Best Books I Read in 2021:

This year I read 75 books.  These are what I consider the best of the list (in the order I read the books).

1.       The Left-Handed Booksellers by Garth Nix (2020) HarperCollins 

The first book I put on this list didn't come until the end of the first week of February.  I read good books, but none of them quite turned the key.

This book is an interesting twist on urban fantasy and mystery.  The story takes place in London where a young art student goes to visit her 'uncle' only to find herself thrust into a war of sorts where left-handed booksellers are authorized to kill fantastical creatures posing as humans.  Only it turns out that the young woman has some fantastical connections of her own.

2.       The Boy, The Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy (2019) HarperOne

This was a difficult choice only because I also read so many other good books in March.  But this one stands out. It's a Jonathon Livingston Seagull for this generation.  A simple feel-good book that could not have had better timing than to come out at the beginning of the pandemic.  It encourages self-worth, and a feeling that no matter what we face, we can go on.

3.       The Fifth Season by N K Jemisin (2015) Orbit 

I have read much less Science Fiction on the past few years and have missed out.  This is a fantastic, complicated book that deserved getting the Hugo and the Nebula.

On a planet, much like Earth, maybe it is Earth, where the continents have drifted back into one giant land, there are still changes that occur.  The people on this planet call the times that last after a change, anywhere from months to years, seasons.  Most settlements last only through one season.  The capital of the empire has lasted through four such seasons.  People with special abilities are shunned and recruited by the capital and trained to use their abilities to try to stave off earthquakes.  The main heroine is one such person.  We follow her in three different timelines: as a child, as a four-ring practitioner, and as a refugee.  In the middle timeline, she is paired with a ten-ring practitioner, almost unheard-of, as her mentor and is ordered to bear his child.  He is less than cooperative.  They are sent to a city on the coast to clear coral from a harbor.  She finds an artifact blocking the harbor.  Trying to move it, she raises it and doing so destroys the city.  She and her mentor find themselves transported to an island where life seems idyllic, and they can raise their child.  But the empire finds them.  In the third timeline, our heroine feels the start of another season and escapes as a refugee.  She is reunited with her mentor on his deathbed.  He has started the fifth season and wants her to finish what he started and destroy the empire.

4.       The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern (2011) Doubleday

This is an urban low fantasy.  There are no elves, no trolls, no orcs, no hobbits.  But there is magic and illusion.  Two very old magicians have an ongoing game they play with other people’s lives.  Each finds a special child with inherent abilities.  They adopt the child and train them.  Once the bet is placed, each child receives a ring, which burns itself into their finger.  Neither will be introduced to the other.  In this case, the venue becomes a circus which opens at night.  Those people who are involved with the circus find that they have become virtually frozen at the age they were when they first agreed to conceive and build the circus.  But they are not immortal.  One of the contestants enhances his own looks to make himself seem ordinary and serves as the assistant to the circus proprietor, who is not one of the magicians.  The other, a superb illusionist has her own act in one tent of the circus.  Each think that it is their work that sustains the circus.  Little by little they recognize that the other contestant is making changes and additions to the circus.  For years, this is how they compete.  Eventually they find each other and go beyond mere introduction to becoming lovers.  The problem is that there is only one way for a contestant to win.  The other must die.

5.       Tears of Amber by Sofia Segovia (2021) Amazon Crossing (english translation)

A group of people are thrown together during World War II in East Prussia, what is now the far-western Russian oblast of Kalingrad.  A Polish man and a Polish woman are sent as slaves to help on a German farm.  A second German family is torn apart by the enforced enlistment of the father.  The history of the war works out its tragedy amongst these innocent bystanders just trying to survive a terrible time in history.  But you will not forget it.

6.       Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (2021) Knopf (7/26)

Klara is an Artificial Friend who longs to be picked by a young girl.  She resides in a store where the manager tells her how to do her best to represent the store and other artificial friends.  She receives nourishment from the sun (she is solar powered) and while in a storefront window, watches a homeless man sit each day with his dog across the street.  One day, neither the homeless man nor his dog rise and Klara is afraid they are dead.  But when the sun comes out the next day, they  rise and seem to be better than before.  A machine is parked in front of the store that produces terrible pollution.  When  it is moved, Klara sees the homeless man become reunited with a woman as they embrace.

When Klara is picked, the girl who asked for her, Josie, is a 'lifted' youngster (genetically edited) who has trouble with her health.  From Josie's room, Klara observes the sun sets, goes to rest, on the far side of the field in a barn.  Josie has a  friend, Rick, who is not lifted, but is brilliant with drones.  They play and squabble.  But Josie's health gets worse.  Klara comes up with a plan to ask the sun to heal Josie with his special restorative nutrition.  So she travels to the barn with Rick's help.  She offers to destroy the pollution machine in exchange for Josie's improved health. 

The family, including Klara go into the city for Josie's 'portrait' where Klara discovers it is a replacement artificial friend body that upon Josie's death is to become a new body for Klara.  Klara is convinced that her bargain with the sun will result in a healthy Josie.  She finds the pollution machine and with the help of Josie's father, takes some of her own lubricant and pours it into the exhaust of the machine, disabling it.  Now Klara plans to watch the sun restore Josie.  But Josie does not get better.

While the family surround Josie, expecting her to die at any moment, odd weather comes through the area where the family lives.  Klara suddenly gets everyone to go into Josie's room and she open's the blinds so that the sun floods the room.  Josie sits up and says she is feeling better.  Klara's sacrifice has not been in vain.

Josie eventually gets well enough to go off to college.

The book ends with the manager finding Klara in a storage yard, discarded, but spending her time reminiscing her time with Josie.

This is a tour-de-force of writing.  Ishiguro has a simple style that flows very swiftly and makes the story amazing.  You won't forget Klara.

7.       My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman (2015) Atria Books (8/5)

Backman’s masterpiece – almost eight-year-old Elsa loves her grandmother, and her grandmother loves her back fiercely.  Her grandmother is an odd duck who tells fairy tales from the land of almost asleep and defends Elsa like no one else.  But her grandmother is sick and dies.  Elsa is given a quest to deliver letters, which she must find to the people who live in her building.  She finds out it really is her building because her grandmother owned it and left it to her.  

We meet people who were rescued by the grandmother when they were just children, except for one woman who was rescued after a tsunami killed her husband and two sons.  There is Wolfheart who is a warrior who doesn’t like to fight.  There is Britt-Marie, who took care of Elsa’s mother while her grandmother was off saving other people.  There is a set of brothers who were both in love with the same woman.  There is a family taking care of their grandson, hoping their son gets some help.  And there’s a wourse who is a hero.

A delightful read.

8.       Billy Summers by Stephen King (2021) Scribner 

King turns his storytelling talent to a thriller and does such a good job, it should get an Edgar.

Billy is a hitman - has been since he returned from Iraq.  He wants to retire, but there is one last job to do, it's to hit a hitman who got too visible and killed someone he shouldn't have.  The client wants Billy to follow a specific escape plan.  Billy does the job, but he does his own escape, which is a problem for the client.  While hiding in the same town as the hit, he sees a van stop and toss a body across the street.  He checks and it's a girl who has been drugged and raped.  He hauls her into his hideout and cleans her up.  When she comes to, she thinks at first that he hurt her.  But as her memory returns, she gets mad at her 'boyfriend' and his buddies.  When it's time to go on the run, she goes with Billy.  There is still one more job to do.  Billy was stiffed because they never intended to pay him, they intended to kill him.  So he hunts down the client to find out why.  That results in a couple of deaths and a brain-dead thug whose mother is outraged.  But the client gives-up the real money behind the hit, a billionaire who likes little girls.  And that angers Billy and his rescued girl.

9.       Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (2021) Scribner 

I am in awe of Mr. Doerr's ability to weave a story.  The main theme is a simple story.

The novel covers six story lines based on character:

Diogenes original story that is only partially available that he sent to his sick daughter,

Zeno, the son of a Greek immigrant, whose father died in World War II, was raised by his almost step-mother, went to war in Korea and fell in love with a British soldier at a POW camp, who translated ancient Greek, and was separated from him when the Brit escaped, then went on to translate Diogenes’ story, and then help a group of fifth graders put it on as a play, and became a hero by running a bomb to a lake before it could kill anyone else,

Seymour, an autistic young man who was infuriated at the destruction of his Trusty Friend’s habitat and wanted to strike back at the developers who caused it and planted a bomb in the library where Zeno was watching a dress rehearsal of the play, he goes to prison for his crime and becomes a programmer for a company that is trying to present a view of the earth that is pristine.  He evaluates anomalies and marks them to be revised with something pleasant.  He eventually gets out of prison and goes to work for the company.  He begins putting easter eggs in the views that have an owl as a hint and if you click on them, you will see the original view before it was modified.  He finds that Zeno published a translation of Diogenes’ story and has them bound and gives a copy to the grown kids from the library play,

Anna, a young girl in Constantinople in 1483, when it fell to the Ottoman empire, who found a copy of Diogenes’ story and told it to her husband and sons,

Omeir, who was born with a cleft palette and whose grandfather refused to put the child to death, even though the child’s father died on the day of his birth, causing the family to have to move way out of their local town in order to survive – who raised two oxen and was pressed into the service of conquering Constantinople, but when the oxen died, he gave up and on his way home discovers Anna and takes her with him, marries her and raises two sons.  When she dies, he makes the journey to Italy with her poor copy of the story,

Konstance, who lives on a deep space ship with her parents and a group of people trying to find another home for humanity and finds the tale on a vast electronic library when a plague kills everyone else on the ship and her father stowed her in the computer room with enough nutrient powder to last her 5 years of a 567 year journey.

All these story lines do come together, but in unexpected ways.  It's a historical novel, it's science fiction and I found it very satisfying.

Strangers by Dean Koontz (1986) Putnam

A priest has a crisis of faith.  A writer starts having nightmares.  An ex-marine cannot stand the dark.  A surgeon starts having fugues and running away.  A thief gets a sudden need to give the money he's stolen away.  What do all these strangers have in common?  And who is sending them clues about a motel they stayed at two summers ago?

DaVinci's Cat by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (2021) Greenwillow Books

DaVinci tried to create a machine to travel from one place to another using a cabinet.  His tests did not produce the results he expected, so he discarded the cabinet, making a gift of it to the Pope.  What he did make was a time machine.  But his cat entered the cabinet before it was shipped and came out as a kitten when a young man, a hostage, or a guest of the Pope on the condition that his father, leading the Pope's armies might not go over to the enemy, opened the cabinet.  He was delighted.  When the cat went back into the cabinet, it disappeared.  When it returned, a man came with it.  He was interested in getting his hands on discarded sketches from Michelangelo or Raphael.  One was of a girl no one recognized.  This, of course, upset the Pope that there was a thief running around in the Vatican.  This man returns several times, bringing the young man chocolates with peanuts.  But the last time he comes, he ventures out of the Vatican Palace, which he should not do, and finds a sick girl.  He runs back to the cabinet and disappears.  The next time the cabinet is used, a young girl comes out with the cat.  She is the girl in the sketch.  Only she wants Raphael to do the sketch and sign it so she can save the sick girl, who has grown old by now.

Selfish Love by Cheryl Terra  (2021) Lit 

A single mother struggles to provide for her precocious and talented daughter.  They're friends with a family where the father manages a recording studio, whose daughters are best friends and the mothers are also best friends.  When an opportunity to get tickets to a concert comes-up, the mother feels she will do whatever she has to in order to send her daughter to the concert.  But the tickets are super expensive and at the last minute, the mother is in an accident and has to call her ex to get the money for the tickets.  He uses this as an opportunity to demand more time with his daughter. 

A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire (2010) DAW

October "Toby" Daye is a changeling, the daughter of Amandine of the fae and a mortal man.  Like her mother, she is gifted in blood magic, able to read what has happened to a person through a mere taste of blood.  Toby is the only changeling who has earned knighthood, and she re-earns that position every day, undertaking assignments for her liege, Sylvester, the Duke of the Shadowed Hills. Now Sylvester has asked her to go to the County of Tamed Lightning—otherwise known as Fremont, CA—to make sure that all is well with his niece, Countess January O'Leary, whom he has not been able to contact. It seems like a simple enough assignment—but when dealing with the realm of Faerie nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Toby soon discovers that someone has begun murdering people close to January, whose domain is a buffer between Sylvester's realm and a scheming rival duchy. If Toby can't find the killer soon, she may well become the next victim.

The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (2010) Orbit

The second book in the Inheritance Trilogy – in the city of Shadows beneath the World Tree, Oree Shoth, a blind artist, who can see magic, takes in an apparent homeless man on impulse.  Someone is murdering godlings, a feat that should be impossible, as her homeless man can attest to – he dies, regularly, trying to do impossible things.  But he resurrects each time.  But the murdered godlings do not.  It does not take all that long in the story to figure out that her roommate is a fallen god, being punished for the way he treated his brother and for killing his sister.  But the murders continue, and the godlings refuse to ask their father for help.

Billy Summers by Stephen King (2021) Scribner

Billy is a hitman - has been since he returned from Iraq.  He wants to retire, but there is one last job to do, it's to hit a hitman who got too visible and killed someone he shouldn't have.  The client wants Billy to follow a specific escape plan.  Billy does the job, but he does his own escape, which is a problem for the client.  While hiding in the same town as the hit, he sees a van stop and toss a body across the street.  He checks and it's a girl who has been drugged and raped.  He hauls her into his hideout and cleans her up.  When she comes to, she thinks at first that he hurt her.  But as her memory returns, she gets mad at her 'boyfriend' and his buddies.  When it's time to go on the run, she goes with Billy.  There is still one more job to do.  Billy was stiffed because they never intended to pay him, they intended to kill him.  So he hunts down the client to find out why.  That results in a couple of deaths and a brain-dead thug whose mother is outraged.  But the client gives-up the real money behind the hit, a billionaire who likes little girls.  And that angers Billy and his rescued girl.

One of the best books I've read this year.

In the Woods by Tana French (2007) Viking

I know a lot of people like this, and it won an Edgar, but to me it's a story that drags.  It could have been told as a short story, but the pages are filled with a whiny-baby detective who can't remember what happened when he was ten years old and had a horrific experience where two friends disappeared forever.  Now he is trying to solve the murder of a ballet prodigy in the same place he grew-up.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (2021) Scribner

The novel covers six story lines based on character:

1. Diogenes original story that is only partially available that he sent to his sick daughter,

2. Zeno, the son of a Greek immigrant, whose father died in World War II, was raised by his almost step-mother, went to war in Korea and fell in love with a British soldier at a POW camp, who translated ancient Greek, and was separated from him when the Brit escaped, then went on to translate Diogenes’ story, and then help a group of fifth graders put it on as a play, and became a hero by running a bomb to a lake before it could kill anyone else,

3. Seymour, an autistic young man who was infuriated at the destruction of his Trusty Friend’s habitat and wanted to strike back at the developers who caused it and planted a bomb in the library where Zeno was watching a dress rehearsal of the play, he goes to prison for his crime and becomes a programmer for a company that is trying to present a view of the earth that is pristine.  He evaluates anomalies and marks them to be revised with something pleasant.  He eventually gets out of prison and goes to work for the company.  He begins putting easter eggs in the views that have an owl as a hint and if you click on them, you will see the original view before it was modified.  He finds that Zeno published a translation of Diogenes’ story and has them bound and gives a copy to the grown kids from the library play,

4. Anna, a young girl in Constantinople in 1483, when it fell to the Ottoman empire, who found a copy of Diogenes’ story and told it to her husband and sons,

5. Omeir, who was born with a cleft palette and whose grandfather refused to put the child to death, even though the child’s father died on the day of his birth, causing the family to have to move way out of their local town in order to survive – who raised two oxen and was pressed into the service of conquering Constantinople, but when the oxen died, he gave up and on his way home discovers Anna and takes her with him, marries her and raises two sons.  When she dies, he makes the journey to Italy with her poor copy of the story,

6. Konstance, who lives on a deep space ship with her parents and a group of people trying to find another home for humanity and finds the tale on a vast electronic library when a plague kills everyone else on the ship and her father stowed her in the computer room with enough nutrient powder to last her 5 years of a 567 year journey.

Some people question Konstance's story, but as far as I'm concerned, it's the best book I've read this year.

Star Mother by Charlie N Holmberg (2021) 47North 

Some years, the Sun demands a random village provide a consort for him, to become a star mother so he can replace a star that died.  This year, the village of Endwever needs to provide a moral womb.  Ceris Wenden is chosen.  The birthing of a star is always fatal for the mother.  But Ceris survives.  When she returns to her village, it’s not nine months later, it’s seven hundred years.  She hardly recognizes the village because it has changed so much.  But she is recognized since there is a statue of her in the town’s cathedral.  She determines to find some of her family’s descendants.  She encounters a desperate godling, Ristriel, who leads her to her destination, but not without finding themselves in the middle of the war between the Sun and the Moon.

Lisey's Story by Stephen King (2006) Scribner

Lisey Langdon survived her famous novelist husband, Scott Langdon.  It’s been two years since his death, and the converted barn that he used as his writing office needs to be cleared-out.  There are people who would give anything to get hold of his unfinished manuscripts and his notes.  There are people who would do anything to get them.  One is a thug who comes and hurts Lisey as a threat that she better turn over Scott’s works to him or else.  There is a fantasy aspect to the story known as Boo’ya Moon.  There Scott had special abilities, and a creature there posed ultimate danger.  It seemed an imaginary world to Lisey until Scott took her there.  Now she may have to return to use one predator to defend herself from her another.

Anxious People by Fredrick Backman (2020) Atria Books

The story of a desperate would-be bank robber who unintentionally takes hostages and feels trapped in a play written by someone else.  A local policeman is determined to figure out who the robber is.  He’s conflicted ever since as a child he could not prevent a young lady from jumping to her death from a bridge.  His partner, who is also his father, interferes mostly by questioning everything his son does.  A wealthy lady who was also present at a suicide she could not prevent at the same bridge, goes to apartment showings, and is trapped in the situation.  Another couple also goes to apartment showings on the pretense of looking for an investment.  And another couple, two women, one who is pregnant, also are at the showing.  And an old lady, who seems to know where everything is in the apartment.  All turns out quite unexpected.

Win by Harlen Coben (2021) Penguin

A mystery in a wealthy family.  Twenty years ago, Patricia Lockwood was kidnapped when her family’s home was robbed of valuable art, and held for months, then managed to escape.  None of the artwork was ever recovered, until now.  A piece is found in the home of a recluse who has died and Win Lockwood, Patricia’s brother was called to identify the piece.  Now he wants to know where the other pieces are and will go to great lengths to find out, in spite of being warned off, even by his father.

Book: Beast in View by Margaret Millar (1956) Random House

This is a tightly woven psychological thriller that surprises all the way to the last sentence.

There is a limited cast and limited locations, which lent itself to becoming an episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour..  This book got the Edgar Award in 1956 and is considered on of the 100 best mystery novels of all time.

Mrs. Millar is an excellent craftswoman and all of her fiction is worth reading.

Holiday in Death by J.D. Robb (1998) Berkley Press

Eve Dallas, recuperating from a wound suffered in the previous volume, has to go after a killer who is using the Twelve Days of Christmas as a theme for killing people.

Who wouldn't open their door to Santa Claus, bearing gifts?

King's Mountain by Sharyn McCrumb (2013) MacMillan

A historical faction on the events leading up to the battle on King's Mountain where the American Whigs fought British Loyalists under the command of a Major Ferguson.  The narrator of the story is a man who founded Sevierville in what is now Eastern Tennessee and who later became the first governor of the new State.

Force of Nature by Jane Harper (2018) Pan MacMillan Australia 

Five women go on a team building hike in the Australian bush - only four return.

Federal Police Agent, Aaron Falk wants to find her because she is the whistleblower on a case he is building against the company where she works.

The story's tension is built through the landscape and the discordant personalities of the women.

Will searchers find the woman?  Did one of her coworkers do something to her?  Did she really leave on her own?

The story is dark in a dreary environment.  Like Harper's book, The Dry, Falk has his own demons to deal with while he methodically goes about solving the case.

Burn Bright by Patricia Briggs (2018) Penguin Random House 

Bran Cornick, the Marrok, or leader of the North American werewolves, is out of town and unreachable.  Charles, his son, has been left in charge and Anna, his wife, an Omega whose presence can calm the wolf inside someone who is having trouble with control, are given an emergency that threatens not only wildings, but the entire pack.Someone has captured one of the wildings, one who is married to a high elf and living in seclusion in the mountains in Montana.  When Charles and Anna go to see what is wrong, they find their captured werewolf in a cage and are ambushed by other werewolves with a witch gun and rifles.  Rather than let their captive escape, they kill her.  The elf’s response is to cause earthquakes as he takes his own life.

There is a traitor in the pack.

Leah, Bran’s mate, makes assignments to check on the other wildings and pairs Charles with another wolf, Sage, and pairs Anna with Asil, the Moor.  Each of these have their own history.  This is part of what makes the series interesting to read.  There are no flat or cardboard characters in the world of the story.

Every book in the series is a page turner and I watch for more stories by this excellent storyteller.

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (2000) A Corgi Book

Robert Langdon is at it again.  The professor is called early in the morning and invited to Cern in Switzerland.  There is an extraordinary jet waiting for him that gets him to Cern in an hour out of Boston.  There he is asked to look at a dead man because of what happened to him.  He was murdered and branded with a Illuminati done as an ambigram; it can be read upside down or right-side up.As usual there is a beautiful, vulnerable, and strong woman at his side throughout the story.  In this case, she is the victim’s daughter.  There is also a memorable directory of CERN, and the key players in Rome as they prepare to elect a new Pope.

Brown certainly leads the story with almost constant rising action, never letting Langdon have a moment to relax.

The Dead Town by Dean Koontz (2011) Bantam Books

The fifth and final book in Koontz’s Frankenstein series.  Like the rest of the series, the story is set in our timeline.  Victor Frankenstein is still alive and wants to take over the world.  Deucalion, Frankenstein’s creature, plans to stop his creator.

Over 200 years have passed since lightning infused Deucalion with life.  Now he must face his creator in a showdown that will either destroy the world or save it.

Dean shows us that people can have faith in each other in the darkest of times.  They can choose to give in to fear, or they can stand-up for each other, their family, and their community.  Even at the ultimate cost of doing what is right.

The writing never drags.  All five of the volumes keep you turning the page.  Reading this book will reveal how and why Frankenstein and Deucalion have survived.  It also reveals how imperfection sometimes is only a mask over a good heart.

I’m hoping Mr. Koontz continues to write such engaging characters in his future titles

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire (2009) DAW Books

October Daye is a changeling, her Mother is a Daoine Sidhe and her father is human.  She was a licensed private investigator in San Francisco, then she was hit with a curse and spent 14 years as a fish in a pond.  Eventually the curse wore off and she returned.  But she was declared dead and her former partner and her daughter won’t see her, and she lost her license.  She thinks everyone is mad at her and refuses to see anyone else or answer her phone.  But when she does check her messages, a powerful Sidhe has left another curse on her and she must find the fae’s murderer and bring them to justice or die herself.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jamisin (2010) Orbit Books

Yeine is the ennu, the leader of her tribal region of Darr.  They are considered barbarians.  Her mother, though, was the heir of the man who rules the world.  But they were estranged, and her mother has died.  Yeine is called to her grandfather’s city where he informs her that she is to be named one of three heirs to his seat.  She does not like the Sky city or the people of that land, though she is a half-blood of the same people.  These people, the Aerimeri rule with the weapons they made of gods when the gods were enslaved to them.  Yeine discovers that she has been named an heir so that she can be sacrificed in the succession ritual.  But she also befriends the enslaved gods and discovers that one of the original three gods was killed, but a part of her soul was left behind.  In a bargain to save her father, her mother agreed to let them put the last remnants of the goddess’s soul into her baby, Yeine.

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

A good example of how it's hard to write a sequel.  Half the book covers how the main character pushed further development of a headset that the founder of the game world designed but did not manufacture, how his income is unimaginable, his money spending is out of control and how he finds a new quest, which one of the founders tells him not to pursue and then he pays someone a million dollars to find the first clue.  This takes place over a decade.  The second half of the book takes place of eight hours.  In that half, a simulation of the one of the founders comes back to 'life', steals the Robes of Anorak back and infects the firmware of millions of players so they cannot log out and risk brain damage or death if the quest he puts forth to the hero is not completed within the time limit so the simulation can be reunited with a simulation of the girl he was never able to woo.  In the end, it turns out that both Anorak and his unrequited love are full uploads of the consciousness of those people.  To defeat Anorak, the founder who warned against the quest, Og, gives up his own life and our hero 'resurrects' him and he 'lives' with his love happily ever after in a computer sent to the stars.  Footnote: there is an element of embryo here that is not explored but could lead to a third book.

Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen 

She likes to rear-end cars for hire and when the angry driver comes back to yell at her they are confronted with seeing her, skirt hiked-up, panties around her ankles and a razor in her hand, apologizing for shaving while driving on her way to a hot date.  She asks for a ride, then gets the driver to pull over in an out-of-the-way location.  This allows whoever hired her to grab the guy for whatever purpose they had in mind; extorsion, punishment, etc.  Then there’s Yancy, an ex-detective on Key West, trying to get his badge back, working as a health inspector, who’s girlfriend, a medical examiner in Miami is tired of the daily dead and goes to Norway.  Somehow, Yancy and the Razor Girl, Merry Mansfield, so she says, end up together.  Meanwhile there is a duck-dynasty look-alike show, whose main character is booked for a stand-up at a bar on Duval Street.  Merry rear-ended the wrong guy, the actor’s agent, and without proper coaching, the actor tells inappropriate jokes for the area.  He is chased out, only one of his chasers is his biggest fan, ala Misery.  And it gets funnier from there.

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø

Harry Hole is back in Norway and in charge of making sure the visiting U.S. President is not assassinated.  A tollbooth that should have been emptied has a man standing in it holding a machine gun.  Harry tells his partner to call their liaison with the Secret Service and if it's one of theirs to blow the horn.  He races towards the tollbooth and as the President's motorcade tops the rise where the man has a clear shot, Harry shoots him.  Then the car horn blows.

Harry followed protocol and the Norwegian government does not want to say it's their fault.  Everyone agrees that the only solution is to treat Harry like he was being heroic and give him a promotion.  When they extract him from his retreat into drunkenness, he understands what's up.  They transfer him upstairs into his new job as an inspector.  He notices that there was an illegal gun sent into the country and he worries that since it is only used by assassins that there is murder that will happen.  His new job has him investigating neo-nazis and he discovers a connection.  The story takes place in two timelines, one during world war ii.  The purpose of the timeline is both a red herring and an explanation of the murderer and the woman Harry falls in love with.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré

Another Smiley story – in this book, Smiley has been ‘retired’, Control is dead and there is a new group in charge of the circus.  The top man, Percy, does not have the experience to really run the place.  His lieutenants, including one who had an affair with Smiley’s wife, go out of their way to be nice to Smiley, but tell him nothing.  Smiley is suspicious that there is a Soviet mole in the organization, feeding intelligence to a master spy back in Moscow.  The story is tough to get through because of how much negative introspection is involved – whether Smiley or someone else.  You have to read ¾ of the story to find the reference to the title – code names assigned by Smiley and those he can recruit for the possible suspects in the circus.  Eventually the mole is found, it’s the man who seduced Smiley’s wife, and deported to the Soviet Union, others are removed from their positions, Smiley is offered at least temporary command of the circus, and he is reunited with his wife.  The plot drags, though it ties stories together – I’m not so sure I agree it was Le Carré’s best work.

Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

Abilene Tucker has been sent to the town of Manifest, Kansas during the Great Depression.  She is loosely taken care of by a 'pastor' who also runs a speak-easy.  She loses the compass her father had given her and looks in the one place everyone warned her away from - a house named the Road to Perdition, where a diviner lives.  She agrees to work for the woman in exchange for getting the compass back.  But there is far more to the town and its history than meets the eye.  A man who owns most of the town and its mine gets tricked into selling land that allows the town to buy back its rights.  The book is well written and worth the read.

Hail Mary by Andy Weir

A man wakes up, disoriented, from a medically induced coma.  He is attended by an medical robot in the ceiling of his room.  When he is able to rise from his bed he discovers he has two companions in the room who are desiccated.  He begins to remember that he is on a spaceship.  He is on a mission to save Earth from a disaster.  The sun is getting dimmer.  So are several other stars surrounding Tau Ceti.  But Tau Ceti is not getting dimmer.  He is there to find out why in hopes of applying that same difference to Sol.  He also discovers that he is not alone.  There is another spaceship that has parked itself nearby.  And it has a survivor too.  They’re from one of the other affected stars.  Both civilizations figured out the cause of the dimming and in the process found they could use that to achieve near light speed travel.  Now they have to cooperate to save both civilizations.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman 

Backman’s masterpiece – almost eight-year-old Elsa loves her grandmother, and her grandmother loves her fiercely.  Her grandmother is an odd duck who tells fairy tales from the land of almost asleep and defends Elsa like no one else.  But her grandmother is sick and dies.  Elsa is given a quest to deliver letters, which she must find to the people who live in her building.  She finds out it really is her building because her grandmother owned it and left it to her.  We meet people who were rescued by the grandmother when they were just children, except for one woman who was rescued after a tsunami killed her husband and two sons.  There is Wolfheart who is a warrior who doesn’t like to fight.  There is Britt-Marie, who took care of Elsa’s mother while her grandmother was off saving other people.  There is a set of brothers who were both in love with the same woman.  There is a family taking care of their grandson while hoping their son gets some help.  And there’s a wourse who is a hero.

The Quick Red Fox by John D MacDonald

Travis McGee is asked by a movie actress to find out who is trying to blackmail her, a second time, over pictures at a party she does not want the public to see.  He agrees and finds himself ‘saddled’ with the actress’ personal secretary.  They start tracking down the other people who were at the same party to find out which were behind the photo-taking.  They go from Miami to a rehab and decide that person is harmless to the situation.  Then they go to New York to check on another red herring.  Then they go to the scene of the crime in California and discover why it was so easy for the photographer to take the pictures from about 100 yards away.  Then they go to Oakland and track down the photographer, and the daughter who helped him.  Only the photographer has been murdered and his assistant has fled town.  They track another member of the party to a ski lodge and discover he is just a braggart but did not know about the photos.  They find another member of the party in Las Vegas, recovering from multiple bad relationships.  Then they hear that she has been killed.  They track down the last member of the party with his wife in Phoenix.  During a horse ride, he is thrown from his horse and dragged.  Only his head has been bashed-in just like the other deaths.  Turns out the man’s wife did all the murders to try to cover up her quest for the man’s riches.

The Animal Under the Fur by E.J. Mellow 

In which we have an assassin working for a secret government agency who has long red hair and lives with her best friend.  Then we have another assassin working for a sister agency.  They are sent to eliminate the same foul underworld boss.  Then they are told they must work together on an assignment to kill a drug lord in Mexico who is selling bioweapons to the highest bidder, since his original customer was killed in the prior assignment.  Only this drug kingpin turns out to be our redhead’s father.

Robert Parker's Cheap Shot by Ace Atkins

Another finished book of Robert Parker's Spenser series.  Kinjo Haywood is an NFL linebacker with people who want a piece of him.  He hires Spenser to find out who has been following him.  Spenser thinks it has something to do with an altercation his client was in years ago.  Whoever is behind the harassment kidnaps his daughter.  He hires Spenser to find her and get her back.  The local FBI agent doesn’t want Spenser involved.  Kinjo does and it’s his girl and his money.  The girl’s mother is Kinjo’s first wife, the woman he is married to now is way out of her depth.  Spenser and his buddies track down an attempt to get ransom, only to find it was a scam.  They still don’t have the kid.  Spenser keeps following leads that all go to dead-ends.  Then Kinjo gets on the radio and announces he isn’t going to pay to get his kid back, he’s going to offer the reward money to anyone who kills her kidnappers.  That doesn’t make anyone happy.  Spenser tracks down the brother and a woman who were at the earlier altercation and finds the girl.  Then he figures out the real reason it all happened.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara is an Artificial Friend who longs to be picked by a young girl.  She resides in a store where the manager tells her how to do her best to represent the store and other artificial friends.  She receives nourishment from the sun (she is solar powered) and while in a storefront window, watches a homeless man sit each day with his dog across the street.  One day, neither the homeless man nor his dog rise and Klara is afraid they are dead.  But when the sun comes out the next day, they  rise and seem to be better than before.  A machine is parked in front of the store that produces terrible pollution.  When  it is moved, Klara sees the homeless man become reunited with a woman as they embrace.

When Klara is picked, the girl who asked for her, Josie, is a 'lifted' youngster (genetically edited) who has trouble with her health.  From Josie's room, Klara observes the sun sets, goes to rest, on the far side of the field in a barn.  Josie has a  friend, Rick, who is not lifted, but is brilliant with drones.  They play and squabble.  But Josie's health gets worse.  Klara comes up with a plan to ask the sun to heal Josie with his special restorative nutrition.  So she travels to the barn with Rick's help.  She offers to destroy the pollution machine in exchange for Josie's improved health. 

The family, including Klara go into the city for Josie's 'portrait' where Klara discovers it is a replacement artificial friend body that upon Josie's death is to become a new body for Klara.  Klara is convinced that her bargain with the sun will result in a healthy Josie.  She finds the pollution machine and with the help of Josie's father, takes some of her own lubricant and pours it into the exhaust of the machine, disabling it.  Now Klara plans to watch the sun restore Josie.  But Josie does not get better.

While the family surround Josie, expecting her to die at any moment, odd weather comes through the area where the family lives.  Klara suddenly gets everyone to go into Josie's room and she open's the blinds so that the sun floods the room.  Josie sits up and says she is feeling better.  Klara's sacrifice has not been in vain.

Josie eventually gets well enough to go off to college.

The book ends with the manager finding Klara in a storage yard, discarded, but spending her time reminiscing her time with Josie.

Song of the Forever Rains by E.J. Mellow

In which three sisters born 2 years apart from the middle sister on the same day, wield magic with music: Arabessa, with her violin, Niya, with dance and Lark, with voice.  The story opens with Lark, the youngest at four years, having never uttered a sound since her birth, when her mother died, are exploring a part of a castle where they should not be.  An immensely powerful guardian creature traps them in a dead-end while an all-powerful creature, Achak, who has two souls trapped in a single body, brother and sister, looks on.  At the last second, Lark turns around, looks the approaching monster in the eye and screams NO at the top of her lungs, shattering the creature.

Achak takes over the teaching of the children, helping them learn how to control their magic, and how to use swords, knives, and other deadly arts so they don’t have to always use their magic.

We skip forward in time to Lark, at almost 19, disguised as a street urchin, having stolen a ring and getting her finger cut off.  She refuses to let any sound out, because that would kill everyone around and make it obvious that she has magic.  She meets a well-dressed man who seems to be lost and leads him to safety, but not until having to use a knife to defeat a group of thugs with swords.  Once back to the part of the city that she is really from, she gets cleaned-up and is presented to her father.  He tells her she is to be pseudo-engaged to a Duke so they can find out what is going wrong in his part of the kingdom and steal his treasure.  Her father is also the King of Thieves.

World Without End by Ken Follet 

The second book in the Pillars of the Earth that takes place four generations later and pits descendants of Tom Builder on two sides.  A group of children, Merthin, Caris, Gwenda and Ralph are exploring the forest, where they should not be, stumble upon a scene where two men-at-arms are attacking a knight. Ralph grabs a bow from his brother, Merthin, and sends an arrow into the eye of one of the men.  The knight dispatches the other but is wounded.  All but one of the children run away.  The knight gets the remaining child to help him dig a hole and bury a secret.

The knight becomes a monk, saving his life, but not his arm.   Merthin grows up to become a carpenter and a builder.  Ralph grows up a bully and a squire.  Ralph gets in trouble for raping a serf girl, is sentenced to death and runs from the court to become an outlaw.  When he is caught, the local Earl commutes his sentence in order fulfill the King's demand on men for his war on France.

Merthin is entrapped by the pregnant daughter of the man he is apprenticed to.  Because he refuses to marry the girl, he is fired, just two months short of becoming a journeyman.  But he is a better builder and eventually becomes richer than his former master.  He is also in love with Caris, but she won't marry him.

All this is against a backdrop of the plague and Caris, because she has a mole at her groin is accused of being a witch.  To save her self, she has to agree to become a nun - even though she does not really believe in God - mostly because she can see the corruption in the local priory.  Caris studies what happens when different methods are tried on the sick.  She does not agree with the centuries old methods of bleeding patients.  She wants to use masks and keep the sick away from the healthy to try to keep the plague from spreading.

Eventually, her methods are used, a more trustworthy man is made prior, Merthin succeeds in Florence and England with his dreams as a builder, replacing a crumbling tower on the cathedral with the tallest tower of the time, Caris is released from her vows and they marry and run a hospital.

The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya by Reimend Yee

A graphic novel about a man, our hero of the story, who was intended to become an Imam, but fell in love with a woman whose family made carpets.  He was fascinated and helped her realize her dream of becoming a merchant.  He also became a merchant of carpets.  On one of his excursions away from Constantinople, he came across a man who seemed in distress.  Only the man was a ghul, a djinn, a vampire.  He died, but woke as a man with an uncontrollable urge to consume blood.  He fought against this and returned home.  He could not go out in the daylight.  He confessed to his wife, but she insisted on taking care of him.  When the urge was too strong, he left her in tears and went away for her safety.  Years later, when he felt more in control of himself, he returned and took care of her in her final years.  Now, he lives in a town in England and entertains friends and sells carpets only from his home.

The man who made him into a vampire tracked him down and becomes a houseguest, mainly because our hero tries to follow the teachings of the Koran and be kind to his fellow beings.  The visitor secretly plots to kill our hero, believing that the blood of another vampire is better than any other kind.  But our hero teaches kindness and humility and eventually persuades his visitor to try it.  They are invited to a masquerade ball.  Once there, the visitor finds himself uncomfortable and goes outside.  There is a scream and a scuffle and someone tried to kill the host of the party.  The visitor follows a woman in black and knocks her down.  Everyone thinks the visitor is the murderer.  Even our hero is of that opinion at first.  He confronts the visitor who flees.  When our hero gets ready to go back into the party, the host has recovered and accuses the woman as his attempted assassin.  Our hero realizes his mistake and finds the visitor in the forest.  The visitor is crazed with fear and threatens to kill our hero, who bares his neck.  The visitor is humbled, cries and is comforted by our hero.  The visitor finds himself dying and blowing away.  The hero returns home and resumes his quiet life.

Memory and Dream by Charles de Lint

Using his favorite location, this is a story about a magical limner who brings the characters in her paintings to life through her talent.  Only there is a sinister side to bringing these magical beings across and it has to do with the man who taught the painter the secret of her paintings.

The Vanished Man by Jeffery Deaver 

A trained Magician, Malerik, is killing people by performing escape tricks with them in the title role.  He does the Lazy Hangman, where the victim strangles herself.  Two policemen happen upon the scene, but the magician escapes using illusion and quick change.  Lincoln Rhyme is asked to help solve the case and he recruits an aspiring magician, Kara, who can explain how it was done.  The next victim is involved in Sawing the Woman in Half trick.  Trace evidence leads from one crime to the next.  The real target is a circus in town which is where Malerik was scarred from a trick gone horribly wrong.  Lincoln and Kara manage to trick the magician and capture him.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

A woman tries to commit suicide and finds herself in a library where an old friend who was her librarian at school offers her a chance to have a different life.  The woman goes through several of these lives, always finding that for every good difference, there are those differences she just cannot live with and goes back to the library.  But she only has so much time before she won’t get another chance.

A Purple Place for Dying by John D Macdonald

A Travis McGee story about finding a missing person who was committed to a hospital for the mentally ill, then disappeared.  The hospital is experimenting on its ‘patients’ all with their consent, even though they do not have the mental capacity to give the consent.  McGee ends-up as an unwilling patient himself and has to cause all kinds of problems to get free.

Interworld by Neil Gaiman

An average high-school student, Joey,  who is shunned by his school mates finds himself at the center of an inter-dimensional attempt to take over every instance of Earth.  Turns out that he has some talent for foiling these beings using a simple formula of omega over infinity.  With his capabilities he does more than just stop the beings and rescues not only the Earth, but the people trying to save all the Earths.

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

The third book by Ms. Quinn set in or around World War II.  This one involves three heroines from different backgrounds working at Bletchley Park, the famous location of codebreaking in England during the war.  Mab is a girl from Southwitch who lives with her mother and sister (actually her daughter).  Osla is a welathy debutante who falls in love with Prince Phillip (before Elizabeth).  Beth is a shy, downtrodden, genius with math.  The three of them end-up in the same home while working at Bletchly park as code breakers. 

The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

The third and final volume of the Broken Earth.   Essun awakes from a coma caused by her use of the obelisk to discover that the comm is on the road to where the attackers came from.  Her arm is partially stone.  The real problem is that the moon, which had been pushed out of it's orbit much farther away from Earth ages ago, is now on a collision course back to the planet it once circled.  Nassun is seeking a way to get to an island on the other side of the planet where she hopes to convert everyone left on Earth into stone people so they can survive the collision.  Essun eventually also realizes she must go to that same island to try to divert the course of the moon.

The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

The second volume of the Broken Earth.  Nassun finds her father standing over her dead brother.  He killed his son because he discovered the boy was an orogene - someone who can control the power of the earth to make changes around themselves to defend or to kill.  But Nassun's talents allow her to calm her father and they set out to find a safe place.  Essun, the mother, finds herself outed as an orogene in their village just after a massive earthquake.  The villagers agree to let her go, but at the gate, the village men try to kill her, unsuccessfully - she kills the entire village instead.  She sets out to find her daughter and husband.  On the way she acquires a couple of followers, one who turns out to be a girl Essun knew and went with to discover a secret.  The other turns out to be a being of stone who can travel through the earth.  They end-up in an underground comm.  The comm is attacked, and Essun uses an obelisk to kill almost all of the attackers.  Even though they survive and eliminate the attackers, the comm is so damaged that the survivors must set out for another place.  Meanwhile, Nassun, who has been learning about how to control her powers at a camp, eventually is forced to kill her father in self-defence using an obelisk.

Tears of Amber by Sofia Segovia        

About a group of people thrown together during World War II in East Prussia, what is now the far-western Russian oblast of Kalingrad.  A Polish man and a Polish woman are sent as slaves to help on a German farm.  A second German family is torn apart by the enforced enlistment of the father.  The history of the war works out its tragedy amongst these innocent bystanders just trying to survive a terrible time in history.