Is It Seriously Still January and Books Read in 2024: Four-Star Horror

Oh my goodness Engie, DID I READ Into the Drowning Deep, INDEED I DID, and five-starred it, it's one of my favourites of Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire's - maybe THE favourite. I had read Rolling in the Deep (now called 0.5) and thought it was good but really needed some fleshing out, and this was all I wanted and more from a sequel. It's catalogued as "Rolling in the Deep #1" and I keep longingly investigating whether there is a #2, and thus far my search has been fruitless. She said something on Twitter about needing it to sell well to get signed for a sequel, so maybe it did not, which is a travesty.

Matt's away for the week again. It is, by some kind of glacial sorcery, still January. I remember one day saying to Eve "well at least we're about halfway through" and Eve said "mom it's the ninth". That was, like, eight months ago? I tend to have a headache most days in January. Something about the rotation of the earth and my head. Sometimes I forget about my migraine pills, but this year I've used the number I was allowed (can't take more than ten in a month) and it's helped. I've done yoga nearly every day and seen my massage therapist thrice already. I also read over my No Resolutions New Year's post and your incredibly kind and supportive comments, and all of this is helping me through the last week of January (seriously, how is the whole week STILL JANUARY?)

In addition to treating my body well I decided to try radically positive self-talk in January. Like, just telling myself that whatever I was doing was fine, whatever I felt like doing was enough. It's really hard, and I forgot about it after about a week. We have to ship Angus's Christmas presents and a couple of things he wants from home and Matt keeps leaving the country and we can't seem to settle on the right way to do it. One giant box or multiple boxes? Matt seems to think driving over the border to Ogdensburg so we're shipping within one country will be cheaper, but I'm not convinced - we sent some stuff by UPS within Canada during the postal strike and it was really expensive. Should we just do Canada Post? I packed a lot of it in one medium-sized box today, and I'm going to request that we figure it out and ship it before Matt leaves again (he's home at the end of the week for a week, and then off to Rome, then Bali. Rome. Then Bali.)

I feel like I read a lot of horror last year, maybe even more than usual. I thought there was a way to see a genre breakdown on Goodreads but there either isn't or I can't remember how (equally likely). I get a horror newsletter from Book Riot that usually has good recommendations, that's probably one reason. I leaned in to every book written by BIPOC that I could find - unsure if that's any kind of helpful, especially if I borrow rather than buying. 

Horror

All These Sunken Souls: A Black Horror Anthology edited by Circe Moskowitz: Synopsis from Goodreads: We are all familiar with tropes of the horror genre: slasher and victims, demon and the possessed. Bloody screams, haunted visions, and the peddler of wares we aren’t sure we can trust. In this young adult horror anthology, fans of Jordan Peele, Lovecraft Country, and Horror Noire will get a little bit of everything they love—and a lot of what they fear—through a twisted blend of horror lenses, from the thoughtful to the terrifying.

From haunted, hungry Victorian mansions, temporal monster–infested asylums, and ravaging zombie apocalypses, to southern gothic hoodoo practitioners and cursed patriarchs in search of Black Excellence.

Lights by Kalynn Bayron (I had read her YA horror novel): a serial killer stalks a family with excruciating leisure and attention, with a fun inversion at the very end. 

All My Best Friends are Dead by Liselle Sambury (also read her YA horror novel): one of those sleepovers where you say a dead girl's name in the mirror three times, and then something happened - or did it? This one freaked me the frig out. There was some dead-on writing about female friendships, and the weird psychosis that can take over during sleepovers and then -- *shiver*.

The Teeth Come Out at Night by Sami Ellis - a young black girl trying desperately to earn money for college, crossed with a freaky tooth fairy thing.

I Love Your Eyes by Joel Rochester - a mixed relationship, an ancestral manor house in Wales and a tightening spiral of menace. Eeeeek. Recalled a particular episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as another classic I won't name (spoilers).

The Landscape of Broken Things by Brent Lambert - a really cool story about clairvoyance, which is feared and regulated.

Mother, Daughter, and the Devil by Donyae Coles - a story about a cursed child told in dialect. A lot of people really liked it. I found it evocative but I didn't really understand exactly what happened.

No Harm Done by Circe Moskowitz (isn't that a cool name?) - A black woman meets her twin after they were separated by adoption for years. And then all hell breaks loose. A zombie apocalypse meets The Parent Trap. Probably the best example of a story where racial issues dovetail neatly with horror tropes. A fantastic ending to the anthology. 

"I think about Alana's life, beside mine. I wonder if I would have fared better here. Or maybe it would have been worse, with well-intentioned racists and forced respectability. A shining token, soaking in a weak trickle of protection that could turn lethal at any minute."

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology edited by Shane Hawk: Synopsis from Goodreads: Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.

These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

Very good, on the whole. Some stories were excellent. Some lost me a little. Overall a really good range of pieces that are scary while also featuring gutting examples of discrimination and violence perpetrated on indigenous people.
Stephen Graham Jones - already a favourite of mine - does an excellent introduction and story. The revenge stories are viciously satisfying, others are viscerally unsettling. There are supernatural creatures and ghosts and bodily transformations, and then sometimes real life is horror enough.
The Scientist's Horror Story by Darcie Little Badger is probably my favourite - uses the trope of telling scary stories in a group, starts off with a classically scary story and then finishes with a sobering wallop of the realities of what a lifetime of racism does to the future of millions of racialized people. Quantum by Nick Medina  - taking the concept of 'blood quantum' to its extreme logical conclusion - was almost too effective. 

Christmas and Other Horrors: A Winter Solstice Anthology edited by Ellen Datlow: Synopsis from Goodreads: Hugo Award winning editor, and horror legend, Ellen Datlow presents a terrifying and chilling horror anthology of original short stories exploring the endless terrors of winter solstice traditions across the globe, featuring chillers by Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu and many more.

The winter solstice is celebrated as a time of joy around the world—yet the long nights also conjure a darker tradition of ghouls, hauntings, and visitations. This anthology of all-new stories invites you to huddle around the fire and revel in the unholy, the dangerous, the horrific aspects of a time when families and friends come together—for better and for worse.

From the eerie Austrian Schnabelperchten to the skeletal Welsh Mari Lwyd, by way of ravenous golems, uncanny neighbors, and unwelcome visitors, Christmas and Other Horrors captures the heart and horror of the festive season.

Because the weather outside is frightful, but the fire inside is hungry...

You know me and a Datlow anthology, even a Christmas one in October. Some of these were legit frightening - the Welsh legend one His Castle by Alma Katsu (read it more than once) in particular. There were a couple where that kind of inversion happens where you think you know where it's going and it manages to surprise you - I love that. In The Importance of a Tidy Home by Christopher Golden, Austrian creatures called Schnabelperchten visit your home on Christmas Eve and if it's not tidy they kill you horribly (I was with the one reviewer who said "love this story. I would be so dead." The Mawkin Field by Terry Dowling made me angry because it was almost really cool, but then it didn't QUITE seem to make sense, and I had that feeling like the author doesn't really know what he meant either but he's counting on you just thinking you were too dumb to get it. 

The Mythic Dream edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe: Synopsis from Goodreads: An all-new anthology of eighteen classic myth retellings featuring an all-star lineup of award-winning and critically acclaimed writers.

Madeleine L’Engle once said, “When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.” The Mythic Dream gathers together eighteen stories that reclaim the myths that shaped our collective past, and use them to explore our present and future. From Hades and Persephone to Kali, from Loki to Inanna, this anthology explores retellings of myths across cultures and civilizations.

I love reading short story collections, hate reviewing them. I either make really great notes or almost none. This was really cool, though. Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, ancient Sumerian, Indian, and Norse mythology all lend themselves really well to updated science-fictional or fantastic treatments. T. Kingfisher's Labours of Hercules entry featuring a talking kingfisher (ha ha, get it?) did not disappoint. Across the River by Leah Cypess was eerie and sad. Naomi Novik takes on the Minotaur legend. One reviewer said "King Minos is not a nice man in this version" which, was he in any? I liked when ancient myths where women were powerless were updated to stories where women turned the tables on their oppressors. 

A Sliver of Darkness by C.J. Tudor: Synopsis from Goodreads: The debut short story collection from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man, featuring ten bone-chilling and mind-bending tales

Timeslips. Doomsday scenarios. Killer butterflies. C. J. Tudor's novels are widely acclaimed for their dark, twisty suspense plots, but with A Sliver of Darkness, she pulls us even further into her dizzying imagination.
In Final Course, the world has descended into darkness, but a group of old friends make time for one last dinner party. In Runaway Blues, thwarted love, revenge, and something very nasty stowed in a hat box converge. In Gloria, a strange girl at a service station endears herself to a cold-hearted killer, but can a leopard really change its spots? And in I'm Not Ted, a case of mistaken identity has unforeseen, fatal consequences.

I said I really liked it, and I believe I really liked it, but I don't remember most of it. I did like the introductions to the stories - I don't always, but in this case I found they added to the experience. I think I was rushing to finish this for some reason. I remember the story where people now live their lives on cruise ships (inspired by when people got stuck on cruise ships during the pandemic), and after fifty years run the risk of being 'retired' at age 75. There is a question of whether the main character's daughter drowned or escaped and is living on land. 

I have really liked all of Tudor's books except one. I will probably take a second crack at some of these stories.

Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories edited by Audrey Niffenegger: Synopsis from Goodreads: Collected and introduced by the bestselling author of The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry --including Audrey Niffenegger's own fabulous new illustrations for each piece, and a new story by her--this is a unique and haunting anthology of some of the best ghost stories of all time.

     From Edgar Allan Poe to Kelly Link, M.R. James to Neil Gaiman, H.H. Munro to Audrey Niffenegger herself, Ghostly reveals the evolution of the ghost story genre with tales going back to the eighteenth century and into the modern era, ranging across styles from Gothic Horror to Victorian, stories about haunting--haunted children, animals, houses. Every story is introduced by Audrey Niffenegger, an acclaimed master of the craft, with some words on its background and why she chose to include it. Audrey's own story is "A Secret Life With Cats."

     Perfect for the classic and contemporary ghost story aficionado, this is a delightful volume, beautifully illustrated by Audrey, who is a graphic artist with great vision. Ghostly showcases the best of the best in the field, including Edith Wharton, P.G. Wodehouse, A.S. Byatt, Ray Bradbury, and so many more.

I always visit the little independent bookstore down the road from Eve and buy something when I'm visiting. I didn't look at this carefully enough and thought it was a new Audrey Niffenegger book - I loved The Time Traveller's Wife and liked Her Fearful Symmetry and have been hoping for something new. But once I settled down to what it was, it was a very satisfying read. I usually veer towards more modern horror, but there's something about a pretty book with good production values, and I gave myself over to the more gothic flourishes of the classic stories. Sometimes a more leisurely, detailed, meandering writing style works, especially in a short story. And there is a Niffenegger story - with cats. It's freakin' weird. 

The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess by Andy Marino: Synopsis from Goodreads: From a thrilling new voice in horror, Andy Marino, comes a haunting tale of a woman whose life begins to unravel after a home invasion. She’s told she killed the intruder. But she can’t remember, and no one believes her…

Sydney's spent years burying her past and building a better life for herself and her eleven-year old son. A respectable marketing job, a house with reclaimed and sustainable furniture, and a boyfriend who loves her son and accepts her, flaws and all. But when she opens her front door, and a masked intruder knocks her briefly unconscious, everything begins to unravel.  She wakes in the hospital and tells a harrowing story of escape. Of dashing out a broken window. Of running into her neighbors' yard and calling the police. What the cops tell her is that she can no longer trust her memories. Because they say that not only is the intruder lying dead in her guest room, but he's been murdered in a way that seems intimately personal. 

When she returns home, Sydney can't shake the deep darkness that hides in every corner. There's an unnatural whisper in her ear, urging her back to old addictions. And as her memories slowly return, she begins to fear that her new life was never built on solid ground-and that the secrets buried beneath will change everything.

This is the aforementioned modern horror, where the terror comes not just from ghosts or intruders, but from the feeling that you might be an unreliable narrator in your own life. This is exacerbated by Sydney's addiction issues, and the descriptions of trying - and sometimes failing - to resist relapsing are uncomfortably well done. There's a vein of misogyny as well. This was an ambitious swing, and I'm not sure it worked entirely, but I'll be interested to see more from this author. 

The Chill by Scott Carson: Synopsis from Goodreads: In this terrifying thriller, a supernatural force—set in motion a century ago—threatens to devastate New York City.

Far upstate, in New York’s ancient forests, a drowned village lays beneath the dark, still waters of the Chilewaukee reservoir. Early in the 20th century, the town was destroyed for the greater good: bringing water to the millions living downstate. Or at least that’s what the politicians from Manhattan insisted at the time. The local families, settled there since America’s founding, were forced from their land, but they didn’t move far, and some didn’t move at all…

Now, a century later, the repercussions of human arrogance are finally making themselves known. An inspector assigned to oversee the dam, dangerously neglected for decades, witnesses something inexplicable. It turns out that more than the village was left behind in the waters of the Chill when it was abandoned. The townspeople didn’t evacuate without a fight. A dark prophecy remained, too, and the time has come for it to be fulfilled. Those who remember must ask themselves: who will be next? For sacrifices must be made. And as the dark waters begin to inexorably rise, the demand for a fresh sacrifice emerges from the deep...

My second-read book by Carson (a pseudonym for Michael Koryta), and my least favourite of the three, but still very good. The descriptions of the underpinnings of water systems - enormous, complicated infrastructure that many of us never give a thought to, that fails badly when it fails - are eerie and impactful in their own right. I think I tend to prefer stories where a collection of mysterious occurrences result in a slow realization of the truth, but the inevitability of the tragedy unfolding here was also effective. 

Dead Water by C.A. Fletcher: Synopsis from Goodreads: A water-borne blight hits a remote community on a small island on the edge of the Northern Atlantic. The islanders are a strange mix, some island-born, some seeking a slower life away from the modern world. All have their own secrets, some much darker than others. Rumour says the illness may be a water-borne neural infection from the shellfish farm, a case of mass hysteria - or even a long-buried curse - but when ferry service fails, inconvenience grows into nightmarish ordeal as the outwardly harmonious fabric of the community is unnervingly torn apart.

A haunting, suspenseful tale of isolation and dread within a small island community -from the author of A Boy and his Dog at the End of the World, perfect for fans of The Loney and Station Eleven.

Truthfully I'm probably inflating my review a tiny bit because of the author's previous book (A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World - so good).  I enjoyed the experience of reading this, I appreciated the characterization and I was engaged enough to keep reading. Fletcher's writing is clear and lovely, and the place description and sense of isolation and inexorability are cinematically vivid. Both the past and present timelines were evocative and affecting, but I would have appreciated a clearer depiction of the connection between the two, which I'm still not sure I completely understand. 

Murder Road by Simone St. James: Synopsis from Goodreads: A young couple find themselves haunted by a string of gruesome murders committed along an old deserted road in this terrifying new novel.

July 1995. April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They’re looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to be a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchhiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them.

When the hitchhiker dies at the local hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the crosshairs of the Coldlake Falls police. Unexplained murders have been happening along Atticus Line for years and the cops finally have two witnesses who easily become their only suspects. As April and Eddie start to dig into the history of the town and that horrible stretch of road to clear their names, they soon learn that there is something supernatural at work, something that could not only tear the town and its dark secrets apart, but take April and Eddie down with it all.

No book of St. James's has quite reached the level of The Broken Girls for me, but I still enjoy her approach to hauntings, which is more matter-of-fact than breathless and dramatic. I also liked how the married couple were united in their search, and how their pasts and relationship informed the action. 

An Inquiry into Love and Death by Simone St. James: Synopsis from Goodreads: After her ghost-hunting uncle Toby dies, Oxford student Jillian must drive to the seaside village of Rothewell to pack up his belongings. Almost immediately, terrifying events convince Jillian that an angry spirit is trying to enter the house. Is it Walking John, the two-hundred-year-old ghost that haunts the bay? And who besides the ghost is roaming the local woods at night? If Toby uncovered something sinister, was his death really an accident? The arrival of handsome Scotland Yard inspector Drew Merriken leaves Jillian with more questions than answers and the added complication of a powerful mutual attraction.

After this I'll probably take a break on this author. I wasn't sure how I would feel about the 1920s timeline, unbroken by any modern timeline, but I enjoyed the plucky Oxford girl scandalizing the small seaside town residents with her tendency to occasionally show an ankle or even a knee. This was nearly a cozy ghost story, which I seem to be growing more susceptible to in my advanced years. Likewise the 'powerful mutual attraction' with the irascible Scotland Yard Inspector - generally the kind of thing that makes me roll my eyes HARD, but I was reluctantly won over by the characters and the romance. Who even am I anymore?

The Night Guest by Hildur Knudsdottir: Synopsis from Goodreads: Hildur Knutsdottir's The Night Guest is an eerie and ensnaring story set in contemporary Reykjavík that’s sure to keep you awake at night. Iðunn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause.

When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same ― have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.
Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night . . .
What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?

Atmosphere to burn. A ghost in your house would be terrible, but what about a ghost in your body? This is short and deeply unsettling. It probably would have been a five-star read except that the ending was terrible and made me want to throw a shoe at the wall. There's being evocative and not spoon-feeding your reader, and then there's just laziness. Hmph. 

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton: Synopsis from Goodreads: A murder on the high seas. A detective duo. A demon who may or may not exist.

It's 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world's greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Traveling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.
But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered.
And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel.
Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes?

With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger onboard. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board.

Interesting, a little different, very character-driven haunting mystery. Samuel Pipps, the Holmesian figure, is interesting, but it is his bodyguard Arent Hayes who really shines. Sara Wessel, a badass female character despite the constraints of the time and her marriage, is also a pleasure to see in action. I admire this author's ambition in scope and device in every successive book, even when it doesn't work for me. 

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle: Synopsis from Goodreads: A searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down.They’ll scare you straight to hell.

Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.

Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.

A hell of a ride for a debut novel. I enjoy when horror satirizes and skewers bigotry, which this does all day long. 

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle: Synopsis from Goodreads: From Chuck Tingle, author of the USA Today bestselling Camp Damascus, comes a new heart-pounding story about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead.

Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale―"for the algorithm"―Misha discovers that it's not that simple.

As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right―before it's too late.

4.5. A step up from Camp Damascus in sophistication. A razor-sharp depiction of Hollywood hypocrisy and the internal conflicts of people working there. I really didn't know where the story was going, and the reveal was really creative and surprising. This author will be an automatic read for me from now on. 

The Gathering by C.J. Tudor: Synopsis from Goodreads: Deadhart, Alaska. 873. Living.

In a small Alaska town, a boy is found with his throat ripped out and all the blood drained from his body. The inhabitants of Deadhart haven’t seen a killing like this in twenty-five years. But they know who’s responsible: a member of the Colony, an ostracized community of vampyrs living in an old mine settlement deep in the woods.

Detective Barbara Atkins, a specialist in vampyr killings, is called in to officially determine if this is a Colony killing—and authorize a cull. Old suspicions die hard in a town like Deadhart, but Barbara isn’t so sure. Determined to find the truth, she enlists the help of a former Deadhart sheriff, Jenson Tucker, whose investigation into the previous murder almost cost him his life. Since then, Tucker has become a recluse. But he knows the Colony better than almost anyone.

As the pair delve into the town’s history, they uncover secrets darker than they could have imagined. And then another body is found. While the snow thickens and the nights grow longer, a killer stalks Deadhart, and two disparate communities circle each other for blood. Time is running out for Atkins and Tucker to find the truth: Are they hunting a bloodthirsty monster . . . or a twisted psychopath? And which is more dangerous?

I felt like Tudor's last book (The Drift) was a bobble, but this was Tudor back in form and more. I read this fast, and for that reason I had a tiny quibble with the book being set in Alaska but the British spelling of smelled - "smelt", (which I hate ew ew ew) - being used repeatedly, because it seemed to come up so often. 

So, so good, though. The setting was so perfect - cold, pitiless, claustrophobic, isolated. Barbara is a fantastic character - her determined equanimity in the face of all manner of bigotry and hostility is admirable, and her grumpy knee-aching schlumpiness is an antidote to the wearying plague of relentlessly glamorous police women in popular fiction. The vampire community is an ideal metaphorical stand-in for multiple other marginalized populations, along with the uneasy existence between the humans and the vampires. 

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner: Synopsis from Goodreads: A librarian with a knack for solving murders realizes there is something decidedly supernatural afoot in her little town in this cozy fantasy mystery.

Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she's concerned by just how many killers she's had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count...but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural. But when someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth. With the help of her town's new priest, and an assortment of friends who dub themselves the "Demon-Hunting Society," Sherry will have to solve the murder and get rid of a demon. This riotous mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Murder, She Wrote is a lesson for demons and murderers.

Never mess with a librarian.

A cozy mystery with a cat - everything I've steered clear of for years. But come on, it's a librarian and there's a demon (and a hot priest), and now that I'm thinking about it, this was a gateway cozy, goddammit.

I recently read another book by this author and it could not be more different in subject matter, but there is something about her writing that I find absolutely irresistible, and I've found that when it comes to this kind of thing it's almost impossible to describe. Someone addressing the usually-unexamined device of a small village where a disproportionate number of people seem to drop dead is most welcome, and the the amateur detective being a middle-aged woman rather than a perky teenager, well, yeah, bring it on. I have plans to give this one as a gift more than once.

The September House by Carissa Orlando: Synopsis from Goodreads: A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.

When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee.
Margaret is not most people.

Margaret is staying. It’s her house. But after four years Hal can’t take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he’s not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine—who knows nothing about the hauntings—arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.

What if your house turned out to be haunted, but you just...lived there anyway? And not in a charming, I See Dead People But They Just Want My Help way. This was most decidedly not a cozy. I really don't want to say too much about the plot because I feel like this is best approached with minimal spoilers, but the dovetailing of the haunted house with a certain other issue in Margaret's life was absolutely brilliant. The haunting manifestations go from merely inconvenient to outright terrifying. I loved everything about this and I'm unsure why I didn't just give it five stars. For a first novel this was massively impressive, and I will be waiting eagerly for the next book. 

Diavola by Jennifer Thorne: Synopsis from Goodreads:Anna has two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly and survive.

It isn’t easy when she’s the only one in the family who doesn’t quite fit in. Her twin brother, Benny, goes with the flow so much he’s practically dissolved, and her older sister, Nicole, is so used to everyone—including her blandly docile husband and two kids—falling in line that Anna often ends up in trouble for simply asking a question. Mom seizes every opportunity to question her life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who paid for this vacation, just wants some peace and quiet.

The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness, until things start going off the rails—the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.
(Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)

By the author or Lute, one of my favourite books from last year. L'enfer, c'est les autres, says Jean-Paul Sartre. Hell is other people. Double that when the other people are your family. Honestly, this book would be terrifying even if the family gathering was the whole story. Anna is a prickly, unlikable character, which is completely understandable once you meet her family. The Italian setting lends an appropriate strangeness and alienation that adds to the age-old grudges and sensitivities in the family. 

Books Read in 2024: Fantasy/Science Fiction/Speculative

Tudor - absolutely fair opinion on Sophie Hannah. I really have no defense for reading the book, I generally hate it when the estate of a beloved writer grants permission to another author to continue the series. And this is AGATHA CHRISTIE, who thought that was a good idea? People who want to cash in, obviously. It's distasteful. And Sophie Hannah is a successful author with her own books, so again - well, never mind, it all comes down to money. 

Suzanne - You get me! Please feel free to comment at length, I always feel so seen. 

About my library's new fees policy, which I actually really like - there are no longer overdue fees for late books. Whatever books you have are renewed automatically as long as no one has requested them, and you get an email about that with the new due date. Once they can't be renewed, you get a notice about that. I think you get 21 days then, and they suspend your account so you can't borrow anything else until you return the book or pay a replacement fee. This has happened to me twice and my fellow delinquent friend Holly and i always confess our suspensions to each other. Then I return the book right to someone at the desk and advise them that it is the walk of shame I'm doing, so they can register it right away and put it on the holds shelf for the person who has been waiting while I either procrastinate from returning the book or read it frantically because I have the worst habit of taking out paper books and then reading ebooks until the paper books are overdue, at which point they become infinitely desirable to me and I MUST finish them. I didn't really mind paying fines - I just considered them a donation - but this system seems very fair across the board. There is still a one dollar replacement fee for books put on hold and then not picked up, which seemed a little disproportionate to me until I did my library placements at various branches of the OPL and on days when it was my job to pull the unclaimed holds there would be SHELVES of books reserved by the same library customer and not picked up, which is kind of inconsiderate and should probably be discouraged.  

I've had a pretty good January, all things considered, but it's mostly because of my habit of taking to my bed super early and mainlining books in great desperate gulps. Maybe physically hiding from depression works? I'm down to going to work and cancelling everything else right now, though, because my anxiety is so bad that bar night or social events or taking a shower makes me feel like I'm going to simultaneously burst into tears, throw up and hyperventilate. I think I'll be okay if I just commit to work and survival activities for a couple of weeks. Our friends had their annual Robbie Burns party last Saturday, and I didn't think I was going to be able to get out of the house, but Matt got home from California at eleven in the morning and we had a cuddling/reassuring session and I managed to get there and it was really fun. My dad wasn't feeling well yesterday in a way that seemed like it might escalate, and by the time bar night departure rolled around I was in too much of a state so I went to bed early again. It's annoying and embarrassing, but what can you do. I keep reading about Slow January, so I could just say I'm doing that. I mean, I am kind of doing that. I did finally feel like cooking this week - crock pot roast last night, instant pot roast chicken tonight, beef stew later in the week. 

Fantasy/Science-Fiction/Speculative

Good Girls Don't Die by Christina Henry: Synopsis from Goodreads: Celia wakes up in a house that isn’t hers. She doesn't recognize her husband or the little girl who claims to be her daughter. She tries to remember who she was before, because she is certain that this life―the little family-run restaurant she owns, the gossipy small town she lives in―is not her own. 

Allie is supposed to be on a fun weekend trip―but then her friend's boyfriend unexpectedly invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods. The cabin looks recently assembled and there are no animals or other life anywhere in the forest. Nothing about the place seems right. Then, in the middle of the night, someone bangs on the cabin door…

Maggie, along with twelve other women, wakes up in a shipping container with the number three stamped on the back of her T-shirt. If she wants to see her daughter Paige again, Maggie must complete The Maze―a deadly high-stakes obstacle course. 

Three women. Three stories. Only one way out...

-”The brunette turned her back to the wall and leaned against it. She looked as exhausted as Celia felt.

‘Typical,’ the brunette said, rolling her eyes at the door. ‘Some man doesn’t get his way and suddenly I’m the bitch for not standing still when he wanted to stab me.’”

3.5. Maybe 3.25. I appreciated what she was trying to do, and the three scenarios kind of worked with each other. It didn't go super-deep.

The Rest is Silence by Scott Fotheringham: Synopsis from Goodreads: Eco-terrorism and future shock in an epic tale that travels from New York to Nova Scotia. North Mountain, Nova Scotia. An unnamed hermit lives off the land. He tries to find love and community in this place he has decided to call home and to shake off the ghosts that haunt him. Even in his newfound domestic bliss he can’t let go of his past and starts to tell his story as a way to make sense of things. Manhattan. Benny is an ambitious graduate student, obsessed with the idea of destroying plastic waste. She is driven by a clear-eyed understanding of humanity’s failure to self-regulate. In this brave, new world, she creates bacteria that consume plastic, inadvertently creating shortages of everything from water to computers and dissolving hospital equipment, pacemakers, and shunts. In this exciting novel, full of unexpected twists and turns, the lives of Benny and the unnamed hermit come together in a dramatic climax.

I bought this book at an event where the author (Canadian, friend of a friend) was signing it, many years ago. Then I somehow misplaced it. I found it again a couple of years ago, but didn't pick it up until recently, which actually kind of worked with the Oppenheimer references, since it was just before the Oscars and I had recently watched the movie. I liked it - I was sort of bracing for a maudlin single-character monologue, so I was happy for the supporting characters and the chapters that took place in the past. This is the kind of 'apocalypse' lit that is particularly frightening, because it is subtle and eminently believable. I enjoyed the writing and the descriptions of learning to live off the land. The 'twist' was telegraphed from a mile away and is the kind of thing I'm finding wearying at this point, but was only unnecessary, not damaging.

Aurora by David Koepp: Synopsis from Goodreads: From the author of Cold Storage comes a riveting, eerily plausible thriller, told with the menace and flair of Under the Dome or Project Hail Mary, in which a worldwide cataclysm plays out in the lives of one complicated Midwestern family. In Aurora, Illinois, Aubrey Wheeler is just trying to get by after her semi-criminal ex-husband split, leaving behind his unruly teenage son.

Then the lights go out--not just in Aurora but across the globe. A solar storm has knocked out power almost everywhere. Suddenly, all problems are local, very local, and Aubrey must assume the mantle of fierce protector of her suburban neighborhood.
Across the country lives Aubrey's estranged brother, Thom. A fantastically wealthy, neurotically over-prepared Silicon Valley CEO, he plans to ride out the crisis in a gilded desert bunker he built for maximum comfort and security.

But the complicated history between the siblings is far from over, and what feels like the end of the world is just the beginning of several long-overdue reckonings--which not everyone will survive . . .

'Eerily plausible' is bang on, similar to The Rest is Silence. This is another book I stumbled over on the Libby app while searching for another book. The first few pages had me waffling on whether I would continue, but I'm really glad I did. The characters really made this, and although a couple veered dangerously close to cartoon villainy early on, the author managed to rein it back in. There were moments of genuine connection and moments of slapstick humour that rang equally true. I appreciate post-apocalypse fiction that demonstrates positive aspects that could arise from a drastic change in living conditions without romanticizing things. This stayed with me longer than I expected. 

The Tribe by Bari Wood: Synopsis from Goodreads: Highly acclaimed when first published in 1981, The Tribe follows a group of Jewish people who not only survive the concentration camps, but thrive. Their secret follows them to modern-day Brooklyn, where they continue their relationship and keep their deadly cabal until one day a new threat arrives...

Drawing on Jewish mythology and folklore, the novel also combines well-drawn characters and police procedural to create a memorable and humane horror novel.

-”’My father was a fisherman, out of Montauk. He went out every day but Sunday…thunder, lightning, snow…once even in a hurricane. I should have admired his gallantry, but he did it for money and he came back cold, exhausted, wretched. He left my mother alone all day and most nights. For money. My brothers thought he was a hero for his persistence. I thought that was bullshit and he was a greedy fool. He died in a storm. They never found his body and I went to seminary as a sort of protest against him. But I inherited his persistence and when I found the first shreds of feeling for this plain bit of church I’m part of, I held on to them, hold on to them still, like a dog with locked teeth. It’s not bullshit to me.’ He looked at Hawkins. ‘I’m a religious man,’ he said, ‘which means that at some level I believe in magic.’”

I knew the subject matter of this - it was referred to in another book I was reading - and since it was available as a library ebook I borrowed it. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much. I'm not sure why, except maybe some weird snobbery about 80s horror. It was excellent - sort of a profound family drama and character study involving generational trauma, with incidental horror elements. The ways in which the various characters tried so hard to be kind and understanding with each other and yet fundamentally could not reconcile their convictions reminded me somewhat of Home by Marilynne Robinson.

Cutting Teeth by Chandler Baker: Synopsis from Goodreads: New York Times bestselling author Chandler Baker's Cutting Teeth is a witty, thrilling story of parental love that asks: is there anything a mother won’t do for her children? Darby, Mary Beth, and Rhea are on personal quests to reclaim aspects of their identities subsumed by motherhood—their careers, their sex lives, their bodies. Their children, though, disrupt their plans when an unsettling medical condition begins to go around the Little Academy preschool: the kids are craving blood.

Then a young teacher is found dead, and the only potential witnesses are ten adorable four-year-olds.
Soon it becomes clear that the children are not just witnesses, but also suspects . . . and so are their mothers.As the police begin to look more closely, the children’s ability to bleed their parents dry becomes deadly serious. Part murder mystery, part motherhood manifesto, Cutting Teeth explores the standards society holds mothers to—along with the ones to which we hold ourselves—and the things no one tells you about becoming a parent.

-”The Bible is filled with really good mothers. There was Rebecca and Leah and Jochebed, not to mention the Virgin Mary, all women who did far more than Mary Beth and without the benefit of arch support. Sometimes she asks Noelle what mommies she learned about in school, but it’s always Jonah and his whale and David and the lions that stick in children’s minds. God should have given biblical women more stories involving animals.”

-”’No.’ Mary Beth swears it’s like her sister isn’t even listening. She keeps track of her sister’s inside jokes about her new boss and who wasn’t invited to which dinner party and offers thoughtful suggestions for adult birthday gifts. And none of that is inherently more interesting because it doesn’t involve kids. In fact, the second you mention kids, people act like you’re such a snooze. Where is the great American novel about motherhood? Is it really so much less fascinating than middle-aged men with alcoholism and angsty affairs? And anyway, what Mary Beth is detailing is actually a compelling mystery, if anyone would pay attention. ‘That’s the unsettling thing,’ she stresses. ‘Nobody has any clue who it is.’”

I really like this kind of book. The writing isn't showy but it is snappy, with a good number of hey! yeah! moments. It's about motherhood! And also about little kids wanting to drink blood! Get it? They're parasites! Kids will literally suck the life-blood out of you! It's a bit more subtle than that, and in the right hands there are many ways to show the conflicts and absurdities of modern mothering (I just got the most intense wave of deja vu typing that, so apologies if I literally just said the same thing yesterday or two paragraphs ago). Also there's a murder. It's kind of like that Ben and Jerry's flavour with peanut butter AND pretzels AND chocolate in it.

The Book of Love by Kelly Link: Synopsis from Goodreads: The Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love—from friendship to romance to abiding family ties—with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot.
Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.

With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.

But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura’s sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.

-”And I definitely do not like how I seem to remember some really bad stuff happening – thanks, Daniel, by the way, for reminding me – and I also don’t like the feeling I”m starting to get that, in a minute or so, something else bad is going to start happening. Like this is a bad sandwich. A sandwich where the filling is a middle-of-the-night school music room in between two slices of being dead. Who orders a sandwich like that? Nobody!’”

-”’Then I’ll conserve my energy,’ Susannah said. ‘Anyway, I don’t think you should kill me. I can think of practically a dozen presents that would be better. Like a thoughtfully selected book! Or chocolate!’

Avelot said, ‘Perhaps I could give him Hector. He seems like a delightful baby,’ She didn’t remark upon the wires and cords that connected Hector to his monitor, the feeding tube taped to his nose, the cannulas in his nostrils, the tangerine Binky plugged into his mouth. Susannah felt that unwanted sympathy again. How strange it must be to find oneself arrived in the future. You wouldn’t even know the right questions to ask. What is a muffin? Should I kill this girl?’”

To be scrupulously honest, this book is a hot mess. It's overly long, it has a serious tendency to meander, and a few story lines seem to get out of hand entirely. But I love every single twisted batshit surreal short story by Kelly Link, and compared to those this is practically a technical paper. There was a rash of books and tv shows about dead people being mysteriously resurrected and I was pretty over it, but this is just different enough. And come on, who hasn't suspected that music teachers have some sketchy secrets? How do they know how to play ALL the instruments? It is bold and sprawling and ambitious and also silly and hilarious in the way that I believe I would also find world-altering magic events to be if they happened to me. It worked for me, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it to everyone. 

Those Beyond the Wall (The Space Between Worlds #2) by Micaiah Johnson: Synopsis from Goodreads: Faced with a coming apocalypse, a woman must reckon with her past to solve a series of sudden and inexplicable deaths in a searing sci-fi thriller from the Compton Crook Award–winning author of The Space Between Worlds.

Scales is the best at what she does. She is an enforcer who keeps the peace in Ashtown; a rough, climate-ravaged desert town. But that fragile peace is fractured when a woman is mangled and killed within Ash's borders, right in front of Scales's eyes. Even more incomprehensible is that there was seemingly no murderer.
When more mutilated bodies start to turn up, both in Ashtown and in the wealthier, walled-off Wiley City, Scales is tasked with finding the cause—and putting an end to it. She teams up with a frustratingly by-the-books partner and a brusque-but-brilliant scientist in order to uncover the truth, delving into both worlds to track down the invisible killer. But what they find points to something bigger and more corrupt than they could've ever foreseen—and it could spell doom for the entire world.

"Still, we were diplomatic. We gave them time to deliver the officer up for justice in Ashtown. They didn't. We paraded through their streets, acid-etching their unbreakable glass with his name as we went. They still didn't give him up. See, the killing wasn't ambiguous. It was recorded. Ashtown and Wiley agreed the office killed him. When they didn't deliver the killer up for charges they weren't saying. He didn't do it. They were saying, He was allowed to."

This is set in the same universe as one of my favourite books from last year - one of those where I literally had trouble believing people when they said they didn't like it (I know, I know!) Same awe-inspiring world-building and razor-sharp observations of structural inequality. Eventually some characters from the previous book surface. The mystery is abundantly captivating, but it's largely a device for illustrating the injustices of Micaiah's brilliant microcosm. Dark and gritty and fiercely exhilarating.

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge: Synopsis from Goodreads: The gods of The Myriad were as real as the coastlines and currents, and as merciless as the winds and whirlpools. Now the gods are dead, but their remains are stirring beneath the waves . . .

On the streets of the Island of Lady's Crave live 14-year-old street urchins Hark and his best friend Jelt. They are scavengers: diving for relics of the gods, desperate for anything they can sell. But there is something dangerous in the deep waters of the undersea, calling to someone brave enough to retrieve it.

When the waves try to claim Jelt, Hark will do anything to save him. Even if it means compromising not just who Jelt is, but what he is . . .

“All human fear runs down into the Undersea, just as streams and rivers run into the sea. Human fear has a terrible power. It changes everything, distorts everything, maddens everything. Fear is the dark womb where monsters are born and thrive.”

I started quite a few years' reading with a Frances Hardinge book. I am baffled at how one imagination can produce so prodigious a wealth of worlds and characters and stories. I bought this - gorgeous cover - and then for some reason kept putting off reading it. I brought it to camp one summer and Eve promptly stole it. Finally got to it last May. 

It captures utterly the way the sea is a place that is beautiful, mysterious, strange, unknowable, and often terrifying. It sketches in a few deft scenes what it's like to have a friend you worship who gradually reveals that they don't think of you the same way, that they don't have your best interests at heart. It's full of monstrous gods and terrible choices. It's nominally YA or even middle-grade, but I really feel like Hardinge transcends age ratings. 

Square3 by Mira Grant: Synopsis from Goodreads: We think we understand the laws of physics. We think reality is an immutable monolith, consistent from one end of the universe to the next. We think the square/cube law has actual relevance.

We think a lot of things. It was perhaps inevitable that some of them would turn out to be wrong.

When the great incursion occurred, no one was prepared. How could they have been? Of all the things physicists had predicted, “the fabric of reality might rip open and giant monsters could come pouring through” had not made the list. But somehow, on a fine morning in May, that was precisely what happened.

For sisters Susan and Katharine Black, the day of the incursion was the day they lost everything. Their home, their parents, their sense of normalcy…and each other, because when the rift opened, Susan was on one side and Katharine was on the other, and each sister was stranded in a separate form of reality. For Susan, it was science and study and the struggle to solve the mystery of the altered physics inside the zones transformed by the incursion. For Katharine, it was monsters and mayhem and the fight to stay alive in a world unlike the world of her birth.

The world has changed. The laws of physics have changed. The girls have changed. And the one universal truth of all states of changed matter is that nothing can be completely restored to what it was originally, no matter how much you might wish it could be. (I don't know what happened with the formatting there, and every time I try to fix it it creates a problem somewhere else so I apologize, please ignore). 

-"Susan wanted her back. Getting her was going to require more than wanting: it was going to need luck, and speed, and muons.

 Muons were the answer.

I sometimes think to myself that I read everything I can get my hands on of this author's (Seanan McGuire, who is also Mira Grant, and A. Deborah Baker - an author that she made up for her Middlegame series and then became, writing actual books around the quotes), but then I realize I don't, not nearly. I haven't finished the October Daye series, I started one of the Incryptids series but couldn't really get into it, I haven't read any of the A Deborah Baker books. She's 47 and has written more than 50 books, which boggles my mind because none of the books I've read seem like they would be tossed off of an afternoon. Some are more plot-heavy, but the writing is never sub-standard, and I'm no scientist, but the science seems fairly solid, so how the fuck does she do it? This was a fairly short entry that I discovered in the Kindle store. Sometimes an author just works for a reader, I guess? 

Lock-In (Lock In #1) by John Scalzi: Synopsis from Goodreads: Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.

A quarter of a century later, in a world shaped by what's now known as "Haden's syndrome," rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann. The two of them are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel, with a suspect who is an "integrator" - someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time. If the Integrator was carrying a Haden client, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.

But "complicated" doesn't begin to describe it. As Shane and Vann began to unravel the threads of the murder, it becomes clear that the real mystery - and the real crime - is bigger than anyone could have imagined. The world of the locked in is changing, and with the change comes opportunities that the ambitious will seize at any cost. The investigation that began as a murder case takes Shane and Vann from the halls of corporate power to the virtual spaces of the locked in, and to the very heart of an emerging, surprising new human culture. It's nothing you could have expected.

--"The threep flung the knife at me, and I flinched involuntarily. It pinged off my head and back onto the kitchen floor. When I came back up, the threep had pulled a large pot out of the pile of dirty dishes in the sink and aimed it diretly for my head. There was a gonging sound as it connected, twisting my head aside and caving in a portion of it.

It was then I realized that my rental threep’s pain receptors were dialed up really high. Some part of my brain recognized this made sense, since the rental place wanted to keep its customers from doing anything stupid with the threep, and dialing up the sensation of pain would certainly do that.

The rest of my brain was going ow jesus fuck ow ow.”

    I first read this in 2014, after discovering Scalzi and getting Matt's stepdad Bill hooked on him as well. I liked it and then forgot about it, then realized there was a second book. I always think I should reread before reading next books in series, but I rarely do. This time I decided I would. When I HAVE reread, the original book sometimes doesn't hold up. That was not the case here. It was a fast, enjoyable read, but flawless world-building as to the treatment of a new disability that affects millions of people. The culture of the Hadens reminded me in many ways of the Deaf culture, which I've always found fascinating. The disability politics and the mechanisms of accessibility - or lack thereof - are well handled. Scalzi seems to be really good at creating nuanced characters without needing to put a whole lot of words into it, so it doesn't slow down the narrative flow. There's also a generous helping of humour and nerdiness - the humanoid robots used by Hadens to move around in the world are informally called 'Threeps', after C3PO from Star Wars. 

Head On (Lock in #2) by John Scalzi: Synopsis from Goodreads: John Scalzi returns with Head On, the standalone follow-up to the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed Lock In. Chilling near-future SF with the thrills of a gritty cop procedural, Head On brings Scalzi's trademark snappy dialogue and technological speculation to the future world of sports.

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent’s head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are “threeps,” robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden’s Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.
Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

Is it an accident or murder? FBI Agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth―and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.

--”As I looked around Amelie Parker’s estate grounds, I strongly suspected she kept it running when she wasn’t in it.

You pay for persistence.

And every Haden knows you’re paying for it, too. In a community where everything is possible and anything imagined can be made real enough, persistence on a very large scale of detail is one of the few possible displays of actual wealth in a virtual world.”

A sophomore effort that measured up fully to the first book. This one folds in the world of professional sports and sports betting. The description of Hiketa - where people whale on each other to the point of dismemberment, decapitation and head-flinging - is wildly enjoyable. Chris Shane and Leslie Vann (his chain-smoking, hard-drinking, bad-habit-collecting partner) are just as entertaining this time around. I will keep reading these as long as Scalzi keeps producing them. 

A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw: Synopsis from Goodreads: Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James—a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books—he’s led to a place many believed to be only a legend.

Called "Pastoral," this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it… he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James.
Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease—rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms.
Hauntingly beautiful, hypnotic, and bewitching, A History of Wild Places is a story about fairy tales, our fear of the dark, and losing yourself within the wilderness of your mind.

-”The sun dips to the west, while I stand on the porch watching Theo walk up the road for his shift at the guard hut, an uneasy feeling stirring in my stomach, like a scream that keeps growing louder. I wish he’d stay with me, but Parker will be waiting for him, and I know we need to pretend that nothing has changed – that we each haven’t found things left in our house like breadcrumbs in a gothic fairy tale.”

-”I stand up from the bed, the Foxtail book in my hand.

It’s heavy , a book you don’t simply open and read before sleep – a chapter here or there. You must commit to it. A book like this demands something of its reader.”

This book kind of snuck up on me. Certain things seemed fairly obvious and telegraphed, and I was unsure about continuing. Then the actual story was just really easy to fall into, and it turned out that I didn't have everything figured out after all. I liked the characters, and the way things were not quite supernatural, but mysterious. The device of a community that tries to remain apart and untainted from the rest of the world is not new, but it is rich with possibility. I was really glad I stuck with it. 

Minor Mage by T. Kingfisher: Synopsis from Goodreads:Oliver was a very minor mage. His familiar reminded him of this several times a day.

He only knew three spells, and one of them was to control his allergy to armadillo dander. His attempts to summon elementals resulted in nosebleeds, and there is nothing more embarrassing than having your elemental leave the circle to get you a tissue, pat you comfortingly, and then disappear in a puff of magic. The armadillo had about wet himself laughing.
He was a very minor mage.
Unfortunately, he was all they had.

'"'Quit squirming,' grumbled the armadillo

'There's rocks on the ground,' muttered Oliver

'It's the ground. It's made of rocks.'

Not for the first time, Oliver wondered if speech was really a good idea in a familiar."

I was just trying to decide whether to try to fit one more book in or settle down to not meeting my reading goal for the year, when I sat down by the Christmas tree after getting a bunch of stuff ready for our New Year's Eve party, opened the Libby app on my ipad and saw that this hold had become available, and it clocked in at a sweet and tidy 176 pages. (Just now when I searched for it on Goodreads it kept not coming up and I was a bit worried that I had dreamed it, but it was just that I had accidentally added an 'A'). 

Pretty much everything good that I have come to expect from T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon. Magical and charming and lovely and bittersweet.