What Fiction are you reading this week, March 19, 2023?

[hermetic]

Bavaria

I'm reading The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown by Vaseem Khan, featuring "the most charming crime-solving duo ever to grace the pages of a book." I like cats but elephants are in a class by themselves. Wonderful.
Earlier I read An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten, a tiny, wickedly funny little book. The adventures of an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and no qualms about a little murder. A woman after my own heart.

Listening to Raging Heat by Richard Castle. Balancing her high stakes job with a complicated romance has been a challenge ever since Nikki Heat fell for a famous writer. "Now, her relationship lurches from mere complexity into sharp conflict over the most high-risk case of her career. Set against the raging force of Hurricane Sandy as it pounds New York, Heat battles an ambitious power broker, fights a platoon of urban mercenaries, and clashes with the man she loves. Detective Heat knows her job is to solve murders. She just worries that solving this one will be the death of her relationship."
Richard Castle is a pseudonym for Tom Straw. Straw published his first mystery novel, The Trigger Episode, in 2007. Subsequently, writing as Richard Castle, he authored seven more crime novels, all of which became bestsellers. He's also a TV writer and producer of many shows like Night Court and Grace Under Fire. The ghostwriter of the more current Castle books remains a true mystery.

Any mysteries in your reading this week?

Happy Spring!

[SheltieLover]

1. Just finishing Rise & Shine, Benedict Stone, Phaedra Patrick

Benedict Stone is a jeweler, whose wife has left him to focus on her painting & whose neice shows up unexpectedly from the USA. Benedict is estranged from his brother &, being that his neice seems troubled, wants to help her reconnect with her heritage. So they dig out Benedict's father's journal on gems & the fun begins. It's a light read, a bit boring at times with all the fear of everything & handwringing, but I'll polish ig off today & get on with the next tasty morsel.

Just a couple of others over the past week worth mentioning:

Love in the afternoon, Karen Hawkins - set in NC, a delightful paranormal  cozy that starts off with a bang!  Very short, 340 pgs.

The cat, the professor, & the poison, sweeney.  The first book in The Cats in Trouble cozy series.  Great!

All of the ones you've mentioned are going on my TBR list! I love elephants & the elderly lady up to no good sounds fun. Raging Heat sounds good, too.

On my TBR list this week:

Lost Lake, Sarah Addison Allen

Suspect, crais

Freefall, Crais

The 6:20 Man, Baldocci

Ty for the thread! Have a great week.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

2. The Secrets of Hartwood Hall by Katie Lumsden

She has a YT channel I follow where she discusses (mostly) Victorian literature, one of my interests. So when she published her own book, I was curious and got it for my Kindle. It's really taking me back to my '60's/'70's gothic romance reading days.

[hermetic]

5. Hot off the press

The title sounds like an old Nancy Drew story, which I loved.

But...A gripping and atmospheric debut that is at once a chilling gothic mystery and a love letter to Victorian fiction.Nobody ever goes to Hartwood Hall. Folks say it’s cursed.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

6. It does, LOL!

[Magoo48]

3. The Last Beekeeper by Julie Carrick Dalton

Damn good piece of speculative fiction.

[hermetic]

4. That one just came out

No one had seen a honeybee in the wild for twenty years.
Decades after bees were declared extinct, Elbie Severn, a greenhouse hand pollinator, sees a honeybee. A real bee. But in the fragile economic and political climate, reporting unsubstantiated bee sightings is illegal because of the hysteria they cause.

Wow, that sounds great, if not a bit scary.

[cbabe]

7. Last beekeeper on my library holds list. Thanks

for the tip.

Reporting back on No Plan B/Lee and Andrew Child.

Disappointing compared to Lee Child titles. Hard to put my finger on the problem.

Reads like half a book considering the two authors.

Lee has a way of building suspense rhythmically and attention to detail with finely drawn characters.

This title is very short and weak in those areas as if it’s a submission outline, not a complete book.

This happens a lot when original creators pass their work on (Dick Francis, Tony Hillerman).

Better to let the magic be.

[hermetic]

8. Thanks for that

Always good to get different takes on a book. IMO

[japple]

9. Based on a recommendation by Jilly_in_VA back in February,

I am reading Richard Wright's The Man Who Lived Underground. I had to kind of ease my way in as the first part is so brutal, and it doesn't look like the rest of the story will be any easier. Here's what Jilly_in_VA posted last month.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/119320501

Thanks for the thread, hermetic, and Happy Spring to you too!

[Polly Hennessey]

10. My Cozy for this week is Elaine Viets Dead-End Job mysteries, Murder Between the Covers

Back with Helen Hawthorne and the gang in Fort Lauderdale and the decidedly stuck in the past Coronado Tropic Apartments. Helen has a new job in a bookstore called Page Turners.

Am also beginning Louise Penney’s, A World of Curiosities. Going back to the familiar quaintness of Three Pines.

[hermetic]

11. A suggestion

While you are reading that wonderful Louise Penny book there will be discussions about a certain painting. It's a real painting and you should do an image search for it because seeing it really adds to the story. Enjoy.

[Polly Hennessey]

12. Now I am curious.

[yellowdogintexas]

13. I finished The War Pianist and I highly recommend it.

This week:
Postcards From Italy by Angela Fetch

Italy, 1945. ‘Where am I?’ The young man wakes, bewildered. He sees olive trees against a bright blue sky. A soft voice soothes him. ‘We saw you fall from your plane. The parachute saved you.’ He remembers nothing of his life, or the war that has torn the world apart… but where does he belong?

England, present day. Antique-shop-owner Susannah wipes away a tear as she tidies her grandmother’s belongings. Elsie’s memories are fading, and every day Susannah feels further away from her only remaining family. But everything changes when she stumbles across a yellowed postcard of a beautiful Italian stone farmhouse, tucked away in Elsie’s dressing table. A message dated from World War 2 speaks of a secret love. Could her grandmother, who never talked about the past, have fallen for someone in Italy all those years ago?

Susannah goes to Italy in search of answers and finds more than she ever imagined.

This is a dual storyline - part in WW II times and part current times. As the story progressed, I kept stopping to think through what I knew up to that point, trying to figure out all the connections among the characters.

It is a beautiful book, with such beautifully descriptive writing and great characters. I finished it in one day!!

Love In The Time of the Improvised Exploding Device. JP Pomerantz
I do not know how to describe this book. It was strange.

Can Jim uncover the real threat before it buries him?
Jim's consumed by the death of his family.
Not the most likely candidate to open an overseas branch of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He'd prefer spreadsheets and silence, sitting in an office by himself for hours on end. Why would he be top pick for the job? And why is Afghanistan about to become the largest pharmaceutical exporter in the world? Women’s militias. Covert mining operations. Rats. Biomedical espionage. Love. Intrigue. Gastric inhibitory polypeptide. Murder

This poor guy really gets put through the mill. There are a few funny moments, and it is definitely absurd!

Wrath of the Gods: A James Acton thriller (#18 of 37)
A THOUSAND YEARS OF HISTORY ARE ABOUT TO BE REWRITTEN!

A strange people land on the shores of the Mayan Empire, triggering a battle for the very survival of a civilization already in upheaval from a punishing drought, the fight falling to a young chieftain left to face what he believes is the wrath of gods angered by a loss of faith.

A thousand years later, Archaeology Professors James Acton and Laura Palmer are invited to an incredible discovery that reveals the truth of what happened in those fateful days 400 years before Columbus. Yet before they can fully explore this amazing find, they are thrust into the middle of the Mexican drug war, Acton and Interpol Agent Hugh Reading taken hostage, leaving it up to Laura to save them

I am a big fan of this series! The author continually finds new and intriguing ways for Acton and his wife to get in trouble, and get out of it with the help of Delta Force, the CIA and sometimes Interpol. Not once have I felt he has jumped the shark with these characters.

[yellowdogintexas]

14. Currently: Verses for the Deadby Preston & Child (Pendergast)

FBI Agent Pendergast reluctantly teams up with a new partner to investigate a rash of Miami Beach murders . . . only to uncover a deadly conspiracy that spans decades.

After an overhaul of leadership at the FBI's New York field office, A. X. L. Pendergast is abruptly forced to accept an unthinkable condition of continued employment: the famously rogue agent must now work with a partner.

Pendergast and his new colleague, junior agent Coldmoon, are assigned to investigate a rash of killings in Miami Beach, where a bloodthirsty psychopath is cutting out the hearts of his victims and leaving them with cryptic handwritten letters at local gravestones. The graves are unconnected save in one bizarre way: all belong to women who committed suicide.

But the seeming lack of connection between the old suicides and the new murders is soon the least of Pendergast's worries. Because as he digs deeper, he realizes the brutal new crimes may be just the tip of the iceberg: a conspiracy of death that reaches back decades.

I am about half finished and it is keeping me on the edge of my seat. Preston & Child sure do know how to tell a story!

[yellowdogintexas]

15. Baby Ganesh!! I love that little elephant.

I also love Vasheem Khan's books in general.

I think it's time for something light and I have several of the Baby Ganesh books tucked away for just this purpose.

Khan has written some much more serious detective novels (the police procedural kind) which are excellent. The Malabar House series is set in the Partition Period; the main character is the first female detective in India. She is very smart and tough; she has to fight for everything every step of the way.

There are 3 books in the series so far. Midnight at Malabar House is the first one. The Dying Day is #2 and The Lost Man of Bombay is #3. You can read them out of order but I think reading in order gives a deeper knowledge of the characters, and these are very complex and interesting people. Actually, Bombay itself is essentially a character, and Khan does a great job of bringing the atmosphere of the city into the story