This month was a bit of a variety show including a gothic novel, two biographies, some non-fiction essays, and plenty of mysteries.

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher was the absolute highlight of the month. As a childhood fan of Edgar Allen Poe and someone always desperate to find a new great gothic novel this was perfection. The short chapters and rapid narrative pulled me in and didn’t let me go until the House of Usher had fallen. Poe’s original The Fall of the House of Usher is a very short story and Kingfisher takes the original and expands the world and the characters and introduces us to our hero Alex – the kind of main character you never want to leave behind.

I am also currently in an evening class (which is why I read Team of Rivals and Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage) in the last few months. This month it meant picking up two biographies from the local library. Because of time constraints, I didn’t read them in full but read relevant chapters in each.

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight and Walt Whitman: A Life by Justin Kaplan have a lot in common. Both won awards (The Pulitzer for Douglass and the National Book Award for Whitman – although Kaplan also won a Pulitzer for his biography of Mark Twain). You can tell both authors are passionate, but not blindly adoring, of their subjects. There’s commentary in both not only on the lives of their figures, but also their legacies and cultural impact. However, the main difference between the two (and the reason I will one day return to the massive 900 page Douglass but probably not pick up Whitman again) is that Blight offers a detailed, well-indexed introduction and overview not only of Douglass’s life and work but also those who impacted his life in significant ways with enough historical context that if you are new to the era or Douglass himself you never feel lost. Blight also uses the traditional chronological structure where as Kaplan opts for a thematic approach and while that’s not always a deal breaker for me in biography or memoir, Kaplan’s expectations of knowledge regarding both the time period of Whitman’s life and the American literary world of his time made it a bit disorienting. There are plenty of readers already well versed in those areas who would be able to enjoy this perspective, but it’s not an introduction to Whitman’s life or work.     

Whenever I need a break or can’t decide what to read next, turning to a recurring series is a great choice so after my biographical reading I picked up the next Phryne Fischer mystery on my shelf: Death Before Wicket by Kerry Greenwood. Although Phryne is in Sydney for the first time it doesn’t stop her from multiple investigations – one to find her maid’s missing sister and the second to find a missing archeological artifact. As per usual Miss Fischer’s adventures with crime, clothes, and romance are a perfect way to spend a few hours. 

Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors by Aravind Jayan is a book I never would have picked up myself, but it came in a book subscription box so I gave it a go. It’s a modern novel about a family dealing with the fallout of an online sex tape. It was sadder and more cynical than I expected from the blurb, but it was still an interesting book about how not every family dispute can be mended.

After enjoying the first book in the Shardlake series by CJ Sansom, I picked the next installment – Dark Fire – to be my plane book for a long trip this month and it was the perfect choice. Sansom hops forward in time to final days of Cromwell, but from the perspective of our lawyer Shardlake. I liked the fact the events of the first novel have left a great impression on Shardlake – sometimes in a series the author prefers to keep a main character mostly static, but I always prefer when they evolve. Just like the first novel the reality of the mechanics of the era – time, waiting for messages and responses, the impact of weather and horses and plague – give the book a tension that makes you think about just how methodical Shardlake is in his investigations. It really makes you wonder what he could achieve in the present with a laptop and good quality wifi.

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill was a compulsive grab at the library and was a great mystery and commentary on mystery all in one. I loved the structure of a mystery novel with emails detailing feedback and notes on the novel itself. It reminded me a bit of Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi which was also a great read. I don’t want to say much else, lest I spoil the mystery but it’s worth a look for fans of the genre.

My audiobook of the month was Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe. A collection of his long-form journalism over the years really shows the scope of his writing and means this is a great pick up and put down book – you can read one chapter and leave it for a few weeks or months if you want before reading the next. Say Nothing is probably still my favorite of his works, but this solidifies the fact that Keefe is going to be a permanent addition on my audio bookshelf (he reads these himself like he did for Empire of Pain and does a great job) or as Rachel Maddow’s blurb from the cover stats: “I read everything he writes. Every time he writes a book, I read it…” That about sums it up.