Never Never by Candice Fox & James Patterson (2017) Little Brown & Company

A quick-paced story in Australia starring a woman sex crimes detective, Harriet Blue (Harry) whose brother has just been arrested as a serial rapist and murderer.  Her boss sends her out of town to a mine in the middle of the desert to investigate the disappearance of several miners.  The mine people are convinced the miners just left – and they will do anything to keep from shutting down the mine.  There are local drug dealers who seem to get a pass, protesters who continually try to sabotage the mine and prostitute who hang around the miner’s places.  And there is a soldier who is hunting miners.

Night School by Lee Child (2016) Delacorte Press

Wherein Jack Reacher just got back from a mission where he had to assassinate two evil politicians in Eastern Europe and his reward is to be sent to a school – that’s not a school.  He’s joined by a CIA and an FBI agent who got the same ‘reward’.  What they’re really there for is to find a man who is selling something for 100 million to the Taliban.  It’s a game of narrowing down what they don’t know and matching it with what they can glean by going to Hamburg.  What is worth that much that can be sold by one man?

Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs (2015) Ace

The Werewolf family, Charles, the son of the Marrok (over all Werewolves in the U.S. maybe world-wide) takes his mate and wife, Anna, to an old friend’s horse ranch to pick a new horse.  While there, they investigate the disappearance of a little girl who went to school with his friend’s granddaughter.  It turns out that she was replaced by a fey’s fetch changling.  The friend is old and dying and refuses to be turned by his son (the local alpha).  But there is something left for him to do.

The story is the best so far in the series.

Squirm by Carl Hiaasen (2018) Alfred A Knopf (8/8)

This is a story about a boy in Florida who likes snakes. It’s a story about the boy’s mother who likes to watch nesting bald eagles.  It’s about his sister who is tired of moving every time the bald eagles leave their nests.  It’s about finding out where his father lives (Montana) and finding a way to try to visit.  It’s also about the father who likes to make everyone think he works for the government on a secret undercover capacity, when he really is independently wealthy and spends his time tracking-down hunters who are trying to kill endangered animals.  And it’s about the father’s new native American (Flathead) family.  And of course, it’s about growing-up.

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwidtz (2010) Penguin Young Readers

In which the novelist takes on the narrator’s tongue-in-cheek about Hansel and Gretel as the main characters of several Grimm tales;

- Faithful Johannes about the man who under-stood four generations of kings of Grimm and did everything he could to help his kings achieve their goals, even stealing the most beautiful woman in the world to marry – who bore her king twins (Hansel and Gretel) at great cost of his own life, and then great cost of the lives of the twins, even though they were revived, prompting them to run away and embark on their own adventures.

- Hansel and Gretel – the classic tale of the children finding the witch’s chocolate cake home (not gingerbread?) and being taken-in by the baker, who fed them sweets, fattening them up to eat.  Only the tables got turned and she ended up baking in the oven.

- The Seven Swallows – when Hansel and Gretel fled the witch, they asked a farmer to take them in – he always wanted a daughter; he had seven sons, with whom he was disappointed.  He cursed the sons and they turned into swallows.  When the twins found out, they fled with the intent of finding the swallows and freeing them from the curse.  Hansel came upon an old gnome in the forest who told he where the swallows had gone and that he would need a chicken bone to unlock the door.  The Twins climbed the crystal mountain and found the door just like told gnome told them, but Gretel lost the bone, so she cut-off her own finger to use as the key.  When they told the swallows that their parents missed them and loved them, they turned back into humans and went home.

- A Smile as Red as Blood - The twins, lost in a forest, happened upon a beautiful glade and a tree told them they could stay as long as they respected the forest.  But each night, Hansel was overcome by an urge to hunt.  He became more beast than human and eventually he was hunted by the local duke.  But when the beast was paraded at the duke’s court and skinned, Hansel was discovered inside the skin.  The duke had a terrible gambling habit and lost to the Devil – the prize was whatever was in his room in front of the fire.  When they got to the castle, Hansel, recuperating, was warming his hands before the fire – the Devil claimed his due.

- The Three Golden Hairs – the twins were separated and Hansel is in a panic because he has to go to hell.  At this time, Joseph has found Hansel and tells him that if he could get three of the Devil’s golden hairs, the Devil would have no power over him.  On the way to hell, he finds tow different villages with problems caused by the Devil.  Once he’s in hell, he refuses to act like the other tormented souls, so the demons take him to the Devil’s home in hell.  There, he steals the Devil’s glasses and while he is nearsighted, he proceeds to steal the hairs.  On his way back, he favors the people who had been vexed by the Devil.

- Hansel and Gretel and the Broken Kingdom – in which the twins return home to find their country in ruins by a dragon.  They decide to do something about it.  But it’s not easy.

- Hansel and Gretel and the Dragon – the Twins raise a ragtag army to fight the dragon and lose a lot of their soldiers in the fight, but they survive, a first, and they wound the dragon, a first.  When they get back to the castle, their father has a terrible headache and does not come down to see them, but their mother is very proud.

- Hansel and Gretel and their Parents – the twins deduce that their father is the dragon, so they kill him, but like he did for them, they revive their father.  The King and Queen, abdicate their throne to their children and they live -maybe not entirely happy and not ever after, but it’s the end of the story.