A gritty noir set in the western Irish city of Galway. Jack Taylor used to be in the guards (police) as a young man, but nowadays he's usually found at the bottom of a bottle. He makes a little money by finding things. One day, a distraught mother asks him to prove that her teenaged daughter did not commit suicide. He is reluctant to take the case, fearing (rightly) that it will require too much of him. Jack struggles mightily with his alcoholism, and both the case and his drinking …continue.

The second of Charlaine Harris's Dead series about Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress in small-town Louisiana. A telepathic waitress. With a vampire boyfriend.

Vampires were legalized two years ago and now live openly. Sookie is asked by the local vampire cabal to visit their coun­ter­parts in Dallas and use her talents to find a missing vampire. She finds that he is being held by the Fellowship of the Sun, a fun­da­men­tal­ist church that wants to take the un out of undead.

Harris portrays life in small Southern towns …continue.

Centuries ago, the fairies were driven north, where they lurk behind the Shadowline. They want their lands back. The humans living in Southmarch are blithely unaware that the Shadowline is drifting pur­pose­ful­ly southwards, being pre­oc­cu­pied with their own politics. The king is being held hostage by a treach­er­ous southern neighbor. The oldest prince is murdered shortly after the book opens, leaving the teenage twins, Briony and Barrick, as the regents.

Briony manages to rise to the occasion, but her half-crippled brother starts cracking under the strain. The book follows several other characters, notably Chert, a hobbit-like …continue.

Baltimore: home to Edgar Alan Poe, the Orioles, and P.I. Tess Monaghan, the subject of most of Laura Lippman's books.

Tess's live-in boyfriend Crow is a trusting soul, which both endears him to her and ex­as­per­ates her. One cold night, he brings home a homeless teenager, Lloyd Jupiter. At first, she is annoyed. Then she realizes that Lloyd is un­wit­ting­ly connected to the recent murder of a federal prosecutor.

As events develop, Crow and Lloyd go on the run, while Tess stonewalls against the feds, reluctant to betray Crow's trust.

Tess, like so …continue.

Jim Butcher is best known for The Dresden Files, a noirish urban fantasy series. Academ's Fury is the second book in his straight, high fantasy series, The Codex Alera, which is set in a world at the tech­no­log­i­cal level of the Roman Empire. Many of the characters have Roman names and I expect that we'll learn in a future book that they are somehow de­scen­dants of marooned Romans. This is not Earth: there are several alien races. More im­por­tant­ly, every human can call upon one or more furies, elemental beings with …continue.

Nobody expects the Spanish In­qui­si­tion!

—Monty Python

They certainly do in the Madrid of 1623. The Spanish Empire is at its peak, ruling much of the Americas as well as the Low Countries. The Spanish In­qui­si­tion functions as an ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal secret police, defending the Faith against heretic­s—and Jews—and ensuring orthodoxy by keeping an iron grip on the hearts and minds of the Spanish people.

This book is the second in a series of novels about Captain Alatriste, a sword-for-hire. The novels are related in flashback by Íñigo, a 13-year-old at the time of …continue.

A certain subgenre has grown up over the last few years. Call it "vampire mystery" or urban fantasy or "horror fiction" or "paranormal romance". Stories set in a world that looks a lot like ours, but witches, vampires, werewolves, and other creatures exist among us, sometimes openly, sometimes not. The creatures have complex personal lives, generally sticking together with their own kind and treating gingerly with the other para­nor­mals. The hero (often, heroine) is not nec­es­sar­i­ly human and has close friends, lovers, and enemies who are vampires or werewolves or witches. In the best …continue.

It's so hard to find a good person of hench these days.

Nobody actually says that in this collection of 14 short stories, but it's not hard to imagine some of them doing so.

The cliches of evil over­lordism and Bond villain have worked their way into the Zeitgeist. From Dr. Evil to Darth Vader, everyone knows how the heroes outwit the villain and save the day.

And so do the villains, as a rule. Some have read the Evil Overlord List. Most …continue.

Robin wakes up in a 27th-century clinic missing most of his memories, apparently arranged by his earlier self. After a few weeks of re­cu­per­a­tion, he agrees to take part in an experiment, the YFH polity, to recreate a microcosm of the 20th century, an era largely lost to historians.

Robin awakes in a female body called Reeve. (The post-Sin­gu­lar­i­ty society has advanced technology which can reassemble human bodies and replicate just about anything you can think of.) Forced to get along in the very conformist society that the ex­per­i­menters are building, Reeve ex­pe­ri­ences …continue.

The Algebraist is Iain M. Banks' most recent science-fiction novel. Most of his SF novels are set in the universe of the Culture. This one is assuredly not. Artificial In­tel­li­gences are hated and persecuted.

Fassin Taak is a human Slow Seer, a sort of an­thro­pol­o­gist who studies the Dwellers, an extremely long-lived race who live on gas-giant planets scattered across the galaxy. He is recruited by his government to in­ves­ti­gate rumors of a secret list of wormholes, which would yield new, high-speed routes across the galaxy. At the same …continue.