Flashman At The Charge finds our hero, newly promoted to Colonel, nurse­maid­ing a minor Royal cousin in the Crimean War. Somehow he finds himself in the thick of the Charge of the Light Brigade, which he survives only to be taken captive by the Russians. Sent off to Count Pencher­jevsky's estate, he luxuriates there for some time, bedding the count's daughter Valla. When he and another British officer overhear the Tsar discussing Russian plans to invade India, he re­luc­tant­ly escapes. After he is captured …continue.

Detective Inspector Ben Cooper, newly promoted, is leading the team that's in­ves­ti­gat­ing the murder of a lorry driver outside a remote Peak District village. It seems to be connected to a suicide that took place the same day, but how? Cooper and his team manage to peel back the layers sur­round­ing the dual mysteries.

Booth writes solidly plotted, solidly char­ac­ter­ized novels, and this is another good entry in his long-running Cooper & Fry series.

Flashman And The Redskins is the seventh volume of the Flashman Papers, although it opens im­me­di­ate­ly after Flash For Freedom! In the first part, which takes place in 1849–50, Flashman is fleeing from New Orleans in the company of a madam who is taking her entire brothel westward to take advantage of the California Gold Rush. He sees the opening of the West and the beginning of huge changes to the Plains. He is taken captive by Apaches …continue.

Jack Holloway is a prospector on Zara XXII, con­tract­ing for the giant ZaraCorp. On one momentous day, he is fired, discovers a huge seam of sunstones worth trillions, and meets the first members of a new species, the fuzzies. Since he was fired before he discovered the sunstones, he now has an en­force­able claim—and he's a disbarred lawyer, so you can bet he's following through. The fuzzies are delightful and they're pretty smart—so smart that they might just be sapient. And if they are, that's a huge problem for ZaraCorp, since the fuzzies …continue.

Flash For Freedom! is the third volume of the Flashman Papers, in which Flashy gets caught up in the slave trade. After a scandal involving cheating and assault, England becomes too hot for young Flashman and his father-in-law ships him off. Flashman quickly realizes that he's on a slave ship captained by a lunatic that is bound for Africa to take on a cargo of slaves, and he's horrified. Not so much about slavery but that running slaves is proscribed in 1848 and he's …continue.

In the summer of 1939, Richard and Frances Myles are approached at their Oxford college to do a simple-sounding spy-related task during their upcoming European vacation. One thing leads to another until eventually these amateur spies are on the run in the Tyrol. MacInnes had traveled in Europe in the 1930s and brings a strong sense of place to the locations she describes, as well as a strong dislike of the to­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism that the Germans had fallen into.

1018AD. King Cnut of Denmark (aka Canute) has recently conquered England, and now must broker peace between the Saxons and the Danes at Oxford. Also in Oxford are Winston, a talented il­lu­mi­na­tor of man­u­scripts, and Halfdan, a roguish half-Danish half-Saxon landless noble. A prominent Saxon has been murdered and Cnut commands Winston and Halfdan to in­ves­ti­gate.

While the mystery was reasonably while done, I found the anachro­nis­tic speech patterns quite jarring. The book is translated from Danish; I presume this is also true in the original.

Abigail has gone missing from creepy Blackwater Farm days before her tenth birthday. Her twin Olivia has been mute ever since. Their strange mother is not helping matters and the father is acting oddly too. DC Jennifer Knight, who belongs to a secret psychic police task force, is the family liaison officer. She must convince Olivia to break her silence and reveal what she knows before time runs out for Abigail.

This was a reasonably good thriller that I think would have been better without the su­per­nat­ur­al elements.

Flashman and the Mountain of Light takes place just after Flashman's Lady, and it also falls between the two parts of Royal Flash, making it the fourth book chrono­log­i­cal­ly of the Flashman Papers and the ninth book published.

In the prologue, our hero finds himself telling Queen Victoria a much-edited version of how he came to acquire the Koh-i-Noor diamond on the crown's behalf forty years earlier during the First Anglo-Sikh War. The actual story—at least according to Flashman and Fraser—is …continue.

Flashman's Lady takes place between the two parts of Royal Flash, making it the third book chrono­log­i­cal­ly of the Flashman Papers and the sixth book published.

Flashman and his wife, Elspeth, become friendly with Don Solomon Haslam, a rich merchant from the East Indies. Losing a wager to Haslam, who is smitten with Elspeth, Flashy has to let Haslam take Elspeth and her father on a trip to Singapore. As things have become hot for him in England, he sails east with them. Haslam's feelings …continue.