What I'm Reading This Week (August 14)

 Last week worked out pretty well for me mainly because the library didn’t notify me to come in and pick up any held books. That's about to change this week, however, because I got an email yesterday saying that five books are now being held and another is "in transit." At least two of those have long lines behind me, so they will have to be given top priority when I pick them up on Wednesday (on the way home from a dreaded dental appointment).

Looking back, I see that I finished three of the six books I began the week with, abandoned another, and am still reading the other two. So this is what's planned for the week ahead:

I started this one mid-week and I'm about 200 pages into it now. It's Deborah Crombie's nineteenth Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James novel, and I'm really getting into the story now. A Killing of Innocents is about a young doctor who is knifed to death while walking across London's Russell Square at the end of a rainy day. The victim is dead before she hits the ground but only one little boy actually saw the murder take place. What is feared to be a random killing turns out to be something very different.

I love the writing of Paulette Jiles, but I was having a little trouble warming up to her soon-to-be published novel Chenneville until near its midpoint. Then something clicked for me, and now I find myself racing through the second half of this story about a man seeking vengeance for the murder of several members of his family. I had to chuckle this morning when I found that one of the most despicable characters in the book happens to share my very own surname. Jiles is a Texas writer so I wonder if she's familiar with the little town not too terribly far from where she lives that goes by the same name. It's not a common name, so I'd love to ask her about it one day. 

Sandra Dallas writes wonderful historical fiction about the American northwest, and Where Coyotes Howl is another good one. It tells the story of a young school teacher who takes a job offer in a tiny Wyoming community in 1916. She almost immediately catches the eye of a young cowboy there and barely finishes the school year before she finds herself married and living own a small ranch in the middle of nowhere. Now she has to adapt to an entirely new and unexpected lifestyle if she is to survive.

Believe it or not, the cover of Satan Is Real is pretty much a copy of a gospel music album released by The Louvin Brothers in 1959. It is actually the biography of the brothers written by Charlie Louvin and Benjamin Whitmer in 2012. I've been meaning to read this one for several years but have just now gotten around to it. It's one of those memoirs that was probably pulled together from taped interviews and thoughts of the author, and it reads that way. Some of the language used in the narrative is almost shocking based on the standards of 2023 even though this book is only eleven years old. Even so, I am finding that it makes for a fascinating read.

Covid-19 was a piece of cake compared to the Shark Flu that springs from Iceland's melting permafrost one October. By December everything around the world has stopped, and the lucky survivors are just trying to hang on. As one character puts it, "it is no longer relevant whether the application of twenty-first century medical science was the equal of the virus because we no longer lived in the twenty-first century." The flu spreads so quickly because no one is willing to suffer the restrictions experienced during the first two years of the covid pandemic again so soon...so they refuse to play the game. 

I haven't started this one yet, so I'll rely on the jacket for some information. Robie is the only passenger on a cargo flight; she's acquainted with the pilot but does not know anything about the co-pilot. When the plane suffers engine failure, Robie finds herself fighting for her life in the water until the co-pilot pulls her onto a life raft. They have no water, and their only food is a single bag of Skittles candy. There is an island ahead but no one knows where they are..."and that's when the real terror begins."

I'm hoping for another good reading week, and I'm pleased with all of the ones I’ve mentioned, plus the ones I'll be picking up in a couple of days. That doesn't even account for the stack that's already lined up behind this bunch, so it’s time to get started.