UNTAMED COAST, historical mystery set in Alaska

UNTAMED COAST
KEVIN C. MORRIS
Ballantine Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A late-night mayday call drives a grieving man to embark on an unexpected journey along the wild Alaskan coast, unraveling a decades-old mystery of stolen gold, missing women, and murder in this atmospheric and propulsive debut novel.

After the loss of his wife, Marconi Franco is content drifting alone on his boat through the isolated waters of Southeast Alaska with no real destination in mind. But when a mysterious distress signal cuts through the static on his radio one sleepless night, Marco feels an overwhelming pull to help the woman whose plea he heard—a pull he can't explain or ignore.

His search for the missing woman draws him to Radioville, an abandoned 1930s communication outpost now decaying on an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska. There, Marco begins uncovering fragments of a story long a Depression-era theft, a shattered marriage, and a disturbing pattern of disappearances. As he sifts through the past, his own grief starts to mirror the tragedies that echo across decades, and his search draws the attention of someone determined to keep the truth buried.

Told across three evocative timelines—a radio operator in 1938 collecting more than just telegrams, a young woman in the 1980s fighting to survive her abusive husband, and Marco in the present day searching for a voice in the static—Untamed Coast is a story of fierce determination, missed signals, loneliness and connection, and the unseen ripples that reverberate across generations, standing the test of time and the tides.

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

My Review: "Marconi Franco" is one of the most nominative-determinist monikers I've run across in fiction. I think Author Morris took a big swing with it, making Marconi the center of the 2017 timeline, and could've whiffed on it very badly...and didn't. That's skill, sure, but even more luck as he's a debut author. I can readily see ten ways he could've fumbled such a "joke" but Marco never becomes a one-liner in a narrative that splits among grieving Marco who misses his late wife Michelle; Anya from 1982, struggling to survive marital abuse in a remote, isolated life fishing with her husbeast; and in 1938, there's gold-struck Joe Baxter in Radioville, a communication outpost who helps isolated prospectors stay alive while scheming how to get rich.

Yes, it's the radio that connects them all. As that oddness in the spacetime continuum plays out, though, Author Morris evokes immersively the bleak, spare beauty of maritime Southern Alaska, allowing readers to really *get* what it is that binds these characters to the life they've each chosen in harsh, unstable conditions.

The mystery of what connects the lives of each character is well-handled. It's always a danger to think in "supernatural" terms, and never moreso than when characters exist in separate timelines. In maritime Southern Alaska, there are a lot of details to survival in a really complicated dance of detailed actions, dangerous situations that have changed very very little in a long time, and thus things in concrete reality that have commonality among Marco, Anya, and Joe. I wouldn't call this a thriller, though there are moments throughout the stories that do indeed cause intense responses; I'd say it's a suspense novel because even in the not-thrilling moments, there are deeply drawn scenes of uneasy peace that feels unlike rest, there are oddball, off-kilter moments that point your attention irresistible *there* and away from *here*...lots of thought went into how to keep your reading finger turning pages.

If no one gives this book to Alan Ritchson's first-look company (he must have one, Reacher's such a success) to develop into a limited series for Prime, it will be a shame. He'd *slay* as Marco. Or Joe, if he prefers. (Not Anya, though.)

August 2026's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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The Women in White by Sarah Pekkanen

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The next thriller from #1 bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen combines a decades-old mystery with spine-tingling paranormal elements in this twisty novel of the seen and unseen.

Extrasensory perception.
The Gift.
A Sixth Sense.
Or something else…

In 1964, four remarkable young women at a prestigious university became the subjects of parapsychology experiments by a visionary scientist. On the cusp of a historic breakthrough, the women mysteriously vanished and the program was erased from history.

Decades later, Riley Bell, newly divorced and desperate for a fresh start, accepts a caretaker job for an elderly widow named Betty. Riley steps into a home that is frozen in another era—no microwave, television, or cell phones, and Betty has never heard of the internet.

Why has Betty lived in such profound isolation for so many years, and why does she need Riley now? As the story unfolds across two timelines—Betty’s 1960s era of 5 o’clock martinis and high-stakes experiments, and Riley’s quest to uncover the truth about the missing women—old secrets rise to the surface. And the only way to survive is to confront the mystery that has lingered for sixty years.

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

My Review: It's not you, book, it's me...I am allergic to storylines about parapsychology now. I had no idea this would happen; I've enjoyed stories in this vein fairly recently. I'm really disappointed.

So my rating is only for me, I need to remind muself not to ask for ESP/parapsychology tales anymore ::sad trombone::


St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) will gladly accept $14.99 from you to get the ebook onto your Kindle. I say do it, though without fervor.

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Dislocations by Sylvia Molloy (tr. Jennifer Croft)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: How do you keep a friendship intact, when Alzheimer's has stolen the common ground of language, memory, and experience, that unites you?

In brief, sharply drawn moments, Sylvia Molloy’s Dislocations records the gradual loss of a beloved friend, M.L., a disappearance in ways expected (forgotten names, forgotten moments) and painfully surprising (the reversion to a formal, proper Spanish from their previous shared vernacular). There are occasions of wonder, too—M.L. can no longer find the words to say she is dizzy, but can translate that message from Spanish to English, when it's passed along by a friend.

This loss holds Molloy’s sense of herself too—the person she is in relation to M.L. fades as her friend’s memory does. But the writer remains: 'I’m not writing to patch up holes and make people (or myself) think that there’s nothing to see here, but rather to bear witness to unintelligibilities and breaches and silences. That is my continuity, that of the scribe.' In 2007, at New York University, she created the MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish, which was the first programme of its kind in the United States.

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

My Review: In under 100pp, the terrifying journey that is dementia is not possible to plumb...only to evoke. It's a quick hit of a terrible drug whose side effects are agonizing.

I did not feel I was particularly drawn in as a short story can do; nor was I afforded insight; nor was I entertained; it was fine sentence-by-sentence writing and image-making but not storytelling.

Charco Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $15.95 for an ebook. Ask the library to get one.

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This is Amiko, Do You Copy? by Natsuko Imamura (tr. Hitomi Yoshio)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Other people don’t seem to understand Amiko. Whether eating curry rice with her hands at school or peeking through the sliding doors at her mother’s calligraphy class, her curious, exuberant nature mostly meets with confusion.

When her stepmother falls into a depression and her brother begins spending all his time with a motorcycle gang, Amiko is left increasingly alone to navigate a world where she doesn’t quite fit.

Subtle, tender and moving, This is Amiko shows us life through the eyes of a unique, irrepressible, neurodivergent young character.

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

My Review: Very interesting look at Japanese culture through the eyes of a young, naïve girl who is also neurodivergent. It is very much her book, in the manner of the French récit; but I know so little about Japanese culture that much flew above my head.

I can't tell if that is my problem really perceiving Amiko's affect on others, or if it is her naïveté that presents the obstacles to her success communicating with others.

Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) needs $11.99 for you to legally access the ebook. An afternoon's involving if slight reading so do it if you're in that mood.

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January by Sara Gallardo (tr. Frances Riddle, and Maureen Shaughnessy)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A revelatory, pioneering masterpiece about the life, rape, and abortion of a 16-year-old Argentine farmworker—now in English for the very first time

With echoes of Edith Wharton’s Summer, this radical feminist novel broke the silence around abortion to reshape the way women’s bodies and rights were perceived in 20th-century Argentina.

Perfect for readers of Tove Ditlevsen, Annie Ernaux’s Happening, and Claudia Piñeiro’s Elana Knows.

In the sweltering Argentine pampas, all things bow to Nefer. Reeds nod when she digs her heels into her horse, unripe peaches snap and fall as she gallops past. Sickly-sweet air bends, churns in Nefer’s throat.

Nefer measures the distance between her body and the table, and feels something filling her up, turning against her. Her belly swells.

Desperate, Nefer visits a local medicine woman who is known to perform abortions but Nefer becomes too afraid to explain why she is truly there.

She attends confession at church but cannot confide in the priest. During a fierce argument with her mother, she finally blurts out her secret.

A radical feminist text, January was the first Argentine novel to represent rape from the survivor’s perspective and to explore the life-threatening risks pregnancy posed, in a society where abortion was both outlawed and taboo.

With a narcotic musicality and voice scorched through with honesty, Gallardo hangs before us an experience that has been lived and ignored a thousand times over. Nefer closes her eyes. We careen to her and we see.

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

My Review: I quibble with "has been lived and ignored a thousand times over" and would put "billion" in that place. I have not read the Spanish version; I can say the English one might be more...flattened out, unmusical...to me as a man who has a pretty simple idea of how to fix rape: Teach your fucking son to keep it in his pants. "No" means no, "stop" means stop. Do it anyway and we lock you in a room with her family and a baseball bat, whatever's left of you raping bastard after five minutes we arrest or bury as appropriate. No further questions.

Abortion is healthcare, healthcare is a human right.

Archipelago (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges $13.99 for an ebook.

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Black Box: The Memoir That Sparked Japan’s #MeToo Movement by Shiori Ito (tr. Allison Markin Powell)

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The internationally recognized sexual assault memoir that revolutionized a feminist movement around rape, stigma, and silence in Japan.

In 2015, an aspiring young journalist named Shiori Ito charged prominent reporter Noriyuki Yamaguchi with rape. After meeting up for drinks and networking, Ito remembers regaining consciousness in a hotel room whilst being assaulted. But when she went to the police, Ito was told that her case was a "black box"—untouchable and unprosecutable.

Upon publication in 2017, Ito’s searing account foregrounded the #MeToo movement in Japan and became the center of an urgent cultural and legal shift around recognizing sexual assault and gender-based violence. As international outlets covered every step of her story—even documenting it in the BBC film Japan’s Secret Shame—this book launched a societal reckoning. At the end of 2019, Ito won a civil case against Yamaguchi.

With careful and quiet fury, Black Box recounts a broken system of repression and violence—but it also heralds the beginning of a new solidarity movement seeking a more equitable path toward justice.

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

My Review: Rape is a disgusting criminal act of bodily and psychological violation; it is the world's most common crime; it's also, for its frequency of occurrence, the least prosecuted because no one wants to believe the victim.

No one believed my mother was raping me, so I relate, Ms. Ito; but your courage while rage-fueled was ultimately what changed the game in Japan. I hope your example continues to inspire victims of rape to come forward in their legions to seek, and receive, justice.

Feminist Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants a pretty hefty $17.95 for any edition. Be prepared for graphic, horrifying words evoking graphic, horrifying acts.

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Variations on the Body by María Ospina Pizano (tr. Heather Cleary)

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A constellation of short stories illustrate the intersecting lives of women on various peripheries of society in and around Bogotá, Colombia.

In six subtly connected stories, Variations on the Body explores the obsessions, desires, and idiosyncrasies of women and girls from different strata of Colombian society. A former FARC guerilla fighter adjusts to urban life and faces the new violence of an editor co-opting her experiences. A woman adrift in the city she left as a child looks for someone to care for, even if it has to be by force, while another documents a flea infestation with a catalog of the marks on her flesh. A little girl copes with her anxiety about the adult world by exacting revenge on her nanny, who she thinks belongs to her.

Combining humor, heartbreak, and unexpected violence, Ospina constructs a keen reflection on the body as a simultaneous vehicle of connection and alienation in vibrant, gleaming prose.

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

My Review: Six stories in ~127pp that came across like weirdly semi-autonomous chapters in a surreal novel, not quite different enough to be full stories but instead feeling to me as though Author Ospina is re-writing the same idea from different angles.

"When she reached that age of abstract yearnings that concentrate in and cloud the body, not long after she moved to the United States with her parents, Aurora used to scrape the bottom of her yogurt cup in desperation, ashamed of her desire for so much more when it was clear there was nothing left, sensing that her distress meant something else, something wretched and essential she couldn't put into words." It's finely wrought but seemingly undifferentiated from the others. I hope we see more, and more developed, other ideas soon.

Coffee House Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks for $16.95 for any edition. Need a short read to get into in fits and starts? It's perfect for you.

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So We Look to the Sky: A Novel by Misumi Kubo (tr. Polly Barton)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: This shocking, boisterous novel was a runaway bestseller and award winner in Japan

Searingly honest and sexually explicit, So We Look to the Sky is a novel told in five linked stories that begin with an affair between a student, Takumi, and a woman ten years his senior. Their scandalous liaison, which the woman's husband makes public by posting a secretly taped video online, frames all of the stories, each exploring different aspects of the passages of life and the hardships ordinary people face.

A teenager experimenting with sex and then, perhaps, experiencing love and loss; a young, anime-obsessed wife bullied by her mother-in-law to produce the child she and her husband cannot conceive; a high school girl, spurned by Takumi, realizing that being cute and fertile is all others expect of her; Takumi's best friend, who lives in the projects and is left alone to support and care for his voracious, senile grandmother; and Takumi's mother, a divorced single parent and midwife, who guides women bringing new life into this world and must rescue her son, crushed by the twin blows of public humiliation and loss, from giving up on his own.

Narrating each story in the distinctive voice of its protagonist, Misumi Kubo weaves themes including sex, love, the female body, gossip, and the bullying that leaves young people feeling burdened and helpless into a profoundly original novel that stays with you for its affirmation of the raw, unstoppable force of life.

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

My Review: I feel a bit dimwitted because I did not get how these stories cohered into a novel at all. Braided stories don't usually flummox me like this; the framing device did not relate to the other stories enough for my old queer's brain to follow its story logic.

However heterosexual I'm not, I did get involved in the events herein and recommend the read to straight people.

Arcade (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) ants what I find a pretty steep $17.95 for the ebook.

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Migratory Birds (Undelivered Lectures series) by Mariana Oliver (tr. Julia Sanches)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A sensitive, stunning debut on movement, migration, and loss, in the vein of Valeria Luiselli’s Sidewalks.

In her prize-winning debut, Mexican essayist Mariana Oliver trains her gaze on migration in its many forms, moving between real cities and other more inaccessible territories: language, memory, pain, desire, and the body. With an abiding curiosity and poetic ease, Oliver leads us through the underground city of Cappadocia, explores the vicissitudes of a Berlin marked by historical fracture, recalls a shocking childhood exodus, and recreates the intimacy of the spaces we inhabit. Blending criticism, reportage, and a travel writing all her own, Oliver presents a brilliant collection of essays that asks us what it means to leave the familiar behind and make the unfamiliar our own.

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

My Review:

"A place at once empty and full, Cappadocia inspires bewilderment. Which is why it is useless to try and take in the landscape with only your eyes. Trees are few and far between and sunlight pours mercilessly onto your skin, drenching it." –and–
A man pilots a yellow ultralight across the sky. His name, Bill, Bill, Bill, is the last thing he hears before his feet take wing. All liftoffs are the same, he thinks, a ritual by which we become birds. As the body rises, the mind blots out all sounds and refashions them one by one, as if they existed in isolation. First heartbeat, then breath, then saliva moistening the throat; then the whoosh of air as the ultralight’s wings break it into a white trail.

Prose like this is...fine. In small doses. I hit my maximum dose before the book was over.


Transit Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) charges you $14.99 for the ebook. I might not be thrilled with it, you might be; at least it's not wasted money.

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In Bad Company (Sandhamn Murders #9) by Viveca Sten (tr. Marlaine Delargy)

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Sandhamn Island’s archipelago is a beautiful place to visit. For a mother on the run, it’s the only place to hide in a novel of escalating suspense by Viveca Sten, bestselling author of Still Waters.

Building a case against Andreis Kovač is a risky strategy for prosecutor Nora Linde. A violent key player in Stockholm’s drug trade and untouchable when it comes to financial crimes, he has the best defense money can buy. To topple Andreis’s empire, Nora’s working a different angle. It’s personal. Nora’s critical witness is Andreis’s wife, Mina—if she’ll testify.

Mina has suffered her husband’s rage too long. It’s nearly cost her her life. Still carrying the traumas of the Bosnian War, Andreis can be triggered like an explosive. He must be taken down. And as the trial looms, Mina and her infant son must disappear. The police have found her a safe place to hide on Runmarö Island in Sandhamn’s archipelago. But there’s no shelter from a man as powerful and merciless as Andreis. Especially when he’s being crossed.

His campaign of terror has just begun. He’s prepared to crush anyone who stands in his way: Mina, Nora, and everyone they know and love. Andreis is coming for them. This time, Nora is on the defense.

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

My Review: It's time I left the series behind. I was not involved in this one at all, and after finishing it felt no relief, no regret, nothing at all.

It could be comparison bias after The Camino, it could be Bosnian-War criminal fatigue, it could be I'm just tired of Nora...but poke me with a fork, I'm done.

Amazon Crossing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) requests and requires $14.95 for a paperback.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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An Ordinary Violence: A Novel (58%) by Adriana Chartrand

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Terrible things happen side by side with the ordinary.

Dawn hasn't spoken to her brother, Cody, since he was sent to prison for a violent crime seven years ago. But when Dawn's seemingly perfect life in the big city implodes, she is forced to return to her childhood home and the prairie city that still holds so much pain for her and her fractured family. Cody is released from prison with a mysterious new friend by his side, and Dawn must follow increasingly sinister leads to uncover their nefarious plans to access a dangerous supernatural network.

As the lines between right and wrong blur and dissolve, Dawn reckons with trauma and violence, loss and reclamation in an unsettling world where spirit realms entwine with the living—and where it is humans who carry out the truly monstrous acts.

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

My Review: "Maybe that's why Violet talks to her, why she can feel a buzzing sometimes, an insistent mechanical whine from somewhere distant that, if she listened hard enough, might turn ou to be the sound of her name, hissing through a hundred thousand alien throats."
I made it all the way to that line before my experiment with #Summerween blew up. Maybe I need actual fall, leaf-changing pumpkin-carving fall, short-day clock-turning fall, to put me in the mood for spooky shenanigans.

Or maybe this just isn't great and I'm done.

Spiderline/House of Anansi Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) asks $18.99 for a paperback.

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Accidental Genius: An Oral History of The Room (32%) edited by Andrew J. Rausch

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: Accidental Genius features intimate and laugh-out-loud commentary from The Room cast and crew, including interviews from its star Greg Sestero.

What a story indeed! A rollicking recollection of experiences from the legendary “so bad it's good” film. This comprehensively chronicled book offers a fascinating glimpse into the cultural phenomenon that brings together die-hard fans and newcomers alike.

Everything you could have possibly wondered about The Room all in one book!

Take a look at Tommy Wiseau's infamous 2003 release through the eyes of the people who made it. Get the low-down on bizarre audition calls, film set antics, and accounts from the very first fans who experienced The Room at its earliest screenings. Also including interviews focusing on the aftermath of the movie: Sestero’s The Disaster Artist, where are they now, and its lasting legacy.

Here you will get a glimpse of how it all began, why it remains popular, and just what audiences still get out of this unusual film that people love to hate.

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

My Review: I thought these were essays on the OTHER bad movie, from 2015, but that one's just called Room. The 2003 excrescence these snippets are about was too ghastly to watch so I really didn't...I heckled and jeered. That was kinda fun, I guess, but not enough to read about the reeking shitpile I've tried to forget seeing.

CLASH Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
has the effrontery to ask you to PAY for this! $18.95 no less...any edition...I'd laugh if I wasn't so pissed off at being pissed on by that Wiseau...person.

PORTRAIT OF A WITCH UNDONE, charming and fun and amusing

PORTRAIT OF A WITCH UNDONE
K.S. SHAY
Erewhon Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$22.95 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending September 2, 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Thirteen stolen works of art. One haunted marsh.
And a Boston witch willing to risk everything for the friend she’s already failed.

An atmospheric, eerie debut for readers of Starling House and A Discovery of Witches, Isabella Stewart Gardner art heist aficionados, witchy girls, burnt-out former gifted kids, New England history buffs, the coven curious, ride-or-die friends, folklore fanatics, and anyone who’s ever wanted to wander through the looking glass.

Once, Maeve Ryan was the strongest witch of her generation. But Maeve messed up a spell to contact the Lady of the Fens, an eerie Revenant who lures the unwary to their deaths in the brackish marshlands of the North Shore. Maeve destroyed her reputation, hurt her best friend Ash, and tainted herself with unbound, wild magic that transforms witches into insane Revenants.

With unbound power eating away at Maeve’s mind, all she wants is to get rid of her magic. Forever. But Ash’s research into how the spell went awry leads in an unexpected direction: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and a link between the Lady and a decades-old art theft worth $500 million. When Ash disappears through a stolen painting’s empty frame, Maeve has to follow.

Inside is the Other Marsh, a haunting, deadly realm where only the Lady’s rules apply. Within this half-world lie secrets about North Shore’s history, Maeve’s failure, and the fate of the masterpieces that disappeared over three decades ago. But as Maeve fights toward the truth, she risks her friendship, her coven, and her life against enemies hiding in plain sight.

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

My Review: The hardcover might be preferable to order, y'all:

Are these endsheets to die for or what?

And then there are the seven maps that this bloody program will not let me upload; just know that they'll enhance your reading experience for the mappish among you, like me. They're there because this is an undertaking to explain the long-ago, still unsolved, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist. After almost forty years, I think it's safe to say the solution presented here...it's magic...might as well become the final word. Nothin' else but the death of some powerful people will bust open the truth and maybe not even then, so heck...why not magic?

Maeve, all of twenty-three during this story, is a really interesting magical practitioner. She's filled with insecurity after very publicly failing at an important working that unintentionally hurts her bestie in the Salem coven. This is the woman who still comes to her rescue when the cursed apartment she lives in is overrun by frogs...without harming the frogs. It was refreshing. Not a frog-fancier, me, but I do get the joke about witches who famously use frogs in magical working that don't turn out well for the frogs subverting that silly stereotype. Also subversive of stereotypes is the way these witches actually *fly*on*their*brooms* and still don't play it for a cheap snigger.

There's a male main character. He is Maeve's "love interest." Nothing about this part of the plot adds anything very interesting to the story. I'm moving on. The interplay among the coven members really exemplifies the use...bordering on overuse...of the miscommunication among people who have one big thing in common but little else drawing them together. It's a problem as the mystery of the art heist steadily takes over the coven's activities; the stolen artworks are, like much art, imbued with magical capability of being bridges between worlds. Maeve is forced to do her best magic in the scenes where she's working to focus everyone on the common goal of regaining these stolen portals. May not be all spells but it's for sure magic.

Maeve has the chops innate in her to be a leader, but she's twenty-three. The action spins out of her control as we-the-reader watch, amused and bemused, while the coven attempts solving the heist for their own, not-law-enforcing, purposes. It is clear Maeve could become the focus of a series with her coven as they redress imbalances and resolve mysteries. I hope they all come back soon. I also hope potential future lovely, fun reads will show Maeve grow into her leadership and not rely on the chaos that comes from poor communication again. Magic carries in its basis the wildness and chaos of Life, untrammelled; Maeve can shape that, can form it...if she's written that way.

Debuts seldom come with this much promise. Hope it's pointed in a positive way.

R.V. RAMAN'S PAGE 2: Harith Athreya series 3 & 4...PRAYING MANTIS, and THE LAST RESORT

THE LAST RESORT (Harith Athreya #4)
R.V. RAMAN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: There's blood in the backwaters of Kerala…

BOLLYWOOD

Detective Harith Athreya is recuperating in the beautiful backwaters of Kerala when he meets a family of vacationing Bollywood royalty, who ask for his help making a murder mystery film.

BANKRUPTCY

But the family is not what it seems—there are rumours of major money troubles, links to organised crime, and rivalry between the scions.

BUTCHERY

When one of them is found dead, murdered exactly like a victim in the film, Athreya puts his holiday on hold to solve the case. Is this the work of an angry co-star, or something more sinister?

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

My Review: Latest of the four (to date) Golden-Age inspired mysteries set across the wildly varied, beautiful subcontinent of India. Using plots we've all loved for generations, techniques of obfuscation and misdirection that work as intended here like they have since Mary Roberts Rinehart began practicing her craft over a hundred twenty-five years ago, Author Raman brings new delights and fresh energy to the film-becomes-crime plot. We meet Mrs. Athreya at last! Dekight beams out of every passage she appears in, as her lifelong love of Bollywood and its films is meshing with the Gurua family's vacationing next to the resort she;s brought her husband to as he recuperates from dengue fever.

It's permaybehaps not my own favorite, that would be Grave Intentions, as this entry lacks some expansiveness of characterization that it could've used. No one involved in the aforementioed Guria family is realized all that well, in fact as the mystery unfolds it begins to feel as though Author Raman simply hasn't got much interest in them, leaving them mostly feeling like labels. The murder being a near-pefect echo of a famous scene in a Guria-produced movie really doesn't feel organic but put there to pique Mrs. Athreya's ongoing interest in the proceedings...a kind of authorial bribe to the character from the auythor that sadly doesn't keep her onscreen nearly long enough.

I'm so deeply pleased we gave the Dramatis Personae, two maps, and a pretty detailed Guria family tree; it is very helpful indeed. I'm always happier with these inclusions in any murder mystery. It's not always clear from dialogue and narration how everything fits together without maps.

A series I'm very happy I've discovered, and expect will continue.

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PRAYING MANTIS (Harith Athreya #3)
R.V. RAMAN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: ISOLATION

Harith Athreya is taking a well-earned break at a boutique hotel in the Himalayan foothills. But his holiday is swiftly cut short when mysterious bloody handprints start appearing on the walls around the resort.

INCRIMINATION

When a woman then falls to her death, chaos and confusion reigns. The hotelier is convinced that the key to the case rests with four other young people who checked in at the same time as the victim, all pretending for some reason not to know each other.

INTRIGUE

Did one of these guests have something to do with it? Harith Athreya must get to the bottom of the case before the murderer strikes again…

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

My Review: The PreCrime Unit strikes again, this time in a very exclusive resort in the sweetest spot possible: a castle in a Himalayan valley. The owner is a friend of Athreya's who's harboring dark suspicions about a small group of guests staying in his resort. Unease is not proof of guilt but Javed is willing to bet these five are bad news and innkeepers, like bartenders, are usually correct in their darker suspicions.

It doesn't take loong for there to be a murder, and even less time for Athreya to see past spurious alibis, though the motivation for the specific crime committed is not really believable to me. I got a bit over the fashion focus of this entry in the series as well...you're in the Himalayas! Tell me more about them not about fabric colors!

Personal crotchet, that; others will feel differently. It's so good to have the Dramatis Personae, the maps, and our brief character descriptions to refer to. I'm not going to tell you I loved the story, a take on one of Dame Agatha's most famous stories which even naming will give everything away. It's a good enough hommage to its famous progenitor. It isn't my favorite thing to have a woman in the story who's pretty thoroughly demonized for what felt to me to be ridiculous, overblown reasons. I'm not convinced by them as you can tell.

I can't quite go all four stars given my reservations but I'll most definitely be picking up book four.

R.V. RAMAN'S PAGE: Harith Athreya series 1 & 2...GRAVE INTENTIONS, and A WILL TO KILL

A WILL TO KILL (Harith Athreya #1)
R.V. RAMAN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$2.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: MIST, MOUNTAINS, MURDER.

Ageing millionaire Bhaskar Fernandez has invited his relatives to the remote, and possibly haunted, Greybrooke Manor, high up in the misty Nilgiris.

He knows his guests expect to gain from his death, so he writes two conflicting wills. Which one of them comes into force will depend on how he dies.

Fernandez also invites Harith Athreya, a seasoned investigator, to watch what unfolds.

When a landslide leaves the estate temporarily isolated, and a body is discovered, Athreya finds that death is not the only thing that the mist conceals. . .

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

My Review: First in a new series of private-investigator mysteries set in India. This Golden-Age style story about a murder yet to occur and fully expected by its purported victim that then morphs into a locked-room mystery is investigated by a Poirot-level famous private investigator. Or so we're told...I'm as always just a bit annoyed that I'm vouchsafed no evidence of this assertion, but that complaint is not one bit new or unusual.

I was set to love the read from the get-go because I read these reissues this summer. It's set in cool, misty mountains, and I about sobbed with jealousy as I compared that to the supersummer outside. *sigh* As I encountered more and more characters, beginning to wonder about a dramatis personae being notably absent. Such a simple thing to add, I mused, and so very helpful. It also struck me that the characters were more or less in the highwayman school: stand and deliver their piece of the narrative. That's a lot of time spent outside the narrative stagecoach waiting to get moving again.

A body is discovered. It means we're all in the stagecoach again, moving at a slightly bouncy, uncushioned pace. It becomes a locked-room mystery as we're moving along; no change of bouncing rocking pace as we clunk shins and bonk shoulders with characters who *are* going to say their piece, despite earlier attitudinal tics. It could have something to do with the sausage-fest we're having here, everyone is male and don't they just show it. A second body is discovered and there is more stand-and-deliver set-piece delivery. A big problem for me is no one who's died is at all, in any way, undeserving of their murder.

It's like a lesser Poirot story meant to convey the eerieness of The Pale Horseman. It works as a story well enough because we know where we're going. It's a bit less effective if the reader's not already on board with the Golden-Age conventions because then the solution, and its delivery by Athreya, ties everything to objects we're aware exist but not filled in on particulars about. It makes the solution a bit less impactful, more like the delivery of a sermon that we and everyone else, simply accept is true and so must be correct.

Points for period appropriateness, then, fewer for fair-play mystery solution, and please dear goddesses give me a damn list of who's who at the beginning. As a series starter I'm most definitely glad I've got all four in their reissue; I don't think I'd've picked up the second one (see below) if it had come out a year or more later.

The ebook is on sale, so definitely go get one!

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GRAVE INTENTIONS (Harith Athreya #2)
R.V. RAMAN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Death, a cursed archaeological dig, and a beloved detective feature in this cozy stand-alone mystery set in contemporary India.

SECRETS

Seasoned detective Harith Athreya is back, this time to investigate suspicious incidences on a riverside dig in the heart of remote Bundelkhand.

SUPERSTITION

In this place, rich in myth and history, the legend goes that anyone who sets foot on nearby island Naaz Tapu would be cursed forever.

SLAUGHTER

When an archaeologist defies local folklore, the fallout is swift and deadly. Is the death a result of the ancient curse, or is it a more down-to-earth case of murder? Athreya needs to unravel the truth from legend before the curse strikes again….

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

My Review: Archaeology! Possible supernatural stuff! A Dramatis Personae! Yes, yes, yes to all of these as good omens, and ways to get my repeat business.

On to the story.

Book two sets itself the task of telling us binaries exist for a reason, there is nothing we do not want to be expressed in a well-matched faceoff between, eg, two young women who are chilly career driven professional/warm, inclusive, family-loving opposites. Athreya is on a holiday with the latter, a nibling of his, and the former is the director of a "cursed" archaeological dig where a local wise guy seems to be stealing artifacts the dig is uncovering. A local legend of lovers kept apart by centuries old political feuding placing the area under a curse offers a modern murderer cover is the first thought a mystery fan would have; but who wants the specific person dead and why? What is the dig site looking for? Do local customs only matter if the people flouting them are white/colonizer people?

Again requested to solve a crime yet to take place, Athreya immediately zooms in on the artifact thefts but...well...are they thefts or rescues of cultural patrimony? Who decides this? What difference does it make, if the end result is the object ends up far far away leaving nothing in its place? Knowledge of the past that will never be accessible to the cultural descendants is no more complete a theft than a profitably sold antiquity....

In the quest to solve the mysteries via fair play, Author Raman snuck a valuable clue past me...in plain sight! Well done, sir. I enjoyed the Murder in Mesopotamia meets The White Tiger vibes. It felt more cohesive and less speechifyin' in tone than A Will to Kill (above) did. The read passed with admirable velocity, the Dramatis Personae made a big difference to my sense of the read as under my control, and Athreya's enough more familiar to me this time around that I felt prepared from the off to invest in his resolution.

A career spent making corporate presentations and mentoring young entrepreneurs has taught Author Raman to stay nimble, to choose a principle at the center of the story he wants to tell then to be sure his story relates to that principle all the way through. That serves him well in this second Athreya mystery/thriller.

LIARS IN PARADISE, Olesya Lyuzna's1920s queer-led mystery series gets its book 2

LIARS IN PARADISE
OLESYA LYUZNA
The Mysterious Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: With five days to clear her partner’s name after a horrific crime, private detective Ginny Dugan infiltrates a cultish secret society on Long Island’s Gold Coast in this champagne-soaked followup to Glitter in the Dark.

New York City, 1925. A night of high-stakes gambling at the Empire Club ends in gunfire and Jack Crawford is found at the center of the carnage—covered in blood, gun in hand. The club’s ruthless owner offers Jack an ultimatum: find the real shooters within five days, or die for their crimes.

Ginny Dugan hasn’t known Jack long, but as his partner in their detective agency, she needs to believe she’s trusted the right man this time. Their only lead is Lila, the sole survivor of the massacre. They follow her to a queer dance hall in Glen Cove, a Long Island Gold Coast town whose glittering summer estates now stand empty in the November chill. Among those who knew Lila, one name keeps surfacing: Echelon, a seductive society where fortune is promised to those who surrender everything. Convinced the answers they seek lie within, Ginny and Jack infiltrate its ranks, where they encounter silent masked attendants, serpents sliding over bare skin, and members who seem to know more than they should—especially about Jack.

As the body count climbs and Jack’s past resurfaces in unsettling ways, Ginny begins to doubt her instincts, her partner, even her own reality. Maybe she was never in control. Maybe she was brought here to play someone else’s game.

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

My Review: Author Lyuzna's previous book Glitter in the Dark gets a sequel. I was delighted to hearit was coming, I missed the wonderful immersion in the slightly-too-full hot tub of Lyuzna's 1920s glamour

People who want, who yearn for something are the ones easiest to manipulate. Show them a path that guides them through the yearning process and you've got 'em in your conytol. There's always something left behind in achieving a goal. That something is...useful...to someone who wants to control the yearner for fun and profit. And that something needs receipts to be truly, enduringly useful, as well as backed up by demonstrated willingness to use it to harm others (but never me, says the voice of hubris very quietly).

Ginny does not believe any secret is worth dying for, it's what makes her such an effective investigator. She's taken Jack on as her...partner, possibly maybe in more than one sense of the word, this is still in flux...knowing there are secrets in his past, though not what precisely they are. She's confronted with them after she foils a knife attack on a stranger.

Are you feelin' the vibe here? We're in a melodrama. We're heading into the choppy waters off the rocky coast leading to Safe Harbor; our vessel is a bit too small to plow through the waves, maybe the wind's shifting to lift spray into our eyes, where are those damn life jackets anyway? It's a familiar setting in general, but the specifics are what burnish the brasses.

Jack's darkish past is tied to the Big Bad of this story, Dickie Stryker. He's a very familiar character in the twenty-first century: charismatic cult leader, prosperity gospel pusher, blackmailer extraordinaire. Jack's entanglement with him is the ostrich-sized chicken that came home to roost. Ginny's own secrets, the woman who got away for example, are unsurprisingly going to need some dealing with as the waves get fiercer smashing against the rocks outside Safe Harbor. Dickie knows a lot, doesn't have a second's heitation about using what he knows to force Ginny and Jack to deal with his problem or face their vessel being holed (Jack's impending murder) in the heaving story-seas.

Overheated? Yes. Fun? Yep!

It's well-constructed as a mystery. I found not plot holes that didn't feel like secret doors to future installments in the series. I thoroughly enjoyed the bisexual representation...something I don't see too much of in mysteryworld...and appreciated Ginny being drawn as a woman very much in charge of her fate in a time period where that was believable but still very difficult. (Not that it's ever been easy.) It makes the Jazz Age setting have greater depth to see these glistening highlights against the dark, terrible background of Power being flexed.

Echelon, our nexus of Power, is appallingly familiar to readers in 2026. If you read this story and still need a map drawn of how the hideous cult of Power we're watching unravel in 2026, you're probably best suited to religious stories and should not be reading my reviews. It's very much a tropical island transferred to Glen Cove (a lovely place that deserves better). As Author Lyuzna builds out the ugly way the Echelon cultists dig the canals leading to Safe Harbor only through dangerous territiry, the twist and doublebacks and unexpected locks that impede the trip become more and more baroque. The slang of the era is lots of fun to read, making this world feel Other and lived in at the same time. It's a storytelling technique I always like to see. Firefly and Battlestar Galactica and Riddley Walker and A Clockwork Orange have all used the same idea; all are celebrated as successful on a storytelling basis at least in part because the creators were attentive to the details at this high of a level.

I'm not all the way convinced the more melodramatic flourishes are necessarily a good ide in a series. Cecil's knife attack tying back only coincidentally to Jack's secret past is my best not-spoilery examplee (it's literally the beginning of the story). It feels forced; it's there that I suspect the bridge to the period setting could let the author down a bit. This exact storytelling trope is torally of the period we're within. A lot of less talented authors might run with the faux-Golden Age-ness of the story with an intrusive framing device. Author Lyuzna leaves the frame in 2026, tells the story that could best happen in the Jazz Age with a modern societal lens but does not force the action to conform with 2026's expectations. The consequences, the need to obey older cultural norms, are still present.

But there's always a course between the rocks, up the canal, into Safe Harbor at last. Makes for an exciting journey.

THE CHILDREN, YA fantasy monadnock looks at the storytelling tapestry from the other side

THE CHILDREN
MELISSA ALBERT
William Morrow (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An intoxicating, haunting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Melissa Albert, in which the estranged adult children of a legendary author, written into their dead mother’s beloved fantasy series, contend with the vine-like creep of legacy, memory, and magic.

Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods.

In one, she lives in the wooded shadow of her family's isolated Vermont farmhouse; in the other, the pages of her mother’s world-famous Ninth City books, where her magical adventures have made her a household name. In reality, Guinevere's childhood isn't the enchanted idyll her mother’s readers imagine: she and her older brother are growing up near-feral, unwashed and underfed, escaping each day to the lichen-clotted woods they’ve made their playland. As Edith Sharpe’s books explode into epic popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame—until the night it all goes up in flames, leaving Edith’s series unfinished and her children the sole survivors.

Now an adult coasting on her mother's name, Guinevere is mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir when her estranged brother, an artist who has until now spurned his family's legacy, announces an upcoming installation titled Mother. As rumors swirl around a death connected to his last show, unsettling recollections from Guinevere’s childhood begin to surface. Her public facade starts to crack, forcing her to confront the questions she's spent the last twenty years running from: What really happened the night of the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother’s creative genius?

Wise to the mythic weight childhood memories gather over time, The Children whispers to you from the hallway outside your bedroom, lights flickering as you turn the pages of a book that didn't seem so scary a moment ago. It's a story for anyone who's ever revisited an old favorite and found it cast in a darker light, the line separating magic and memory blurring as the gap widens between the authors we imagined and the people they turn out to be.

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My Review: Does George RR Martin have kids? Maybe one called "Dayana" or something? He's on track to die before agreeing to finish his astoundingly beloved fantasy series, like Edith...and to many of us not-fans it feels as though there's some kinda dark bargain involved in its globe-spanning popularity.

In the age of severely overprivileged fandoms for what is revoltingly, but accurately, called "IP," this story could not cut closer to the bone. There's a certain inevitability in Edith's appalling betrayal of her children, using them as close models for her fantasy characters. "Write what you know" taken to a dark extreme by a parent who gave little but took much. A bargain her children had no say over. It supports them to this good day. In a sense that's fair enough since it took their developmental years out of their own control.

Guin is the kid who bought in, albeit resentfully, to the hype and has become an apologist for Edith and her invasive behavior. Perhaps she's just making hay while the sun shines, perhaps she's getting her own back for the neglect and emotional absence of her self-centered parents...failed actor father, family-supporting writer mother. She's created a hollow kind of fame out of monetizing her childhood marked by the celebrity lifestyle her parents cultivated in place of actually being parents. Guin's project is to keep the spondulix rolling in. Brother Ennis has chosen a more rigorous path, though still cashing in on his beginnings, by becoming An Artist. Fame has followed, but he's chosen to cut Guin out of his life. Throughout this story we're in Guin's PoV so we're only told what she knows about why.


"Guinevere" is a terrible name to hang on a kid. It practically slams the door on an ordinary childhood because the teasing would be brutal. It's really of a piece with Edith's fantasy life-turned-hugely successful fantasy world: Guin's fated to be an unhappy princess who's become a queen in a realm not her own, and not of her choosing. "Nomen est omen" test case number skatey-eight skabillion. It feels as we're reading along as though Author Albert, author of multiple popular children's books, started wondering about how this creation thing works as a force outside your authorial control. It's clear Guin is traumatized. By what? Her parents are the first in line for blame. But she and Ennis are orphans. The fire that consumed their childhood home and killed their not-good parents was not caused by the parents themselves. What did cause it? How does...does...that unsolved mystery explain Edith's massive cultural juggernaut "The Ninth City?" It's eaten their lives, not knowing but knowing too much, not understanding but seeing more than they should. Ennis isn't working with Guin on solving what she sees as a strange mystery. It is as always up to Guin to do the work, shoulder the burden.

Author Albert uses the psychological reality of Guin's parentification to explore women's roles in our capitalist culture. It's also clear that there are...oddnesses...in this family system that clearly come from the psychological stress of bearing all the load on the females, woman and girl, in the system. When one looks at it out of the corner of one's eye there are ununsual things that cause unease in we-the-reader. They're not remarked on or attended to in the narrative. They are there and quite uneasy-making though...the woods, how cliche, have eyes and are watching you.

The fire destroys as fires do. No more parents, no more books to keep the mmoney comingin, no more brother because he buggers off leaving it to Guin to pick up such pieces as she can to make what she—she alone—will from the wreckage. The number of abandonments Guin suffers would warp anyone in her shoes. Her response...to take it all on, put it to the best use she can...is what fuels this novel of reckoning with her ghosts.

Literal ghosts? Probably, at least of a sort. Edith might not have been as inventive as her adoring and demanding fan base thinks.

It's here the missing fifth star is explained. The tinges of horror, of fantastical things not seen just beyond our line of sight, all crystallize in the last approximately ten percent of the story. I saw why, and saw the point, but I'm less interested in the fantastical than in the truly chilling psychological novel that precedes the ending. That is not to criticize the ending as a natural result of the preceding story. It absolutely fits, it's quite clearly signposted early on. It's definitely one of several possible results of the story as told.

Just not the one I would've preferred.

July 2026's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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I Who Have Never Known Men by by Jacqueline Harpman (tr. Ros Schwartz)

Real Rating: 4.8* of five

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending September 2, 2026

The Publisher Says: Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.

As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.

Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US TO STAY ALIVE!

My Review: Library borrow, to read before the story collection reviewed here: WE WERE FORBIDDEN, three stories from a feminist author at her tendentious best. This is an SFnal story about how very awful it is to be a woman. Since the evidence is pretty overwhelming that it *is* dreadful to be a woman, I've got nothing clever to say about it.

Most agreeable-to-me prose style as ably rendered into English by Translator Schwartz, it feels...pithy, almost aphoristic.

Transit Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) EXPECTS $15.99 from you before you open the ebook.

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The Simp: A Novel Without a Hero by Roshan Sethi

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A novel without a hero. Hellscape with an infinity pool.

Raj Ladlani is an unemployable actor. He has reasons to believe he is spectacularly talented (his beloved acting coach Anthony says so), a legend in every way but for the success.

His anonymous life working at Yogurtland, obsessively reading Vanity Fair, and fantasizing about stardom, comes to an end when he answers a job ad detailing a relentless, laughable parade of menial responsibilities for a "Hollywood Family." So begins the astonishing decline and fall of Raj Ladlani.

The Simp tells the story of Raj's momentous employment with the H Family and the destruction that follows in the wake of his time with the with Jim H, a massive and macho director in a creative rut. Anna H might uncharitably be described as his much younger trophy wife, quietly and neurotically seeking out her own independent sense of purpose as a screenwriter. Raj’s work as their executive assistant becomes his new sense of soaring purpose. But he procured the job through a sea of lies.

And when the job reveals itself to be an absurdist walk through affluent domestic chaos and misguided engagements with identity politics, Raj might be about to lose it—on a very public stage.

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

My Review: The Line of Beauty. Saltburn. The world of wealth and its attendant privileges is of never-ending fascination for the have-nots. Is another iteration, with a South Asian protagonist, adding to the conversation or cashing in on the gossip?

Yes...both...and bloodily flensing the fakeness of it all, class, ethnicity, hype, all of it. Not as much LOL-funny as it is mordant.

Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) takes $14.99 from you to legally read the ebook. It will fit a mood, or else skip it.

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A Human Business: The People-First Model for Lasting Success by Glenn Bostock

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: For too long, business leaders have operated under the assumption that maximizing profit requires minimizing humanity. The result is widespread employee disengagement, toxic workplace cultures, and organizations that drain rather than energize their people.

A Human Business challenges this paradigm with a proven alternative. Drawing from forty years building SnapCab from a small cabinet shop to an international manufacturing company, Glenn Bostock demonstrates how modeling your organization after the human body creates communities where people thrive.

Inside, you will discover:

how to create a foundation of caring that attracts and retains exceptional talent

identify and leverage what you and your team genuinely love doing

shift focus from profit-chasing to value-creation through usefulness

build interdependent systems where every department serves shared intentions

Through vulnerable personal stories and practical business applications, Bostock reveals how dyslexia and learning disabilities became unexpected assets in building a company culture that values accessibility over expertise, collaboration over competition, and purpose over profit alone.

Whether launching a startup or transforming an established organization, A Human Business provides the framework for creating workplaces where people want to spend their days—and where sustainable success follows naturally.

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

My Review: Three stars for the time-tested advice to get to know the people, treat them with respect and honor, and allow them to grow under your care. The extra half-star is for the genuinely vulnerable revelations of how Author Bostock learned to take these ancient nuggets of wisdom to heart, apply them to his own business, and reap generous rewards therefrom.

Life changing for some, perhaps, good for all to read as a reminder of how to behave and why, and not at all hard to plow through.

Forbes Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) offers an ebook for 99¢. I bought one just to show solidarity with the author and publisher for being so very generous.

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Nothing in Moderation: A Psychedelic Reckoning With Excess by Shep Rose

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Shep Rose thought he had life figured out.

As one of the breakout stars of Bravo's Southern Charm, he'd built a reputation as Charleston's ultimate good-time guy: charismatic, adventurous, and always ready for the next party. His mantra? Say yes. Say yes to every invitation, every adventure, every opportunity for excess. For years, it worked beautifully, bringing him a successful television career, incredible experiences around the world, and the kind of life most people only dream about.

But by November 2023, that same approach had become dangerous. A blackout weekend at BravoCon in Las Vegas, complete with drugs, gambling binges, and behavior he couldn't even remember, culminated in a sobering phone call from Andy Cohen himself. The message was clear: change or lose everything.

Instead of deploying more traditional methods, Shep made an unconventional choice. At the recommendation of a Navy SEAL friend who'd found his own healing there, Shep flew to Costa Rica to spend a week at Rythmia, participating in four consecutive nights of Ayahuasca ceremonies. What followed was the most transformative, terrifying, and enlightening experience of his life.

In this remarkably honest memoir, Shep chronicles his journey with vivid detail and his signature humor. From his first ceremony, where he saw himself as the pole of an amusement park ride that could send everyone flying if he wasn't stable, to the profound night when he witnessed "the machine" and underwent spiritual heart surgery, each experience peeled back another layer of self-deception and forced him to confront uncomfortable truths.

This book is about the universal struggle between who we think we are and who we've actually become. It's about the fine line between being the life of the party and being destructively out of control. It's about learning that vulnerability isn't weakness and that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is admit you need help.

Written with the same authenticity that's made him a fan favorite for over a decade, Shep shares not just the mystical visions and profound realizations, but also the awkward moments, the embarrassing incidents, and the ongoing work of integration after the ceremonies ended. He doesn't pretend to have all the answers or to be "cured." Instead, he offers something more valuable: an honest account of one man's attempt to course correct before it's too late.

Whether you've struggled with your own relationship to excess, questioned whether your greatest strengths might also be your biggest weaknesses, or simply wondered what it's really like to drink Ayahuasca with a shaman in the Costa Rican jungle, this book offers insights, laughs, and the kind of raw honesty that's increasingly rare in our curated world.

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

My Review: Earnest, heartfelt prose telling the self-discovery story again. I myownself will attest to ayahuasca's efficacy as a self-discovery tool from forty-plus-year-old experience...nothing beats altering perceptions of reality as an aid to gaining perspective on life, the past, and the path forward best to take: Pursue honesty and behave compassionately, starting with yourself.

DO NOT TRY IT ALONE. Always seek guidance, always verify your guide's trustworthiness because honest people welcome scrutiny.

Advantage Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) wants $9.99 for an ebook. Worth the price if you need the nudge to take the reins of your life.

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The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder (Antique Hunter’s #1) by C.L. Miller

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In this irresistible and thrilling debut novel, a former antique hunter investigates a suspicious death at an isolated English manor, embroiling her back in the dangerous world of tracking stolen artifacts.

What antique would you kill for?

Freya Lockwood is shocked when she learns that Arthur Crockleford, antiques dealer and her estranged mentor, has died under mysterious circumstances. She has spent the last twenty years avoiding her quaint English hometown, but when she receives a letter from Arthur asking her to investigate—sent just days before his death—Freya has no choice but to return to a life she had sworn to leave behind.

Joining forces with her eccentric Aunt Carole, Freya follows clues and her instincts to an old manor house for an advertised antiques enthusiast’s weekend. But not all is as it seems. It’s clear to Freya that the antiques are all just poor reproductions and her fellow guests are secretive and menacing. What is going on at this estate and how was Arthur involved? More importantly, can Freya and Carole discover the truth before the killer strikes again?

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

My Review: Very much on board with the "return your spoliated goods" message; the precise target audience for the Antiques Roadshow provenance of the story; loved the tidbit about the author being one of the show's expert's daughter!

The mystery itself was competent but journeyman-level work. It's not bad but it should only get better from here.

Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) would like you to be so genteel as to surreptitiously slip $13.99 onto the electronic butler's digital visiting card tray before you open that ebook.

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The Antique Hunter's Death on the Red Sea (Antique Hunter’s #2) by C.L. Miller

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In this follow-up to the USA TODAY bestselling “utterly charming mystery” (Robyn Harding, author The Party) The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder, Freya Lockwood and Aunt Carole are on the hunt once again to return priceless stolen antiques and catch a dangerous criminal aboard a cruise ship.

When a painting vanishes from a maritime museum and a dead body is found nearby, the newly established Lockwood Antique Hunter’s Agency, Freya Lockwood and her Aunt Carole, are called to investigate.

Following a lead that takes them aboard a glamorous antiques cruise sailing toward the Red Sea in Jordan, they quickly discover that the ships art gallery is filled with stolen antiquities. Each antique is also listed in Freya’s late mentor’s journals that detail unsolved cases. In chasing a murderer with a stolen painting, they may have found something more sinister than they could’ve imagined…

Their hunt soon turns deadly when they learn the enigmatic and dangerous art trafficker named The Collector could be on board. But on a ship full of antiques enthusiasts—plus some unexpected familiar faces—will Freya and Carole be able to discover the Collector’s identity and stop his murderous plans before the ship docks? Or will the killer strike again?

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

My Review: Again, I batten on each element of the story: bottled on a cruise ship, antique collectors with grudges old enough to have grand-grudges end up one terrible old greedy snot down, while on the quite stunning Red Sea. None of it quite jells.

"The Collector" who is the anonymous Big Bad would've been a cute narrative device on TV. Think Lovejoy on The Love Boat. Alas, an authorial hand more suited to Kojak was at work.

Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) still wants $13.99 for the ebook. Mmmaaaybe, but the library's free.

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The Antique Hunter's Murder in the Castle (Antique Hunter’s #3) by C.L. Miller

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The third novel in the “delightful, page-turning” (Tom Ryan, USA TODAY bestselling author) Antique Hunter Series finds Freya, Aunt Carole, and friends searching for a missing colleague in picturesque Scotland.

Hot on the heels of an art forger, a member of the Lockwood Antique Hunter’s Agency disappears while investigating an isolated castle deep in Scottish countryside. Freya and Aunt Carole race to her last known location and arrive in the wintry, snow-covered Scottish Borders.

At the castle, they discover that a murdered laird in the vegetable garden and his priceless collection of silverware has been stolen. Local police believe Freya’s missing team member was involved with the robbery and murder...but where is she now?

As a snowstorm descends on the castle, Freya and Carole call in back-up to help uncover what happened that fateful night. As each question is met with more mystery, the clock is ticking to find their friend and the murderer before they are cut off from the outside world.

Another delightfully gripping and endearing mystery, the Antique Hunter’s Series provides “great characters, great story, and you’re always eager for the next one” (Ian Moore, author of Death and Croissants).

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

My Review: Look at that praise, from reputable authors! And here I sit with my teeth in my mouth.

No more. Atria should not try this author on me again because I'm not a good fit for this prose.

Atria Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) now wants $14.99 for an ebook! Gadzooks and godzilla!

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A Lark's Gambit (A Verity Lark Mystery #6) by Lynn Messina

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Oh, dear. Is that the Marquess of Ware enjoying a pipe in the very same upscale opium den as Verity Lark?

It is, yes.
Wonderful.

Now she must inform her suitor, Colson Hardwicke, of his father’s unsavory habit—which means she will have to reveal that she herself had been partaking in the very next berth.

He will understand.

Once she explains that the den is above the fish seller whose poppy trade she has been monitoring for months, he will totally get it. As London’s most intrepid reporter and dogged gossipmonger, she is duty bound to get to the bottom of the mystery.

What Hardwicke might find a little harder to accept is why she was kissing the marquess in a darkened room during a fashionable society affair.

That is a slightly more complicated story.

Alas, with a killer stalking her, she might not have a chance to tell it.

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

My Review: There is a deeply, intricately interconnected Messina-verse. Verity Lark and Beatrice Hyde-Clare are the poles the puzzles to be solved in the stories anchor to. The reason Author Messina chose two bluestockings to hold up her stories is obvious: Aren't you damn good and sick of YET ANOTHER marriage plot?

Bridgerton notwithstanding, it's time to move 2026 past 1806's mores, if not manners and speech patterns because those're still heaps of fun. Verity's a ballsy Lady Whistledown with serious Ida Tarbell vibes.

I won't pretend this is Heyer territory, all champagne bubbles and gooseberry fool served to noddycocks by discreet servants. It's still well-thought-out fun, puzzling stories that hang on details you missed; no easy solves with Verity! You *do* need to read them in order, though. I recommend starting with A Lark's Tale to get properly oriented, the proceed at your own pace...likely apace...to savor the fun.

Potatoworks Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) will need $6.99 for you to get into that Kindlebook.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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Goodbye Chinatown (28%) by Kit Fan

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: As her native Hong Kong seethes, torn between two world powers, Amber Fan tries to build a career as a chef in London’s Chinatown.

Amber Fan, a young Oxford-educated chef, opens the first Chinese fusion joint in London’s Chinatown following the failure of her father’s traditional restaurant. When her parents decide to return to Hong Kong, taking with them their young son Bobby as well as the haunting secret surrounding his birth, Amber is left alone in London. That is, until a woman called Celeste hires out the restaurant, coughing up three grand for a dinner for one. Who is this extravagant stranger, and how did she get so wealthy?

Set in the aftermath of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule, Goodbye Chinatown shows a family torn between two countries. Amber throws herself into her career to escape the painful cycle of family separations and reunions.

The tastes and smells spark off every page in Kit Fan’s latest novel, making for a truly multisensorial reading experience. Offering a behind-the-scenes of this suburb of London’s hospitality economy, and using food to reflect on identity, Goodbye Chinatown paints a portrait of an enterprising émigré who, faced with divided loyalties, invents her own language for home through the culinary arts.

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

My Review: I tapped out in chapter 13:

Amber smiled. She'd just closed the kitchen and agreed to meet Celeste outside in five minutes. She came out wearing a tight pair of Levi's and a loose russet jacket and kissed Celeste's cheeks.She told her she'd have put her on the VIP list if she'd rung.

Which she? Who "her"? What's "her" jacket got to do with anything except making me picture "her" as a potato? (Russet, see, and unattached to any other concept but closely associated with a kitchen = spud.) Craft failures for author *and* editor.

It's just too hard to connect all those dots tentatively because who knows if I'm getting the referents right, who knows what I'm supposed to think about "her" sincerity over the VIP list, or about "her" place on it...or control over it...?

World Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) would like $14.99 for you to read the book. Try a sample first.

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Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of Truth (30%) by Zahid R. Chaudhary

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Facts and established truths are regularly denied in contemporary life. This situation has brought paranoid politics into the mainstream, from conspiracy theories like QAnon, to sex panics and assaults on public health measures, to election denialism and the rise of vigilante militias. Paranoid Publics analyzes these phenomena as psychosocial realities enmeshed with emerging ways of determining truth.

Today’s paranoia cannot simply be blamed on the rise of social media or the recent surge of populist anger. Rather, as Chaudhary shows, both are fueled by preexisting psychosocial processes. Applying psychodynamics to analyze truth and politics, Paranoid Publics foregrounds unconscious demands, wishes, and compulsions. Against the hope that progressive economic policies might dispel widespread disorientation and disillusionment, Chaudhary reveals how psychic realities mark politics as deeply as do self-interest and class dynamics do.

Chaudhary takes up and reinvents psychoanalytic concepts to analyze how, for example, the personal liberty exercised through vaccine exemptions is paradoxically grounded in submission to the authority of the family and the state. Such politically consequential attitudes concerning truth emerge from a social order that they proceed to challenge. Making a case for psychosocial understandings of our current historical juncture, Paranoid Publics radically expands our notion of the political.

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

My Review: I had to give up my battle against academic prose when Author Zahid says, oh so casually, "Hence, as well, elaborate rationalizations by right-wing politicians for the kind of manipulative work engaged in surreptitiously by Cambridge Analytica (which has become more common and less scandalous since the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018.)"

I felt a T.I.A. in my immediate future as the import of that statement sat longer and longer in my craw, stuck fast. Self-defensively, then, I called it and closed my Kindle at that point.

Fordham University Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link) would like $26.99 for ebook access. If you're up to it....