Series on account of which I have stayed up way too late and devoured a series of books like candy:
1. Hugh Howey, the silo books. The first one is Wool, and it is not about knitting. not at all. Hint: they all live in an underground silo.
Mystery type books.
1. Kate Atkinson, the Jackson Brodie series – set in the British Isles, “mystery” spiced with sly humor. I really like these. Jackson Brodie is divorced, listens to great music in his car, and always solves the puzzle even when the plot meanders through a maze of overlapping and interlocking characters.
2. Thomas Perry, the Jane Whitehead books – they are all alike, but it’s okay, they’re all a lot of fun. Jane agrees to make someone disappear/reappear/ in a do-it-yourself witness relocation process, and on the way many bad guys almost get her but are dispatched. Have you ever watched Burn Notice? If so, you might have noticed how the voice over makes the most impossible things sound kind of possible: “If you need to make a bomb in a hurry, you need peanut butter, a plastic bag, and a mousetrap” etc. These books do the same thing with evading bad guys.
3. Julia Spencer Fleming – Rev. Clare Ferguson. very cute – feisty tomboy helicopter pilot hears the Call, becomes an Episcopalian priest, is assigned to a small town in the Adirondacks, where she and the sheriff have an immediate connection . . . but he’s married! . . . and there are mysteries . . . and each one focuses on an aspect of the history and culture of the Adirondacks – loggers vs environmentalists, historical antipathy to vaccines, immigrant farm workers, Iraq vets readjusting to civilian life, etc.
4. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child – the Agent Pendergast books. Again, they’re all the same and all a lot of fun. Why, that Agent Pendergast can escape from an underground dungeon where he is manacled to the wall and guarded by six soldiers, then defeat all the bad guys using only items in the pockets of his immaculate suit coat!
5. Denise Mina – any and all. She writes about the gritty side of Glasgow which, as far as I can tell from these books, is every side. They can be a bit dark, but I think they’re great. I may reread the Garnet Hill series this fall.
Many Happy Returns 