NY: HarperCollins, 2004.
This is the fifth of Moriarty’s excellent novels that I’ve read now (set in Australia, as they all are), and it maintains the high standards she has set for herself. The protagonists are triplets Gemma, Lyn, and Cat, who are celebrating their mutual thirty-third birthday at a nice restaurant, when they get into a loud argument and one of them jumps up at the table and stabs another — the pregnant one — in the stomach with a fondue fork.
NY: Crown, 2017.
This is a pretty good YA rom-com by an author who’s new to me, and who seems previously to have previously produced mostly adult-level romances — the sort with a brooding man of action in an Italian suit on the cover.
Continue reading “Williams, Nicole. Trusting You and Other Lies.”
NY: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Recently reading and enjoying Weiner’s latest book, Big Summer, has led me to go back and reread some of her earlier work. This was her auspicious debut novel, published twenty years ago, and it’s still good. The protagonist is Cannie Shapiro of Philadelphia, twenty-eight and “plus-sized,” who reports on pop culture for the city’s largest newspaper and is very good at her job — and she has a tongue like a straight razor when necessary.
London: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, 2020.
The author’s “Rivers of London” urban fantasy series has become popular and therefore successful over the past dozen years, but there was a time when Aaronovitch worked for the Waterstone’s bookstore chain to pay the rent. When he hit the big time (relatively speaking) in 2010, his old employer, who also publish special editions of new titles, asked him for a specially-written short story set in the upcoming 2012 London Olympics. That led him into a series of short works, of which this is the first collection. And they’re . . . okay. Sort of. But not nearly as good as what I had hoped for.
NY: Simon & Schuster, 2009.
I discovered Sherlock Holmes in 6th Grade by prowling through my father’s bookshelves, and I got thoroughly hooked on the characters of Holmes and Watson. In later years, I also read a number of the pastiche novels by other authors, featuring the same characters, most of which weren’t terribly successful. But this one, which was Faye’s first novel, is a whole other matter.
NY: Saga Press, 2018.
I’ve been aware of this pretty new author for awhile now, but this is the first book of hers I’ve read — and it’s easy to see why it won the Locus Award and was a finalist for both the Hugo and the Nebula. The protagonist is twenty-two-year-old Maggie Hoskie, Navajo, a skilled monsterslayer and general badass (thanks to inherited clan traits that make her very fast and more than willing to commit mayhem).
NY: Washington Square Press, 2015.
It’s 1985 when Rachel Blum and Andy Landis, both eight years old, meet in the waiting room of a Miami hospital. She’s there for one of her regular treatments for a congenital heart condition and he’s there because he fell off a motel balcony (while his mother was out partying) and broke his arm.
Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productiions, 2012.
At more than 280 pages, this engrossing book is uncommonly long for a graphic novel. If you’re old enough to remember pre-digital telephones, you may have heard of John Draper, a/k/a “Captain Crunch,” the legendary phone phreak and proto-hacker of the 1960s and ’70s.
NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2020.
I quite enjoyed this author’s first novel, The Friend Zone, which was the story of two twenty-somethings who weren’t exactly destined to be together — Kristin, a lifelong Angelino who knows exactly what she wants out of life and doesn’t stop until she gets it, and Josh, a recent transplant from North Dakota and a much more laid back sort of person — but they managed it anyway.
Continue reading “Jimenez, Abby. The Happy Ever After Playlist.”
NY: Random House, 2020.
This is the immediate sequel to Ready Player One, which came out six years ago and was the geekiest novel of its generation, hands down. It was set in 2044, but its theme was the pop culture of the 1980s and even though I’m a generation older than that, I loved it. It’s also impossible to summarize the plot of the earlier book in a reasonably short space in order to connect the two books.
BookSmith