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.  

The Paradox Hotel

 

By Rob Hart

January Cole is the head of security at the Paradox Hotel. The hotel serves the wealthy time travelers who have paid big money to visit the past. January used to travel to the past too but now she is can no longer due to health concerns. Unfortunately, repeated trips to the past have a deleterious effect on the time travelers health. January is in danger of slipping into the final, last stage of being "Unstuck" where the sufferer becomes catatonic. Being this far along in the affliction means that sometimes January gets glimpses of the future and of the past. 

But there are big doings at Paradox Hotel because the government is going to sell the time travel business to private investors and the four main investors have checked into the hotel for meeting to determine who will gain ownership of the hotel and the time travel business. Not surprisingly though, someone has decided to try to gain an advantage by cheating and is willing to commit murder to do so. Which January realizes when she sees a dead man in one of the hotel rooms that no one else can see and it is clearly one of her frequent glimpses of times future and times past. And since she is the only one who can see this future, it is up to her to solve a murder that has not yet been committed.

I enjoyed this story quite a bit. Although I didn't care the ending, which seemed like a gyp for poor unhappy January, who is still mired in grief for her lost lover. Still, it was quite an interesting story. 

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections

 

By Eva Jurczyk

Universities need donors. Donors provide funds for all kinds of perks and improvements. And when donors provide the funds for a university library to purchase a rare, old book, it is not unreasonable of them to want to see the book they paid for.  But the book in question has gone missing. And the only man who can tell the university where the missing book might be is unconscious in a hospital bed and is probably dying.

So Liesl Weiss has stepped into his position while he is in the hospital and has to deal with the disappearance of this $500,000 rare book. And she is being undercut on all sides by the university president and by many of the other members of the Department of Rare Books. Even though Liesl has been a part to the library staff for a nearly twenty years, for some reason, people (mostly the men) don't think she is up to the job of supervising the Department of Rare Books. 

So between trying to track down the missing book, coping with the donors, and trying to get the university president into contacting the police about the loss, Liesl is afraid she is not up to the job either.

This is not really a book about a mystery. It's really about a woman coping with a stressful job and dealing with her own doubts and insecurities. The missing book is just another source of stress for the woman. So even though it's not a real mystery story, it was still a pretty good read. 

Review from Kirkus Reviews.

Persephone Station

 

By Stina Leicht

Angel was forced out of the military and now she and her crew work for a local crime boss, Rosie, on the planet of Persephone. 

When Persephone was first settled, it appeared to be an abandoned planet with only ruins left by a long-gone civilization.

Turns out, though, this was not the case. The ruins were left by a race called the Architects. And they were the ones who raised up the current intelligent residents who call themselves the Emissaries. Although the Architects are vanished, the Emissaries remained but they prefer to keep themselves hidden. 

The corporation that now owns the planet has a deal with the Emissaries, they keep them hidden and the Emissaries provide them with advanced technology. But there has been a change of leadership at the corporation and the new leader has decided to just take what she wants by force from the Emissaries, who are a peaceful people and not accustomed to war.

The Emissaries have an ally on their side, the crime boss Rosie. And Rosie has hired Angel and her crew to travel to the Emissary city and protect them from being invaded by the obsessed woman who is leading the assault against them. 

This was an OK read. Unfortunately a large part of it concerns the battle between Angel's crew, the Emissaries and the corporate forces. Unfortunately I don't have any interest in reading a play-by-play of battlefield action. So I just skimmed large parts of the second half of the story. Outside of  battle stuff, the rest of it was pretty interesting. I did feel that the aliens were rather tame and bland and too human-like. 

A review by Kirkus Reviews.

Doonesbury : The President Is a Lot Smarter Than You Think

 

By G.B. Trudeau

A collection of Doonesbury cartoon stripes from the late 1960s and early 1970s. A trip back in time for those who grew up in that era and a visit to the past for those who didn't: a really fun read.

The Big Steep

 

By Sandra Balzo

The Big Steep is the name new arrivals Vivian and Philip have chosen for the tea shop they are planning to open in the childhood home of Vivian's mother, Vana. But during the innovation process, the body of a baby is found buried in a compost heap on the property. And in the course of a few days, two more people end up dead, starting with Vivian. 

So who killed Vivian? And why? Does it have anything to do with the dead baby? The baby's death was dated to the early 1960s, when Vivian's mother, Vana, was just a small child herself. So how could Vivian's murder possibly be connected to that of the baby?

Oh, the 1960s: free love, drugs, communes, hippies. All sorts of shenanigans. And Vana's parents were in the thick of it, even in the small town of Brookhills, Wisconsin. Who knows what skeletons will come to light now that the bones of an innocent child who was buried in a compost heap have been found?

This was an okay read. The blurbs on the front of the book and on the back are comparing it to the Laura Childs Tea Shop mystery series. I haven't read any of Childs' books, so if it compares or not, I don't know. I do know that it winds up in a complicated tangle of relationships dating back to the 1960s that I found rather hard to follow. A few too many plot twists are thrown at the reader in the space of a few pages.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Call Me When You Find America : Doonesbury

 

By G.B. Trudeau

A collection of daily strips of Doonesbury, dating from the early 1970s. The copyrights are from 1971, 1972 and 1973.

 A trip down memory lane for an old-timer like me. A look back to an era of change and confusion for those who didn't live through it. 

My Brother Michael

 

By Mary Stewart

It's about 1958 or 59. A young British woman, Camilla, is in Greece on vacation. By mistake, she comes into possession of a car just when she is running low of funds and yet she still has several places that she wants to visit. She was told the car was needed in Delphi by someone named Simon and since she wanted to go there anyway, she takes the car and heads out.

Arriving to the Delphi area, she tracks down a Simon, but this Simon denies knowing anything about who ordered the car. But he decides to help Camilla track down this other Simon who needed a car. However, their inquiries lead nowhere. Their trips around the area trying to find the missing Simon lets them also indulge their interest in Greek ruins and Greek history. It also allows Camilla to find out more about her Simon and his reasons for coming to Delphi.

Simon's brother Michael was in Greece, working for the British government, helping the resistance  against the German occupation during World War II.  Michael was killed there and Simon is there to find out more about his brother's death. Something about Michael's last letter to his family hinted that he had found something important. 

Camilla and Simon visit the Greek family that Michael was close to just before he was killed. They are told that Michael was attacked and killed by a member of the resistance who was piling up weapons, money and stores to be used in a communist plot to overthrow the Greece's government. And that Michael found the stockpile and was murdered to silence him. Further, the man who did it has recently returned to Greece for reasons unknown. 

Together Camilla and Simon dig deeper into the circumstances that led to Michael's death and come up against some very dangerous and unsavory characters in the process.

This was an OK read. One problem I had with it were the many detailed descriptions of the scenic points of interest in the Greek countryside. There are a lot of them, it sometimes reads more like a travelog than a mystery story. After reading through a couple of them, I just started skipping them. Also I found it odd that this diffident young woman was so willing to travel around Greece in company of a man who was a total stranger to her. But other than that, the mystery story itself was interesting. 

The Old Reliable

 

By P.G. Wodehouse

Poor Smedley Cork is a bird in a gilded cage, yearning to escape to freedom. When his wealthy brother died, the terms of his will required his widow to take care of Smedley for the rest of his life. And the widow, Adela Cork, follows the terms of the will to the letter, providing room and board for Smedley but nothing more. Plus she makes him drink yoghurt everyday, something Smedley deeply resents,

But Smedley has a plan. Before the Corks bought their mansion, it used to be the home of a Hollywood star who was known for the many lovers she entertained in her bedroom. She died in a plane crash and the Corks bought the mansion fully furnished with all her belongings. Rumor has that she kept a diary that has never been found. Smedley has a plan to search the premises for this diary and then sell it for $50,000. And thus gain his freedom from his hated gilded cage.

But there are snags. Mainly Wilhemina, who has loved Smedley since she was a young woman and a Smedley running free with $50,000 in his pocket is not a Smedley who would be willing to settle down and marry "Bill," as Wilhemina goes by. Second is a larcenous butler who also knows about the diary and feels it will be much better off in his hands than in Smedley's. And finally, when the diary is found, there's Adela, who has snatched the diary right out of Smedley's hands and locked it up in safe. She also wants that $50,000 to pay, as she says, for all the money she has spent maintaining Smedley in her home. She's not a very nice person. But all will come out right in the end, although probably not the way that Smedley was hoping for.

This is a typical Wodehouse plot, just reworked with different characters. But even though the plot is quite familiar and predictable, it still is a good, funny read.

 

The Ladies of the Secret Circus

 

By Constance Sayers

Althacazur is a demon prince who fell in love with a human woman in the early 1900s. She died while giving birth to her two babies, conjoined twins Esme and Cecile. The babies were raised and loved by the damned souls of Althacazur's cursed secret circus. The damned perform in his circus as part of their punishment for their sins. But one day, paying a visit, Althacazur is repulsed by the babies being conjoined and he uses magic to separate the two girls and to give them the organs they lacked. It was very hard on the two girls who were adolescents at the time. It was especially hard on Cecile and Althacazur wiped her memory of the whole process. As for Esme, on her was placed the burden of maintaining the magic which required the spilling of human blood. 

Forward to modern times, and Lara is on the verge of marrying the love of her life, Todd. But the day of their wedding, Todd vanishes, leaving behind everything that is important to him. As Lara tries to cope with his disappearance, she learns that Todd was not the first man to disappear in the same strange way, on the same day thirty years ago. And who also had a connection to the women of Lara's family.

This was an ok story. Lara travels to France to track down the connection between her family and the secret circus of the demon prince Althacazur. Althacazur didn't seem very demonic though. Also, the ending was rather flat and disappointing.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

The Man Who Died Twice

 

By Richard Osman

They call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. They are a group of four retirees in Britain who have a knack for solving mysteries. Now they have some new mysteries to investigate. First, there is the letter from a man decades dead. Next, the mystery of who mugged and beat Ibrahim, one of the murder club members, putting him in the hospital. Linked to the dead man's letter, there is the question of 20 million British pounds worth of missing diamonds. And  the gangster banker who needs those diamonds back or blood will flow. Throw in a local drug lord and someone is going to end up dead. Or many someones.

I enjoyed this book although I did find the plot got a too convoluted for me. The characters are interesting but a bit hard to understand if you haven't read the first book, The Thursday Murder Club. The story is told with a light touch, for example, the gangster banker is less concerned about the dead bodies buried on his property than he is about his forthcoming garden party. And the drug lord (who is a woman) is constantly worried about her appearance and if she is attractive enough. These humanizing touches make the villains seem almost endearing even though they are the absolute scum of society. But they all get what the deserve in the end.

Check out the review by Kirkus Reviews.

Retief's War

 

By Keith Laumer

Retief, the super diplomat, is back again, saving a planet and its people from the ills of galactic civilization, from the greedy Groaci and the locals from themselves.

The Quopp are composed of many tribes, each tribe unique and quite different and with most tribes cheerfully dining on the members of other tribes. Quopp is a world rich in metals and the Quoppina evolved to be partially mechanical and partially organic. 

A newly discovered world, the Terrans were quick to set up an embassy on Quopp. The leader of the diplomatic mission, of which Retief is a member, is Ambassador Longspoon. Longspoon came up with the "bright" idea of turning Quopp's criminal class, the Voion tribe, into the police force. But one ambitious Voion, Ikk, gets himself appointed Prime Minister and decides he and his tribe will take over Quopp. In short order, the embassy is bombed and the members of the Terran delegation locked up. All except Retief, who slips away, determined, with the help of any of the locals he can convince to stand up to the Voion and with the help of some Terran settlers, to get to the bottom of Ikk's takeover.

Disguised as a Quoppina, Retief travels to the jungle countryside looking for allies and inspiring the local tribes into not fighting each other and instead fighting against Ikk's army of Voion. In the process, he discovers that the Groaci are involved and backing, advising and arming Ikk's troops, for their own greedy reasons.  

In addition to trying to fend off the start of a world war, Retief also has to rescue a group of women whose space ship was shot at in space and it crashed landed in the jungle. Among those women is one who, unknown to Retief, is someone he cares greatly about. But it's all just business as usual for Retief of the CDT!

This was an ok read. A lot of it is about the various conflicts and battles that Retief engineers and gets involved in. The most interesting thing is the variety of Quoppina, the intelligent beings of Quopp, who come in all sizes from tiny to gigantic and who have wheels instead of feet. Some of the Quoppina are like trucks, some are like bulldozers, some are like cargo planes and some have specialized nippers, cutters and manglers depending on their evolutionary niche in the world. 

What wasn't so interesting were the many fights and battles to wade through. I just skimmed the battle scenes. I don't care about the action, I don't need a play-by-play, I just care about the outcome. 

Still A Few Bugs In The System

 

By G.B. Trudeau

I think this was one of the first Doonesbury collections to be published back in the early 1970s. In it Mike Doonesbury is just a lad freshly launched into college life, probably still a virgin and striving to find a girl friend. 

Here we meet some of the recurring characters that featured in the strips, B.D. the jock; Mark Slackmeyer the rebel; Berne, the science nerd and Calvin, the black activist. 

Sample from the book:

For me, this was a visit back to the good old days, as I was a teen in the 1970s. I truly enjoyed revisiting that time as depicted in these strips. I probably like them better now than I did in my ignorant youth.

Dept. Of Speculation

 

By Jenny Offill

The story of a woman's search for love, getting married, having kids, getting tossed aside for someone younger but hanging on to her man in the end, probably.

It's told oddly. No names mentioned, not even her name. It's told in snippets with lots of blank spaces between the snippets. The copy I read had 177 pages but it has so many blank spaces I read it in less than two hours. The style really put me off at first and I started the book then stopped and left it sitting for several weeks. I did finally get around to it but I still didn't care for its anonymous style. It was an OK read, other than the annoying style, pretty much a typical depiction of a marriage. 

Here is a review by NPR.

Seek You : A Journey Through American Loneliness

 

By Kristen Radtke

Radtke takes a look at why people feel so isolated and lonely these days. She talks about her own struggle with loneliness and also looks at other professionals' thoughts about and studies of loneliness, including the negative effects it has on people and on society. And I also enjoyed the illustrations.

I picked this book up in the new book section of our local library. It was classified as fiction and I thought it was a graphical romance novel. OK, I was disappointed when I started to read it and bit angry at the library for misclassifying it. But I decided to keep on reading it and I quickly overcame my disappointment. It is a really worthy look at the way people are affected by loneliness and how, in the end, it just pushes us deeper and deeper into our isolation. It was interesting and surprising and I liked it. But I'm still not happy that the librarians decided it belonged in fiction. Just because it is a graphical essay? I suppose they had their reasons.

Go here for a review by NPR.

Kingdom of the Wicked

 

By Kerri Maniscalco

Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are young witches, direct descendants of a goddess. They live with their parents and grandmother who run a small, popular restaurant. That they are witches is a secret they keep from everyone because the persecution of witches still continues among the local populace. 

Emilia and Vittoria are as close as most twins are. At least that is what Emilia always believed. But when she finds Vittoria's dead body and sees that her sister's heart has been ripped out, Emilia, in her effort to track down her sister's killer, discovers that Vittoria has been performing dark, dangerous magic, magic she was using to discover who has been murdering other young female witches in the area. Emilia takes up Vittoria's quest, vowing to find her sister's killer, no matter what it takes. And to do so, she calls forth a demon prince, Wrath, who she forces to help her in her quest for justice for Vittoria. It isn't long, though, before Emilia realizes that she is not the only one who has called forth demon princes and that the gates of Hell are weakening and all Hell is about to break loose.

This was an OK read. Prince Wrath turns out to be a pretty nice fellow, devastatingly handsome, of course. And Emilia, of course, finds herself attracted to him against her better judgment. But since this is a Young Adult novel, they most the two do is exchange a few kisses and have a naked, but chaste, bath together. 

The book ends on a cliffhanger designed to keep the reader coming back for the next book in the series. But I wasn't interested enough by this book to follow up with the next one in the series.

Here is a review by Kirkus.

Judgment on Janus

 

By Andre Norton

Naill Renfro finds himself on Janus, a frontier world. He signed up to be a laborer and ended up in near slavery. But his life is about to undergo a startling change, beginning with the day he uncovered a buried alien treasure. 

He and all the new hires had been warned about these treasures, warned not to touch them and told to report any found. For those who handle the treasures fall ill of the Green Sick, a deadly fever. So frightened of this disease are the settlers, that any who fell ill are abandoned in the wilderness, presumed to die there either from the fever or eaten by predators. 

But Niall was fascinated by the beautiful glowing objects he uncovered and he couldn't keep himself from touching them. As he had been warned, he was infected and he lapsed into unconsciousness and his body was dumped into the forest. 

How long he lay there he didn't know. But when he woke up, he was a changed man, no longer even human. His body was stronger, his skin the green of growing plants, his eyes able to see in the dark, his ears large and pointed and his entire body completely hairless. And his mind was filled the thoughts of another person, Ayyar, the Lord of Ky-Kye. And he was soon to realize that he was not the only human so changed, not the only human to be converted by the Green Sick into an Iftin, the long-vanished original inhabitants of the planet Janus.

This was an interesting story, as Niall grapples with the conflicting parts of his new life, human vs alien. He no longer can be part of human society but the memories of Ayyar are not complete enough to guide him in his new life. In addition, he and the other changelings have to deal with the doom that took out those who came before, the Iftin. 

Here is a review by Patrick T. Reardon.

The Butler Did It

 

By P.G. Wodehouse

It's a tontine! 

It all begin with a gathering of New York millionaires at J.J. Bunyan house. In addition to the millionaires, also in attendance were an art expert, Mortimer Bayliss, who worked for Bunyan and Bunyan's butler, Augustus Keggs. It was the Bayliss who suggested the tontine. Each of the ten millionaires would contribute $50,000 to the pot. But instead of the last millionaire standing getting the approximately $500,000, the money would go to the millionaires' son that was the last one to get married. Of course, the sons were not to know about the tontine.

Jump forward about twenty-five years. All of the millionaires' sons except two have gotten married. One is J.J.'s son, Roscoe who is now living in England as is J.J.'s former butler, Keggs. Turns out Keggs was listening in when the tontine was formed and it also turns out Keggs is a man with rather flexible morals. He goes to Roscoe and reveals to him the facts of the tontine, expecting Roscoe will pay him well for the information. Instead all he gets from Roscoe is 50£. In revenge, Keggs fingers the wrong man, namely one Stanhope Twine, as the other man in the running for the tontine payout. Knowing Twine is an unsuccessful artist who is engaged to a friend of Keggs and that Twine is too poor to actually marry his fiancee, Keggs suggests that if Roscoe bought a piece of Twine's art for a hefty sum, about $20,000, then Twine would be able to marry his fiancee, Jane Benedick. Roscoe decides it's a good idea and spends $20,000 on Twine's sculpture.

Meanwhile, Bill Hollister, whose father was one of the tontine millionaires, is also in England, working at an art gallery. He happens to meet Twine's fiancee, Jane Benedick, and he falls in love at first sight. Jane's uncle, Lord Uffenham, is trying to sell off some of his old family paintings and is working with Bill's art gallery. Uffenham doesn't like Twine and when he discovers Bill has fallen for Jane, he bonks Bill in the head in order to make Jane realize she loves Bill too. And it works, Jane rushes to his side with bandages and gentle caresses. 

And Keggs springs his revenge on Roscoe, revealing that Roscoe wasted his money on the wrong man. Keggs also tells Bill that his dad was part of the tontine and if Roscoe marries first, Bill will get the $500,000. But if it means Bill can't marry Jane, Bill is not interested. He would rather be with Jane than with the $500,000. 

But somehow true love will triumph and Wodehouse makes all right at the end.

This is a typical later Wodehouse story of lovers overcoming complications and finding each other, and usually getting a bit of loot in the process. Same story, slightly different circumstances. Still I thought the tontine plot was pretty good and I did enjoy the story.