The Lost and Found Bookshop

 

By Susan Wiggs

Natalie's life changed in every way in one day. She quit her job and lost her boyfriend and her mom later that same day. Now she has to take over her mom's affairs including running the family bookstore and taking care of her aging and senile grandfather.

Once she gets into her mother's affairs, she finds out that her mother owed lots of people lots of money. Most of which was spent on the ancient building the bookstore and the family apartments are located in. And the rest on keeping the bookstore running. Looking at all the problems with the building and the business, the obvious thing would be to close the bookstore and sell the building. But, contrary to what Natalie previously assumed, her mom did not own the business or the building. It is all owned by the grandfather. And he absolutely refuses to go along with Natalie's desire to sell everything. 

But the building needs some repairs. Parts of it are so bad, it would be condemned if it were ever inspected. Also, the downstairs apartment where the grandfather is living needs some assisted-living improvements. Enter "Peach" Gallagher, handyman, father, and all-around-good-guy. Not to mention just plain gorgeous. 

But Peach isn't the only handsome bachelor to enter Natalie's orbit. The other is personable, successful author Trevor Dashwood. And unlike Peach, Trevor is obviously strongly attracted  to Natalie. And proceeds to woo her while Peach looks on, once burned and twice shy after a painful divorce.

Often, in a romance story like this, the main barrier to the girl finding the right boy is the wrong boy the girl is usually involved with. If there is an interfering mother, usually the girl and mom work through their problems and come to a better understanding. And the girl dumps or loses the wrong boy friend and usually overlooks the right boyfriend until something causes her to realize he is the one. But not in this story. We never even get to meet the problematic mom or the wrong boyfriend. They are both bumped off in the beginning shortly after Natalie quits her job, killed in a plane crash. In  fact, they were probably already dead when she quit, although she did not know that. 

Also, in a lot of romances, the wrong boy is wrong because he is not a nice person. But that is not the case here. Both of the possible boyfriends are decent, good guys, as was the boyfriend who died. He also was a decent, good guy who in fact was planning on asking Natalie to marry him the same day that he died. The only thing that made him the wrong boy was that Natalie was no longer interested in him.

Anyway, these twists on the usual romance novel made it a lot more interesting to me and I really enjoyed the story. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Calculating Stars

 

By Mary Robinette Kowal

Early spring, 1952. Elma and Nathaniel are vacationing at a cabin in the Poconos when an meteorite strikes the earth just off the east coast of North America, causing catastrophic devastation. But even worse, scientists have calculated that the result of will be, first many years of winter, but then the planet will start to warm up. Eventually it will become so hot, that life will no longer be possible. It will become another Venus, in effect.

So the goal becomes getting to space and setting up colonies on the moon and then on Mars. Before that can be done, first they have to figure how to do that, starting with just getting off the Earth. 

Elma  and her husband, Nathaniel both already work for the space program. Nathaniel is an engineer and Elma is a "computer," someone who who is gifted mathematically and does the complex calculations required for launching a rocket into space. But as Elma observes that the preparations underway involve only white men, she decides she wants to be part of it too. Logically, if they are serious about humanity surviving off-world, then they have to have women off-world too. So women should be part of the astronaut program. But it's the 1950s and everything is run by white men. Women are considered too fragile and emotional to be astronauts. But Elma wants to prove that women are up to the job!

This was an OK read. It has a lot of technical stuff that I just didn't care about. In fact, I just skimmed through the last chapter as the author describes in detail the procedure for launching a rocket into space. 

Here is a review by Kirkus.

In Odd We Trust

 

By Dean Koontz

A graphic novel

Odd Thomas is a young man with a gift. He sees ghosts. The ghosts don't talk but they do seem to communicate to Odd at times.

Odd lives in a town in California and has a job working the grill in a small restaurant. He has a steady girl friend and he likes his job and he is also trusted and liked in his community. 

But tragedy visits small towns too. And Odd is seeing the timid ghost of a small boy. The boy was home alone when he was attacked and slaughtered. But it soon turns out the boy was just killed because he was in the way of the killer's real target, the babysitter. 

For some time the babysitter, Sherry, has been stalked by a stranger who sends her messages composed of letters cut out of magazines. Who this person is, Sherry has no idea. And the killer is still stalking Sherry and clearly doesn't mind committing murder to gain access to her. The only clue to the killer's identity is locked inside the silent, shy ghost of a small, murdered boy that only Odd can perceive.

This was an OK read. Being a graphic novel, it lacks the depth you usually find in an Odd Thomas story.  I'm not really a fan of manga-style illustrations, though. I think that affected my perception of the story.

According to Wikipedia, it's a prequel to the first Odd Thomas novel and was published in 2008. 

My Granddaughter Has Fleas!!

 

By Cathy Guisewite

Life of a single working woman, Cathy, in the 1980s who decides she is finally ready to become, not a mom, but the owner of a dog.

Electra is the new puppy and Cathy soon finds out that having a dog is almost as life-altering as having a baby. 

Meanwhile, her relationship with long-time boyfriend (eight years!) is going nowhere. Cathy wants to be married and Irving just isn't ready. 

I like the Cathy comic strip. I haven't subscribed to a newspaper in over twenty years so I don't even know if the strip is still being published.  But I always enjoyed reading Cathy back when we were getting a daily newspaper. Cathy always seemed kind of miserable and I totally related to that. And I still do.

Station Eleven

 

By Emily St. John Mandel

A deadly flu wipes out most of humanity. Only a small percentage survives. They struggle to survive and come together in small communities and bands. One of those bands is the Traveling Symphony which performs plays and concerts. They come to a community that they visited in the past, hoping to find two members who were staying there for a couple of years. But the place has changed and their friends are not there. It has been taken over by a cult, and their prophet is one of those gross dudes who has visions that instruct him to "marry" every female he lusts for his wives. Although the symphony was planning to stay awhile, this new cult gives them the creeps and they pack up and leave. But the prophets next intended bride, an adolescent girl, hides in one of the caravan wagons, giving the prophet the excuse he needs to chase after them.

Tying the story together is the tale of Arthur Leander, a famous actor who dies on stage of a heart attack during a play on the very night the plague came to America. One of the actors in the play is a little girl, Kirsten, who escapes the plague and, twenty years later, is one of the members of the Traveling Symphony. Art's life and that of his three wives winds through the story, with a graphic novel, Station Eleven, drawn and written by his first wife, Miranda, also bringing the characters' stories together. 

This was a pretty good read. I really found her style of writing to easy and enjoyable to read. She doesn't bog you down in complicated descriptions of scientific gobbledygook or boring descriptions of battles and wars. She also skips horrifying descriptions of the aftermath of the deadly epidemic, probably something that disappointed a lot of readers, maybe.

Here is a review by The Guardian.

Double Whammy

By Carl Hiaasen

R.J. Decker used to work for a large Florida newspaper as a photographer. But he got into trouble and landed in jail. After prison, he was jobless and wifeless and found work as an insurance investigator. 

Dennis Gault, wealthy man who wants to make a name for himself in the bass fishing tournament circles, hires R.J. to investigate Dickie Lockhart, a big name in the bass fishing world. Gault believes Lockhart has been cheating, planting prize-winning fish in the lakes during tournaments. He wants R.J. to get photos of Lockhart planting fish.

Lockhart's home base is in Harney County, Florida (not a real place). So R.J. heads there and does some sleuthing. A former associate from the newspaper also lives there, Ott Pickney. Ott dismisses Gault's claims that Lockhart is a cheater. But he does advise R.J. to hire a local man, Skink, to serve as a guide in the area. Ott also is the one who tells R.J. about the recent death of another pro-bass fisherman locally, Bobby Clinch. 

But after thinking about what R.J. told him, Ott decides to take a closer look at the remains of Clinch's bass boat. While doing so, he is found by a couple of thugs who take him into the woods and kill him. R.J. and Skink find Ott's body sunk in a lake. They are discovered by the thugs and Skink shoots and kills one of them. R.J. thinks Lockhart is behind the murders of Bobby and Ott and he and Skink head to Louisiana to catch Lockhart cheating at a big bass tournament there. But things don't pan out quite as they planned. They don't find Lockhart cheating, although they do find fish being planted. And the morning after the tournament, R.J. finds Lockhart dead. He is worried that Skink killed Lockhart because Skink had threatened to do exactly that. So instead of staying in Louisiana, R.J. drives back to Florida. Only to discover that he is being blamed for death of Lockhart. And that Skink had nothing to do with Lockhart's death.

This was a pretty good read. Unfortunately, like most of Hiaasen's Florida novels, it has some pretty gruesome scenes in it. The dog head business is pretty rank and Skink loses one of his eyes to a rather graphic beating. I always find that aspect of Hiaasen's stories a bit hard to take. But besides that, it was a pretty entertaining story and it is the first appearance of Hiaasen's recurring character, Skink, a wild man who lives off road kill and has no fixed home in the later novels and who used to be the governor of Florida.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Untold Story

 

By Genevieve Cogman

This is the eighth book in the Invisible Library series.

Irene Winters is a young librarian in the Invisible Library. The library is a storage place for the books of the multiverse. The worlds of this multiverse range from chaos and order, with the Fae being agents of chaos and the Dragons being agents of order. 

Irene has been sent to broker a treaty between the Fae and the Dragons, two groups that have long been enemies. Normally she travels the worlds looking for books that the library deems need its protection. So diplomatic missions are a bit out of her regular range of duties. 

For some time, Irene has been concerned about the great enemy of the library, her father, Alberich. Now she has come across an origin story that might help her finally bring Alberich down. But the story is incomplete and Irene sets out, accompanied by her lover, Kai, to track down the rest of the story. But has her search advances, it becomes clear that something rotten exists at the heart of the library, something that is distorting the main mission of the library from collecting and protecting books. And that rotten heart is willing to kill to protect its secret and to keep Irene from finding out the whole story.

This was an OK read. I came to the series unfamiliar with the first seven books in the series. It would probably make more sense and be much more enjoyable if the reader is acquainted with the preceding books. I felt a bit lost, trying to understand the magic and the relationships and the library's function.  Maybe that is why I found the book a bit boring. I also found the plot about the subversion of the library to be less than compelling.