Séamus Joyce, a former senior civil servant, returns to Dublin from self-imposed exile in Germany. He has been engaged as a consultant by Finer Small Campuses to evaluate his alma mater, King's College Dublin, a third-rate, third-level in­sti­tu­tion.

Millar, himself an Irish academic, satirizes both Irish higher-level education and the brave new world wrought by the Celtic Tiger economy. It's a different world from the depressed, inward-looking Dublin that Joyce moved to as a student. The plot moves ef­fi­cient­ly and some of the characters are, well, characters. Not Joyce though: he's insecure and in­tro­vert­ed, still …continue.

A few decades hence, Britain has devolved into balkanized ministates. A Trotskyite, space-loving mercenary in­ad­ver­tent­ly awakens an AI and sparks the revolution. The plot is un­sum­ma­riz­able, but it's en­ter­tain­ing and complex, mixing action, political theory, cyberpunk, and romance.

There are two Dr. Temperance Brennan's. Both are forensic an­thro­pol­o­gists. One is the heroine of Kathy Reichs' novels, who, like Reichs herself, is a professor in North Carolina and works with the Montreal police. The other is the star of the TV show, Bones, is brilliant but devoid of social skills, works with the FBI in Washington DC, and has a state-of-the-art lab and a crack team of geeks.

A war has erupted between biker gangs in Montreal. Old bones have been found in the ground, including the skull of a teenaged girl, whose other …continue.

Seven years ago, “Paul Hardy” was found with his head smashed in. He recovered physically, but not mentally. After another accident, his wits come back and a few memories. Googling for the one name he remembers brings the NSA to his door. He goes on the run, causing the un­rav­el­ling of a coverup.

Efficient, well-plotted thriller in the paranoid vein. The plot is as risible as most such books, but no matter. Enjoy it for a few hours.

Anathem takes place on Arbre, a world where those of an in­tel­lec­tu­al bent sequester themselves in monas­ter­ies apart from the Sæcular world. When an alien ship is noticed orbiting the planet, avout from concents all over Arbre are drawn together for a Convox to determine how to respond to the threat of the Geometers.

Stephen­son's Anathem is an ambitious project, pulling together physics, meta­physics, world-building, an­thro­pol­o­gy, and an adventure tale. It's an alien world as he keeps reminding us by the huge vocabulary he's invented. Said vocabulary alternates between ex­as­per­at­ing and …continue.

England, 1958: an alternate universe where famous fictional characters really lived and the regime of Big Brother has just come to an end. Sixty years ago, the British Crown gathered together the Murray Group, ex­tra­or­di­nary ad­ven­tur­ers charged with sensitive missions. The remnants of the group fled England in World War II. Now they've come back to steal their dossier from MI-5, a dossier that could lead the Government back to them, a dossier that details the exploits of earlier …continue.

Betty Bacal is an only child, abandoned by her father, raised by her Rumanian Jewish mother in New York. Stagestruck from an early age, she takes acting classes for years but gets little stage work. Modeling work is a fallback. A cover shot for Harper's Bazaar leads Howard Hawks to bring her out to Hollywood. Within months, Hawks' protogée, now Lauren Bacall, is the lead in “To Have or Have Not” and falling in love with her costar, Humphrey Bogart. Bogie is 45 to her 20, but it doesn't …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.

Ten LAPD patrolmen congregate regularly in MacArthur Park for “choir practice”: late-night bitchfests, marathon boozing, and group sex with a couple of cocktail waitresses.

LA's finest are not exactly fine specimens of humanity, but then neither are the people they serve, whom they consider little better than the ones they arrest. The choirboys include an idealist, a psychopath, a prankster, and a world-class mooch. They fight and they drink and they argue: everything but discuss the things that really bother them. Wambaugh lampoons the choirboys, but he reserves his full contempt for their …continue.

DI John Rebus in­ves­ti­gates the murder of an illegal immigrant, who had ties to asylum seekers in Edinburgh. DS Siobhan Clarke looks into the dis­ap­pear­ance of a teenaged girl; soon, the rapist of the girl's sister is murdered.

Rebus and Siobhan struggle with the uglier side of life in Edinburgh, notably, racism, latter-day slavery, and the increasing numbers of asylum seekers. As usual, their personal lives are in a mess: Rebus drinks too much; Siobhan falls asleep with a tub of ice cream.

As in other Rebus books, the two in­ves­ti­ga­tions …continue.