Sequel to The Wee Free Men.

Tiffany Aching, now 11, becomes a trainee witch. But an ancient evil, the hiver, has noticed her and possesses her. Her Nac Mac Feegle friends, the diminutive and in­domitable blue pictsies, come to her aid.

She may only be eleven, but she’s as tough as nails.

Rec­om­mend­ed.

Hiaasen drags a motley cast of characters to a remote key in the Everglades and lets their various lunacies duke it out.

An en­ter­tain­ing romp.

In the year Eighteen-Six, it has been two hundred years since last a practical magician walked in England, when Mr. Norrell shews himself after many years of study. In time, he is joined by a student Jonathan Strange who later dis­tin­guish­es himself in the Peninsular War against the tyrant Bonaparte. But their most dangerous adversary is the capricious gentleman with the thistle-down hair from Faerie.

Susanna Clarke’s debut novel is a startling take on fantasy, evoking the work of Austen and Dickens, pitting madness against reason, exploring magic and Eng­lish­ness.

Highly rec­om­mend­ed.

A year after Sir Edward Grey’s sudden collapse and death, his widow Lady Julia realizes the truth in what Nicholas Brisbane, the private inquiry agent, had told her: Sir Edward had received threat­en­ing letters. She engages Brisbane to in­ves­ti­gate the possible murder and starts asking questions herself.

The most re­spectable member of her large, eccentric family, Julia starts to shed her Victorian con­ven­tion­al­i­ty as she is drawn to the enigmatic Brisbane.

The Northern English city of Newcastle is on edge as racial tensions have been whipped up. Joe Donovan’s team are asked to in­ves­ti­gate a seemingly unrelated case where a one-time radical is getting threat­en­ing calls.

The main char­ac­ter­s—­Dono­van’s team and some teenaged no-hopers way out of their depth in a white su­prema­cist or­ga­ni­za­tion—are credible and well-drawn. The plot however relies overly on co­in­ci­dence after co­in­ci­dence.

Inspector John Madden, like so many of his generation, came back from the Great War a changed man. When a par­tic­u­lar­ly savage and senseless murder takes place, he must persuade his superiors at Scotland Yard to adopt some new and unwelcome practices, such as psy­cho­log­i­cal profiling.

This well-done thriller is as much about the aftermath of World War I as it is a police procedural.

Honey West is a “private eyeful”, a kick-ass statuesque private in­ves­ti­ga­tor tough enough to take on the guys at their own game and sexy enough to dazzle them. Somehow she manages to lose her top all the time, but it never goes further than that. The plot is lu­di­crous­ly com­pli­cat­ed, switching gears on every page, with snappy Mike Ham­meresque dialog.

The books inspired a mid-sixties TV show that Emma remembers with great fondness. The sex was excised from the show, of course.