Every Man Dies Alone was published in German in 1947, and became a “surprise best­seller” after it was translated into English in 2009. It’s a novel of the little-known German resistance against the Nazis, loosely based on true events.

Otto and Anna Quangel are apolitical, middle-aged, working class Berliners, who become rad­i­cal­ized after the death of their son early in the War. Otto starts writing seditious postcards and dropping them in public buildings, hoping to foment unrest. The Gestapo grow furiouser as this goes on for two years, and several …continue.

Sequel to The Outlaw Demon Wails; best read in sequence.

Rachel Morgan’s life is com­pli­cat­ed. She’s in­ves­ti­gat­ing the murder of her boyfriend, the vampire Kisten. There’s a banshee on the rampage in Cincinatti and the human police want her help. And she’s being shunned by her fellow witches because she’s thought to consort with demons. And then there’s her personal life. That’s com­pli­cat­ed too.

En­ter­tain­ing, but far over the top.

Jana Matinova is a senior Slovak police officer following the trail of a master criminal across half of Europe. His old rivals think he’s dead and are squabbling over his legacy.

The book is more in­ter­est­ing in the long flashbacks to her early career under the Communists than in the fairly pre­pos­ter­ous present-day plot, which relies too heavily on co­in­ci­dences and clichés.

Quick, readable intro to Shake­speare’s life and plays, setting him in the context of the religious and political turmoils of the late Eliz­a­bethan and early Jacobean eras. You can’t do justice to Shake­speare in an hour, of course, Most useful if you didn’t already know anything about him or his work.

Pock Rafferty is a "rough travel" writer trying to form a family in Bangkok with ex-bar girl Rose and former street kid Miaow. When he is asked to look into the dis­ap­pear­ance of an Australian expat after the Tsunami, he finds both a sadistic child pornog­ra­ph­er and a Khmer Rouge torturer.

Hallinan clearly knows a lot about Thai culture and brings the seedy back streets of Bangkok to life. Rafferty is no hard-bitten Mar­lowesque cynic however. He is a soft-hearted would-be family man, trying to bridge the cultural and …continue.

The first of the The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.

Mma Precious Ramotswe sets up a one-woman detective agency in Gaborne, the capital of her native Botswana. She is shrewd and observant and makes a go of it, despite the naysayers. The book is a collection of short episodes, loosely tied together. Her good nature helps lead her to find sat­is­fac­to­ry res­o­lu­tions for most of her clients.

Enjoyable, if frothy.

First of the Bulldog Drummond novels.

Bored former army officer, Capt. Hugh Drummond, “late of the Royal Loamshires”, puts an ad­ver­tise­ment in the paper looking for adventure. He gets more than he expected when a young woman puts him on the trail of a master criminal who is organizing a would-be socialist putsch.

En­ter­tain­ing in a square-jawed, stiff-upper-lip sort of way.

The first in the Temeraire series.

Capt. Will Laurence of the Royal Navy captures one of Napoleon’s ships. It’s carrying a dragon egg, from which the dragon Temeraire promptly hatches and bonds with Laurence. Laurence must leave the Navy and become an aviator in the socially un­de­sir­able Royal Aerial Corps, where he and Temeraire will fight against Napoleon’s dragons.

This is a delightful cross between the Napoleonic seafaring of the Aubrey-Maturin novels and Drag­onrid­ers of Pern, with a little bit of Hogwarts for dragons thrown in. Temeraire …continue.

Arik is the smartest of the 100 young humans born to the only colony on Venus—a colony that needs to develop its in­de­pen­dence from Earth. After he wakes from a three-month coma, he grows to realize that there is something very wrong going on in the colony.

The book starts off very slowly, with massive amounts of exposition that the author apparently couldn’t bear to cut. Later, it develops some in­ter­est­ing ideas and unexpected plot twists, making it worthwhile.

Available as a free ebook from the author’s website.

Playback is the last Philip Marlowe novel completed by Raymond Chandler. Marlowe is hired to tail a woman who arrives on a train from the East. He follows her to a small town near San Diego, where she falls under the influence of a black­mail­er—and Marlowe starts to fall for her.

Not Chandler’s best work—one is left feeling that both Chandler and Marlowe are old and tired and going through the mo­tion­s—but enjoyable none the less.