January 2026 Reading

It is always good to start the year with books you enjoy and so in December I decided to save for January a number of books that I wanted to read. It worked. I started the year off on a good reading foot.  

I finished my read of the 2025 Booker Prize short listed novels. I read a book of poetry that I enjoyed (which was a relief after not finding enjoyable poetry last year). Surprisingly I also read three nonfiction books this month, all memoirs. That puts me half way to my goal of reading 6 nonfiction books this year. 

I also carried through on my resolution to write more, individually, about books I read. I didn't do a "Short Take" for each of the books I read but I have provided a link for where I did.  

These are the books I finished in January. 

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovitz

The last of the 2025 Booker short listed books that I read, I enjoyed this one.  After learning of his wife's affair Tom Layward makes a decision. He will leave her but only after their youngest child leaves for college. Years later the time has come. Tom considers his options as he drives his daughter to college in Pittsburgh. Once in Pittsburgh he decides to continue the drive cross country to Los Angeles to see his son, stopping along the way to visit old friends. He is in ill health, suffering from what his doctor has said was "long COVID". Told in the first person, we are in Tom's head the entire novel. This is a character driven novel that focuses mostly on the one character.  My Short Take is here. Recommended.

My Beloved: A Mitford Novel by Jan Karon

Yes, yes, yes. Jan Karon's Mitford series is kind of hokey but that's ok. Sometimes in dark times you need to read the heartwarming hokey books. How great that she published her 15th Mitford book now. This one takes place at Christmas time and I read it during the 12 days of Christmas. My Short Take is here. Recommended only if you have read and are a fan of the other Mitford novels. 

All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley

A memoir of loss, grief, joy and finding calmness through surrounding yourself with beauty. In his twenties Patrick Bringley quit his job at the New Yorker after his brother died and took a job as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he worked for ten years. This memoir is a love letter to the Met but also a story of how he dealt with his grief by surrounding himself with beauty and stillness.  Another book to read during hard times. My Short Take is here. Highly recommended.

The Snow Lies Deep by Paula Munier

The latest in Paula Munier's Mercy Carr mystery series, this one takes place at Christmas time and where better to celebrate Christmas than in Vermont's Green Mountains? But someone is killing Santas, which puts a crimp in the local holiday festival. Former Army MP Mercy and her husband, game warden Troy Warner, just want to celebrate their daughter Felicity's first Christmas in peace. Instead they are called on to help solve the mystery with their dogs Elvis, a retired bomb sniffing Malinois, and Susie Bear, a search and rescue Newfoundland. In addition, they have to deal with both sets of grandparents who have their own ideas about how to celebrate the holidays. I really like this series because the author clearly understands dogs and the dogs are integral to solving the mysteries. But the mysteries are also usually good and Munier does a good job developing her characters. And you can't beat the beautiful location. This one had a fairly convoluted plot but it all came together at the end. You can read this as a stand alone mystery but as always I recommend you start at the beginning of the series.

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

I know that some people dislike when an Ian McEwan novel has a twist that reminds the reader that s/he is reading fiction. But I don't mind it. This novel is set in a dystopian future in the year 2119, and the humanities are still under siege at the university level. Thomas Metcalfe specializes in the literature of the early years of the 21st century, specifically  the poetry of the poet Francis Bundy (a sort of lesser Seamus Heaney). Bundy is reputed to have written a long poem for his wife Vivien and given the only copy to her. Thomas is determined to find it even though the geography of the world has changed immensely. Through the archive of emails, text messages and social media posts, he traces Vivien's days, especially the date of her birthday when the poem was given to her, and draws what conclusions he can. Through this research he creates a narrative that seems to fit the facts. But does it?  There are always things about people that remain unknown because neither the person nor anyone in the person's life ever refers to it in any kind of writing. The novel is divided into two parts:  the search and Vivien's actual story. Truthfully, I thought the second part, the shorter of the two, dragged a bit. Too much narrative, not enough action. But on the whole I enjoyed this novel.  My Short Take is here.  Recommended with reservations.

Doggerel by Reginald Dwayne Betts

After a disappointing year with poetry in 2025 I was glad to start off 2026 with a collection I enjoyed. I admit I would have understood it better if I had read a bit of the poet's biography before finishing the collection. When he was 16, Betts, otherwise an honors student, committed armed carjacking and was sentenced to 9 years in prison as an adult. While in prison he began to write poetry and after his release and receiving his GED he went to graduate school and received a number of degrees. It would have been very helpful to have known that in prison he received the name Shahid because through the collection he refers to Shahid. This collection examines his life both in prison and after prison using primarily (but not exclusively) his relationship with dogs. Sometimes as a person puts their lives together only their dog is a witness. Sometimes their dog reminds them to live in the here and now. Sometimes other people's dogs allow connection with other humans. This is not necessarily a light hearted collection and, as with most modern poetry, it is very personal and therefore not always understandable to a third person (my major complaint about modern poetry). It is a tribute to man's best friend although in the acknowledgements he thanks "Fiesty, the cat, a rescue, that circles my legs whenever I sit near her, & purrs that doggerel is kind of incomplete without a cat." Recommended.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

This memoir has been on my TBR list since it was released more than 10 years ago. Since there is a feature film of the book being released this month it seemed to be the right time to pick it up. Helen Macdonald tries to deal with her grief over the sudden death of her father by retreating from the world and raising and training a goshawk she names Mabel. Helen was an experienced falconer but goshawks are supposed to be difficult to train. Over the first year with Mabel she learns as much about herself as she learns about Mabel. The memoir is interspersed with memories of her father (who seemed to have been a lovely man). She also becomes somewhat obsessed with a memoir by T.H. White in which he describes how he (badly) tried to train a goshawk. Although filled with information about birds of prey and the woods around Cambridge, this actually reads more like a novel than the usual memoir. Macdonald seamlessly integrates facts into her narrative so that it doesn't feel like a digression but an essential part of the narrative. My Short Take is here. Highly recommended.

Honey, Baby, Mine by Laura Dern and Diane Ladd

I listened to this joint memoir on audiobook and I'm really glad I did. The book arose out of a series of walks that Laura Dern forced her mother to do when her mother was diagnosed with a life threatening illness. The doctor said that increasing her lung capacity by walking would be good for Diane. To distract her mom during the walks Laura asked her questions. That led to Diane asking Laura questions. The book is a transcript of the conversations (clearly also edited) but in the audiobook each of Laura and Diane read their own "parts" and, being actresses, that makes the whole book sound like it is taking place in real time. There is a lot of interesting information about working in Hollywood but the personal parts (especially when they disagree over their memories) are equally entertaining.  My Short Take is here. Recommended.

The Last Children of Mill Creek by Vivian Gibson

Six months after she retired, Vivian Gibson joined a creative writing class and began writing about her childhood. That turned into this memoir of her life growing up as a Black child in the 1950's in segregated St. Louis. Vivian lived in a segregated area called the Mill Creek Valley, a section of the city containing over 5,000 buildings and inhabited by 20,000 citizens, 95% of them black. My book group picked it for next month's discussion and the Missouri History Museum currently has an exhibit called Mill Creek: Black Metropolis which runs until July 12.  The Mill Creek Valley neighborhood was demolished in 1959 for "urban renewal". Almost no trace of it remains today.  Vivian remembers the community that lived there and the details of her life. This book was not only informative but nostalgic for me. Even though Vivian is black and I am white and I did not grow up in Mill Creek I remember many of the things she remembers including the Charlotte Peters show on television that my mom watched at noon every day, going to Soulard Market for fresh fruit and vegetables, making cornbread (with my grandma) and being allowed to play in other kids' backyards but being told not to go in their houses. I did not, however, grow up in a house infested with rats. I enjoyed this book. I'm not sure it would have the same effect on someone who wasn't from St. Louis. 

Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville

This was a month long read-along with my usual BlueSky reading group. I think most of the people in the group (at least the ones that were posting the most often) had read it before but I hadn't. You might expect more "action" in a book about a whaling ship searching for and trying to kill the Great White Whale but most of the book is more like a treatise on whales, whaling ships and whalers. Fortunately Melville writes with humor, and his descriptions are vivid and every time I would think that I was bored out of my mind he would pop in with some quip that made me laugh. Also, the sections on whales and whaling included most of the "deep thoughts" that Melville had (or seemed to have). While I'm glad I read this book (finally) and I appreciated the writing, it was my least favorite book that I read this month. I don't need a novel to be plot-heavy (this isn't) but I do like my novels to be character-driven and through most of this novel (really, until the last part) it isn't. Even though the plot (such as it is) is driven by Ahab's obsessive search for the White Whale, Ahab himself isn't really much in the novel until toward the end. I will say that Melville created a good sense of place - being on a whaleship hunting for and processing whales - which is usually a plus for me but I found that I really wasn't that interested in whaling ships and whales.  My Short Take is here.

In some ways it is a shame I chose to read "Moby Dick" and "H is for Hawk" in the same month. "H is for Hawk" could be read as a treatise on hawks and hawking but Macdonald's digressions into hawks and hawking were integrated into the greater narrative and were necessary for her character arc (even though it was a memoir and not a novel). On the other hand Melville, who was ostensibly writing a novel, did not integrate his information about whales and whaling into his narrative but put them into (many) separate chapters. This was, I think, partly because of the age in which the novel was written but also the digressions may have been his way of showing how time slowly passed on a whaling ship where you might have nothing to do but reflect on life. Either way, I have to say that in my opinion those sections went on much too long.  

My 2025 Reading Wrap Up

It's that time of year again. Time to count up the books I read in 2025 and try to make some sense of my reading year. These tend to be long posts, maybe too long for a reader. But part of the reason I do these is to help myself remember each year.

Except for specific categories (explained below) I do not set myself a yearly goal of a total number of books to read, I just look for books that I think I will enjoy or that I feel I should read at some time in my life. 

Goals and Statistics

Each of the past couple of years, since I retired, I set a goal to read more non-fiction and poetry. I arbitrarily set a goal for each of 6 books. That's a book every two months which seemed manageable. I also have had the goal to read more classic novels but I didn't set any particular number for myself. I, in general, wanted to re-visit some favorite books by re-reading them but didn't have any particular list. Finally, I wanted to reduce the number of mysteries that I read as a percentage of all the fiction I read. But mysteries are my comfort read and 2025 was a year in which I needed a whole lot of comfort reads! So I decided early in the year to ignore that goal.  

This year I read a total of 130 books which is more than my total of 100 books in 2024 and my total of 73 books in 2023. Of those, six (6) were nonfiction (4.6%), four (4) were poetry (3%) and the remainder was fiction (92.4%). Of the fiction I read, 72 books were mysteries (60%) which is much higher than the 42% I read in 2024. Within the category of fiction, 54 books (45%) were historical (either historical mysteries or historical fiction). My fiction also included 7 classics (5.8%). I appear to have only re-read one book this year.  

87 of the books (67%) were books I borrowed from a library. According to my libraries I saved $2,231.80 this year by using their libraries. We should all support public libraries!

I have already posted a list of my favorite books of 2025 so I won't repeat myself here, I encourage you to read that post separately. In putting together this post I did not worry about including every book I read. If I didn't really enjoy a book and didn't feel it was a book that would interest many people I omitted it from this post. (Admittedly there were only a few books that fell into this category.) I have linked each book to the post in which I originally wrote about it. 

Poetry

I read four books of poetry this year, which was fewer than the six I intended to read (one collection every other month). Unlike in previous years, I didn't particularly enjoy some of the poetry I chose this year and none of them really stood out to me in thinking about them at the end of the year. Water, Water by Billy Collins was how I started the year and although I usually like Collins I did not think this was one of his best collections. In March I finished Frank: Sonnets by Dianne Seuss which I found depressing. In April I read Double Negative by Vona Groarke, which contained many poems about aging which I related to. But, in the end, none of them stayed with me. In August, on vacation, I read Poems by Ann Michaels, a Canadian poet who had written a novel that I enjoyed last year. I liked her work the best of the poetry I read this year but was not blown away by it. At that point I think I just gave up for the year and didn't read any more poetry collections. 

Non-Fiction

I read six works of non-fiction this year, which met my goal for the year (surprisingly, I forgot I had read that many). In January I finished How Sondheim Can Change Your Life by Richard Schoch which I was very disappointed in. I read two books by the historian Michael John Witgen about native American history. The first, Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America, I very much enjoyed. The second, Great Lakes Creoles: A French Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, was almost as interesting. However, unless you are really into the history of Great Lakes Indian tribes you probably wouldn't rush out to get either of them. It's Easier Than You Think was recommended on a podcast I listen to. It turned out to be, basically, a beginner book about Buddhism and while I enjoyed it I didn't think it was really worth my time. 

The highlight of my year in non-fiction was Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Air we Breathe by Carl Zimmer, which made my list of favorites. My most unexpected find was Parallel Lives: A Love Story from a Lost Continent by Iain Pears, the unlikely story of how two art historians met, fell in love and married despite one of them being in the Soviet Union. I truly enjoyed reading about them. 

Mysteries

I read 72 mysteries this year which was 55% of my total reads and 60% of my fiction reads. As I said above, this was a year in which I needed a lot of comfort reads. 

Mystery Series (New to me)

I love a good mystery series so, first, let's talk about a few new (to me) mystery series that I discovered this year. The best thing about this annus horribilis was that it made me search out many new authors in search of a new mystery series to distract me. Fortunately most are by authors who are still writing, so we will hopefully get more books in these series in the future. 

A friend on BlueSky recommended the Rowland Sinclair historical mystery series by Sulari Gentill and I raced through all the available books, truly enjoying them. Set (mostly) in Australia in the years before WWII, Rowland is a wealthy artistic type with non-wealthy, very liberal, artistic friends. And, yes, they solve murder mysteries. Gentill sets her stories amongst the growth of fascism in Australia and in Germany and other countries where Rowland and his friends travel to. Sometimes the fascism part hit a little too close to home. But despite that, I enjoyed this series and hope for more books. The series begins with A Few Right Thinking Men and goes on from there for many volumes, all of which I read. 

I've enjoyed Vaseem Kahn's Baby Ganesh Agency mysteries and this year I read the most recent book published in that series, A Bad Day at the Vulture Club. I always enjoy that series which features a baby elephant called Ganesha who helps solve crimes. But I was happy to find that Kahn is now writing another series, this time a historical series set in Bombay just after Indian independence: The Persis Wadia series. The main character, Persis Wadia, is the first woman policeman in Bombay. Shunted off to the district office where they send all the losers (in her case because they don't know what to do with a woman policeman) this is sort of a Slow Horses set in India. I raced through all the books I could find in the series including the first book Midnight at the Malabar House, and hope he continues it. 

Martin Edwards, a British author, has written a series called the Lake District Mysteries set in the present time and in which the main characters are a historian and a police woman in charge of cold cases. I like the locale of these mysteries although the plots are sometimes a little too melodramatic for my taste. He also has another series and I read the first book, Gallows Court.  It was a real page turner but  ... strange.  I remember thinking I would definitely read more in the series but when it came down to it I chose the Lake District Mysteries first. Edwards is also an editor of the British Library Crime Collection Series, of which I have read a few over the years. This year I read three from that collection, two of which were books of short stories that were edited by him.  Capital Crimes: London Mysteries was a book of short stories set in London.  Short stories are never my favorite type of read, but in this case had a couple of very good ones that I enjoyed. Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries was another book of short stories edited by Edwards. I took it on vacation because each mystery occurred while the detective was on vacation. Again, I'm not really a short story reader but there were a few good ones in the collection. Finally, I read Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story by J. Jefferson Farjeon, for which Edwards wrote the forward. This was the last of the BLCC books that I inhereited from my mom and I saved it to read for Christmas. It was a story that reminded me of something a young Alfred Hitchcock would film. 

Julia Spencer-Fleming writes the Russ Van Alstyne/Claire Ferguson Series set in upstate New York. The mysteries are solved by the local chief of police and the local Episcopal Priest (who is a woman). I like the different viewpoints they bring to situations although sometimes the situations that Spencer-Fleming puts them in makes me roll my eyes. The first book is In the Bleak Midwinter which is set in the 1990's. The others followed every few years. The latest in the series, At Midnight Comes the Cry, was released in time for Christmas this year which was appropriate since it encompassed the Christmas season. 

If you had told me I would enjoy a series where a cryptozoologist solves mysteries involving mythical creatures I would have thought you were crazy. But I have enjoyed Annelise Ryan's Monster Hunter Series set in Northern Wisconsin despite the wacky premises. I read  A Death in Door County, Death in the Dark Woods and Beast of the North Woods. Despite the "monster" premise, the mysteries all have (so far) perfectly rational solutions.

A new novel I read, which is the beginning of a new series, was Rob Osler's The Case of the Missing Maid. Set in Chicago in the late 1800's the main character is a woman detective who has to prove herself. If you are familiar with the neighborhoods of Chicago, it makes it extra fun to read. The next book will be released in January. 

Another new author for me was Nev March whose novel Murder in Old Bombay won a First Crime Novel Award a few years ago. I enjoyed it despite its length but I think you might need to be interested in a lot of Indian history to get through it. It is the first in a series and I will probably get around to reading the others. 

Detective Aunty by Uzma Jalaluddin is a first time mystery by an established romance writer and was a very good start for her. Set in Canada (mainly Toronto) the main character is a Muslim widow who, in this book, is called on to prove that her daughter did not commit a murder. The process drags up issues from her past that she must come to terms with. I liked the older main character and want to read more about her.

I picked up The Shell House Detectives by Emylia Hall before I left for vacation based solely on the fact that it was set in Cornwall. The main character, Ally Bright, is a widow in her sixties (I love this new trend of having older main characters).  She joins up with a young newcomer to Cornwall to solve the mystery of a missing woman and a man who fell or was thrown from a cliff. This was a perfect summer read and I will read more in the series.  

Laura Lippman is one of my favorite mystery writers and I was excited to read her latest, Murder Takes a Vacation, which I believe is the start of a new series for her. I loved her Tess Monaghan series and the main character in this novel, Muriel Blossom, at one time worked for Tess (who has a cameo in this novel). Muriel and a friend are taking a river cruise in Europe (something I've always wanted to do, but single supplements are outrageous). Murder occurs (of course) and Muriel must solve it. You don't have to know much more than that. I found it somewhat hard to believe that Muriel was as naive about travel as she was at the beginning, but she caught on and hopefully will be a pro at it in the next book. 

Mystery Series (Continuations)

In addition to new authors, many of the series that I have been following for years had new installments issued (or I found installments that I had missed in previous years). One reason I like to recap the reading year is so I have a place to look to see what mystery series I've been reading so I can see if there are new books. 

This year I read the last two books in Lindsey Davis' Flavia Albia series set in Ancient Rome: Death on the Tiber ,which I did not care for much because I thought the pacing was off, and There Will be Bodies, which I very much enjoyed. Davis clearly does a lot of research for her novels and I have felt for a few years that the research has gotten in the way of the pacing. She seems to want to give the reader a lot of background narrative, all of which is interesting but does not move the story along. I felt that she remedied that in There Will be Bodies which takes place near Herculaneum in the years after the eruption of Vesuvius. I very much enjoyed that novel and hope she is back on track since she has always been one of my favorite mystery writers. 

Kate Atkinson put out her first Jackson Brodie mystery after five years, Death at the Sign of the Rook. I enjoyed it but wouldn't place it at the top of my list of Kate Atkinson books.

I read the Louise Penny novel The Grey Wolf  in January. The latest in her Three Pines series I had saved it to savor after the holidays but was a bit disappointed in it. Later in the year I read her follow up novel, The Black Wolf, which I liked better. In an afterword she admits that her fans wish she would go back to solving "Three Pines" mysteries and while I don't particularly care if the stories stay in Three Pines, I'm not really interested in international thrillers (which the last two books have bordered on). I'm looking for murder mysteries.  

Jane Pek published The Rivals as a follow up to her first novel. I had originally assumed she intended to write a series of mysteries featuring the cast of characters she created in her first novel in which they investigate the backgrounds of people on dating apps but she seems to have planned a trilogy with a beginning, middle and end. The plot involves a conspiracy involving AI - and reality seems to have caught up with the plot. I enjoyed this novel but I do think it helps if you've read her first novel. 

I began Stephen Spotswood's Pentecost and Parker historical series last year and this year I caught up with it. Set in post-WWII New York, Pentecost is the most famous woman detective in NYC and her associate, Parker, is a former circus performer. This year I read Murder Under Her Skin, Secrets Typed in Blood, Murder Crossed Her Mind, and  Dead in the Frame. The last two books focus on Pentecost and her mysterious past and it looks like the next book will too. 

Alison Montclair writes the Sparks and Bainbridge mystery series and I am slowly making my way through those books. Set in 1940's post-war London it involves a woman owned detective agency. I read A Rogue's Company and The Unkept Woman in March. The plots of this series always require a certain suspension of disbelief but the two main characters are so enjoyable that I don't mind. 

Anna Lee Huber writes two mystery series that I read. The Verity Kent series, set in the 1920's, is usually my favorite but the latest two books in that series have been set in Dublin during the fight for Irish independence and I haven't enjoyed them as much as the earlier novels. It was a very violent time in real life (essentially a war zone) and, perhaps because of my Irish background, I find it difficult to read about. I read The Cold Light of Day in March and then I read the latest, A Moment's Shadow, later in the year. Huber's other series is the Lady Darby series, set in pre-Victorian Britain. At first I thought these stories, while enjoyable, were a little too pat, but the series has grown on me more and more as she incorporates true historical situations into the plots. I caught up with it this year and read A Fatal Illusion in March and A Tarnished Canvass in July, both of which are based on true stories. I especially found the second one very interesting from a plot point of view.   

This year C.S. Harris published Who Will Remember, the 20th installment in the Sebastien St. Cyr series. This is one of my very favorite series and Harris always delivers. Set in the years immediately following the Napoleanic Wars, it is a period I wasn't too familiar with before I started this series and was happy to learn more about. I constantly recommend this series to everyone who will listen. You can read them of course in any order but I always recommend starting with the first in the series due to the continuing evolvement of St. Cyr's personality and life story. 

The Wrexford and Sloane mystery series is set in about the same time period as the Sebastian St. Cyr series. What differentiates it is that Andrea Penrose likes to incorporate a scientific discovery or invention that is being worked on at the time into the mystery. Murder at Somerset House involves the attempt to build what will eventually become the telegraph machine. It also goes (deeply) into the workings of the London Stock Exchange.

The Edinburgh Murders by Catriona McPherson is the second in a series set in post-WWII Edinburgh and featuring a social worker (which was a new concept at the time). In this mystery there is a dead body, boiled to death in a bath house. Very gruesome. I've enjoyed both novels in this series and hope she continues it. 

It always surprises me that I am a fan of C.J. Box's Joe Picket series, but I am.  This year I read his latest, Battle Mountain. The plot was just as eye-rolling as all of the Joe Picket plots but it still swept me along. And, as usual, in real life Joe would be dead but as usual he is saved. I believe it is the setting that really captivates me. Box really captures the beauty of the mountains. 

Apostle's Cove was the latest mystery by William Kent Krueger in his Cork O'Connor mystery series. This series is mostly set in Minnesota in the Boundary Waters region, not far from where I vacation each year and I enjoy it almost as much for its sense of place as its characters. This installment in the series has Cork looking back on the first murder he solved long ago when he was the chief of police. Did he get it wrong?

I'm a big fan of Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club mysteries and The Impossible Fortune was released this year. The gang is back together solving mysteries, this time with Joyce's daughter. The mystery is never really the point with these novels. The point is that old age doesn't mean that you can't still be living your best life. 

One of my very favorite mystery series is the Inspector Rutledge series by Charles Todd. The author is actually a pen name for a mother/son writing team. Unfortunately the mother died a few years ago and the son has been tied up in estate issues (let that be a lesson to authors - be sure to have your estate planning up to date). A Christmas Witness is the first story issued since her death and it is really a novella. I found it very disappointing. It should have been a short story, it was extremely padded to bring it to novella length. A full length novel is to be released in 2026, so we'll see if he can write alone without his mother. 

Ann Cleves writes so many excellent mysteries. When she finished with her Shetland Series I thought we had seen the end of Jimmy Perez. He was heading off to Orkney with his pregnant girlfriend/boss. But she has now picked up his story in Orkney with The Killing Stones and she is still in good form. Orkney is a place I've always wanted to visit so I loved her evocation of place in this novel. 

Back in 2023 I read the first novel of a proposed new historical mystery series set in Fiji during World War I. This year the second book, A Shipwreck in Fiji by Nilima Rao,was released. The main character is a Police Sergeant named Akal Sing, who is a Sikh from India. As an outsider we learn about Fiji through his eyes. If you read for a sense of place, you would enjoy this. The mystery was fine but the characters other than Sing could use a little more development. 

Standalone Mysteries

Surprisingly, I did not read many stand alone mysteries this year. 

The Lake House by Kate Morton was a stand-alone mystery that I had on my shelf for many years. I finally read it this year. This is a dual timeline novel in which a modern day detective on leave in Cornwall tries to solve the mystery of a missing child that occurred many years earlier. Sometimes dual timeline novels slow the pacing of the novel down, in my opinion, but Morton made it work very well and the structure didn't bother me as much as it has with other author's writings.  

I assume that Guilty by Definition by Suzie Dent is a standalone novel. The main character works for a (thinly disguised) Oxford English Dictionary and is trying to determine what happened to her sister who went missing ten years earlier. The mystery was good and the characters were well drawn. 

I intensely disliked Venetian Vespers by John Banville. Set in Venice in the late 1800's the first person narrator is a pompous ass who is also too stupid to figure out what is happening. I figured out most of the mystery very early on and didn't find the characters that interesting (mainly because we see them through the narrator's eyes). Not recommended. 

The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson is the story of Hannah Cole, a widow who operates a confectioner's shop in London in the 1700s. The business is failing because her husband's estate is tied up in probate pending the resolution of the investigation into his death by murder. But one day a stranger introduces her to "iced creams" and this new concept increases her business. Is the stranger to be trusted, however? This book has a very (VERY!) complicated plot but not as complicated as her last novel. And I did not see the end coming. I'm not even sure I should categorize this as a mystery because it isn't your usual mystery, but I think this is where it belongs. 

Fiction

Historical Fiction

My favorite kind of fiction is historical fiction (you will notice that even my favorite mystery series include a lot of historical fiction). This year I read quite a bit of historical fiction, probably because it was a way to avoid thinking about what was going on in the present day. As I said in my Favorite Books of 2025 post, I read a lot of books that I enjoyed but that did not make by favorites list, mostly because they just didn't stay with me after I put them down. I'll try to note the ones that I didn't like, and why. 

The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane is set in the southern Australia Outback in the 1800's where a family (a whole town really) is living from day-to-day trying to raise sheep and grow wheat, all of which is dependent on the weather. One day a six year old boy wanders away in a dust storm and the town is called out to find him. 

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry is set in Idaho in the 1800's. Most of the characters are Irish or Cornish immigrants. A mail order bride arrives but ends up running off with another man in town. Her jilted husband puts together a posse to find them. I didn't particularly like this novel, which was nominated for many prizes, but it had the advantage for me of being short. 

I never knew that Belfast suffered a Blitz during WWII until I read These Days by Lucy Caldwell.  There are three nights of bombings and the novel is divided into three parts, basically following the fates of one family and their domestic servants. I thought it was very good.

Radio Girls by Sarah Jane Stratford is the story of the early days of  BBC radio including the story of Hilda Matheson, the real head of "Talks" programming of BBC radio in those early days. The story is fictional, not a biography, and is told from the point of view of a fictional assistant. The BBC was one of the few places that a woman could get ahead in the job market in those days. 

The Joseph O'Connor novel, My Father's House, made my list of favorites this year and I wanted to read more novels by him. His 2020 Walter Scott Prize winning novel Shadowplay is the story of Bram Stoker before he wrote Dracula, when he managed a London theater and was the personal assistant to a famous actor. I think the only reason I did not put this on my list of favorite books of 2025 was because I liked My Father's House slightly better and didn't want to include two books by the same author. 

I very much enjoyed each of the two Robert Harris novels that I have read and I wanted to read more Harris so I picked up Precipice. This novel involved the true story of a love affair during WWI of the British Prime Minister and a much younger London socialite and the rash way that he told her about state secrets in his letters (all of which she kept but never disclosed). I very much enjoyed it. After finishing Precipice I wanted to read another Harris novel and chose Conclave, which had been made into a film last year that I had never seen. I liked this one even more that Precipice. It involves the selection of a new pope (which was a very appropriate theme this year) and is excellent. Whereas Precipice sometimes gets too much in the weeds about WWI which might lose some readers (not me), I think anyone could read and enjoy Conclave. Each of his novels that I have read takes place in a different time period with plots that are completely different. At this point I think I'm going to become a Harris completist and search out all of his novels. 

A Long Way from Home by Peter Carey was the story of a 1950's car race around the entire continent of Australia. A husband and wife team enter and take their neighbor as navigator. The novel explores relationships between men and women as well as white people and aborigines. What was disappointing to me was that it, surprisingly, didn't really have much of a sense of place.

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams was chosen by my book group to read a couple of years ago but since I was going to miss that meeting I did not read it. It sat on my shelf for two years until I picked it up this year, and I was glad I did. It is the story of Esme and her growth from childhood to womanhood, but it is also the story of the birth of the Oxford English Dictionary which was just as fascinating. 

The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry involves a child who goes missing during WWII. Her older sister, years later, is shocked to find a children's book that contains the story she made up for the missing sister years ago. Thus begins a search for the now grown child. This novel had a good premise and the author was very good at capturing the plight of children evacuated during the Blitz, but there were too many "coincidences" for my taste. 

Strangers in Time by David Baldacci was a pick by my book group that I unexpectedly liked very much. I compared it to an adult Enid Blyton book in terms of style and (a bit) in subject matter. The two main characters are teenagers living through the Blitz who are taken in by a friendly bookseller. 

Love Forms by Claire Adam is a delightful book about a woman who grew up in Trinidad and Tobbago and gave up a child for adoption after she got pregnant as a teenager. As an adult she is searching for that child she gave up 40 years earlier and remembering her life when she was young. I didn't know much about the history of those islands and I found it interesting. 

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood almost made my list of favorites this year. Set in the 1950's, Thomas is a "shanker", he scrapes for shrimp along the coast using a horse drawn cart. His life is a life of drudgery as he supports himself and his mother. He is secretly learning to play the guitar and longs to be a folk musician. He is too shy to ask out the girl he admires. Then one day a Hollywood film director comes to town looking for a location for his next film and Thomas' life begins to change.

Flashlight by Susan Choi is the story of a family. The father is Korean but was raised in Japan during WWII. He marries an American woman. One day he and his daughter take a walk along the shore. She is found unconscious, he is presumed dead by drowning. The main point of this story was a true historical event that happened in Japan after WWII. This book was a favorite of many people and while I appreciated the history in the book, I felt it was too expository even when the exposition was being shown through what happened to different characters.  

The winner of the Walter Scott prize this year was The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It is a very good novel set in the early 1960's during a famously cold winter. The story involves two couples. One husband operates a farm, the other is the town doctor. Both wives are pregnant. This is in some ways a "slice of life" novel.  Although there is a plot the real interest lies in the characters and the evocation of time and place. I think the reason it did not make my list of favorites (even though I've thought of it since I read it) was that it was set during my lifetime and that makes me feel old. But I very much recommend it.

Other Fiction

My favorite novel in 2024 was James by Percival Everett, so I decided I needed to read more books by him. The Trees is hard to describe. It starts as a murder mystery, evolves into a zombie story and is also incredibly funny. It is set in the town of Money, Mississippi which is the town where Emmett Till was lynched.  And that is the lynchpin (get it?) of the story. I almost put this novel on my list of favorite novels for the year but I didn't feel that I thought enough about it after I read it.

I enjoyed The Wedding People by Alison Espach enough that I recommended it to my book club to read and they seemed to enjoy it too. The main character, Phoebe, finds herself staying at an inn at which every other guest is part of a Wedding Party. Phoebe, who is in the midst of a deep depression, gets to know the bride-to-be (who is a likeable Bridezilla) and other guests and it helps her put her own life in perspective. This makes the novel sound serious but it is written in a fairly light manner that makes it easy to read. I hesitate to call it a beach read but you could certainly read it on a beach. 

If you are looking for a really good beach read, try Sandwich by Catherine Newman. Set literally at a beach house it is a story of three generations of a family that come together each year in the same rented house. Similar to The Fortnight in September (see below) but set in modern times, this would be especially enjoyable for you if you have been vacationing at the same rental house for many years. 

I read a couple of books this summer simply because many people were discussing them and not because their premises necessarily appealed to me. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar is a novel about Cyrus, an Iranian immigrant who is an addict and a poet who is obsessed with the idea of martyrdom. I thought this novel was very well written but I never really felt connected to the main character. Similarly, All Fours by Miranda July, did not work for me. A woman sets out on a cross country trip but basically only makes it to the suburbs of Los Angeles where she checks into a motel, redecorates the motel room and has an affair. I never related to the main character and didn't particularly care what happened to her. 

Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano is a funny book about a divorced writer who gets mistaken for a hit man. The premise is absurd but the book is funny. I would classify this as a beach read. I will be surprised if it isn't picked up to be a film on a streaming service. 

 Flesh by David Szalay was the 2025 Booker Prize winner. It didn't appeal to me although I admit that the author created very realistic dialog, albeit by an uncurious, monosyllabic man. 

Audition by Katie Kitamura was on the Booker Prize shortlist and on many people's list of favorite novels in 2025. The structure of the novel is interesting (albeit slightly confusing) but to me it read more like an exercise in writing than a fully completed novel. I never attached to any of the characters. 

Universality by Natasha Brown was on the Booker Prize longlist and so I read it. I'm not a big fan of satire (mostly because I don't usually "get" satire) and this was a satire of the present day.  It's hard to satirize the present day because the present day is so absurd all on its own. 

Classic Fiction

I probably would not have read as much Classic Fiction if it were not for the BlueSky Book Club. I should say that I use a pretty broad definition of Classic Fiction - basically anything really old that I always felt I should have read. 

The Fortnight in September by RC Sherrif was a delightful book that I discovered through someone on BlueSky who listed it as a favorite book from last year. This 1931 novel is about an ordinary British family that goes on a two week holiday to the shore as they do every year but this year they are all aware that it may be the last because the children are now grown. 

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This was a BlueSky Book Club readalong. I tired of the constant themes of pedophilia, incest and rape and did not particularly enjoy this read.  

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.  Another BlueSky Book Club readalong, this was in part a 1,000 line poem and in part the "notes" to the poem (which are really what comprises the novel). This was, to say the least, an odd book. I didn't really enjoy it but I might have enjoyed it more if I had read it in one or two sittings rather than slowly over a month.

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Yet another BlueSky Book Club readalong, this novel was a complete success for me. The writing in this book is brilliant. Highsmith made me care about what happened to Tom Ripley even though I didn't like him. 

The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges was another BlueSky Book Club readalong. The group actually chose short stores by Borges that were included in this book and others but I only made it through this book. Short stories are not my favorite type of reading and while I appreciated Borges' writing I did not particularly enjoy the stories. 

I picked up a copy of The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham last year after reading a novel that featured Maugham as a side character. Set during a cholera epidemic in China, Maugham is great at evoking a true sense of place. The main character is a woman whose husband, a doctor, finds out she is cheating on him so he takes her with him to the cholera ravaged region perhaps in the hope that she will die. Although this sounds depressing I did not find it so. It is a short, beautifully written novel. 

I'm not sure if What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies counts as a classic but I will put it here. More people need to read Robertson Davies, a Canadian author. This novel is the story of Francis Cornish, a talented artist from a wealthy Canadian family who trains to be an art restorer but his career is interrupted by WWII. The novel is a fascinating look at art restoration and asks the question "what makes great art" but in a way you won't expect. This was a re-read for me, my only re-read of the year. 

I can't remember why I picked up The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald but it ended up not being for me. It is historical fiction about a German poet I had never heard of.  It did not make me want to find his poetry. 

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton was another BlueSky Book Club readalong and I am so glad that I participated. The story is set in the late 1800's in New York. The main character, Newland Archer, is engaged to the lovely, traditional May but enamored of her more non-traditional cousin Ellen. This is really a story of how people are trapped by the manners of the day. What surprised me so much was that Wharton was so funny! This ended up being a very easy read. 

Finally, last but certainly not least, I participated in a Blue Sky Book Club year-long read of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. I chose the translation by Edith Grossman. We also tried to watch the lectures of a Yale professor about the novel that was available on YouTube (although I still have not finished that).  Many of the people who started the novel dropped out through the year but I am so pleased that I finished it. It is a true classic and surprisingly modern. Divided into two "books", I admit I enjoyed Book 1 more than Book 2. 

July and August 2025 Reading

I always combine July and August because I'm away on vacation during that time. This year July found me unable to tolerate reading almost anything except mysteries, my comfort read.  I binged two different mystery series and read a number of stand alone mysteries.  By the end of the month I was on vacation at the lake and was able to read more literary fiction.

Since I read so many books I thought I would organize them differently this month. 

MY FAVORITES OF THE BOOKS I READ IN JULY/AUGUST

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

Phoebe Stone arrives at the Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island dressed to the nines but with no luggage. Phoebe has a dark plan for herself. The hotel is fully booked with a wedding party and guests for a wedding that has been planned down to the last detail. People that Phoebe doesn't know, in fact Phoebe is the only person at the Inn not involved with the wedding  In a surprising twist Phoebe and the bride, Lila, grow to know each other and confide in each other. I didn't know what to expect with this novel but it ended up being a fascinating examination of the paths that life can unexpectedly take us on. Phoebe was an interesting character with multiple layers. Her interactions with the wedding people revealed things to the reader and to Phoebe. Espach was not afraid to take Phoebe into some dark places: trigger warning for discussion of suicide. There are, however, light hearted elements to the story and people who like romance novels more than I do will enjoy those parts. I found some of the "coincidences" that were necessary for that part of the story to be a bit eye rolling but not enough to ruin the story for me. If you like character driven novels you will enjoy this novel. It has a good plot but it is the characters that make it work. 

The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey

It is summer on Cape Cod. The painter, Edward Hopper, and his wife are in their summer residence where he is struggling to find a subject for a painting.  Down the beach is a rented house with two young boys both struggling with the aftermath of World War II.  This novel is, simultaneously, a picture of the complicated marriage of the Hoppers, an examination of the effect of war, and a questioning of the meaning of The American Dream. This novel won the Walter Scott Prize for fiction in 2020 and it is well deserved.  Although there is a plot, it is more of a character study over one short summer. The writing is exquisite and the sense of place is real. I admit that I didn't figure out that the painter was Edward Hopper until I read some reviews after I finished.

Conclave by Robert Harris

This novel became popular after the film version came out, which I never saw.  I meant to watch it while the new pope was being chosen but the choosing happened so fast that I never had time. The novel is excellent.  Harris depicts the intrigues so well and I felt like I was in the Sistine Chapel with the Cardinals.  I've now read four novels by Harris and I've loved each of them even though each of them was so different from the others.  

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

This is the story of Esme, a young motherless girl, and her growth into womanhood, and also the story of  the birth of the Oxford English Dictionary. As Esme discovers, there are many words in everyday use that weren't making it into the dictionary because they weren't used in print either because the people who used them were illiterate or the words were considered too vulgar to print.  Esme sets out to save those words and along the way encounters the woman's suffrage movement and World War I.  One thing I particularly liked about this novel was that Williams did not shy away from the tragedy of World War I - many novels feel compelled to have a happy ending when in reality there were more tragedies than happy endings.  Again, this is mostly a character driven novel and it is a big plus if you love words.

MYSTERIES I READ IN JULY/AUGUST

The Rowland Sinclair Mystery Series:

    Gentlemen Formerly Dressed by Sulari Gentill
    A Murder Unmentioned by Sulari Gentill
    Give the Devil His Due by Sulari Gentill
    A Dangerous Language by Sulari Gentill
    Shanghai Secrets by Sulari Gentill
    Where There's a Will by Sulari Gentill

Because of the situation in the world I decided that July would be taken up mostly with mysteries because they would distract me from my anxiety. It is a mark of how much I enjoy the Rowland Sinclair mystery series that I keep reading the books even though the fact that they take place during the rise of fascism in the 1930's does not relieve any of my anxiety. In fact, one of the books I read in June took place in Germany where the main character was attacked by Brownshirts and, well, let's just say I found it very hard to read. This month I was able to find the rest of the series at the library and I checked out all of them and binged them. Rowland and his friends are now safely out of Germany (whew). First, in Gentlemen Formerly Dressed they are in London where (of course) they stumble across a murder. In addition they deal with the fact that German authorities may be after them. Then in A Murder Unmentioned they are back home in Australia where Rowland's past comes back to haunt him.  They solve murders and avoid the local fascists. Give the Devil His Due involves a car race (and murders). A Dangerous Language has a complicated plot that puts Rowland back on an ocean liner for a short time but this time in steerage. Shanghai Secrets finds the gang in Shanghai where people are trying to kill Rowland. In Where There's a Will the gang travels to America because Rowly has been named the executor of the estate of a murdered friend. One of the things I very much enjoy in this series is how Gentill peppers the story with side characters that Rowland happens to meet who are real historical characters. Whenever he meets a side character I google them if I don't recognize the name and more often than not they turn out to be a historical character. I have now finished the series and I'm sad. I hope Gentill writes more about Rowland and his friends. I heartily recommend this series if you like reading books with a good sense of place and good characters. The plots are sometimes a little far fetched but fun and I usually don't guess whodunnit. 

The Lake District Mysteries Series:

    The Coffin Trail by Martin Edwards
    The Cipher Garden by Martin Edwards
    The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
    The Serpent Pool by Martin Edwards
    The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards
    The Frozen Shroud by Martin Edwards
    The Dungeon House by Martin Edwards
    The Girl They All Forgot by Martin Edwards

When I finished with Rowland Sinclair series I was looking for a new mystery series to binge. I like books in series because if the first book sets everything up will then I can immerse myself in the universe for the rest of the books. Back in January I read the first book in a series by Martin Edwards called Gallows Court and I considered reading the follow up books. Then I discovered that Edwards had written a series called The Lake District Mysteries.  These are set, as you can guess, in the Lake District of England which I have never visited. Edwards does an excellent job giving the reader a sense of place and I am always a sucker for a good sense of place especially if I've never visited the place. The main characters are Hannah Scarlett, a detective leading a Cold Case Team, and Daniel Kind, a historian who has left Oxford behind to settle in the Lake District and write. Daniel is the son of a policeman, Hannah's deceased mentor.  Edwards does a good job with these two main characters, making them interesting and giving them a degree of depth. He's a bit less successful with the secondary characters - he gives them interesting backgrounds but often their personalities seemed a little too stereotypical for me (the men usually think with a certain body part and the women are always all able to seduce the men).  He has decent ideas for plots and they move along but he often relies on a few tropes - suicide, couples splitting up because of infidelity. I also think his editors did him no favors because there were at least a couple of continuity problems between books or even in the same book.   I obviously liked the series enough to read all the books but when you binge a series you notice the flaws more.  I think this is a series that would be enjoyed more if the books were read a year or so apart. 

A Tarnished Canvas by Anna Lee Huber

The latest in the Lady Darby mystery series, we find Lady Darby back in Edinburgh with her husband and 1 year old child preparing for a 1 year old birthday party and also finishing some paintings for an exhibition. An invitation to the sale of art and other objets d'art of a local deceased lord arrives at the house. She and Gage decide to go. There is one painting she is interested in that will be up for auction on the third day. She and Gage show up on the third day and a disaster ensues resulting in bodily harm to many people and the death of one man.  Was it an accident or was someone behind it, and if someone is behind it what was the purpose?  According to the afterward, this situation is based on a real occurrence in Edinburgh history.  This series takes place in the 1830s, a period I'm not really familiar with. At one point Lady Darby complains about the big sleeves of the fashions of the day so I looked them up and, wow! They were really big sleeves!  I always enjoy this series and this was one of my favorite books so far. You could read this as a standalone but I think would be more enjoyable if the reader has read the entire series. 

The Shell House Detectives by Emylia Hall

This was a book I picked up while browsing at the library and it turned out to be a winner.  Ally Bright is a widow in her early sixties living in The Shell House, a cottage on the western coast of Cornwall.  The western coast is the coast with palm trees and surfing (I've seen it with my own eyes).  One night a distraught young man arrives at her door looking for Bill, Ally's deceased husband who was in local law enforcement. The next day the young man is found at the foot of a cliff, unconscious but not dead, by Jayden Westen a young newcomer to Cornwall and a former policeman. In the meantime, a local woman has disappeared.  It's too complicated to say why Jayden and Ally team up to discover what happened to the woman and the unconscious man who lies in the hospital. My only complaint about this novel is that the point of view jumps around between various characters and that just isn't a style I like too much if there are too many points of view.  But I liked Ally and Jayden and I loved the setting. It looks like this will be the first book in a series and I will be sure to read the follow ups. 

There Will Be Bodies by Lindsay Davis

This is the next book in the Flavia Albia series set during ancient Roman times. I was somewhat disappointed in the last few books of this series but this one was a good return to form. Flavia Albia's husband Manlius is hired by his uncle to do a construction/cleanup job in southern Italy near the destroyed city of Pompeii.  As Manlius warns his crew - there will be bodies. And there are.  But clearly one of these bodies was not destroyed in the volcanic eruption. Flavia Albia is on the case to determine who the murderer was. I really liked the setting of this book.  There also wasn't too much exposition (as there was in the last few books).  

Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman

Muriel Blossom is a middle aged widow setting out on a vacation to England and France. On the plane she meets a very nice man who shows her around London. But then it's on to France and the river cruise she is taking with a friend.  Murder ensues.  It's a good thing that Muriel used to work for private investigator Tess Monaghan (the main character in Lippman's other successful series).  I enjoyed this book but had trouble sometimes believing that Muriel knew so little about travel. But that is probably because I have been a traveler often. This is a great book to take on a vacation. 

The Lake House by Kate Morton

Back in the 1930's, at an estate in Cornwall, a child went missing and was never found. Decades later, Sadie Sparrow comes upon the house which is completely shut up as if the family left and never returned. Sadie is on leave from her job as a police investigator and decides to use her leave time to look into the cold case of the missing child.  This novel jumps back and forth between the two time periods, which is a format that I'm extremely tired of.  But other than that I enjoyed this novel very much.

The Edinburgh Murders by Catriona McPherson

This is the second in a series featuring a woman who is an early social worker in post war Edinburgh.  I've enjoyed both of these mysteries and hope she continues the series.  This one involves a victim who is boiled to death in the local bath house.  My great grandma worked in a bath house and I kept picturing her in there.  This murder is followed by other equally mysterious deaths. 

Battle Mountain by CJ Box

Wyoming Game Warden, Joe Pickett, is back with another mystery to solve and his friend Nate (on the run from the law) seems to be coming at the same mystery from a different location and angle.  As usual, in real life Joe would probably have been killed without the intervention of a deus ex machina.  That didn't matter to me because I love the setting of these mysteries and Box keeps the pages turning. 

Capital Crimes: London Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards. 

This book of short stories was another of the British Library Crime Collection that I inherited from my mom.  I don't generally like short stories but some of these were very good.  I particularly liked a story by JS Fletcher and would like to read a whole novel by that author. 

OTHER BOOKS I READ IN JULY/AUGUST

The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges (tr. by Andrew Hurley)

The Garden of Forking Paths is a book published in Spanish in 1941 that was included in "Fictions" in 1944. My BlueSky readalong group chose selections from Fictions for a July readalong. I had misgivings from the start. I don't particularly like short stories. I seldom read works in translation because I'm always suspicious that the translation doesn't capture the original language. I also have discovered over the last year that I'm not much interested in post-modern literature. Fictions included three books of short stories: The Garden of Forking Paths, Artifices and The Aleph. I only made it through the first book before I threw in the towel. I do think Borges was a brilliant writer but the "stories" often took the form of literature critiques. I love to read lit crit but these were critiques of made up stories and I found that I just wasn't interested in spending the time figuring out what he was saying about stories and situations that didn't really exist. 

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

A family vacations every year on Cape Cod in the same rental house for twenty years.  They know all the quirks of the house, good and bad. This year there is the mother, father, the two adult children and one child's girlfriend.  And the grandparents also come for a few days.  All as usual. This novel is a snapshot of a period of time in a family as the members deal with menopause, unplanned pregnancies, aging, and life in general.  Rocky, the mother, thinks back on prior years of vacations.  This is a good book to read on vacation - especially if you've been vacationing in the same cabin for more than twenty years as I have. 

The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry

Another book about a child that goes missing.  Twenty years later the older sister, Hazel, comes across a book written by an American author that is essentially the story she herself made up for her younger sister.  How did the American writer know the story?  This book is very good at capturing what it was like for the children who were sent to the country during the London Blitz. It is a page turner but I thought there were too many unbelievable coincidences that were needed to tie up the plot.

Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano

Finlay Donovan is a struggling writer and a divorced mom. At a meeting with her agent, at which her agent is urging her to finish off her latest book, a woman overhears the conversation and misunderstands. She thinks Finlay is a gun for hire and she would like her husband killed.  Well, Finlay DOES need the money. But is she a killer?  This is a humorous book. If you like humorous novels (which aren't my favorite) you'd probably like this one. I'm not sure if it is intended to be a series but I can definitely see it being made into a television show. 

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

This is the story of Cyrus Shams whose mother died when the US Navy accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger jet.  Cyrus is a recovering addict and a poet who becomes obsessed with the idea of martyrdom. I tend to find books about addicts a bit boring (they always think they are so interesting, but they aren't).  This novel is well written but I never could connect with the main character.  And I didn't find the ending as surprising as I think the author meant for me to find it - I thought it was telegraphed well in advance.

All Fours by Miranda July

Talk about not connecting with a character. I couldn't connect with the main character of this novel at all. She leaves on a cross country trip from LA to New York but thirty miles away she stops, checks into a motel and stays there the whole trip - redecorating the motel room on her own nickel.  I always dislike when a novel is written in the first person and that person is someone whose head I don't want to be in.  I think this novel was supposed to be funny or ironic or ... something.  But I couldn't wait for it to be over. 

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham 

A short novel about a woman who makes a bad marriage, has an affair and then her husband takes her to a cholera ravaged region in the hopes that she will die.  That sounds depressing but I liked this novel as the main character came into her own through adversity. It also had a great sense of place. 

Poems by Anne Michaels

Last year one of my favorite books was Held by Anne Michaels, who is a Canadian poet. So I decided to read some of her poetry. This volume was a compilation of three books of poetry:  The Weight of Oranges, Miner's Pond and Skin Divers. Her poems explore love in all its facets - in the present and in historical persons.  I don't understand enough about poetry to really understand everything she did but I did enjoy many of the poems. 

Rainy Lake Rendezvous by Janet Kay

I can't imagine anyone would really enjoy this novel if you haven't spent time in Voyageur's National Park, as I have.  I recognized all of the landmarks.  That's about the best thing I can say about it. 

Great Lakes Creoles: A French Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, Prairie du Chien, 1750-1860 by Lucy Eldersveld Murphy. 

Again, I can't imagine anyone wanting to read this book unless you, like I, am interested in French Colonial History in North America and its aftermath.  I liked this book which went into a lot of detail of the history of Prairie du Chien under the American Regime.  

April 2025 Reading

I know I keep saying this every month but concentrating on anything these days with everything <waves hands around> is difficult.  Last month I said that I've pretty much given up on reading anything that takes a lot of concentration.  Despite that, I surprisingly did read more than just mysteries this month, mostly because a lot of library wait lists came through. I also managed a book of poetry this month. 

These are the books I finished in April.

My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor

This book was on the Walter Scott Prize longlist last year but since I'm not drawn to WWII as a topic I didn't rush to pick it up. Eventually I put my name on the library wait list for it and am I glad I did!  Wow! I thought this was an excellent novel. The hero is Father Hugh O’Flaherty, a resident at the Vatican during WWII. Rome is occupied by the Nazis and Father Hugh and his intrepid band of helpers (calling themselves The Choir), are doing what they can to help thousands of people being hunted by the Nazis make it out of Rome. The local German commander is desperate to find them and shut the operation down. This is one of the most suspenseful novels I’ve read in years; I truly never knew what was going to happen. This was partly due to a very smart structure that O'Connor adopted. I've been recommending this novel to everyone I know. I highly recommend it if you like good plots, good characters, a sense of place and good writing. I understand that O'Connor has written a follow-up novel but I think I will wait to read that one for when I feel calmer. (As an aside, I learned that the author is the brother of Sinead O'Connor - what a talented family.)

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Another BlueSky readalong book, I really enjoyed this one. I've never seen any of the movies or TV series based on this novel but from reading reviews I basically knew the plot going in. That didn't matter. Highsmith was brilliant in making me care about finding out what happened to Tom Ripley and whether he could get out of his responsibility for his actions. I didn't LIKE him, but I wanted to know what happened to him, which is the mark of a great book for me. This book was shorter than I expected and it has good pacing. Ripley is a complex character. In terms of a sense of place - at times it was almost like a travelogue of Tom's journeys through Italy.  Recommended. 

A Few Right Thinking Men by Sulari Gentill

On the recommendation of someone who knows I love historical mysteries set in other countries, especially if it is part of a series, I picked this up and I'm glad I did. Set in 1930's Australia, the amateur sleuth in this series is Rowland Sinclair. As a member of the upper class he is relatively unaffected by the Depression that is sweeping the country (the world). Living in the family home in Sydney, working as a portrait (and sometimes a landscape) painter he allows his artistic but poor friends to live with him. Although Rowland is somewhat apolitical but left-leaning, Rowland's friends are (pre-Stalin) Communists who want to change the world for the better. When Rowland's uncle is murdered and the police seem to have no suspects, Rowland goes "undercover" suspecting that the villains are a fascist militant group. I liked this book and I'm sure will read more in the series even though my library has no more of the series in e-version and I'll have to find the hard copies. (By the way, apparently this is a reissue and the original name of the book is "A House Divided"). 

A Death in Door County by Annelise Ryan
Death in the Dark Woods by Annelise Ryan
Beast of the North Woods by Annelise Ryan

I'm combining these into one description because I read them in order, one after the other. Morgan Carter, the owner of Odds and Ends Bookstore in Door County, Wisconsin is also a cryptozoologist - someone who hunts creatures that have never been proven to be real, like the Loch Ness Monster. When a couple of bodies show upon the shores of  Lake Michigan, drowned but with giant teeth marks and all of their internal organs crushed, she is brought in to investigate. At first I thought I wouldn't like this premise, but Morgan is a skeptic and she also has an adorable dog named Newt. I enjoyed it more than I expected. It was a quick read and, since I was at a point where I really needed distraction (a recurring theme these days) and the next two books in the series were available on Libby, I downloaded them. The second book takes place in northern Wisconsin near Bayfield, Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior. Strange deaths have been occurring in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest and maybe it's Big Foot?  I was a little confused by the geography of this one until I figured out that the national forest had different sections in Wisconsin and although the main section is down near Rhinelander (2 plus hours from Bayfield) there are smaller sections including one near Bayfield. Once I figured that out I could relax into the story. I didn't figure out the mystery before the end and I thought it was clever.  The third book does take place in Rhinelander, Wisconsin (a place I've flown in and out of) and involves a death supposedly caused by a creature that was long ago proven to be a fraud. This is not the best mystery series I've ever read but it does have a good sense of place and the premise is unique. Be warned that there is a lot (a LOT) of  exposition and I often thought that the dialog was clunky. But I liked the main character and I found it entertaining during a time when I pretty much wanted mindless entertainment. 

Who Will Remember by C.S. Harris

This is the 20th installment of the Sebastien St. Cyr mystery series by C. S. Harris set in Regency England. This is one of my favorite (if not my absolute favorite) mystery series mostly because I just love the way that Harris writes. Mysteries are my comfort reads and I don't get picky about them but when I find an author that entertains me AND I like the way she writes, it's a win for me. In this installment, Sebastien is approached by a waif who tells him of a dead man hanging in an abandoned church. The dead man turns out to be the son of a Duke and it is clear that his body has been staged to match the picture on a Tarot card. It's a decent mystery; I didn't guess the whodunnit. But I mostly read this series because of the time and place that Harris evokes. This installment takes place in 1816 - The Year Without Summer. Crops are failing not only in England but all over the world. The rain is never-ending. The weather is cold even in August. Although not part of the story, over in Switzerland Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron are passing the days of terrible weather writing gothic tales, including Frankenstein.  Although we know now that the massive eruption of Mt. Tambora in the Dutch East Indies caused the bad weather, many people of the time thought the world was coming to an end. This story hit pretty close to home because the dead man was of the "judgmental religious" type that we see all the time now. He even threatens heresy to a geologist who posits that the weather could be caused by a natural occurrence. This is not my favorite novel of the series (not enough Hero in it) but I always enjoy these books and always look forward to the next one and I always recommend this series. Although you can read each book separately, the series is one you really should read from the beginning. 

The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane

It is the Southern Australian Outback in the late 1800s. In a fairly new but already dying town, the community tries to raise sheep and grow wheat. One day a farmer and his hired man (an aborigine) are out working in the fields, the five daughters have gone into town for a wedding, the mother is doing laundry and the little boy (6 years old) is collecting tinder, when a dust storm comes up. The boy gets turned around and is lost. The town rallies to search for him. The novel is structured as a series of days and nights. As the story unfolds McFarlane's focus shifts in 3d person omniscient between all of these characters and the other characters searching for the boy. This is a well written novel but the constantly changing perspectives interrupted the flow for me and it took me longer to finish than I expected. McFarlane evokes a strong sense of place and that is probably the strongest point of the novel.  The characterizations are good but, in the end, the number of characters kept me from becoming engrossed in the story. Recommended with reservations. 

Double Negative by Vona Groarke

As the back of the book says: a double negative equals a positive. It also says that Groarke is one of Ireland's leading poets, and I have no reason to doubt this. I enjoyed this collection of poetry. Many of them are on the theme of aging, which I relate to. I wish I understood more about poetry so that I could say something intelligent about her poetry rather than simply "I enjoyed it."  Given that I haven't enjoyed the last few books of poetry I've read, I was relieved to finally read poems that I (mostly) understood. 

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

This is an odd little work of historical fiction. It is set in Idaho (Butte and environs) but most of the (male) characters are Irish or Cornish. Were there that many Irish who came over to work the mines?  (I actually understand the Cornish, they had mines in Cornwall). The plot is very basic, local (Irish)man falls in love with another man's wife and they run off but are pursued. Neither of the main characters (in fact none of the characters) is very likeable, but that's never been a problem for me. I kept reading because I wanted to find out what happened to them all (and, this is a relatively short novel). Annoyingly Barry doesn't use quote marks for his dialog and the structure of the novel is a shifting perspective among the characters where their thoughts (and the story) is presented in short little bursts of paragraphs. On the whole I can't say that I liked this novel but I guess I appreciated it. Perhaps my biggest problem was that the whole thing seemed like fan fiction based on the TV series Deadwood.  Yes, I know Deadwood is in South Dakota not Idaho and I know it involves prospecting for gold, not copper mining, but the whole ambiance that Barry created seemed to be taken right off the visuals of that TV series.  (Maybe that's because Deadwood was so good at evoking the Old West in all of its horror.)  I can't recommend this but if you want to read it because it has been nominated for some prizes, know that it is short and it did keep my interest.

March Reading

This was a difficult reading month for me.  First, I traveled quite a bit and didn't have as much time for reading., which is always an impediment to reading complex books.  And of course everything <waves arms around> seems designed to distract me and not allow me to sink into difficult books and enjoy them. It also didn't help that I was in the middle of a couple of books that I was having a hard time enjoying in the first place. 

In the end, of the 11 books I read this month, 8 of them were historical mysteries, my go-to comfort reads. I am, by the way, continuing my year-long read of Don Quixote, which I am enjoying. I am also continuing my year-long read of Clarissa, which I am enjoying less. 

These are the books I finished in March:

Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March

Desperately looking for some distraction amongst <waves arms around> I saw that this novel had won a Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award. And, even better, it was immediately available through the library. This is a murder mystery set in Bombay in the late 1800's. It involves (yet again) a Parsee family (this is my year for reading novels about Parsees). The daughter and daughter-in-law of a prominent man have been killed by falling (being pushed?) from a clock tower. Jim Agnihotri, a Anglo-Indian military officer recuperating in a hospital, becomes interested in the resulting court case in which it is determined the women must have committed suicide. Retiring from the Army he decides to look into it and ends up being hired by the family who don't believe it was suicide. This was a surprisingly long novel and covered a large swath of Indian history. I can see why it won a first novel award but hopefully the sequel novels are shorter. 

An Old, Cold Grave by Iona Wishaw

This is one of the books in the Lane Winslow mystery series that I started last year. These mysteries are set in a small community in western Canada in the 1930s. I like the characters in this series and in general I like Wishaw's writing but she structures her stories to take the reader back in time so that they know more about what happened than the people investigating the case, which I don't like. This involved the skeletal remains of a child found buried on a local farm. The death obviously took place many years previously. The plot relied on a lot of coincidences to solve the case.  I'm not sure I will read any more of this series. 

A Rogue's Company by Allison Montclair

This is the third of the Sparks and Bainbridge mystery series set in late 1940's post-war London. Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge run the Right Sort Marriage Bureau but are regularly caught up in solving mysteries. This installment involves Gwen's crusty father-in-law, recently returned from Africa and acting odd. As usual with this series, the process of resolving the mystery requires some suspension of disbelief but I still enjoy it, mostly because I enjoy the two main characters. 

Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John Witgen

A non-fiction book telling how the Anishinaabeg resisted removal from their tribal lands in what is now Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, this is a very "scholarly" book (meaning that it is slow reading for the non-scholar). There is a lot of good information in it but I didn't enjoy reading it as much as Witgen's last book, An Infinity of Nations.  This may be because it was about, as he put it, the Political Economy of Plunder and the plunder continues against Native American lands and others - and in fact against our whole economy. This book was an honorable mention for a Pulitzer Prize in 2023 but truthfully I found it a bit of a slog.

Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss

I bought this book of poetry a few years ago when it won the Pulitzer Prize but in the wake of the pandemic I found it too raw to read. A few years of waiting didn't change that. I don't know enough about poetry to appreciate how Seuss uses the sonnet form in what is apparently an original way (or so say the reviews I read). The topics of her poem are mostly about sadness and suffering, including people she lost in the AIDS epidemic and a son who overdoses. Truthfully, I actively disliked this collection and almost stopped reading it many times. 

The Cold Light of Day by Anna Lee Huber

The latest released Verity Kent mystery, this novel finds Verity in Dublin following World War I during the fight for Irish Independence. I admit to an aversion to novels set in Ireland during this time period; the violence of the period (that continued into my lifetime in Northern Ireland) is always too much for me to handle. Huber clearly did a lot of research because she seems to reference every assassination and killing that took place during the 2-3 month period in which the novel is set. However, I do like Verity Kent as a character - an intelligence operative during WWI she can't talk about it because of the Official Secrets Act. I was somewhat disappointed that this ended on a cliffhanger which means we'll be returning to Dublin in the next book. 

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

The only other book by Nabokov that I've read was Lolita, which I thought was a masterpiece. So I was willing to join in this BlueSky readalong even though I had never heard of this novel. I don't really know what to make of it. It is in part a 1,000 line poem and in part "notes' to the poem which aren't really notes but really the novel itself. The narrator is unreliable but it was never clear to me whether he was making the whole thing up OR whether most of the bones of the story were true but his point of view was delusional. There was a twist - maybe. All in all, I didn't really enjoy this novel although part of the problem may have been that I was traveling a lot this month and couldn't keep up with the reading. Or maybe the problem was that this is the kind of novel that should be read in one or two sittings rather than over a month. 

The Unkept Woman by Allison Montclair

The fourth in the Sparks and Bainbridge mystery series, this novel finds Sparks accused of murder while Bainbridge has decided to try to be declared legally competent, which means she shouldn't get caught up in any more murders according to her barrister.  I enjoy this series even though I think many of the situations are farfetched. I like the location and time period (London after WWII). I don't, however, think that the characters SOUND very British, which isn't really a problem for me.  But it did make me curious and yes it turns out that Allison Montclair (a pseudonym) isn't British.   

A Fatal Illusion by Anna Lee Huber

Anna Lee Huber's other mystery series, the Lady Darby mysteries, are set in the early 1800's during the reign of William IV (the uncle of Queen Victoria).  In this installment, her irascible father-in-law has been set upon by highwaymen and while he recovers they search for the perpetrators.  I enjoy this series, but not as much as the Verity Kent series (I like Verity's time period better).  This one definitely had a surprise at the end that, in an afterward, Huber says is based upon a true story. 

Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen Spotswood

The next in the Pentecost & Parker mysteries, this one involves the search for an elderly woman who is the retired secretary from a law firm that Forest Whitsun formerly worked for.  Showing that he does have a heart, Whitsun has regularly visited her and brought her groceries.  Worried about her whereabout he asks Pentecost & Parker to find her.  Warning:  this ends on a cliffhanger (which the author apologizes for in an afterward).  Fortunately, I was able to get the next book fairly quickly. 

Dead in the Frame by Stephen Spotswood

This resolves the cliffhanger and frankly I don't think the author played fair in this because he introduced a new fact at the very end that allowed the mystery to be solved. There was also a deus ex machina event that bothered me too - it seemed designed solely to remind us of a character from the other books who, I assume, will eventually come back into the story. As a character study of Lilian, it was well done. It appears that the next volume will focus on Lilian's past.  Truthfully, I always feel that when a mystery series begins to focus solely on personal issues of the main characters, it has lost its way.  But we'll see. In general, I still like the series.