What Fiction are you reading this week, July 17, 2022?

[hermetic]

For these scorching days...

Stay cool

I'm reading Witch Hunt by Ian Rankin, "a formidable presence in author Ian Rankin's precision-tooled plots." This is not a Rebus mystery but a high level Scotland Yard/CIA investigation into an unusual terrorist. It was first published in '93 under the pseudonym "Jack Harvey," and is the first novel Rankin wrote under this name.

Listening to Diablo Mesa, the latest from Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. A wealthy and eccentric billionaire and founder of Icarus Space Systems, approaches the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute with a hefty donation and a proposal for an excavation. Hoping to bring welcome publicity to the privatized space travel industry, he wants to finance a careful, scientific archaeological excavation of the 1947 Roswell Incident site. I got this on CD from my library and I'm enjoying how it resembles certain people we know without adding to my despair over other current events.

What books are you enjoying this week?

[Bayard]

1. Devoted, by Dean Koontz

Its an older book, but I missed it previously. I love his Golden Retriever characters!

[hermetic]

2. Oh neat,

Fiction database says it's only about 2 yrs old, though maybe it's a rerelease. Sounds great, though. Love Koontz and stories where animals are heroes.

[bif]

3. "Swan Song" by Lisa Alther

A good read.

[hermetic]

7. Sounds like it

"A new novel, funny, wise, moving, true, as only Lisa Alther can write ("she had me laughing at 4 in the morning" --Doris Lessing), set on a cruise ship, about a the high-wire madcappery of cruise ship life.."

[Diamond_Dog]

4. Lightning Strike

by William Kent Krueger

One of my favorite authors. I’ve read everything he’s written except one or two of his books.

[hermetic]

6. That sounds quite good.

Lots of 5-star reviews. "In this masterful story of a young man and a Minnesota town on the cusp of change, beloved novelist William Kent Krueger shows that some mysteries can be solved even as others surpass our understanding."

[Diamond_Dog]

10. I love your meme about reading, hermetic

That’s also my philosophy! 👍

[Easterncedar]

5. Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing

It’s about her parents, and a curious mix of fiction and biography. WWI devastated their lives, and the first half of the book is a sweet English idyll imagining their lives as if the war had never happened. The rest is the tragic truth. A very powerful anti war story. Her brother survived WWII, but barely, so the book spans most of the last century. It came out in 2008.

[hermetic]

8. Sounds pretty intense...

"Here I still am," says Doris Lessing, "trying to get out from under that monstrous legacy, trying to get free." Triumphantly, with the publication of Alfred and Emily, she has done just that.

[Easterncedar]

19. It was riveting

A lot of sweetness in the first half, a lot of wisdom all the way.

I was surprised to read her list of favorite childhood books and see how many were also mine. But then, I was reading my parents’ books to a great extent, and loved them. Girl of the Limberlost, Laddie, The Secret Garden, Kim, Lobo, a Wolf. She was reading them in Rhodesia while my parents, and I, 30 years later, were reading them in western New York.

[madamesilverspurs]

9. "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates", Tom Robbins

Just started. If it's anything like his other books, which are nothing like each other, it should be uniquely entertaining.


.

[bahboo]

14. great book....

and yep...uniquely entertaining...

[hermetic]

15. Oh yeah

His books are SO entertaining. I've read all of them.

[SheltieLover]

11. Reread Diane Kelly's "Paw & Order" series. Now working through Tara Holliday again.

[hermetic]

18. Paw and Orders are fun

Hope you are doing well. Take care.

[SheltieLover]

24. Yes, they are!

Thx. Hope you are well also.

[TexLaProgressive]

12. 2 hours left on Black Sun Rising by C. Friedman

Still reading the short stories in Afro-Bougie Blues and will read A Cast of Corbin’s by Mercedes Lackey and Josepha Sherman.

[hermetic]

16. You're sure getting in a lot of reading

Good for you. Pretty hot where you are? 100 degrees here every day now. Yowza.

And wow, Ms. Lackey has 226 titles on her author list!

Stay cool.

[TexLaProgressive]

23. We're liking 100 better than 114 that was the worst.

[Number9Dream]

13. Finished "Dead Silence" by S.A. Barnes

"Titanic meets The Shining in S.A. Barnes’ Dead Silence, a SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury space cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn't yet ended." I had not read anything by this author, but it sounded creepy so I gave it a try, not expecting too much. I expected one of those let the reader figure out his or her own ending. Instead, it was unexpectedly good, and scary, and had a good ending. Ms. Barnes calling out futuristic corporate greed appealed to me (these days).

[hermetic]

17. Oooh, that sounds really good.

I could use a little space horror on my reading list. Thanks!

[yellowdogintexas]

20. Still hanging out with the Deschanels in New Orleans

I just finished "1975" the next book in "The Seven" series and am starting "1976"; still loving these books and this author.

It took a significant amount of digging but I finally found the publisher's notes on this book:
1976. New Orleans. The Deschanel siblings are parents themselves now, and they must leave their own childhoods behind forever.

Charles, the playboy, is torn between love for his son and heir, and the prospect of having children with a woman who is far more welcoming and loving than his wife. Augustus, the fixer, now a widower, loses himself in the one thing that still gives his life meaning: Anasofiya. Colleen, the adherent, is married to the love of her life, and mother to a new daughter, but faces a new challenge as she is asked to step into the shoes of the family matriarch. Evangeline, the genius, falls nicely into her new world in Cambridge, but must soon confront the same fears she’d hoped to escape by leaving home. Maureen, the haunted, has her life turned upside down by a most unlikely connection.

Elizabeth, the anguished, prepares for adulthood by pouring herself into being a caretaker for her brother and niece, carefully avoiding her own future that she’s seen clearly, and horribly, so many times.

As the family progresses through the seventies, they’ll discover the power of secrets, lies, and a fate they cannot escape, no matter how wealthy or powerful they are.

[yellowdogintexas]

21. Also reading "Stone Cribs" a Smokey Dalton novel

I always have a different book on my purse Kindle because often I can't pull the one from my other Kindle.

This one is so timely that I jumped right into it; sometimes books sit on my Kindle for a long time before I get into them

Anyway, here are the publisher's notes

Smokey Dalton takes on the dangerous world of back-street abortionists in pre-Roe Chicago.

After attending a charity fundraiser, private investigator Smokey Dalton and his powerful girlfriend discover a critically injured woman in his neighbor’s apartment, and his neighbor missing. Smokey gets the woman to a nearby hospital which proves to be a mistake: the doctor won’t treat the dying woman until she tells him what happened to her. Smokey works to save the woman and find his neighbor, but everything he does makes the situation worse.

Smokey has entered a secret part of America—the arcane rules of a hospital trying to follow the law as well as save lives. None of it makes sense, and all of it threatens everything Smokey believes in.

Everything is happening in 1969.

“Without the slightest hint of preaching, Nelscott brilliantly illuminates the ugliness of that era-which defines Smokey’s world but does not destroy him. Because of Nelscott’s strong hand, it also does not overwhelm the drama of this remarkable story. “
I am in the middle of this right now; it is a good read. Smokey Dalton is a very interesting character and now I want to read the whole series. This is book 4
can be read as a standalone.

[hermetic]

22. Wow, some seriously good offerings

From both posts. Thanks, as always.

[Jilly_in_VA]

25. Just finished

Smoke in the Wind, by Philip Booker, which was a good mystery story, well conceived but rather poorly executed and full of the kind of editing errors that drive one nuts. In his afterword he said he passed it on to a copy editor, but she did a rather sloppy job, IMNSHO.

Now reading Nanny on my other iPad, and the name of the author escapers me at the moment. I could go look but it's upstairs and I'm too lazy (I'm taking a break from cleaning the kitchen). It's quite a good story of the romantic fiction type, beginning with a young middle-class woman in late Victorian times who is forced to go into service because her father has run off with a neighbor and someone has to support the mother and young sister. She begins as a between-stairs maid (a "tweeny&quot but through a series of circumstances has just become the nanny to the young children of the house, and that's as far as I've gotten. Quite good so far, good escapist lit and well written.

[hermetic]

26. Perhaps later you will fill us in

There are like 20-40 books called THE NANNY so searching wasn't much help for me. If this turns out to be a really good read, though, perhaps add the author so people here who might want to read it can look for it later.
We are always on the lookout here for something new to read and enjoy.

[question everything]

27. Peaches and Schemes by Anna Gerard

The third and, so far, the last of the Georgia B&B series. The first was Peach Clobbered and the second Peachy Scream.

Easy read, especially for these hot days. Takes place in a tourist town in Georgia. And, yes, there are a murders.

And I enjoyed the occasional “woof” in the sentences, coming from Matilda, (Mattie) the Australian shepherd, playing both a comforting and an attacking roles.

[hermetic]

30. These sound like fun

I hope fellow reader Sheltie Lover sees your post as she is always on the lookout for new cozies to read.

[hermetic]

29. Hi! Welcome to DU.

And to the Fiction Group. Always happy to have new readers.

I am going to guess that the book you like is the one written by Kiki Hamilton and is Book Four of THE FAERIE RING series. There are at least 4 other books with the same title so I couldn't really say for sure. When you recommend a book it's always a good idea to mention the author's name because there are no rules against books having the same titles.