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The Waiting by Michael Connelly, Christine Lakin (Narrator), Titus Welliver (Narrator), Madison Lintz (Narrator)

This book covers three cases, two cold cases and one case that Renee can’t make an official case since it deals with her badge and gun being stolen while she was surfing.  The first cold case is an old series of rapes that gets a familial hit that send then trying to solve an even older rape case. The second cold case is one that Maddie brings to the unit when she gets flagged on her personal time at her storage unit when they owner finds an abandoned unit with graphic evidence of a very old serial killer.  Renee reaches out the Harry to help her with getting her badge and gun back and that leads to a trail of breadcrumbs to a bigger case that she has to decide what to do about.

A lone figure carrying a surfboard out into the ocean with a setting sun.

National Gallery

Jul. 20th, 2025 09:14 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
We went into central London this afternoon, intending to visit the British Museum, but we made a very late start, and after our late lunch discovered they were sold out of (free) tickets for today.

So we went to the National Gallery, a few bus stops away, and looked at paintings. I wasn't up for a huge amount of walking, but bny the time I was ready to leave, so were Adrian and Cattitude. We spent a few minutes just enjoyong being in Trafalgar Square on a sunny afternoon, then walked to Charing Cross to get the Underground. Annoyingly, while it was (as whichever app Cattitude was using said) only a few minutes walk to Charing Cross, there was a lot more walking underground, and we had to go down several flights of stairs.

ETA: I was emotionally worn out to the point that I was glad it was just t he three of us yesterday, not socializing with anyone else. I hadn't realized that beforehand, only that I was tired enough that committing to anything involving other people seemed imprudent. Being around my brother for most of several consecutive days was a lot of 'there are people here,' even though, or because, much of it wasn't socializing so much as being near each other and sometimes asking whether we needed, or wanted, various items.

I was pleasantly surprised by how little my joints hurt by the time we got back to Mom's flat. I took both naproxen and acetominophen before we left, and wore my better walking shoes and a pair of smartwool socks, and the combination sdeems to have done me a lot of good.

We're flying home tomorrow. I booked a cab, which will pick us up at 2:15, and logged onto the British Airways website and changed the (acceptable) seats it had assigned us to ones we like better (I got us all aisle seats, instead of all next to each other so one person was in a middle seat).

former tripwires

Jul. 20th, 2025 12:03 pm
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[personal profile] thistleingrey
Because my nearest aunt (in her lifetime quest for the status and domestic comforts reft from her at single-digit age) encouraged it, and because my father didn't want to spend money unnecessarily, my mother usually consulted my aunt for should-we-go-to-the-doctor medical questions. i'm fineish, no different from last month, but i have an idea )

Mission accomplished

Jul. 19th, 2025 10:36 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird

We are essentially done at Mom’s flat. I didn’t have a lot to do today, but am still tired. We will decide tomorrow what if anything we want to do.

Leaving for Boston Monday afternoon.

We had Chinese food delivered tonight, and it was basic good Cantonese food. They included a small bag of those weird shrimp chips, which I turned out to be in the mood for.

garden update

Jul. 19th, 2025 01:12 pm
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[personal profile] thistleingrey
The plants that the landscaper placed too close to a fence and that I was too ignorant to gainsay have been deformed variously for neighborly relations, now that those plants are tall enough to peek over. Leaving the resulting twigs where foot traffic would otherwise result in winter mud has been effective, so far. Tiny housemate considers it her duty to pull them apart somewhat, to the extent that she complains if I don't toss the cut branches her way. She's learned not to linger over the ones whose bark oils are dog-unfriendly, and whenever I use my thumbnails to strip drying bark, she complains again: just toss the stick!

The persimmon tree grew so much in response to the unusually wet spring that several branches became long and heavy by midsummer, apt to break---more lopping.

Most plants my height or shorter have been drifting towards sere yellow-brown, except the peony, which almost chose dormancy this year and has put up a hand-height of leaves. Self-seeded dill shoots have appeared again, thanks to the ants. Self-seeded California poppy has dried out for the season. Half the hydrangeas are the smallest they've been so far, between drowning in oxalis over winter and being too shaded by other plants since spring; the other half look much as they did last year. A neighbor's semi-myrtle, which smells similar to eucalyptus whenever I trim the overhang from my side of our fence, has sent up shoots more than a meter into my yard, including beneath one hydrangea. The latter may not last, since I try not to water that corner as a result.

The wisteria stub nudged a handful of green vines upwards, which tiny housemate tried showing me, then eating. (The eating was thwarted.) Last year, with a drier preceding winter, the wisteria stub was quiet. My struggles to find and discard wisteria seed pods before tiny housemate could poison herself were the prior fall, when she was a puppy. I suspect she was only showing me a new thing in the yard, not remembering the seed pods, but even hey-look is pretty cool from a dog when it's not something the dog has caused.
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[personal profile] missingvolume
 

A group of bots that had been working in a restaurant decide to reopen it so they can pay their bills. Robots have a limited number of rights in California after the war and this group of friends decide to take matters in their own hands and make Biang Biang noodles to pay the bills. They are selling well but dister strikes in the form of review bombing them based on being a robot kitchen. By the end of the book they find out who is doing this and take the bad press and make it work for them.  This is a SF cozy even if it is set in a future San Franscisco trying to rebuild from a war.

 

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

A robot hand using chopsticks to pick up noodles out of a container in the background with a cityscape of San Franscisco in the foreground below the container all rendered in bright color line drawings.

not quite done

Jul. 19th, 2025 10:43 am
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
We expected to finish going through Mom's papers, photos, etc. yesterday, but despite me and \mark both pushing hard, we realized in the late afternoon that we were both badly worn out, so we stopped. He left, and I got Adrian and Cattitude to tale care of me. I was worn out both mentally and physically; Adrian pointed out that \I hade worked steadily for longer that the previous couple of days. Mark will coming back to the flat a bit, but we did not set an alarm, because I needed the rest.

We reached a point yesterday that I could be satisfied just packing everyting the three f us have decided to take--photos, the gorgeous candlesticks Mom left to Adrian (officially tp me, but she had discussed them with Acrian), and a few other s,mall mementoes, but there's a stack of paper that Mark wants to take a second look at: he was lookinmg both for financial paperwork as well as photos and other mementoes. It felt like it might be 45 minutes more work today, but could take tjhree times as long if we had tried to push through last night.

I told Andy and Adrian to go out and play yesterday, so they spent the afternoon at Kew Gardens. It is raining steadily now, and foercast to do so for several hours. I#m thinking I want to do not much today, just finish the tasks here, and maybe go out and do something interesting tomorrow, before leaving for Boston on Monday.

I am very glad we saw [personal profile] liv on Tuesday, when we were still feeling energetic.
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[personal profile] missingvolume
 

Mickey made some bad bets on a friend’s game and now he is more than desperate to sign up as an Expendable on a colony ship. 200 people with specialized skills and then there is Mickey, his job is to do things that will get him killed but are necessary for the colony. When he dies he is resurrected and keeps doing jobs until he must do something lethal.  When the 6th version of him is presumed dead his 7th version is decanted. Six makes it back to camp and finds Seven in his bed and neither of them want to die even though only one of them should be alive.  With a colony leader having a religious hate about him he needs to keep out of trouble, but it doesn't happen.  The story was interesting and the ending fixes a lot of what is going on for Mickey.

An astronaut floating above a planet The title is in large white letter superimposed over the space scene.

Random Castle

Jul. 18th, 2025 05:29 pm
purplecat: A ruined keep. (General:Castle)
[personal profile] purplecat

High ruined castle walls with windows set in them and a turret at one corner.  Low walls where once were rooms below.
Harlech
jacey: (Default)
[personal profile] jacey

DS Peter Grant and his extended family are trying to take a holiday in Scotland - Aberdeen to be precise. There's his partner, Beverley, a minor riber goddess, their twins, cousin Abigail (and DCI Nightingale who is training her in the arcane arts). And then there's Peter's mum and his dad, and old jazz musician, plus his band and their disreputable manager. Dad and the band have a gig at the Lemon Tree, a well known Aberdeen venue. It turns out to be a working holiday as a strange corpse (with gills) turns up, and Abigail's talking foxes spot some strange things. Expect giant seagulls, corrupt oil companies, selkies, mermaids, the local police force and some very strange goings-on culminating in danger on board an oil platform in the stormy North Sea. T(I was particularly intrigued because in my muso days, I played a gig at the Lemon Tree, and stayed  in Foot Dee (Fitty) which gets regular mentions.) The story was entertaining, but not my favourite Rivers of London book. This is from both Peter's viewpoint and Abigail's as the story diverges and comes back together. I did find Abigail's teen slang a bit wearing, and wonder how that part of the book will age, as slang changes so rapidly. It's good addition to the Rivers of London series, but not the place to start.


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[personal profile] jacey

Another Grimdark winner for Joe Abercrombie, well read by Stephen Pacey.

Europe is in turmoil, plague and famine go hand in hand, the church is split and her holiness the pope, a ten-year-old child, calls upon the services of her 'devils', tried and convicted transgressors. There's a vampire, a werewolf, an undying knight, a female soldier, an elf, and a necromancer, all shepherded by an unwilling monk who would rather be a librarian. Their task is to make sure Alexa, newly discovered heir to the empire of Troy, gets safely home and crowned. But there are complications. Alex has been brought up on the streets of the Holy City, living by her wits. She's a better thief than a princess, but her newly introduced Uncle Michael says she's the true heir, and it's better than being shredded by the shady folks she owes money to, so Alex goes along with it. They have many adventures on the way to Troy. They are attacked, shipwrecked and attacked again, mainly by Alexa's cousins who believe they hare the rightful Emperor.  And then... when they reach their destination, there are betrayals, from the highest, disguised as political expediency. The characters are fabulous, the plot twists, twisty. If anything, the fight scenes - which are well written - last a little too long. It does resolve but then there's a bit tagged on to the end that leads into a second book in the sequence. Not exactly a cliffhanger (thank goodness). Stephen Pacey does a marvellous job differentiating the voices and accents from a growly, insane werewolf to a cheerful elf with little to be cheerful about.


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[personal profile] missingvolume
 

Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly, Peter Giles (Narrator), Titus Welliver (Narrator), Christine Lakin (Narrator)


This is a Lincoln Lawyer book with Bosch also appearing since he is working for Mickey in order to keep health insurance since he is fighting cancer from radiation exposure from an old case.  Harry is sorting through all the letters Mickey gets looking for a needle in the haystack of people saying they are innocent but in jail. They find a case in a woman serving time for the murder of her ex-husband, a sheriff’s deputy.  Once they start looking at the details, things don’t add up and Mickey does his magic in the courtroom.  A good mystery and of course there is more than just a simple murder.

A tilted up view of a palm tree lined street looking at a sunset colored sky  


London, Thursdauy morning

Jul. 17th, 2025 08:07 am
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
We got a lot done yesterday and today, Mark and I sorted through a bunch of stuff on Tuesday, and talked to Ralph (Mom's stepson) and figuring out which things are his/his sister's, and then which withim that what people actually want. Legally, he and Liz own the flat and some of the contents (specified\). In practice, there are things none of us want, partly because of geography: Ralph doesn#t need furniture, and he's the only one of us who lives anywhere nearby. So it's mostly what has sentimental value, like Simon's family china.

To our London friends: If we get enough done today, we might still be able to see people tomorrow or Saturday, but I don't know yet.

I also got into a stupid argument Tuesday afternoon with Ralph's wife Jenny, who was trying to convince me that my brother and I had some koind of obligation to arrange for clearing out everything that nobody wants, so Liz (Ralph's s sister) can sell the flat. This started with me telling her that we hadn't traveled from the US to be unpaid labor clearing out a flat for someone else to sell, and then on the third time she cirled back to telling her that by insulting my recently deceased mother she wasn't helping. |She said she wasn't trying to help, I told her to at least stop hurting then, and walked away from the conversation. My brother is one of the executor's of the will, so maybe has some obligations here, but Ralph and Liz own the flat now--my mother had a life tenancy and then it went too her stepchildren. I emerged a while later to find that Mark, Ralph, and Jenny had made a bit more progress in figuring things out.

They left here at about five, and Cattitude and Adrian went shopping to buy a few groceries.

[personal profile] liv, who is staying part-time in a flat half a mile from here, came over for the evening, and we had a very good, long visit. Adrian cooked dinner in an unfamiliar kitchen; I'd checked with Live a fw hours earlier about dietary restrictions. The original plan was just for her to come over here, where we can sit in the back garden, but one advantage of that is being able to comfortably share meals with people.

Wednesday was productive, sorting through papers and Mom's jewelry and a few oddments. The will leaves a few specific pieces of jewelry to Simon's daughter and two of my cousins, so we need(ed) to locate those. Beyond that we can do whatever seems good, and had agreed to offer things we didn't want to our cousins. We've found one piece Adrian is taking, and there's a bracelet of Grandma's that my cousin Janet asked us to sell her. If we find it, it's Janet's, as a gift.

After Mark and Linza left, the three of us decompressed a bit. After supper, I sorted through a bunch of [photos, pulling out a few that \I want and/or thought \mark would want to least see. My mother's youth hostel card, signed by her and Grandpa, was in an envelope, along with a 1949 student discount subway pass, which got her free or discounted trips home from school. Thirty-odd years later, they were giving us passes good for free trips both ways, but only after the first few weeks of the semester.

In going through papers, and figuring out what we need, including things the executors and Mom's account might need, we have so far found four social security cards. What seems to be the original has a number stamped on it rather than neatly printed. One of the others makes sense in that it has her second married name on it--Eve Rosenzweig Kugler--but four still seems like a lot.

I'm going to post this and have some breakfast

UPDATE: Tempestuous Tours + news

Jul. 16th, 2025 05:33 pm
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[personal profile] duskpeterson

BLOG FICTION

Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket. ¶ Latest installments:


NEWS

About a millisecond before I was about to release my next ebook, a medical crisis occurred in my family (though not to me or my companion). It's the sort of crisis that involves dozens of members of a support team, professional and nonprofessional. I'm one of the two people coordinating all that. I'll continue posting blog fiction here whenever I can, but expect my presence here to be light for a while.

poetry sale!

Jul. 16th, 2025 02:07 pm
gwynnega: (books poisoninjest)
[personal profile] gwynnega
I'm delighted to announce that my poem "the jacarandas are unimpressed by your show of force" will be published by Strange Horizons. I wrote it last month, which was a very challenging time for me (and a very challenging time for Los Angeles and this country). Thank god for poetry, and for jacarandas. It always makes me so happy when my work appears in Strange Horizons.

Recent reading

Jul. 16th, 2025 04:00 pm
egret: egret in Harlem Meer (Default)
[personal profile] egret
Mysteries by Charles Finch:  A Beautiful Blue Death, The September Society, The Fleet Street Murders - These are very pleasant cozy mysteries set in Victorian London where Lord Lennox reads a lot of books and solves mysteries as a hobby. In the last one I read he has married and been elected to Parliament which are both interfering with his mystery solving, much to his consternation. There is a certain amount of flustering over the servant problem as the servants keep insisting on behaving like real people, which Liberal Lord Lennox admits they are but you know society has a structure for a reason. Very charming and entertaining. Originally these were a recommendation from my sister and believe me, if my sister and I both like something, it’s very broadly attractive. I think the other thing we agree is good is Keanu Reeves LOL

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr, Christians Against Christianity - A justified screed on why conservative/evangelical Christians are wrong to support Trump and Christian nationalism.

Tom Bower, Revenge. Scandalous royal family gossip about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. As an American, I enjoy British Royal Family gossip as a soap opera distraction. It’s entertaining to read about PROTOCOL and TRADITION and TASTE and TACKY when it has nothing to do with me. So I read this gossip book from the library during a terrible brain melting heatwave and it distracted me from how hot it was. 

Lynette Eason, Too Close to Home and Don’t Look Back. These are from the Women of Justice series of Christian mysteries by Eason. In each one a woman law enforcement officer solves crimes and falls in love with another LEO, often having to lead him first to church and/or Christ. Eason is good at creating genuinely scary situations that keep you in there, and her characters are likable and relatable. The villains are a little wildly over the top and I guessed who the second one was about a quarter of the way through, but I didn’t get bored listening. So I endorse these if you like Christian mysteries. If not, the proselytizing might put you off. Currently listening to the 3rd one which is A Killer Among Us. Oh, did I mention that all the main character women are sisters? So you hear about what’s happening with the other sisters as you move through the series. Another thing these books lean into is the danger of stalkers and women’s safety of movement. I would like to dismiss this as paranoia but it’s really not. I follow a discussion group about walking and people are always sharing their playlists and books for listening to while walking to prevent boredom. I’m always a bit amazed because I never listen to headphones when I’m walking because I need to listen to what’s going on around me to stay safe. I can’t even say this is just a woman’s issue: No one should be so lost in the clouds while they’re walking around in public. Perhaps this comes from living in a city my whole life. But I think even in the country I would listen for bears or something. OK, this is a tangent. 

Loves of His Life - Lesley Ann Jones - this is an older rehash/update of her Freddie Mercury biography focusing on his relationships. I pre-ordered her dubious book about his alleged secret daughter, which is releasing on his birthday, but in the process of doing so I found this unread and lurking on my Kindle. Main new contribution is a theory that Freddie was more traumatized by the Zanzibar revolution and the income extremes around Mumbai than he liked to discuss and that trauma explains his avoidance of Africa and India for the rest of his life. (I don’t totally dismiss this theory and add that the one time he did return to Africa — to shamefully perform at Sun City during the boycott — he lost his voice, which sounds psychosomatic as heck.)

Currently: Alaska Twilight by Colleen Coble.  Another Christian one that’s not even the beginning of the series. It’s about a wildlife photographer traveling in Alaska to film a guy who gets too close to bears. She has brought a dachshund into the Alaskan wilderness and if that little dog is eaten by a bear I will stop listening. Listening to it because it reminds me of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man documentary and because other things I have on hold have not arrived yet. Still have not finished Herland and have de-emphasized it in favor of writing my fall syllabi. 
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[personal profile] missingvolume
 

Renee is heading up a newly reformed cold case unit that has the political support of a councilman who’s sister is one of the cases. Renee gets Harry to volunteer on the unit with the carrot that he can also work on one of his old cases that has always nagged him.  Ballard’s case turns up to be a serial murderer and Bosch closes his in a way that could cost him his life.


The sun rising over a ridge in the desert with a dead tree in one corner.

blog post up at Planetside

Jul. 15th, 2025 10:38 am
gwynnega: (books poisoninjest)
[personal profile] gwynnega
This week on Planetside, I write about a subject close to my writerly heart, "Using Pop Culture as Poetic Inspiration," in which I discuss work by Brandon O'Brien, Sonya Taaffe, Dorothea Lasky, and more!

Costume Bracket: Round 4, Post 6

Jul. 15th, 2025 06:27 pm
purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)
[personal profile] purplecat
Two Doctor Who companion outfits for your delectation and delight! Outfits selected by a mixture of ones I, personally, like; lists on the internet; and a certain random element.


Outfits below the Cut )

Vote for your favourite of these costumes. Use whatever criteria you please - most practical, most outrageously spacey, most of its decade!

Voting will remain open for at least a week, possibly longer!

Costume Bracket Masterlist

Images are a mixture of my own screencaps, screencaps from Lost in Time Graphics, PCJ's Whoniverse Gallery, and random Google searches.
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[personal profile] missingvolume
 

The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, Jesse Kirkwood (Translator), Sadao Ueda (Narrator), Tomoko Komura (Narrator), Yuriri Naka (Narrator)


The book has three POV people that each find a magical coffee shop run by cats during the full moon.  It isn’t where you would expect a coffee shop to be and but guidance the cats provide with coffee and snacks helps each person find their way.  A nice low stakes read when you need a little pick me up of a read.  I really enjoyed the audio version of this book. 



A drawing of a moon with astrological symbols drawn over and two cats on the moon and one cat at the bottom edge of the book all on a dark background.

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