A Contract with God by Will Eisner (2006) W.W. Norton & Company

A collection of five graphic stories in the fictional Dropsie Avenue tenement #55 by the inimitable artist, Will Eisner, for whom the top comic artists vie for his award.  Dropsie Avenue is a finctional place in the Bronx where the immigrant influx after World War I created the need for cheap housing.  55 being a Jewish group of residents, we follow the lives of two generations trying to improve their lot in life while clinging to the traditions of their religion.  Whether it is a misinterpretation of God’s responsibilities vs man’s or the attempt to be someone else, irony, karma, or fate intervenes to balance the scales.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (2000) Scribner

The author reflects on his childhood and how that influenced his writing style of choice of stories.  He describes his writing habits and the problems he has experienced, including when he was hit by a car.  There are two bonuses: his sons Joe (Hill), an award-winning horror writer himself, and Owen King.  The best bit being about how as children, they would ask their father to tell them a story each night (no wonder they grew up to write and edit horror themselves).

We listened to the audio version read by King himself - it's well worth a listen.

The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo (2021) Candlewick

A young girl is found lying next to a usually terrifying goat. But he makes an exception for the girl, who can only remember her first name.  The current king is searching for a girl who is supposed to unseat him and change the way things are done in the kingdom.  There is also a boy whose parents were killed, and a king who walked away from his throne.  The usual wonderful writing by DiCamillo.

Fairy Tale by Stephen King (2022) Scribner

Stephen King wrote a masterful tale, reminiscent of his collaboration with Peter Straub,  that involves a boy, a dog, other worlds, and something out of H.P. Lovecraft.  The hero is a seventeen-year-old boy who saves an old man’s life and finds his own life changed.  There are secrets and more dangerous secrets.  There are worlds of discovery, and more people who need the hero’s help.  A coming-of-age story that shapes a boy into a man.  This gripping tale kept me awake late into the night wanting to know what happens next through more than 600 pages.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer (2013) Square Fish

A futuristic take on Cinderella set after a World War IV and interaction with a human/lunar hybrid that uses the ability to detect and manipulate the electrical energy from emotions.  The lunar queen, who killed her sister to gain the throne, is demanding the hand of the earthly prince of the Eastern commonwealth or threatens war.  In the meantime, a broken child was rescued and is now a cyborg.  When her new father brought her home, his wife and the oldest sister was not happy.  Especially when he suddenly dies from a highly contagious plague.  Cinder is an excellent mechanic, and the prince brought her an android to fix.  It holds secrets that could shatter the fragile peace keeping war from starting.  But the biggest revelation could change everything.

Shadow Born by D.K. Holmberg (2016) CreateSpace

The third book in the Shadow trilogy – in which our heroine learns answers to long standing questions, makes an astounding discovery about her past and comes into understanding about her capabilities and develops confidence about her future.

Glitches by Marissa Meyer (2013) Tor Books

Little Cinder has lost her parents and a leg and an arm.  And she seems to have access to information in her brain whenever she asks a question.  Her new stepfather, an inventor, has taken her in to be a new member of his family.  Though her stepmother and one of her stepsisters is not very happy to have her.  She feels she needs to prove her worth and fixes the housekeeper android.  But before she can show it off to her stepfather, he has come down with a deadly plague.

Master of Djinn by P Djeli Clark (2021) Little Brown Book Group

A steampunk/fantasy/mystery with djinns who have become Egyptian citizens before World War I (the Ottoman Empire still exists).  George Alec Effinger would have been proud to read this.  We have touches of each genre, advanced magical technology, fantastic creatures, a mass murder, a megalomanic who wants to remake the world in their own insane image, a heroine who prefers to dress in dapper British men’s’ clothing who is in love with another woman, and a partner who is both a strict Muslim and an avid feminist.

The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn (2022) William Morrow

Ms. Quinn becomes better with each book.  Her blend of accurate historical fact with fiction teaches us about lesser known, but important people in history and makes their stories memorable.
In this book we learn about a heroic woman who wanted to be a historian but would not let the invasion of her country go unanswered.  She responded by becoming one of World War II’s best snipers.  Read her story as she became Lady Death to the Nazi’s and did everything she could, even when not carrying a gun, to help defeat the worst megalomaniac in the twentieth century.

The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman (1921) Viking Books

The words we needed to hear.  Ms. Gorman will be a significant contributor to American Poetry, with her own words, and the poets she inspires.  The United States and the world is a better place because of her poems and her actions.

She has another book coming out: Call Us What We Carry - I'm waiting for my copy.

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (1999) Doubleday

Lionel Essrog, a man with Tourette’s, along with three other marginalized guys was recruited as teenagers by Frank Minna, who does questionable jobs for a couple of old gangsters.  His mentor went away for a few years with a brother.  When he came back, he created a car service as a front for a detective agency, which was really a front for doing what he always did.  Lionel is along as backup when his mentor is killed.  As a detective, even if that was a front, he feels obligated to bring the murderer to justice, in spite of his Tourettic tics.

The Dracula Tape by Fred Saberhagen (1980) Ace Books

One of my favorite books by Saberhagen is An Old Friend of the Family.  I discovered that it was the third book in a series and decided to start from the beginning.

Vlad Dracula wanted to join the ‘modern’ society of Victorian England, specifically London.  He records five tracks recounting his efforts to blend in and the disastrous results of his experiment.  Dracula told from the viewpoint of the vampire.  The story reads with much action that parallels Bram Stoker’s novel and pre-dates Anne Rice’s Interview.

Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice (1944) Simon & Schuster

Marion Carstairs is a mystery writer raising three children with a lot of trust.  They hear a gunshot followed by another and followed by the sound of a couple of cars leaving.  They run to see what happened at their next door neighbor’s house.  There is a young actress screaming and a dead body.  They decide to solve this mystery so their mother can take credit and sell a lot more books.  There is a wide cast of characters and suspects abound.  Ms. Rice mixes humor and the standard mystery outline at work.  The book is entertaining from start to finish.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (2009) Ballentine Books

A marvelously intriguing book.  This is the story of a Chinese American boy in Seattle who befriended a Japanese American girl in 1942.  It follows the journey of the boy whose father is viciously anti-Japanese since they took over his native China.  Parallel to this is the same boy grown into a man who has lost his Chinese wife and discovers that the Panama Hotel has artifacts in its basement that were left by Japanese families when they were ‘evacuated’ during the war.  A jazz saxophone player provides a connecting role between the two time periods.  The writing is rich with poetic similes and observations of the human condition between generations and with young and old love.

Sabriel by Garth Nix (1995) Harper Collins

A girl is stillborn, then brought back to life by a magician and raised by him.  She is educated outside of the Old Kingdom and taught Charter magic.  In her senior year, almost ready to graduate, she is approached by a dead thing, and she banishes it back to death.  She receives a pack with her father’s sword and magic bells.  So, a quest is set for her to find her father’s body and redeem him from death.  She returns to the Old Kingdom, chased by the dead, who have taken over everything on that side of the wall.  She goes to her father’s home, is joined by his captive free spirit, in the form of a cat, sets sail in a paperwing, crashes into a sinkhole and frees a man trapped as the figurehead of a ship in a King’s graveyard.  All they have to do is find the body of Sabriel’s father, retrieve him from death, then defeat the most powerful dark necromancer of the time.

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (2022) Random House

There are few books that I label as important - this is one of them.  The story follows Esme, the daughter of a worker on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.  As a child, she sits below her father’s desk and looks at the word slips the fall from the tables.  At one point she is sent to a boarding school with disastrous effect on her life.  She notices over time that the words not included in the printed work are about women.  She becomes friends with a brother and sister in the suffrage movement.  With him, she bears a child, who is adopted by friends who move to Australia.  She starts collecting these lost words and eventually they become a book titled Women’s Words and their Meanings.  At the same time as this immense project takes place, the world changes.  War comes and with it is the loss of many of the workers on the dictionary, including a compositor with whom she fell in love.  You will laugh at parts, be angry at others, and cry tears.  But you will read a very well written book and find it a satisfying read.

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera (2021) Levine Querido

Something has altered the flight of Halley’s Comet and this time it is going to impact Earth.  On this premise, several countries, including the U.S., have developed extra large rockets that can take humanity to other solar systems.  Most of the passengers will sleep during the entire trip.  Some will stay awake for generations to watch over their quiet charges.  The story is told from the point of view of a teenage girl whose parents are professors and her little brother.  But the real conflict is a group of people who think our history is what went wrong with humanity.  And they become in charge of the society running the ship.

Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan (2002) Victor Gollancz Ltd

A science fiction/murder mystery/thriller that takes place in the far future.  Mankind has gone out to other worlds, which have their own wars, the U.N. is in charge on Earth.  And people can be re-sleeved into other bodies, with their ‘stack’ containing all their memories installed into the new body.  Drugs and cyber entities have taken advances as well.  So, when a ‘meth’ (short for Methuselah – a person who has lived hundreds of years) hires a highly trained envoy out of storage (prison) to prove he did not commit suicide, interviewing the envoy in his backed-up copy, things get complicated.  To top it off, the detective who grabs him and personally delivers him to the meth was in love with the mad whose sleeve (body) the envoy is wearing.  Sex, drugs and too many chiefs in this mixed metaphor of a tale.

Ask the Parrot by Richard Stark (2006) Mysterious Press

In which Parker, the professional thief, narrowly escapes the cops.  Which makes the money his crew stole worthless.  As he escapes, he runs into a hunter, who is more interested in partnering with Parker to get revenge on a racetrack.  Parker needs clean money.  So, they set it up.  But there are problems along the way and things never go the way they’re supposed to go.

Donald E. Westlake (the writer behind the pseudonym) said the name was inspired by Richard Widmark's performance in the film Kiss of Death (1947). "part of the character's fascination and danger is his unpredictability. He's fast and mean, and that's what I wanted the writing to be: crisp and lean, no fat, trimmed down ... stark." -Richard Stark (March 1, 1999). "Richard Stark: Introduced by Donald E. Westlake". Payback. Grand Central Publishing. pp. vii–x. ISBN 978-0-446-67464-5.

Bank Shot by Donald Westlake (1972) Simon & Schuster

A Dortmunder caper where the crew steals the bank.  A local bank is rebuilding their headquarters and has put a mobile office across the street in an empty lot to service their customers.  The wheels and axles have been removed and the temporary building set on blocks.  Once a week they get the payroll and have extra guards.  The question is how the gang can steal the bank and then leisurely break into the vault.  Of course, nothing goes right for the gang, or for the police.  Hilarity and irony take the day.