Sequel to Living Dead in Dallas.

Sookie’s vampire boyfriend, Bill, has gone missing and seems to have had an affair with another vampire. To get him back—and she’s not sure she wants him back—she must go undercover among the vampire glitterati of Jackson, Mis­sis­sip­pi. She retrieves him eventually, but not without some physical battering, and emotional upheaval as she finds herself attracted to another vampire and a very nice werewolf.

En­ter­tain­ing, often funny, oc­ca­sion­al­ly touching. Harris offers an amusing and original ex­pla­na­tion for why Elvis continues to be sighted.

Three short novels, extracted from longer stories published elsewhere.

Ms. Mid­ship­woman Harrington by David Weber is a prequel to the Honor Harrington novels. Harrington is a mid­ship­woman in the Royal Navy of Manticore, on her first tour of duty out in a pirate-infested area. She survives the hazing of a par­tic­u­lar­ly brutal and stupid superior. When half the bridge is blown away by a privateer’s attack, she manages to save the day.

Islands by Eric Flint is extracted from one of the later novels in …continue.

Mary-Mathilda has been the mistress of Bellfeels, a plantation owner in Bimshire (a lightly fic­tion­al­ized Barbados), since her early teens. One night, she calls the police to confess a crime. Sargeant, who has silently loved her since they were children, takes her Statement over the course of a very long, discursive night. A night in which many ugly secrets bubble to the surface. Secrets about Mary-Mathilda’s past, secrets about the English elite who ruled pre-War Bimshire, secrets about the plantation: secrets that Sargeant doesn’t really want to hear.

An odd, meandering novel that moves …continue.

Anyone who has attempted to build a Web Service has come away scarred by the complexity of all the WS-* standards. Heavy­weight standards that in many ways reinvent earlier dis­trib­uted object tech­nolo­gies like CORBA and DCOM, providing Remote Procedure Calls over HTTP. The promised in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty hasn’t really happened: a web service built with one stack of tools may or may not be consumable by another stack.

A movement has arisen in the last few years, arguing for RESTful Web Services: lighter­weight services built on top of …continue.

The Nightside: the dark, mysterious, sleazy place under the city of London, where you can find anything or lose yourself. Monsters lurk there, demons slum there, John Taylor grew up there. Taylor has a gift. He can find anything in Nightside.

Taylor exiled himself five years ago. Now he’s making a precarious living as a private eye in London. A distraught busi­ness­woman hires him to find her teenage daughter, who was last seen heading for Nightside. Taylor finds the girl alright, and he finds plenty of trouble along the way.

En­ter­tain­ing fantasy noir.

Francesco di Marco Datini was born in Prato in 1335 and died there without an heir in 1410. Prato is a small town in Tuscany, about 10 miles from Florence. Then, as now, Prato was in Florence’s shadow. At the age of fifteen with only a few florins to his name, Francesco ap­pren­ticed himself to a merchant in Avignon, then home of the Papal court. Thirty-three years later, he returned to Prato, a wealthy man.

Throughout his career, he was an inveterate letter writer, spending hours a day writing to his …continue.

A loose sequel to The Lion of Farside. The newly widowed Curtis Macurdy has returned to Earth in 1933. He heads west to a lumber town in Oregon where he becomes a sheriff’s deputy. After Pearl Harbor, he enlists in the Army and quickly becomes a para­troop­er. Despite showing great promise (and having been a general on Yuulith!), Macurdy refuses to be sent to Officer Training School. After some hair-raising adventures in North Africa that he only survives due to his Yuulith-trained magical abilities, he is recruited by the Office of …continue.

Sequel to The Bavarian Gate. Again widowed, Macurdy returns to Yuulith from Earth. He meets up with Vulkan, a bod­hisatt­va in the avatar of a wild boar, who is troubled by portents of trouble coming across the ocean. The voitar are invading the continent of Yuulith and Macurdy must pull together the disparate nations to fight back against the brutal voitar.

The series works better in a swords-and-sorcery milieu than in 20th century Earth, and this book is more enjoyable than its pre­de­ces­sor. Overall, the series is rather clumsily written. Emma said the books tell …continue.

Curtis Macurdy is a simple, Depression-era farmer married to the beautiful and exotic Varia. Varia is kidnapped and drawn back to her home in the parallel world of Yuulith. Macurdy follows her, but is im­me­di­ate­ly enslaved. After some training as a shaman, he shows promise as a fighter, and is sent to an elite regiment. He breaks out a few months later with two friends. Soon they fall in with outlaws and Macurdy quickly rises to the top, leading a successful rebellion.

Meanwhile, Varia is back with the Sisterhood, which she forswore long …continue.

Mercy Thompson, heroine of Moon Called, is back. Mercedes the Volkswagen mechanic is a shape-shifter living in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington.

A new vampire is in town, one who also happens to be a demon-possessed sorceror, and he’s killing in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly. The other vampires and the local werewolf pack need to shut him down before the general public catches on. In the end, Mercy’s skills are needed to track him down and put an end to him. Along the way, she has two werewolves and a vampire paying court to her. Mercy is …continue.