Read: Golden Hill by Francis Spufford 📚Dark smart pastiche of Fielding, Sterne, etc, in late 18th century New York, but there’s more to it than just quality fanfiction. The characters are ludicrously alive and you can smell the horse shit and ambition. #booksky #books #readingcommunity

Read: The Unwanted Dead by Chris Lloyd 📚 Juicy atmospheric procedural set in Paris just after the Germans marched in during June 1940. Not spies, but feels like Furst, Gerlis, Robert Harris. #booksky #books #readingcommunity

Read: All the Sinners Bleed A Novel by S. A. Cosby 📚Nails the atmosphere of Deep(ish) South small town revenge, tangled up in barely hidden racism, fully developed characters. Solid genre procedural but stands in its own right too. #booksky #books

My latest ’excursion’ into podcasting is up - an interview with spy writer Michael Dylan about his latest book The New Spy, for @spybrary. Find it where-ever you get your etc. etc. spybrary.com/the-new-s… #booksky #authorsky

Read: There There by Tommy Orange 📚Most of the book is perceptively drawn scenes of disparate cast in the runup to a powwow in Oakland. When tragic violence explodes there, it’s both the point and beside the point that they’re all native American. #booksky #books

Read: The Fraud by Zadie Smith 📚Meaty and slightly meandering like the 19th century English novels it pastiches, with a nuanced human take on slavery’s effects rather than performative shouty self righteousness. #booksky #books

Read: Everything We Do Is Music How 20th-Century Classical Music Shaped Pop by @elizabethalker.bsky.social 📚Wonderfully nerdy cross referencing of pop music with ‘serious’ avant garde, which took my listening down many weird and, it transpired, joyously unlistenable rabbitholes. #booksky

Read: Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie 📚Fergie/Andrew bio- readable etc. but most of it’s been in the media already. Brings together the astonishing extent of their ligging and fosters a sense of righteous outrage. #booksky

Read: Villager by Tom Cox 📚Portrait of a village, seen partly through the eyes of the village, circling through time, space and points of view. Rich and enrichening and humane. #booksky #books

Read: The New Spy by Michael Dylan 📚The opposite of the Slow Horses (Galloping Thoroughbreds?) fight a bunch of terrorist threats in London. Fast read, and more action than atmosphere. Feels like a lost novelisation of BBC’s Spooks. #booksky #thrillers

Read: Reykjavik - A Crime Story by Ragnar Jónasson Katrín Jakobsdóttir 📚By the numbers, emotionally flat Icelandic noir heavy with the usual deserted islands, crusading journalist and middle aged professionals hiding a sin from their youth. #booksky #thrillers

Read: Vienna At Nightfall by Richard Wake 📚Richly atmospheric Alan Furst-ish world of pre-WW2 Austria, as completely believable ‘ordinary bloke’ is pulled into spying, with all the agonies and internal conflicts it brings, and a credibly snarky authorial voice. #booksky #thrillers

Read: The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry 📚Leans more towards agonised burnt out spook cases of Greeneland and Deighton than gripping suspense. Feels real enough that I now need to research what actually happened in Bahrain in 2012. #booksky #thrillers

Read: Harry’s Game by Gerald Seymour 📚 Long overdue to read this (mostly associate it with the 1970s TV series and Clannad). Pulls together action, politics, ‘world’, psychology, morality, emotions, suspense, allthethings, brilliantly. Total, total classic. #booksky #readingcommunity #thriller

Read: Yellowface by R F Kuang 📚Readable and smart while disappearing up its own postmodern identity-politicking arse. I can see why publishers hyped it: industries love to see themselves reflected back as edgy and absorbing, especially when they’re cliquey and privileged. #booksky #reading #books

Read: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James 📚 Pacey and compulsive psych thriller just keeping to an acceptable amount of supernatural flummery. Will be reading more of her stuff. #booksky #horror #thriller

Read: The Call of the Wild by Jack London 📚 Fight Club but with dogs in the late 19th century Yukon. #booksky #books #readingcommunity

Read: In Ascension by Martin MacInnes 📚 Top drawer grown up SF with much geekiness, philosophical ponderings, and characters who exist in a world rather than being case studies or Star Wars/Tolkien knock offs. If you liked Contact, The Martian, Arrival, it’s the same kind of deal. #booksky #books

Read: The Missing Millionaire by Katie Daubs 📚A digestable way to learn about early 20th century Toronto rather than turning up any new info on the disappearance of theatre impresario Ambrose Small in 1919. Entertaining enough though. #BookSky

Read: The Friends of Meager Fortune by David Adams Richards 📚 Who’d have thought a family saga in in post WW2 New Brunswick logging industry would be this enthralling? The characters are recognisable people, even if the backdrop is unknown. #booksky

Read: Desert Star (A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel) by Michael Connelly 📚 Bosch and Ballard content. Solid procedural plus some Ageing Bosch character development. Reliably delivers what you want and then some, and this is why the big name writers get to be the big names. #booksky

Read: The Widowmaker by Hannah Morrissey 📚Love the seedy, grimey Black Harbor world and this has the usual tapestry of decay, lies and small town secrets. Not quite up there with Hello Transcriber, and there’s gratuitous Oirishness at the end. But better than most. #booksky

Read: Putin’s People by Catherine Belton 📚TLDR: Putin helped the KGB steal all Russia’s money, oligarchs stole it from the KGB and set up Putin as leader, Putin stole the money from the oligarchs. Putin wins. Authoritative, heavily researched and so so so so detailed. #booksky #bookstodon

Read: You Killed Me First by John Marrs 📚More gloriously fucked up suburban homicide from John Marrs. At one point I feared it might veer into supernatural tropes, but thankfully it was just psychosis. #booksky #bookstodon

Read: The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak 📚Modern day CIA spy-daughter investigates what her CIA spy-father got up to in the cold war. Top flight blend of character, suspense and world. Audiobook marred by a narrator with only a passing acquaintance with many common English words. #bookstodon