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 …continue.
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.
After the events of The Truelove, Aubrey and Maturin set sail for Peru to undertake the intelligence mission originally begun four books ago in The Letter of Marque. O'Brian packs more than usual into this book: multiple sea battles, the Reverend Martin's descent into madness, Stephen inciting a revolution of independence against the Spanish, naturalism high in the Andes, Jack almost being lost at sea in a small boat, and a nerve-wracking encounter with an American frigate amongst the ice floes of Cape Horn.
Highly recommended.
Twenty years ago, three twelve-year-olds went into their local woods in Knocknaree near Dublin. Hours later, only one was found, catatonic. Now, under a different name, Rob Ryan is a detective in the Irish Murder Squad and another twelve-year-old has been murdered in Knocknaree.
Tana French's debut is subtle and gripping. The story unfolds in unexpected ways. Ryan's relationship with his partner in detection, Cassie Maddox, is tested to the breaking point while he tries to conceal his past and stay on the case.
Highly recommended.