for earlier parts in this “What I Read” series, scroll down to previous posts
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I think we’re only one – maybe two – of these summaries, and I’ll be current. Here we go.
Thirteen Guests by J. Jefferson Farjeon – On a fine autumn weekend Lord Aveling hosts a hunting party at his country house, Bragley Court. Among the guests are an actress, a journalist, an artist and a mystery novelist. The unlucky thirteenth is John Foss, injured at the local train station and brought to the house to recuperate. Soon events take a sinister turn when a painting is mutilated, a dog stabbed, and a man strangled. Death strikes more than one of the house guests, and the police are called. Classic golden age country house mystery. I enjoyed it.
Semiosis by Sue Burke – An interesting SF novel. “In the 2060s, a group leaves Earth to create a new, peaceful society. They arrive 158 years later on a planet they name Pax. The botanist, Octavio, knows that planting seeds from Earth, without symbiotic microorganisms in the soil, would be futile, but Pax is already teeming with plants. He tests a persimmon-like fruit growing on snow-white vines and finds it safe to eat—but later, three Pacifists die after eating the same fruit from a different vine that’s now, somehow, poisonous. The deadly crop, he discovers, comes from an identical snow vine that’s competing for space with the vines closer to the colonists. He knows the chemical alteration is too fast to be mere ecological adjustment, and when the deadly vine changes its chemistry again to destroy a field of grain the colonists planted, Octavio begins to understand that the poisonous vine sees them as a threat. The plants of Pax are able to think and plan ahead—and the colonists must learn to communicate with them in order to survive.” – Kirkus
Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes – This is considered a classic, featuring Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones in a war against scams and racism in Harlem. “Reverend” Deke O’Malley, a conman, is selling shares at a Harlem rally, for the purchase of a Back-to-Africa movement ship to be called The Black Beauty. During the rally, several masked gunman jump out of a meat truck and steal $87,000 in donated cash from the back of an armored car. Two Harlem detectives, Gravedigger Jones and “Coffin” Ed Johnson chase the car, and a bale of cotton falls out of the vehicle, unremarked at the time. Uncle Budd,
a scavenger, finds the bale of cotton and sells it for $25 to a junk dealer, not knowing the money is hidden inside. This is rough, tough cop fiction.
Origin by Dan Brown – I’ve liked some of Brown’s books, and others have left me wondering why I spent the time. This one falls somewhere in between, as I liked most of it, but was dissatisfied with some of the choices Brown made late in the book in wrapping things up. Still, in spite of criticism from many, I find his books readable and a nice break from tough mysteries or war in space.
The Complete Psychotecnic League, Volume 1 by Poul Anderson – And speaking of war in space, this is the first volume in the series presenting the complete stories in Anderson’s Psychotecnic League history. Though not my favorite set of his works, these are good solid stories.
I especially liked “The Big Rain”, which I remembered reading in Astounding Science Fiction when it was a cover story.
Trouble in Nuala by Harriet Steel – I’m not sure how I came across this cozy series by Steel, this being the first book, but I got it for 
Kindle for next to nothing and found it to be a quick read, light, interesting setting of Nuala, Ceylon in the 1930s.
Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi – I was in the mood to re-read these, the first of the Old Man’s War series. In thinking they were the better of the series, and better than his more recent books, I was right.
The Long Arm of the Law edited by Martin Edwards – British Library Crime Classics are a series of novels and short story anthologies by golden and sometimes silver age authors. They are published by Poisoned Pen Press here in the U. S. and I think I’ve gotten just about every one of them.
In this one, the stories are, as the cover states, “classic police stories”, and they’re good ones. I had read a couple in other anthologies over the years, but most were new to me.
That brings us to the middle of March. Next time, Raoul Whitfield, maybe some muscle car stuff, some Sherlock Holmes stories and a novel by John Crowley, which will bring us to the middle of April. Almost caught up!
The Other Woman by Hank Phillips Ryan – thriller/mystery – One of the many blogs I visit is Jungle Red Writers, contributed to by seven or more writers of various genres, mostly soft or cozy, but also historical and thriller. One of those authors is Ryan, and I wanted to try one of her books and choose this one from 2012. At 433 pages I think it was too long and needed editing down. The main character, a reporter kicked off her lead TV job after refusing to reveal a source, is interesting and likable, though her tendency to get flustered is bothersome. Her love interest and the second main character is a cop.
Forsaken by Michael McBride – Horror, Unit 51 Book 2. I came across and read the first Unit 51 book, Subhuman in May, and followed it up with this just a couple of weeks ago. Not as good as the first one, which is a very Alien-like story of the monsters deep in the Antarctic ice. In chambers that are thawed. If you like that sort of thing, try the first one (I read them in ebook format).
Ragged Lake by Ron Corbett – mystery. This was shortlisted for the Nero Award. The setting in Canada is very well realized, the characters strong, the mystery well laid out. The author puts in a twist near the end. My only complaint is a character I liked didn’t survive. But I 
guess everyone can’t stay alive in a mystery novel with dope gangs and a hired killer stalking in the woods. This is Corbett’s first novel, and I’ll read his next one when it comes out this Fall.
