Recent Reads: The Freddy Pilkington-Soames Adventures

Recent Reads: The Freddy Pilkington-Soames Adventures, by Clara Benson – a pretty satisfying period-piece murder mystery series I picked the first book up as a free book on Kobo, and it did its job: I have now read the entire series, and have another book by the same author in another series to start. Our Hero, Freddy Pilkington-Soames, is not as half-witted as his name suggests he might be, but he’s not a serious young man, particularly in the first book in this series, A CASE OF BLACKMAIL IN BELGRAVIA,…

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Recent Reads: Fake Flame

Recent Reads: Fake Flame: very cute. This is a a fake-dating book that has the brass tits to actually examine the trope of fake dating from within it own pages. Our Heroine, an English lit teacher, is being harrassed by her ex who won’t take no for an answer; in an attempt to get rid of him, she ends up almost setting a piano on fire, and Our Hero, a firefighter, arrives on the scene. Sparks, as one might say, ensue. Our Hero ends up offering to be her fake…

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Recent Reads: Species Imperative, Julie E. Czerneda

Along that whole topic of ‘books don’t have shelf lives…’ I’ve been aware of Julie Czerneda’s books since they first came out, and somehow just sort of hadn’t ever gotten around to reading any. I specifically remember the title A Thousand Words for Stranger, which I still think is a great title, and I specifically remember the cover art for the Species Imperative trilogy. Well, the other day, book one, SURVIVAL, was on sale at Kobo, so I thought “yes I should buy this” and I did, and read it,…

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Recent Reads: At First Spite

Recent Reads: AT FIRST SPITE: a complete delight This is a romance I preordered because how could you resist that title, even if you DON’T know the main character ends up living in a spite house (a tiny, tiny house built between other properties, practically unlivable but built out of, you know, spite) between her ex’s house, and, as it turns out, her ex’s horrible older brother’s house? Which you do know, because the back of the book tells you so, so I’m not spoiling anything. :) The heroine, Athena,…

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Recent Reads: The Dark is Rising

I have read THE DARK IS RISING many, many times in my life, far more than I can count (I mean, it’s probably a countable number, but it’s not like I have been counting!). It is, perhaps, not quite my favorite of the sequence (I have a soft spot for GREENWITCH, which was the first of them I read, and which features Jane quite heavily, which, I mean, like, y’know, female protagonist, so…), but I’m fairly willing to concede it’s the best of the series, arguably by a long shot.…

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