A good next installment in this set of mysteries about a forensic anthropologist who had a baby with a detective who is still married to his wife. A combination of mystery-solving and interpersonal relationship solving. I like the mystery stuff a lot better than the other stuff but it’s still a nice readable and not-too-complex set of novels with a very likable (to me) main character who is a single mom who does her best and doesn’t much care what people think.

A graphic novel about a dancing school in Bucharest and the young women who are trying to figure things out in their lives (mainly relationships with other young women or not-so-young women). Beautifully drawn and very relatable and brought me back to my short time in Bucharest in the nineties. Ultimately, like many of these graphic novels, it’s a story of friendship and growing up and learning to set boundaries and get comfortable with yourself.

A memoir of a sort by Jon King from Gang of Four covering his early life and the early years of the band through their first four albums and their ascension to popularity and US/UK tours. King has a chatty and funny style and this book is super readable, doesn’t feel like a tell-all, and has some nifty photos. It wraps up at a dark time in the band’s history which is too bad (since the band continued on and worked some stuff out) but overall a great punk memoir.

This was a fun one to ILL at the library. My director: “Should I be worried?” The story is about a mysterious school in an unknown location where people receive schooling in the fine arts of undetectable murder (of one’s employer). It follows three students through their experiences at the school. The important catch is that if you don’t accomplish your “thesis” you will, yourself, be killed. Written by Rupert “Pina Colada Song” Holmes. It’s a fun, if goofy, read.

Even though this book takes place in rural NH, it had a very Vermont-y feel to it. A family with generations of single moms with single daughters, all of whom are witchy in some way, live in a farm doing their thing until a tragedy strikes. They are blamed, and the family fractures and things unravel. Can Lizzy, the title character, pull it all together, and does she even want to or would she prefer to go back to her more normal and anonymous life in New York? This book deals with some pretty difficult things but it has a calm and peaceful vibe and I enjoyed getting to know the family and the small town.

This is a short sort of bland mystery about a couple from New York who buys a house in Vermont (he got a job with the Forest Service, she was hoping for a job at the Shelburne Museum which fell through) and come to town like fish out of water only to discover a dead man in their well! They can only move into the house once the murder is solved, so they apply themselves to it, driving around in their Smart car like n00bs, and figure it out. Solidly okay. It was a quick read and I’ll probably try the second one to see if the series improves.

A tedious retelling of a dramatic shipwreck and the very involved project to locate and salvage the gold from the shipwreck led by one “mad genius” type guy who sounds like he is very extra. There is a staggering amount of detail in parts and then a lot of hand wavey “And then they got the rest of the gold” at the end which felt very weird considering how much detail there was in the beginning. Looking up the story on Wikipedia, it seems that the mad genius went on the run rather than pay his creditors and investors. That’s the book I’d like to read.

Erosion brought on by climate change has revealed six bodies formerly buried near but not IN the sea. Are they really old, only sort of old, or not old at all? Enter forensic anthropologist Ruth Galloway who has been seconded to the local police to help figure it out. The mystery in this one is almost secondary to the character development (Galloway has had a child that she is raising as a single mom) but there are still some interesting historical aspects. There were a lot of characters with generic names that I had a slightly difficult time keeping straight.

If you’re looking for a lightish book about book banning with a bunch of easily-defeated straw man book banners, this is the book for you. It’s simple, a bit funny, and does its best to describe just how communities can get to the point where they want to restrict people’s access to information, and the knock-on effects of those restrictions. Takes place in Georgia. Did not love this one but I liked it well enough.

This is mostly not a memoir about this man’s body. It’s a series of vignettes, in no particular order, about the life he’s led which got him to where he is now. He’s a guy who has sort of lumped through life. Had some challenges like Crohn’s disease and weirdnesses at art school, trying to make and keep friends, meet women. He paid his way through some of this doing painting at a wooden shoe factory. It’s disjointed at times but a good read overall.