Some favorite books I recommend
I thought I’d do a post about some books I’d like to recommend. It’s a mix of new and old, e-books and printed books and several different genres.
E-books (that I’d love to buy in print):
Wattpad books:
* Kidnapping in Kaua’i by Ava Easter (mystery/fantasy),
* Feyland: The First Adventure, Feyland: The Dark Realm, Feyland: The Bright Court by Anthea Sharp (fantasy)
From other sites, such as Smashwords and Amazon:
* The Backworlds by M Pax (Science fiction)
* The Rune House by L J Hutton (fantasy)
* Housewife with a Halflife by A B Wells (fantasy)
* Cut Crop and Die by Joanna Campbell Slan (scrapbook mystery)
* The Night Also Rises by C B McCullough (SF)
* Fatal Boarding and Deep Crossing by E R Mason (SF)
* Defying Fate by D L Morrese (fantasy/science fiction)
* Bonds of Fire by Sophie Duncan (fantasy slash romance)
* The Glass Wall, Behind the Mirror by Madison Adler/Carmen Caine
Print books:
Mysteries:
* Eliot Pattison’s Tibet mysteries
* Barbara Nadel’s Turkey mysteries
* Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum comic mysteries
* Susan Russo Anderson’s historic mysteries set in Sicily (one of them only available as e-book)
* Jean François Parot’s French historic mysteries (in French and English, maybe other languages)
* Michael Innes’ mysteries
* Denise Mina’s Garnet Hill trilogy
Fantasy:
* Shadowbridge, Lord Tophet by Gregory Frost
* the Old Kingdom series about Sabriel by Garth Nix
* The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams
* The Blue Girl, Dreams Underfoot by Charles De Lint
* Kelly McCullough: science/tech/fantasy series starting with Webmage
* Eccentric Circles by Rebecca Lickiss
* The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop
* Diana Wynne Jones’ books (all of them)
* Ursula K LeGuin’s Earthsea series
* Frances Hardinge’s books, especially The Lost Conspiracy (Gullstruck Island) and Well Witched (Verdigris Deep)
YA:
* Tattoo the Awakening by Toni Leland
Historic romances
* Penelope by Anya Wylde (comedy)
* Kitty by Catherine Chapman
* The Only Gold by Tamara Allen (slash)
Science Fiction:
* Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, Hespira by Matthew Hughes (sort of science fiction/fantasy)
* To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (time travel story)
* The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K LeGuin
This is really a post about books, but I can’t resist adding some of my current favorite tv series:
Endevour, Grantchester – historic cop series
Shetland, Fortitude – cop series in rather unusual settings
The Glass Wall by Madison Adler/Carmen Caine
For some reason, I neglected to review a number of ebooks that I downloaded for free from Amazon, right after I read them. I’m trying to remedy that now.
Superficially, this book, Beyond the Glass Wall (The Glass Wall), book one in a series of YA urban fantasy books, sounds like any recent YA fantasy book. If I’d read the blurb I probably wouldn’t have bothered reading it. But my list of Kindle freebies is so long and from my view on my Kindle I can’t see what the book is about, just the title. So I did start reading it and I quickly realized that I liked it.
The books starts with the main character, 17-year-old Sydney, moving in with a new foster family. She’s been through this a lot so she’s not all that bothered. However, the family she comes to is very nice and she slowly finds herself warming up to them. Almost right away, she spots a very good-looking guy moving into a house nearby. Sydney soon finds out that he’s far more than just a handsome stranger.
It appears Rafael, the new guy, has superhuman powers, which leads Sydney to suspect he might be some sort of alien, which isn’t quite the case. It takes Sydney a long time to find out exactly what he is. In the meantime, she also meets another extremely handsome guy, Jareth, who is a rock star. He has a mysterious connection to Rafael, though not really a friendly one.
I can’t seem to give this book justice. It still sounds like a cliche. Just take my word for it, this one is really good. I finished it in just a few days, because I wanted to know more about Rafael and Jareth.
I suppose partly it’s because it’s so easy to see everything through Sydney’s eyes. I liked the way she slowly realized that her foster family was different from earlier ones, who she liked, but never felt completely connected to. Right from the start the parents treat her as their own child. Their daughter takes a little longer to connect with Sydney, but she too, comes to view her as a close family member. This book is the first in a series of four. There’s also a prequel, Behind the Mirror, a short story, that is available for free download on Amazon.
Some new fandoms
I thought I’d mention some of my ‘new’ fandoms – not necessarily ones I’ll write fic in, but still fandoms I quite enjoy one way or another. Later I’ll probably review some or most of these.
Here is the list:
Mr Selfridge
Death in Paradise
Bletchley Circle
(VikingsHill)
Sherlock
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries
VikingsHill is a Swedish YA serial with an intriguing plot, but annoyingly, it’s only five (1) minutes long, which includes a brief preview of next week’s episode. It’s about a teenaged girl who moves to a new residential area that I find a little creepy. All the houses are exactly the same and the area seems to be more or less dead at all times. You only see the school kids going to and from school. The new girl has a mysterious past and things start getting more mysterious her first day in school. Everyone stares at her and whisper behind her back. Eventually, someone tells her that there was a girl who looked exactly like her who disappeared five months earlier. She gets to know some people and tries to figure out some of the mystery, but no one seems to be exactly who they seem to be and she doesn’t know who to trust. It’s definitely not the people who show up wearing masks and stay around for a while to stare at her. This is a web only series. I like that, but most series are available online now, which is very convenient for me. I just don’t seem to be able to turn on the tv (or rather the computer) at the right time. 😉 Here is an image from the series. You won’t be able to watch the episode but maybe you’ll be able to see the pic.
Since I’m sure everyone knows what Sherlock is I’ll just mention that I really enjoyed the last episode of the third season. I wasn’t sure I would, but I did.
In case you’re not familiar with the series, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is a quite interesting Australian mystery series about a woman who solves mysteries in 1920’s Melbourne, with the help of her maid Dot, two cops, two taxi drivers, and a female doctor. Phryne Fisher has an interesting background, some of it quite dark, but now she is living it up, partying and chasing men, when she’s not out solving mysteries and making sure victims of crime get justice. She’s also an early feminist.
I imagine most of my readers are familiar with the rest of these series, but in case you’re not, I’ll just say a few words about them.
Mr Selfridge is a historic series about the man who founded the department store Selfridges. In season 2 the producers seem to have given up on trying to follow the real Mr Selfridge’s life, simply because comparatively little is known about him. I think that’s an improvement. This season seems to be even better than the first one.
Death in Paradise is, not surprisingly, a cop series, with a bit of comedy. It’s set in a tropical island. There’s also a really hot cop – Fidel Best (played by Gary Carr, known from Downton Abbey) – but I kind of like the other cops too.
Bletchley Circle is about a group of women who worked at Bletchley Park during the war. They are brilliant at cracking codes. Now they’re having trouble adapting to live in postwar England and the enforced inactivity, so they’ve turned to solving murders.
It’s no coincidence that half of these series are historic. I really love the genre. (I also love science fiction, but there seems to be little of that on Swedish tv. Not that I watch much of our tv. Netflix has come in very handy.)
I’d say Bletchley Circle is my favorite, though I know I’ll never write any fic about it. Actually, I like/have liked all of these series.
