Critical Mass, Sara Paretsky

V.I. Warshawski, or Vic to her friends is drawn into the investigation of a missing meth addict and her genius son.

Vic’s long term friend Dr. Lotty Herschel shares a past with the missing woman’s grandmother who refused point blank to let her grandson Martin go to college. What seems like a simple addict on the run case turns complicated as Vic uncovers connections between the great grand mother and a nobel winning Austrian scientist who worked on the Manhattan project and her investigation is ruffling some pretty high level feathers…

The Carpet People, Terry Pratchett

When Terry Pratchett was seventeen he wrote a version of this story, it ran as a serial in the Childrens Circle section of the Bucks Free Press where young Pratchett worked and was published as a longer novel in 1971. Who else but Pratchett (who went on to create the discworld series) could set an entire story inside a carpet?

Various tribes live within the carpet, power hungry Mouls, cerebral Wights, and Munrungs who while not power hungry do love a good skirmish, but every carpet dweller is in awe of ‘Fray’. It sweeps across the carpet, flattening settlements without warning and setting two brothers and their tribe off on the adventure of a lifetime. Laced with the trademark humour of the disc world novels and illustrated by the author, good clean fun.

Bellman & Black, Diane Setterfield

Never harm a rook. Aged 10, William Bellman uses his catapult to dispatch a young rook. William, along with three other boys, Luke, Fred and cousin Charles deny the bird a decent burial, they will pay dearly for that disrespect.

William grows up to be a good businessman, and a loving husband and father. When tragedy strikes and threatens his most precious possession, William gets a visit from a Mr. Black. Black proposes a partnership and so a very strange (some would say macabre) new venture is born.

Preservationist, Justin Kramon

Stradler College: freshman Julia Stilwell’s second choice after Julliard. Still recovering from a recent tragedy Julia dates intense fellow music student Marcus before choosing Sam, the thirty-something guy who works at the college cafeteria. Sam showers Julia with attention while Marcus sulks in the background but with a brutal attacker terrorizing the college campus does Julia really know who to trust? She’s not just risking her life.

Mortal Bonds, Michael Sears

Jason Stafford and ‘the kid’ are back! Jason, who we first met in Black Fridays still has to visit his parole officer every week. Hired by the squabbling Von Becker family Jason is asked to locate a fortune that the FBI, SEC and many other interested parties have so far failed to find. And no one can ask the head of the household, he hanged himself in prison.

‘The kid’, is now six years old and thriving, his autism will always be a challenge and Jason still has a lot to learn about what sets him off, but the pair are coping. Until Angie, Jason’s duplicitous ex-wife announces a visit to New York. She’s coming for a month and bringing family.

Jason has the SEC and the Feds looking over his shoulder and a softly spoken aristocrat named Castillo telling him tales of dead lawyers and bearer bonds before offering his help. But the interests Castillo represents are deadly and they’ve just made the mistake of threatening Jason’s son.

October List, Jeffery Deaver

What is the October List and why does everyone want to get their hands on it?

Deaver’s tale, told in reverse, starts with murder suspect Gabriella Mackenzie being menaced by the man who kidnapped her six year old daughter and unspools from there. Gabriella’s only ally in all this is the moneyed and enigmatic Daniel Reardon, but is he dead too?

The Abominable, Dan Simmons

No one summited Mt Everest in 1925, or did they? Simmons gives us a secret 1925 recovery/summit expedition through the eyes of Jacob (Jake) Perry, then a young American climber. Jake and mountain guide JC Clairoux and poet and first world war survivor Richard Davis Deacon are to climb Everest in search of a minor noble, Lord Bromley who was attached to the fateful 1924 expedition that claimed Mallory and Irvine and who died in the company of a young Austrian during an avalanche.

Everest declares war on the small team led by Reggie Bromley, herself an accomplished climber, they encounter uncooperative monks, accidents, rumours of yeti roaming the mountain, but with cutting edge technology (for 1925) they are soon into the ‘death zone’ at 28,000 ft and their recovery mission becomes a fight for survival that could one day avert a war and the only way out is to head for the summit.