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.