What I'm Reading This Week (October 9)

 I feel as if my reading pace slowed down drastically last week, but I still managed to complete three of the four books I started the week reading: Rabbit Hole, Between Them, and The Heron's Cry, despite reading very little in the last two days. I'm also well into the upcoming James Lee Burke short story compilation, Harbor Lights, and I've started a story collection by new-to-me author Eric Puchner. So, I'll be kicking off the new week with these:

I can't imagine a short story collection more James Lee Burke than Harbor Lights. The stories are surprisingly dark, however, even for Burke. There are few winners in the bunch, and if there is a word darker than "noir" to describe the stories, that's the word I'm searching for. A typical James Lee Burke hero is a man who cannot stand to watch powerful people abuse those incapable of defending themselves; it bothers them so much that they willingly put their own lives and futures in jeopardy in order to bring some measure of justice to the bad guys. These stories are filled with crusaders who suffer greatly for their consciences, and the Louisiana bayou/Texas Gulf Coast setting is right up my alley, so I'm really enjoying the book.

Eric Puchner's stories focus on family internals and relationships between friends, and in a different way, it's almost as dark as the Burke collection. The common theme through the first several stories in Last Day on Earth is the fragility of family and friendships, and how easily those relationships can be destroyed or forever altered via carless words or behavior.Some of the stories fit neatly into th science fiction genre, giving them a little twist that is very entertaining and thought provoking.

Proving yet again that I should never actually go inside a library to return a book, I ended up walking away with more books than I returned the day I brought The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra home. I was so taken with the plot, that I immediately wanted to read it. It's about a Mumbai detective who is on his last day of the job, when an intriguing case drops suddenly into his lap. It's also the day that the inspector learns that he's just inherited a baby elephant. I have only read a chapter so far, but I can already tell that I'm going to enjoy Vaseem Khan's writing style. 

In addition, one or two of these will probably be started later this week:

Jane and the Final Mystery is the fifteenth book in Stephanie Barron's Jane-Austen-as-Detective series, and it's going to be the final one because Jane succumbs to illness at the end of this one. I'm doing the series-thing completely backwards with the Jane Austen mysteries because I have not read any of the previous fourteen books in the series, and have heard almost nothing about them. I figure that if I like this one, the other fourteen can easily be read as an extended prequel to it. By the way, the fact that Jane dies in this one is in all the publisher information provided about the book, so that's not a spoiler...seems to be a key element in the book publicity.

I know very little about General Benedict Arnold other than the basic fact that he was a traitor to the country during America's Revolutionary War. I anticipate that Jack Kelly's upcoming book God Save Benedict Arnold is about to fill in the gaps in my knowledge about the man and the illustrious military career had had right up to the moment that he decided to switch sides in the fight. Apparently, he's believed to have been the best combat commander on either side during the Revolutionary war. I'm very curious about this one.

I'll admit that it was the cover that grabbed my attention on Intercessions, but the plot description is certainly the icing on that cake. It's the story of what happens in later life to a woman who experienced a deadly traumatic experience as a young girl on the day that she and a friend on their way to school together were approached on the road by a stranger. Only one of them made it home that day; the other died. Now, the survivor is experiencing tremendous guilt about her behavior and is beginning to doubt her own memories of what really happened to her and her friend.

As usual, I suffer from an abundance of choices, with a large stack of books here patiently waiting for me to give them their chance. Among these are: Suffer Little Children by Freda Hansburg, The Murder Specialist by Bud Clifton, Not Dead Enough by Phillip Thompson, and The Rise by Ian Rankin. And those are just the tip of the TBR iceberg that sits atop my desk today (and every day).