The Glass Magician by Charlie N Holmberg (2014) 47North

In which our heroine, Ceony, an apprentice paper magician, is pursued by evil magicians and finds a way to do what no other magician has done before.

Darker than Amber by John D McDonald (1970) J.B. Lippincott Co

In which a girl is thrown over a bridge with intent to kill, but Travis McGee saves her, only for her to try

to get her stash of money and get killed for the effort.  That angers McGee and he has to see justice done,

for her and for other victims of the same villains.

Incubus Dreams by Laurell K Hamilton (2004) Berkley Publishing Group

Not as good as the previous 11 books in the series.  Too much sex, not enough vampire hunter.  The title is revealed late in the story and seems to have no relationship to the purpose of the book.  Sorry, Ms. Hamilton, I like the other books.

The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman (2015) Harper

In which sleeping beauty is not who you think, and Rose Red knows how to fix the problem.

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman (2019) Dark Horse Books

An eerie retelling of the Snow White story from the viewpoint of the Queen in which there is no innocence to be lost.

The Dig by John Preston

On an estate in England, a widow commissions a local amateur archeologist to dig into barrows on her land in hopes of finding something of significance.  What they find is more that they expected and that attracts the attention of rival museums and the attendance of notable professional archeologists.

Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio (2010) William Morrow & Company

A collection of stories by some of the best writers, including Gaiman's The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, a masterpiece told in the isles about a man who lost a daughter and sought revenge.  

It also features Joyce Carol Oates, Joe R. Lansdale, Walter Mosley, Richard Adams, Jodi Picoult, Lawrence Block, Peter Straub, Gene Wolfe, Jeffery Deaver, Michael Moorcock, Joe Hill, and others.

A fun study of the short story in the twenty-first century.

Four Blind Mice by James Patterson (2002) Little Brown & Company

An Alex Cross episode where men in the Army who served in Viet Nam are being framed for murders.  This is not the best of the series.  It does move, though it seems a little stiff.  Yet it ends on a happy note.

Zero Day by David Baldacci (2011) Grand Central Publishing

The first Puller book.  An investigator in the army has to call on his incarcerated brother to prevent a nuclear disaster.

Bacchanal by Veronica G Henry (2021) 47North

I love finding new authors who write so fluidly that I can get lost in the reading.  Bacchanal is set in the Depression, a unique black carnival populated by performers with real talents, and some with burdens that they cannot help or shake.  But we learn that even when our family connections seem to be too hard to bear, they can also give us strength we did not know we could wield.

The Magician’s Lie by Greer Macallister (2021) 47North

An interesting take on magic and illusion.  A woman who performs illusions runs from the scene where a man who is assumed to be her husband has been killed with the tools of sawing the man in half.  But is she a murderess, or the victim of domestic violence who has been pursued by a man who is not her husband?

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

The Twelfth Card by Jeffery Deaver (2005) Simon & Schuster

A Lincoln Rhyme novel about a 140-year-old case, a descendent, and people who want to kill her.  These are today’s Nero Wolfe novels.  Lincoln Rhyme as the shut-in Amelia Sachs as his Archie, doing all the footwork.  There is a space-filling part that grows and is repeated a dozen times in the book, taking up at least 10% of the pages.
In this one, a high-school student wants to write about an ancestor, whom she feels was wrongly accused of stealing a foundation’s treasury in the days just after the civil war.  Other people are also trying to find out about the incident.  A professional hitman wants to find her, there’s a potential terrorist involved, two different accomplices, an estranged father who wants to reconnect, and a banker who will do anything to protect a secret.

The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin (2011) Orbit

In which Sieh’s story is told – he is the oldest of the Gods’ children, a trickster and in love with a mortal brother and sister – and when they mix their blood in a ceremony as children, Sieh becomes increasingly mortal.  The sister is the heir of the powerful family that rules the world.  Her brother, an inconvenience is sent away to learn how to be a scrivener.  But they are not ordinary mortal children.  They are also the grandchildren of a godling, which makes them demons and makes their blood poisonous to gods and godlings.  While The Three have exiled one of their own, the parallels between the two sets tells potentially the same story.

The Paper Magician by Charlie N Holmberg (2014) 47North

A woman, Ceony, is apprenticed to a paper magician and must save him when another magician literally steals his heart for dark magical purposes.  She follows the woman (Lira, his former wife) who stole the heart on a magically enhanced glider to the seashore.  There Lira uses blood magic to put Ceony into the heart and she must go through all four chambers to find her way out.  She sees some of his memories and learns a magic ritual from him.  When she gets out, she performs the ritual, freezing Lira and manages to take the heart back to her teacher.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (1934) Knopf

A Nick and Nora story wherein Nick, a retired PI, is approached by a young woman to find her father, an inventor and prior client of Nick’s.  He doesn’t want to be involved, but between a scam and getting shot, he decides to pursue the mystery.  Nora is a device to get him to explain, which he avoids until the end. 

Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes (2003) Greenwillow Books

Olive died, but she left a note for Martha, whom she saw as the only person who was nice to her, she wished she’d seen an actual ocean.  Twelve-year-old Martha is about to visit her grandmother, Godbe, at the ocean.  Martha has some growing up to do and wants to be a writer, but her father is already trying to be a writer and not doing very well.  A local boy takes advantage of Marth’s naivete while filming things and films himself kissing her, then reveals it was a bet.  Marth feels terrible and wants nothing to do with the older boy after that.  She collects a bottle of water to take to Olive’s mother as Olive’s Ocean.  The boy’s brother, who is Martha’s age steals the film and gives it to her at the end of the vacation.  When Martha gets home, she goes to Olive’s house to give her mother the bottle of ocean, but she has already moved too far away.  So, Martha paints Olive’s name with the ocean water and watches it evaporate in the heat.

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume (2015) Knopf

In 1952, three airplanes crashed into Elizabeth, New Jersey in a span of 38 days.  We follow Mira, a fifteen-year-old living with her single Mom, while she navigates school, summer and getting introduced to the father she’s never known.  This is all about coming of age.

Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs (2017) Ace

Mercy, a descendent of Coyote, a shapeshifter and wife of the Adam Hauptman, a werewolf and alpha of the Columbia Basin pack, is intentionally hit by a semi and kidnapped by the Lord of the Night, the master vampire of Milan, Italy.  This launches a panic search for Mercy by the pack.  When she comes-to in Italy, she escapes, is chased by a local werewolf who is in thrall to the vampire.  Mercy leads her into the path of a bus.  Riding in the luggage compartment of a bus, she makes her way to Prague.  There, she runs into the golem made by rabbi Loeb.  She asks for protection from the local wolfpack.  One of her ‘talents’ is being able to see ghosts and communicate with them.  She can also command them.  The golem is dead.  While under the protection of the second and third wolves in the Prague pack, she wanders into a second seethe of vampires and too late, realizes there are wards that prevent the wolves from seeing the building.  To them, she just disappeared.  She is captured and placed into a magical cage that she cannot get out of in a basement that is filled with ghosts.  The golem appears and gets her help to consume all but one of the ghosts.  This gives him the power break down the wards protecting the building.  It’s even more complicated than that.  In the end, of course, she is rescued.

Britt Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman (2016) Simon & Schuster

A woman who was cheated on insists on making a new life elsewhere and finds it hard to change, and then finds herself changed anyway, by life, by people, by understanding more about herself.
Britt Marie has let life pass her by, watching her father, then her mother, give-up over time since the death of their other daughter, spending her time raising her husband’s children, and taking care of him  Then he had a heart attack and the other woman called her.  Britt-Marie saw that he was on the mend, then went home, packed a bag and left.  Now she’s in Borg, a small town that has been shutting down, working as the caretaker of the Recreation Center.  She’s inherited a soccer team, actually just a group of local kids.  She likes things to be neat and tidy.  So, she changes Borg, and it changes her.

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke (2017) Mulholland Books

An Edgar winner, yet hard to get through.  Not because the writing is obscure, or the craft is poor.  It’s mostly that the writer does not get me to care about the protagonist.  He’s a Texas Ranger, he’s black, and his status is questionable.  His wife has kicked him out, he’s being looked-at by his boss and the Rangers because of how close he was to his uncle, who has killed a man on his property.  In the meantime, at a small town, if you can even call it that, there is a place that isn’t quite a juke joint, where multiple murders of its patrons have happened.  Who kills whom is a longer story?