Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling by Michael Boccacino

Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling by Michael Boccacino

Halloween is right around the corner!  It’s time to get your spooky reading list together.  If you like your scares to be gothic and otherworldly join Mrs. Markham as she journeys into the House of Darkling.

Charlotte Markham has lost everyone she has ever loved: her mother, father and husband.  She is now destitute, having lost everything in the fire that claimed her husband.  Being well-educated she is able to find employment as a governess at a manor in the village of Blackfield to two young boys who recently lost their mother.  Shortly after starting her employment strange things begin to happen.  One day Charlotte takes the boys on an outing into the woods surrounding their home.  A fog comes up and as the trio crosses it they find themselving in The Ending, and Lily Darrow, the boys’ dead mother, is there to great them.

This story very much reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft (there were lots of tentacles) as well as Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman (because of the strange atmostpheric details).  It’s not particularly ghastly or gory, but wonderfully creepy.

The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen

The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Add Denmark to my growing list of countries producing great crime fiction!  (For those keeping score Sweden, Norway, Brazil and Iceland are already on that list.) 

Carl Mǿrck is back from medical leave and he is impossible to work with.  It is little wonder.  One of his closest colleagues is paralyzed and the other is dead after a line of duty shoot out.  To solve their personnel issues, and to appease the politicians, Department Q is formed with Carl as the lone employee.  It is his job to solve the cold cases; those important ones that never got closed.  Like the disappearance of a woman with political standing five years ago who was long ago declared dead.  As Carl and his new assistant (new to police work and a man, who with Carl makes an unlikely and wonderful pairing) investigate they see all the avenues that the original officers assigned to the case never pursued.  Could Carl actually close a cold case?

WONDERFUL on audio.  The reader read all the dialogue in a Danish accent, which was particularly interesting when he was voicing a transplant from Syria with a Syrian/Danish accent.  I have just put the second audiobook in the series – The Absent One – on hold.

The White Forest by Adam McOmber

The White Forest by Adam McOmber

The editor of this book is still kicking herself for passing on The Night Circus last year so she wasn’t about to let another book about the fantastic blurring with our world slip through her fingers.  While The White Forest hasn’t been too heavily pushed yet, I give it another week or two before the bombardments begin.

Set in Victorian England this is the story of friendship, scary mystical cults and strange abilities.  Three friends, Maddy, Nathan and Jane have been rambling around the heath for ages together.  Everything changes between them when Jane reveals her secret.  She can hear the “souls” of man-made objects.  They sing and pour forth color to her at all times of day and night.  She finds it all quite useless but over time her abilities evolve.  Her friends would have though her mad, but if she touches someone she can transfer her experiences on to them as well.  Maddy wishes to ignore Jane’s abilities, but Nathan wants to learn more about it and do experiments.  Then he is sent off to fight in the Crimea.  His obsession with Jane continues and upon his return he joins a cult in London.  A cult dedicated to finding the Empryrean and he thinks Jane may be the doorway there.

I’ll admit this was a weird one.  Unlike Harry Potter and The Night Circus this wasn’t just a “magic exists and we just don’t know it” type of book.  This book was more about the parallel worlds existing beside our own and the ways those worlds can mingle with (possibly) disastrous results.  If you are not a fan of fantasy you will probably not enjoy this book. 

Dare Me by Megan Abbott

Dare Me by Megan Abbott 

This is not just another book about mean girl cheerleaders.  These mean girls are scary.  They are like a well-oiled machine.  Until the former captain decides that enough is enough – she needs to get her own back. 

Very dark, very readable, very disturbing.  What I’m taking away from this one is how one mean, vindictive, smart person with low morals can ruin the lives of those around her and walk away shiny and fresh and without a care in the world.  Yikes!

Where the Shadows Lie by Michael Ridpath

Where the Shadows Lie by Michael Ridpath

Magnus Jonson is having a bad week.  His girlfriend broke up with him.  Someone has tried to kill him (again).  And his boss is sending him off on special assignment for an unspecified amount of time. 

Magnus is the prime witness in the upcoming trial of a fellow police officer.  The drug kingpin who had that officer in his pocket is the one trying to have Magnus killed.  To protect their star witness Boston’s Police Commissioner is sending him off to Iceland.  Magnus lived in Iceland until he was twelve and speaks Icelandic so he is the perfect fit to help the Icelandic police learn how to deal with violent crime.  In a country that feels their murder rate is booming because it has hit eight, help with investigating murders is sorely needed.  And when Marcus arrives a murder has just been committed and nothing about the case is straightforward.

I fell in love with Iceland when I was there in March and I had a chance to revisit many of the places I saw in this book.  I also learned a lot about policing in that country.  First of all no one in law enforcement, aside from the police at the airport, have guns.  Secondly, if they think you may have had something to do with a serious crime they can jail you for three weeks.  Don’t get in trouble in Iceland!

Breaking Silence by Linda Castillo

Breaking Silence by Linda Castillo

Police Chief Kate Burkholder knows things are not going to end well when she gets the call about people in a manure pit on an Amish farm.  Too often those who find themselves trapped in a pit like that succumb to the methane fumes.  This accident proves even more tragic than Kate originally supposed.  A mother, father and uncle are dead.  Four children are now orphaned.  But was it an accident?  Kate is shocked to learn that according to the autopsy results one of the adults suffered head trauma prior to entering the pit.  Was it murder combined with tragedy as the other adults attempted to save him?

Simultaneously hate crimes against the Amish of Ohio are on the rise.  Sheep are slaughtered, buggies are vandalised and a woman is injured.  The ferocity of these crimes is increasing – could the manure pit deaths be linked?

Nothing is as it first appears in this twisty mystery.  Kate is an interesting character having grown up Amish and then left the community.  While it is a closed community her knowledge of its inner workings helps her know who to talk to and when to push.

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

Chris Bohjalian is one of those authors that constantly surprises me.  None of his books seem to be the same.  He’s written historical novels, twisty suspense, even a ghost story.  This time he’s blending fact and fiction to tell the story of the Armenian genocide. 

I am embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t aware that there even was an Armenian genocide.  One of the main characters echoes my feelings: How did a million and a half people die and I didn’t know about it?  To tell the story the author follows Elizabeth Endicott, a young women traveling to Aleppo with her father to distribute aid in 1915, and Elizabeth’s great-granddaughter, Laura Petrosian, an author trying to track down her family’s Armenian history and learning a LOT more than she thought she would, in present day Massachusetts.

This is a hard story to read; it is well written, it’s the subject matter that makes it a hard read.  Hundreds of women and children were marched across the desert and when those who survived finally arrived in Aleppo they were little more than walking skeletons.  And with the stories Bohjalian decides to tell the heartbreak becomes more vivid and real.  A great story of a family, and the secrets hidden within families, that are sometimes buried for good reason.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

Janus Rock is a small rocky island off the Southwestern coast of Australia.  There two great oceans meet and the lighthouse of Janus Rock provides the beacon to guide ships safely around the rocky coastline.  It is a solitary life.  The supply boat comes out every few months and shore leave is granted once every three years.  On his first leave the lighthouse keeper meets a girl and falls in love.  Their relationship blooms through their sporadic correspondence.  On his next leave they marry and return together to Janus Rock.  After all, the island will be a lively place once the children arrive.  It does not seem meant to be.  She suffers two miscarriages and has just recently given birth to a stillborn boy when a baby’s cries are heard on the wind.  The couple thinks they are hallucinating but the sound continues.  On the rocky shore is a dinghy.  Aboard are a dead man and an infant.  The keeper knows that he should report the incident yet his wife begs him to delay.  How can he deny his grieving wife this little bit of comfort?  He will report the incident the next day.  Or does he?

This is a book all about consequences, guilt and responsibility.  You really get into the moralistic nitty gritty of how a decision can affect the lives of many in a myriad of different ways.  Fans of domestic fiction that asks the hard questions, like the works of Jodi Picoult and Barbara Delinsky, will find a lot to like and think about in this novel. 

Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum

Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum

The body of a teenaged girl is found naked on the side of an idyllic lake on Kollen Mountain.  The local village is in mourning and shock.  Who would kill want her dead?  It seemed like everyone the police talked to liked, even loved, her.  Inspector Sejer knows that the villagers hope an outsider killed the girl, but he feels that someone in the village is the killer.

Unlike a lot of Scandinavian mysteries (this one takes place in Norway) this one is a straightforward murder mystery.  There isn’t a lot of blood and gore and the case involves a lot of good old fashioned police work like interviewing (and re-interviewing) suspects and witnesses.  You’ll be well over halfway through the book and you’ll know how the victim died and you’ll still have no clue why.  When you find out though, it all makes (a certain kind of) sense. 

This is a long running mystery series and this book is the first of eight so far released in the United States. 

(Interesting!  I just noticed that we have a movie in our collection called The Girl by the Lake which is based on this novel.  What's interesting is that the movie is set in a small village in Italy and it's a foreign film in Italian!)

The Yard by Alex Grecian

The Yard by Alex Grecian

Inspector Day recently moved from quiet Devon to bustling London to join the Murder Squad of Scotland Yard.  The public isn’t too happy with the Yard since they believe Saucy Jack is still out there and the police should have caught him.  Someone is apparently VERY upset.  One of the Murder Squad detectives is found mutilated and stuffed into a steamer trunk left on a train platform.  Who is targeting police?  Could Jack the Ripper be back?

What I liked most about this book was the sense of being there.  The author does a great job making the main and secondary characters come to life.  You know what being them, during this time, was like.  This is great historical fiction as well as a well-crafted mystery; equally good on audio and the printed page. 

Some Kind of Peace by Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff

Some Kind of Peace by Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff

Dr. Siri Bergman is a psychologist.  She helps her patients cope with eating disorders, depression and compulsions.  She also is afraid of the dark and can’t sleep at night unless all the lights in her house are on and a fully charged flashlight is on her nightstand.  Siri is still coping (or not) with accidental drowning death of her husband and cocoons herself away in the cottage by the sea that they lived in together.  She leaves the cottage to go to her practice and hang out with her best friend and colleague, but she mostly stays in the cottage spending her nights with the lights on.

Then the body of one of her patients is found floating near her dock.  How did the patient know where she lived?  Did she commit suicide?  The autopsy shows that the young patient was murdered.  Things start happening around Siri that convince her, and those around her, that someone means her harm.  But who?  And why?

This suspense/mystery keeps you guessing.  Written by a Swedish sister duo it is the first in a series.  Since this suspense clearly revolved around the sleuth/psychologist Siri I’m guessing her best friend will take center stage in the next book  After that I really don’t know how they will continue but I might just take a peek to find out.

Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

Twenty years ago Tara Martin disappeared.  Her family was crushed but mostly accepted that she was gone.  On Christmas Day as the Martin’s sit down to eat their Christmas goose there is a knock at the door.  A young woman is standing there.  Tara has finally come home.  But is it Tara?  This girl looks exactly as Tara did when she disappeared, but then she should look 36, not 16.  Tara is reluctant to tell her family the truth about where she has been, but eventually she does.  She accepted a ride on a white horse from a stranger in the woods twenty years ago and they made the crossing together.  Once there she realized that she was a long way from home and asked to return, but the man told her the crossing wouldn’t be possible for another six months.  She returned as soon as she could, but time works differently there.  Six months there was twenty years here.

Needless to say everyone has a difficult time believing Tara’s story.  Where has she been for twenty years?  Does she really think anyone will believe she’s been with the fairy folk?  Can her psychiatrist break through this complex delusion to find the truth?  Where has Tara been?

Great both on audio and print – I kept switching back and forth to see what happened next!  I also loved The Silent Land and this author is now permanently on my must read list. 

Amped by Daniel H. Wilson

Amped by Daniel H. Wilson

In the not so far future scientists discover a way to help those with developmental disabilities and physical disabilities.  Brain chip implementation can augment their abilities or just simply regulate medical problems without medication.  For example, a child born unable to see or learn due to fetal alcohol syndrome can miraculously see (extremely well too) and performs at the top of his class.  Children with ADHD are given autofocus chips and can focus to such an extent that they are skipping grades.  Veterans returning from war injured have prosthetic limbs or exoskeletons providing great strength and dexterity.  Sounds wonderful right?  Until the Pure Pride Alliance has these “Amps” – slang for amplified human – declared as non-human.  If you have a port in your head the Constitution no longer applies to you.

Owen Gray was in a car accident as a teen and suffered a severe head injury leaving him with chronic epilepsy.  His dad happened to be a specialist in brain implants.  He was able to give Owen a medical chip to control his seizures.  Now Owen is considered sub-human even though his implant doesn’t do anything but stop the seizures.  Or is Owen Amped more than he knows?

Written in the same cinematic style as Robopocalypse this is a great choice if you’re looking for a summer blockbuster read.  Great on the page and on audio.