2026/136: As We Fall Through Time — Claire North

We are not, in fact, victims of a great pre-written fate. Time -- all of it, all of human history -- is a great big messy conflagration of connectivity, of people making choices and choosing outcomes and all of it just tangling together until what could be coalesces into what is -- but still, people choose. [loc. 4553]

Time travellers exist. Often (always?) there is something indefinite about their birth: Cal, our protagonist, was born, a medieval peasant, 'in a moment of temporal uncertainty', to a mother 'pregnant/not pregnant from an affair with a man who had/had not passed by'. 

Cal is indeterminate in other ways, too: sometimes male, sometimes female. They have a refreshingly cavalier approach to time travel (another time traveller is able to track them down via a cache of discarded asthma inhalers in a 17th-century manor house) and know how to close a rift in time by using an amaranthine, best described as a chronological paradox. And they, like all time travellers, are wary of the ghosts and witches ('fathomless creatures of unlived realities') that threaten those who move through time -- and, perhaps, threaten time itself.

The plot of As We Fall Through Time loops and layers confusingly, but at its heart is a love story (Cal falls in love with a French soldier named Olivier in 1789), a murder mystery (an archivist named Fadimatu causes a major paradox by encountering her own corpse in the Museum of the Unmasked Conspiracy), and a quixotic attempt by a time traveller named Bede to fix the climate catastrophe. The ways in which these three plots knot together is a twisty adventure, told by a mysterious first-person narrator in a resolutely non-linear sequence. It's the literary equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle, if the jigsaw puzzle sometimes made you laugh with delight at a new connection or a plot twist. And it was just as good on second reading: I found whole new angles of plot opening up.

Read because: Claire North has become one of my favourite authors -- from the 'Songs of Penelope' trilogy to the awesome Slow Gods. Obviously I read this as soon as it landed on my Kindle....

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 13th October 2026.

2026/135: The Exorcist — William Peter Blatty

The terror drifted over Georgetown like the sun over a blind man's eyes.

I have not seen, and have no intention of seeing, the film. The novel is another matter. Set in Washington DC, it focuses on Regan O'Neil, who's twelve years old, and her mother Chris, a famous actress. Regan starts playing with a Ouija board, talking to an entity she calls 'Captain Howdy'. Soon, her behaviour changes dramatically. Meanwhile, Chris's director is murdered, and there are instances of desecration at a local church.

Chris seeks the help of Father Damien Karras, a Jesuit who's struggling with the death of his mother and the loss of his own faith. Karras applies rigorous methodology to the task of determining whether Regan is truly possessed. Meanwhile, Detective Kinderman is investigating the murder and the desecration, and suspects Karras himself...

Karras may not be the titular Exorcist -- he's deemed lacking experience, and an older priest, Father Merrin, is brought in to perform the ritual -- but he is the central character of the novel. Trained as a psychiatrist, he's adept at applying the scientific method to matters of religious doctrine. He's also a man who cannot turn aside from someone in need (one can read events at the end of the novel as the story of someone driven mad by lack of sleep) and whose loss of faith has left him profoundly lonely.

Precise, characterful dialogue throughout: Blatty (a professional screenwriter) fleshes out secondary characters such as Chris's housekeeper Karl, and conveys each character's story through their speech and actions rather than description. The scenes featuring early 1970s electronics (for instance the tapes used to record the demon's utterances) gave me a shudder of familiarity. And it is plain, in this novel, that good and evil are real. I found the story compelling, and the characters fascinating: I would happily read more of Blatty's fiction.

Read because: I recently read another novel in which a character reads The Exorcist aloud, to entertain. Coincidentally, this audiobook (read by the author) was on offer...

2026/134: The Old Drift — Namwali Serpell

Trust our biology, it teaches you better. If you grip too tight, you'll lose the fight. If you stay in one place, you'll fester and waste. When young ones grow full, they must drift from the pool, lest it turn to a watery grave.

The Old Drift tells the entwined, tangled stories of three generations of Zambians. It begins in 1902, with 'Percy M. Clark, a wanderer, a brute, a cad, the forefather who started it all.' (When I first acquired this novel in Kindle form, I never got past that section.) The rest of the novel, though, focuses on more intriguing individuals, spanning the years from 1939 to 2023 -- which was, when this was published, The Future.

There are Italian immigrants, one with magic-realist hair; a blind girl who falls for an engineering student without knowing that he's black; the Zambian 'Afronauts'; sex workers, revolutionaries, immigrants, doctors... The novel is split into three sections -- 'The Grandmothers', 'The Mothers' and 'The Children' -- each with three viewpoint characters: this structure made it easier for me to appreciate each section individually, as well as the wider context in which the characters overlapped. The focus is very much on women and girls, though in 'The Children' two of the three protagonists are young men. And throughout the novel there's a strong sense of seizing possibilities, of repurposing and reworking the legacies of colonialism. A swarm of mosquitoes provides a lyrical, omniscient chorus bracketing each section. (They're quoted at the top of this review.)

I was ignorant of Zambia's history, and found this educational as well as immersive. I found myself drawn into stories that I would normally not have wanted to read, and appreciated Serpell's knack of blending historical and cultural facts with well-paced plots. And, on reflection, I think the sense of dissatisfaction I had with the final few chapters was because the time at which they're set (2023) is already in the past: the future depicted in those chapters felt, feels, as though it would be further away, maybe mid-21st century, but of course that wouldn't work with the 'three generations' structure.

Brilliantly narrated by Adjoa Andoh, with Richard E. Grant (doing Percy) and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (doing mosquitos): Andoh produced a myriad of distinct voices for the characters, and made them easy to distinguish.

Namwali Serpell's New Yorker piece on the Afronauts can be found here.

Read because: this novel won the Arthur C Clarke Award ('for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year') in 2020: I purchased a copy as soon as I learnt that it featured, among other narrators, a swarm of mosquitoes... but bounced off the initial 'white male colonist' section. I found the audiobook more accessible.

2026/133: The Mischievous Letters of the Marquise de Q — Felicia Davin

... what etiquette exists for an androgynous novelist paying a visit to the escaped convict she’s hosting at her lover’s request... [p. 205]

Second in the series that began with The Scandalous Letters of V and J (which I really should have reread before starting this): it's the story of Delphine, in love with scandalous androgynous novelist Camille Dupin ... and also with the father of her child, Ari, who vanished mysteriously before she could break the news of her pregnancy. Delphine is married to an abusive husband, but after his death she's free to be with Camille. And then Ari returns...

This is a polyamorous romance, and a magical adventure set in a nineteenth-century France where magical artifacts are collectors' items, and at least two characters seem to have discovered, if not immortality, at least extremely long life. It's told almost entirely through letters and diaries: Delphine's to Ari, even after his disappearance; Delphine and Camille's correspondence; Ari's melancholy journal. It features Victor and Julie(n) from the previous volume, as well as the mysterious Isabelle and some villainous aristocrats. And it has happy endings for those who deserve them ... though the third volume, which I plan to read soon, will focus on the continuing crisis of the collectors.

The author, in her afterword, describes this trilogy as 'Balzac, but horny and queer and magic': now I'm almost tempted to tackle Balzac...

Read because: I fancied a historical romance with fantasy elements, and remembered how much I'd enjoyed Scandalous Letters... though, as I quickly discovered, I hadn't remembered much of the plot!

2026/132: Other Minds — Peter Godfrey-Smith

If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over. This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. [loc. 131]

Sometimes lyrical, sometimes very technical, this is an account of octopus intelligence -- its origins, its manifestations, its implications -- by a philosopher with a scientific background and a passion for scuba-diving.

The common ancestor of humans and cephalopods has been dated to 750 million years ago (more than twice the separation between humans and any other vertebrate). If octopuses are intelligent, then evolution came up with intelligence not once but twice. Octopuses, and closely-related cephalopods such as cuttlefish and perhaps squid, show intelligent behaviour in a variety of ways: they play, they manipulate their environment, they communicate. Their brains are very different from vertebrate brains, being more distributed. And they have very short lifespans, which seems tragic.

I enjoyed Godfrey-Smith's accounts of his encounters with octopuses and giant cuttlefish, including being led by the hand by one curious individual. The philosophical elements -- what is it like to be an octopus? echoing Nagel's 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, which was a set text when I was a philosophy undergraduate -- were less interesting to me, but I read the scientific studies with fascination... while cringing at some of the experiments performed on sentient creatures. ('Sentience comes before consciousness,' writes Godfrey-Smith: and he also makes a good case for consciousness.) A truly fascinating read, with compassion and empathy as much as science and philosophy.

Narrated by Peter Noble, whose enthusiasm and warmth kept me listening through the more theoretical sections.

Read because: I've owned the Kindle version since, er, May 2018: the audio version (from the library) was easier to get into, and then I alternated between text and audio. I have wanted to read it, but I think was put off by the dense philosophising -- though, on initial reading way back when, I got far enough to make me swear off eating octopus.

2026/131: What Happened That Night — Nicci French

...while I’ve been in my own particular hell since Leo’s murder, you don’t seem to have lived the lives you longed for when we were young and full of promise. [loc. 1388]

Tyler Green has spent nearly 29 years in prison, found guilty of the murder of his friend Leo Bauer at a post-exam house party at university. He claims he is innocent, and asks a friend to organise a reunion of the guests at that house party. They haven't kept in touch, and all have changed a great deal -- Tyler's girlfriend, Ali, is now married to Will; Beatrice, who's hosting the reunion, is a KC married to an MP; Marco's musical career has descended into pub gigs. And by the end of the (horrible) dinner party, there's another death.

That's the first third of the book. Then we get to meet DI Maud O'Connor and her DS Carrie Kessler, investigating the death. Maud's bosses are convinced Tyler has struck again, but she's not so sure.

I spotted the murderer at 41%.

Good on toxic interpersonal relationships, the ways in which people change between university and middle age, and the dangers of police prejudice. I would have liked more of Tyler's viewpoint, and I felt very sorry for Conrad Bauer, crusading for penalties after the death of his son. There was some interestingly subtle clues that led Maud to her conclusion. But really, very few likeable characters and unexceptional prose -- and a couple of jarring moments, such as Maud making a veiled comment about the personal life of one of the characters, and a throwaway, improbable line intended to distract attention from the actual murderer.

Read because: one of my challenge prompts was 'two authors, one pseudonym': Nicci French ('the pseudonym of English husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French ') seemed a popular choice, and I'd never read any of their books.

2026/130: Uprooted — Naomi Novik

I knew, suddenly, why the Dragon took a girl from the valley. ... We were of the valley. Born in the valley, of families planted too deep to leave even when they knew their daughter might be taken; raised in the valley, drinking of whatever power also fed the Wood. [loc. 4176]

Agnieszka, seventeen, is certain that her friend Kasia will be chosen by the sorcerer known as the Dragon: will spend ten years in his stone tower, and will afterwards leave the valley where they've grown up. Agnieszka -- who is clumsy, ungainly, prone to dishevelment -- is extremely surprised to be chosen instead. 

But it turns out that she's a witch: and though her powers are quite unlike the Dragon's, he's obliged to teach her... though not to be kind or patient with her. Most of what Agnieszka learns is from an ancient spellbook written by a legendary witch. (The Dragon tries to convince her that the spells are nonsense, since he'd never been able to get them to work.)

I first read this in 2015 (my original review) and had forgotten much of the plot. This time round I noticed that almost all of the major characters -- Agnieszka, Kasia, Queen Hanna, the sorceress Alosha, the forest queen -- are female; that each magic-user has a different style of magic (Agnieszka's is often described as fluid or wandering, the Dragon's is crisp and precise); that Agnieszka re-roots herself in village life, unlike all the girls before her. 

The depiction of Agnieszka and Kasia's friendship was a delight -- including the nasty pettinesses that creep into even the best of friendships. The book club discussion also focussed on the romance: the age gap felt insignificant beside the inherent power dynamic of the teacher-student relationship. I'm glad to have revisited this, but it's not my favourite of Novik's novels -- though I now have a strong urge to reread the Scholomance books...

Read because: book club selection.

2026/129: Dionysus in Wisconsin — E H Lupton

"...since you met him you keep getting attacked by demons.”
“Twice!” Sam said. “It’s happened twice.”
“It’s been two weeks!”
Harry was looking back and forth between them nervously. “Ellen, every relationship has trade-offs.”[p. 193]

Audiobook of a novel I enjoyed very much last winter (original review from January). Dionysus in Wisconsin is set in Madison in 1969, in a reality where magic works and ghosts walk. Ulysses Lenkov is a 'human lightning rod', a magician who can attract and talk to spirits (but can't decide a subject for his dissertation). Sam Sterling is a mild-mannered archivist who's moved back to Madison to be near his family, who he doesn't especially like. Warned by a fellow magic-user that something big is coming -- something connected with the god Dionysus -- Ulysses seeks out Sam and discovers that his first name happens to be Dionysus ... and that there's a strong mutual attraction between them.

Narrated by Scott Paige, who gives each character a distinct voice (and manages a very spooky ghost-Abi at one point). I really liked the loucheness of his Ulysses, and the way that Sam and Ulysses' voices changed over the course of the book. Ulysses is much more fun after he's lightened up a bit and allowed himself to be emotionally involved with Sam, and Sam's dilemma. And Sam sounds much more confident by the end of the novel.

Read because: I noticed that E H Lupton was offering free review copies, and leapt at the chance. And now, of course, I want to reread the rest of the series...

Thanks to the author for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. The audiobook is available now.

2026/128: The CIA Book Club — Charlie English

"A book was like fresh air. They allowed us to survive and not go mad.”

During the 1980s, the Solidarity movement in Poland (expanded from the original Solidarity union) was the main opposition to the Soviet-backed Communist regime. Even before martial law was declared in 1981, the CIA were quietly funding the import, publication and distribution of subversive literature, from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago to Orwell's 1984 ... as well as fashion magazines, the Guardian Weekly, and novels by Vonnegut and Le Carre. America also funded underground printing initiatives, such as Mazovia Weekly and Kultura.

English's book is well-researched yet reads like a thriller, with vivid characters (ex-pat Jerzy Giedroyc in Paris, whose CIA codename was QRBERETTA; Mirosław Chojecki, self-appointed Minister for Smuggling; Helena Łuczywo, editor of Mazovia Weekly, who relied on the innate chauvinism of the secret police to keep her and her mostly-female team safe) and a compelling account of the key events of the period, from the founding of the Solidarity union to the election of Lech Wałęsa as President in 1990.

I remember some (though not all) of the major events covered in this book, but very much from the perspective of a teenager with little interest in politics and less understanding of what it might be like to live under an oppressive regime. I certainly wouldn't, then or now, have associated the CIA with such a hands-off, benevolent approach to undermining communism! (It's harder to imagine it happening in 2026.) And I found English's account of underground activism uplifting, even inspiring: people's time, money, effort, even lives, dedicated to a greater cause.

Narrated by James Parsons, who (as far as I can tell) pronounced Polish names correctly and clearly, and highlighted the occasional black humour of the book.

Read because: I bought the ebook when it was on offer -- I think it was at a time when my interest in the Cold War peaked -- but didn't get around to it until I noticed that the library had the audiobook. I combined the two, which worked very nicely.

2026/127: Yield Under Great Persuasion — Alexandra Rowland

...maybe finally he’d be a different person, someone he liked more than the person he was now. Someone who could let sweetness and softness happen to him without his throat closing up in fear and suspicion. Someone who could be loved. [p. 163]

Tam Brocken runs a tea shop in a village. He's lonely, if you discount -- as he does -- the more-or-less weekly occasions on which he has sex with Lord Lyford. He always leaves hastily, and it's just sex, so that's all right -- even if Lyford (who he's hated since childhood) keeps flirting with him. And then Tam and Lyford are assigned to run the matchmaking tent at the village festival. Together.

Then Tam, trying to escape the village gossips, meets the goddess Angarat on the road, and she imparts a few home truths ... including that Tam is stuck in a rut of his own devising, and that he should keep an open mind about Lyford, and give him a chance to redeem himself.

This is a story about second chances, divine favor, and trying to be a better person. It's a sweet story, though Tam is often far from sweet: and it's also a rural idyll, with gods walking the world and interacting with humans, and with a really strong sense of Lyford and Tam's love for the land. A gentle and life-affirming novel that's often very funny and (usually at other points) very steamy.

Read because: wishlist hit, plus I'd just finished a book by Rowland's fellow Serpent Freya Marske. Though the two are very different writers, there's a commonality of timbre. I also felt that the explicit sex scenes qualified this as a fill for the 'erotic fantasy' prompt on a book challenge. Also, 'set at harvest time'.

2026/126: Bodies of Magic — Freya Marske

Perhaps a body was all you ever were.
Perhaps a body was the least of what you were.
They were days away from becoming a fully-fledged healer and they still didn't know which was true. Or if both were, somehow. [loc. 2776]

Five medical students at the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr are about to begin their final exam -- a week-long trial of five medical cases, which the five healers will have to work together to diagnose and perhaps treat. They will pass together, or fail together. And this particular exam group (randomly chosen, of course) comprises five very different individuals, each with secrets, each with complicated emotions towards the others. Moyna is the daughter of ambitious parents who moved to Sieuxerr so that Moyna could be trained in the healing arts, and serve her community. Alys is an aristocratic beauty with little magical aptitude. Estiene is the son of the Head Healer. Jehan comes from a working-class, single-parent family. Clement is non-binary, and the best friend of the most gifted student of their year, Ysabel Caudotte ... and Ysabel is found, dead, in their exam chamber on the first day of the exam.

She's not their case: they don't have to diagnose or treat. But each of the five has some connection to Ysabel, and each has secrets to keep, complications to manouevre, expectations and fears and hopes. As the week progresses, it's clear that Ysabel had been planning something: but what? And did it lead to her death?

The gradual fleshing-out of each of the five, as the novel rotates through their viewpoints, is brilliantly and effectively achieved. Each begins the week distrusting one or more of their fellow candidates: each ends the week with a better understanding of the others, and of their own skills and weaknesses. The medical cases are interesting, too, and the author's medical background is evident in the details of diagnostic techniques.

Marske's worldbuilding is understated but sound: I liked the little details of Sieuxerr, from the lingering horrors of a terrible pandemic (the serrage) to the almond-paste 'sweetmice' that are eaten to celebrate Mathe's feast; from the artificers' strikes to the bestselling popular novels about Healer Chambeley. The themes of class, of institutional corruption, and of medical diagnosis are thoroughly explored, but there's also room for romance(s) as well as the core murder mystery. I liked this a great deal.

Read because: I checked Netgalley as soon as I heard that Marske had a new novel on the way: I discovered her via the Be the Serpent podcast, and have very much enjoyed her other work.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 17th September 2026.

2026/125: They Bloom at Night — Trang Thanh Tran

Every generation before had a semblance of chance, but we have the end of the world. This end of the world. It’s beautiful, it’s crushing, and I wish we could think of a future without a thousand ways of how we must change to endure it.

Nhung, known as Noon, lives on a boat with her mother, making a living by selling the sometimes-mutated fish they catch. Hurricane Arlene took Noon's father and brother, and flooded Mercy, Louisiana: it also left behind a toxic bloom of weird red algae, and there have been sightings of strange sea creatures and reports of missing persons. When a marine biologist goes missing, Noon -- along with Covey, the daughter of the town's big boss -- is tasked with capturing a monster. Any monster.

Noon herself has been changing for months. After a sexual assault, her hair turned white overnight, and she's losing her fingernails. She no longer feels at home in her body. Is she a monster? What has triggered her transformation -- the assault, or something in the water?

Noon is very much alone: she's frustrated by her mother's certainty that the sea will reincarnate her lost husband and son, perhaps as sea creatures, and there's an undercurrent of lingering resentment that, as a girl, Noon was always second best. Later, she reconnects with an old friend, Wilder, and Wilder's new friend Saffy, who is trans. There's a tentative friendship blooming with Covey, too: an accomplished huntress, yes, but also a young woman rejecting her big-boss father and everything he stands for. And ultimately Noon comes to understand, and to reconcile herself to, her mother's beliefs ... and their roots in the family history.

This is as much a novel about becoming your true self as it is about the ecological, social and economic changes wrought by the hurricane and the algae. There's some stomach-turning body horror, and a pervasive sense of unease: Tran evokes the smells, sounds and motion of Noon's world with vivid sensory detail. I found Noon's prickliness very relatable, and was captivated by the ways in which various mermaid stories (not the Disney versions) were woven into Noon's story.

I read the audiobook, narrated by Nhi Do, who managed some truly unsettling vocal effects.

Read because: it was on offer at Libro.fm, and the Libro.fm 2026 Audiobook Listening Challenge has a prompt for 'a winning audiobook from our 2025 Bookseller Choice Awards': as I read, I decided it also fitted 'a BIPOC retelling of a fairytale', for the original Little Mermaid.

2026/124: Annie Bot — Sierra Greer

Doug and all the other humans talk about their lives with a myopic intensity, sharing singular, subjective opinions as if they are each the protagonist of their own novel. ... they treat their fellow humans as guest protagonists visiting from their own respective books. None of the humans are satellites the way she is, in her orbit around Doug. [p. 215]

Annie is in an abusive relationship with Doug: he says she's fat, criticises her housework, and chooses her lingerie. She's not allowed to go online without permission / supervision. He punishes her with the silent treatment.

It's all right, though </sarcasm> because Annie isn't a real woman. She's a bot -- an artificial being grown in a lab from a human embryo and mechanical components. Doug literally owns her: he purchased her, as a 'Cuddle Bunny' (sexbot), and he gets to decide everything about her, from her breast size to how high her libido is set. (One horrific scene has him setting libido to 10 and then locking her in a closet: she can't 'simulate orgasm' without him inside her, and she is desperate.) But Doug has also switched on 'auto-didact' mode, and Annie is evolving as she learns more about the world -- and about herself. She's also learnt, somehow, to keep a secret -- one that she knows would hurt Doug.

Annie's growing self-awareness, and her understanding of her situation, is powerfully conveyed. I am not sure I liked this novel, but I did want to keep reading to see how Annie evolved. Because it's a first-person narrative, embedded in Annie's physical and mental experience, it has an immediacy that's lacking in some other works with comparable themes. And Doug, for all his many faults, isn't a two-dimensional villain. He changes (perhaps even grows) over the course of the novel. He based Annie's appearance on his ex-wife Gwen, and it's possible to infer the story of Doug and Gwen's relationship from Doug's reactions to Annie. But even at his best, he's pretty bad.

Read because: this book won the Arthur C Clarke Award, and I was curious.

2026/123: The Edge of Memory — Patrick Nunn

Literacy is tyrannical, for it encourages us to undervalue our pasts –- the knowledge amassed by those countless ancestors of ours who could neither read nor write.

Subtitled 'Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World', Nunn's thesis is that preliterate societies encoded and passed down observations of natural disasters in folk tales. He opens with a discussion of Klamath stories about Crater Lake in Oregon. According to the stories, there was a demon who dwelt in a mountain and terrorised the local people with earthquakes and falls of hot rock. The demon was defeated by a spirit who pulled the mountain down and made a lake instead. This is, according to Nunn, a fair fictionalisation of what actually happened when the caldera was formed ... 7,700 years ago. If the story is an account of actual events, it's been passed down for 300 generations.

The bulk of the book deals with Aboriginal myths that include information about sea level rise and coastal drowning. Nunn recounts more than twenty of these, which began to feel a bit repetitive: but he believes each story explains a local phenomenon, such as the disappearance of an island or the flooding of a bay. He also discusses similar stories from India, and from north-west Europe: Doggerland, and especially the Scillies, which were once rather higher above water (and thus had fewer distinct islands). There's also an intriguing mention of a folktale from Italy which seems to record a meteorite impact in the 4th or 5th century, which disrupted a pagan ritual and convinced the locals to convert to Christianity. (I am unable to access the article on which this is based, but there's more about the theory on wikipedia.)

I wasn't wholly convinced by some of the interpretations, but I do accept the core tenet that folk tales can be fictionalised accounts of actual events, and can be passed on for many generations. And it's certainly true that 'our ancestors', as in 'prehistoric humans', lived through some drastic geological, astronomical and meteorological events. I'd like to read more on this topic.

Excellent narration by Peter Silverleaf, who sounded engaged and enthusiastic throughout.

Read because: I'm fascinated by the notion of stories being passed down, specifically from prehistoric/preliterate times, as a way of remembering important events.

2026/122: The Smart Neanderthal — Clive Finlayson

[the] sweeping statements made by some archaeologists, such as birds are fast-moving prey or hard to catch, are gross overgeneralizations which reveal an absence of natural history understanding, an understanding that intelligent Neanderthals would have had. [loc. 1382]

Finlayson is a keen ornithologist and archaeologist who lives in Gibraltar: much of this book is devoted to his excavations at the Gorham's Cave system, and to his ornithological expeditions in Gibraltar and southern Spain. His aim in this short book is to prove that Neanderthals were cognitive equals to modern humans: 'they made blades; they made complex tools; they had personal ornaments in the form of eagle feathers; they used ochre either to paint themselves or to make paintings, or both; they made engravings in cave walls; and they had sophisticated economic and social organization that included detailed planning of hunting activities at specific times of the year for particular prey. The prey often included birds.' [loc. 2678].

Though his prose is occasionally lacklustre, the sense of scientific excitement comes across strongly -- as does the grind of archaeological excavation, the care which must be taken with each specimen. His descriptions of observing eagles, vultures and corvids in the wild, acquiring an understanding of their habits and behaviour in the same way as Neanderthals may have done, are compelling. And I gained a better understanding of how climate change (the Ice Age and its aftermath) would have affected Neanderthal populations, fragmenting their territory and isolating communities.

Read because: I've been fascinated by Neanderthals, and by their differences to modern humans, since I first read The Clan of the Cave Bear (which was impeccably researched, though some of the data is dated now).

2026/121: The Salt King — Natasha Pulley

Avelyn thought of saints in paintings again. There were often other paintings hidden underneath that final layer of colour. You could see them under the right kind of light, those deeper iterations where the saint was not smiling, or where instead of cotton, they wore armour. The more time he spent with Jericho, the more he saw flashes of armour. [loc. 4493]

Avelyn Brocken is a Jesuit priest, 'sent from the Vatican to investigate something that was either miraculous or requiring an exorcist'. He is the only person in the Vatican who speaks Hreod -- the language of Hreodwater, a remote and inaccessible place somewhere in East Anglia that does not appear on any maps, contains the most valuable salt mine in Europe, is a place of pilgrimage, and seems to have been the site of a miracle. An American priest walked again after two years in a wheelchair ... and then, on camera, turned to a pillar of salt.

Avelyn very much does not want to return to Hreodwater. He left after his entire family were killed, and has spent the intervening decade or so lasering off his tattoos, studying, and aware that (unlike his mentor, Father Li) he feels nothing during worship, except cold. He has come to understand, over the last decade, that he was raised in a cult: but he still believes that there is something beneath Hreodwater: something called the Salt King, that has protected the community for centuries. He does not believe it is good.

Meanwhile, in Jordan, nuclear safety inspector Dr Tallis Osho is investigating a mysterious structure in the desert, which may be emitting radiation. Her colleague Dr Saloman Akhbar identifies the black metal spikes protecting the structure as silver. There are other anomalies from around the world: coins always landing heads-up, electronic equipment failing and emitting spikes of salt, random number generators no longer being random (with calamitous consequences for capitalism), fortune tellers finding clear images in coffee grounds and sand... 

But the focus is on Avelyn, and his uncomfortable friendship with / attraction to Jericho (the doctor at Hreodwater), and the gradual revelations of the events leading up to his departure from Hreodwater. It's a strange place, with a subterranean abbey, an ancient language -- and a strange 'salt light', that only Hreoda can see, which illuminates wonders and horrors.

I loved this, despite some flaws -- Tallis's story felt distinctly secondary to Avelyn's -- and some disappointments. Avelyn is very much a product of his training, and he holds some views that I found unpleasant. Pulley doesn't gloss over the scandals of the Church, either: Father Li is viewed with suspicion in some quarters for having 'abducted' Avelyn and taken him to Rome. God, apparently, told him to do it.  

As usual in Pulley's novels, there is plenty of humour, often in footnotes, to lighten the darker aspects of the novel. And there are mammoths, cephalopods, Dionysus, shield walls, and linguistic oddities. It's not a wholly happy ending for all concerned, but I found it very satisfying.

Read because: Natasha Pulley is my favourite author (and I had to wait until publication day because Netgalley don't give me her books in advance).

“Are you, like, neurodiverse?”
“No, I’m a Jesuit.” [loc. 1656]

2026/120: Our Noble Selves — Kate Atkinson

He wasn't whole, he would never be whole, but, like the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of men before him who had returned from a war, he was getting on with his life by treating the past as if it barely existed. [loc. 217]

Before the war, Harry Flynn was a reporter; then, very briefly, a war reporter; and finally a POW working on the Burma Railway. In post-war London he drifts miserably, only vaguely aware of the planned Festival of Britain. One day he encounters his old boss in St James's Park, and is offered a job in the Festival Office, 'sopping up all the bits and pieces of Festival business that no else else cared to'. He shares his office with 'Badger', a.k.a. Mr Badgley, who doesn't talk about his war work; Evans, who survived shipwreck in the Arctic; and 'the Boy', who is 14, illiterate, working class, and a delight. 

One night Flynn goes for a drink with a rather obnoxious Frenchwoman named Delphine Dubois. He wakes up the next morning with a black eye and a gap in his memory -- and Delphine has disappeared. Naturally, suspicion falls on Flynn. Even under suspicion of murder, though, he still has a job to do -- dealing with a celebrity cook and her nefarious husband, a stepdaughter and a dog, a Festival anthology of appalling poetry, and a plethora of plaster doves...

There is a lot of detail about the Festival here, but it's woven around a thriller about spies, double agents and fascists. As usual with Kate Atkinson, it's easy to get sidetracked by the asides, the characters, the setting: London in 1951 is a city still emerging from the horrors of war, and though the Festival is intended as a boost to morale and a taste of a peacetime future, there are plenty (including the Daily Express) who fulminate about the cost, the inherent classism, the London-centric nature of the main event. Plus ça change.

Flynn is somewhat naive but generally a good man: the novel is told, third-person, from his perspective, and the attentive reader will find significance where Flynn does not. This is a hopeful novel, despite its gentle mockery of British art and attitudes.  I found Atkinson's afterword -- where, as well as describing her research, she sets out her reasons for not writing about Flynn's war -- interesting, too. 

Read because: spotted it on Netgalley and was intrigued by the premise and setting: I generally enjoy Atkinson's novels, and this was no exception.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 10th September 2026.

2026/119: The Moor's Account — Laila Lalami

How strange, I remember thinking, how utterly strange were the ways of the Castilians—just by saying that something was so, they believed that it was. I know now that these conquerors, like many others before them, and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice the truth, but to create it. [chapter 1]

The Moor's Account tells the story of 'Estebanico', a Moroccan slave who was among the four survivors of the 600-strong Narváez expedition, an expedition to the so-called New World in 1527. 'Estebanico' is the name forced, by the Spanish, upon a trader from Azemmour, Mustafa ibn Muhommad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori, after he sells himself into slavery to save his family from poverty and starvation. And the 'New World' is neither unknown nor uninhabited.

Within a year of the expedition landing in what's now Florida, there are only four survivors: three Castilian gentlemen -- among them Mustafa's owner, Andrés de Dorantes -- and Mustafa himself. Sometimes together, sometimes not, they travel westward, living among indigenous tribes (some more welcoming than others) and becoming healers, using a combination of folk medicine, storytelling and prayer. But the Castilians never lose sight of their primary purpose -- to find gold, more gold, all the gold -- while Mustafa's experience as a trader and then as trade goods has taught him that not everything has, or should have, a price. 

Eventually, they are found by a group of Spanish slavers and taken to Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), where arrangements are slowly made for them to return to Spain. The three Castilians are asked for their accounts of the expedition: Mustafa, mentioned only once in the Castilian reports ('The fourth [survivor] is Estebanico, an Arab Negro from Azamor') and is not asked to contribute his own version of events.

Mustafa observes that the Castilians' accounts of the years in the wilderness, they omit a great deal: cannibalism, theft, rape, murder, and their Native American wives. (Not real wives, Dorantes assures him: they weren't married in church.)  Mustafa has sustained himself by dreams of returning to Azemmour: but he too has married a Native American woman, now pregnant, and is increasingly disturbed by the invaders' attitude to the indigenous peoples. Dorantes' reluctance to free Mustafa, despite all they've endured together, crystallises his determination to free himself. 

This felt long, perhaps because it was repetitive: tribe after tribe, misfortune after misfortune: it's under 400 pages in print. I listened to the audiobook, read by Neil Shah, and found the exaggerated Spanish accents rather grating. But it is a fascinating story, and Mustafa's perspective is quite unlike that of the Spaniards. The style is that of an Arabic travel text: dates are given according to the Islamic calendar, and places in the Old World are referred to by their Arabic names. The narrative switches between Mustafa's early life in Azemmour and his adventures as part of the expedition, each chapter entitled 'The Story of...': the parallel narratives show how Mustafa's response to the New World is shaped by his own past, and that of his people.

Two interesting resources I found when I was reading about the historical background: an analysis of the 'official' accounts with reference to the tribes they may have encountered, and Lalami's own set of resources.

Read because:I enjoyed The Dream Hotel, and when contemplating the 'Storygraph Reads the World: Morocco' prompt this drew my attention.

2026/118: The Magician of Tiger Castle — Louis Sachar

By the way, when the princess said the king called me Esquaveta's Leonardo, he was referring to Leonardo da Vinci. Just thought I ought to point that out in case it slipped past you. [p. 127]

We first meet Anatole -- overweight, short and hairless -- in a coffee bar in what used to be a country called Esquaveta. He's musing on the tigers that roam the castle moat, and on the history of the castle itself: then, abruptly, he's reminiscing about the arrival of the very first tiger in 1523, when he was the court magician, working on turning black sand into gold, and performing a series of proto-scientific experiments. ('In the 1500s, science and magic were virtually indistinguishable.') Gradually, he tells the story of how, tasked with ensuring that Princess Tullia of Esquaveta married Prince Dalrympl of Oxatania, he had to contend with Tullia falling in love with penniless scribe Pito. His solution? Create a potion that makes each of them forget the other.

Needless to say, it is not that simple. Oh, the potions work: they didn't have ethics in 1523, apparently, so it's fine not to tell either of his subjects what the potion does, and anyway that would negate its effects. But the potion he uses to postpone the wedding is not the lethal poison expected, and he's forced to flee, with two cantankerous lovers in tow. Can Anatole reach freedom? Can Tullia and Pito survive long enough to marry? And why is Anatole so attached to one of his laboratory animals?

This was announced as Sachar's first novel for adults, though it felt quite YA to me: the plethora of historical factoids ('In 1523 fire was started by striking flint against a piece of iron'; a description of how a hurdy-gurdy works; why ale is was healthier than water) was occasionally intrusive, and the overall tone reminded me of The Princess Bride, though rather more cynical. I didn't really warm to the characters, except Luigi the mouse. A pleasant enough read but not one I'll revisit.

Read because: it was on offer as a Kindle Daily Deal, and I was intrigued by the idea of an adult fantasy novel from the author of Holes.

2026/117: Daggerbound — T Kingfisher

"... I thought you'd be on the side of law and order."
"No, young man," said Bishop Beartongue, despite being several centuries his junior. "I am on the side of justice. If we're lucky, the two run in parallel. If they don't, we bend the law to attain justice, not the other way around." [loc. 4092]

Edmund leaves the Temple of the Many-Armed God with a mule named Sweetheart, a selection of rare books and an ancient artifact that he's been tasked with transporting to an academic in Archen's Glory. He has no intention of returning to the temple, with its misogynist priests and antiquated ways. But before he has time to make plans, bandits happen -- and he accidentally unsheathes the artifact (a sword) and releases a silver-eyed angel.

The angel is ... no angel. His name is the Dervish, and he's been imprisoned in the sword for many years: his last wielder was a sadistic priest, and consequently he has no time for religion, or indeed wielders. He is a walking mass of trauma, but (in his opinion) 'very pretty trauma'. And he helps Edmund survive the journey -- via more outlaws, an excellent gnole, a cobbled-together dragon, and a diplomat from another species -- though what the pair find when they reach the city is not what either of them expected.

This was an absolute delight: a romance, yes, but also a story about healing, and about loyalty, and about scholarship. (There is some steam. They are in a sauna.) I am happy to report that Zale features in Daggerbound, as do other characters from Kingfisher's previous explorations in the World of the White Rat. 

Daggerbound has heroism, emotional inarticulacy, gnole pronouns, the importance of books, and an exciting new use for bacon. The characters -- human and otherwise, good and bad -- have personality and motivation, and the worldbuilding is thorough without being forced.

I requested this from NetGalley despite having the Kindle version pre-ordered, which should give you some idea of my enthusiasm for this series. Already looking forward to Shieldborn...

Read because: It showed up on Netgalley, and even though I have the Kindle edition preordered I couldn't resist.

2026/116: Parallel Lives — Iain Pears

... it is difficult to believe that life during the siege of Leningrad was quite as jolly as the tone of [Larissa's] recollections sometimes suggested. [Introduction]

Larissa Salmina was born in northern Russia in 1931, daughter of an army officer: she survived the siege of Leningrad (and does indeed make it sound quite jolly, though there are horrors too: they ate the neighbour's cat, who was starving anyway) and later became a curator at the Hermitage Museum. She was appointed Commissar for the Venice Biennale -- she lost some of the artworks en route -- and met an English art historian Francis Haskell.

Francis was brought up in England, grandson of an Iraqi Jew, and seems to have had a very miserable youth, struggling with repressed (and not so repressed) homosexual urges, antisemitism, and loneliness. He was smitten by Larissa, more of a free spirit than himself: she, already married, blithely embarked on their affair, and broke the terms of her visa to travel with him -- which could have ruined her own career in the USSR.

Larissa seems to have had the gift of landing on her feet: Francis revealed unsuspected backbone in his determination to marry her, despite the bureaucratic hoops this entailed in the mid-1960s. And Iain Pears, who was taught by Haskell and befriended Larissa after Haskell's death, weaves their story together -- from conversations with Larissa, and from the diaries Francis kept from childhood until his marriage -- to depict 'a tale of a Europe that is lost. 'Not the Europe of geographical and ideological divisions, but of a certain mentality, which was common to a very few on both sides of the Iron Curtain'. He emphasises the importance of art to both, and their sense of a shared cultural inheritance: and he balances Larissa's oral history (noting that it's full of gaps and deliberate omissions) with Francis' dogged self-analysis.

I confess I was much more interested in Larissa, especially her experiences during the siege. I learnt a lot about post-war Soviet society, including the fact that Russians were legally obliged to look after ageing parents: Larissa's mother had to waive her right to this before the marriage could go ahead. I would have liked more discussion of Francis' homosexual affairs (there are delicate allusions, no more) and perhaps of their married life: but the book effectively concludes with their marriage, and I respect Pears' decision to stop there.

Read by Richard Attlee: his voice suited the narrative, and Pears' measured style, really well.

Read because: It was on offer at Libro.fm, and Larissa's story in particular sounded fascinating. Also, this is the Europe which my father's family knew.

2026/115: Under Story — Chloe Benjamin

In our world, matter that was living decomposes -- but not always. If decomposition was interrupted, a fossil forms instead... Here, a fossil is like a seed. [loc. 2988]

It's 2018, and Laurel is working as a dishwasher in Antarctica, mourning the death of her son, separated from her husband Eli -- and drawn to the Arc, an anomalous phenomenon a few miles from McMurdo Base, that manifests as an arch of light. Laurel was formerly a mycologist, and she has a scientific outlook: but when she dreams about the Arc, she can't help feeling that her dream has given her an insight. And then Eli, a renowned physicist, shows up at McMurdo. He believes that the Arc might help him prove his theory of the universe, a theory that proposes an 'antiuniverse' where 'entropy reverses on a massive scale' and time itself moves in the opposite direction.

This is a fascinating thought experiment of a novel, with elements of romance and mysticism as well as the hard (if theoretical) science underpinning it. There are octopodes! There is Antarctic life! I loved the secondary characters, especially Gloria and Louis, and I was intrigued by Laurel's experiments in mycology.

I'm not sure I fully understood some elements of the novel, and I almost gave up on the story when it seemed likely to explain some aspects solely through a mystical experience: and I am not wholly satisfied by the ending. But it was a fascinating read, with moments of beauty (both scientific and personal) that balance the occasional horrors.

Read because: I spotted it on Netgalley, where an early review described it as 'The Overstory meets Interstellar': I was intrigued.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 1st September 2026.

2026/114: After Hours at Dooryard Books — Cat Sebastian

Outside these doors is chaos. Appalling men are elected president. Every day's headlines are worse than the last. All year, it's been like that, and it isn't getting better. But it will. 

The setting is New York in 1968. Patrick is the manager of Dooryard Books, a secondhand bookstore owned by the philanthropic Mrs Kaplan. One night, Mrs Kaplan turns up with a stranger, who she introduces as 'Nathaniel Smith': a man several years older than Patrick, with a haunted look and no possessions to speak of. Patrick can relate: he was one of Mrs K's 'projects' too, years ago.

Nathaniel (who's agoraphobic) clearly has guilty secrets, but Patrick is happy to let him take his time revealing them. And he has plenty else to distract him: soon after Nathaniel's arrival, Susan -- Patrick's sister-in-law and childhood friend, a well-known singer-songwriter -- shows up, distraught, with a suitcase, a baby, and a telegram from the Department of Defence. Susan's husband (Patrick's brother) Michael has been killed in Vietnam.

How the three of them (plus baby Eleanor) create a kind of family, and how Nathaniel comes to terms with his own sexuality, is the heart of the novel: it also features delightfully spiky Puerto Rican twins, a lot of discussion of Walt Whitman's poetry (Patrick is a huge fan), plenty of gay and trans secondary characters, anti-war protestors and political radicals and folk musicians, and a dog. The revelation of Nathaniel's secret past was a big surprise and definitely something to feel bad about, but he does his best to make things right, not only with Susan and Nathaniel but with the wider world.

Great depictions of male-female friendship, alternative culture, and the second-hand book trade. I listened to the audiobook, read by JJ Hawkins (who read Patrick's chapters) and Joel Leslie (who read Nathaniel's). I felt a bit uncomfortable while listening to Leslie, who sounded as though he was choking at the end of each sentence, but both narrators brought warmth, emotion and humour to their performances.

Read because: it was in the Libro.fm sale, and I have enjoyed other novels by Cat Sebastian.

2026/113: The Sentence — Louise Erdrich

Think how white people believe their houses or yards or scenic overlooks are haunted by Indians, when it’s really the opposite. We’re haunted by settlers and their descendants. [p. 91]

Reread for book club: I had forgotten just how much it's about the pandemic. I also noticed many aspects of motherhood here, from Hetta with her new baby to Tookie bearing the name of the woman who helped her mother. Book club response was positive: we talked about the sense of community in the novel, and the low-key horror of the ghost.

My original review is here.

Read because: bookclub choice, and I was happy to reread this!

2026/112: Never After — Alexis Hall

“Say something.” His voice rang harshly, even in his own ears. “Call me unnatural. Scorn me. Turn away in revulsion. Tell the village.”
“Oh, Michael, I’m an old woman, my back would play up something chronic. I can’t turn away in revulsion like I used to.” [loc. 3759]

This is described as 'a melancholic tale of queer romance': it's set in the 1860s in London and, later, a country town, and it's the story of two men (an opium-addicted male prostitute named Micha, and the Reverend Thomas Mandeville) who love one another. But I'm not sure it's a romance per se.

It has many of the tropes of romance: Micha is very ill when Thomas finds him collapsed on the street and takes him home; Micha is prickly and dishonest, but gradually becomes more likeable under Thomas' gentle ministrations; Micha's secrets gradually come to light, and Thomas's unpleasant family history likewise; Thomas finds a better family because of Micha. And it does seem that they might achieve a HEA. But no.

Devastatingly emotional, with lots of rich textured descriptions that reminded me of nineteenth-century novels. Hall treats Thomas' faith, and the moral quandaries his desire for Micha sparks in him, with respect and honesty. And Micha's addiction is also portrayed realistically and without modern sensibilities. I especially liked the female characters, none of whom behave as Micha expects: Thomas' housekeeper Mrs Clark, who could reveal Micha's past; the ladies of Nettlefield, especially Esther (whose response to Micha's confession of homosexuality heads this review); and, at the end, Hope.

Pleasantly read by Steve West, who managed to infuse Micha's sometimes-limited vocabulary ('Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.') with emotions appropriate to the setting.

from the author's webpage, discussing ending and epilogue...

Read because: I've enjoyed many of Hall's other novels and spotted this as audio and ebook on Kindle Unlimited, my 'free trial' of which runs out very soon. A pleasant audiobook to listen to in the garden!

2026/111: A Trade of Blood — Robert Jackson Bennett

My augmentations had permanently altered my very biologies. Had I been made a beast, to be sacrificed for my family and the Empire? Or was I now a shepherd, and the common folk of the cantons my flock? [loc. 3578]

My initial gleeful review is here: I liked this novel just as much on rereading.

Two households, both alike in dignity... The Armentas are a wealthy aristocratic family, raising monstrous cows to feed the Empire: the Buravs are a neighbouring family who provide the beans that feed the cows. The two families have been feuding for years: despite this, Castus Armenta and Zanzay Burav were planning to run away together. Now Zanzay lies horribly dead and Castus is in the local jail, unable to explain the events of the previous night. 

Just another case for Immunis Ana Dolabra and her trusty assistant, Signum Dinios Kol! Together, the two uncover a history of misfortune (or perhaps a family curse) plaguing the Armentas, and an ancient forest which may harbour gods from before the Empire. And they learn about farming. This is not Romeo and Juliet: it's certainly not a romance. It is, instead, a novel about the grotesque excesses of agriculture. It highlights the routine slaughter and the wastefulness, the ecological impact, and the use of enslaved creatures^* as field workers.

And it's also about Ana and about Din -- the former coming a little closer to revealing the secrets of her alterations, the latter wholly unprepared to encounter someone from his past. There is body horror, there are unsettling mental changes, and there is more, much more, about the Empire itself. (I note that Ana and Din are moving towards the heart of the Empire -- the first book was set on the coast, the second in the independent kingdom of Yarrowdale, and this novel within the Third Ring.)

Very much looking forward to the next book -- this is clearly not a trilogy! -- and to learning even more about the Empire, and about the eccentric Ana. (A taste of Ana: "I'd normally be given to suspect his enemies, the Armentas --except they've nearly been eliminated... Or so we think! I can't confirm, because people keep goddamn interrupting me with their dying!" [loc. 2597])

^*Small creatures known as cats, though they are more like squirrels or weasels: I suspect the author of devising a way to refer to characters as 'cat-herders'.

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 this full honest review. UK publication date is 4th August 2026.

2026/110: As We Fall Through Time — Claire North

Every time traveller who has ever trodden on a butterfly has created a ripple through time. These ripples make more ripples which make more travellers, the snake swallows its tail... [loc. 694]

Cal is a time-traveller, and something of a paradox: sometimes male, sometimes female. He encounters Olivier, a French soldier, in 1789, and falls in love. Which seems to be somehow connected to the temporal paradox sparked by fellow time-traveller Fadimatu encountering her own corpse in The Museum of the Unmasked Conspiracy...

This is a love story, a story of climate activism, and a murder mystery. It's narrated in first person by a mysterious observer. Time is infested with ghosts and witches, 'fathomless creatures of unlived realities': paradoxes can be healed, or at least ameliorated, by paradoxical objects ('amaranthines') such as a ceramic flower that did and did not crack in the kiln.

I am already looking forward to rereading this next month for the full review...

Read because: Claire North has become one of my favourite authors -- from the 'Songs of Penelope' trilogy to the awesome Slow Gods. Obviously I read this as soon as it landed on my Kindle... Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for the full honest review I'll write nearer UK Publication Date -- 10th October 2026.

2026/109: Apollo 13 — James Lovell / Jeffrey Kruger

I’m afraid this is going to be the last moon mission for a long time.

Initially published as Lost Moon and retitled to tie in with the movie Apollo 13, this is Jim Lovell's account -- with Jeffrey Kruger's wealth of background research and synthesis -- of the NASA mission that would have been the third Moon landing. It's not just a minute-by-minute account of the accident and the return, both on board the spacecraft and back at Mission Control, but also a biography of Lovell: there are vignettes featuring other people impacted by the events (such as the spacecraft recovery specialist aboard the USS Iwo Jima), and a detailed account of Marilyn Lovell waiting at home with their children, supported by friends and neighbours.

I found this compelling listening: it's extremely well paced. The technical details of the damage to the Service Module, and the ingenious workarounds developed by crew and Control, are explained clearly for a non-technical audience. The constant stress of the four days after the explosion (which vented most of the oxygen to space, and forced the three-man crew to take refuge in the Lunar Module which had been designed to support two men for two days on the surface of the Moon) is clear, but there's never false drama.

The crew's levelheadedness did occasionally falter, but only in throwaway comments. (I suspect Kruger relied heavily on the log transcripts.) And I found the dogged perseverance of Mission Control uplifting and inspirational. It's also amazing to me that the mission was completed -- not only on the ground, but in the spacecraft -- with less processing power than my smartwatch. (See Reddit for discussion).

Narrated very well by Fred Sanders, whose voice I found pleasant and who injected humour into the lighter interludes, and didn't speed up when things became tense.

Read because: I don't quite remember this happening (unlike some of my friends), but it's been part of my cultural background for most of my life. I realised I knew very little about the disaster, though I did know it hadn't ended in tragedy. And the NASA space program, at its height in the '60s and '70s, is exciting.

2026/108: Dragon's Fin Soup — S P Somtow

...in this town, there’s no distinction between the real world and the world of illusion. It’s the only place in the world where all truths are true at the same time. [p. 264]

Subtitled 'Eight Modern Siamese Fables', these stories are set in Thailand -- mostly Bangkok -- at various points in the late twentieth century, and typically deal with the culture clash between Thai and Western culture, with flourishes of the fantastic. I especially liked 'The Steel American', about a knight seeking the Grail in a small village, and 'Fiddling for Water Buffaloes', a cheery tale of an American anthropologist, the trade in fake antiquities, and possible alien invasion. 

Some of the other stories felt dated: sexist, cyberpunk-inflected, plain body-horror. And the text is not formatted well in this edition.  In some of the stories it looks as though a draft version, complete with markup and comments, has been used.

But when it's good, it's very good: the little details of domestic life, the prevalence of belief in spiritual entities (good and otherwise), the juxtaposition of ancient and modern. I intend to read more of Somtow's work, having (I think) bounced off some of his horror fiction in the 1990s.

Read because: Many of S P Somtow's books are available on Kindle Unlimited, and I wanted to fill a challenge prompt -- 'by a Thai author or about Thailand'. This one looked interesting and accessible, and fulfilled both aspects of the prompt.

2026/107: The Georgian Star — Michael Lemonick

Herschel... followed his own ambition, which was nothing less than to understand the universe, to figure out its overall structure and composition. [loc. 180]

A comprehensive overview of the lives and work of William and Caroline Herschel, covering not only their astronomical accomplishments (which are many) but their previous careers in music -- William was a professional musician and composer, and Caroline a soprano who performed some of his works. 

Born in Germany, William emigrated to England in 1757, and Caroline joined him in 1772. At this point Herschel had already become interested in astronomy, and roped in his sister as assistant. They built telescopes (Caroline grinding the lenses and polishing the mirrors) and recorded their observations, which were considerably more meticulous, detailed and accurate than those of their peers. 

William discovered Uranus, though he thought at first it was a comet: on realising it was a planet he proposed the name Georgium Sidus, hoping this would attract royal favour and the post of Astronomer Royal. Caroline, meanwhile, discovered multiple comets and some Messier objects that Messier had missed.

Lemonick doesn't assume too much in the way of scientific knowledge or understanding: I was grateful for the clear explanations of theories and methods, though more astronomically-minded readers may feel these are overly basic. The Georgian Star succeeds in presenting a rounded picture of the Herschels as scientists and as human beings, and setting out the importance of their work in modern astronomy. I liked the argument that Herschel's approach was radical: that he was more a cosmologist than an astronomer, and realised that his desire to understand the universe could only be achieved by close observation. I was also amused to read that (like many of his contemporaries) he believed the planets, and the Sun, were inhabited. 

The audiobook was read by Paul Boehmer: somewhat monotone, but no weird pronunciations or false amusement!

Read because: I'm interested in astronomy, and in Caroline Herschel, and this was on offer on Libro.fm.

2026/106: The House That Eats the Dead — Max Doty

I curled up in a chair with ... a copy of a book on tidying by Marie Kondo. ... it would be good to get rid of some things. Maybe the house would help me.
I went to put down my book and found my hand empty. Marie Kondo was gone, tidied into oblivion. [loc. 623]

Claire and Tom Morgan, with their delightful children Grace (6) and Derek (15), and their dog King, move from the urban frenzy of San Francisco to a leafy suburb. Their new home seems perfect, though food seems to rot quickly and flowers wilt in hours. Gradually, Claire realises that the house devours anything organic -- but only if it's dead. She and her children are safe, and nosebleeds get cleaned up instantly. And only the owners of the house remember anything that has been eaten.

At first this seems convenient, even benevolent. The house has eaten Grace's favourite soft toy, but she doesn't remember loving it, and a tearful crisis is averted. Later, Claire and Tom decide that the children would be better off not remembering that they'd ever owned a dog...

Claire is the protagonist, a stay-at-home mother (formerly an artist) experimenting with the house's powers, and treating it as an individual. She brings it cow hearts to stop it eating the food in the fridge: she paints with organic paints, and the house finds a way to tell its story. Claire has a traumatic past, and so does the house -- which is very much a character in the novel, though it never speaks ... at least not to Claire. It affects each of the Morgans in different ways: Grace likes the stories it tells, Tom finds it helpful in climbing the corporate ladder, Derek's self-confidence grows, and Claire is painting again...

I was reminded of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, which also features a family discovering a supernatural phenomenon and being altered by their use of it. But this is a more mundane narrative: a family drama with horror elements, rather than a story of demons and tragedies. Which isn't to say that there aren't deaths, and bad decisions -- but the impulse behind both is human rather than occult.

It took me a few chapters to get into this novel, because Claire is not immediately likeable: but once the plot started escalating I was gripped. I liked the morally grey characters, the vaguely-sketched backstory, and the family dynamics, and I found Claire's ethical dilemmas fascinating. Would I have done the same?

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 13th August 2026.

Read because: The publisher invited me to read this, on the basis of my having enjoyed other Tor Nightfire titles.

2026/105: My Best Friend's Exorcism — Grady Hendrix

For the Langs, Madonna was totally and completely out of the question. But when Gretchen's dad was at work and her mom was taking one of her nine billion classes (Jazzercise, power walking, book club, wine club, sewing circle, women's prayer circle), Gretchen and Abby would dress up like the Material Girl and sing into the mirror. Gretchen's mom had a jewelry box devoted entirely to crosses, so it was basically like she was inviting them to do it.

Set in Charleston in the 1980s, this is the story of two best friends -- Gretchen, from a well-off, conservative, religious family, and Abby, whose background is lower-income and rather liberal -- from elementary school to adulthood. It's full of 80s culture: big hair, Benetton perfume, fad diets, Madonna, personality quizzes, Halley's Comet ... and the Satanic Panic, which in this instance turns out to be justified. It's also packed with period-typical attitudes and behaviour (racism, sexism, homophobia, corporal punishment) which I remember being 'normal' back then, and find horrific now.

Abby and Gretchen are best friends. They attend the same school, and are friends (but not best friends) with constantly-dieting Margaret and class swot Glee. One night at Margaret's riverside home they take LSD, and Gretchen declares that she's going skinny-dipping. She vanishes, and the other three search for her all night, eventually finding her naked in the woods, saying she can't remember what happened. After that, Gretchen becomes a lot meaner, and Abby starts to wonder if her friend has been the victim of sexual assault. Then the Lemon brothers, charismatic preacher-types, do a show at the school, and Christian Lemon says he can see that Gretchen has a demon...

Issues of race, class, wealth are explored in the manner of a high school comedy-drama, but the story gets increasingly dark. Abby, though, is a resourceful and courageous protagonist, and the actual exorcism is a virtuoso blend of character, setting and cultural references. (It made me laugh, but it's also very emotional.) Yes, it's a horror novel, and there are some terrible scenes: but there is so much humour and ridiculousness that I could tolerate the nastier elements.

Interestingly, the novel doesn't stop with the exorcism. We see Abby and Gretchen growing up, changing, staying more or less friends for decades. I really liked that Hendrix showed us how their friendship changed and evolved as they grew older.

I listened to the audiobook, read by Emily Woo Zeller, whose narration was very engaging and emotional, to the extent that I sometimes had to pause the shriekier bits! Some aspects, however -- like the yearbook messages and newspaper clippings -- didn't translate well to audio format.

Read because: The book appeared in the Libro.fm sale a while ago, and having enjoyed The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires I snapped it up. I was in the mood for something very different from Neumeier's trilogy, and this certainly delivered.

2026/104: Tasmakat — Rachel Neumeier

When we ask the gods to be merciful, we have no idea what we’re asking. [p. 469]

After the events of Tarashana, Aras and Ryo travel back to the summer lands -- via a wedding -- and to the king's judgment. Aras seems sanguine on the long journey from the winter lands (a journey which I now realise comprises more than half of the novel) but there's a strong possibility that the king will have him executed.

Instead, he sends Aras and Ryo to the Land of Two Suns, ruled by the Ro-Antalet (sphinxes), where the envoy Tasmakat (a jackal-headed woman) has suggested there might be an adept who can lighten the sorcerous madness that is beginning to afflict Aras, and break the bond -- the 'leash', as the Ugaro call it -- between Aras and Ryo.

Of course it is not that simple.

This novel is packed with thorny issues of loyalty, honour and mercy. Ryo is strong and stubborn, but can he prevail against madness? He has to contend with false memories and guard his mind (though he's already proved he can mask his thoughts): he's sorcerously altered to withstand the tremendous heat of the Two Suns ... and all the while he worries about what's happening in the winter lands, what's happening with his wife and her other husband.

Intensely emotional, sometimes very dark, sometimes unevenly paced: the climax of this novel is a triumph, and the finale hopeful. I enjoyed it very much despite sometimes wearying of the interminable journeying. And I'm keen to read more of the novels set in this world -- though perhaps not quite yet.

Read because: This concludes the Ryo-centric trilogy that started with Tuyo and continued with Tarashana -- I wanted to follow that story to its conclusion, especially while the events of the previous two books were still fresh in my mind.

2026/103: Why We Swim — Bonnie Tsui

For many swimmers, the act of swimming is a tonic, in that old-fashioned sense of the word: it is a restorative, a stimulant, undertaken for a feeling of vigor and well-being. The word tonic comes from the Greek tonikos, “of or for stretching".

Read by Angie Kane. I spotted this in the Libro.fm audiobook sale and thought it looked intriguing: I didn't expect such a comprehensive survey of the history of swimming, from prehistoric times (I was especially fascinated by the chapter on the likelihood that the humans at Gobera swam in their lake) to modern competitive swimming.

Tsui covers five major reasons to swim -- survival, well-being, community, competition and flow. She discusses how various communities throughout history have adapted to swimming -- for instance, free-diving fishers in south-east Asia and Japan, or 'human seal' Guðlaugur Friðþórsson who survived six hours in 5^o water -- and the ways in which swimming has been used and recommended as a therapy for centuries. She describes the creep of racial segregation in twentieth-century America, reducing access to swimming for non-white Americans. It's not just a leisure issue, but a question of being able to swim -- being able to avoid death by drowning.

I learnt about samurai swimming, and was inspired by the accounts of people who've overcome major physical challenges via the 'salt water cure' -- sea-swimming. "Being in the ocean, you can become part of the food chain at any moment," writes Tsui. (In 21st-century Britain you are, sadly, more likely to encounter the end product of the food chain if you swim in the sea.) And Tsui's mention of Lewis Pugh, who swam across the North Pole to highlight the climate catastrophe, led me to some videos that I swear will cool you down on the hottest of days.

Reading this book made me want to swim more often, especially in rivers and the sea. I already know it improves my health, mentally and creatively as well as physically. 

Read because: I am a keen swimmer and was intrigued by this history of swimming.

2026/102: Tarashana — Rachel Neumeier

I think everyone behaved courageously and honorably, until courage and honor were not enough. [p. 328]

Second in the 'Tuyo' arc, despite it being book number 3... A year and a half after the events of Tuyo, Lord Aras is encountering some political issues in the summer lands, where Ryo still serves him. A reprieve of sorts is offered when a message comes from the winter country, asking for Aras' help. Apparently a Tarashana woman (from another cosmological realm, beyond the winter lands, lit only by starlight) has approached the Ugaro: she seems to be mute but clearly needs help of some kind. Can Aras (and Ryo) assist?

Cue an expedition through the winter lands -- with various Lau allies, including the excellent Lalani -- and a chance to see Ryo in his homeland, with his people. After they leave the Ugaro and cross the steppe, the world becomes very much stranger: ghost tigers, paths that don't lead where they appear to, and the horrors that the Tarashana woman has fled from. Some appalling things happen, especially at the book's climax. Honour, respect, trust and kindness prevail, eventually. And Aras and Ryo have some difficult conversations.

Also, Ryo wants to get married, but there's competition...

This is a vast book, 700-odd pages in print, and I did occasionally feel that some passages weren't essential to the plot. But every action, every reaction, every line of dialogue matters... And when the bad things happened I could not stop reading, because Neumeier knows how to play arpeggios on my heartstrings. The plot here -- and the worldbuilding -- feel more complex than in Tuyo, and as soon as I'd finished this I went on to the third of the Ryo-centric novels...

Read because: Having finished Tuyo, I wanted to see what happened next: I like the characters and am intrigued by the worldbuilding.

2026/101: Tuyo — Rachel Neumeier

Every man is glad to stop looking for the truth when he’s handed a lie he likes better. Sorcerers are no different in that. [p. 129]

Ryo InGara is nineteen years old, a warrior of a nomadic tribe that dwells in the winter country. At the beginning of Tuyo, he's been left as a kind of sacrifice to the opposing army -- the Lau -- in a minor skirmish: he expects to be killed slowly and painfully, and it is a matter of honour that he meets his death bravely.

Instead, he finds himself given guest-right by his captor, Lord Aras Eren Samaura, who says that Ryo is more useful alive than dead. Aras is trying to determine the cause of the recent unrest between the Ugaro (Ryo's people) and the Lau (Aras' people). He suspects sorcery is involved -- and Ryo comes from a culture where sorcery is punished by death. Ryo does indeed encounter sorcerers, plural: his memories are changed without his consent, and only his own strength of will -- and his trust in Aras' essential good nature -- saves him.

What I liked most in this novel was Ryo's narrative, and the close examination of the changing relationship between Ryo and Aras. (NB This is not a romance.) Neumeier depicts the minutae of Ryo's emotional landscape, and the evolution of his understanding of Aras, credibly and without sentiment.

The worldbuilding is fascinating, too: it's clear almost from the start that this is a radically different cosmology. A river separates the winter lands of the Ugaro from the summer lands of the Lau. In the winter lands, the moon is always full, but in the summer lands it ('she', the goddess) has phases. There are stories of another land beyond the winter land, lit by starlight, and a sunless sea; and Aras has travelled beyond the summer land, where jackal-headed sorcerers dwell. 

One brief complaint: there is a great deal of story-telling in this novel, but we don't get the stories themselves.

Ryo and his culture reminded me of Ariantes, the Sarmatian narrator of Island of Ghosts, one of my favourite novels: I was pleased to read Neumeier's post on that novel, which acknowledges it as an influence.

Read because: I'd read a sample after seeing it recommended (and I'd already enjoyed The Year's Midnight by the same author). Amazon stealthily offered me a month of free Kindle Unlimited, and I bit.

2026/100: The Killing Time — Elly Griffiths

It’s hard enough being a woman in 2024, what must it be like when you’ve almost no agency and are imprisoned by your clothes? [loc. 3368]

In this, the second of the Ali Dawson time-travel thrillers, Ali is confounded by bureaucracy. After the problems of her previous expedition to 1851 -- and the disappearance of star physicist Jones, presumed lost in the nineteenth century -- the Cold Cases Unit is banned from further excursions. 

Ali distracts herself by investigating the contemporary case of a young man who fell to his death after being told by a charismatic psychic that he could fly. Prepared to find a fraud, Ali is unnerved when the psychic, Barry Power, seems to convey a message from Jones. And Ali already knows that she'll return to the 1850s... though she doesn't expect it to happen when she's trying to go back just a few minutes to close the cat flap and prevent her beloved kitty from escaping. 

This excursion was less harrowing than the first, although I was anxious about Terry the cat. (Naturally he has landed on his feet.) And there are hints of the directions the series might go: the connections between the members of the Cold Case Unit, Ali's romantic entanglement, the collective unconsciousness, Jones' new life. I remain intrigued. 

Read because: I enjoyed The Frozen People, and was eager to discover what happened next...

2026/099: Around the World in 72 Days — Nellie Bly

"It is impossible for you to do it... In the first place you are a woman and would need a protector, and even if it were possible for you to travel alone you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you in making rapid changes. Besides you speak nothing but English, so there is no use talking about it; no one but a man can do this."
"Very well," I said angrily, "Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him." [chapter 1]

Inspired by Jules Verne's novel (and desperate to write about something interesting), New York World reporter Nellie Bly suggested to her editor in 1888 that she might attempt to recreate the fictional journey of Phineas Fogg. (Her editor's initial reaction is quoted at the top of this review.)

Bly's only luggage was a single bag: she'd commissioned a lightweight dress, but refused several society invitations on her travels due to lack of the proper attire. She sailed to England, then took the boat train to France, where she met Jules Verne himself; then another train to Brindisi, a ship through the Suez Canal, a stay in Ceylon: then Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, a Pacific crossing, and a breakneck railway journey on a specially-commissioned train -- greeted everywhere by cheering crowds -- from San Francisco to New York. 

Her account is generally witty and gossipy, poking mostly-gentle fun at fellow travellers. Obviously, it's also packed with period-typical racism and some old-fashioned attitudes. Occasionally she encounters an importunate gentleman, who she dismisses with charm. She's quite rude about British trains, but who isn't? And she does go into a little too much detail about Japanese executions.

And she leaves a lot out. In Hong Kong she's told of a contender in the 'race', another reporter who has set out to beat Bly's time. "I will not race. If someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that is their concern," she declares. And we never hear anything more about the competition -- or Elizabeth Bisland, who travelled in the opposite direction (setting out across the Pacific, returning across the Atlantic) and made the trip in 78 days. 

I would have liked more about the mundane problems -- did she wish she'd packed more clothes? what were the sanitary facilities like? did she like any of those importunate men? -- but nevertheless this was a fascinating account of travel and travellers in the 1880s.

The Librivox audiobook, which is in the public domain, was excellently narrated by Mary Reagan, whose voice suited Bly's light tone very nicely. There's a good summary here, which also includes context lacking from Bly's sometimes-breathless account.

Elizabeth Bisland's memoir of her trip is also available as a public-domain audiobook.

Read because: it fills two challenge prompts -- non-fiction published before I was born, and a work written in the nineteenth century. Bly's journey took place in 1889, and her account of it was published in 1890.

2026/098: The Frozen People — Elly Griffiths

‘Whatever you do, don’t trust Dickens.’ [loc. 696]

Ali Dawson is fifty years old, with fire-engine red hair and a son who's working as a special advisor to Isaac Templeton, a Tory MP. Ali herself works for the Cold Case Unit -- 'so cold they're frozen' -- which uses a top-secret time-travel device to investigate crimes.

Ali's first experience of time travel, in the first weeks of Covid lockdowns, went smoothly: she and her companion travelled back a single week, weren't visible to those around them, and returned to their present once they'd worked out that they had to stand exactly in the spot they'd arrived. Sent back to 1850s London to clear the name of Isaac Templeton's ancestor, things fall out rather differently.

There was a lot to like here: Ali's discoveries about Cain Templeton, presumed murderer, and the Collectors' Club of which he's a member; Jones (a.k.a Serafina Pellegrini), the brilliant Italian physicist who developed the time travel device; the subplot involving Finn; Ali's Siamese cat Terry (even though I hope the description of him as 'sleek teal' is a misprint). As long as I didn't think too hard about the time travel -- and the likelihood of it being used to solve crimes, rather than for military or criminal purposes -- my disbelief stayed manageable. And there's enough of a cliffhanger that I went straight on to the second in the series...

Read because: I'm a big fan of Griffiths' Ruth Galloway mysteries, and had bought this some time ago... then the second in the series showed up as a Daily Deal, and friends waxed enthusiastic about this first volume. After reading, it fitted nicely into a challenge prompt -- 'suspension of disbelief'!