It’s 1592 and Elizabeth I has ruled England for nearly 35 years. The Virgin Queen has never named her heir, creating both un­cer­tain­ty and op­por­tu­ni­ty. John Shake­speare used to be an "in­tel­li­gencer" for the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spymaster. With reluctance, Shake­speare is drawn back into that life when the Earl of Essex insists upon com­mi­sion­ing him to find a woman who should be dead—a survivor of the lost Roanoke settlement has been sighted in London. Essex wants her as does his mysterious ally, a …continue.

Eighth and penul­ti­mate book in the Temeraire series, which began with His Majesty’s Dragon. It’s a delightful take on the Napoleonic wars with in­tel­li­gent dragons.

The book opens with William Laurence awaking ship­wrecked and amnesiac on the shores of Japan, where European foreigners are strictly forbidden. His dragon Temeraire fran­ti­cal­ly seeks him, while the rest of the crew think him dead. After being reunited in Nagasaki, they travel on to the Chinese court in Peking and enlist the help of the emperor’s dragons in fighting Napoleon, who has …continue.

India has split apart by 2047, into a dozen competing states desperate for the life-giving monsoon rains. New castes have appeared, as have the new gender of nutes. Aeais (artificial in­tel­li­gences) abound but are strictly proscribed from attaining full sentience. And an asteroid with seven-billion-year-old images of now-living people has been discovered.

McDonald draws together nine people from different walks of life, weaving their tales into one tapestry. India, ancient yet up-to-the-minute, is the vibrant backdrop for this explosion of ideas.

Three years ago, we visited our friends Louise and Melissa in South Florida, and we drove down Highway 1 through the Florida Keys to Key West—the south­ern­most city in the United States. Recently, they sent me a copy of this book.

Henry Flagler was well-known in his own time as one of the Robber Barons of the Golden Age. He founded Standard Oil with John D. Rock­e­feller and became fabulously wealthy. In …continue.

It’s the fiftieth an­niver­sary of the death of my maternal grand­fa­ther, George Victor Clery, on 3rd March 1965. It did not come as a shock to the family. His health was often poor and he had been ill for some time. He was born a month premature on 30th March 1900 and his mother was told she would never rear him. Nev­er­the­less, he grew up to become an avid golfer and tennis player, to marry and father five children, and to live all the way to a brief retirement, though not quite long enough to see any of his grand­chil­dren. Both I and my cousin Siobhán were born in the …continue.

We use Nose to run unit tests. I noticed that we had some tests that weren’t being run, and it took me some time to work out why. Eventually, I found this checklist, which told me to "make sure the files in your tests directory are not executable".

A quick chmod -x *.py later and nosetests project/tests suddenly found all the tests.

Now that I know what to look for, I found this in the Nose docs:

It is important to note that the default behavior of nose is to not include tests from files which are executable.

--exe: Look for tests in python modules that are executable. Normal behavior is to exclude executable …continue.

Patterson Wells lives dan­ger­ous­ly, clearing fallen trees in hurricane season. Since the death of his young son a few years ago, he’s been lost in a self-de­struc­tive fog. His life becomes entangled with that of his neighbor’s grown son, Junior, another lost soul. Wells and Junior bond after a fashion, as their lives spiral further out of control, with drug deals gone bad, drunken sprees, and murders.

Fas­ci­nat­ing in a grim can’t-look-away-from-the-trainwreck fashion. Whitmer writes lyrically about broken lives and disposable people.

When the Norse raiders arrive in the English village, Raven, the young outsider who was found two years before with no memory, realizes that he speaks their language. He is drawn to them and he joins them in their quest for glory, plunder, and battle.

After a slow start, the plot moves along with enough fighting to hold one’s interest. Aside from Raven, the characters are poorly drawn, with little to dis­tin­guish or motivate them.

Five years ago, the Greatcoats were the lawgivers of Tristia. And then the good king was deposed by the dukes and the Greatcoats were broken up. Now despised, only a few are left, taking work as caravan guards and sellswords. Falcio, the former First Cantor, finally starts to care again, as he is sucked into the dukes’ intrigues.

Traitor’s Blade starts out light-hearted and joky, growing darker and more passionate as Falcio opens himself up and re­dis­cov­ers his honor. De Castell is a fine sto­ry­teller and the action …continue.

A young woman from a prominent family is missing and the Edinburgh police are looking for her. In time, they find her body. A small wooden coffin is found near her home, and DI John Rebus links that to some cold cases, while DC Siobhan Clarke tracks down the mysterious Quizmaster on the Internet.

Another enjoyable and competent police procedural from Ian Rankin.