Something for everyone! by Catriona

This isn’t so much a blog of book recommendations as it is a list. It’s everything I read from knocking off work for Christmas last year to what I’m reading right now, plus some atttempt to identify favourites. 

As in 2021, I’ve made my life a bit easier by choosing a book of the month every month, rather than trying to choose books of the year. Some months were a nightmare. June was a nightmare after eating a wheel of ripe Brie before bedtime. 

Two more things: I enjoyed all of these books. I’ll give any book fifty pages but if I’m not enjoying it on page fifty-one I stop reading and keep quiet about it. Also, the monthly pick is whatever book made me excited, or happy, or heartbroken all over again when I reviewed the year. There’s no method to it. I was surprised not to see any memoir in the pick after a year when I read wonderful memoirs. I think I must be a story-junkie to my marrow.

Colour decoder: Crime fiction Other fiction Memoir  Other non-fiction Horror

XMAS HOLS 21-22

MAKING IT, Jay Blades

RACHEL'S HOLIDAY, Marian Keyes

JUST LIKE YOU, Nick Hornby

BIG LITTLE LIES, Liane Moriarty

EXIT, Belinda Bauer

I'm a huge fan of Belinda Bauer and EXIT is her best yet. It's the story of elderly Felix Pink, an assisted suicide assister who gets himself into a hell of scrape when he and a debut "exiteer" as they're called, accidentally assist the wrong person. It's warm and funny as well as plotted like a pretzel.

CURIOUS, Rebecca Front

FIND YOU FIRST, Linwood Barclay

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, Jean-Dominique Bauby

THE BOOKSHOP OF SECOND CHANCES, Jackie Fraser

THE HERON'S CRY, Ann Cleeves

CARDS ON THE TABLE, Agatha Christie

BILLY SUMMERS, Stephen King

 

 

Jan 2022

ENDLESS NIGHT, Agatha Christie

SWORN TO SILENCE, Linda Castillo

A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED: 35 great writers on why we read Jane Austen, Susannah Carson (ed)

IF I DISAPPEAR, Eliza Jane Brazier

THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

L A WEATHER, Maria Amparo Escandon

NEW YORK, MY VILLAGE, Uwem Akpan

MEN WHO HATE WOMEN, Laura Bates

WHERE THE WILD LADIES ARE, Matsuda Aoko

This is an anthology of modern, feminist-inflected retellings of traditional Japanase ghost stories, separate but thematically linked, so that by the end they build a world. I loved it but I wasn't sure I understood it, so when I was invited to choose a book for a guest spot at a book club, this was the only choice. No one else understood it either. 

THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS, Muriel Spark

 

Feb 2022

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny, STATE OF TERROR

I mean, what else, right? It's a cracking thriller and you've got to believe the political stuff is spot-on, but also it was sort of like eavesdropping on someone I know while they were hanging out with someone so stratospherically famous I was gobsmacked. I'm still sorry Hillary had time to do this, but what lemonade to have made with those lemons!

Mary Higgins Clark, YOU BELONG TO ME

E J Copperman, JUDGEMENT AT SANTA MONICA

MURDER AT WEDGEFIELD MANOR, Erica Ruth Bauer

VILLAINY IN VIENNA, Kelly Oliver

HER PERFECT LIFE, Hank Phillipi Ryan

IN THE DARK WE FORGET, Sandra Wong

MAGIC, LIES AND DEADLY PIES, Misha Popp

I WANNA BE YOURS, John Cooper Clarke

 

Mar 2022

MR LOVERMAN, Bernardine Evaristo

THE SENTENCE, Louise Erdrich

THE LAST THING HE WANTED, Joan Didion

OUTLINE, Rachel Cusk

ONE WOMAN'S YEAR, Stella Martin Currey

ON CHAPEL SANDS, Laura Cummings

SLOW HORSES, Mick Herron

Talk about late to the party! I don't suppose many readers of this blog will need an introduction to Jackson Lamb, shambolic and flatulent spy boss and his band of MI6 rejects, but let me assure you - there is no over-hype going on here; it's exactly as clever, funny and thrilling as everyone says.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEED, E J Copperman

THE FAMILY PLOT, Megan Collins

MR WILDER AND MEA, Jonathan Coe

WE WERE EIGHT YEARS IN POWER, Ta-Nehisi Coates

 

Apr 2022

BEFORE SHE DISAPPEARED, Lisa Gardner

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BENNETTS, Lisa Scottoline

THE TRESPASSER, Tana French

CROSSROADS, Jonathan Franzen

CLARK AND DIVISION, Naomi Hirahara

THE LOCKED ROOM, Elly Griffiths

THE HOME-MAKER, Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Trust me. I know it seems unlikely but this 1924 story of a bored housewife and struggling mother, who takes a job in a department store after her husband becomes disabled in an accident, is breathtaking. Sharply insightful about every member of the ill-fated Knapp family, with endless compassion for them all, and fascinating detail about the small-town New England of the time - if I had been asked to another book club, I'd have made them read this so we could all marvel together. In fact, Susan Shea, of this parish, also read it (she loves Persephone books too) and we clutched each other's arms and exclaimed in wonder when we met up afterwards. HOW is this a "forgotten" novel? (Hint: sexism.)

 

May 2022

WARN ME WHEN IT'S TIME, Cheryl Head

DEAD MEN DON'T DECORATE, Cordy Abbott

BURY ME IN SHADOWS, Greg Herren

A SLOW FIRE BURNING, Paula Hawkins

THE SHAPELESS UNEASE, Samantha Harvey

THE DRY, Jane Harper

THE STRANGER BEHND YOU, Carol Goodman

OLGA DIES DREAMING, Xochitl Gonzalez

(This, and some more below, looked truly hideous against my tomato-red kitchen surface.) This book is the sort of debut that makes you want to give up in disgust. It's extraordinarily accomplished, sweeping in its range, and perfect in its detail. It's set partly in New York and partly in Puerto Rico at the time of Irma, it's a . . . family saga, I suppose. But with so many secrets we could almost claim it for the genre.

HANDSTANDS IN THE DARK, Janey Godley

 

 June 2022

MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG, Richard Coles

FRENCH BRAID, Anne Tyler

SYMPHONY ROAD, Gabriel Valjan

TEN STEPS TO NANETTE, Hannah Gadsby

I PLAY ONE ON TV, Alan Orloff

FINDING ME, Viola Davis

ALL HER LITTLE SECRETS, Wanda Morris

NOTES TO SELF, Emilie Pine

WALKING THROUGH NEEDLES, Heather Levy

THE HANDSHAKE Ella Al-Shamahi

THE MOTHER NEXT DOOR,  Tara Laskowski

HER NAME IS KNIGHT, Yasmin Angoe

Another debut, another family, but this time there's no quesition that this is a crime novel. It's about an assassin and her parents and sister, her childhood in Ghana and how its tentacles threaten to choke her adult life in the US, and it's got a twist on one of my favourite crime-fiction tropes: "one last job". Utter delight. 

 

July 2022

YOURS CHEERFULLY, A J Pearce

WHAT THEY KNEW, Marion Todd

LIES TO TELL, Marion Todd

THE LIBRARIAN, Sally Vickers

JUSTICE IS SERVED, Leslie Karst (Nov 22)

QUITE, Claudia Winkelman

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MICHAEL K, JM Coetzee

THE COUPLE AT NUMBER NINE, Claire Douglas

AN ISLAND WEDDING,  Jenny Colgan

AND AWAY, Bob Mortimer

IN PLAIN SIGHT, Marion Todd

SEE THEM RUN, Marion Todd

It had to be this book. My mother-in-law gave it to me and I read all six in the series over the ensuing few weeks. At one point, my mum, my dad and I were all reading Marion Todd in the same house. Why? Well, it's a police procedural set in rural Scotland, fair play plot, clean as a whistle prose, believable, relatable characters, and perfect pacing. I'm now champing for book seven. 

THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY, Matt Haig

RED DUST ROAD, Jackie Kay

 

August 2022

THE IT GIRL, Ruth Ware

THE AUTHENTICITY PROJECT, Clare Pooley

SNAP, Belinda Bauer

A MATTER OF TIME, Claire Askew

COVER YOUR TRACKS, Claire Askew

THE LAST PARTY, Clare MacKintosh

HOW TO STOP TIME, Matt Haig

THE APPEAL, Janice Hallett

If Marion Todd's series is old-school in the best possible way this is a great example of a crime novel from the far end of the spectrum of technique. Through emails and texts, it tells the story of an amateur dramatic company's staging of their latest show and the eponymous charity appeal for one of the players' children, who is desperately ill. I wondered if emails would allow characterisation and texture? Shows what I know.

THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES, Deesha Philyaw

OLD BONES LIE, Marion Todd

THE HONJIN MURDERS, Seishi Yokomizo

THE PEOPLE ON PLATFORM 5, Claire Pooley

THE TWYFORD CODE, Janice Hallett

NEXT IN LINE, Marion Todd

 

September 2022

THE DEVIL TAKES YOU HOME, Gabino Iglesias

Is this horror or crime? I'd call it crirror if that didn't sound like a new and unnecessary kind of pastry.  There's a bit of "one last job" going on here too - yay! - as well as family tragedy, a take-down of US healthcare, a window into the murky world of drug cartels, a love-hate letter to the southern border region and - I have to say - the most extreme and distressing violence of any book I read this year. Extreme, but never gratuitous. Might be my book of the year, if I was doing that.

BONES UNDER THE ICE (Apr 2023), Mary Ann Miller

THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER, James Hogg

ICED IN PARADISE, Naomi Hirahara

QUARRY GIRLS, Jess Lourey

THE SECRETS WE SHARE, Edwin Hill

DEAD LIONS, Mick Herron

 

October 22022

ROADWORK, Stephen King

BRAIDING SWEETGRASS, Robin Wall Kimmerer

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE, Claire Keegan

A BAD DAY FOR SUNSHINE, Darynda Jones

THE TRUTH ABOUT MELODY BROWNE, Lisa Jewell

THE SUMMER BOOK, Tove Jansson

Variety would certainly ppear to be the spice of my life. After Gabino Iglesias comes Tove Jansson's quiet little biographical novel about a small girl and her grandmother spending summers together on an island in the Gulf of Finland. Nothing happens, except love. I've never read a book about love and innocence that manages so completely not to be too sweet. A jewel of a novel.

THE DARLINGS, Angela Jackson

 

November 2022

THE INTERRUPTION OF EVERYTHING, Terry MacMillan

AMONGST WOMEN, John McGahern

ONE OF US IS NEXT, Karen McManus

BOOKED FOR MURDER, Val McDermid

APPLES NEVER FALL, Liane Moriarty

THE PURSUIT OF ALICE THRIFT, Elinor Lipman

If all you want for Christmas is a quirky tale about a junior surgical resident in a Boston hospital being wooed by a travelling fudge salesman, your search is over. I'd never heard of Elinor Lipman (she's written six other novels) but I'm glad I picked this up. A fabulously dysfunctional family adds to the fun but it's Alice's hopelessness at work that made this irresistible. How often do we read about people trying and kind of failing to do their dream job, outside of Hallmark movies where they pack it in to go and grow lavendar on a farm next door to a widowed architect? 

GHOST MONTH,  Ed Lin

BIRD BY BIRD, Anne Lamott

 

December

HOMICIDE AND HALO-HALO, Mia Manansala

THE BAD MUSLIM DISCOUNT, Syed M. Masood

I've only read 53 pages of The Bad Muslim Discount as of today, so Mia Manansala is my December pick! But she might well still be my December pick as the year turns. Homicide and Halo-Halo is the perfect cozy - sweet, cool, peppery and delicious. I didn't know anything about beauty pageants before I read it, and now they terrify me.

There you have it: my year in books. At the end of next week I will finish the one I'm writing and curate another pile of treats for the Christmas holiday. Definitely Ellie Griffiths, Ann Cleeves and Stephen King . . . And Yasmin Angoe's new one . . . and a Christmas mystery . . . and a celebrity memoir . . . 

Cx

New Release News - And My "Twice-Checked List" by Cathy Ace

This week I get the chance to write about “Books (or book-adjacent "things") I'm happy to recommend this gift-giving season” – which is excellent…and a bit daunting, so here goes.

Well, the first thing I want to say is: whatever the reason for the gift-giving, the answer to the question “What should I give?” is always “A book”!

The second thing I want to say is: all the MINDS have books out there – check them out first 😉

So now we’re up to my third caveat which is this: I don’t read anything but crime, unless I’m doing a specific bit of research so, as long as that’s a given, we’ll be good.

And, finally, my fourth point: I’m Welsh, (and now Canadian too), and find most of the books I read are written by British authors; I think it’s the language, tempo, and rhythm I’m used to and comfortable with, so I’ve decided to give you a quick trip around the UK.

QUICK PROMO HERE: The 6th book in my WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries series is being published on December 29th 2022 - YES, that soon! 

If you sign up for my newsletter at the home page on my website you'll be the first to see the cover, and get the pre-order link (newsletter will be sent on December 11th). 

Just click through here to subscribe: https://www.cathyace.com/

Here's wishing you and yours whatever you wish for yourselves (dare I hope it's one of my books?) as we end one year and begin another, Cathy 😊

WELSH WRITERS:

Alis Hawkins: The Black and the White

England, 1349: The Black Death is tearing through the country and those not yet afflicted are living in fear.

Martin Collyer wakes up in his family's charcoaling hut in the Forest of Dean to find his father dead on the bed beside him, half-sewn into his shroud. As Martin’s most recent memory is of being given the last rites, he cannot account for why he is alive and why his father – whose body bears not a trace of the plague – is dead.

With no home to go to and set free from the life of virtual servitude that his father had planned for him, Martin sets off on a journey across England to seek salvation for his father’s unconfessed soul.

He befriends another traveller on the way. But the man – Hob Cleve – seems to be harbouring dark secrets of his own.

As more suspicious deaths occur, Martin is left wondering whether Hob can be trusted.

Alis also writes the Teifi Coroner series, which I very much enjoy, and yet I am recommending this older release because it’s an excellent standalone...a quick hit!

https://alishawkins.co.uk/

 

Mark Ellis: Dead in the Water

Summer, 1942: The Second World War rages on but Britain now faces the Nazi threat with America at its side.

In a bombed-out London swarming with gangsters and spies, DCI Frank Merlin continues his battle against rampant wartime crime. A mangled body is found in the Thames just as some items of priceless art go mysteriously missing. What sinister connection links the two?

Merlin and his team follow a twisting trail of secrets and lies as they investigate a baffling and deadly puzzle.

Excellent installment in this excellent series – and he's from Swansea, like me, how could I not recommend it!?

https://markellisauthor.com/

Louise Mumford: The Safe House

She told you the house would keep you safe. She lied.

Esther is safe in the house. For sixteen years, she and her mother have lived off the grid, protected from the dangers of the outside world. For sixteen years, Esther has never seen another single soul.

Until today.

Today there’s a man outside the house. A man who knows Esther’s name, and who proves that her mother’s claims about the outside world are false. A man who is telling Esther that she’s been living a ie.

Is her mother keeping Esther safe – or keeping her prisoner?

Chilling and thrilling – and really, really good!

https://www.louisemumfordauthor.com/

Philip Gwynne Jones: Angels of Venice

It's the night of 12 November 2019. The worst flooding in 50 years hits the city of Venice. 85% of La Serenissima is underwater. Gale force winds roar across the lagoon and along the narrow streets. And the body of Dr Jennifer Whiteread- a young British art historian, specialising in the depiction of angels in Venetian painting - is found floating in a flooded antique bookshop on the Street of the Assassins.

As the local police struggle to restore order to a city on its knees, Nathan Sutherland - under pressure from the British Ambassador and distraught relatives - sets out into the dark and rain-swept streets in an attempt to discover the truth behind Whiteread's death.

The trail leads to the "Markham Foundation", a recent and welcome addition to the list of charities working to preserve the ancient city. Charming, handsome and very, very rich, Giles Markham is a well-known and popular figure in the highest Venetian social circles, and has the ear of both the Mayor and the Patriarch.

But a man with powerful friends may also have powerful enemies. And Nathan is about to learn that, in Venice at least, angels come in many forms - merciful, fallen and vengeful...

More than happy to go to Venice with Philip, you should try it!

https://philipgwynnejones.com/

To find more Welsh crime writers, and to find out about 2023’s Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival in Aberystwyth, check out the Crime Cymru website: https://crime.cymru/

 

ENGLISH WRITERS:

Mick Herron: Bad Actors

In London’s MI5 headquarters a scandal is brewing that could disgrace the entire intelligence community. The Downing Street superforecaster—a specialist who advises the Prime Minister’s office on how policy is likely to be received by the electorate—has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, who was once head of MI5, has been tasked with tracking her down.

 But the trail leads him straight back to Regent’s Park itself, with First Desk Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Taverner overplayed her hand at last? Meanwhile, her Russian counterpart, Moscow intelligence’s First Desk, has cheekily showed up in London and shaken off his escort. Are the two unfortunate events connected?

Over at Slough House, where Jackson Lamb presides over some of MI5’s most embittered demoted agents, the slow horses are doing what they do best, and adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation . . .

There are bad actors everywhere, and they usually get their comeuppance before the credits roll. But politics is a dirty business, and in a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing are the norm, sometimes the good guys can find themselves outgunned.

I am a lover of le Carre, Deighton, and Fleming…and Herron is my go-to read for all things spy-related. Love, love, love these books – characters, dialogue, and plots are fantastic, but – for me – it’s his descriptive writing that really grabs me.

https://www.mickherron.com/

Elly Griffiths: The Locked Room

Three years after her mother’s death, Ruth is finally sorting through her things when she finds a curious relic: a decades-old photograph of her own Norfolk cottage—before she lived there—with a peculiar inscription on the back. Ruth returns to the cot­tage to uncover its meaning as Norfolk’s first cases of Covid-19 make headlines, leaving her and Kate to shelter in place there. They struggle to stave off isolation by clapping for frontline workers each evening and befriending a kind neighbor, Zoe, from a distance.

Meanwhile, Nelson is investigating a series of deaths of women that may or may not be suicide. When he links a case to an archaeological dis­covery, he breaks curfew to visit Ruth and enlist her help. But the further Nelson investigates the deaths, the closer he gets to Ruth’s isolated cot­tage—until Ruth, Zoe, and Kate all go missing, and Nelson is left scrambling to find them before it’s too late.

I have reached the point where I believe that Ruth Galloway is a real person, and someone I’d very much like to have dinner with…so being on this part of her life journey was as much of a delight as ever. Everything Elly Griffiths writes is a joy to read.

https://ellygriffiths.co.uk/

 

Lee and Andrew Child: No Plan B

In Gerrardsville, Colorado, a woman dies under the wheels of a moving bus. The death is ruled a suicide. But Jack Reacher saw what really happened: A man in a gray hoodie and jeans, moving stealthily, pushed the victim to her demise—before swiftly grabbing the dead woman’s purse and strolling away.

When another homicide is ruled an accident, Reacher knows this is no coincidence. With a killer on the loose, Reacher has no time to waste to track down those responsible.

But Reacher is unaware that these crimes are part of something much larger and more far-reaching: an arsonist out for revenge, a foster kid on the run, a cabal of powerful people involved in a secret conspiracy with many moving parts. There is no room for error, but they make a grave one. They don’t consider Reacher a threat. “There’s too much at stake to start running from shadows.” But Reacher isn’t a shadow. He is flesh and blood. And relentless when it comes to making things right.

For when the threat is Reacher, there is No Plan B.

It’s Reacher, and this is a strong Reacher book…I am very much enjoying the books written by the brothers together.

https://www.jackreacher.com/

 

Lesley Thomson: The Companion

In a grand old mansion in the middle of the Sussex countryside, seven people have seen more than they should...

The new chilling thriller from Lesley Thomson. James Ritchie was looking forward to a boys' day out with his son, Wilbur – even if he was a little late picking him up from the home of his ex-wife, Anna. Annoyed by his late arrival, and competing for their son's attention, Anna leaves the two of them to their day with the promise of a roast dinner when Wilbur returns. But Anna will never see her family again. That afternoon, James and Wilbur are found dead, the victims of a double stabbing on the beach. DI Toni Kemp, of Sussex police, must unravel a case which has shocked the county to its core. What she discovers will lead her to Blacklock House, a grand country mansion, long ago converted into flats.

Here in the middle of nowhere, where a peacock struts the lawn, and a fountain plays intermittently, seven long-term residents have seen more than they should. But this is a community who are good at keeping secrets.

Thoroughly enjoyable, thoroughly British standalone.

https://lesleythomson.co.uk/

(NB: website under construction as I type)

 

SCOTTISH WRITERS:

CS Robertson (new pen name for Craig Robertson): The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill

Death is not the end. For Grace McGill, it's only the beginning.

When people die alone and undiscovered, it's her job to clean up what's left behind - whether it's clutter, bodily remains or dark secrets.

When an old man lies undetected in his flat for months, it seems an unremarkable life and an unnoticed death. But Grace knows that everyone has a story and that all deaths mean something more.

When he was writing as Craig Robertson, I read every book, and loved them all. Now in his new incarnation as CS Roberston, the voice and talent is there, and I enjoyed this new direction very much.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Craig-Robertson/69815753

 

Val McDermid: 1989

It’s 1989 and Allie Burns is back. Older and maybe wiser, she’s running the northern news operation of the Sunday Globe, chafing at losing her role in investigative journalism and at the descent into the gutter of the UK tabloid media. But there’s plenty to keep her occupied. The year begins with the memorial service for the victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, but Allie has barely filed her copy when she stumbles over a story about HIV/AIDS that will shock her into a major change of direction. The world of newspapers is undergoing a revolution, there’s skullduggery in the medical research labs and there are seismic rumblings behind the Iron Curtain. When murder is added to this potent mix, Allie is forced to question all her old certainties.

Readers are having a great time time-traveling with Val, and 1989 is a seamless, riveting novel that brings us once again face to face with how very much past is prologue, and how history’s sins stay with us.

You don’t need to have read the previous book, 1979, for this one to work – but I would recommend you do…because they are both brilliant.

https://www.valmcdermid.com/

Stuart MacBride: No Less The Devil

It's been seventeen months since the Bloodsmith butchered his first victim and Operation Maypole is still no nearer to catching him. The media is whipping up a storm, the top brass are demanding results, but the investigation is sinking fast.

Now isn't the time to get distracted with other cases, but Detective Sergeant Lucy McVeigh doesn't have much choice. When Benedict Strachan was just eleven, he hunted down and killed a homeless man. No one's ever figured out why Benedict did it, but now, after sixteen years, he's back on the streets again - battered, frightened, convinced a shadowy 'They' are out to get him, and begging Lucy for help.

It sounds like paranoia, but what if he's right? What if he really is caught up in something bigger and darker than Lucy's ever dealt with before? What if the Bloodsmith isn't the only monster out there? And what's going to happen when Lucy goes after them?

An author who writes dark…very dark…yet I still laugh out loud (don’t judge me) and adore the humanity within the inhumanity.

https://www.stuartmacbride.com/

 

Ian Rankin: A Heart Full Of Headstones

John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life.

But what drove a good man to cross the line?

Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke may well find out. Clarke is tasked with the city’s most explosive case in years, an infamous cop, at the center of decades of misconduct, has gone missing. Finding him will expose not only her superiors, but her mentor John Rebus. And Rebus himself may not have her own interests at heart, as the repayment of a past debt places him in the crosshairs of both crime lords and his police brethren.

One way or another, a reckoning is coming – and John Rebus may be hearing the call for last orders…

It’s Rankin, and Rebus…I enjoy the voice of one, and reading about the life of the other (yes, Rebus is real to me). Fantastic, satisfying read.

https://www.ianrankin.net/

IRISH WRITERS:

Dervla McTiernan: The Murder Rule

First Rule: Make them like you.

Second Rule: Make them need you.

Third Rule: Make them pay.

They think I’m a young, idealistic law student, that I’m passionate about reforming a corrupt and brutal system.

They think I’m working hard to impress them.

They think I’m here to save an innocent man on death row.

 They're wrong. I’m going to bury him.

Another strong standalone from this author whose voice I enjoy reading very much, even when she’s writing about challenging topics.

https://dervlamctiernan.com/

 

Adrian McKinty: The Island

After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom.

When they discover remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram.

But as soon as they set foot on the island, which is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare.

When Heather and the kids are separated from Tom, they are forced to escape alone, seconds ahead of their pursuers.

Now it’s up to Heather to save herself and the kids, even though they don’t trust her, the harsh bushland is filled with danger, and the locals want her dead.

Heather has been underestimated her entire life, but she knows that only she can bring her family home again and become the mother the children desperately need, even if it means doing the unthinkable to keep them all alive.

Hard to contemplate where he’d go after The Chain, this is truly dark, scary, and wonderful!

http://officialadrianmckinty.com/bio/

 

BOOK-ADJACENT THINGS

Bookmarks, bookstore gift tokens, signed books, bookends, reading lamps.

By the way - if you'd like to find out more about my work - you can do so at my website: https://www.cathyace.com/

Gift Giving and Gratitude from Gabriel Valjan

 

The Minds were queried to give their recommendations for gift ideas. I dread lists because there’s the inevitable, “What about…?” where the ellipsis and trailing voice seems like an indictment. Therefore, I hereby waive my Fifth Amendment right. I enter the graphic as Evidence. A picture may say a lot but it’s also a good shopping list.

            An authorial advantage and privilege is knowing other authors and having the opportunity to read WIPs or get your mitts on ARCs. Such was the case with my entries from Edwin Hill, James Ziskin, and one of the two entries from Colleen Cambridge.

 

Colleen Cambridge (aka Colleen Gleason) is an author whose work I’ve enjoyed for years. She has mastered multiple genres. She makes me laugh, and she is prolific. Edwin Hill and fellow Criminal Mind James W. Ziskin are on this list because I respect writers who take artistic chances. Edwin stepped away from his Hester Thursby series, Jim from his Ellie Stone, to write thrillers. The Secrets We Share juggles POV and timelines. Bombay Monsoon introduces history that most readers don’t know but should, since the coup d’état in India in 1975 in the background to the story brings a cautionary lesson of just how fragile democracy is to the foreground.

I loved Lev ACRosen’s Lavender House, which I won in a Giveaway at First Chapter Fun with Hank Phillippi Ryan and Hannah Mary McKinnon. Lavender House is a noir mystery, with an LGBT twist on all the familiar tropes I enjoy in detective fiction.

I’m a sucker for anything about the Revolutionary War. You can’t go wrong with Mally Becker’s second outing with her widow Becca Parcell and former printer Daniel Alloway. Eleanor Kuhns immerses readers in a tense murder mystery that invokes forgotten history. All I will say is that the state of Maine had outlawed slavery, Virginia had not, and the swamp in the title is Purgatory.

I’d written two unpublished mysteries set in 1930s Shanghai when Jonathan Kaufman’s The Last Kings of Shanghai appeared and sent me back to the manuscripts. The history of Shanghai is an object lesson in class, colonialism, and why I’ve argued for years that World War II started in the East and not in Europe.

Nonfiction is my palate cleanser. Dennis Duncan’s Index is a book nerd’s Nirvana. I love animals, and Ed Yong’s An Immense World is a treasure trove of facts and a dose of humility. I can’t reduce Joseph Heinrich’s Weirdest People to one sentence. It’s about how things work and why we think the way we do, explained from multiple angles.

There are (technically) five books under Authors New to Me. Crazy Rich Asians has been adapted for the screen, and was a great movie, but we know that the book is almost always better than the series. Kevin Kwan’s trilogy ventures deeper in personalities and family dynamics than what could fit on the screen. Someday, Maybe is a debut that will leave you on the ropes. MarcusVega Doesn’t Speak Spanish, but he’s on a quest to learn more about his father and discovers so much while he visits Puerto Rico.

While I prefer horror that is psychological, each of these three stories left me changed emotionally. Both Pinocchio and Pedro Páramo are hallucinatory and disquieting texts and will leave you unnerved. I highly recommend the Perella translation because it offers the unabridged text from Carlo Collodi, and it includes drawings from the original illustrator, Enrico Mazzanti. With Pedro Páramo, even if you don’t know Spanish, listen to the hypnotic cadences of the original text on YouTube and do yourself a favor and find Rulfo’s photographs of desert landscapes online. Juan Rulfo wrote two books, and Gabriel García Márquez hailed Pedro Páramo as “the most important, the most beautiful novel ever written in Spanish. If I had written [it] I would never worry or write again in my life.” Márquez memorized Pedro and it inspired Gabo’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.

If Machiavelli’s The Prince were an allegory, it would be Pär Lagerkvist’s The Dwarf, a text filled with monstrous ambition, and a character so evil, so sinister that Piccoline, the eponymous dwarf, makes Ahab and Iago seem like choirboys who couldn’t hold a note.

When your eyes grow tired from reading, Binge! Wednesday landed last week, and it won me over with its dark humor and literary references. For All Mankind is for fans of sci-fi and alt-history. Walter Tevis, author of The Queen’s Gambit, was the John Cazale (Fredo in The Godfather) of literature. Every novel Walter wrote was literary gold. Sky Rojo is a Spanish Thelma & Louise, but darker, and its rich with accents and vocabulary from all around the Spanish-speaking world.

Happy Reading. Be kind. Be safe. See you in 2023.

My Favourite (six) Holiday(s and counting), by Catriona

I know this is A. last week's question and B. Susan's day but I'm tagging on for a very particular reason. I've got a book coming out tomorrow. What's that, you say? In a group blog with ten authors, someone's always got a book coming out? Fair point but the thing is that all five-and-I'm-writing-the-sixth in the series open on a holiday. Sort of.

SCOT FREE kicks off as fish-out-water Scot, Leagsaidh (pronounced Lexy) Campbell, is cowering in her office - she's a marriage and family therapist - as the 4th of July fireworks light up the sky and terrify all dogs and any humans who're scared of explosions. The short marriage that brought her to California is over and her only remaining client, Mrs Bombarro, is just about to be arrested for killing Mr Bombarro, the owner of a fireworks empire. Nothing goes BOOM like Bombarro! Literally. 

Three months later, in SCOT AND SODA, Lexy is having a Halloween party onboard her new home, moored in the slough that gives the Last Ditch Motel its branding disaaster of a name, declaring that she never wants to see another dead body in her life, trying to tug up the case of beer she sank in the slough to keep it cool, and wondering if the rope is caught on something. Guess. What. Happens. 

By February, Lexy has just about resigned herself to being the only singleton at the loved-up Last Ditch, but Valentine's Day, US-style, is a lot to take and so she's on her way home with two Chinese take-out meals because it was too embarrassing to buy one this night of all night, when once again she meets trouble, in SCOT ON THE ROCKS.

Then something happened. All over the world, in every country, life stopped except for essential workers, emergency services and, of course, healthcare professionals. For writers, expecially comic crime writers, the task of getting the next book out of our heads and into the bookshops was a peculiar one. It took us all differently. Me? I made lemonade. In SCOT MIST, I put the Last Ditchers into lockdown at the motel and wrote my first-ever closed circle mystery. It opened not on any holiday, but on an anti-holiday: Friday the 13th of March, 2020, the day they closed Disneyland. 

Normal service resumed for the next book, this book, SCOT IN A  TRAP, the one that comes out tomorrow! It's nine months later and Thanksgiving is straining the belts and the tempers of the Last Ditch residents, as a figure from Lexy's past materialises at the motel. Dead. Awkward, right? Also, no spoilers, but it's significant that Thanksgiving comes nine months after the start of the lockdown. It's not only Thanksgving; it's also someone's birthday . . .

And now I'm writing the sixth book, HOPSCOT, which is more about the holiday it's about than any of the others have been. It's about my favourite holiday of all - Christmas - and, in it, Lexy goes home to Scotland for a freezing cold family get-together, taking the entire Last Ditch contingent with her. I'm having more fun than seems reasonable, considering this is my job, and it's taken over my brain so much that when I was laying in refreshements for the launch party for SCOT IN A TRAP, the California Thanksgiving book, I bought a big tin of Quality Street, an iconic* Bristish Christmas confectionery. But be honest: who wants more pumpkin-spice snacks once December has begun? Exactly. 

* Seriously iconic - that is a wreath of Quality Street wrappers, made by my friend Michael, crafty spouse of fellow writer Laura Jensen Walker. 

 

Bah Humbug!

by Abir

This week we’ve been asked to talk about our favourite holiday memories.

 

Morning. Friday again, eh? Another week all but over. I hope you’ve achieved more than I have in that time. I seem to have spent a lot of it scanning Black Friday sales and buying things that I convinced myself I really needed but which, now they’re here, I find almost completely surplus to requirements. For instance I am writing this using a new keyboard which I’m having difficulty getting used to because the keys are approximately 2mm further spaced than on my former keyboard and every sentence takes about an hour to write because of all the spelling mistakes. 

 

I’m also staring at a brand new monitor which is frankly too big for my desk, so now I’m contemplating buying a bigger desk, but that’ll be too big for the room and so then I’ll need to either build an extension or buy a bigger house and doing either of those in this economy will bankrupt me. My life is a dumpster fire.

 

Right, so where were we? That’s right, favourite holiday memories. The first thing to say is that I actually wrote a version of this last Tuesday, well in advance of posting time. However, because my colleagues on this blog are mainly north Americans, they have no real concept of the English language. You see, outside of the North American continent, the word ‘holidays’ refers to pretty much any holiday you can think of – mainly sunny summer holidays. When people ask you – ‘What did you do in the holidays?’ they generally mean – what did you do last summer, and if you’re British, the answer is normally, ‘I went to Europe, got drunk and sunburned, and boorishly acted like I owned the place.’ If you want to know what someone did at Christmas, you ask: ‘I say, dear boy, what japes did you get up to during the Yuletide?’ ‘Note: the words: festive season or Christmascan be substituted for Yuletide, but only if you’re common. This is all a long way of saying that I wrote a blog post about my summer holidays instead of the Christmas holidays, for which the blame squarely lies with my north American colleagues, and now I’m having to re-write it at 8am on a Friday morning.

 

For the budding writers among you looking for writing tips, the lesson you should take from this is: Never do anything until the very last minute. There’s really no point.

 

Right. So I guess I’d better make some stuff up about Christmas. The first thing to say is that I don’t understand the nervousness about calling it Christmas. It’s Christmas. Call it that. I say that as the son of Hindus. Non Christians shouldn’t (and I think 99% of them aren’t) worried or offended by you calling Christmas Christmas. I know that Hannukah is at the same time, and that’ fine, and I know the term ‘holidays’ is technically more inclusive, but I feel as though you lose something when you make it generic. The thing I hate most is when people start calling it Xmas. What’s that about? Removing Christ from Christmas and replacing him with an X. That’s bonkers. So why do you do it?

 

Anyway, you can tell I haven’t had my coffee yet. 

 

Let me tell you about Christmases in my house when I was growing up. As I said, we’re Hindus, so you’d think we wouldn’t be that into Christmas, but you’d be wrong. My family (and my community) are pretty much happy to join in with any festivity that involves a lot of food and alcohol. Plus, Christmas has always been well celebrated in Calcutta, the city of my parents’ origins, on account of the perfidious British influence there for the last two hundred years. So Christmas was no big surprise to my parents. What was surprising was the sight of snow. The first time my dad saw it snowing, he asked a policeman what was going on.

 

So yeah, we celebrated Christmas in the 70s and 80s in much the same way as our white neighbours, with crackers and turkey and presents under a plastic tree, followed by hours in front of the TV watching Star Wars and Indiana Jones. The only thing we didn’t do was go to the midnight church services.

 

Christmas has always been a special time in the year for me, and probably the happiest. Many of my best childhood memories centre around that time – be it the parties or the presents, and growing up, Christmas was always a time to take stock and be thankful. 

Every year, we are visited by Indian Santa

 

Now, in middle age, I try to recreate that wonder of Christmas for my boys, but it doesn’t quite feel the same. On another level though, their Christmases are more ‘authentically British’ than mine were – perversely because my wife is South African and mad about everything twee and British. She loves nothing more than having a cream tea in front of an open fire (even in July). She insists we have a ‘traditional’ British Christmas, with a real tree (waste of money) and stockings over the fireplace (pointless) and all the other festive crap.

I mean really, what is the point of this?

 Fortunately even she draws the line at a traditional British Christmas lunch. I mean it’s so bloody bland. Turkey is the driest, most tasteless meat there is. Then there’s Brussels sprouts, which are a complete abomination – creating them was not God’s finest hour, and then, the worst of the lot: Bread sauce. 

 

Bread…..Sauce….

 

A sauce…made of bread. Think about that for a moment.

 

Only the British could have invented something so totally without flavour.

 

Of course, my wife tried making it, and for several years she persisted in forcing it upon us, but even she has had to admit defeat. Now our Christmas dinners feature better dishes and more spice, which is what I think the baby Jesus in the Middle East would have wanted. After all, what is Christmas without the traditional Christmas Eve biryani?

 

Happy holidays to you all.

Obligatory shot of us imprisoned in a Christmas bauble

Embarking on a New Adventure from James W. Ziskin

This week we’ve been asked to describe our best holiday memories. But since this is a special week for me, I’m going off script and will write about something else. To wit, my new book, Bombay Monsoon, which hits shelves next Tuesday, December 6. 

Styx & Stone was my first novel, published in 2013. It was the debut for my plucky “girl reporter” heroine named Ellie Stone. I wrote her in the first person, a choice that surely surprised some readers. I used to joke that “I’m 6’ 2” tall, weigh 200 pounds, and write like a girl.” I’ve stopped saying that now, because it felt as if I might be minimizing the challenges of writing across gender. There has been a lot of debate about appropriation in recent years, and I certainly recognize the importance of authenticity of voice and experience when it comes to writing characters. I can only hope I’ve overcome any missteps or blunders I made in my Ellie Stone books. My intention was always to write a believable, likable, flawed character, whom I love and respect. Ellie is sharp, tough, small, and fragile. She’s a firecracker and a lightning rod for trouble. She loves to exact revenge—with her wit—on odious male colleagues, people who punch down, and, of course, murderers.

Ellie has now appeared in seven books, and I believe she’s grown a lot from her first adventure in January of 1960. Now a seasoned investigative reporter, Ellie has solved crimes from her adopted home of New Holland, NY, to Los Angeles, to Florence, Italy. With stops in Saratoga Springs and the Adirondack Mountains. She’s been nominated for seventeen major industry awards, and even managed to return home a winner for four of those: an Anthony, a Barry, and two Macavity awards. The success of the Ellie Stone mysteries has been a gift I never would have imagined possible. A gift for which I am eternally grateful. 

I’ll certainly write more Ellie Stone books, but now I feel it’s time to try something new. 

Did I mention that Ellie Stone is a mid-twenties newspaper reporter in the early 1960s? I did? Splendid! Well, I’m not that. I’m a man of a certain age who has spent a lot of time visiting far-off places around the world. I’ve lived and worked in France for two years. I was director of New York University’s Casa Italiana for five years, and spent months on end in Italy, once even organizing and heading a summer study abroad program in a Florentine villa. I studied French and Italian for more years than I care to count. Hell, I currently teach French in a middle school in Massachusetts. I have a long history of loving languages and living abroad as an expat. Let’s see, what else? Oh, yes…

I call India my second home

Why? Well, for one, I was married there. And, two, I’ve made fifty-six separate trips to India over the past twenty-five years. Three, I lived and worked there for a full year and a half. And, four, my fifty-six business and personal trips add up to nearly four years in country. Most of my time has been in Bangalore, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), and Pune (formerly Poona). (I give those older names because they figure prominently in my new book)

So, finally, I get to the point. I wanted to write a book or two that more closely matches my own real experience. The expat life I’ve led in India inspired the character who narrates Bombay Monsoon, Daniel “Danny” Jacobs.

Enter Danny Jacobs

Danny is a young journalist, who, having chronicled the fall of Saigon, is freshly back from Vietnam in 1975. He’s reported on the desaparecidos in Chile as well. But now he’s looking for a new challenge. Something to satisfy his ambitions. To make his mark. An opportunity arises at UNI, United News International, and Danny is off to Bombay, India, for a longterm assignment. But just as he’s settling in to his new life, the prime minister, Indira Gandhi, declares an “Emergency.” It’s a virtual coup. Responding to a court’s decision that invalidated her election victory four years before, Mrs. Gandhi invokes an article of the Indian Constitution that grants her sweeping powers to defend the nation against a “domestic emergency.” She suspends due process and elections, throws her political opponents in jail, and imposes strict censorship of the press.

Danny finds himself in a difficult situation. He’s a foreign journalist, still trying to find his way in a strange country, and nothing he writes passes the censor. What’s he to do?

How about embark on an ill-advised romance with the Indian lover of his expat neighbor, Willy Smets? Sound good? Well, that’s what Danny does.

Enter Sushmita

She’s the young companion of the charismatic Belgian who occupies the penthouse flat in Danny’s South Bombay building. Willy throws elaborate parties, with free-flowing liquor and beautiful women. His soirées are legend among the expatriate community. And when Danny finally gets an invite, he’s immediately smitten by his host’s inscrutable lover, the alluring Sushmita. You’ll have to read the rest to find out what happens. And why Willy and Sushmita might not be who they seem to be.

Colorism

One of the major social themes I wanted to explore in Bombay Monsoon was colorism. In India, as well as in many countries around the world, the obsession with fairness has been, and continues to be, a horrible prejudice in society. Cosmetics that lighten skin color are a billion-dollar industry. Fair and Lovely is one example today. It works. It lightens skin. But I couldn’t include that product in my book because it was only introduced in 1975—when Bombay Monsoon takes place—but late in the year. So that wasn’t an option for my story. Before Fair and Lovely, however, there was Afghan Snow, a makeup that masked natural skin tone and made it lighter. But only until you washed it off. This bias against natural color is heartbreaking. I knew I had to include it in my story, not to criticize India, but to praise beauty in all its shades, no matter how arbitrary our cultural diktats are.

The Monsoon

I love playing with weather in my books and stories, perhaps never more so than in this novel. The monsoon is, after all, a season on the Subcontinent. Like winter and spring and autumn. The monsoon comes in June and retreats in September, but it’s not “summer.” It’s monsoon season. I don’t usually like referring to places or things as “characters” in books, but I might be tempted to change my mind in the case of the monsoon. It’s heavy and onerous and ever-present in Bombay Monsoon, drenching the city and following Danny like a curse. Or a shadow. A companion. Everywhere he goes. I’ve experienced the monsoon in India many times. And I’ve always been grateful to be warm and dry, safe under a good roof. It’s an awesome phenomenon, the monsoon, one that I respect and fear. One underestimates nature at one’s own peril. It’s beautiful to watch the rain pouring down the windows, hissing through the warm air, and drumming on the roof as if it wants to get inside. I love the rain. But I realize it can give and take. The farmers depend on a good monsoon for their crops, their livelihood. The city dwellers, too. For their groceries. But there can be flooding and destruction, too. Not to mention the dangers of driving in powerful rainstorms.

The Ghats

Which brings me to the ghats. The Western Ghats of Maharashtra rise from the coastal plain to the Deccan Plateau. They are beautiful mountains, luscious green in the rainy season, with spontaneous cascades of runoff water roaring down their steep shoulders in ribbons to the valleys below. The roads that climb the ghats are narrow, bumpy, and dangerous. The path switches back and forth, with only the occasional guardrail to protect you from a plunge over the edge to certain doom. Of course today there’s a modern highway that leads up the ghats, safe—relatively speaking—nothing like the terrifying ascent on the old Bombay-Poona Road. I had the “pleasure” of climbing and descending that horrifying road twenty-five years ago. I was sure I’d never make it out alive and, given my acrophobia, pressed myself against the car door and prayed for deliverance until the nightmare ended. It was the most terrifying experience of my life, and I do not lie. That’s why I decided to include it in Bombay Monsoon. I hope it scares you in your reading chair half as much as it scared me in the back seat of that car twenty-five years ago.

Ellie Stone

And now back to Ellie Stone. I toyed with the idea of making her Danny’s boss back in the New York office of UNI. She would be thirty-nine in 1975, and it would have been fun to play with that idea. But ultimately, I didn’t want to paint Ellie’s future into a corner and decided against it, opting instead for a different female editor, Kate Erving. Kate is also a remarkable journalist, forged from the same iron as Ellie, perhaps. Using Kate as Danny’s boss will allow me more freedom to play with Ellie’s future. Stay tuned.

Gatsby meets Graham Greene on the Subcontinent

My elevator pitch for this book is Gatsby meets Graham Greene on the Subcontinent. But it’s also about prejudice, loyalty, love, and threats to democracy. I hope you’ll be intrigued enough to give Bombay Monsoon a try. Maybe for Christmas reading. 

Bombay Monsoon (December 6, 2022, from Oceanview Publications). Available in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook versions.