2026/122: The Smart Neanderthal — Clive Finlayson

[the] sweeping statements made by some archaeologists, such as birds are fast-moving prey or hard to catch, are gross overgeneralizations which reveal an absence of natural history understanding, an understanding that intelligent Neanderthals would have had. [loc. 1382]

Finlayson is a keen ornithologist and archaeologist who lives in Gibraltar: much of this book is devoted to his excavations at the Gorham's Cave system, and to his ornithological expeditions in Gibraltar and southern Spain. His aim in this short book is to prove that Neanderthals were cognitive equals to modern humans: 'they made blades; they made complex tools; they had personal ornaments in the form of eagle feathers; they used ochre either to paint themselves or to make paintings, or both; they made engravings in cave walls; and they had sophisticated economic and social organization that included detailed planning of hunting activities at specific times of the year for particular prey. The prey often included birds.' [loc. 2678].

Though his prose is occasionally lacklustre, the sense of scientific excitement comes across strongly -- as does the grind of archaeological excavation, the care which must be taken with each specimen. His descriptions of observing eagles, vultures and corvids in the wild, acquiring an understanding of their habits and behaviour in the same way as Neanderthals may have done, are compelling. And I gained a better understanding of how climate change (the Ice Age and its aftermath) would have affected Neanderthal populations, fragmenting their territory and isolating communities.

Read because: I've been fascinated by Neanderthals, and by their differences to modern humans, since I first read The Clan of the Cave Bear (which was impeccably researched, though some of the data is dated now).

2026/121: The Salt King — Natasha Pulley

Avelyn thought of saints in paintings again. There were often other paintings hidden underneath that final layer of colour. You could see them under the right kind of light, those deeper iterations where the saint was not smiling, or where instead of cotton, they wore armour. The more time he spent with Jericho, the more he saw flashes of armour. [loc. 4493]

Avelyn Brocken is a Jesuit priest, 'sent from the Vatican to investigate something that was either miraculous or requiring an exorcist'. He is the only person in the Vatican who speaks Hreod -- the language of Hreodwater, a remote and inaccessible place somewhere in East Anglia that does not appear on any maps, contains the most valuable salt mine in Europe, is a place of pilgrimage, and seems to have been the site of a miracle. An American priest walked again after two years in a wheelchair ... and then, on camera, turned to a pillar of salt.

Avelyn very much does not want to return to Hreodwater. He left after his entire family were killed, and has spent the intervening decade or so lasering off his tattoos, studying, and aware that (unlike his mentor, Father Li) he feels nothing during worship, except cold. He has come to understand, over the last decade, that he was raised in a cult: but he still believes that there is something beneath Hreodwater: something called the Salt King, that has protected the community for centuries. He does not believe it is good.

Meanwhile, in Jordan, nuclear safety inspector Dr Tallis Osho is investigating a mysterious structure in the desert, which may be emitting radiation. Her colleague Dr Saloman Akhbar identifies the black metal spikes protecting the structure as silver. There are other anomalies from around the world: coins always landing heads-up, electronic equipment failing and emitting spikes of salt, random number generators no longer being random (with calamitous consequences for capitalism), fortune tellers finding clear images in coffee grounds and sand... 

But the focus is on Avelyn, and his uncomfortable friendship with / attraction to Jericho (the doctor at Hreodwater), and the gradual revelations of the events leading up to his departure from Hreodwater. It's a strange place, with a subterranean abbey, an ancient language -- and a strange 'salt light', that only Hreoda can see, which illuminates wonders and horrors.

I loved this, despite some flaws -- Tallis's story felt distinctly secondary to Avelyn's -- and some disappointments. Avelyn is very much a product of his training, and he holds some views that I found unpleasant. Pulley doesn't gloss over the scandals of the Church, either: Father Li is viewed with suspicion in some quarters for having 'abducted' Avelyn and taken him to Rome. God, apparently, told him to do it.  

As usual in Pulley's novels, there is plenty of humour, often in footnotes, to lighten the darker aspects of the novel. And there are mammoths, cephalopods, Dionysus, shield walls, and linguistic oddities. It's not a wholly happy ending for all concerned, but I found it very satisfying.

Read because: Natasha Pulley is my favourite author (and I had to wait until publication day because Netgalley don't give me her books in advance).

“Are you, like, neurodiverse?”
“No, I’m a Jesuit.” [loc. 1656]

2026/120: Our Noble Selves — Kate Atkinson

He wasn't whole, he would never be whole, but, like the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of men before him who had returned from a war, he was getting on with his life by treating the past as if it barely existed. [loc. 217]

Before the war, Harry Flynn was a reporter; then, very briefly, a war reporter; and finally a POW working on the Burma Railway. In post-war London he drifts miserably, only vaguely aware of the planned Festival of Britain. One day he encounters his old boss in St James's Park, and is offered a job in the Festival Office, 'sopping up all the bits and pieces of Festival business that no else else cared to'. He shares his office with 'Badger', a.k.a. Mr Badgley, who doesn't talk about his war work; Evans, who survived shipwreck in the Arctic; and 'the Boy', who is 14, illiterate, working class, and a delight. 

One night Flynn goes for a drink with a rather obnoxious Frenchwoman named Delphine Dubois. He wakes up the next morning with a black eye and a gap in his memory -- and Delphine has disappeared. Naturally, suspicion falls on Flynn. Even under suspicion of murder, though, he still has a job to do -- dealing with a celebrity cook and her nefarious husband, a stepdaughter and a dog, a Festival anthology of appalling poetry, and a plethora of plaster doves...

There is a lot of detail about the Festival here, but it's woven around a thriller about spies, double agents and fascists. As usual with Kate Atkinson, it's easy to get sidetracked by the asides, the characters, the setting: London in 1951 is a city still emerging from the horrors of war, and though the Festival is intended as a boost to morale and a taste of a peacetime future, there are plenty (including the Daily Express) who fulminate about the cost, the inherent classism, the London-centric nature of the main event. Plus ça change.

Flynn is somewhat naive but generally a good man: the novel is told, third-person, from his perspective, and the attentive reader will find significance where Flynn does not. This is a hopeful novel, despite its gentle mockery of British art and attitudes.  I found Atkinson's afterword -- where, as well as describing her research, she sets out her reasons for not writing about Flynn's war -- interesting, too. 

Read because: spotted it on Netgalley and was intrigued by the premise and setting: I generally enjoy Atkinson's novels, and this was no exception.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 10th September 2026.

2026/119: The Moor's Account — Laila Lalami

How strange, I remember thinking, how utterly strange were the ways of the Castilians—just by saying that something was so, they believed that it was. I know now that these conquerors, like many others before them, and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice the truth, but to create it. [chapter 1]

The Moor's Account tells the story of 'Estebanico', a Moroccan slave who was among the four survivors of the 600-strong Narváez expedition, an expedition to the so-called New World in 1527. 'Estebanico' is the name forced, by the Spanish, upon a trader from Azemmour, Mustafa ibn Muhommad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori, after he sells himself into slavery to save his family from poverty and starvation. And the 'New World' is neither unknown nor uninhabited.

Within a year of the expedition landing in what's now Florida, there are only four survivors: three Castilian gentlemen -- among them Mustafa's owner, Andrés de Dorantes -- and Mustafa himself. Sometimes together, sometimes not, they travel westward, living among indigenous tribes (some more welcoming than others) and becoming healers, using a combination of folk medicine, storytelling and prayer. But the Castilians never lose sight of their primary purpose -- to find gold, more gold, all the gold -- while Mustafa's experience as a trader and then as trade goods has taught him that not everything has, or should have, a price. 

Eventually, they are found by a group of Spanish slavers and taken to Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), where arrangements are slowly made for them to return to Spain. The three Castilians are asked for their accounts of the expedition: Mustafa, mentioned only once in the Castilian reports ('The fourth [survivor] is Estebanico, an Arab Negro from Azamor') and is not asked to contribute his own version of events.

Mustafa observes that the Castilians' accounts of the years in the wilderness, they omit a great deal: cannibalism, theft, rape, murder, and their Native American wives. (Not real wives, Dorantes assures him: they weren't married in church.)  Mustafa has sustained himself by dreams of returning to Azemmour: but he too has married a Native American woman, now pregnant, and is increasingly disturbed by the invaders' attitude to the indigenous peoples. Dorantes' reluctance to free Mustafa, despite all they've endured together, crystallises his determination to free himself. 

This felt long, perhaps because it was repetitive: tribe after tribe, misfortune after misfortune: it's under 400 pages in print. I listened to the audiobook, read by Neil Shah, and found the exaggerated Spanish accents rather grating. But it is a fascinating story, and Mustafa's perspective is quite unlike that of the Spaniards. The style is that of an Arabic travel text: dates are given according to the Islamic calendar, and places in the Old World are referred to by their Arabic names. The narrative switches between Mustafa's early life in Azemmour and his adventures as part of the expedition, each chapter entitled 'The Story of...': the parallel narratives show how Mustafa's response to the New World is shaped by his own past, and that of his people.

Two interesting resources I found when I was reading about the historical background: an analysis of the 'official' accounts with reference to the tribes they may have encountered, and Lalami's own set of resources.

Read because:I enjoyed The Dream Hotel, and when contemplating the 'Storygraph Reads the World: Morocco' prompt this drew my attention.

2026/118: The Magician of Tiger Castle — Louis Sachar

By the way, when the princess said the king called me Esquaveta's Leonardo, he was referring to Leonardo da Vinci. Just thought I ought to point that out in case it slipped past you. [p. 127]

We first meet Anatole -- overweight, short and hairless -- in a coffee bar in what used to be a country called Esquaveta. He's musing on the tigers that roam the castle moat, and on the history of the castle itself: then, abruptly, he's reminiscing about the arrival of the very first tiger in 1523, when he was the court magician, working on turning black sand into gold, and performing a series of proto-scientific experiments. ('In the 1500s, science and magic were virtually indistinguishable.') Gradually, he tells the story of how, tasked with ensuring that Princess Tullia of Esquaveta married Prince Dalrympl of Oxatania, he had to contend with Tullia falling in love with penniless scribe Pito. His solution? Create a potion that makes each of them forget the other.

Needless to say, it is not that simple. Oh, the potions work: they didn't have ethics in 1523, apparently, so it's fine not to tell either of his subjects what the potion does, and anyway that would negate its effects. But the potion he uses to postpone the wedding is not the lethal poison expected, and he's forced to flee, with two cantankerous lovers in tow. Can Anatole reach freedom? Can Tullia and Pito survive long enough to marry? And why is Anatole so attached to one of his laboratory animals?

This was announced as Sachar's first novel for adults, though it felt quite YA to me: the plethora of historical factoids ('In 1523 fire was started by striking flint against a piece of iron'; a description of how a hurdy-gurdy works; why ale is was healthier than water) was occasionally intrusive, and the overall tone reminded me of The Princess Bride, though rather more cynical. I didn't really warm to the characters, except Luigi the mouse. A pleasant enough read but not one I'll revisit.

Read because: it was on offer as a Kindle Daily Deal, and I was intrigued by the idea of an adult fantasy novel from the author of Holes.

2026/117: Daggerbound — T Kingfisher

"... I thought you'd be on the side of law and order."
"No, young man," said Bishop Beartongue, despite being several centuries his junior. "I am on the side of justice. If we're lucky, the two run in parallel. If they don't, we bend the law to attain justice, not the other way around." [loc. 4092]

Edmund leaves the Temple of the Many-Armed God with a mule named Sweetheart, a selection of rare books and an ancient artifact that he's been tasked with transporting to an academic in Archen's Glory. He has no intention of returning to the temple, with its misogynist priests and antiquated ways. But before he has time to make plans, bandits happen -- and he accidentally unsheathes the artifact (a sword) and releases a silver-eyed angel.

The angel is ... no angel. His name is the Dervish, and he's been imprisoned in the sword for many years: his last wielder was a sadistic priest, and consequently he has no time for religion, or indeed wielders. He is a walking mass of trauma, but (in his opinion) 'very pretty trauma'. And he helps Edmund survive the journey -- via more outlaws, an excellent gnole, a cobbled-together dragon, and a diplomat from another species -- though what the pair find when they reach the city is not what either of them expected.

This was an absolute delight: a romance, yes, but also a story about healing, and about loyalty, and about scholarship. (There is some steam. They are in a sauna.) I am happy to report that Zale features in Daggerbound, as do other characters from Kingfisher's previous explorations in the World of the White Rat. 

Daggerbound has heroism, emotional inarticulacy, gnole pronouns, the importance of books, and an exciting new use for bacon. The characters -- human and otherwise, good and bad -- have personality and motivation, and the worldbuilding is thorough without being forced.

I requested this from NetGalley despite having the Kindle version pre-ordered, which should give you some idea of my enthusiasm for this series. Already looking forward to Shieldborn...

Read because: It showed up on Netgalley, and even though I have the Kindle edition preordered I couldn't resist.

2026/116: Parallel Lives — Iain Pears

... it is difficult to believe that life during the siege of Leningrad was quite as jolly as the tone of [Larissa's] recollections sometimes suggested. [Introduction]

Larissa Salmina was born in northern Russia in 1931, daughter of an army officer: she survived the siege of Leningrad (and does indeed make it sound quite jolly, though there are horrors too: they ate the neighbour's cat, who was starving anyway) and later became a curator at the Hermitage Museum. She was appointed Commissar for the Venice Biennale -- she lost some of the artworks en route -- and met an English art historian Francis Haskell.

Francis was brought up in England, grandson of an Iraqi Jew, and seems to have had a very miserable youth, struggling with repressed (and not so repressed) homosexual urges, antisemitism, and loneliness. He was smitten by Larissa, more of a free spirit than himself: she, already married, blithely embarked on their affair, and broke the terms of her visa to travel with him -- which could have ruined her own career in the USSR.

Larissa seems to have had the gift of landing on her feet: Francis revealed unsuspected backbone in his determination to marry her, despite the bureaucratic hoops this entailed in the mid-1960s. And Iain Pears, who was taught by Haskell and befriended Larissa after Haskell's death, weaves their story together -- from conversations with Larissa, and from the diaries Francis kept from childhood until his marriage -- to depict 'a tale of a Europe that is lost. 'Not the Europe of geographical and ideological divisions, but of a certain mentality, which was common to a very few on both sides of the Iron Curtain'. He emphasises the importance of art to both, and their sense of a shared cultural inheritance: and he balances Larissa's oral history (noting that it's full of gaps and deliberate omissions) with Francis' dogged self-analysis.

I confess I was much more interested in Larissa, especially her experiences during the siege. I learnt a lot about post-war Soviet society, including the fact that Russians were legally obliged to look after ageing parents: Larissa's mother had to waive her right to this before the marriage could go ahead. I would have liked more discussion of Francis' homosexual affairs (there are delicate allusions, no more) and perhaps of their married life: but the book effectively concludes with their marriage, and I respect Pears' decision to stop there.

Read by Richard Attlee: his voice suited the narrative, and Pears' measured style, really well.

Read because: It was on offer at Libro.fm, and Larissa's story in particular sounded fascinating. Also, this is the Europe which my father's family knew.

2026/115: Under Story — Chloe Benjamin

In our world, matter that was living decomposes -- but not always. If decomposition was interrupted, a fossil forms instead... Here, a fossil is like a seed. [loc. 2988]

It's 2018, and Laurel is working as a dishwasher in Antarctica, mourning the death of her son, separated from her husband Eli -- and drawn to the Arc, an anomalous phenomenon a few miles from McMurdo Base, that manifests as an arch of light. Laurel was formerly a mycologist, and she has a scientific outlook: but when she dreams about the Arc, she can't help feeling that her dream has given her an insight. And then Eli, a renowned physicist, shows up at McMurdo. He believes that the Arc might help him prove his theory of the universe, a theory that proposes an 'antiuniverse' where 'entropy reverses on a massive scale' and time itself moves in the opposite direction.

This is a fascinating thought experiment of a novel, with elements of romance and mysticism as well as the hard (if theoretical) science underpinning it. There are octopodes! There is Antarctic life! I loved the secondary characters, especially Gloria and Louis, and I was intrigued by Laurel's experiments in mycology.

I'm not sure I fully understood some elements of the novel, and I almost gave up on the story when it seemed likely to explain some aspects solely through a mystical experience: and I am not wholly satisfied by the ending. But it was a fascinating read, with moments of beauty (both scientific and personal) that balance the occasional horrors.

Read because: I spotted it on Netgalley, where an early review described it as 'The Overstory meets Interstellar': I was intrigued.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 1st September 2026.

2026/114: After Hours at Dooryard Books — Cat Sebastian

Outside these doors is chaos. Appalling men are elected president. Every day's headlines are worse than the last. All year, it's been like that, and it isn't getting better. But it will. 

The setting is New York in 1968. Patrick is the manager of Dooryard Books, a secondhand bookstore owned by the philanthropic Mrs Kaplan. One night, Mrs Kaplan turns up with a stranger, who she introduces as 'Nathaniel Smith': a man several years older than Patrick, with a haunted look and no possessions to speak of. Patrick can relate: he was one of Mrs K's 'projects' too, years ago.

Nathaniel (who's agoraphobic) clearly has guilty secrets, but Patrick is happy to let him take his time revealing them. And he has plenty else to distract him: soon after Nathaniel's arrival, Susan -- Patrick's sister-in-law and childhood friend, a well-known singer-songwriter -- shows up, distraught, with a suitcase, a baby, and a telegram from the Department of Defence. Susan's husband (Patrick's brother) Michael has been killed in Vietnam.

How the three of them (plus baby Eleanor) create a kind of family, and how Nathaniel comes to terms with his own sexuality, is the heart of the novel: it also features delightfully spiky Puerto Rican twins, a lot of discussion of Walt Whitman's poetry (Patrick is a huge fan), plenty of gay and trans secondary characters, anti-war protestors and political radicals and folk musicians, and a dog. The revelation of Nathaniel's secret past was a big surprise and definitely something to feel bad about, but he does his best to make things right, not only with Susan and Nathaniel but with the wider world.

Great depictions of male-female friendship, alternative culture, and the second-hand book trade. I listened to the audiobook, read by JJ Hawkins (who read Patrick's chapters) and Joel Leslie (who read Nathaniel's). I felt a bit uncomfortable while listening to Leslie, who sounded as though he was choking at the end of each sentence, but both narrators brought warmth, emotion and humour to their performances.

Read because: it was in the Libro.fm sale, and I have enjoyed other novels by Cat Sebastian.

2026/113: The Sentence — Louise Erdrich

Think how white people believe their houses or yards or scenic overlooks are haunted by Indians, when it’s really the opposite. We’re haunted by settlers and their descendants. [p. 91]

Reread for book club: I had forgotten just how much it's about the pandemic. I also noticed many aspects of motherhood here, from Hetta with her new baby to Tookie bearing the name of the woman who helped her mother. Book club response was positive: we talked about the sense of community in the novel, and the low-key horror of the ghost.

My original review is here.

Read because: bookclub choice, and I was happy to reread this!

2026/112: Never After — Alexis Hall

“Say something.” His voice rang harshly, even in his own ears. “Call me unnatural. Scorn me. Turn away in revulsion. Tell the village.”
“Oh, Michael, I’m an old woman, my back would play up something chronic. I can’t turn away in revulsion like I used to.” [loc. 3759]

This is described as 'a melancholic tale of queer romance': it's set in the 1860s in London and, later, a country town, and it's the story of two men (an opium-addicted male prostitute named Micha, and the Reverend Thomas Mandeville) who love one another. But I'm not sure it's a romance per se.

It has many of the tropes of romance: Micha is very ill when Thomas finds him collapsed on the street and takes him home; Micha is prickly and dishonest, but gradually becomes more likeable under Thomas' gentle ministrations; Micha's secrets gradually come to light, and Thomas's unpleasant family history likewise; Thomas finds a better family because of Micha. And it does seem that they might achieve a HEA. But no.

Devastatingly emotional, with lots of rich textured descriptions that reminded me of nineteenth-century novels. Hall treats Thomas' faith, and the moral quandaries his desire for Micha sparks in him, with respect and honesty. And Micha's addiction is also portrayed realistically and without modern sensibilities. I especially liked the female characters, none of whom behave as Micha expects: Thomas' housekeeper Mrs Clark, who could reveal Micha's past; the ladies of Nettlefield, especially Esther (whose response to Micha's confession of homosexuality heads this review); and, at the end, Hope.

Pleasantly read by Steve West, who managed to infuse Micha's sometimes-limited vocabulary ('Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.') with emotions appropriate to the setting.

from the author's webpage, discussing ending and epilogue...

Read because: I've enjoyed many of Hall's other novels and spotted this as audio and ebook on Kindle Unlimited, my 'free trial' of which runs out very soon. A pleasant audiobook to listen to in the garden!

2026/111: A Trade of Blood — Robert Jackson Bennett

My augmentations had permanently altered my very biologies. Had I been made a beast, to be sacrificed for my family and the Empire? Or was I now a shepherd, and the common folk of the cantons my flock? [loc. 3578]

My initial gleeful review is here: I liked this novel just as much on rereading.

Two households, both alike in dignity... The Armentas are a wealthy aristocratic family, raising monstrous cows to feed the Empire: the Buravs are a neighbouring family who provide the beans that feed the cows. The two families have been feuding for years: despite this, Castus Armenta and Zanzay Burav were planning to run away together. Now Zanzay lies horribly dead and Castus is in the local jail, unable to explain the events of the previous night. 

Just another case for Immunis Ana Dolabra and her trusty assistant, Signum Dinios Kol! Together, the two uncover a history of misfortune (or perhaps a family curse) plaguing the Armentas, and an ancient forest which may harbour gods from before the Empire. And they learn about farming. This is not Romeo and Juliet: it's certainly not a romance. It is, instead, a novel about the grotesque excesses of agriculture. It highlights the routine slaughter and the wastefulness, the ecological impact, and the use of enslaved creatures^* as field workers.

And it's also about Ana and about Din -- the former coming a little closer to revealing the secrets of her alterations, the latter wholly unprepared to encounter someone from his past. There is body horror, there are unsettling mental changes, and there is more, much more, about the Empire itself. (I note that Ana and Din are moving towards the heart of the Empire -- the first book was set on the coast, the second in the independent kingdom of Yarrowdale, and this novel within the Third Ring.)

Very much looking forward to the next book -- this is clearly not a trilogy! -- and to learning even more about the Empire, and about the eccentric Ana. (A taste of Ana: "I'd normally be given to suspect his enemies, the Armentas --except they've nearly been eliminated... Or so we think! I can't confirm, because people keep goddamn interrupting me with their dying!" [loc. 2597])

^*Small creatures known as cats, though they are more like squirrels or weasels: I suspect the author of devising a way to refer to characters as 'cat-herders'.

Read because: I enjoyed the first two books so much, and leapt at the chance to get an ARC. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 4th August 2026.

2026/110: As We Fall Through Time — Claire North

Every time traveller who has ever trodden on a butterfly has created a ripple through time. These ripples make more ripples which make more travellers, the snake swallows its tail... [loc. 694]

Cal is a time-traveller, and something of a paradox: sometimes male, sometimes female. He encounters Olivier, a French soldier, in 1789, and falls in love. Which seems to be somehow connected to the temporal paradox sparked by fellow time-traveller Fadimatu encountering her own corpse in The Museum of the Unmasked Conspiracy...

This is a love story, a story of climate activism, and a murder mystery. It's narrated in first person by a mysterious observer. Time is infested with ghosts and witches, 'fathomless creatures of unlived realities': paradoxes can be healed, or at least ameliorated, by paradoxical objects ('amaranthines') such as a ceramic flower that did and did not crack in the kiln.

I am already looking forward to rereading this next month for the full review...

Read because: Claire North has become one of my favourite authors -- from the 'Songs of Penelope' trilogy to the awesome Slow Gods. Obviously I read this as soon as it landed on my Kindle... Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for the full honest review I'll write nearer UK Publication Date -- 10th October 2026.

2026/109: Apollo 13 — James Lovell / Jeffrey Kruger

I’m afraid this is going to be the last moon mission for a long time.

Initially published as Lost Moon and retitled to tie in with the movie Apollo 13, this is Jim Lovell's account -- with Jeffrey Kruger's wealth of background research and synthesis -- of the NASA mission that would have been the third Moon landing. It's not just a minute-by-minute account of the accident and the return, both on board the spacecraft and back at Mission Control, but also a biography of Lovell: there are vignettes featuring other people impacted by the events (such as the spacecraft recovery specialist aboard the USS Iwo Jima), and a detailed account of Marilyn Lovell waiting at home with their children, supported by friends and neighbours.

I found this compelling listening: it's extremely well paced. The technical details of the damage to the Service Module, and the ingenious workarounds developed by crew and Control, are explained clearly for a non-technical audience. The constant stress of the four days after the explosion (which vented most of the oxygen to space, and forced the three-man crew to take refuge in the Lunar Module which had been designed to support two men for two days on the surface of the Moon) is clear, but there's never false drama.

The crew's levelheadedness did occasionally falter, but only in throwaway comments. (I suspect Kruger relied heavily on the log transcripts.) And I found the dogged perseverance of Mission Control uplifting and inspirational. It's also amazing to me that the mission was completed -- not only on the ground, but in the spacecraft -- with less processing power than my smartwatch. (See Reddit for discussion).

Narrated very well by Fred Sanders, whose voice I found pleasant and who injected humour into the lighter interludes, and didn't speed up when things became tense.

Read because: I don't quite remember this happening (unlike some of my friends), but it's been part of my cultural background for most of my life. I realised I knew very little about the disaster, though I did know it hadn't ended in tragedy. And the NASA space program, at its height in the '60s and '70s, is exciting.

2026/108: Dragon's Fin Soup — S P Somtow

...in this town, there’s no distinction between the real world and the world of illusion. It’s the only place in the world where all truths are true at the same time. [p. 264]

Subtitled 'Eight Modern Siamese Fables', these stories are set in Thailand -- mostly Bangkok -- at various points in the late twentieth century, and typically deal with the culture clash between Thai and Western culture, with flourishes of the fantastic. I especially liked 'The Steel American', about a knight seeking the Grail in a small village, and 'Fiddling for Water Buffaloes', a cheery tale of an American anthropologist, the trade in fake antiquities, and possible alien invasion. 

Some of the other stories felt dated: sexist, cyberpunk-inflected, plain body-horror. And the text is not formatted well in this edition.  In some of the stories it looks as though a draft version, complete with markup and comments, has been used.

But when it's good, it's very good: the little details of domestic life, the prevalence of belief in spiritual entities (good and otherwise), the juxtaposition of ancient and modern. I intend to read more of Somtow's work, having (I think) bounced off some of his horror fiction in the 1990s.

Read because: Many of S P Somtow's books are available on Kindle Unlimited, and I wanted to fill a challenge prompt -- 'by a Thai author or about Thailand'. This one looked interesting and accessible, and fulfilled both aspects of the prompt.

2026/107: The Georgian Star — Michael Lemonick

Herschel... followed his own ambition, which was nothing less than to understand the universe, to figure out its overall structure and composition. [loc. 180]

A comprehensive overview of the lives and work of William and Caroline Herschel, covering not only their astronomical accomplishments (which are many) but their previous careers in music -- William was a professional musician and composer, and Caroline a soprano who performed some of his works. 

Born in Germany, William emigrated to England in 1757, and Caroline joined him in 1772. At this point Herschel had already become interested in astronomy, and roped in his sister as assistant. They built telescopes (Caroline grinding the lenses and polishing the mirrors) and recorded their observations, which were considerably more meticulous, detailed and accurate than those of their peers. 

William discovered Uranus, though he thought at first it was a comet: on realising it was a planet he proposed the name Georgium Sidus, hoping this would attract royal favour and the post of Astronomer Royal. Caroline, meanwhile, discovered multiple comets and some Messier objects that Messier had missed.

Lemonick doesn't assume too much in the way of scientific knowledge or understanding: I was grateful for the clear explanations of theories and methods, though more astronomically-minded readers may feel these are overly basic. The Georgian Star succeeds in presenting a rounded picture of the Herschels as scientists and as human beings, and setting out the importance of their work in modern astronomy. I liked the argument that Herschel's approach was radical: that he was more a cosmologist than an astronomer, and realised that his desire to understand the universe could only be achieved by close observation. I was also amused to read that (like many of his contemporaries) he believed the planets, and the Sun, were inhabited. 

The audiobook was read by Paul Boehmer: somewhat monotone, but no weird pronunciations or false amusement!

Read because: I'm interested in astronomy, and in Caroline Herschel, and this was on offer on Libro.fm.

2026/106: The House That Eats the Dead — Max Doty

I curled up in a chair with ... a copy of a book on tidying by Marie Kondo. ... it would be good to get rid of some things. Maybe the house would help me.
I went to put down my book and found my hand empty. Marie Kondo was gone, tidied into oblivion. [loc. 623]

Claire and Tom Morgan, with their delightful children Grace (6) and Derek (15), and their dog King, move from the urban frenzy of San Francisco to a leafy suburb. Their new home seems perfect, though food seems to rot quickly and flowers wilt in hours. Gradually, Claire realises that the house devours anything organic -- but only if it's dead. She and her children are safe, and nosebleeds get cleaned up instantly. And only the owners of the house remember anything that has been eaten.

At first this seems convenient, even benevolent. The house has eaten Grace's favourite soft toy, but she doesn't remember loving it, and a tearful crisis is averted. Later, Claire and Tom decide that the children would be better off not remembering that they'd ever owned a dog...

Claire is the protagonist, a stay-at-home mother (formerly an artist) experimenting with the house's powers, and treating it as an individual. She brings it cow hearts to stop it eating the food in the fridge: she paints with organic paints, and the house finds a way to tell its story. Claire has a traumatic past, and so does the house -- which is very much a character in the novel, though it never speaks ... at least not to Claire. It affects each of the Morgans in different ways: Grace likes the stories it tells, Tom finds it helpful in climbing the corporate ladder, Derek's self-confidence grows, and Claire is painting again...

I was reminded of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, which also features a family discovering a supernatural phenomenon and being altered by their use of it. But this is a more mundane narrative: a family drama with horror elements, rather than a story of demons and tragedies. Which isn't to say that there aren't deaths, and bad decisions -- but the impulse behind both is human rather than occult.

It took me a few chapters to get into this novel, because Claire is not immediately likeable: but once the plot started escalating I was gripped. I liked the morally grey characters, the vaguely-sketched backstory, and the family dynamics, and I found Claire's ethical dilemmas fascinating. Would I have done the same?

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 13th August 2026.

Read because: The publisher invited me to read this, on the basis of my having enjoyed other Tor Nightfire titles.

2026/105: My Best Friend's Exorcism — Grady Hendrix

For the Langs, Madonna was totally and completely out of the question. But when Gretchen's dad was at work and her mom was taking one of her nine billion classes (Jazzercise, power walking, book club, wine club, sewing circle, women's prayer circle), Gretchen and Abby would dress up like the Material Girl and sing into the mirror. Gretchen's mom had a jewelry box devoted entirely to crosses, so it was basically like she was inviting them to do it.

Set in Charleston in the 1980s, this is the story of two best friends -- Gretchen, from a well-off, conservative, religious family, and Abby, whose background is lower-income and rather liberal -- from elementary school to adulthood. It's full of 80s culture: big hair, Benetton perfume, fad diets, Madonna, personality quizzes, Halley's Comet ... and the Satanic Panic, which in this instance turns out to be justified. It's also packed with period-typical attitudes and behaviour (racism, sexism, homophobia, corporal punishment) which I remember being 'normal' back then, and find horrific now.

Abby and Gretchen are best friends. They attend the same school, and are friends (but not best friends) with constantly-dieting Margaret and class swot Glee. One night at Margaret's riverside home they take LSD, and Gretchen declares that she's going skinny-dipping. She vanishes, and the other three search for her all night, eventually finding her naked in the woods, saying she can't remember what happened. After that, Gretchen becomes a lot meaner, and Abby starts to wonder if her friend has been the victim of sexual assault. Then the Lemon brothers, charismatic preacher-types, do a show at the school, and Christian Lemon says he can see that Gretchen has a demon...

Issues of race, class, wealth are explored in the manner of a high school comedy-drama, but the story gets increasingly dark. Abby, though, is a resourceful and courageous protagonist, and the actual exorcism is a virtuoso blend of character, setting and cultural references. (It made me laugh, but it's also very emotional.) Yes, it's a horror novel, and there are some terrible scenes: but there is so much humour and ridiculousness that I could tolerate the nastier elements.

Interestingly, the novel doesn't stop with the exorcism. We see Abby and Gretchen growing up, changing, staying more or less friends for decades. I really liked that Hendrix showed us how their friendship changed and evolved as they grew older.

I listened to the audiobook, read by Emily Woo Zeller, whose narration was very engaging and emotional, to the extent that I sometimes had to pause the shriekier bits! Some aspects, however -- like the yearbook messages and newspaper clippings -- didn't translate well to audio format.

Read because: The book appeared in the Libro.fm sale a while ago, and having enjoyed The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires I snapped it up. I was in the mood for something very different from Neumeier's trilogy, and this certainly delivered.

2026/104: Tasmakat — Rachel Neumeier

When we ask the gods to be merciful, we have no idea what we’re asking. [p. 469]

After the events of Tarashana, Aras and Ryo travel back to the summer lands -- via a wedding -- and to the king's judgment. Aras seems sanguine on the long journey from the winter lands (a journey which I now realise comprises more than half of the novel) but there's a strong possibility that the king will have him executed.

Instead, he sends Aras and Ryo to the Land of Two Suns, ruled by the Ro-Antalet (sphinxes), where the envoy Tasmakat (a jackal-headed woman) has suggested there might be an adept who can lighten the sorcerous madness that is beginning to afflict Aras, and break the bond -- the 'leash', as the Ugaro call it -- between Aras and Ryo.

Of course it is not that simple.

This novel is packed with thorny issues of loyalty, honour and mercy. Ryo is strong and stubborn, but can he prevail against madness? He has to contend with false memories and guard his mind (though he's already proved he can mask his thoughts): he's sorcerously altered to withstand the tremendous heat of the Two Suns ... and all the while he worries about what's happening in the winter lands, what's happening with his wife and her other husband.

Intensely emotional, sometimes very dark, sometimes unevenly paced: the climax of this novel is a triumph, and the finale hopeful. I enjoyed it very much despite sometimes wearying of the interminable journeying. And I'm keen to read more of the novels set in this world -- though perhaps not quite yet.

Read because: This concludes the Ryo-centric trilogy that started with Tuyo and continued with Tarashana -- I wanted to follow that story to its conclusion, especially while the events of the previous two books were still fresh in my mind.

2026/103: Why We Swim — Bonnie Tsui

For many swimmers, the act of swimming is a tonic, in that old-fashioned sense of the word: it is a restorative, a stimulant, undertaken for a feeling of vigor and well-being. The word tonic comes from the Greek tonikos, “of or for stretching".

Read by Angie Kane. I spotted this in the Libro.fm audiobook sale and thought it looked intriguing: I didn't expect such a comprehensive survey of the history of swimming, from prehistoric times (I was especially fascinated by the chapter on the likelihood that the humans at Gobera swam in their lake) to modern competitive swimming.

Tsui covers five major reasons to swim -- survival, well-being, community, competition and flow. She discusses how various communities throughout history have adapted to swimming -- for instance, free-diving fishers in south-east Asia and Japan, or 'human seal' Guðlaugur Friðþórsson who survived six hours in 5^o water -- and the ways in which swimming has been used and recommended as a therapy for centuries. She describes the creep of racial segregation in twentieth-century America, reducing access to swimming for non-white Americans. It's not just a leisure issue, but a question of being able to swim -- being able to avoid death by drowning.

I learnt about samurai swimming, and was inspired by the accounts of people who've overcome major physical challenges via the 'salt water cure' -- sea-swimming. "Being in the ocean, you can become part of the food chain at any moment," writes Tsui. (In 21st-century Britain you are, sadly, more likely to encounter the end product of the food chain if you swim in the sea.) And Tsui's mention of Lewis Pugh, who swam across the North Pole to highlight the climate catastrophe, led me to some videos that I swear will cool you down on the hottest of days.

Reading this book made me want to swim more often, especially in rivers and the sea. I already know it improves my health, mentally and creatively as well as physically. 

Read because: I am a keen swimmer and was intrigued by this history of swimming.

2026/102: Tarashana — Rachel Neumeier

I think everyone behaved courageously and honorably, until courage and honor were not enough. [p. 328]

Second in the 'Tuyo' arc, despite it being book number 3... A year and a half after the events of Tuyo, Lord Aras is encountering some political issues in the summer lands, where Ryo still serves him. A reprieve of sorts is offered when a message comes from the winter country, asking for Aras' help. Apparently a Tarashana woman (from another cosmological realm, beyond the winter lands, lit only by starlight) has approached the Ugaro: she seems to be mute but clearly needs help of some kind. Can Aras (and Ryo) assist?

Cue an expedition through the winter lands -- with various Lau allies, including the excellent Lalani -- and a chance to see Ryo in his homeland, with his people. After they leave the Ugaro and cross the steppe, the world becomes very much stranger: ghost tigers, paths that don't lead where they appear to, and the horrors that the Tarashana woman has fled from. Some appalling things happen, especially at the book's climax. Honour, respect, trust and kindness prevail, eventually. And Aras and Ryo have some difficult conversations.

Also, Ryo wants to get married, but there's competition...

This is a vast book, 700-odd pages in print, and I did occasionally feel that some passages weren't essential to the plot. But every action, every reaction, every line of dialogue matters... And when the bad things happened I could not stop reading, because Neumeier knows how to play arpeggios on my heartstrings. The plot here -- and the worldbuilding -- feel more complex than in Tuyo, and as soon as I'd finished this I went on to the third of the Ryo-centric novels...

Read because: Having finished Tuyo, I wanted to see what happened next: I like the characters and am intrigued by the worldbuilding.

2026/101: Tuyo — Rachel Neumeier

Every man is glad to stop looking for the truth when he’s handed a lie he likes better. Sorcerers are no different in that. [p. 129]

Ryo InGara is nineteen years old, a warrior of a nomadic tribe that dwells in the winter country. At the beginning of Tuyo, he's been left as a kind of sacrifice to the opposing army -- the Lau -- in a minor skirmish: he expects to be killed slowly and painfully, and it is a matter of honour that he meets his death bravely.

Instead, he finds himself given guest-right by his captor, Lord Aras Eren Samaura, who says that Ryo is more useful alive than dead. Aras is trying to determine the cause of the recent unrest between the Ugaro (Ryo's people) and the Lau (Aras' people). He suspects sorcery is involved -- and Ryo comes from a culture where sorcery is punished by death. Ryo does indeed encounter sorcerers, plural: his memories are changed without his consent, and only his own strength of will -- and his trust in Aras' essential good nature -- saves him.

What I liked most in this novel was Ryo's narrative, and the close examination of the changing relationship between Ryo and Aras. (NB This is not a romance.) Neumeier depicts the minutae of Ryo's emotional landscape, and the evolution of his understanding of Aras, credibly and without sentiment.

The worldbuilding is fascinating, too: it's clear almost from the start that this is a radically different cosmology. A river separates the winter lands of the Ugaro from the summer lands of the Lau. In the winter lands, the moon is always full, but in the summer lands it ('she', the goddess) has phases. There are stories of another land beyond the winter land, lit by starlight, and a sunless sea; and Aras has travelled beyond the summer land, where jackal-headed sorcerers dwell. 

One brief complaint: there is a great deal of story-telling in this novel, but we don't get the stories themselves.

Ryo and his culture reminded me of Ariantes, the Sarmatian narrator of Island of Ghosts, one of my favourite novels: I was pleased to read Neumeier's post on that novel, which acknowledges it as an influence.

Read because: I'd read a sample after seeing it recommended (and I'd already enjoyed The Year's Midnight by the same author). Amazon stealthily offered me a month of free Kindle Unlimited, and I bit.

2026/100: The Killing Time — Elly Griffiths

It’s hard enough being a woman in 2024, what must it be like when you’ve almost no agency and are imprisoned by your clothes? [loc. 3368]

In this, the second of the Ali Dawson time-travel thrillers, Ali is confounded by bureaucracy. After the problems of her previous expedition to 1851 -- and the disappearance of star physicist Jones, presumed lost in the nineteenth century -- the Cold Cases Unit is banned from further excursions. 

Ali distracts herself by investigating the contemporary case of a young man who fell to his death after being told by a charismatic psychic that he could fly. Prepared to find a fraud, Ali is unnerved when the psychic, Barry Power, seems to convey a message from Jones. And Ali already knows that she'll return to the 1850s... though she doesn't expect it to happen when she's trying to go back just a few minutes to close the cat flap and prevent her beloved kitty from escaping. 

This excursion was less harrowing than the first, although I was anxious about Terry the cat. (Naturally he has landed on his feet.) And there are hints of the directions the series might go: the connections between the members of the Cold Case Unit, Ali's romantic entanglement, the collective unconsciousness, Jones' new life. I remain intrigued. 

Read because: I enjoyed The Frozen People, and was eager to discover what happened next...

2026/099: Around the World in 72 Days — Nellie Bly

"It is impossible for you to do it... In the first place you are a woman and would need a protector, and even if it were possible for you to travel alone you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you in making rapid changes. Besides you speak nothing but English, so there is no use talking about it; no one but a man can do this."
"Very well," I said angrily, "Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him." [chapter 1]

Inspired by Jules Verne's novel (and desperate to write about something interesting), New York World reporter Nellie Bly suggested to her editor in 1888 that she might attempt to recreate the fictional journey of Phineas Fogg. (Her editor's initial reaction is quoted at the top of this review.)

Bly's only luggage was a single bag: she'd commissioned a lightweight dress, but refused several society invitations on her travels due to lack of the proper attire. She sailed to England, then took the boat train to France, where she met Jules Verne himself; then another train to Brindisi, a ship through the Suez Canal, a stay in Ceylon: then Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, a Pacific crossing, and a breakneck railway journey on a specially-commissioned train -- greeted everywhere by cheering crowds -- from San Francisco to New York. 

Her account is generally witty and gossipy, poking mostly-gentle fun at fellow travellers. Obviously, it's also packed with period-typical racism and some old-fashioned attitudes. Occasionally she encounters an importunate gentleman, who she dismisses with charm. She's quite rude about British trains, but who isn't? And she does go into a little too much detail about Japanese executions.

And she leaves a lot out. In Hong Kong she's told of a contender in the 'race', another reporter who has set out to beat Bly's time. "I will not race. If someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that is their concern," she declares. And we never hear anything more about the competition -- or Elizabeth Bisland, who travelled in the opposite direction (setting out across the Pacific, returning across the Atlantic) and made the trip in 78 days. 

I would have liked more about the mundane problems -- did she wish she'd packed more clothes? what were the sanitary facilities like? did she like any of those importunate men? -- but nevertheless this was a fascinating account of travel and travellers in the 1880s.

The Librivox audiobook, which is in the public domain, was excellently narrated by Mary Reagan, whose voice suited Bly's light tone very nicely. There's a good summary here, which also includes context lacking from Bly's sometimes-breathless account.

Elizabeth Bisland's memoir of her trip is also available as a public-domain audiobook.

Read because: it fills two challenge prompts -- non-fiction published before I was born, and a work written in the nineteenth century. Bly's journey took place in 1889, and her account of it was published in 1890.

2026/098: The Frozen People — Elly Griffiths

‘Whatever you do, don’t trust Dickens.’ [loc. 696]

Ali Dawson is fifty years old, with fire-engine red hair and a son who's working as a special advisor to Isaac Templeton, a Tory MP. Ali herself works for the Cold Case Unit -- 'so cold they're frozen' -- which uses a top-secret time-travel device to investigate crimes.

Ali's first experience of time travel, in the first weeks of Covid lockdowns, went smoothly: she and her companion travelled back a single week, weren't visible to those around them, and returned to their present once they'd worked out that they had to stand exactly in the spot they'd arrived. Sent back to 1850s London to clear the name of Isaac Templeton's ancestor, things fall out rather differently.

There was a lot to like here: Ali's discoveries about Cain Templeton, presumed murderer, and the Collectors' Club of which he's a member; Jones (a.k.a Serafina Pellegrini), the brilliant Italian physicist who developed the time travel device; the subplot involving Finn; Ali's Siamese cat Terry (even though I hope the description of him as 'sleek teal' is a misprint). As long as I didn't think too hard about the time travel -- and the likelihood of it being used to solve crimes, rather than for military or criminal purposes -- my disbelief stayed manageable. And there's enough of a cliffhanger that I went straight on to the second in the series...

Read because: I'm a big fan of Griffiths' Ruth Galloway mysteries, and had bought this some time ago... then the second in the series showed up as a Daily Deal, and friends waxed enthusiastic about this first volume. After reading, it fitted nicely into a challenge prompt -- 'suspension of disbelief'!

2026/097: The Bookshop Woman — Nanako Hanada (translated by Catriona Anderson)

...you couldn’t recommend a book to someone if you didn’t know them, not really. And you couldn’t recommend a book if you didn’t know it well yourself. And moreover, you couldn’t recommend a book without a good reason. You had to want that person to read it, because you’d thought about what that specific book would mean to them. [loc. 614]

A short sweet novel about a woman who's just separated from her husband and feels alienated from her work as the manager of an alternative bookshop. Wanting to meet new people -- friends at least as much as potential partners -- she signs up for a site called Perfect Strangers, which enables 30-minute meetings between strangers (perfect or not). Her USP is her ability to recommend 'the book that's perfect for you'.

She meets the usual assortment of men trying to impress her into bed, but she also meets people who become close friends, people who change her life and people whose lives she changes. She's always viewed herself as socially inept, but she has the knack of asking the right questions and persuading the strangers she meets to reveal their own hopes and fears. And she begins to realise how judgmental she is -- how judgmental everyone is -- with the assumptions they make about people they don't know.

I hadn't realised this was biographical, but apparently Hanada did carry out this experiment as a way of reinventing, or revitalising, her life: the book was a huge hit in Japan, with its themes of urban loneliness and the pressures of work. I liked the insights into Japanese dating and socialising, and the narrator's gradual rediscovery of hope and joy. And her book recommendations fascinated me: there's a bibliography (is that the right word when it's not reference material but recommendations?) though the translator has helpfully indicated that many of the books are unavailable in English translation.

Read because: there was a challenge prompt for a book that 'revolves around a bookstore, library, or museum': also recommended by a friend.

Maybe, just maybe, the day will come when one person picks up this book of mine and recommends it to someone else. It could be the start of an infinite loop … Well, sort of. The story would be circulating, anyway – and that’s pretty incredible. In fact, I can’t think of anything more wonderful. [loc. 2307]

2026/096: I May Be Some Time — Francis Spufford

Romantic vocabulary, and Romantic hopes and horrors, remained important ways of negotiating the perceptual maze of the polar regions. They helped; they answered to the experience of light and motion, dark and stillness. They described the shock of finding nature other than you thought it was. [p. 93]

Recently the subtitle has changed to 'The Story Behind the Antarctic Tragedy of Captain Scott', but I prefer the original, which is much more accurate: 'Ice and the English Imagination'.

Spufford's first book is a social and cultural history of the great age of British polar exploration, from the Admiralty's push for Arctic expeditions after the Napoleonic Wars to the Edwardian explorations of Scott and Shackleton. He explores the Romantic notion of the sublime, the attitudes of the women left behind, and -- with compassion -- the vainglorious dreams and arrogant incompetence of the explorers themselves.

There is a vast amount in this book, and I read it very slowly, enjoying the cadences of Spufford's prose, his gentle mockery of Victorian ideas and ideals, and his clarity. The final chapter of the book, a fictionalised account of Scott's solitary death, moved me to tears but also exasperated me: as Spufford suggests, there's a sense of 'a fatalism so profound it became a kind of violence, a spiteful refusal to look out for themselves' (p. 346). Scott had opium tablets but did not take them to ease his passing. Instead, only 12 miles from the nearest camp, he lay with his dead companions and died in agony.

Spufford also explores perceptions of the Inuit ('Eskimos') and the ways in which their existence complicated the narratives of exploration: the Arctic was not, after all, pristine and empty, and some people did know how to survive there. Not, of course, that a British explorer would take advice from the locals... And he writes about the divisions of social class on board pole-bound ships: "the tasks [the officers] do on board are so far beneath their class’s roster of possible destinies that doing them does not feel like any conceivable backward step, it feels like a holiday" (p. 302). Polar exploration, and the myths around it, had a vast influence on everyday culture. For instance, I learnt that 'north', previously slang for 'clever', came to mean 'strong' in terms of drinks. 'Too far north', once slang for 'too clever by half', came to mean 'desperately, incapably drunk – ... hopelessly lost up there in the ultima Thule of booze.' (p. 237).

It’s too big, too silent, too cold. It’s all too much. ‘Coo-ee!’ shouts Ponting. Pause. Moonstruck immensity. ‘Coo-ee!’ replies the Barne Glacier. A perfect echo! [p. 326]

Read because: it's been on my wishlist for ages, and I have a long-standing interest in Arctic and Antarctic exploration. This was my bedtime read for well over a month: the cadences of Spufford's prose, and the lengthy excerpts from Victorian accounts of expeditions, were very soothing.

2026/095: The Gate, the Girl and the Dragon — Grace Lin

“Jin was carved face upward, looking at the sky. Watching people is not in his nature.”
“Watching people is in the nature of all Gongshi,” Ba protested. “Protecting and caring for people is the purpose bestowed on us by the goddess!”
Jin winced… People! There were so many of them, rushing around and squeezed together in their gray, grubby world... Watching people was the most boring thing ever. [loc. 500]

Jin is a Gongshi, a stone spirit dwelling in a statue: he's also a young lion cub who's passionate about zuqiu, a soccer-like game, and is forever being told by his parents that he's irresponsible. One day, in a fit of pique after a match is stopped just as he was about to score the winning goal, he accidentally kicks the Sacred Sphere, a relic of the Goddess, through the magical City Gate and into the human world. Rushing after it, he finds himself trapped in mundanity -- and nobody can come to his rescue, because the Gate is closed.

Jin was exasperating, but I felt very sorry for him, and was glad when he found a friend. Lulu is a human girl who nobody else seems to be able to see. She's very sad. The two also meet a worm who claims to be a dragon. And, in a secondary plotline, there's a sculptor who wishes his two masterworks would come alive: after all, they were carved from stone that used to be a dragon's pillow.

There's lots of excitement and tension, woven through with retellings of Chinese legends and folklore, but the core of the story is Jin growing up a little, learning to empathise and work with others. I understand the print version is beautifully illustrated -- a shame to have missed out on that -- but the audio was clearly and sympathetically read by Mesmi Chu. (Jin's voice did grate occasionally, but that fitted the character!)

Read because: challenge prompt for 'middle-grade novel by non-Caucasian author' -- this was in the Libro.fm sale and looked fascinating -- and it was.

2026/094: Pandemonium — Daryl Gregory

Jungians saw evidence that archetypes had been seizing human minds since prehistory. In America demon sightings had been recorded since the Pilgrims, but most scholars pegged the start of the modern possession epidemic at the first publicized appearance of the Captain on July 12, 1944. [p. 205]

Del Pierce has grown up in a world where demonic possession -- or, to put it in medical terms, the 'possession disorder' -- has changed the course of history. Eisenhower was killed in 1955 by a man possessed by -- sorry, suffering from the Kamikaze strain of the disorder -- and O J Simpson was shot down in the courtroom by a janitor temporarily hosting the strain known as the Truth. Possession can happen to anybody, anywhere, at any point in their life.

It happened to Del when he was five years old: he was possessed by the Hellion, a Dennis-the-Menace type. Because all the demons are types, archetypes: they have a single story that defines them, and they act it out. Del, though, is starting to wonder if his demon ever left. 

With the help of his brother Lew, and exorcist Mother Mariette (real name Siobhan O'Connell, a cigarette-smoking skinhead nun who's highly reminiscent of Sinead O'Connor), Del attempts to discover the history and origin of the demons. Along the way he meets Philip K Dick (and the demon Valis), and is pursued by the Human League -- no, not that Human League, but an organisation that has interpreted Van Vogt's Slan as a manual for how to rid humanity of demons.

It's a wild ride with lots of nods to genre and a surprisingly poignant denouement. Del's first-person narration made it feel breathless and fast-paced, and this was a quick read for me, which probably helped to keep my disbelief suspended. Then the questions bubbled up. When is this set? (It feels like early 2000s.) Presumably the whole world is affected? (Who knows. We only see America.) Del may have discovered the source of his demon and a few others, but what about the other ninety-odd? And isn't that finale really quite horrible for his family? 

I did enjoy the reading experience, though, despite not finding the characters either likeable or relatable. And I note it's Gregory's first novel (though he's written award-winning short fiction): I will keep an eye out for his later novels.

Read because: a random pick from my TBR, for a change. No challenge, no book club, probably recommended by someone online at some point.

2026/093: When There are Wolves Again — E J Swift

You want to believe the tide is turning. You want to believe you will die in a better world than you were born in. [loc. 2070]

A hopeful novel about the future of the UK, the ecology, and the climate crisis (yes, really!), beginning in 2020 and ending in 2070. It follows the lives of two women: Lucy Gillard, whose ecological awakening comes when she's sent to stay with her grandparents during Covid, and Hester Moore, whose story starts in Chornobyl, where she's making a documentary about a team of vets who care for the abandoned dogs. 

Lucy and Hester do eventually meet, but their paths are very different. Lucy is inspired by Greta Thunberg, becomes an activist, and helps set up an ecological form of peace camp. Hester, who does not get along with people but loves her dogs, wins awards for her documentaries and tries not to let her personal issues get in front of the camera.

There is a lot in this novel, and probably a lot that will not come true. Which is not to say it's wishful thinking: Swift's future seems firmly grounded in the present (or the recent past), though her fascist Albion party are less popular than Reform seem to be... There are other horrors. The Endling Market, where collectors vie to own the last survivor of a species (there are online forums where they discuss the least damaging ways of killing a bird of animal); heat domes that devastate western Europe; extinctions, NIMBYs, bird flus... But there is also positive change. The dissolution of the US; a moon habitat (not American); Net Zero; and an astonishing bequest.

I especially liked that this novel doesn't attempt easy answers. It gives both sides of the argument about rewilding schemes; it balances the vast expense of space missions against their role as a beacon of hope. And there is a great deal of kindness -- and respect -- from humans to other humans, from humans to animals and birds.

Also really refreshing to read a novel where there are no romantic subplots. There are male characters (I liked Lucy's grandfather, and could relate to Hester's brother: and Jerome is proof that people do change) but they're not the focus of the female characters' lives. And When There Are Wolves Again is realistic about the people -- like Lucy's parents -- who don't believe in climate change, don't think the ecology is important, cling to their old habits even when those habits become deeply unfashionable.

This has prompted me to push Isabella Tree's Wilding up my TBR, and to visit a couple of rewilding sites. And to be slightly more hopeful than I've been in recent years.

you think about what you said to the farmer: is it about autonomy? And what he said in return: it’s about respect. It must be possible to have both. To nurture a space of one’s own in the knowledge that this too is transitory, communal. Shared between humans and non-human animals. There were languages for this, once. There were words, before the conceit of ownership consumed everything else. [loc. 2170]

Read because: The heat, the heat! I knew this was a novel about the climate catastrophe, so it felt like perfect reading in the June 2026 UK heatwave. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. I dunno, you wait ages for a great SF novel and then read two in the same week...

2026/092: The Last Hawk — Elizabeth Wein

Emil had told me to get out. But like a pilot in a damaged plane, I had to keep flying blindly before I was able to land. [loc. 784]

Ingrid Hartman has been deemed 'a disgrace to Germany' because of her stammer, and her failure to greet an SS officer with 'Heil Hitler'. Her widowed father urges her to get a job at the gliding school where she helps out: Ingrid, at seventeen, is already one of the best glider pilots there. The plan keeps her out of the way, and her friend Emil, a Luftwaffe pilot, recommends her as assistant to test pilot Hanna Reitsch. 

Hanna is doing a series of air shows to inspire German youth -- and she has an ambitious plan to create a 'Leonidas Squadron' of suicide pilots. (“I am volunteering as a pilot for the manned glider bomb,” read the pledge... “I fully understand that this mission will end in my death.” [loc. 660]). Ingrid's loyalty to Hanna is shaken, especially when she hears about conditions inside the factories where the 'manned bombs' are being built. But Hanna won't believe the stories...

A short but vivid novel, with lots of period detail (as I've learned to expect from Wein): fake coffee made from acorns and barley, Ingrid's devotion to Saint-Exupery's Wind, Sand and Stars, the aviator chocolate (Scho-ka-cola, with cola and caffeine) that Emil gives Ingrid. (I have now tried this: it's ... invigorating.) Wein's note at the end details her research -- she based Emil on the pilot who shot down Saint-Exupery! -- and also gives resources and reassurance for stutterers.

Read because: I rate Wein very highly as an author, and this was the last of her books aimed at less-confident readers (after White Eagles and Firebird, which I 'read' as an audiobook) that I hadn't read. It initially didn't seem that The Last Hawk had as much weight as the other two novels, but I think that's simply because it has neither personal tragedy nor a twisty revelation.

2026/091: Baba Yaga Laid an Egg — Dubravka Ugrešić

As we grow older, we weep less and less. It takes energy to weep. In old age neither the lungs, nor the heart, nor the tear ducts, nor the muscles have the strength for great misery. Age is a kind of natural sedative, perhaps because age itself is a misfortune. [loc. 2704]

A book of three halves. Part One ('Go There, I Know not Where – and Bring Me Back a Thing I Lack'), set mostly in Zagreb, is the first-person narrative of someone who might be the author, coping with her own ageing and with her widowed mother's dementia (and with their relationship). There's a young female folklore student who seems determined to make the narrator into a mother figure, too. This is the most realistic and thoughtful section of Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, dealing honestly with the indignities of old age and the ways in which the self remains unchanged.

Part Two ('Ask Me No Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies') deals with the visit of three old ladies to a 'wellness spa' in Czechoslovakia. The three have lived through the worst of Yugoslavian history (one has spent time in prison) and each has her story to tell. They're contrasted with three men: a masseur with a permanent erection, a doctor who seeks the secret of immortality, and the cynical owner of the spa.

And the third part ('If You Know Too Much, You Grow Old Too Soon') is presented as a 'Baba Yaga for Beginners', the author being the folklore student from Part 1. Her name is Aba Babay... Lots of mythology, some of it rather reductive and some of it absurdly Freudian: old women, it turns out, are monsters all over the world (though some are kind to the deserving, or to children). 

I cannot say I engaged with this novel, though I did enjoy the triumphs of the three crones in Part 2, and I admire the craft of Part 1. It's a sobering reflection on ageing (though I do not feel I will ever be as old as the crones, if I live to be a hundred: my life has been easier).

Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać, Celia Hawkesworth and Mark Thompson, who between them have (according to the Internet) managed to render Ugrešić's wordplay into English without losing the humour.

Read because: I'd enjoyed other volumes in the Canongate Myth series (for instance, Where Three Roads Meet, The Penelopiad, Ragnarok ) -- when I discovered that this was set in Croatia and written by a Croatian author, it fitted a prompt in 'The Storygraph Reads The World Challenge' nicely.

2026/090: The End of Everything — M John Harrison

Several [fallen trees] could be found in a single glade, many with younger trees growing from the earth caked in their ripped-up root balls, so that it looked as though a different species was springing out of the carcass of the original. Birch from beech, Marnie thought. Holly from ash. A sense of horror overcame her. [50%]

The setting is the Kent coast, some years after what may be an alien invasion by the iGhetti. Humans are waging an ineffectual war against the invaders, who are rumoured to originate from the astral plane; who manifest as 'tall writhing bursts of light'; who may not have noticed that humans even exist. There are three protagonists. Richard Tennent is a mudlark who, at the beginning of the novel, has just found an iGhetti artefact in the surf. Marnie, his aunt, lives near the beach, in the shadow of the wing of a crashed aeroplane, and may be suffering dementia. Hampson, to whom Tennent tries to sell the artefact, is a collector who obsessively chronicles his experiments with similar artefacts. (If I add that the artefact is humanoid and apparently sentient -- and the most likeable character in the novel -- you can probably imagine some of the more horrific consequences.)

But there is a great deal more than inhumanity in this novel. Europe, and possibly the rest of the world, has vanished ('How do you misplace a continent?' Marnie writes on a protest-adjacent sign) but people still queue to board ships and head out in the hope of something new. This future England (and it's a very English novel, with old men dreaming of Agincourt and the Battle of Britain) is full of people who have adjusted, not entirely without complaint, to life in the ruins, where 'bad patches' can produce timelooped experiences or affectless states of mind. The infrastructure has collapsed, and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. And because nobody in the novel understands what is happening, neither do we -- though it's possible to piece together an extremely unsettling version of the narrative.

Intrigued by a review which mentioned the iGhetti's appearance in an earlier short story, I found 'The Crisis', which contains some passages very similar to passages in The End of Everything, though may be a different iteration of the same scenario.

Excellently read by Russ Bain: I highly recommend the audiobook, though am not wholly convinced by the voice he uses for Marnie.

Read because: I have enjoyed many (though not all) of Harrison's previous novels, and the mudlarking aspect of this work intrigued me. And now I am on my third listen...

...we pretended our scientific epistemy was still serviceable... the apocalypse seemed to withhold itself, quicky becoming just another historical continuity. That is to say, we got used to it. [40%]

2026/089: The Most Secret Memory of Men — Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

...just because you’re wounded doesn’t mean you have to write about it. It doesn’t even mean you have to consider writing about it. I won’t bother bringing up ability. Time heals? Wrong; it kills. It kills the illusion that our wounds are unique. They’re not. No wound is unique. Nothing human is unique. Everything becomes terribly banal over time. There’s the conundrum; but somewhere in there, literature has a chance to emerge.

Translated by Lara Vergnaud, and read by multiple narrators: Ayesha Antoine, Chris Thompson, Kyle Gabbidon, Masimba Ushe, Musu-kulla Massaquoi and Nile Faure-Bryan. (Not all the female-viewpoint chapters are read by women.)

It's a novel 'about' a lost Senegalese author, T C Elimane, and his infamous novel The Labyrinth of Inhumanity -- at first lauded by the French literary establishment as the work of 'a Negro Rimbaud', and later reviled as plagiarism. (This aspect of the novel mirrors the career of Malian author Yambo Ouologuem.) And it's also 'about' the narrator, another young Senegalese writer named Diégane Latyr Faye, living in Paris and hanging out with other African writers, bemoaning the lack of success of his own first novel, which sold 79 copies.

 One day he encounters another compatriot, the outrageous author Siga D, who lends him her copy of The Labyrinth of Inhumanity and tells him to visit her when he's read it. He is rivetted by Elimane's prose and desperate to learn more about the man -- and his subsequent conversations with Siga D (not to mention a visit home) help him to unravel the mystery of the author's disappearance. Via Argentina, wartime Paris, Senegal and Amsterdam, Elimane's legacy is discoverable.

I found parts of this novel hard going: for instance, there is a deeply unsettling scene featuring the depredations of soldiers in wartime. And Faye's sex life did not enthrall me. But the magic realism, the long feuds and deceptions of families, the ways in which lives are shaped by wars, racism, religion, colonialism... those aspects of the novel kept me listening. Faye is sometimes ridiculous, sometimes pompous, and sometimes very relatable: and I appreciated his growth over the course of The Most Secret Memory of Men.

Read because: a challenge prompt for Senegal. Looking for something that fit the prompt, I found this novel -- which won the Prix Goncourt, the first win by a sub-Saharan author -- and was intrigued by the sample chapters. Unlike some books I've read purely to fulfil a prompt, I have no regrets about having read this.

2026/088: The Widows' Guide to Murder — Amanda Ashby

... up until this week she’d never found a dead body, adopted a stray cat or drunk Drambuie on a Thursday night. [p. 72]

Ginny Cole is sixty years old and recently widowed. She's moved from Bristol to the village of Little Shaw to make a fresh start -- though she isn't sure she quite knows how to do that. And she's found a job as a library assistant, working for an unpleasant woman named Louisa.

On her second day at the library, she finds Louisa dead: murdered, it transpires. (Ginny used to work as a receptionist at her husband's surgery: she knows the signs of poisoning.) Then she's befriended by a trio of other widows -- Hen, Tuppence and JM -- who want to investigate the death... not least because Hen's daughter Alison is a suspect. And Ginny also finds herself adopted by a black cat whom she names Edgar.

Sufficient red herrings to keep me guessing, a lesbian character, a kitty, some distinct derring-do, and a cast of vividly-drawn characters: this was the perfect read for a summer's afternoon. I may even read the other books in the series...

Read because: I wanted a light, 'cosy' read, and the Something Bookish reading challenge prompted 'a book with widow or widows in the title': this one popped up on Amazon Prime.

2026/087: 1177 BC: A Graphic History of the Year Civilisation Collapsed — Eric H Cline & Glynnis Fawkes

A gorgeously illustrated update to Cline's original 1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, featuring Cline and Fawkes as narrators with a modern viewpoint (for archaeological discoveries et cetera), as well as a pair of fictional characters -- Pel, of the Sea Peoples, and Shesha, an Egyptian scribe. 

Together Pel and Shesha time-travel through the Bronze Age, the centuries leading up to the collapse: and they travel physically too, from Amenhotep’s palace to the city of Hattusa via shipwrecks, battles and quayside bartering. Their interactions help to humanise the stories of the people affected by the collapse: migrants (with a comparison to Syrian refugees), merchants (whose luxury goods are no longer obtainable), families listening to grandfather's stories about the good old days...

The book has been updated with recent archaeological discoveries, and there's more emphasis on the probable mega-drought that contributed to the collapse. The format lends itself to maps and images, which was extremely helpful (the original book, read on Kindle, was sometimes difficult to follow because the maps were separate from the text), and though it's dense with facts, names, and theories, there is also plenty of humour. Fantastic, and highly recommended. 

Read because: I was fascinated by the original version (1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed) and happened upon this marvellously illustrated, updated version. Shamefully I bought it as a gift for someone else before purchasing it for, and reading it, myself!

2026/086: Glyph — Ali Smith

Whoever you thought you weren’t speaking to must’ve heard you after all. [loc. 607]

This is indeed connected to Gliff, but not in the way I think I expected. The roughly contemporary setting allows the characters -- Petra, her estranged younger sister Patricia ('Patch'), and Patricia's adopted daughter Billie -- to literally and figuratively protest the war in Gaza, and to tie society's lack of empathy to the Covid pandemic. But there are parallels with other wars: with the First World War, and a story about a man leading a blind horse out of the trenches; and with the Second, and a story about a person being flattened to two dimensions by a tank convoy.

This second story prompts Petra and Patch, as children, to invent (and in Petra's case to 'speak to') a ghost they call Glyph, so named because the only sound he can make -- 'partly like a cough, partly like someone breathing out very suddenly' -- sounds like 'glyph'. But Glyph is not the only ghost in the novel: one night Petra's bedroom is trashed by what seems to be the ghost of a blind horse...

The seeds of Gliff are being sown in this world. When Patricia tells Billie about Glyph, the girl responds with 'like the word at the start of the weedkiller?' and talks about glyphosphate -- the cause of the ecocide underlying Gliff's dystopian future. 

But the most blatant connection is the strangest: the novel Gliff exists in the world of Glyph, and all three women have read it. Petra says it's 'a bit too dark for me. A bit too clever-clever, a bit too on the nose politically, for a novel. I’d have preferred a bit more world building. And what’s with all that horse stuff? It could’ve been a bit more sci-fi.' Patricia, who sent it to Petra, thinks it's 'rather good about siblings'. Billie, who read it first, says 'What if nobody knows what happened to them? ...And what if that’s the thing that makes you care?'

I'm not sure that the connections in the other direction are as effective: that Glyph is a story 'hidden in' Gliff. I found it at once more relatable and more ordinary.

Read because: I recently read Gliff, and was hoping this paired novel would shed further light on it. Yes and no. But Ali Smith's prose is always a delight.

2026/085: The Cat and The Masked Woman — Colette (translated by Helen Constantine)

Though Saha, like a human, was watching Camille leave, Alain was sprawling in the chair, his upturned palm like a paw, skillfully playing with the first green prickly conkers of August. [final line of The Cat]

The Cat (original French title La Chatte, feminising the masculine noun) is a short novel set in 1920s Paris. It opens with Alain about to marry his childhood friend, the gorgeous Camille. Alain's pleasure in her company is tempered by his reluctance to leave his childhood home: the servants he's known all his life, his mother's luxuriant garden, and especially his cat Saha. The plan is for Alain and Camille to move into a nearby property, but it's not yet finished: instead, after the wedding, they stay at a friend's chic high-rise apartment in Paris. Meanwhile, Saha pines, and Alain soon decides to bring her to the apartment. Camille -- who is bourgeois, insensitive and shallow -- becomes increasingly jealous of Saha, and tries to kill her. Saha survives, Alain realises what's happened, and the marriage is over.

It's effectively a love triangle, except that one of the contenders for Alain's affection is a cat. Colette doesn't anthropomorphise Saha, or gild her essentially animal nature (litter trays are mentioned): but Saha is as much a character as Camille, and a more likeable one. The critical interpretation seems to be that Saha symbolises Alain's childhood, which he doesn't want to let go of. I am perfectly happy to take the novel as literal: I would absolutely leave a partner who tried to murder my cat.

The Masked Woman is a series of vignettes and short stories about men and women dealing with love. The stories focus on the moments that change a life, from the apprehension of a murderer to a woman who apparently revels in living alone, yet is full of regrets. The writing is perceptive, dwelling on little details (the more mundane the better) and evoking French life between the wars.

Narrated by Machteld van der Gaag, who's Dutch but grew up in Paris: her pronunciation of French names was really evocative, and she injects just the right amount of emotion into the prose.

Read because: 'Storygraph Reads the World' challenge, 'France': and I read, or attempted to read, La Chatte as a teenager, an optimistic gift from a French cousin: I wanted to see how much I remembered ... and discovered how much I had not understood.