recently-read books. I have read a lot of books by Michael Connelly, both the Harry Bosch series and the Mickey Haller (Lincoln Lawyer) series. He never seems to make a false step with his writing--at least IMHO, he is a craftsman, and I like this genre. Bosch in this book decides to take on a case for his defence attorney half-brother, Mickey, thus crossing over to the dark side. After decades of putting the bad guys away as a LAPD detective,  Bosch knows that he is going to be seen as a traitor and take a lot of heat from his former colleagues. Nevertheless, he talks to the defendant and thinks he is innocent, but gets an agreement from Mickey that he will follow where the clues lead--whether it be to innocence or guilt.
Harry is still able to get a little help from his last partner, Lucy Soto, because Bosch always treated her fairly; as a female detective Lucy experienced a lot of harassment and discrimination in the job. Unfortunately, the clues Harry starts turning up suggest that it is dirty cops that have staged not only the murder for which Mickey's client has been jailed, but other deaths as well. When Bosch gets too close, the corrupt detectives make arrangements to have Haller arrested on a trumped-up charge, and they start stalking Bosch, even threatening his daughter Maddie.
As usual, things are not easy with Maddie as she is getting ready to go off to college, where she will be roommates with Mickey's daughter, Hayley. Harry will never win "father of the year" award, but it is obvious he is trying his best and just hanging in there.
Harry comes through in the end, but not without first making some high-stakes plays to lure in the killers. As always, an engrossing read with fully developed characters and credible dialog. If you are a fan of detective novels, don't miss this series.

Foundation

So, having just finished Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov for my bookgroup, I thought I would revisit the Foundation books that I read probably 40 years ago. I would say I was not as taken with it as I remember being when I was a young adult, but this book was certainly interesting enough to keep me engaged. In Foundation, which was originally the first of the series, Hari Seldon has caused unrest in the Empire with his predictions of imperial decline and is brought to trial and exiled to the planet Terminus, at the far end of the universe. He is allowed to take his group of experts, who are also working on psychohistory, with him and they become The Foundation, whose ostensible goal is to record all the known history of the Empire. We jump a few decades ahead and Seldon is now dead, and The Empire has indeed fallen. The universe has devolved into smaller fiefdoms that are ruled by military might. Technology has disappeared from most of the planets of the former Empire  but has been maintained on Terminus (notably atomic power), which has largely remained unaccosted due to its technological superiority. Seldon is set to reappear holographically 50 years after his death and his predictions about the future are anxiously anticipated. What everyone learns is that The Foundation's purpose is a sham but a necessary one in order to move the universe forward through chaotic times as expeditiously as possible. We are introduced to a series of storylines and characters who have been trained by or have enough knowledge of the Foundation to recognize the pivotal crises in Seldon's predictions and keep everything on track, notably Salvor Hardin, a mayor on Terminus, and Hober Mallow, a cunning trader. The ending makes it clear that it is not an ending at all, but just a pause in the progression of Seldon's predictions.

Prelude to Foundation

Although this book by Isaac Asimov was written after completion of the original "Foundation series," the chronology of the stories would put this one first. I had never read this one and do feel it provides some excellent background to the award-winning series.
We meet Hari Seldon for the first time and come to understand the evolution of his thinking as the originator of psychohistory, which can predict the future. Hari, a talented mathematician, comes from a minor planet to give a paper on the theoretical proof for psychohistory at a conference on the Empire's capital planet of Trantor. Needless to say, even though his idea is still in the theoretical stage, many people would be most interested in being able to predict the future, including the Emperor.  Seldom sincerely replies that psychohistory is not practical or do-able at this point in time and is summarily dismissed to return home. But before he can leave the Trantor, he is approached while eating lunch in a park by a friendly stranger, Chetter Hummin, who warns Hari that the Emperor will not let him go so easily. When Hari is attacked by a couple of thugs, he begins to believe the threat is real and accepts  Chetter's offer to relocate him someplace safe while he continues to work on his theory. So Hari and Dors, a female historian from the university on Trantor who has been assigned by Chetter to bodyguard Hari, get moved around several times. Hari remains convinced of the impossibility of actualizing psychohistory without written records, but Chetter is equally convincing that without it, the declining Empire will soon disintegrate into Chaos for millennia. Based on historical research, Hari then decides that, if, as certain myths contend, some nearly human robots did exist at an earlier time, and if he can find one, the robot might contain enough data about civilizations and events for Hari to implement his predictive theory. In his search for a robot, Hari is continually getting into trouble with unfamiliar cultures, species, and customs and always getting rescued by either Dors or Chetter. Eventually, Hari finds a robot, but the real solution to his dilemma is his dawning realization that the complex social diversity on Trantor is enough of a foundation for him to move ahead with making psychohistory viable.
Although this book was really great for setting the context of the Foundation series, it was not a particularly compelling novel. Nobody can fault Asimov when it comes to brilliant forward thinking ideas, but the characters are not well developed enough to really make them likeable or detestable, and there is really very little plot. There is, however, a pretty nifty surprise ending.

Saturn Run

John Sandford, a prolific author of thrillers, here joins force with Ctein, "photographic craftsman," physicist, and science fiction thinker/writer, to create a science fiction thriller based on the device of earth's humans making first contact with alien beings. When a seemingly ne'er-do-well rich kid working at an astronomy lab notices clear evidence of a space ship landing and then departing from the rings of Saturn, the race by earth's major powers is on. China has already planned a manned launch to Mars but now is scurrying to reconfigure their ship and crew for the longer journey to Saturn. Under orders from a take-no-prisoners President, the U.S. is frantically trying to remake their space station into a ship that can travel to Saturn and get there before the Chinese. Both sides recognize that not only is there tremendous risk involved with the trip and with first contact, but also there is the potential to gain technological knowledge that is decades, if not centuries, ahead of our own. The cast of characters aboard the U.S. Richard M. Nixon will become real people and their challenges will both convince and engage the reader. There is a good chance that the failure of one of the two innovative power plants on the Nixon is the result of sabotage and that likely means a spy is on board. Recent news about the discovery of a whole system of exo-planets makes the belief that we are not alone in the universe ever more likely. What the crew finds when they arrive at Saturn's rings is unexpected.
The authors offer an Afterword that will discuss the scientific work invested in creating a realistic and believable set of technologies for the late 2060's timeframe of the novel. Well worth the read if you are a fan of sci fi.

Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses

This is book #7 in Catriona McPherson's "Dandy Gilver" series of cosy Scottish mysteries -- there are 11 so far. Mrs. Dandy Gilver (nee Dandelion Dahlia Leston) is the mother of two growing boys and wife of husband Hugh Gilver, who is less than enthusiastic about her chosen profession as a detective. Nevertheless he holds down the fort when Dandy and sleuthing partner Alec Osborne must travel for their work. This time they head to Portpatrick, on the coast of Scotland to track down the youngest Lipscott sister, Fleur, at the request of the two older sisters. When Dandy was 18, she spent an idyllic summer at the Lipscott country manor and feels a sense of obligation to the family. Supposedly, Fleur is working as a schoolmistress at St. Columba's College for Young Ladies. Dandy goes undercover as Miss Gilver, English mistress, and finds that Fleur is not happy to see her, that several other school mistresses have inexplicably disappeared from the school in recent months, and that the current head mistress has some very odd priorities for running the school. Meanwhile, Alec has taken on a case of his own in town, agreeing to find the missing wife of a local shopkeeper. Not surprisingly, their cases will collide. When a woman is washed up on the town's beach, nearly unidentifiable after days in the water, Alec wonders if it's the missing wife, and Dandy fears it may be the latest missing school mistress. Set in the 1920's, the book is full of detailed settings, well-developed characters, and a twisty plot. At the end we learn the reason for Fleur's bizarre behavior, restore her to her family, find out what the devious head mistress of St. Columba's has been up to, and catch the murderer. I will certainly seek out other books in the series and perhaps also some of McPherson's stand alone novels, which sound intriguing. Just for fun, you can visit the Gilver estate online, and learn some background about the characters.

The Warmth of the Heart Prevents your Body from Rusting

French psychologist Marie de Hennezel has written several books on aging that have been translated into English.
I honestly did not much care for this book although she had a lot of good things to say, many of which are excerpted here in an article from The Mail Online (British newspaper). There is also a good interview with de Hennezel in the Huffington Post about her book The Art of Growing Old that is worth reading. There are excerpts from several reviews here, all of which are quite positive. Maybe I was just in a grumpy mood, or maybe it was her frequent reference to ugly bodies of the aged... Apparently de Hennezel has written 10 books and is a household name in France where she leads the charge on re-examining our views on aging.

At Seventy: A Journal

Born Eleanore Marie Sarton in Belgium, May Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) was a prolific (over 50 books) American poet, novelist, and memoirist. She is often associated with Lesbian literature and widely read in Women's Studies, because she was one of the first women writers to focus on love between women and then to come out herself, after her parents' death, in Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. She preferred to be thought of as a writer who explored the universal aspects of love and life, however. For 13 years Sarton had a partner, Judy Matlack,  and in this journal written during her 70th year, she often refers to that love. It was during the course of writing this book that Sarton learned of Judy's death, although apparently Judy had been in a home with dementia for quite some time.
What struck me most about this journal was the amazing pace of activity she sustained. Between friends and admirers coming to stay a few days or just share a meal, and her packed schedule of appearances to do readings all across the country, she struggled to find quiet time to write. She carried on a voluminous correspondence, often responding to 25 or more letters a day. She stayed in touch with distant friends by phone as well. She was a passionate gardener, and worked in the garden almost every day, weather permitting. This is even more remarkable given that  she lived in York, Maine, the last decade or so of her life. Some notable quotes follow:
"I do not feel old at all, not as much a survivor as a person still on her way. I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward, but I look forward with joy to the years ahead and especially to the surprises that any day may bring." (p. 10)
When someone asked her at a reading why it was good to be old, she responded, "This is the best time of my life. I love being old...Because I am more myself than I have ever been."
"One thing is certain...the joys of my life have nothing to do with age...Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence the goldfinches darting about..." (p. 17)
"I am far better able to cope at seventy than I was at fifty. I think that is partly because I have learned to glide instead of to force myself at moments of tension...(p. 37)
"I live more completely in the moment these days, am not as anxious about the future, and am far more detached from the areas of pain, the loss of love, the struggle to get the work completed, the fear of death. I have less guilt because there is less anger." (p. 37)
"A face without lines that shows no mark of what has been lived through in a long life suggests something unlived, empty...Still one mourns one's young face sometimes...At the same time, I felt that my face is better now, and ...That is because I am a far more complete and richer person than I was at twenty-five...Now I wear the inside person outside and am more comfortable with myself...I do not have to pretend." (p. 61)
"...it is possible to keep the genius of youth into old age, the curiosity, the intense interst in everything from a bird,to a book to a dog..."(p.76)
"The autumn of life is also a matter of saying farewell, but the strange thing is that I do not feel it is autumn. Life is so rich and full these day. There is so much to look forward to, so much here and now, and also ahead..." (p. 161)
"But the discipline this time must be...to make every effort to live in eternity's light, not in time. If I begin to think of how little time we shall have...panic sets in...To live in eternity means to live in the moment, the moment unalloyed--to allow feeling to the limit of what can be felt, to hold nothing back..."(p. 190)
"These mornings when I brush my hair before going down to get breakfast I have to face wrinkles, the first sign of old age. It's not easy to accept, but I remind myself that they do not really diminish the beauty of an old face." (p. 306)
There are, of course, lots of biographies of Sarton. I found a couple of short ones online that were informative. This one from the Unitarian Universalist church, and this one from The Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life.