Heard about this one on NPR and couldn’t resist: Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero SUMMER 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon’s Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster—another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion.… Read more
Wow, was I excited to get this one! Urban Enemies: Villains have all the fun—everyone knows that—and this anthology takes you on a wild ride through the dark side! The top villains from seventeen urban fantasy series get their own stories—including the baddies of New York Times bestselling authors Jim Butcher, Kevin Hearne, Kelley Armstrong, Seanan McGuire, and Jonathan Maberry. For… Read more
The blurb on the front of the book says it all: A contract killer, a detective, and a transgender sex worker: an unlikely team fighting crime and corruption in contemporary Athens. Athenian Blues by Pol Koutsakis is kind of a buddy story – three good friends, solving a murder. One, Drag, is a cop – a brusque homicide detective who is… Read more
“The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.” Life, the Universe and Everything Douglas Adams Read more
I saw a documentary a few years ago called The Imposter. In it, French con-man Frédéric Bourdin impersonates a boy from Texas who went missing when he was 13 years old. I wondered what would make a person do something so awful – torture a family who had already been through so much. In Only Daughter by Anna Snoekstra, we get a glimpse into that… Read more
“The trial was irrevocably over; everything that could be said had been said, but he had never doubted that he would lose.” The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Stieg Larsson Read more
“It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.” City of Glass Paul Auster Read more
“This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history.” The Fellowship of the Ring J.R.R. Tolkein Read more
The Dark Side by Anthony O’Neill is possibly the most fun bit of sci-fi I’ve read in ages. I laughed a lot, cringed a little, and found a whole new set of rules to live by – The Brass Code. The Brass Code is invoked by an evil, amnesiac android named Leonardo Black. Some of my favorites: Don’t take.… Read more
“Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the corn flake and peanut butter, not to mention caramel-cereal coffee, Bromose, Nuttolene and some seventy-five other gastrically correct foods, paused to level his gaze on the heavyset woman in the front row.” The Road to Wellville T. Coraghessan Boyle Read more