The first of the The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.

Mma Precious Ramotswe sets up a one-woman detective agency in Gaborne, the capital of her native Botswana. She is shrewd and observant and makes a go of it, despite the naysayers. The book is a collection of short episodes, loosely tied together. Her good nature helps lead her to find sat­is­fac­to­ry res­o­lu­tions for most of her clients.

Enjoyable, if frothy.

First of the Bulldog Drummond novels.

Bored former army officer, Capt. Hugh Drummond, “late of the Royal Loamshires”, puts an ad­ver­tise­ment in the paper looking for adventure. He gets more than he expected when a young woman puts him on the trail of a master criminal who is organizing a would-be socialist putsch.

En­ter­tain­ing in a square-jawed, stiff-upper-lip sort of way.

The first in the Temeraire series.

Capt. Will Laurence of the Royal Navy captures one of Napoleon’s ships. It’s carrying a dragon egg, from which the dragon Temeraire promptly hatches and bonds with Laurence. Laurence must leave the Navy and become an aviator in the socially un­de­sir­able Royal Aerial Corps, where he and Temeraire will fight against Napoleon’s dragons.

This is a delightful cross between the Napoleonic seafaring of the Aubrey-Maturin novels and Drag­onrid­ers of Pern, with a little bit of Hogwarts for dragons thrown in. Temeraire …continue.

Arik is the smartest of the 100 young humans born to the only colony on Venus—a colony that needs to develop its in­de­pen­dence from Earth. After he wakes from a three-month coma, he grows to realize that there is something very wrong going on in the colony.

The book starts off very slowly, with massive amounts of exposition that the author apparently couldn’t bear to cut. Later, it develops some in­ter­est­ing ideas and unexpected plot twists, making it worthwhile.

Available as a free ebook from the author’s website.

Playback is the last Philip Marlowe novel completed by Raymond Chandler. Marlowe is hired to tail a woman who arrives on a train from the East. He follows her to a small town near San Diego, where she falls under the influence of a black­mail­er—and Marlowe starts to fall for her.

Not Chandler’s best work—one is left feeling that both Chandler and Marlowe are old and tired and going through the mo­tion­s—but enjoyable none the less.

The boy is abandoned at the castle gate when he’s six, Prince Chivalry’s bastard. Over ten years, he grows up on the sidelines, where he is ignored by most save the stable master. The king eventually finds a use for him, ap­pren­tic­ing the boy to his assassin.

There are few swords swung in this book. It’s a character study of an outcast boy and his often strained re­la­tion­ships with others. It details his developing awareness of court intrigue and national politics, and the difficult choices that confront him.

Highly rec­om­mend­ed.

The plot is more than slightly ridiculous. Young woman discovers that exactly on her 25th birthday she will come into her hitherto unknown powers and join the secret superhero zodiacal troupe that protects Las Vegas from their nemeses. For her own protection, she must assume the identity of her murdered sister.

It’s better than it sounds though. The heroine is appealing and copes fairly well with the traumatic upending of her life.

The Winds of Dune is another interquel in the Dune franchise, following on from Paul of Dune, taking place between Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.

The Emperor Paul Atreides has dis­ap­peared into the desert, leaving behind his new-born twins and his half-mad sister Alia as the Regent. His mother Jessica arrives from Caladan and comes to understand a great deal about her son’s legacy, and the galaxy-wide Jihad that had grown beyond his control.