October 2024 Reading List

 I'm planning on reading eleven books in October. There are the usual buddy reads, book club reads (except my in person book club which is skipping a month), and the pick it for me book for this month. This will be the first month in a very long time that I have no Hercule Poirot book scheduled. I'm taking a break from those for a month or two, and then I'll get back to the short stories in that series. I also have some creepy stories scheduled for the Spooktober reading challenge. 

Reading at fantasy buddy reads-

 

A Dance of Fang and Claw (The Ranger Archives #3) by Philip C. Quaintrell

 

Rangers aren’t born, they’re forged

Never has this been more true for Asher, who must train a new ranger… or be the one to hunt him down. Surviving an encounter with a Werewolf has changed Russell Maybury’s life forever. If he is to salvage anything, he must craft a new life using his abilities to do good. Should he stray, he will answer to Asher.

Learning to fight monsters is all the more difficult when the monsters are the ones hunting you. In his possession, Russell holds an artefact of great significance, a relic central to a shadow war waged for centuries untold. On the one side, the Werewolves bring their claws. On the other, the Vorska, blood fiends who know only the night, bring their fangs.

In over his head, Asher must navigate a war of monsters and the machinations of ancient mages if he is to survive. And should he survive, there is still the Assassin that dwells within, a monster of his own making, that fights for supremacy.

One way or another, the ranger is going to bleed…

 

Test of the Twins (Dragonlance Legends #3) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

 

A confrontation with the Queen of Darkness is finally within Raistlin's reach—and Caramon will do anything to stop it—in this conclusion to the beloved Legends trilogy

Defying the fate that claimed his evil predecessor, Raistlin opens the Portal to the Abyss and passes through. With Crysania at his side, he engages the Queen of Darkness in a battle for the ultimate prize—a seat among the gods.

At the same time, Caramon and Tasslehoff are transported to the future. They come to understand the consequences of Raistlin’s quest—and Caramon at last realizes the painful sacrifice he must make to prevent his brother’s success. Old friends and strange allies come together to aid him, but Caramon must take the last, greatest step alone: the first step into the Abyss.

 

 

 Reading with the mystery book club-

 This first one is a holdover from last month. I ran out of time and didn't get to it.

 

A Ruse of Shadows (Lady Sherlock #8) by Sherry Thomas 

Charlotte Holmes is accustomed to solving crimes, not being accused of them, but she finds herself in a dreadfully precarious position as the bestselling Lady Sherlock series continues.

Charlotte’s success on the RMS Provence has afforded her a certain measure of time and assurance. Taking advantage of that, she has been busy, plotting to prise the man her sister loves from Moriarty’s iron grip.

Disruption, however, comes from an unexpected quarter. Lord Bancroft Ashburton, disgraced and imprisoned as a result of Charlotte’s prior investigations, nevertheless manages to press Charlotte into service: Underwood, his most loyal henchman, is missing and Lord Bancroft wants Charlotte to find Underwood, dead or alive.

But then Lord Bancroft himself turns up dead and Charlotte, more than anyone else, meets the trifecta criteria of motive, means, and opportunity. Never mind rescuing anyone else, with the law breathing down her neck, can Charlotte save herself from prosecution for murder?

 

 

 

Girl Number One by Jane Holland

 

As a young child, Eleanor Blackwood witnessed her mother's murder in woods near their farm. The killer was never found.

Now an adult, Eleanor discovers a woman's body in the same spot in the Cornish woods where her mother was strangled eighteen years before. But when the police get there, the body has disappeared.

Is Eleanor’s disturbed mind playing tricks on her again, or has her mother’s killer resurfaced? And what does the number on the dead woman’s forehead signify?

 

 

 

Grave Beginnings (The Grave Report #1) by R.R. Virdi

 

Thirteen...
As far as numbers go, it isn't a great one. Hell, it's not even a good one and Vincent Graves is going to find out just how unlucky of a number it can be.
Because someone, or something, is killing people in the Empire state, and whatever it is, it gives people everything they ever desired and more. And it's the more that's the problem!
Well...it's one of the problems.
Vincent's investigation also seems to have drawn the attention of a relentless FBI agent and then there's the little bit where he has only thirteen hours to solve the case, or he dies.
Talk about your literal deadlines...
...No pressure.
By the end of this case Vincent will come to understand the meaning of an age old proverb: Be careful what you wish for - because you just might get it!

 

 

  

The Icarus Changeling (The Icarus Saga #4) by Timothy Zahn

 

Gregory Roarke – former bounty hunter, former Trailblazer, current agent for the ultra-secret Icarus Group – has received a new locate a suspected but as-yet undiscovered teleportation portal on the backwater colony world of Alainn.

The rival Patth are also searching for the device, and have considerably more resources at their disposal. Fortunately, Roarke has Selene and her incredibly sensitive Kadolian sense of smell. On paper, it should be a straightforward enough job.

But that was before there was a murder in the small town of Bilswift…and another one…and the discovery that the Patth are already on the scene and have narrowed the search to a heavily forested area in the hills and mountains east of town.

Most disturbing of all is the discovery that one of Selene’s people, a Kadolian teenaged boy named Tirano, is working at one of Bilswift’s fish markets. A boy who may have lost his parents before his proper socialization was completed. A boy who may be connected to both the murders and the Patth.

A boy who may be the potentially dangerous wild card that the Kadolians call changelings. 

 

 

Pick it for me book-

 

The Fate of Mercy Alban by Wendy Webb

 

From award-winning novelist Wendy Webb comes a spine-tingling mystery about family secrets set in a big, old haunted house on Lake Superior.

Grace Alban has spent twenty years away from her childhood home, the stately Alban House, for reasons she would rather forget. But when her mother's unexpected death brings Grace and her teen-age daughter home, she finds more haunting the halls and passageways of Alban House than her own personal demons.

Long-buried family secrets, a packet of old love letters and a lost manuscript plunge Grace into a decades-old mystery about a scandalous party at Alban House, when a world-famous author took his own life and Grace's aunt disappeared without a trace. The night has been shrouded in secrecy by the powerful Alban family for all of these years, and Grace realizes her family secrets tangle and twist as darkly as the secret passages of Alban House. Her mother was intending to tell the truth about that night to a reporter on the very day she died - could it have been murder? Or was she a victim of the supposed Alban curse? With the help of the disarmingly kind--and attractive—Reverend Matthew Parker, Grace must uncover the truth about her home and its curse before she and her daughter become the next victims.

 

 

 Spooktober reads-

 

The Ghost Line by Andrew Neil Gray and J.S. Herbison

 

The luxury cruise ship the Martian Queen was decommissioned years ago, set to drift back and forth between Earth and Mars on the off-chance that reclaiming it ever became profitable for the owners. For Saga and her husband Michel the cruise ship represents a massive payday. Hacking and stealing the ship could earn them enough to settle down, have children, and pay for the treatments to save Saga’s mother’s life.

But the Martian Queen is much more than their employer has told them. In the twenty years since it was abandoned, something strange and dangerous has come to reside in the decadent vessel. Saga feels herself being drawn into a spider’s web, and must navigate the traps and lures of an awakening intelligence if she wants to go home again.

 

 

 

The Lonely Dead by April Henry

 

A killer is on the loose, and only one girl has the power to find him. But in this genre-bending YA thriller, she must first manage to avoid becoming a target herself.

For Adele, the dead aren’t really dead. She can see them and even talk to them. But she’s spent years denying her gift. When she encounters her ex best friend Tori in a shallow grave in the woods and realizes that Tori is actually dead -- that gift turns into a curse. Without an alibi, Adele becomes the prime suspect in Tori’s murder. She must work with Tori’s ghost to find the real killer. But what if the killer finds Adele first?

Master mystery-write April Henry adds a chilling paranormal twist to this incredibly suspenseful young adult novel.

 

 

  

The Locked Door by Freida McFadden

 

Some doors are locked for a reason…

While eleven-year-old Nora Davis was up in her bedroom doing homework, she had no idea her father was killing women in the basement.

Until the day the police arrived at their front door.

Decades later, Nora’s father is spending his life behind bars, and Nora is a successful surgeon with a quiet, solitary existence. Nobody knows her father was a notorious serial killer. And she intends to keep it that way.

Then Nora discovers one of her young female patients has been murdered. In the same unique and horrific manner that her father used to kill his victims.

Somebody knows who Nora is. Somebody wants her to take the fall for this unthinkable crime. But she’s not a killer like her father. The police can’t pin anything on her.

As long as they don’t look in her basement.

 

 

   

Arrowood by Laura McHugh

 

Arrowood is the most ornate and grand of the historical houses that line the Mississippi River in southern Iowa. But the house has a mystery it has never revealed: It's where Arden Arrowood's younger twin sisters vanished on her watch twenty years ago--never to be seen again. After the twins' disappearance, Arden's parents divorced and the Arrowoods left the big house that had been in their family for generations. And Arden's own life has fallen apart: She can't finish her master's thesis, and a misguided love affair has ended badly. She has held on to the hope that her sisters are still alive, and it seems she can't move forward until she finds them. When her father dies and she inherits Arrowood, Arden returns to her childhood home determined to discover what really happened to her sisters that traumatic summer.

Arden's return to the town of Keokuk--and the now infamous house that bears her name--is greeted with curiosity. But she is welcomed back by her old neighbor and first love, Ben Ferris, whose family, she slowly learns, knows more about the Arrowoods' secrets and their small, closed community than she ever realized. With the help of a young amateur investigator, Arden tracks down the man who was the prime suspect in the kidnapping. But the house and the surrounding town hold their secrets close--and the truth, when Arden finds it, is more devastating than she ever could have imagined.

Arrowood is a powerful and resonant novel that examines the ways in which our lives are shaped by memory. As with her award-winning debut novel, The Weight of Blood, Laura McHugh has written a thrilling novel in which nothing is as it seems, and in which our longing for the past can take hold of the present in insidious and haunting ways.