A book clearly written by someone who read the Harry Potter books and knew she could write a better, more interesting, more complex series of wizard school books. And she has! This book is SO GOOD. A young wizard woman (high school junior), enrolled at The Scholomance, the wizard school, and her various travails trying to stay alive. She is extremely prickly, owing to the combination of a somewhat unusual upbringing, even for a wizard, and a prophecy that she would go wrong, very wrong, at some point. She has spent her school years so far hiding her enormous power under a barrel; she has no friends; the wizard world is stratified in interesting ways. Also, the student wizards have such an interesting economy, in which they're constantly trading what they have for what they need. (I subsequently learned that the Scholomance was a "fabled school of black magic in Romania," per wikipedia. Okay, then!)

The second in the series. As graduation draws near, things get more and more serious, but also, El finds her people and begins to act more like a human. Things....heat up elsewhere.

The eighth Martin Beck novel. He is back at work after time off after having been shot at the end of The Abominable Man. A bank robbery and the death of a man in a locked room happen at around the same time; the police fumble a lot.

Lesbian romance set in 1857. Fun, though not very believable. There are some anachronisms in the speech of the young women who are the viewpoint characters, plus you would not be wearing stays and a corset at the same time.

The third and final book in the Scholomance series. Holy moley, Novik landed a perfect ending to a complicated series.

Memoir by an economist whose husband, their children, her parents, and her best friend died in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, and who nearly died herself. Truly heartbreaking and beautifully written.

An extremely beautiful, almost plotless, novel. The international space ship, with a polyglot crew, obits the earth; the crew members observe the earth and their own lives.

A beautifully-written, charming, and well-plotted historical gay romantacy set around 1905 in London and other places in England. First book in a trilogy.

The third and last novel about Thara Celehar, Witness for the Dead. I love these books so much, and I wish there were more. He is a religious figure and also a detective; he is prickly, but his friends love him. Also, there's opera.

Set in the early 1940s, when WWII was underway and life in England was greatly altered. Someone dies early in the book, and Inspector Holly needs to solve it. The mystery is interesting, but even more interesting are the life stories of the many suspects. Extremely well written, also.

First book of a trilogy. A young woman in a military training academy dreams of being a lancer pilot, at the same time that she has a secret to hide: she's an orphan from clanner culture, which is at war with the imperial government. Not his best, I feel; there are some editing inconsistencies or something; words out of place; phrasing that didn't quite work. I'm not sure whether I will read the rest of the trilogy, although I am generally a big fan of his.

Amusing short story? Novelette? about an arranged marriage between a live woman and a vampire that turns out better than you might expect. First in a series, I think.

Superb novel involving Jewish and gentile people in what I take to be a Baltic or otherwise Eastern European country, nobles in that same country, and a race of people called the Staryk. They encounter each other with powerful outcomes.

Novella (I think) set in the world of The Goblin Emperor, but featuring characters not in that book or the marvelous Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy. It features a disgraced scholar, missing relics, and an artifact forger, among others. A Witness plays an important role. Superb.

Intense memoir by Sorrentino, who is the son of the novelist and critic Gilbert Sorrentino, about his parents and their marriage, about himself and his marriage, and above all about his mother, of Puerto Rican descent who chose to pass as white.