Alban McGill has a strained re­la­tion­ship with his extended family, the Wopulds, maker of Empire, one of the world's best­selling games for more than a century. They are being drawn together at their remote Scottish estate, Garbadale, to decide whether to sell the company to a large American company. His cousin Sophie will be there, the one he's loved from afar for twenty years, since their affair was forcibly broken up.

Banks weaves together multiple strands of Alban's life, the torrid adolescent love affair, his mother's early …continue.

Rural Texas, 1980. Llewelyn Moss, out hunting in the middle of nowhere, finds the remains of a drug buy that went wrong: dead bodies, shot-up cars, black tar heroin. And a satchel with two million dollars in cash. Moss takes the money and runs. He knows it's stupid, he knows that people will come after him, and he does it anyway.

Anton Chigurh is the worst of the killers on his trail. Relentless, re­morse­less, untroubled by conscience, and offended by the wrongness of Moss's act. He and Moss will be …continue.

In the 1850s, three anti-slavery families settled next to each other in rural Kansas: the Grelliers, the Schapens, and the rich Fremantles. Seven gen­er­a­tions later, the last of the Fremantles is gone, the Grelliers are pro­gres­sive farmers, and the Schapens are bel­liger­ent fun­da­men­tal­ists. Gina Haring, a Wiccan lesbian from New York, housesits the Fremantle mansion, while she tries to pick up the pieces of her life. In­ad­ver­tent­ly, she triggers a cascade of changes. Most notably, the Grellier son, at odds with his anti-war mother, enlists and is killed in Iraq, sending her into a …continue.

Sequel to The Purity of Blood.

Captain Alatriste has rejoined the Spanish army in Flanders, besieging Breda in 1625. Íñigo, his follower and later biographer, is still too young to bear arms, and serves as a forager for Ala­tris­te's squad.

There's no glory in this war—Pérez-Reverte is a former war cor­re­spon­dent. The Spanish empire is on the decline. Spain has been fighting in the Spanish Nether­lands for sixty years to suppress the Protestant heretics. The Spanish troops are mutinous and close to starving; they haven't been paid in a …continue.

Almost two years ago, I read Quick­sil­ver, the first volume of Neal Stephen­son's Baroque Cycle. It wasn't until two months ago, that I read The Confusion and The System of the World, the second and third volumes. By then it was clear that I had forgotten much of the first book, so I re-read it.

The books are suf­fi­cient­ly in­ter­twined that it would have been better had I read all three in quick succession, rather than leaving such a long interval.

Quick­sil­ver stands up well to …continue.

Neal Stephen­son's massive, sprawling Baroque Cycle began with Quick­sil­ver, continued in The Confusion, and concludes with The System of the World.

1714: Daniel Waterhouse has been recalled from Boston by Princess Caroline of Ansbach, soon to be Princess of Wales, after the last Stuart monarch dies, so that he can intervene in the rancorous dispute between Newton and Leibniz over who invented calculus. The plot is too complex to summarize, but it's a glorious farrago of coun­ter­feit­ing gold coins, alchemy, Solomonic gold, …continue.

Neal Stephen­son's massive, sprawling Baroque Cycle began with Quick­sil­ver and continues in the aptly named Confusion. The book in­ter­weaves two novels, Bonanza and The Juncto, taking place between 1689 and 1702. Bonanza follows Jack Shaftoe, as he and other galley slaves in Algiers capture Spanish gold of particular sig­nif­i­cance to some highly placed alchemists, and make their way ever eastward, through Cairo, India, Manila, and Mexico. The Juncto deals primarily with Eliza, now a French duchess, and her remarkable financial derring-do.

The previous book concerned itself with …continue.

A Sydney pole dancer known as ‘the Doll’ has a one-night stand with a Muslim. The next day she's the subject of a massive witchhunt as a suspected terrorist. After 9/11, the Bali bombings, and the Iraq war, Aus­tralians are ripe for the fear­mon­ger­ing of the media. An escalating cycle of hype and fear and ever more lurid headlines plunges the Doll into a waking nightmare from which she cannot escape.

This novel indicts everyone: the ordinary people who un­think­ing­ly condone events; the security forces with their own agenda; and most …continue.

Steven Saylor is best known for his Roma Sub Rosa series of detective novels about Gordianus the Finder, set in ancient Rome.

Roma is a Mich­eneresque saga, spanning 1000BC to 1BC, in a dozen vignettes following the holders of an ancient amulet. Starting with a crossroads frequented by traders, it shows the evolution of Rome from a village to the great power of the Mediter­ranean, led by Augustus Caesar, the first of the emperors. It's an easy in­tro­duc­tion to much of Roman history, but the episodic nature of the story means that …continue.

This novel continues not long after The Far Side of the World left off. The Surprise stops off in Barbados, then chases an American privateer almost to England. Jack Aubrey, astute at sea, but a naïf on land, is hoodwinked into causing a run on the stock market, and brought to trial. Stephen Maturin finds that his wife has left him and that his former superior in Naval In­tel­li­gence has been sidelined.

O'Brian moves ef­fort­less­ly from a naval chase to the rural pleasures of Aubrey's cottage to …continue.