At the beginning of the month I read a Peter Temple book, An Iron Rose. Mac Faraday, the narrator, is a blacksmith (hence the title) working in the country outside of Melbourne. His good friend Ned Lowey is found hanged and it is ruled a suicide. Neither Ned's grandson, who was living with Ned and whom Mac takes in, nor Mac can believe that Ned ( Read more... )

Last month I read, in amongst the adult books, A Very Peculiar Plague. Birdie is now living a very comfortable life with Miss Eames, with beautiful clothes to wear, plentiful food and singing lessons to train her lovely voice. Jem spots a poster outside a Whitechapel attraction, using Birdie's name to draw the customers in. This leads Jem to take ( Read more... )

June - Unwanted, by Kristina Ohlsson, is a Swedish crime book, the first in a series about Fredrika Bergman, a civilian police analyst. She feels inadequate in her job and resented by the others on the team she's part of. A young girl goes missing from a train and initially it looks like a custody problem between the girls' estranged parents. ( Read more... )