What Fiction are you reading this week, May 4, 2025?

[hermetic]

Our future?

1950s

Still reading Thunderhead by Preston/Child. Fascinating. Brutal.

Listened to Blackout by David Rosenfelt. No dogs in this story but Rosenfelt's signature humor is still in evidence. It truly is "a propulsive and compelling thriller that will rivet readers from start to finish." A New Jersey state police officer is shot during an investigation and while he survives the bullet wound he wakes up in the hospital with retrograde amnesia. He knows who he is but has no memory of the past ten years. Full of surprises and intense scenarios.
Now I'm back to light listening with Rosenfelt's Collared.

And you?

[cbabe]

1. The Women Who Rode Miles on Horseback to Deliver Library Books

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/librarians-horseback-new-deal-book-delivery-wpa

The Women Who Rode Miles on Horseback to Deliver Library Books

Librarians are amazing.

BY ANIKA BURGESS AUGUST 31, 2017

They were known as the “book women.” They would saddle up, usually at dawn, to pick their way along snowy hillsides and through muddy creeks with a simple goal: to deliver reading material to Kentucky’s isolated mountain communities.

The Pack Horse Library initiative was part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), created to help lift America out of the Great Depression, during which, by 1933, unemployment had risen to 40 percent in Appalachia. Roving horseback libraries weren’t entirely new to Kentucky, but this initiative was an opportunity to boost both employment and literacy at the same time.

… more …

Fiction

https://www.litreadernotes.com/home/2021/1/30/the-book-woman-of-troublesome-creek

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek opens in 1936 and (with the exception of a short third-person scene with which the novel begins) is a first-person account of the life Cussy Mary. Cussy is both a pack horse librarian and the last of the blue-skinned people of Kentucky (or so she has always been told). Cussy’s narration sets the novel in Appalachia as much as any description of the landscape and people; she tells her story in a no-nonsense way with all the idiosyncrasies of Kentucky speech.

As a “blue,” Cussy experiences the same racist discrimination as her friend, Queenie Johnson, an African-American pack horse librarian. Her skin color has always separated her from the people—particularly the other young women—of Troublesome Creek. Her blue-hued skin has also always intrigued the local town doctor, who calls her “Bluet” and wishes to study her blood and attempt to cure her condition. In the role of pack horse librarian, Cussy finds a welcome and meaningful identity beyond her skin color and she revels in her role as “Book Woman.”

… more …

(Today use drones? But mules are better company.)

[hermetic]

2. Great books

My photo is a 1950's book woman, in Virginia.

No drones, TYVM.

[Bayard]

3. That's one I'll look for

Thanks! I have never heard of the blue-skinned people of KY.

[txwhitedove]

13. Loved Book Woman of Troublesome Creek!

[Bayard]

4. I really liked Thunderhead

I will look for Blackout. Sounds good.

Time is at a premium right now. I'm trying to get in a few short stories from, "From The Borderlands," at night. Its a compilation of strange and scary stories from people like Stephen King.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. 'The Crash' by Freida McFadden. Bought it in a small town in Norway.

[hermetic]

7. That just came out

in February. A "snowbound thriller that will chill you to the bone." She's written 22 other books, as well. Mostly thrillers.

[The King of Prussia]

6. "At The Villa Rose" by AEW Mason

A murder mystery written in 1910, but by an author new to me.

[hermetic]

9. A classic

The debut of Inspector Hanaud who was an inspiration for Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot.

[Midnight Writer]

8. The Angel Killer by Andrew Mayne. Mystery-Thriller.

A former professional magician joins the FBI and is assigned to a task force hunting a serial killer who stages "impossible crimes".

The agent uses her expertise in stage magic to unravel the killer's methods.

Extremely unlikely, but a fun battle of wits, with lots of interesting details about how stage magic works.

Very well-written, first in a series, contains some very gruesome content. I'm about two-thirds of the way through and am really enjoying it.

[hermetic]

10. Sounds like fun

Except for the gruesome parts, of course. A bit of magic is always enjoyable.

[mentalsolstice]

11. Finished Tartufo by Kira Jane Buxton

A dying Italian village decides what to do after the world’s largest truffle is found within its borders. I loved getting to know the villagers and their animals. Absurdly funny.

Now I’m reading The Good Sister by Gillian McAllister. Two very close sisters, one deceased child.

[hermetic]

12. Mmmm, truffles

"I savored every page of this book.” -- Shelby Van Pelt

Must read.

[txwhitedove]

14. Hi there. I'm another Andrew Mayne fan. Last week read his super popular suspense novel

The Nauralist. "Professor Theo Cray is trained to see patterns where others see chaos. So when mutilated bodies found deep in the Montana woods leave the cops searching blindly for clues, Theo sees something they missed. Something unnatural. Something only he can stop."

Just finished Exile, Texas by Rachel Caine, a new author to me and sadly deceased. This was recommended right here on one of your Sunday posts. Ripping good tale full of characters, kept me guessing, great lines kind of Texas 'noir'. "Most folks in Exile, Texas, think Megan Leary got away with murder. Megan was acquitted of her mother's vicious killing after someone else confessed—but suspicion still shadows her fifteen years later. Now a private investigator, she's come back to help a friend look for her missing teenage daughter—and it's not just gossip that's being stirred up."

Also read non-fiction about war in Ukraine Looking at Women Looking at War, Victoria Amelina now deceased, and underwater diving for excavation of sunken slave ships Written in the Waters by Tara Robert's.