USING GIFT CARDS: Non-Fiction

Now that The Big Day's come and gone, lots of us have some giftcards, or some actual filthy lucre, to spend. There being no better way to spend that haul than on books, here are some reasonably priced options you might not've thought of to get your story needs met. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

QUEEN MOTHER: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore
ASHLEY D. FARMER
Pantheon Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2025

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: From an award-winning historian of radical Black politics comes the definitive biography of Queen Mother Audley Moore—foremother of the Black Nationalism movement and trailblazer in the fight for reparations

In the world of radical Black politics, the name Audley Moore commands unquestioned respect. Across the nine decades of her life, Queen Mother Moore distinguished herself as a leading progenitor of Black Nationalism, the founder of the modern reparations movement, and a mentor to some of America's most influential Black activists from her homes in North Philadelphia and Harlem.

And yet, she is far less remembered than many of her peers and protégés—Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ahmad, to name just a few—and the ephemera of her life are either lost or plundered. In Queen Mother, celebrated writer and historian Ashley D. Farmer restores Moore's faded portrait, delivering the first ever definitive account of her life and enduring legacy.

Deeply researched and richly detailed, Queen Mother is more than just the biography of an American icon. It's a narrative history of 20th-century Black radicalism, told through the lens of the woman whose grit and determination sustained the movement.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Listen to the author on the Smarty Pants podcast!

Black nationalism. Reparations for slavery's ongoing horrors. A long lifetime of refusing to sit down and shut up, refusing to be a good girl, declining to accept partial and insincere and less-than sops and stop-gaps. "Queen Mother" is a very good title for Audley Moore and a good character analysis of her.

It pains me I knew little about her until now, until someone pulled together threads her proteges had deliberately unpicked and appropriated. She was truly unforgivable to the PTB within and without the Civil Rights movement because she was that powerless victim, a woman; yet her every act and every word gave the lie to that characterization. No one anywhere ever comes across less like a victim than Audley Moore.

She got done wrong to all the damn time, but that did not make her a victim...an identity she rejected, along with mainstreaming, assimilation, and capitalism. It's no wonder she was ignored by historians of the movement until now. She is guaranteed to scare, offend, and even radicalize the very kind of white guy who will commit racist violence. Since those guys are already doing it, empowered by the kakistocracy presently in government in the US, along comes Author Farmer to be introduced to Queen Mother Audley Moore as a child; galvanized by her Presence, her affect on those around her, Author Farmer became her biographer in due course. Outrage at not finding any records cache or archive of her life, the biographer took her considerable powers of persuasion and of study to pull back together the deliberately unpicked threads of an incredible life.

If you care at all about why, how, and at what our country needs to look honestly at itself, use some of your holiday pilf to procure this excellent, easy-to-read, necessary to understand book. Rescuing a major force from calculated desuetude is the act of a true apostle of truth.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ENSHITTIFICATION: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
CORY DOCTOROW
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2025

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Explaining the process of the “enshittification” of digital platforms over time and what to do about it.

Cory Doctorow's Enshittification takes a witty yet incisive look at the tech landscape, where platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Google start off great—before they inevitably turn terrible. In this contemporary moment of digital decline, Doctorow explores how tech giants lure users in with convenience and then degrade their services over time, squeezing profit at the cost of user experience. With a mix of sharp humor and deep insight, he unveils the slow creep of "enshittification," turning the online world into a worse place, one algorithm at a time.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Enshittification...it's not just for tech anymore. Popularized by Author Doctorow beginning in 2022, the word appeared online in the teens and identified exactly the capitalist endgame of charging you more and delivering less for it.

The model's simplicity is its strength. It is really down to real, enforced regulation to prevent this appalling greed from costing the users huge sums of money.

As the tech scum were willing to share their stolen good with the regulators, guess what didn't happen. Ever. The current spate of online regulation is hunky-dory by the tech scum because it makes them in an even more powerful position, requiring more and more and more data to be collected...that they can use to surveil you,to extract ever more profit from surveiling you. Ten years ago, I reviewed David Brin's THE TRANSPARENT SOCIETY, his prescient 1999 warning about today's reality: NO PRIVACY only profit.

We weren't listening then, aren't listening to Author Doctorow's blaring klaxon now, and look where it's got us. Right about now is the time to read this book and heed its warning.

Please.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

READ THIS WHEN THINGS FALL APART: Letters to Activists in Crisis
KELLY HAYES (Editor)
AK Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.00 all editions, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the co-author of Let This Radicalize You, a collection of letters to inspire activists to continue the fight

Organizers are well seasoned in defeat. We study movement histories, strategize collectively, and gather strength in direct action, knowing that liberation does not arrive overnight, but that the fight is worth it. But what happens when political and personal crises overlap, and the despair becomes overwhelming? Where do we turn when the process of organizing no longer feels like a site of refuge, but isolating, or even tragic?

Read This When Things Fall Apart is a collection of letters written to organizers in crisis who are struggling with the conflicts, heartbreaks, and catastrophes that activists so often experience. From grief to exhaustion, fractured relationships, state violence and interpersonal violence, the struggle for justice can be tumultuous. Each letter invites the reader to the writer’s particular world in abortion defense, organizing within prison walls, recuperating from state repression after the 2020 uprisings, or as a new parent struggling to find their way in movement spaces, and offers an authentic account of moving through difficult times.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Burnout to burning the candle at both ends, every human one of is hits the wall of what we can do eventually. Oftentimes that spells the end of that person's activism. It's hard to invent solutions to problems in yourself and your personal sphere that you've never faced before, all while trying to fix things The World℠ would prefer you left alone...and also shut up about so "They" don't have to hear it.

So what better self-gift than a collection of letters to you, teetering on the edge of or mired deep in the falling-apart of the world, that show you it's happened before and been overcome? Even if no idea in this book resonates with you...that would surprise me a lot...or you've already done it before, just the reminder that you are not the first to face this and it's been overcome before is hugely valuable. Support, understanding, fellow feeling, commiseration, are all available in these pages. It can do you a world of good just to know others are, were, have been where you are now.

We can not afford to let challenges met and surmounted by those who went on this journey of resistance to illegitimate authority before us halt our gift of energy and effort in bettering the world be snuffed out. We have a long way to go...we'll only get to the better, kinder, fairer world we want to see if we use every tool in the world's chest to make ourselves as capable and as forearmed as we can.

I recommend this read for its tonic properties because they worked on me.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

PERFECT VICTIMS AND THE POLITICS OF APPEAL
MOHAMMED EL-KURD
Haymarket Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.

Palestine is a microcosm of the on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.

Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.

How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple dignity for the Palestinian.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Okay, I realize I'm unlikely to win this battle for your Yule gift card money. I'm gonna try because 2026 is not going to be an easy year for any of the warring parts of the world. In writing this book, Author El-Kurd did not use his polite appeaser voice. He does not pretend he is "reasonable" about the genocide being perpetrated on his people. He asks us to interrogate why this heinous act is not more in the foreground of our awareness. It is not the first time genocide has been perpetrated in this century. What allows that to continue?

How are good little capitalist consumers complicit in this media landscape that fails to condemn the crimes being committed? The mere mention of the crime of genocide is too divisive, is not acceptable discourse because...?

Those who dare to support Palestinians having full equal rights in their homeland are canceled, are required to prove they don't mean Israel should suffer consequences for committing this crime against humanity, and we accept it because...? Why is it The System℠ tells us what we may say about this ongoing crime against humanity and we obey?

It is time to interrogate our own (in)action regarding settler colonialism's record of injustices and crimes all over the world. Yes, that includes the US, Canada, Mexico, etc etc. This reckoning with the crimes committed by our ancestors, white people, will come no matter what. Get your mind ready by reading this book's very specific takedowns of the comfy little lies and ugly misdirections that have prevented a reckoning...but are failing at last, ever faster, ever more publicly to keep the cork in the bottle.

It's never a good idea to go into a discussion without any idea what you're discussing. Ignorance, in today's world, is a choice.

A very bad, stupid choice. Educate yourself before knowledge is thrust on you.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ISRAEL ON THE BRINK: And the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence
ILAN PAPPÉ
Beacon Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A renowned Israeli-British historian argues Israel is fracturing, and considers the issues that must be centered for a peaceful future for Palestinians and Jews alike

In this timely book, historian Ilan Pappé argues that with the 2022 election of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza, political fractures inherent in the Jewish state have expanded dangerously—and will potentially lead to Israel's collapse. With the goal of working towards a transition that is as peaceful as possible, Pappé sets out his thoughts about the risks and opportunities emerging from this historical moment.

Eight “mini-revolutions,” he argues, will be necessary for this more hopeful future to emerge, including:

Relocating the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees to the center of the future vision

Establishing a new definition for the Jewish collective in historical Palestine

Finalizing a plan for the future of the Jewish settlements built in the West Bank since 1967, and

Creating a new strategy for a united Palestinian national movement

Pappé concretely envisions a more just future—a democratic decolonized state for both Palestinians and Israelis—and how we might get there.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Ilan Pappé's PALESTINE IN A WORLD ON FIRE (q.v.) contained temperature-taking interviews with many of the world's eminent progressives on the subject of public perception of Palestine. Now there comes via Beacon Press the proposal for a roadmap out of this quagmire.

Considering more West Bank Jewish settlements were approved this week I don't foresee the proposals herein being enacted or taken seriously by Israeli officials.

Considering the state of the world's opinion of Bibi and his gang of thugs, it feels more like we should be preparing for a collapse of the state.

It is a good idea for honest, morally sound people to get their heads around what eminent and practical thinkers propose as the future course of this extremely troubled part of the world. Much disgusting vitriolic hysteria will be spewed as things change, so have the antidote in your head already so as not to add to the chaos that's coming.

USING GIFT CARDS: Edelweiss+ Mystery/Thriller Page

Now that The Big Day's come and gone, lots of us have some giftcards, or some actual filthy lucre, to spend. There being no better way to spend that haul than on books, here are some reasonably priced options you might not've thought of to get your story needs met. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Mr Campion's Christmas
Mike Ripley
Severn House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$2.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Campions are snowed in at Christmas, but j ust when they think it can't get any colder, their holidays take an even chillier turn.

1962, Norfolk. Boxing Day looks set to be a quiet affair for the Campions when they are snowed in at their remote farmhouse, Carterers - until a charabanc full of 'pilgrims' travelling from London to the Shrine of Our Lady in nearby Walsingham crashes into their imposing granite gateposts and the family unexpectedly find themselves playing host to the eccentric passengers.

But any lingering festive cheer is in short supply when a shocking discovery is made the following day, while a terrifying twist reveals that some of the guests are not who they seem. Which—if any—can they trust? Suddenly hostage to events, the Campions are drawn into a fiendish web of espionage as the Cold War comes chillingly close to home.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Set today, this final installment of Ripley's continuation of the Albert Campion Golden Age mysteries has Lady Amanda, Rupert, and Lugg doing their festive celebrating in the countryside...and Lugg piloting "Santa's Sleigh" aka Lady Amanda's works Land Rover in Yule drag.

Isn't that an image?

The passengers troop into Carterers, the family's Norfolk-countryside escape from the city, much to every Campion's distress; of course, as it's a literal blizzard outside, they make the stranded pilgrims to a Walsingham shrine welcome. They are signally lacking a driver among them,and thus kicks off the several stages of the murder investigation.

As always, the events in the story hew closely to known and checkable facts, like the blizzard that happened in Norfolk that Boxing Day. Lady Amanda's works (factory in US terms) is targeted for Cold War espionage, which I daresay is something all of us can remember taking place (the war, not the fictional spying), and so we're grounded in trustworthy reality for Ripley to base his fiction atop.

The murder, the weird assortment of religious pilgrims and US war personnel, Lady Amanda's capitalist war machine supplying works, Campion and Lugg doing their sleuthing double act...it's all good fun and results in a resolution that plays fair, still without spilling the beans too soon.

Author Ripley has continued the Allingham series creditably for a number of books. It seems a shame he's decided to make this one his final outing as the pilot of the Campion bus by crashing one into Carterers' gatepost, but permaybehaps it felt fitting to him. I will watch for the next thing he decides to do.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE CONSPIRACIES OF THE EMPIRE (Judge Dee Investigation #2)
QIU XIAOLONG
Severn House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The legendary Judge Dee Renjie returns, in this lyrical combination of mystery, history and ancient Chinese politics from the author of the renowned Inspector Chen mysteries

In Tang dynasty China, Empress Wu—seductive, ambitious and vindictive—rules with an iron fist. Her premier minister, Judge Dee Renjie, is honored to be trusted by her. But when she orders him to carry out an urgent investigation into the disappearance of disgraced poet Luo Binwang, he can't see why the matter is of such vital importance.

Luo Binwang joined a doomed uprising against Her Majesty, and vanished after the final, bloody battle. Is he missing—or dead? Either way, now that the rebellion has been mercilessly quashed, what harm could a poor, elderly poet do?

Traveling out of the great capital of Chang'an, accompanied by his loyal manservant Yang, Judge Dee launches a painstaking investigation, in the hopes of achieving what the empress' secret police could not. But the journey is marred by ill omens, and with death and disaster following his every step, Judge Dee soon begins to wonder if the empress trusts him as much as he thought . . .

This powerful mystery, set in ancient China, will appeal to fans of Robert Van Gulik's novels featuring the semi-fictional historical character Judge Dee, and includes an appendix of poems from some of China's finest Tang dynasty poets, newly translated by the author, who is an award-wining poet and critic in his own right.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I ate up the van Gulik series in the 1970s. I have never been so ready to get into a new take on the character from classic mystery days...Robert van Gulik started publishing his take on the Chinese character in fiction in 1951...as in this instance. I was not disappointed. Author Qiu's Inspector Chen mysteries have entertained me for twenty-five years now, so I knew I was in for a good reading experience. I liked his choice to set the story in the more appropriate seventh-century Tang dynasty, unlike van Gulik's more Western-reader friendly sixteenth-century Ming setting that we're all more familiar with.

I think my feelings about poetry are well known to most who read my reviews (I'm agin it) and here I am pushing a story centered around a poet, written by a poet and scholar, at you. I reserve the right to be inconsistent. Judge Dee, to give him the Western-accepted name, is an old man who should not be traveling over rough roads and sleeping wherever he finds himself to re-investigate a death the secret police have thoroughly raked over for plots and treason...Poet Luo died rebelling against Empress Wu. The Empress wants him to do it so off the Judge goes. You don't say "no, I'm too old and ill to do that" to someone who has ordered the horrific deaths she has lest you be next.

It's now I must tell you that this is not as much a mystery as an historical fiction literary novel with a puzzle of sorts to push its plot down the action hill. It's super vibes heavy, with an appalling tyrant creating a paranoid culture of personality, an atmosphere of unrest and resistance, and an old man who thinks he's probably going to die doing this job for the tyrant he privately disrespects. (Spoiler alert: he doesn't.)

I did object to the poetry that clogged the story's channels adding nothing but dragging like heavy, caked on clay to my readerly need for action. I was ready not to be whirled into motion like a 1950s 87th Precinct procedural, but wow is there a lot of verse. There's also some excellent food description, and good ol' Yang's as dolefully fun as ever in any version of the Dee stories.

As Author Qiu makes clear in the historical notes of the Afterword, Di Goong An is an amalgam of real crime-solver and the platonic ideal of one. Think Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. I enjoyed the history lesson and the assurance we were reading real events from this period's annals.

Not for the plot-driven reader, but catnip for the vibes-led lover of atmosphere.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE CONDOR'S RIDDLE
MARCELO ANTINORI
Secant Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.00 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Who is the dead man lying in front of the convent in Santa Clara by the Sea? Was he already dead before he died in Santa Clara?

Bebéi, a simpleminded French archivist with a photographic memory, must solve an ever-deepening mystery to calm the streets. But it will also take a village of friends and a Caribbean ex-president who lives among cats; a Chinese stripper with a doll face; a Rastafarian workaholic; a Greek sea captain; even a remorseful German terrorist, who shares a vagabond life on the church stairs with a runaway Wall Street investor and a stoned Canadian hippie.

With these and other characters, The Condor's Riddle adds to the exotic literature of Latin America, where timeworn splendors provide a haunting backdrop for the tragicomedy of modern times.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Clever, fourth-wall-breaking narration is the main motivating force in the story, similar to the old rom-com Don Juan de Marco. The cast is *huge* as the narrator warns you at the beginning of the story. I was often just riding the wave of narrative energy,wondering if this or that character was someone I'd met before.

The book is more about the characters, all skatey-eight bajillion of 'em, than the mystery of who killed the guy who dies. Bebéi has a photographic memory, and is characterized uncomfortably often as "simple" in what regard I didn't ever get. He's like Chance the gardener in Being There. He observes fully and completely; he absorbs relatively little. So what he is in relation to the story being told is more or less a camera, so we're really in a cinematic story.

Why that was fun for me, I suppose, is that the author committed to it, was fully in that intention, throughout the read. No excursions into interiority interrupted the characters' full and complete presence on the page. I read a movie, I suppose gets at the effect on me as I rolled along being narrated to. I might not have enjoyed that experience had the story itself not been so fully visual. The sensory world of the Caribbean is, to my northern experience, intensely visual, secondarily auditory and olfactory. That's the way the Brazilian author presents it to us. It was a very immersive experience for me.

It's also a pretty tendentiously political book. I say that to allow the head-in-the-sanders to decide on it for themselves if they care to risk the reality of the life of others being laid out to them. I did feel some of the more intense physiological politics were more protracted than was strictly necessary. I was edified by the excursion into indigenous beliefs occasioned by a discovery around the identity of the dead guy that you'll need to experience for yourself.

If you're in the mood for a brightly colored exploration of Caribbean life, with dark ugly secrets making deeply contrasting shadows, in its total affect feeling like you're reading a spy thriller set in hot, bright lands, this is the way to spend that gift card.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

RED TIDE
IRMA VENTER (tr. Karin Schimke)
Catalyst Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$10.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Deep in the South African Karoo, a small desert town runs red with old grudges and deadly secrets.

Three years after his niece is found dead the week of her wedding, Jaap Reyneke, a retired detective, is still doggedly looking for answers. Why was her body displayed so carefully, like a macabre art installation? Who erased all correspondence from her devices? But the townspeople of Carnarvon seem content to let dead bodies lie.

Desperate for help, Jaap turns to Sarah Fourie, a convicted hacker seeking reprieve from her own demons. Together, they sniff out the truth of Janien's death, setting in motion a chain of events that will tear the town apart from within.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: South Africa fascinates me because it has so many of the same disfiguring flaws as US culture has, and an ugly side it likes to pretend it doesn't have like the US does. I've watched its soap operas in an effort to get to grips with what it thinks of itself; I read its mysteries and thrillers to find out what scares it from within.

Jaap's retired from the police force, but Janien's unresolved death, a murder without closure, refuses to let him rest. He needs more skilled help to get information from the internet age that, frankly, does not interest him nor does he want to get into its guts. Enter Sarah, convicted of hacking for profit, and now seeking redemption. How better than to get the data Jaap needs to finally close Janien's murder?

It's a good mystery, keeps a solid pace, plays fair...but wow, does the author need some computer tech lessons. This being fiction, I get the need to compress time scales but hacking is not as straightforward nor as quick to produce results as this story suggests. I felt I needed to withhold a star for that; but the reason Janien was murdered, the ugliness the solution uncovered, and Jaap's dogged quest to fix this rent in Ma'at's fabric all compelled me to keep the pages turning.

As the motive for multiple crimes came to light the story had a fascinating tonal shift. A matter-of-factness entered the narrative that, the more I thought about it, was so much more pointedly a comment on the sickness of the world that hides, empowers, allows suchlike than a more condemnatory tone would've been that I got a chill. That's the half-star returned.

I hope we'll see more of Irma Venter's work in English soon.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SHUDDER PULP (Charley Scott Mystery #2)
VANESSA WESTERMANN
Cormorant Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$24.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Leaves are turning red in cottage country, and Charley Scott is putting on an immersive Halloween pulp art installation based on a local lake monster legend. But life imitates art when Laura, a mercenary newcomer with a controversial agenda for the dam, claims she was attacked by a lake monster she accuses Charley of raising.

Hours later, Laura is found dead by dry drowning.

Accident, murder, or a lethal encounter with a mythical beast? Tension mounts as snaking tracks, an animal carcass, and a witch’s ladder are found near the lake, but could there truly be supernatural forces at work?

Charley teams up with chocolatier Matt Thorn to investigate, but it’ll take more than seafoam toffee to bait this trap. To find the truth, Charley will have to risk it all to look the monster in the eye.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Dry drowning had never crossed my attention before now; there's a reason for that. I didn't start this read all that confident in the author's basis for the story even before that, as cryptid stories make my eyes roll so far I can see my brain.

Sounds like I'm about to light into Author Westermann, doesn't it. Consider the countervailing forces, though: cozy autumnal lakeside setting; Canada, that put-upon northern neighbor of the US; and a woman declining to leave the investigation of a death the deceased had accused her of causing before kicking the bucket to the police. Even though "the police" come in the form of her sister's boyfriend.

Soldiering on was not painful, even though I was not starting out that well, because I resonated as described and because I was drawn quietly along by the unshowy, unadorned narrative voice. Charley being our PoV character, we hear her more than any other in the third-person narrative. It makes her initial confrontation with the victim much more engrossing, immediate, than if we'd been in the omniscient or even the first-person narrative voice (I always wonder how first-person narrators see such fine-grained detail in action moments.)

Laura's secrets, her private plans, all come to light with appropriate speed and timing. Meghan, Charley's sister, is a journalist so a lot is due to her efforts; Meghan's boyfriend being The Law around their town makes her access believable. Matt, Charley's boyfriend, is of some help to her in the effort to resolve this threat, but he is (believably) involved in events happening in his own business. It doesn't beggar belief how supportive he is, because he's got limits and she respects them.

A cozy story indeed with that kind of scoobygroup. Each character adds their piece to the puzzle; each piece fits in a place that looks one way before it was added, another way after that. People in their town have just had the big October Thanksgiving rush of tourists so have free energy to spend on the murder investigation...some helping, others hiding evidence or knowledge.

This is the second mystery in the series featuring Charley and the townsfolk. I haven't read the first. It was not difficult to find my way through the characters and plot; I expect it will get harder if one were to start after this story because we are in a very dense web of relationships that will only get harder to untangle, to get inside and see from its best angle.

So start here, pick the series up with your gift cards and settle in to cozy Canadian killings.

USING GIFT CARDS: NetGalley Mystery/Thriller Page

Now that The Big Day's come and gone, lots of us have some giftcards, or some actual filthy lucre, to spend. There being no better way to spend that haul than on books, here are some reasonably priced options you might not've thought of to get your story needs met. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DEAD MONEY
JAKOB KERR
Bantam Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Don’t call me a fixer. This isn’t HBO.

In her job as unofficial “problem solver” for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalist, Mackenzie Clyde’s gotten used to playing for high stakes. Even if none of those tech-bro millions she’s so good at wrangling ever make it into her pockets.

But this time, she’s in way over her head—or so it seems.

The lightning-rod CEO of tech’s hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” frozen in his will. As the company’s chief investor, Mackenzie’s boss has a fortune on the line—and with the police treading water, it’s up to Mackenzie to step up and resolve things, fast.

Mackenzie’s a lawyer, not a detective. Cracking this fiendishly clever killing, with its list of suspects that reads like a who’s-who of Valley power players, should be way out of her league.

Except that Mackenzie’s used to being underestimated. In fact, she’s counting on it.

Because the way she sees it, this isn’t an investigation. It’s an opportunity. And she’ll do anything it takes to seize it.

Anything at all.

Featuring jaw-dropping twists and a wily, outsider heroine you can’t help rooting for, Dead Money is a brilliant sleight-of-hand mystery. Written by a longtime insider, it is also a dead-on snapshot of the Valley’s rich and famous—and a glimpse at the darkness lurking behind the tech world’s cheery facade.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: It's a great way to start 2026, this book. Don't buy into the ever-so-cheery façade that the AI-promoting shills very badly want you not to question! There is always a darker side to every shiny surface.

This twisty, really twisted thriller is not realistic, though, because it's a thriller. They're OTT by design. In this case I really liked Mackenzie's utter ruthlessness because it's all too seldom one sees that role fulfilled by a female character. Author Kerr made her legal-eagle skills more believably deployed than I expected in the novel's framework...private-practice lawyers don't get "attached" to FBI investigations, or there'd be no honest investigation ever performed...but again, it's a thriller. Told in several timeframes, with action-slowing jumps, the story still unfolds in a logical way. I'm not eager to hop around quite as much as Author Kerr takes me, but it did all hang together, and none of the hops were unnecessary.

The concept of "dead money"—funds not accessible until some legal process is complete—is very useful indeed. It added a great deal of urgency to this story, and provided a seriously powerful goad for Mackenzie to use every lever she can reach to get the murder of a man who, frankly, just needed killin', resolved. Only in a certain way...which is why she's morally ambiguous and happy to use methods, umm, unorthodox shall we say to accomplish her goal.

That this is Author Kerr's debut novel was really impressive to me. He's clearly an habitual observer. All his characters felt distinct, if not distinctive; but it is a novel set in the tech world, so there the buffet is already laid. It's not a knock, the characters are well used; but it does make me eager to see what more he decides to do beyond this framework. The plot twists are never exactly perfectly convenient for Mackenzie so he's not intellectually lazy. It wasn't entirely his fault that I figured out who committed the murder, nor that I wanted to smack the shit out of some of the entitled goofs he peoples the world with. He's an insider, I think he'd know if these were unfair stereotypes; I'll go with "not" as the answer to that.

The ending was very satisfying, and I particularly liked some of the moralizing speeches in advance of it. Others will feel differently. A very solid debut thriller introducing a new voice in thrillerdom. May he decide to keep developing his good-quality storytelling chops.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SALTWATER
KATY HAYS
Ballantine Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1992, Sarah Lingate is found dead below the cliffs of Capri, Italy, leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, Helen. Despite suspicions that the old-money Lingates are involved, Sarah’s death is ruled an accident. And every year, the family returns to prove it’s true. But on the thirtieth anniversary of her death, the Lingates arrive at the villa to find a surprise waiting for them—the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died.

Haunted by the specter of that night, the paranoid, insular Lingate family begins to crack, and Helen seizes the opportunity with the help of Lorna Moreno, the family assistant. But then Lorna disappears, and the investigation into Sarah’s death is reopened. Everyone who was on Capri thirty years ago remains a suspect—Helen’s controlling father, Richard; her rarely lucid aunt, Naomi; her distant uncle, Marcus; and their circle of friends, visitors, and staff. Even Lorna, her closest ally, may not be who she seems. As long-hidden secrets about that night boil to surface, one thing becomes clear: Not everyone will leave the island alive.

Combining a glittering, dark atmosphere, morally-gray characters, and mind-bending twists, Saltwater is an exploration of the corrupting effects of generational privilege and the lengths people go to protect a legacy—and how no one can hold a grudge like family.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Poor Helen Lingate...poor little rich girl...it must really feel awful to suffer inside a gilded cage.

Actually, it does. Money does not make people happier, does not insulate them against the awfulness that life chucks into the pits we dig for ourselves. That lots of it is self-inflicted is true of everyone on Earth. It also does not obviate the role of luck in the lottery we call family. Helen got some lousy luck, some decent luck, and genetic gifts out of her family heritage.

What she didn't get was a decent family. Uncle Marcus and dad Richard (!) have her locked into an ugly conservatorship à la Britney Spears. Is his control justified? Is he her concerned papa or a bog-standard greedy parent? Why is the sudden reappearance of the necklace worn by the late Sarah Lingate the night of her death such a jolt?

A gothic story of grudges nursed, retribution plotted, and cruelty from unexpected quarters, all set on the storied isle of Capri...there's a reason Tiberius used this locale as his hideaway, it's so lush...and soapishly ornate. I had a good time indeed. The big twist that family stories must always have amused me greatly. Using multiple narrative voices was a clever way to avoid giving the game away. Jumping around in time is just the way things seem to be in thrillers in 2025. I'm not the biggest fan, but it does allow us to keep a real sense of suspense here. A good way to hide clues is to put them in a different frame from the main story's narrative.

A second novel from an author whose first, The Cloisters, I have not read. I won't accuse her of sophomore slump!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

CAT'S PEOPLE
TANYA GUERRERO
Delacorte Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a little resentment for the “crazy cat lady” label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-it notes left by a secret admirer in an area where her feeds her favorite stray—a black cat named Cat. Like most felines, he is both curious and observant, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless.

Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early midlife crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns Núria’s favorite bodega?

When Cat suddenly falls ill, these five strangers find themselves bonding together in their desire to care for him, and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they’ve all been searching for.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I said yes to this story from the publisher because I need to keep challenging my prejudices. One of those is a strong dislike of Felis catus in all its colorways and personality types. Cat people don't tend to be sane in reference to their cult objects, which worries me for the future of humanity.

Romantic plots and sentimental results are just not my favorites. Remarkably Bright Creatures got my highest-ever rating for this kind of fiction, at four full stars; that was down to Marcellus the cephalopod not being, oh let's just say for example, a cat.

I liked Marcellus' narrative voice more than the human narrators' voices. I liked Cat's voice among these narrators more than the human ones. I was particularly amused by Cat's names for the humans. The struck me as very likely the real way that cats see their cultists. Would I have bought this book for myself? Surely you jest! (Leslie Nielsen...what do you call an earworm when it's a meme, not a song lyric?...reference only more pointed, intentional.) It's a damn sight better than those unbearable cutesy-poopsie Japanese bookshop-cat things y'all're lappin' up like they're cream.

I don't have to like something to know when it's well-made. This is a well-made polyphonic sentimental novel that's good at smoothing your emotional fur while scratching that itchy place, that "I need a happy" place, you can't reach on your own.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

PARTY OF LIARS
KELSEY COX
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A lavish, Texas-sized Sweet Sixteen turns deadly in this twisty, pulse-pounding new novel — serving up a fresh take on a classic locked-room whodunnit. Let the festivities begin…

Today is Sophie Matthews’s sixteenth birthday party, an exclusive black-tie bash in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, where secrets are as deep-rooted as the sprawling live oaks. Sophie’s dad has spared no expense, and his renovated cliffside mansion—once thought haunted—is now hosting the event of the season. Then, just before the candles on the three-tiered red velvet cake are blown out, a body falls from the balcony onto the starlit dance floor below.

It’s a killer guest list . . .

DANI: Sophie’s new stepmother who’s been plagued by self-doubt ever since the birth of her own baby girl

ÓRLAITH: the superstitious Irish nanny who senses a looming danger in this cavernous house

MIKAYLA: the birthday girl’s best friend who is not nearly as meek as the popular kids assume

KIM: the cunning ex-wife who has a grudge she can’t let go of . . .

Everyone is invited in. Not everyone will get out alive.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I like the classic drama technique of setting a story during the course of one day. Of course, in line with modern trends, the story's told in multiple timelines and PoVs. It's the action taking place that's all the story's Today. It works reasonably well in Author Kelsey's hands.

I think the enduring appeal of rich-people shenanigans is the scope for soap (opera) they provide. Setting a novel at a Sweet-Sixteen party is fiendishly clever because adolescence, that time of adult-strength emotions without adult perspective to help manage them, is quite the drama-driving force. The adults in this story appear not to have resolved their own angry adolescent issues, then add the new generation's...!

Exploring these varying levels of rage, envy, and desire is the meat of this story. It makes the read absorbing...if you're reading for character. As a thriller, Author Kelsey's debut novel shows her learning curve. I would've asked her to give us real action more frequently than all at the end of the read. It's not dull before then, it is very interior. A thriller with that kind of reflectiveness is not bad, only a tad slower than many genre readers would prefer.

Getting to know these folks was enough satisfaction for me, so I recommend it to y'all who like character novels even if the "thriller" label turns you off; and y'all thriller lovers ought to give these flawed, damaged women some room to expand your repertoire.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

That Devil, Ambition
Linsey Miller
Storytide (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$1.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: here is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…

First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school's honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.

If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.

And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.

Fabian isn't worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.

As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Dark academia YA with murderous schools prioritizing the killer instincts of the students...shades of that ghastly Yarros series y'all're gobbling up. I really detested that farrago on multiple axes. One big one is how idiotic a parent would have to be to consent to their child being admitted under these circs.

...and then...how different is it, really, from the titanic greed mill that is the student loan racket? How different is it from this administration resuming the revolting practice of garnishing paychecks of student-loan debtors as long as those debtors are left with $217.50 from the paycheck? Debt peonage is a real threat to people's ability to live.

So, while I was sniffy at first, I had to admit the horror, the evil personified, was more than dramatically fun...it was really quite on point. The concept of "severance" in this magic system made me think very strongly of the TV show. It's a bigger take on the idea but similarly evil in its intent. I was deeply impressed throughout by the clear, unambiguous tenor of matter-of-factness...it enabled the moral stakes to stand stark in contrast to the worldbuilding. I approve of such a contrast as a didactic storytelling choice because once one sees the contrast as the commentary it is, it can't be unseen.

The same matter-of-factness points up the controversial inclusiveness of the queer people in this story...literally all of them in relationships, and all the same at risk of betrayal-for-advancement as cishet couples. In other words, no single hair's breadth of difference between them. That this is a comment on the narrative being pushed by external forces is entirely invisible, until you see it.

I'm sure you're getting my drift by now. This is a story of a scoobygroup with a life-or-death motivation to resist the narrative they're being sold. Their actions will make the world...so they need to choose how they're going to do that in the face of a death-dealing Devil who has absolute power over them.

I think over-forty readers might sigh and roll their eyes at the beginning 25%, thinking they were in for a very specific kind of read. To them I say, put it down for a week, read some porn...oops, romantasy...or something, then come back to get your surprise. Author Linsey's talking to people who don't have our frame of reference. Clear your cookies then come refreshed as she shifts registers to one more suited to the "A" bit of YA.

It isn't perfect but damn! It heartened and elevated me in my mood and affect. That is saying a lot in 2025.

SEE YOU ON BOXING DAY!

Another #Booksgiving done and dusted. I hope at least a few reviews piqued your interest in a title you wouldn't otherwise have heard of.

It feels good to be able to write to a few readers, hopeful feelings stir when I see signs of folk checking in to see what's on offer. Writing hundreds of reviews in 2025 has kept me sane, prevented me from falling into a pit of despair as the world changes around us all in ways I hate and must (to keep faith with my moral beliefs) resist in the only ways I can.

Thanks for reading, and I do not mean just my words...thanks for being a reader. It matters how you get your stories delivered. It matters that you develop the habit of getting your stories in more than one way, from more than one source. Your choices matter. Don't lose sight of that fact in the days, weeks, months, and years you'll be told that they do not matter. No one bothers to insist that something truly irrelevant and unimportant does not matter. It's the same kind of high-control social engineering as making rules against actions and beliefs. No one ever tells you not to do something unimportant, or bad for you, unless they mean it's bad for them in some way. (Safety is never the real reason for warning labels, it's to prevent you from being able to sue them.)

Well, that turned dark. Let's sweeten the tone: I found an excellent six-stars-of-five read for 2025 in THE REMEMBERED SOLDIER by ANJET DAANJE, and translated from Flemish by David McKay via the estimable tastemakers at New Vessel Press. My review should say it all about the layered, subtle evocation of memory's centrality to identity, about the effort love takes, about the nature of desire and its propulsive projective power. It's the kind of (long!) read that I want to put in peoples' hands to explain themselves to themselves.

Support an excellent indie press! It is a New York Times 100 Notable Books designee, it was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Fiction, on lists from Publishers Weekly and LitHub and the Wall Street Journal...it deserves the patient companionship and compassion of readers seeking a window into forming, discovering identity through its loss and rebuilding...trauma does not have to be war, you know. The world can, and does, do similar things to us callously and carelessly in the course of Life. Buy one, tree book or ebook, ask your library for one so they'll know people want it, get on their wait list for it, or get one via their ILL program. It is a good, impactful story told the best way a story can be: carefully, caringly, with the cares and the needs of characters and readers in its sights.

Some stories go beyond a solid idea and a good execution, beyond even a lucky meeting of idea and author. A few other books were truly extraordinarily good in my 2025 reading. I enjoyed my Jess Zafarris reads the most of any in October, Words from Hell: Unearthing the Darkest Secrets of English Etymology and Useless Etymology: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds were each separately delightful...read together I was giggling and snorting my way through the month. "Rantallion" is my new favorite weird word to unleash on the unsuspecting. Jess and Rob's video podcast, Words Unravelled on YouTube, is a must listen every week.

August was, as always, Women In Translation Month (#WITMonth); as usual it was a solid month of pleasure reads. Funny way for me to say it, though, because it was the month of Fang Fang's Soft Burial, anything but a "pleasant" read...the true nature of memory seemed to be my August accidental theme. It's memory's loss that clues us in to the centrality of memory to identity, to selfhood; I got that from a male perspective in The Remembered Soldier and a female one in this read. Dementia is a better guide to the effects than is the soap-opera stuff we're trained to think of. It's brutal, devastating; it's happened to many for no causal action on their own part, and that's the worst, cruelest, most repugnant part.

Back in June, the most satisfying read I had was The Surge, Adam Kovac's war story via Tortoise Books. It's told in laconic warrior-appropriate prose. It exemplifies an experience I do not think soldiers will ever have again as AI and automation turn war into a weirdly impersonal industrial slaughterhouse...as we're seeing in this year's oil war they're starting in Venezuela. Moving on...May brought a lovely, up-buoying quality via Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature that made it my beacon-of-sanity read. This book was genuinely smile-granting. I hope it will go on to become a standard text in biology classes (once sanity is restored and we start teaching again).

In April, a good month for reading, I read my first merman/man romance, When the Tides Held the Moon, amusing enough if...well...silly. Laurent Binet's superb Perspective(s) elevated my mood. Not so elevating was Sad Tiger, likely the most important book I read, possibly in all of 2025, for what it has accomplished in the world with the conversation around incest and assault it has started.

I liked The Case of Cem best of March's reads because it made polyphony its most interesting point through the device of a court case in the Afterlife. More Earthly and still legally based was the utterly infuriating The Man Nobody Killed, the latest from Elon Green. What an enraging travesty of justice! I still boil up over it. In a translation-heavy year of reading, an early delight was the extraordinary Río Muerto, my first all-five-stars read of 2025, by Ricardo Silva Romero and translated from Spanish by the gifted Victor Meadowcroft. Voiceless narrators don't come better than this; many language-choice delights in its pages. My January best-quality read, Fire Exit by Morgan Talty, was this Native American talent's first-ever novel. Aaalmost all five stars from me, and happy to give them I was!

I began 2025 deeply unhappy and very, very scared. I'm ending it much the same, but with the perspective that there's always, always the heartening world of literary imagination to grant a different view to a reader. In writing reviews of books I've read over the past ten-plus years, I've learned that I am a creature of deep greed, insatiable hunger, for that magic of storytelling: the gift of perspective.

I have never in my life been more grateful to be a reader than I am right now.

AMERICAN DREAMER, first in the Dreamers series by ADRIANA HERRERA

AMERICAN DREAMER (Dreamers #1)
ADRIANA HERRERA
Carina Press
$7.75 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: No one ever said big dreams come easy

For Nesto Vasquez, moving his Afro-Caribbean food truck from New York City to the wilds of Upstate New York is a huge gamble. If it works? He’ll be a big fish in a little pond. If it doesn’t? He’ll have to give up the hustle and return to the day job he hates. He’s got six months to make it happen—the last thing he needs is a distraction.

Jude Fuller is proud of the life he’s built on the banks of Cayuga Lake. He has a job he loves and good friends. It’s safe. It’s quiet. And it’s damn lonely. Until he tries Ithaca’s most-talked-about new lunch spot and works up the courage to flirt with the handsome owner. Soon he can’t get enough—of Nesto’s food or of Nesto. For the first time in his life, Jude can finally taste the kind of happiness that’s always been just out of reach.

An opportunity too good to pass up could mean a way to stay together and an incredible future for them both...if Nesto can remember happiness isn’t always measured by business success. And if Jude can overcome his past and trust his man will never let him down.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: I gained at least 15lb reading this book. Nesto's food truck needs to park here on the beachside lots so I can eat there every day.

Author Herrera is a dab hand at using Spanish in her mainly-English text in such a way as a monoglot will get what was said, a bilingual reader will get the feelings of the speaker, and both will be able to feel involved and invested in the story. It's a tricky thing to accomplish.

It felt to me as though the main issues in Jade and Nesto's relationship were...details. Not superficial, understand, but the kind of things couples have to negotiate as time tugs them in different directions. Nesto needs reminding that Jude needs his time as much as the food truck does; Jude needs reminding that Nesto is focused and so needs reason to focus on him.

I stepped away from the vehicle, taking a long look at it. Emblazoned on the back was the logo for my business, OuNYe, Afro-Caribbean Food in huge bold black font on a red background. The black and red contrasted with the flags of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica painted over the entire truck. To name my business, I used a word from the Yoruba language. Which had been spoken all over the Caribbean by our ancestors, the West Africans who were brought there as slaves. Ounje is the Yoruba word for nourishment, and I’d decided to play a bit with things and put the NY right at the center.

You know the kind of stuff, it's happened to all of us who are not terminally single. It's not that it's inaccurate, but it arose really fast; we sped through the getting to know you phase a wee bit less lingeringly than I think is ordinary.

I'm pretty sure Nesto knows what Jude needs from him but is Jude clear on it? We're reading Nesto's PoV so I wasn't all the way sure...though it's obvious Jude knows he'd be a fool not to make a real family, away from the rigid, rejecting Evangelicals who raised him,right by Nesto's side. He's experienced the darkest side of the Murruhkun Dream, its eager hatefulness at those it deems not good enough; Nesto lives the anti-immigrant, racist bit daily; they're in tune already on this, but still need to work out their harmony. Very much what makes real couplehood so much fun, so much work, so deep a reward when it's done, to build.

A romance with its flaws. but those are minor; a love story it's easy to invest in; and a food-based novel that ought to come with recipes...or an online ordering app.

CLINCH: The Stockholm Trilogy: Volume One, bisexual Swedish boxer turned enforcer has a bad day

CLINCH (The Stockholm Trilogy: Volume One)
MARTIN HOLMÉN (tr. Henning Koch)
Pushkin Vertigo
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Dashiell Hammett meets Raymond Chandler in this ultra-gritty piece of contemporary Swedish noir, set in a decrepit, highly atmospheric 1930s Stockholm

The writing's on the wall for Harry Kvist. Once a notorious boxer, he now spends his days drinking, and his nights chasing debts amongst the pimps, prostitutes and petty thieves of 1930s Stockholm. When women can't satisfy him, men can. But one biting winter's night he pays a threatening visit to a debtor named Zetterberg, and when the man is found dead shortly afterwards, all eyes are on Kvist.

Determined to avoid yet another stint in prison, Kvist sets out to track down the only person who can clear his name. His hunt will lead him from the city's slums, gangster hideouts and gambling dens to its most opulent hotels and elite nightclubs. It will bring him face to face with bootleggers and whores, aristocrats and murderers. It will be the biggest fight of his life.

Blending noir with gritty violence, Clinch is a visceral, compulsive thriller that packs a punch and leaves you reeling.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: This one was a surprise to receive the year I got it. I had it on my list, and whaddaya know, in it came. I wasn't expecting to get a really dark, pretty nihilistic read but really feel glad I did.

Male bisexuality is all but invisible in all parts of our culture. No matter how much progress gets made, this is true. Gay guys are deeply suspicious of and fairly hostile to bi guys; straight women prefer their fantasy men either straight or gay, no spectrum tolerance there, either. I've never heard a lesbian express an opinion on the matter.

Harry is a rough-and-tumble guy. He's got the marks of a life in boxing on his body; he's got the marks of a beginning that leads a man into boxing on his being. He's on hard ground in his life because he's been in prison for fucking who he pleases instead of who society says to.

It's not like Sweden in the 1930s was the socialist paradise, however alloyed it may be, that it is today. Society was more aligned with the Nazi German model. Neutral Sweden provided a lot of raw materials to the Nazis and never helped the Jews...that was piecemeal, individually made decisions, not real help despite some of its diplomats doing their best. It's complicated, as what is not? Go look at Lise Meitner's experiences in Sweden, Othering was alive and well.

Harry, found guilty of sodomy, is shoved further down the social hierarchy until he arrives at loan-shark debt collector. It's here the action begins...his latest collection effort is found dead the day he comes to make good. Well, this ain't good. Harry's guaranteed to go back to prison if he gets convicted of the crime, and who the hell will make any effort to get him a fair trial rather than just pin the crime on him and go on with their day? Only Harry...so who saw him? Oh no, only a whore and a man in a snazzy sports car who tried his sexual luck with Harry. Not great choices.

Author Holmén, whose debut novel this is, creates a believably complex Harry, a pragmatic earthy survivor who loves animals and kids, helps anyone who needs it when he can (Lundin, his landlord the undertaker, is one), and satiates his needs as he experiences them however is available to him. He knows the deck is stacked against him so he doesn't hesitate to use violent means to get what he needs, to protect himself and others from predators, and even to become a predator when he must.

That flexibility and willingness to do what needs doing is what enables him to solve the murder he's wrongly accused of. It's a very dirty business that started him off on this search...it's not getting cleaner the further up the social hierarchy he goes. There are the usual noir novel twists, a resolution to the crime that requires a gigantic double-cross, and a setting where cold does the narrative job that heat does in Southern noirs: keeps everyone on edge, keyed up, on the point of suffering dire consequences.

It's a wonderfully gritty tale of an ugly side Sweden doesn't show the world. Voluntarily, anyway. Deeply satisfying.

TO THE STARS: The Autobiography of George Takei, Star Trek's Mr. Sulu

TO THE STARS: The Autobiography of George Takei, Star Trek's Mr. Sulu
GEORGE TAKEI
Pocket Books
$8.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Best known as Mr. Sulu, helmsman of the Starship Enterprise™ and captain of the Starship Excelsior, George Takei is beloved by millions as part of the command team that has taken audiences to new vistas of adventure in Star Trek®—the unprecedented television and feature film phenomenon.

From the program’s birth in the changing world of the 1960s and death at the hands of the network to its rebirth in the hearts and minds of loyal fans, the Star Trek story has blazed its own path into our recent cultural history, leading to a series of blockbuster feature films and three new versions of Star Trek for television.

The Star Trek story is one of boundless hope and crushing disappointment, wrenching rivalries and incredible achievements. It is also the story of how, after nearly thirty years, the cast of characters from a unique but poorly rated television show have come to be known to millions of Americans and people around the world as family.

For George Takei, the Star Trek adventure is intertwined with his personal odyssey through adversity in which four-year-old George and his family were forced by the United States government into internment camps during World War II.

Star Trek means much more to George Takei than an extraordinary career that has spanned thirty years. For an American whose ideals faced such a severe test, Star Trek represents a shining embodiment of the American Dream—the promise of an optimistic future in which people from all over the world contribute to a common destiny.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: The fascistic turn new Trek has taken has a hard job erasing the original series' legacy, as there are still some dollars to be extracted from the nostalgia for those bygone, halcyon days of TOS (The Original Series in Trekspeak), of inclusion and celebration of human decency over disgusting, primitive violence and hatred of Others.

Thirty years ago, this book stood out. Nowadays, it's a bloody unicorn. See my review of They Called Us Enemy for the expanded and more self-focused story of Takei's childhood experiences with US racism and exclusion.

This is the story of Takei the man, the actor, the ground-breaking Asian role model. What it isn't, to the moaning of superfans of TOS, is a gossipy tea-spilling tell-all about the shenanigans behind the scenes of TOS. I was mildly miffed by this on my 1990s read; but this is a re-read, and it's been an entire generation for news to have filtered out about this fact, so no pearl-clutching from me.

Takei does not shy away from discussing his on-set conflicts with Shatner, of course, because they're part of his ground-breaking for actors who aren't white. He stood up for the integrity of his vision of Sulu. That would've been unthinkable even ten years earlier. Better contracts for actors! Imagine! The entertainment industry, like all capitalist enterprises, demands workers sacrifice for the profits of the owners. Takei stood against that; his actions might be small, but they were in concert with others, and had a real impact on the well-being of those across the industry who were also not white.

I mostly reveled, if I'm honest, in the opportunity to hear Takei's voice in my head as I read his conversational writing style. Of course, in the 1990s, the conversation didn't include even a whisper of his now-public gayness. He came out when the legalization of "gay marriage" was vetoed by Arnie the Terminator; around the was when Proposition 8 began being mooted. Never think, babyqueers, that straight people are your friends. Anything "granted" to you by their charity is something they can, and will, take away. May take them a long time, may take them a week, but anything they can take away they will eventually.

Would his very open (in fandom, anyway) secret have caused a stir had he discussed it in 1994? You bet! Remember how very different the landscape was then: AIDS was still a death sentence, though it was now deferrable to those who could afford the meds. There was the travesty of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" that the inexperience and indifference of the Clintons gifted us with wreaking havoc; also the indefensible "Defense of Marriage" Act. The social landscape was not such that the revelation to the normies that George was a big ol' 'mo would've done more good than harm...to the book, to the franchise, to his inclusion in the Star Trek/industrial complex of convention appearances and tat-sales.

I understood that then, I'm more clear than ever about it now, and I urge those unhappy with this decision made by a stranger they do not know personally to accept a perspective check from one who was there, who knew that landscape intimately.

He had our backs when the chips were down and his voice really counted. Let go of judgment, let the past be the past, accept that now things are different in part because of a brave man who's lost it all more than once in his life.