Author: Civilian Reader

Very Quick Review: MIST & MALICE by Rachel Howzell Hall (Thomas & Mercer)

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Return to Haven and the darkness beneath the ideal

A small-town PI is drawn into a killer conspiracy…

Private investigator Sonny Rush, the newest resident of Haven, California, knows that this fogbound coastal hamlet is every bit as dangerous as her hometown of Los Angeles. And when teenager and repeat runaway Honor Butler shows up at Sonny’s door with terror in her eyes, Sonny is immediately pulled into a new case that lands close to home.

Desperate, hungry, and in need of someone she can trust, Honor tells Sonny a horrifying story about where she’s been—and what she’s been forced to do. Then, hours later, the forest near Sonny’s cottage yields the remains of a missing day laborer, a man whose wife has been searching for answers for months. Soon, coincidence sharpens into conspiracy.

As Sonny digs deeper, the threads of these cases twist together into something horrifying: a ruthless network preying on the vulnerable, protected by the very people meant to uphold the law. With every step closer to revealing Haven’s corruption, Sonny risks pulling the lives of her loved ones into the cross fire—and exposing the shadows of her own past. Because in this town, loyalty can be fatal, and survival means deciding who you’re willing to betray.

Rachel Howzell Hall’s first Haven novel, Fog & Fury was a very good introduction to Sonny Rush and the ideal-but-only-on-the-surface town of Haven. In Mist & Malice, we pick up Sonny’s story shortly after the end of the first novel, as she continues to wrestle with the fallout of the first novel, even as a new case arises. I enjoyed this, but it wasn’t quite as strong as the first book. Continue reading →

Quick Review: THE SHADOW FRIENDS by Tess Gerritsen (Thomas & Mercer / Penguin UK)

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Ghosts of the Cold War come back to haunt the Martini Club

When a renowned disease expert and Russian defector dies mysteriously during a global affairs conference in Purity, Maine, the tight-knit band of former spies in the Martini Club once again sees their quiet coastal retirement interrupted by international intrigue. And when a waitress at the conference hotel is found murdered, Ingrid Slocum sees chilling links to a disastrous mission that nearly killed her three decades ago.

Desperate to uncover the truth, Ingrid’s drawn back into the game by a magnetic ex-CIA colleague ― and former lover ― who was with her on the long-ago doomed mission. He convinces her to join him, and together they head to Amsterdam to track down her would-be killer.

Ingrid’s frantic husband Lloyd and Maggie Bird are close behind, but a clandestine network of assassins is intent on stopping them. Forced to question every allegiance, the Martini Club must rely on the skills they tried to leave behind. Because in this game of revenge and deception, the past never dies ― it just hides in the shadows.

The first novel I read by Tess Gerritsen was The Spy Coast (2023), the first book in the Martini Club series. It was a fantastic introduction to the group of retired spies living in Maine, juggling civilian life with the now-frequent resurrection of issues from their past actions. The Summer Guests (2025) nicely expanded readers’ picture of these characters and the lives they lived at CIA. In The Shadow Friends, Gerritsen continues to develop the characters and the world they live in, and also gives another member of the group the spotlight. It’s another engaging thriller/mystery, which I very much enjoyed. Continue reading →

Upcoming: SOULSTEALER by Miles Cameron (Gollancz)

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This September, Gollancz are due to publish Soulstealer by Miles Cameron, the first novel in the Soulflake fantasy series! The excellent cover by Fran Vegas was unveiled earlier this week by Grimdark Magazine, along with the synopsis, and both the artwork and plot caught my attention. Here’s what it’s about:

Bekka Trevelyan is an arcanist, and the first woman to be made a Gentleman Scholar of Arcany at the University of Kabakak. Her graduate work was in refining a device to measure the potency of the winds of magic. Over her Yule holidays from teaching, she travels east on a field trip to test her theory about the Winds in the true Wyld. Instead, she finds herself swept up in the investigation of a kidnapping of an indigenous woman and her child by a demon that has possessed the body of a tracker.

Tam Warden was a war hero, and then a sort of government enforcer. He gave up rank and fame to marry across class lines. But government isn’t done with him yet. He’s called back to action to investigate Bekka’s claims – discreetly. This is delicate work, because the truth could unbalance the nation.

Essa Bateman is a mercenary spy, a hard woman with no attachments and very few ethics. Few, it turns out, is more than ‘none.’ She sees the ripples of unrest from the underbelly of society, but deciding what to do about them is a different beast entirely.

In a world where gunpowder is manufactured from the souls of executed criminals, and the ultra-rich seek immortality at any price, where children labour in factories and the desperate poor turn to vampirism, where slavery is rampant and gangs rule the streets…

A few people are about to be heroes. They just don’t know it yet.

But maybe, just maybe, the Revolution is coming.

Mile Cameron’s Soulstealer is due to be published by Gollancz in the UK, on September 3rd. The author’s sci-fi series, Arcana Imperii, is also published in the UK by Gollancz, and in North America by Saga Press. (He is also a prolific historical fiction author, as Christian Cameron.)

Also on CR: Excerpt from Storming Heaven, Guest Post on “How I do Research”

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky

Excerpt: MOON OVER BRENDLE by Jeff Noon (Angry Robot Books)

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A couple of weeks ago, Angry Robot Books published the latest magical contemporary fantasy novel from Jeff Noon: Moon Over Brendle. Already very well-received, the publisher has provided CR with an excerpt to share with our readers (in case you need any more convincing to give it a read). Before we get to that, though, here’s the synopsis:

The Dust tells the story…

1968, Lancashire: It is Joe Sutter’s last summer before going to secondary school. His world is like ours but beyond and beside what we know is Greot; a vast swirling rainbow of many-coloured dust. It settles on the dead, it swathes cities and fields. Joe is one of the few who have the gift of always being able to see it. But no one knows what Greot is. Is it the trillion-eyed god? The history of everything told grain-by-grain? Prophecy? The magic of creativity?

Joe can’t know; all he wants to do is draw comics and listen to music. Then one day, after climbing up to the ancient tower on Brendle hill, he meets an old writer of pulp SF books who is determined to pass on the power and joy of telling stories. And everything changes.

Decades later Joe is a successful SF novelist, and the time has come to tell his story, not only of how he became a writer but also how the secrets of the dust were revealed to him, one grain at a time.

And now, on with the excerpt…

Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE PORCELAIN SISTERS by Daryl Gregory (Tachyon)

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I’ve been a fan of Daryl Gregory‘s books for quite some time, now. I believe the first novel by him that I read was Afterparty, which was partially set in the first neighbourhood in Toronto I got to know. Ever since, I’ve been a keen reader of his new novels and short stories — each has been engaging, original, and offers imaginative twists on new and classic SFF ideas and tropes. In October, Tachyon Publications are due to publish his latest speculative mystery: The Porcelain Sisters. Check out the synopsis:

A shy young woman and her deeply unpleasant—and literally porcelain—sister fight for their inheritance, taking on an impossible array of enemies, including a chain-smoking demon crow, an unkillable assassin, and a secret clan of French sorceresses.

Ruth Winslow is trying to save up enough money to finish college while looking after her sister, Isabel―who happens to be a haunted doll. When an accident severely damages Isabel’s porcelain body, the sisters have to find the only woman who can fix her, the fearsome witch known as La Fabricante: the Dollmaker.

The sisters head to Marseille, where they take on Le Clan: Chiffon, a red-headed, unkillable assassin; a collection of angry, haunted dolls; plus a pair of demons―one a cigarette-smoking crow, the other a black cat―and their human familiars.

Along the way, the sisters learn that they’ve been lied to their entire lives. Their mother wasn’t just a homemaker who died in a car accident, she was a legendary enforcer in the Le Clan des Sorcières.

While Ruth has to come out of her shell and deal with her own latent powers, Isabel has to grow up in a body that can’t grow. Together they’ll have to outwit and outfight everyone to claim their birthright.

I’m really looking forward to this!

Daryl Gregory’s The Porcelain Sisters is due to be published by Tachyon Publications, on October 26th.

Also on CR: Interview with Daryl Gregory (2017); Review of The Album of Dr. Moreau

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky

Excerpt: THE REDEMPTION CENTER IS CLOSED ON SUNDAYS by Andrea Hairston (Tor Books)

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Today, we have an excerpt from Andrea Hairston‘s upcoming new novel, The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays. An interesting take on the mystery genre, featuring a canine detective, sci-fi elements, and more; here’s the synopsis:

In the Heart of Mystery Lies Redemption…

Every Sunday, Oona the St. Berdoodle and her current owner, Zsuzsu, make their way through the winding paths of the State Park to the enigmatic Redemption Center—a place often mistaken for a haunted mansion.

When a local celebrity is found murdered, the unexpected brings Oona together with a rag-tag group of local misfits. Together they venture into the depths of the Center’s mystery to untangle the threads of murder and deception.

But Oona holds two secrets: she’s a citizen of the multiverse, able to travel between dimensions at will, and more importantly, she knows the killer’s identity. Unfortunately, the killer knows she knows, and he’s determined to find her and silence her for good.

An extra-dimensional murder mystery with conundrums, alien tricksters, and a dog detective who just doesn’t know the meaning of “stay”.

Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE SENSUALIST by Gary Shteyngart (Random House)

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I’ve been reading Gary Shteyngart‘s journalism for quite some time. This has not, strangely, translated into me reading much of his fiction… Weird. In 2024, The Atlantic published the author’s amusing feature “Crying Myself to Sleep on the icon of the Seas”, which went a little bit viral — it’s a well-written, amusing piece. It looks like this article, and others, will be collected in Shteyngart’s first essay collection, The Sensualist, which is due to be published by Random House in November. Here’s the synopsis:

In The Sensualist, Gary chases capybaras, the world’s largest (and cutest) rodent. He joins 7500 fellow passengers on the earth’s biggest cruise ship. He schleps around New York City in search of the best martini. He visits wool merchants and tailors in pursuit of the perfect blue suit.

To Gary, a sensualist believes the details of one’s life are always worth savoring and happiness can be found from looking around. A sensualist isn’t a glutton or an aesthete (and certainly not a snob), but someone who embraces the sublime—and the absurd. In The Sensualist Gary takes us across town and across the world, showing us how to appreciate.

Gary Shteyngart’s The Sensualist is due to be published by Random House in North America and in the UK, on November 10th.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky

Upcoming: LIFE OF M by Rachel Cusk (FSG / Faber)

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Yesterday, I spotted Life of M on NetGalley. It’s the next novel by Rachel Cusk, the acclaimed, best-selling author of the Outline Trilogy and many others. I haven’t actually read anything by Cusk (not actually sure why), but the synopsis for this next book caught my attention. I’ve popped it on my anticipated list, and I’m really looking forward to reading it. Here’s the synopsis:

M is a famous actor. She has been famous since she was a child. With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. Over time she has grown so accustomed to being recognized that not to be recognized comes as a rare surprise.

This might be why she agrees to let a stranger write her biography, a stranger who knows nothing of M and yet resembles her uncannily. The project they embark upon together sprawls and expands, to the olive groves and holiday beaches where M spends her days, across hotel rooms and bourgeois facades and film sets, through the endless modern cities whose beauty requires great suffering, whose ugliness holds great beauty.

Out of the bewildering torrent of the present, Rachel Cusk has fashioned a new kind of literature. What begins with a collision between two people — M, and the ordinary stranger who begins to tell her story — evolves into a chronicle of modern life, a choral investigation into how we might find what is significant within the wreck of the ordinary. This is a novel stripped of artifice, that takes our emptiness and fills it with grace. It is a shocking achievement.

Rachel Cusk’s Life of M is due to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in North America (August 25th) and Faber & Faber in the UK (August 28th).

Follow the Author: Goodreads

Upcoming: 138 MAIN STREET by Gavin Bell (Gallery/Scout, Simon & Schuster)

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Next month, Gallery/Scout Press is due to publish 138 Main Street by Gavin Bell. I just found out today that Gavin Bell is the real name of the author Mason Cross, whose Carter Blake series is one of my favourites. He has also written two novels as Alex Knight (although, I inexplicably haven’t had a chance to read those, yet, despite owning them).

I was particularly drawn to the intriguing, original premise; so, combined with how much I’ve enjoyed the author’s previous books, this naturally became one of my (suddenly) most-anticipated novels of the year. Here’s the synopsis…

AN ADDRESS TO DIE FOR…

There’s a killer on the loose. And he’s targeting one specific address—138 Main Street. The problem? There are over 7,000 Main Streets in the USA. And the police and FBI have no clue which one will be next.

For FBI Special Agent Ben Walker and his rookie colleague, Officer Zoe Hill, the pressure to solve the case is unimaginable. There aren’t enough police officers to cover every house, and vigilante residents are attacking anyone who rings their doorbell. Main Street might be one of America’s most popular addresses, but for those living at number 138, it comes down to fight or flight.

Then a manuscript is sent to the New York Times, purporting to be the manifesto of the “Main Street Killer” and demanding radical social change. As the effect of the terror campaign takes hold across the nation, Walker and Hill find themselves in a race against time to stop the killer. But with their target always several steps ahead, and almost 3,800,000 square miles of ground to cover, they’ll have to find him first…

Gavin Bell’s 138 Main Street is due to be published by Gallery/Scout Press in North America, on June 2nd. UK readers, however, are in luck: it was published today, by Simon & Schuster.

Also on CR: Reviews of The Killing Season, The Samaritan, The Time to Kill/Winterlong, and Don’t Look For Me

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