Another book from the 1632 series and a direct sequel to 1634: The Galileo Affair. For­tu­nate­ly, this one is much better than Grantville Gazette III.

The Americans from the future have es­tab­lished an embassy in Rome, as well as a tavern catering to the rev­o­lu­tion­ary-minded elements. Cardinal Borja, head of the Spanish In­qui­si­tion, is enraged by the ac­com­mo­da­tion reached by Pope Urban, and he foments unrest leading to an attempt to overthrow the pope.

Fairly en­ter­tain­ing with a coherent plot and engaging characters. The first half moves slowly as …continue.

In The Golden Compass, Lyra Belacqua is a young girl living at Jordan College, Oxford. A ward of her distant uncle, Lord Asriel, she is rather absently looked after by the staff and scholars, but prefers to spend her time rough­hous­ing with the local …continue.

In Dies the Fire, the first book of the trilogy, the "Change" instantly and per­ma­nent­ly disabled elec­tric­i­ty, high-powered chemical reactions, and explosives, plunging mankind back into the Dark Ages. Ninety percent of the planet's population died in the first year, mostly from disease, starvation, or murder. Dies the Fire follows several groups that form in Oregon's Willamette valley, including the Clan Mackenzie and the Bear­killers.

The second book, The Pro­tec­tor's War, took place nine years later. The tyrannical Protector of Portland and his feudal barons start to provoke war against the …continue.

So, there's this two-time loser Eddie Coyle, see. Eddie Fingers. They call him that on account of the time that he screwed up and some other guys had to break his fingers. Eddie deals guns and he's facing time in New Hampshire, so he's talking to the police hoping to get his sentence reduced. His friends wouldn't like that if they knew.

This was the first novel published by George V. Higgins (no relation). Written in an im­pres­sion­is­tic, dialog-heavy style, Higgins clearly knew his lowlifes. He …continue.

A small troupe of traveling players spend a few days in the Oxford of 1434 and are nearly framed for a murder.

Frazer evokes the sights and sounds of medieval Oxford during the Corpus Christi holiday, the hard life of traveling players, and the goings-on of a rich merchant's household. Amazingly enough, she almost completely avoids the colleges of Oxford. The mystery itself is thin and occupies little of the book, as the author prefers to con­cen­trate on the other aspects of her tale.

Moderately en­ter­tain­ing.

Lily is a cleaning woman in the small town of Shake­speare, Arkansas. A cleaner with a traumatic past, who erects high walls around herself and works out at the gym and the dojo fervently. One morning, she opens up the gym to find a body­builder whose larynx has been crushed by a laden barbell. Tensions are already high over the murder of a young black man, and racist literature starts appearing everywhere, followed by a bombing at a black church. Lily falls in with a private detective who is trying to get …continue.

This book is not a Sher­lock­ian pastiche, although Mycroft Holmes does appear in two short stories within the story.

Damien March is a 30ish researcher at the BBC, who un­ex­pect­ed­ly inherits a house on a remote island off Cape Cod, from his late uncle Patrick, a once-successful novelist. He moves to Ionia and slowly starts inhabiting the life of Patrick. Brothers are a recurring theme throughout this book: Patrick and Damien's father; Damien and his brother Vivian; Mycroft and Sherlock; and others. Damien comes to an un­der­stand­ing and a …continue.

Brigadier-General Sir Harry Flashman returns in the twelfth volume of the Flashman Papers. Flashy is a cad, a rogue, a lecher, a toady, and a bully. His reputation for bravery is wholly undeserved, but he has suc­cess­ful­ly concealed that through an extremely long career, spanning much of the nineteenth century. Flashman reveals all in a series of extremely frank memoirs written in his old age, published long after his death by his "editor", Fraser.

Flashman has many un­de­sir­able qualities, but he has a knack for finding himself in …continue.

Dark Fire is set in the summer of 1540, a few years after Henry VIII es­tab­lished himself as the head of the Church of England. Matthew Shardlake is a London lawyer, who takes on a case defending a young woman against the charge of murdering her 12-year-old cousin. She refuses to speak and will be "pressed" by heavy weights until she enters a plea—or dies. In exchange for a temporary reprieve, Shardlake agrees to take on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion for his sometime patron, Thomas Cromwell, Henry's first minister. An alchemist claims to have discovered the …continue.

This book is blurbed by Dan Brown on the front cover; happily, The Dante Club is a much better book than The Da Vinci Code and Pearl is a much better writer than Brown.

The poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, their publisher, J.T. Fields, and the historian George Washington Greene are completing the first trans­la­tion of Dante Alighier­i's The Divine Comedy ever to be published in America. It is Boston in 1865, just after the Civil War. Two prominent Brahmins are murdered …continue.