American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

This is Nate Blakeslee's 2nd non-fiction work and he has done a masterful job of weaving together written records and personal interviews to tell the story of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone and the western United States. He focuses particularly on one female alpha wolf dubbed 0-Six who came to be beloved by people far beyond the park due to bloggers who documented her activities. According to her fans, she was a remarkable leader, exhibiting the human characteristics of intelligence, strength, generosity, protectiveness, playfulness, adaptability, and the ability to strategize. She built and guided her pack ably in the face of challenging wolf packs and fearsome weather, but was ultimately defeated by the ranchers and hunters who saw the wolves as enemies. Blakeslee also examines the heated convictions on both sides of the wolf reintroduction and the often labyrinthine politics that went along with them. He briefly touches on the cascade of environmental benefits that have resulted from the wolf reintroduction--from plants to fish, to mammals and birds of prey--as they re-established a more balanced level of predators and prey. You will find yourself rooting for the wolves if you have any humanity at all.
This book was the NY Times October book club pick. Additional reviews from the LA Times, Kirkus, the Denver Post, and The Spokesman-Review.

Curiosity Thrilled the Cat

A totally cozy mystery with magical cats thrown in for good measure. Sofie Kelly has given the two cats in this inaugural book of the "Magical Cats" series the power to walk through walls and to disappear, among other things. Not surprisingly, this comes as quite a shock to their new owner, Kathleen Paulson, who recently moved to Mayville Heights, Minnesota from Boston. Owen, who is addicted to catnip, and Hercules, who loves to listen to Barry Manilow, followed her home one day from an abandoned house in town. Kathleen has been hired to bring the town's library into the 21st century with a major remodel and upgrade of services. But things inexplicably keep going wrong and Kathleen is often on the receiving end of accidents like a shorted electrical outlet and a falling roll of plastic that nearly breaks her shoulder. Worse yet, the guest conductor for the local music festival is murdered and Kathleen, who found the body, becomes the prime suspect. There is a quirky and entertaining cast of characters. They are not all what they seem and several hide secrets that may--or may not--also implicate them in the murder. The cats offer help but it's up to Kathleen to unravel the clues.
There are now 11 books in this series and an additional 8 in her other series, the "Second Chance Cat," written under the pen name Sofie Ryan. I might just track them all down and read them.

Box 21

This novel by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström (aka The Vault in its British edition) got such rave reviews I was eager to read it. By page 85, I was so depressed with all the miserable characters that I gave up. It is Scandinavian noir at its most noir. Two young women from Lithuania have been trafficked into being sex slaves; one of them, Lydia, is so badly beaten that she ends up in the hospital. Drug addict Hilding Oldeus is just the most miserable human being you would never want to meet, constantly looking for his next hit, no matter what the cost to himself or others. Police investigator Ewert Grens seem to have a miserable personal life as well, trapped in the memory of a police bust 25 years ago that went so horribly wrong that fellow police officer and his then fiancée was left a nearly mindless invalid. He still visits her in the care home but she doesn't know him. 

The book was recommended for fans of Henning Mankel and Stieg Larsson, which I am, but I just could not persist at this point in time. Reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus.

Beloved Poison

This first novel by E.S. (Elaine) Thomson is an historical mystery set in 1850's London. This inaugural outing certainly conjures the horrors of those living in poverty and the crude approaches to so-called medical practices of the times. The author, after all, has a Ph.D. in the history of medicine. This is a period just subsequent to the heyday of Resurrectionists (aka body snatchers or grave robbers) who disinterred the recently dead in order to supply medical teaching facilities with corpses for anatomical study.
Our main character is Jem Flockhart, an apothecary in the crumbling hospital and infirmary of St. Saviour's, in one of the poorest parts of the city. It is slated to be torn down to make way for a new rail line and a junior architect, William Quartermain, has been sent to oversee the removal of hundreds of years of corpses from the adjacent graveyard. Jem is a woman but has been raised by her widowed father as a boy so that she might take over his apothecary practice. “Oh, yes, I was unique among women. There had been an apothecary named Flockhart at St. Saviour’s Infirmary for over one hundred years and I was set to inherit my father’s kingdom amongst the potions. But it took a man to run that apothecary, and so a man I must be.” She has lived her entire life at St. Saviour's in this role, dressing in men's clothing and even visiting houses of prostitution with her good friend, Dr. Bain, to support the charade. When Jem is showing Will around St. Saviour's, they discover a hiding place in the chapel that contains six tiny handmade coffins containing horrible small effigies. Jem shows them to Dr. Bain one evening and the action proceeds from there, because it's clear that he knows something about their origins. Dr. Bain, who had been a co-researcher Jem into the effects of various poisons, is found dead in his home the next day, apparently poisoned. When two more victims follow, Jem is determined to find out who the murderer is. There are several plot twists above and beyond the gender disguise but one can be sure from the outset, that some of the hospital's physicians are at the heart of the mystery. Although I remained engrossed in the story, I was also grossed out by the constant references to the extreme levels of filth that permeated everyday life in the hospital and surrounding slums. The descriptions were frequent and detailed. I also found the foreshadowing of events to come somewhat heavy-handed and too numerous.
Reviews available from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and a detailed storyline from the  NY Journal of Books.

The Incense Game

This is the BBC's read this month and I was looking forward to it as this group almost never selects mysteries. I have not read anything by Laura Joh Rowland before but she is obviously a prolific author with 3 series of historical mysteries and 18 in this "Sano Ichiro" series alone.  The series is set in feudal Japan and offers a rich look at what life was like. In spite of some non-stereotypical female characters, they make you glad you were not born a woman then and there. She has won several award nominations for her writing; two made Publishers Weekly "best mysteries of the year" lists (The Cloud Pavilion and The Snow Empress), while The Fire Kimono made WSJ's list of 5 best historical mysteries.
The book opens on the aftermath of a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 1703 which has destroyed most of the city of Edo (today's Tokyo), seat of the shogun's empire. Among the victims were 3 women who were found intact in an incense teacher's house; evidence suggests they were involved in an "incense game" where small packets of incense are burned and the students try to determine what they are.  Moreover, Sano determines the women did not die from the earthquake but were poisoned. As the shogun's Chamberlain, Sano has his hands full trying to help survivors, but two of the dead women are the daughters of a powerful lord who threatens Sano with an overthrow of the shogun if Sano does not find the murderer of his daughters.
There are lots of complicated politics and plot twists, but reading this book without benefit of having read the previous 15 installments led to some noticeable downsides. In particular, there are storylines that carry over from previous novels, which are not well explained. Also there is very little character development in this book, with the author perhaps relying on readers already being familiar with them and their relationships to one another. I am a fan of historical novels and historical mysteries in particular, but I didn't come to care much about these characters in this book.

Review from Publishers Weekly is here.

Force of Nature

This second mystery from author Jane Harper continues with the protagonist we met in her first book (The Dry) and once again is set alternately in Melbourne and the remote areas of Australia. Federal agent Aaron Falk investigates financial crimes and he is neck deep in a money laundering case in which they have invested months of time and hundreds of hours. He and his partner, Carmen Cooper, are getting pressure from the top to force their mole in the targeted company, Alice Russell, to get copies of some key contracts. But now Alice, along with four of her female co-workers and her boss at Bailey Tennants have been sent into the rugged Giralang Range on a corporate team-building exercise. And, when the group of women emerge from the trek several days late, Alice is no longer among them.
Aaron discovers this when he is contacted by the head of the search team. Apparently Alice had tried to call Aaron sometime after she disappeared, but the signal or the phone failed before he could talk to her. Now terrain as well as weather conspire to hinder an already overwhelmingly difficult search for the missing woman. Did the company execs find out that Alice was betraying them to the federal investigators and do away with her? As the remaining women are interviewed, we come to find no one liked Alice very much, certainly not her bullied personal assistant, Breeana, Breeana's formerly drug addicted twin who works in the mail room, or former schoolmate, Lauren. And there's also the 20 year old legacy of the Giralangs, which were once the hideout of a serial killer. Rumor has it the killer's son has gotten out of jail and come back.
The story is alternately told as a procedural from Aaron's point of view--with minor asides about his relationship with his father and his non-existent love life--and the recollections from the women in the group as the facade of civilization falls away and the repressed resentments and distrust emerge and then erupt in physical violence.
More detailed storylines and reviews are available from The Guardian, The Independent, Publishers Weekly, and  Kirkus who called it a "spooky, compelling read."