2026/097: The Bookshop Woman — Nanako Hanada (translated by Catriona Anderson)

...you couldn’t recommend a book to someone if you didn’t know them, not really. And you couldn’t recommend a book if you didn’t know it well yourself. And moreover, you couldn’t recommend a book without a good reason. You had to want that person to read it, because you’d thought about what that specific book would mean to them. [loc. 614]

A short sweet novel about a woman who's just separated from her husband and feels alienated from her work as the manager of an alternative bookshop. Wanting to meet new people -- friends at least as much as potential partners -- she signs up for a site called Perfect Strangers, which enables 30-minute meetings between strangers (perfect or not). Her USP is her ability to recommend 'the book that's perfect for you'.

She meets the usual assortment of men trying to impress her into bed, but she also meets people who become close friends, people who change her life and people whose lives she changes. She's always viewed herself as socially inept, but she has the knack of asking the right questions and persuading the strangers she meets to reveal their own hopes and fears. And she begins to realise how judgmental she is -- how judgmental everyone is -- with the assumptions they make about people they don't know.

I hadn't realised this was biographical, but apparently Hanada did carry out this experiment as a way of reinventing, or revitalising, her life: the book was a huge hit in Japan, with its themes of urban loneliness and the pressures of work. I liked the insights into Japanese dating and socialising, and the narrator's gradual rediscovery of hope and joy. And her book recommendations fascinated me: there's a bibliography (is that the right word when it's not reference material but recommendations?) though the translator has helpfully indicated that many of the books are unavailable in English translation.

Read because: there was a challenge prompt for a book that 'revolves around a bookstore, library, or museum': also recommended by a friend.

Maybe, just maybe, the day will come when one person picks up this book of mine and recommends it to someone else. It could be the start of an infinite loop … Well, sort of. The story would be circulating, anyway – and that’s pretty incredible. In fact, I can’t think of anything more wonderful. [loc. 2307]

2026/096: I May Be Some Time — Francis Spufford

Romantic vocabulary, and Romantic hopes and horrors, remained important ways of negotiating the perceptual maze of the polar regions. They helped; they answered to the experience of light and motion, dark and stillness. They described the shock of finding nature other than you thought it was. [p. 93]

Recently the subtitle has changed to 'The Story Behind the Antarctic Tragedy of Captain Scott', but I prefer the original, which is much more accurate: 'Ice and the English Imagination'.

Spufford's first book is a social and cultural history of the great age of British polar exploration, from the Admiralty's push for Arctic expeditions after the Napoleonic Wars to the Edwardian explorations of Scott and Shackleton. He explores the Romantic notion of the sublime, the attitudes of the women left behind, and -- with compassion -- the vainglorious dreams and arrogant incompetence of the explorers themselves.

There is a vast amount in this book, and I read it very slowly, enjoying the cadences of Spufford's prose, his gentle mockery of Victorian ideas and ideals, and his clarity. The final chapter of the book, a fictionalised account of Scott's solitary death, moved me to tears but also exasperated me: as Spufford suggests, there's a sense of 'a fatalism so profound it became a kind of violence, a spiteful refusal to look out for themselves' (p. 346). Scott had opium tablets but did not take them to ease his passing. Instead, only 12 miles from the nearest camp, he lay with his dead companions and died in agony.

Spufford also explores perceptions of the Inuit ('Eskimos') and the ways in which their existence complicated the narratives of exploration: the Arctic was not, after all, pristine and empty, and some people did know how to survive there. Not, of course, that a British explorer would take advice from the locals... And he writes about the divisions of social class on board pole-bound ships: "the tasks [the officers] do on board are so far beneath their class’s roster of possible destinies that doing them does not feel like any conceivable backward step, it feels like a holiday" (p. 302). Polar exploration, and the myths around it, had a vast influence on everyday culture. For instance, I learnt that 'north', previously slang for 'clever', came to mean 'strong' in terms of drinks. 'Too far north', once slang for 'too clever by half', came to mean 'desperately, incapably drunk – ... hopelessly lost up there in the ultima Thule of booze.' (p. 237).

It’s too big, too silent, too cold. It’s all too much. ‘Coo-ee!’ shouts Ponting. Pause. Moonstruck immensity. ‘Coo-ee!’ replies the Barne Glacier. A perfect echo! [p. 326]

Read because: it's been on my wishlist for ages, and I have a long-standing interest in Arctic and Antarctic exploration. This was my bedtime read for well over a month: the cadences of Spufford's prose, and the lengthy excerpts from Victorian accounts of expeditions, were very soothing.

2026/095: The Gate, the Girl and the Dragon — Grace Lin

“Jin was carved face upward, looking at the sky. Watching people is not in his nature.”
“Watching people is in the nature of all Gongshi,” Ba protested. “Protecting and caring for people is the purpose bestowed on us by the goddess!”
Jin winced… People! There were so many of them, rushing around and squeezed together in their gray, grubby world... Watching people was the most boring thing ever. [loc. 500]

Jin is a Gongshi, a stone spirit dwelling in a statue: he's also a young lion cub who's passionate about zuqiu, a soccer-like game, and is forever being told by his parents that he's irresponsible. One day, in a fit of pique after a match is stopped just as he was about to score the winning goal, he accidentally kicks the Sacred Sphere, a relic of the Goddess, through the magical City Gate and into the human world. Rushing after it, he finds himself trapped in mundanity -- and nobody can come to his rescue, because the Gate is closed.

Jin was exasperating, but I felt very sorry for him, and was glad when he found a friend. Lulu is a human girl who nobody else seems to be able to see. She's very sad. The two also meet a worm who claims to be a dragon. And, in a secondary plotline, there's a sculptor who wishes his two masterworks would come alive: after all, they were carved from stone that used to be a dragon's pillow.

There's lots of excitement and tension, woven through with retellings of Chinese legends and folklore, but the core of the story is Jin growing up a little, learning to empathise and work with others. I understand the print version is beautifully illustrated -- a shame to have missed out on that -- but the audio was clearly and sympathetically read by Mesmi Chu. (Jin's voice did grate occasionally, but that fitted the character!)

Read because: challenge prompt for 'middle-grade novel by non-Caucasian author' -- this was in the Libro.fm sale and looked fascinating -- and it was.

2026/094: Pandemonium — Daryl Gregory

Jungians saw evidence that archetypes had been seizing human minds since prehistory. In America demon sightings had been recorded since the Pilgrims, but most scholars pegged the start of the modern possession epidemic at the first publicized appearance of the Captain on July 12, 1944. [p. 205]

Del Pierce has grown up in a world where demonic possession -- or, to put it in medical terms, the 'possession disorder' -- has changed the course of history. Eisenhower was killed in 1955 by a man possessed by -- sorry, suffering from the Kamikaze strain of the disorder -- and O J Simpson was shot down in the courtroom by a janitor temporarily hosting the strain known as the Truth. Possession can happen to anybody, anywhere, at any point in their life.

It happened to Del when he was five years old: he was possessed by the Hellion, a Dennis-the-Menace type. Because all the demons are types, archetypes: they have a single story that defines them, and they act it out. Del, though, is starting to wonder if his demon ever left. 

With the help of his brother Lew, and exorcist Mother Mariette (real name Siobhan O'Connell, a cigarette-smoking skinhead nun who's highly reminiscent of Sinead O'Connor), Del attempts to discover the history and origin of the demons. Along the way he meets Philip K Dick (and the demon Valis), and is pursued by the Human League -- no, not that Human League, but an organisation that has interpreted Van Vogt's Slan as a manual for how to rid humanity of demons.

It's a wild ride with lots of nods to genre and a surprisingly poignant denouement. Del's first-person narration made it feel breathless and fast-paced, and this was a quick read for me, which probably helped to keep my disbelief suspended. Then the questions bubbled up. When is this set? (It feels like early 2000s.) Presumably the whole world is affected? (Who knows. We only see America.) Del may have discovered the source of his demon and a few others, but what about the other ninety-odd? And isn't that finale really quite horrible for his family? 

I did enjoy the reading experience, though, despite not finding the characters either likeable or relatable. And I note it's Gregory's first novel (though he's written award-winning short fiction): I will keep an eye out for his later novels.

Read because: a random pick from my TBR, for a change. No challenge, no book club, probably recommended by someone online at some point.

2026/093: When There are Wolves Again — E J Swift

You want to believe the tide is turning. You want to believe you will die in a better world than you were born in. [loc. 2070]

A hopeful novel about the future of the UK, the ecology, and the climate crisis (yes, really!), beginning in 2020 and ending in 2070. It follows the lives of two women: Lucy Gillard, whose ecological awakening comes when she's sent to stay with her grandparents during Covid, and Hester Moore, whose story starts in Chornobyl, where she's making a documentary about a team of vets who care for the abandoned dogs. 

Lucy and Hester do eventually meet, but their paths are very different. Lucy is inspired by Greta Thunberg, becomes an activist, and helps set up an ecological form of peace camp. Hester, who does not get along with people but loves her dogs, wins awards for her documentaries and tries not to let her personal issues get in front of the camera.

There is a lot in this novel, and probably a lot that will not come true. Which is not to say it's wishful thinking: Swift's future seems firmly grounded in the present (or the recent past), though her fascist Albion party are less popular than Reform seem to be... There are other horrors. The Endling Market, where collectors vie to own the last survivor of a species (there are online forums where they discuss the least damaging ways of killing a bird of animal); heat domes that devastate western Europe; extinctions, NIMBYs, bird flus... But there is also positive change. The dissolution of the US; a moon habitat (not American); Net Zero; and an astonishing bequest.

I especially liked that this novel doesn't attempt easy answers. It gives both sides of the argument about rewilding schemes; it balances the vast expense of space missions against their role as a beacon of hope. And there is a great deal of kindness -- and respect -- from humans to other humans, from humans to animals and birds.

Also really refreshing to read a novel where there are no romantic subplots. There are male characters (I liked Lucy's grandfather, and could relate to Hester's brother: and Jerome is proof that people do change) but they're not the focus of the female characters' lives. And When There Are Wolves Again is realistic about the people -- like Lucy's parents -- who don't believe in climate change, don't think the ecology is important, cling to their old habits even when those habits become deeply unfashionable.

This has prompted me to push Isabella Tree's Wilding up my TBR, and to visit a couple of rewilding sites. And to be slightly more hopeful than I've been in recent years.

you think about what you said to the farmer: is it about autonomy? And what he said in return: it’s about respect. It must be possible to have both. To nurture a space of one’s own in the knowledge that this too is transitory, communal. Shared between humans and non-human animals. There were languages for this, once. There were words, before the conceit of ownership consumed everything else. [loc. 2170]

Read because: The heat, the heat! I knew this was a novel about the climate catastrophe, so it felt like perfect reading in the June 2026 UK heatwave. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. I dunno, you wait ages for a great SF novel and then read two in the same week...

2026/092: The Last Hawk — Elizabeth Wein

Emil had told me to get out. But like a pilot in a damaged plane, I had to keep flying blindly before I was able to land. [loc. 784]

Ingrid Hartman has been deemed 'a disgrace to Germany' because of her stammer, and her failure to greet an SS officer with 'Heil Hitler'. Her widowed father urges her to get a job at the gliding school where she helps out: Ingrid, at seventeen, is already one of the best glider pilots there. The plan keeps her out of the way, and her friend Emil, a Luftwaffe pilot, recommends her as assistant to test pilot Hanna Reitsch. 

Hanna is doing a series of air shows to inspire German youth -- and she has an ambitious plan to create a 'Leonidas Squadron' of suicide pilots. (“I am volunteering as a pilot for the manned glider bomb,” read the pledge... “I fully understand that this mission will end in my death.” [loc. 660]). Ingrid's loyalty to Hanna is shaken, especially when she hears about conditions inside the factories where the 'manned bombs' are being built. But Hanna won't believe the stories...

A short but vivid novel, with lots of period detail (as I've learned to expect from Wein): fake coffee made from acorns and barley, Ingrid's devotion to Saint-Exupery's Wind, Sand and Stars, the aviator chocolate (Scho-ka-cola, with cola and caffeine) that Emil gives Ingrid. (I have now tried this: it's ... invigorating.) Wein's note at the end details her research -- she based Emil on the pilot who shot down Saint-Exupery! -- and also gives resources and reassurance for stutterers.

Read because: I rate Wein very highly as an author, and this was the last of her books aimed at less-confident readers (after White Eagles and Firebird, which I 'read' as an audiobook) that I hadn't read. It initially didn't seem that The Last Hawk had as much weight as the other two novels, but I think that's simply because it has neither personal tragedy nor a twisty revelation.

2026/091: Baba Yaga Laid an Egg — Dubravka Ugrešić

As we grow older, we weep less and less. It takes energy to weep. In old age neither the lungs, nor the heart, nor the tear ducts, nor the muscles have the strength for great misery. Age is a kind of natural sedative, perhaps because age itself is a misfortune. [loc. 2704]

A book of three halves. Part One ('Go There, I Know not Where – and Bring Me Back a Thing I Lack'), set mostly in Zagreb, is the first-person narrative of someone who might be the author, coping with her own ageing and with her widowed mother's dementia (and with their relationship). There's a young female folklore student who seems determined to make the narrator into a mother figure, too. This is the most realistic and thoughtful section of Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, dealing honestly with the indignities of old age and the ways in which the self remains unchanged.

Part Two ('Ask Me No Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies') deals with the visit of three old ladies to a 'wellness spa' in Czechoslovakia. The three have lived through the worst of Yugoslavian history (one has spent time in prison) and each has her story to tell. They're contrasted with three men: a masseur with a permanent erection, a doctor who seeks the secret of immortality, and the cynical owner of the spa.

And the third part ('If You Know Too Much, You Grow Old Too Soon') is presented as a 'Baba Yaga for Beginners', the author being the folklore student from Part 1. Her name is Aba Babay... Lots of mythology, some of it rather reductive and some of it absurdly Freudian: old women, it turns out, are monsters all over the world (though some are kind to the deserving, or to children). 

I cannot say I engaged with this novel, though I did enjoy the triumphs of the three crones in Part 2, and I admire the craft of Part 1. It's a sobering reflection on ageing (though I do not feel I will ever be as old as the crones, if I live to be a hundred: my life has been easier).

Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać, Celia Hawkesworth and Mark Thompson, who between them have (according to the Internet) managed to render Ugrešić's wordplay into English without losing the humour.

Read because: I'd enjoyed other volumes in the Canongate Myth series (for instance, Where Three Roads Meet, The Penelopiad, Ragnarok ) -- when I discovered that this was set in Croatia and written by a Croatian author, it fitted a prompt in 'The Storygraph Reads The World Challenge' nicely.

2026/090: The End of Everything — M John Harrison

Several [fallen trees] could be found in a single glade, many with younger trees growing from the earth caked in their ripped-up root balls, so that it looked as though a different species was springing out of the carcass of the original. Birch from beech, Marnie thought. Holly from ash. A sense of horror overcame her. [50%]

The setting is the Kent coast, some years after what may be an alien invasion by the iGhetti. Humans are waging an ineffectual war against the invaders, who are rumoured to originate from the astral plane; who manifest as 'tall writhing bursts of light'; who may not have noticed that humans even exist. There are three protagonists. Richard Tennent is a mudlark who, at the beginning of the novel, has just found an iGhetti artefact in the surf. Marnie, his aunt, lives near the beach, in the shadow of the wing of a crashed aeroplane, and may be suffering dementia. Hampson, to whom Tennent tries to sell the artefact, is a collector who obsessively chronicles his experiments with similar artefacts. (If I add that the artefact is humanoid and apparently sentient -- and the most likeable character in the novel -- you can probably imagine some of the more horrific consequences.)

But there is a great deal more than inhumanity in this novel. Europe, and possibly the rest of the world, has vanished ('How do you misplace a continent?' Marnie writes on a protest-adjacent sign) but people still queue to board ships and head out in the hope of something new. This future England (and it's a very English novel, with old men dreaming of Agincourt and the Battle of Britain) is full of people who have adjusted, not entirely without complaint, to life in the ruins, where 'bad patches' can produce timelooped experiences or affectless states of mind. The infrastructure has collapsed, and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. And because nobody in the novel understands what is happening, neither do we -- though it's possible to piece together an extremely unsettling version of the narrative.

Intrigued by a review which mentioned the iGhetti's appearance in an earlier short story, I found 'The Crisis', which contains some passages very similar to passages in The End of Everything, though may be a different iteration of the same scenario.

Excellently read by Russ Bain: I highly recommend the audiobook, though am not wholly convinced by the voice he uses for Marnie.

Read because: I have enjoyed many (though not all) of Harrison's previous novels, and the mudlarking aspect of this work intrigued me. And now I am on my third listen...

...we pretended our scientific epistemy was still serviceable... the apocalypse seemed to withhold itself, quicky becoming just another historical continuity. That is to say, we got used to it. [40%]

2026/089: The Most Secret Memory of Men — Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

...just because you’re wounded doesn’t mean you have to write about it. It doesn’t even mean you have to consider writing about it. I won’t bother bringing up ability. Time heals? Wrong; it kills. It kills the illusion that our wounds are unique. They’re not. No wound is unique. Nothing human is unique. Everything becomes terribly banal over time. There’s the conundrum; but somewhere in there, literature has a chance to emerge.

Translated by Lara Vergnaud, and read by multiple narrators: Ayesha Antoine, Chris Thompson, Kyle Gabbidon, Masimba Ushe, Musu-kulla Massaquoi and Nile Faure-Bryan. (Not all the female-viewpoint chapters are read by women.)

It's a novel 'about' a lost Senegalese author, T C Elimane, and his infamous novel The Labyrinth of Inhumanity -- at first lauded by the French literary establishment as the work of 'a Negro Rimbaud', and later reviled as plagiarism. (This aspect of the novel mirrors the career of Malian author Yambo Ouologuem.) And it's also 'about' the narrator, another young Senegalese writer named Diégane Latyr Faye, living in Paris and hanging out with other African writers, bemoaning the lack of success of his own first novel, which sold 79 copies.

 One day he encounters another compatriot, the outrageous author Siga D, who lends him her copy of The Labyrinth of Inhumanity and tells him to visit her when he's read it. He is rivetted by Elimane's prose and desperate to learn more about the man -- and his subsequent conversations with Siga D (not to mention a visit home) help him to unravel the mystery of the author's disappearance. Via Argentina, wartime Paris, Senegal and Amsterdam, Elimane's legacy is discoverable.

I found parts of this novel hard going: for instance, there is a deeply unsettling scene featuring the depredations of soldiers in wartime. And Faye's sex life did not enthrall me. But the magic realism, the long feuds and deceptions of families, the ways in which lives are shaped by wars, racism, religion, colonialism... those aspects of the novel kept me listening. Faye is sometimes ridiculous, sometimes pompous, and sometimes very relatable: and I appreciated his growth over the course of The Most Secret Memory of Men.

Read because: a challenge prompt for Senegal. Looking for something that fit the prompt, I found this novel -- which won the Prix Goncourt, the first win by a sub-Saharan author -- and was intrigued by the sample chapters. Unlike some books I've read purely to fulfil a prompt, I have no regrets about having read this.

2026/088: The Widows' Guide to Murder — Amanda Ashby

... up until this week she’d never found a dead body, adopted a stray cat or drunk Drambuie on a Thursday night. [p. 72]

Ginny Cole is sixty years old and recently widowed. She's moved from Bristol to the village of Little Shaw to make a fresh start -- though she isn't sure she quite knows how to do that. And she's found a job as a library assistant, working for an unpleasant woman named Louisa.

On her second day at the library, she finds Louisa dead: murdered, it transpires. (Ginny used to work as a receptionist at her husband's surgery: she knows the signs of poisoning.) Then she's befriended by a trio of other widows -- Hen, Tuppence and JM -- who want to investigate the death... not least because Hen's daughter Alison is a suspect. And Ginny also finds herself adopted by a black cat whom she names Edgar.

Sufficient red herrings to keep me guessing, a lesbian character, a kitty, some distinct derring-do, and a cast of vividly-drawn characters: this was the perfect read for a summer's afternoon. I may even read the other books in the series...

Read because: I wanted a light, 'cosy' read, and the Something Bookish reading challenge prompted 'a book with widow or widows in the title': this one popped up on Amazon Prime.

2026/087: 1177 BC: A Graphic History of the Year Civilisation Collapsed — Eric H Cline & Glynnis Fawkes

A gorgeously illustrated update to Cline's original 1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, featuring Cline and Fawkes as narrators with a modern viewpoint (for archaeological discoveries et cetera), as well as a pair of fictional characters -- Pel, of the Sea Peoples, and Shesha, an Egyptian scribe. 

Together Pel and Shesha time-travel through the Bronze Age, the centuries leading up to the collapse: and they travel physically too, from Amenhotep’s palace to the city of Hattusa via shipwrecks, battles and quayside bartering. Their interactions help to humanise the stories of the people affected by the collapse: migrants (with a comparison to Syrian refugees), merchants (whose luxury goods are no longer obtainable), families listening to grandfather's stories about the good old days...

The book has been updated with recent archaeological discoveries, and there's more emphasis on the probable mega-drought that contributed to the collapse. The format lends itself to maps and images, which was extremely helpful (the original book, read on Kindle, was sometimes difficult to follow because the maps were separate from the text), and though it's dense with facts, names, and theories, there is also plenty of humour. Fantastic, and highly recommended. 

Read because: I was fascinated by the original version (1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed) and happened upon this marvellously illustrated, updated version. Shamefully I bought it as a gift for someone else before purchasing it for, and reading it, myself!

2026/086: Glyph — Ali Smith

Whoever you thought you weren’t speaking to must’ve heard you after all. [loc. 607]

This is indeed connected to Gliff, but not in the way I think I expected. The roughly contemporary setting allows the characters -- Petra, her estranged younger sister Patricia ('Patch'), and Patricia's adopted daughter Billie -- to literally and figuratively protest the war in Gaza, and to tie society's lack of empathy to the Covid pandemic. But there are parallels with other wars: with the First World War, and a story about a man leading a blind horse out of the trenches; and with the Second, and a story about a person being flattened to two dimensions by a tank convoy.

This second story prompts Petra and Patch, as children, to invent (and in Petra's case to 'speak to') a ghost they call Glyph, so named because the only sound he can make -- 'partly like a cough, partly like someone breathing out very suddenly' -- sounds like 'glyph'. But Glyph is not the only ghost in the novel: one night Petra's bedroom is trashed by what seems to be the ghost of a blind horse...

The seeds of Gliff are being sown in this world. When Patricia tells Billie about Glyph, the girl responds with 'like the word at the start of the weedkiller?' and talks about glyphosphate -- the cause of the ecocide underlying Gliff's dystopian future. 

But the most blatant connection is the strangest: the novel Gliff exists in the world of Glyph, and all three women have read it. Petra says it's 'a bit too dark for me. A bit too clever-clever, a bit too on the nose politically, for a novel. I’d have preferred a bit more world building. And what’s with all that horse stuff? It could’ve been a bit more sci-fi.' Patricia, who sent it to Petra, thinks it's 'rather good about siblings'. Billie, who read it first, says 'What if nobody knows what happened to them? ...And what if that’s the thing that makes you care?'

I'm not sure that the connections in the other direction are as effective: that Glyph is a story 'hidden in' Gliff. I found it at once more relatable and more ordinary.

Read because: I recently read Gliff, and was hoping this paired novel would shed further light on it. Yes and no. But Ali Smith's prose is always a delight.

2026/085: The Cat and The Masked Woman — Colette (translated by Helen Constantine)

Though Saha, like a human, was watching Camille leave, Alain was sprawling in the chair, his upturned palm like a paw, skillfully playing with the first green prickly conkers of August. [final line of The Cat]

The Cat (original French title La Chatte, feminising the masculine noun) is a short novel set in 1920s Paris. It opens with Alain about to marry his childhood friend, the gorgeous Camille. Alain's pleasure in her company is tempered by his reluctance to leave his childhood home: the servants he's known all his life, his mother's luxuriant garden, and especially his cat Saha. The plan is for Alain and Camille to move into a nearby property, but it's not yet finished: instead, after the wedding, they stay at a friend's chic high-rise apartment in Paris. Meanwhile, Saha pines, and Alain soon decides to bring her to the apartment. Camille -- who is bourgeois, insensitive and shallow -- becomes increasingly jealous of Saha, and tries to kill her. Saha survives, Alain realises what's happened, and the marriage is over.

It's effectively a love triangle, except that one of the contenders for Alain's affection is a cat. Colette doesn't anthropomorphise Saha, or gild her essentially animal nature (litter trays are mentioned): but Saha is as much a character as Camille, and a more likeable one. The critical interpretation seems to be that Saha symbolises Alain's childhood, which he doesn't want to let go of. I am perfectly happy to take the novel as literal: I would absolutely leave a partner who tried to murder my cat.

The Masked Woman is a series of vignettes and short stories about men and women dealing with love. The stories focus on the moments that change a life, from the apprehension of a murderer to a woman who apparently revels in living alone, yet is full of regrets. The writing is perceptive, dwelling on little details (the more mundane the better) and evoking French life between the wars.

Narrated by Machteld van der Gaag, who's Dutch but grew up in Paris: her pronunciation of French names was really evocative, and she injects just the right amount of emotion into the prose.

Read because: 'Storygraph Reads the World' challenge, 'France': and I read, or attempted to read, La Chatte as a teenager, an optimistic gift from a French cousin: I wanted to see how much I remembered ... and discovered how much I had not understood.

2026/084: Heaven's Graveyard — Grace Curtis

"No one can decide if it was a mass hallucination or a -- a mir --" Her lips convulsed. "Some kind of divine event... But I know what this is. It's fuckery." [loc. 3613]

Heaven's Graveyard is a fantasy novel, set in the same world as, though long after the events in, Curtis' earlier Idolfire (which I have not read), and featuring archaeology, sapphic romance, a protagonist who mostly lives in her head, and a murder mystery.

Cod -- short for Coda -- is an archivist, working in blissful solitude in Asha's Civic Museum. One day, she receives a message saying 'historic discovery, come home urgently'. It's signed by her friend Denali Marr. Since she first encountered his Ashan Myths for Children, Cod has been captivated by the story of Aleya Ana-Ulai, and she and Marr both believe that the legendary heroine really existed. Surely it's worth taking leave of absence and heading back to Palgaro, where she grew up in poverty with an emotionally-distant mother.

Except, of course, it's never that simple. Cod encounters her ex, Sparrow, who is apparently now a travelling saleswoman; she learns more about Marr's great discovery, and makes discoveries of her own -- not least that there is, after all, some truth in the old stories.

I didn't initially warm to Cod, but as her own history was revealed, and as she began to connect to people (and indeed to the world in which she lives, which is on the brink of war; which has 'rattlers' and 'rails' instead of cars and buses; which is plagued by religious schism) I became more engrossed in her story. That said, I found the book's climax frustratingly rushed, and the epilogue -- though it provides closure to one element of the story, and opens up new possibilities -- doesn't give much idea of just how much the world has changed. Though perhaps that's Cod (who is autistic-coded) simply not paying much attention to it...

From the author's afterword: "I'd like to ask [you] to keep this book's surprises to yourself, at least for a little while. Together we can horribly betray many more people to come."

Read because: I recently read and enjoyed Floating Hotel (which is more SFnal). Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 18th June 2026.

2026/083: A Trade of Blood — Robert Jackson Bennett

We have stolen secrets from the bloods of the titans and taught all of nature to grow and warp and shift at our pleasing. [loc. 545]

Cat-herders! Unexpected siblings! More of Ana's background! Another ill-judged liaison! Blue grass! And a very knotty murder mystery... This was an excellent read, and very much not the culmination of a trilogy: this series could run and run, and I for one will be grateful for each new volume.

Full review nearer publication date, but I note that the 'Shadow of the Leviathan' series is rooted firmly in the mundane world, the place where we're reading. The first novel, The Tainted Cup, explored civil servants and builders, and regulatory frameworks: the second, A Drop of Corruption, tackled autocracy, with a side order of shady banking practises. This time...

Farms are not sites of hallowed tradition. They are, if anything, laboratories for profound biological change. [Author's Note]

Read because: I enjoyed the first two books so much, and leapt at the chance to get an ARC. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for the full honest review I'll write closer to UK publication date -- 4th August 2026.

2026/082: Generation Loss — Elizabeth Hand

I’ve lived my entire life expecting the worst, knowing it will happen, seeing it happen. Making it happen, people used to think, then photographing it and making other people see it too.

Cass Neary works in the stock room of a New York bookshop. She was a famous photographer for fifteen minutes back in the Seventies: her book Dead Girls was a hit. But her later photography, of dead or dying punks and addicts, didn't have as much impact: a brutal assault, and a series of failed relationships (her last girlfriend died in the 9/11 attacks) have reduced her to a shadow of herself. Then an old friend tells her he's recommended her for an interview with Aphrodite Kamestos, the legendary photographer who inspired Cass. Kamestos lives on a remote island off the coast of Maine, but Cass could do with getting out of the city for a bit: she pops some speed and sets out.

She winds up in Burnt Harbor, a seaside town down on its luck. The motel is unpromising, the man in the next room gives off vibes of damage, and the owner's teenage Goth daughter, Kenzie, wants to go to New York more than anything. Cass escapes to drink at the Good Tern, Burnt Harbor's one restaurant/bar, and encounters some of the locals. Due to a hangover, she's late to Aphrodite's island the next morning -- where she discovers that Aphrodite did not, after all, ask for Cass.

There's plenty else to occupy her in Burnt Harbor. Aphrodite's aloof son Gryffin; the plethora of missing pets and people (including Kenzie, who vanished the night Cass arrived); the cold; the bleakness; the occasional mysterious, beautiful work of art; the wild animals she glimpses in the woods.

This is a noirish crime novel, quite slow -- apart from the unexpectedly mainstream climax of the murder/disappearance mystery -- and beautifully written. It's hard to like Cass, whose emotional damage expresses itself in alcohol and medication abuse, rudeness to strangers, and putting art before everything else. (Her unpleasant traits pale into nothing beside the true villain of the novel, though.) And I did appreciate her devotion to photography, her respect for the craft and her sense of light and shape. 

Read because: I think someone (Mark?) recommended Generation Loss to me -- on the basis of Cass's punk days, and her appreciation of Patti Smith -- when it first came out, nearly twenty years ago. I'm glad I've finally followed up, via a cut-price audiobook. Carol Monda's laconic narration suits this novel very well.