What Fiction are you reading this week, September 8, 2024?

[hermetic]

I'm reading The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman, number 3 in the Thursday Murder Club series. The club investigates a reported murder with no body and no answers. A story filled with the "cleverness, intrigue, and irresistible charm" we're coming to expect from this series. Movie coming soon with Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley. Looking forward to that.

Listening to Chaos by Patricia Cornwell, the 24th Kay Scarpetta novel from 2016. A very intriguing tale of mysterious phone calls and shocking murders.

What books are in your reading room this week?

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I almost said, "I'm reading MSM headlines". I've really been too busy to start a new book.

[hermetic]

3. I hear ya

There's a lot of that going around.

[birdographer]

2. Crooked River by Preston & Child

Good story!

[brer cat]

5. I enjoy Preston and Child. I don't think I have read this one, so

it will go on my list for my next visit to the library.

[hermetic]

6. Yeah,

Agent Pendergast is faced with the most inexplicable challenge of his career when several shoe-clad severed feet are found floating in the Gulf of Mexico.

[brer cat]

9. Aah, I have read that one, just didn't recognize the title.

Thanks for adding that blurb.

[brer cat]

4. Steven White, Compound Fractures.

I discovered this author by chance several months ago and have been reading one of his books every few weeks. He is a psychologist with a complicated family life and a detective friend who commits a murder which involves the psychologist. It's an interesting read, but I have read them out of order which I don't recommend.

[hermetic]

7. Looks like that one

Is the very last in the series of 20. The first, from 1991, is Privileged Information, for anyone who might want to check out this highly acclaimed psychological thriller series.

[mentalsolstice]

8. Just finished a really good one

The Consequence of Anna by Kate Birkin and Mark Bornz. It was long, but well worth it. It takes place on the southeast coast of Australia. A cautionary tale of bad choices made with good intentions.

Now I’m reading something a bit lighter, About a Mum by L.M. Barrett.

Thanks for the thread!

[hermetic]

10. Interesting

The Consequence of Anna: Pulitzer Prize 2024 Nominee. inspired by a true story of a woman with undiagnosed mental illness.

[cbabe]

11. Child Zero/Chris Holm

Antibiotics fail worldwide due to overuse.

Millions die from disease and paper cuts.

First published in 2022, mid COVID.

The child is a young immigrant with healing power due to genetic fluke micro biome.

Corrupt politicians and cops want the kid. Corporations want to exploit the kid for profit. Good guys try to keep him safe.

Pretty good page turner but kinda shallow. What I call ‘video game’ books. Every time a situation seems to resolve something even more dire happens and action hero explodes into action.

Easy afternoon read.

[Jilly_in_VA]

12. Just finished two Kelsey Kingsley books

The Spider and The Storm and Saving Rain, which are interconnected, as most of her books are. This seems to happen to me every time time I read one of them---I have to read the connected one. These two are connected by the two sisters, but are actually about the men who fall in love with them. Yes, they are romances, but exceptionally good ones. All of hers are. Her protagonists have very real problems, some physical, some psychological, and don't always quite overcome them, but learn to live with them. Kelsey herself is legally blind, which I guess gives her an insight into learning to live with a disability.

Don't know what I'm reading next. We're in the midst of getting ready for our biggest gem show of the year and I'm a little crazy at the moment.

[hermetic]

14. Well, good luck

And have fun. I love gem shows. I have a large rock collection.

[Bayard]

13. Reading two books currently

"Condor's Fury," by Clive Cussler. I had just started it when I got a new shipment of books, including, "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse," by Peter Matthiessen. I picked it up, and can't put it down. Not fiction, but you wish it was.

I missed last week's thread--internet service was down for several days. I went through major withdrawal!

[hermetic]

16. Bummer, the internet down for so long

I can't even imagine...

Your book, “indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent," The Story of Leonard Peltier.

[Jilly_in_VA]

18. I think I read that some time back

It was very good but it pissed me off. Don't get me started on that, though....

[The King of Prussia]

15. When the Needle Drops by Colin MacIntyre

Author AKA "The Mull Historical Society." It's very good. Next up is "The Dark Wives" by Ann Cleeves. The latest Vera novel. We went to the book launch last week.

[cbabe]

17. Dark Wives on my library hold list. Looking forward to it.

[hermetic]

19. I'll bet that was fun

And the new Vera story sounds quite interesting. The "stunning eleventh book" of the series. I look forward to reading it. Thanks.

[rsdsharp]

20. I just started Death of Kings, number 6 in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Tales.

They are good, I enjoy them, but after I finish this I still have more than half the series to go!

[Number9Dream]

24. I've read them all and they're all very good.

[japple]

21. I've been reading an interview with Attica Locke in Book Page magazine and

decided to check out one the Hwy 59 series books, Bluebird, Bluebird. Having traveled up and down that highway myself on trips to Texas, I am compelled to at least read one book in the series.

When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules -- a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.

When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders -- a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman -- have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes -- and save himself in the process -- before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. From a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV show Empire, Bluebird, Bluebird is a rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas.

Thank you for the weekly thread, hermetic. Have a great week.

[hermetic]

22. Ooooh,

that sounds really good!

Thanks. Same to you.

[Number9Dream]

23. A short way into "The Situation Room" by George Stephanopoulos

I know it's not fiction, but it's what I'm reading. So far, excellent.

[hermetic]

25. Wow, that just came out

in May. It's good to know history and that sounds fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

[Ponietz]

26. Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante

Foolish people doing foolish things. Too far in, now, to put it down.

Elsa Morante is one of the great writers of the twentieth century—Natalia Ginzburg said she was the writer of her own generation that she admired most—and yet her work remains little known in the United States. Morante’s celebrated first novel, Lies and Sorcery, written during the war, when Morante, half-Jewish, was living in hiding, and published in 1948, is a sprawling 700-page novel in the grand tradition of Stendhal, Tolstoy, and Proust, spanning the lives of three generations of wildly eccentric women. Set in Sicily, the story is told by Elisa, who, after the sudden death of her parents, was adopted at a young age by a wealthy “fallen woman.” Over the fifteen years that she has lived with her “protectress,” Elisa has retreated into an imaginary world populated by relatives and ancestors. Beginning with the death of Elisa’s guardian, Lies and Sorcery recounts this young woman’s attempt to reclaim reality by uncovering the dark details of her family’s tortured and dramatic history. The reader is drawn into a tale, sweeping in scope, of family secrets, of intrigue and treachery, that is also an exploration of political and social injustice. Throughout, Morante’s elegant and elaborate prose as well as her drive to get at the heart of her characters’ complex motivations and relationships and their all-too self-destructive behavior hold us spellbound.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62001844-lies-and-sorcery

[KC19]

27. All the Colors of the Dark

By Chris Whitaker

[rogerashton]

28. The Off Season

by Coleen Thompson. The first of hers I've read -- supposed to be a thriller but in a mood is more like bodice-ripper. Not sure I'll finish it.

[LogDog75]

29. Farside by Ben Bova

This is my first post on Democratic Underground. I've lurked here for years and finally decided to join.

I like good scifi novels and he hasn't disappointed me yet.

Someone mentioned Crooked River by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child and I checked it's available for checkout in my library so I'll be heading there after the football game to get it. I've read all the Agent Pendergast novels and I'm looking forward to this one.

[Number9Dream]

32. Welcome to DU

[BOSSHOG]

30. A Walk Amongst the Tombstones by Lawrence Block - 1992

A former cop with a substance abuse problem goes to AA Meetings is dating a prostitute still on the job and is hired by a drug dealer to solve his wife’s murder. The dealer doesn’t want to mess with the police because he himself is a criminal.

Bad guy deviants doing yucky things to women. I’m not finished yet. With the Book.

1992. Lots of use of pay phones. Refreshing that not everyone is connected.

[yellowdogintexas]

31. The second book in the Music City Murders series "Torch Town Boogie" by Stephen Womack

TORCH TOWN BOOGIE (Shamus Award Nominee)
Harry James Denton is looking for another case—and he gets one when the magnificent mansion across the street from his apartment is consumed in a suspicious fire. The blaze has all the scorch marks of the East Nashville Arsonist, a phantom firebug whose burning desire seems to be driving gentrifiers out of Harry's funky, rundown neighborhood. This time, though, the modus operandi includes murder.

This has been an enjoyable series for me, especially since the author takes us to a number of my old haunts from my Nashville days.