The Last Murder at the End of the World (Audiobook) – Stuart Turton, Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh – 21.07.25

This was an interesting and enjoyable book. Set in a post apocalyptic world, where a poisonous gas covers most of the planet and a small community lives on an Greek island that had been inhabited by a team of scientists before the apocalypse most of whom were put into suspended animation in an underground lab, now cut off by gas in the tunnels and a few, unnaturally long lived ‘elders’ survive and rule the community of descendants of the original scientists.

An AI presence has a telepathic connection to the villagers and also some control over them. Most of the villagers happily accept both this control and the strictly hierarchical society with the elders calling the shots, including that all other villagers peacefully die on the evening of their 60th birthday (my husband is about to turn 60 so we had a rueful laugh about this!). One villager, however, is unusually questioning and when one of the elders dies in suspicious circumstances, she is tasked with investigating the ‘murder’.

I found the book quite thought provoking, with interesting twists that I didn’t always see coming. Thumbs up from me!

Twelve Bones (Sixteen Souls) – Rosie Talbot – 17.07.25

I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the first book in this series, but this sequel didn’t excite me so much. It was fine, a bit young adulty for my taste (I am after all a retired granny now!). The relationship between the two main (living) characters was sweet but I got a bit bored with all the action and the mystery elements. Maybe my head just wasn’t in it enough and I got a bit lost.

The Institute – Stephen King (Audiobook), Narrated by: Santino Fontana – 15.07.25

I am such a fan of Stephen King, especially his more recent books which have moved away from full on horror to more rich character led books of different genres, often (but not always) involving supernatural elements and sometimes mystery or thriller elements and deep thoughtful plots.

I saw an ad for the TV adaptation of this book and realised it was a Stephen King that I hadn’t read and it sounded great so I bought it right away.

The institute that the book is named for is a secure and secret unit hidden in the woods in Maine, housing children with special gifts – either TK (telekinesis or the ability to move objects with their minds) or TP (telepathy – mind reading) or very rarely, both.

The children are abducted from their homes and told that they will be returned when they have completed their ‘service’ but we know that this is not true – the staff of the institute are ruthless and cold blooded in the pursuit of their mission and leave no witnesses. They believe (or at least some of them do) that they are working toward a greater good that is worth the sacrifice.

When Luke Ellis is taken to the institute, the staff hadn’t reckoned on his superior intelligence making him the first child in their ‘care’ with a real chance at fighting back.

I loved it (of course!) and I’m enjoying watching the tv show too.

Stone and Sky: Rivers of London, Book 10 (Audiobook) – Ben Aaronovitch, Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Shvorne Marks – 09.07.25

I enjoyed this latest instalment on the Rivers of London Urban Fantasy series – this time the gang are on holiday/work trip to Scotland to bring their specialist knowledge and skill set to the weird sh*t that has been going on up there – farm animals mutilated by giant invisible creatures and a man turning up dead who is found to have gills.

The Scottish element very much reminded me of the wonderful Edinburgh Nights series by T.L. Huchu (I can’t wait for the new book in that series coming out soon btw) so much so that I really wanted there to be crossover and for the gang to meet up with Ropa Moyo and do some magical investigating with her!

The plot was quite fun with seemingly disparate threads all coming together, but for me the relationships were more fun – the alternate chapters featuring Abigail with her new found love, not to mention love among the foxes, were my favourite bits, although I also enjoyed seeing Peter juggling being a husband and father of small twins with being a supernatural police man. Nice.

The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man (Audiobook) – Jonas Jonasson (Author), Rachel Willson-Broyles – translator, Peter Kenny (Narrator) – 02.07.25

I did enjoy the first book in this series about the 100 year old man going on an adventure and like Forest Gump, remembering stumbling into all kinds of historical moments in his long life which came in useful in getting him out of trouble in sticky situations.

This sequel, is largely more of the same, and I mostly enjoyed it, although I did find it a bit daft. The scenes with Donald Trump were quite funny, but then Donald Trump is low hanging fruit for comedic parody.

I felt slightly uncomfortable with the narrator’s exaggerated accents for the people of different ethnicities, it’s a bit of a rocky path I guess and I’m not sure how narrators should approach giving voice to ethnic characters but it seemed a bit inappropriate.

If there is another sequel, I don’t think I would bother reading it (although I might be tempted if is was super cheap!).

Woman on the Edge of Time (Audiobook) – Marge Piercy (Author), Tanya Eby (Narrator) – 25.06.25

Written over forty years ago, this dystopian/utopian, speculative, sci-fi, feminist novel (I know, that’s a lot of genres!) feels prescient and relevant to our times. The main character, Connie, is a Latin American woman struggling to cope with poverty and abusive relationships. When she defends her cousin by attacking her violent pimp he has her committed to a mental asylum. Peopled largely by women and ethnic minorities, the asylum is like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s nest – with cruel and self serving doctors and care workers who treat the patients more like sub-human test subjects to experiment on.

Connie is contacted by a person from the future who only she can see, and she is able to leave her body in a trance like state to travel with this person to the future – the utopian future where there are technological advances unheard of in the 1970s (when the novel was written) like wrist computers, and interactive touch screens and solar powered fully automatic factories, but also a return to subsistence farming and shared belongings because of respecting the earth and its natural resources. The future people have abandoned gender roles, having neutral personal pronouns and having both male and female born people able to breast feed babies grown in artificial wombs. In this future positions of authority and government are rotated so everyone gets a turn and democracy is king.

However, there is a darker possible future that Connie also visits, where the world is so toxic that people have to live underground, where men rule the roost and women must augment their bodies to be attractive enough.

A battle over which future will win out rests on Connie as a turning point in history like a small pebble in a stream might change it’s course over time.

The novel always leaves the possibility that all of this is in Connie’s mind and not based on any actual reality, in fact, there is a confusing (at least I found it confusing) sequence with a battle and the enemy seem to be people who work at the asylum, lending credence to the psychosis rather than reality theory, at least for that timeline.

I did find the book very readable, and thought provoking – in fact it was one of the books that I talked about in depth to my (long suffering) husband on our nightly dog walks because my mind was full of thoughts and implications that it raised.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks – Jason Arnopp – 21.06.25

This is a fun comedy horror story for the modern age. The titular character, Jack, sees himself as the next Louis Theroux, taking investigative journalism to new levels with books and social media platforms detailing the extreme lengths he goes to – taking various drugs and infiltrating gang culture for example. His latest project is to debunk supernatural claims of hauntings, possessions and exorcisms.

The resulting book is like ‘found footage’ pieced together by the Jack’s brother. Both Jack and his brother come across as quite unlikeable and not very reliable narrators, but this isn’t a problem, in fact, I think it adds to the fun.

It’s a horror book, so we know how ‘debunking’ claims of supernatural activity is going to turn out, and the fact that the brother has to piece together bits of written text, video and other media to tell the story give us a clue that it’s not going to end well for Jack (and the title of the book I guess lol!).

There are nice nods to classics in the horror genre, and on the whole I really enjoyed reading this book.

Possession: A Romance Audiobook – A. S. Byatt (Author), Samuel West (Narrator) – 20.06.25

I have read a few of these ‘literary detective’ type novels, where contemporary characters discover journals, or letters or other documents from the past and piece together stories of the people involved and for some reason they always leave me pretty cold. I just don’t get why anyone would be that bothered by the loves and lives of long dead people. I get that in this case the lives being uncovered are of famous writers and for the academics finding them it is a career changing coup, but still, I just didn’t care that much.

I did quite like both the poetic bits and the short mythological stories – because I read this as an audiobook, I didn’t have the hard work of reading the poetry but got to enjoy listening to it being read.

I thought the parallels between the relationships of the modern characters and the historical ones was quite interesting, but not enough for me to feel anything one way or the other – more like looking at people through a microscope than making friends with them.

Not one of my favourite books.

April in Spain: A Strafford and Quirke Murder Mystery – John Banville – 16.06.25 The Lock-Up: A Strafford and Quirke Murder Mystery – John Banville – 07.07.25

The Drowned: A Strafford and Quirke Murder Mystery – John Banville – 12.07.25

I read Snow a while ago, and wasn’t sure how much I liked it, but for some reason I bought the other three books in the series and read them. These books remind me of the Morse books, except that they are set (mostly) in Ireland in the 1950s.

If instead of a grumpy, alcohol abusing, intellectual, always gets-his-man, detective, Morse, you have a grumpy, alcohol abusing, intellectual, always gets-his-man, pathologist, Quirke, and instead of his nice, northern, well meaning, sidekick, Lewis, you have a nice, protestant (they keep making a thing out of his being protestant – I guess because of the colonial aspect of Protestantism in Ireland) well meaning, sidekick, Strafford, you have this series.

I actually really liked April in Spain, largely because of the Quirke’s second wife who has quite a large role in this book. She reminded me of Nelly from the 2024 season of The Great British Bake Off – if you’ve seen the show you’ll remember Nelly as the funny, jolly, nicely rotund lady who had been through tough times but still smiled, joked and made cake. Quirke’s wife gave a him much needed softer side and brought some light to the fairly dark and turgid world of murder that is his job.

The other two books plunged back into darkness without the light of the wife and while they are clearly well written and the mystery aspect was engaging, I found them a bit of a slog to get through.

A Promise of Ankles (44 Scotland Street Book 14) – Alexander McCall Smith – 09.06.25

It’s a while since I’ve read any Alexander McCall Smith books, to the point that I wasn’t sure if I’d read this one already or not – it’s hard to keep track as I have some on kindle, some on Audible and some as physical copies (some of which I’ve given away),and he has written about 47 million novels, and in a sense it doesn’t really matter since they’re all pretty much the same.

When I want something sweet and gentle and predictable (like a favourite comfort food or old movie) a 44 Scotland street book will usually hit the spot – I did quite enjoy it. I have to spread them out, as I do get annoyed by the sameness of them, especially since they are often very expensive for a lightweight read.

Typical stuff with Bertie’s mum being awful, Bertie’s dad being pathetic and Bertie being wise beyond his years, and the other cast members pontificating and having misunderstandings. I pick them up when they’re on offer and will keep reading, but I won’t go out of my way to pay full price for the next in series.