TBR Thursday 87…

Episode 87…

Oh dear! The TBR dropped over the weekend and I was so thrilled. But then it all went horribly wrong again. End result – no change! Stuck on 169. Still, at least it didn’t go up, eh? And I’m sure it’s going to start going down any time now…

Here are some of the ones that are getting close to the top of the heap…

Factual

I downloaded this to my Kindle in June 2011, so I’m thinking it might be time I should actually read it…

The Blurb says: Writing under a pseudonym, Alcott recounted the vicissitudes of her two-day journey from her home in Concord, Massachusetts, to Washington, D.C. A fiery baptism in the practice of nursing awaited her at Washington Hospital, were she arrived immediately after the slaughter of the Army of the Potomac at the battle of Fredericksburg. Alcott’s rapidly paced prose graphically depicts the facts of hospital life, deftly balancing pathos with gentle humor. A vivid and truthful portrait of an often overlooked aspect of the Civil War, this book remains among the most illuminating reports of the era’s medical practices as well as a moving testimonial to the war’s human cost.

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Fiction

Courtesy of NetGalley. This will be my introduction to Don DeLillo. I’m a little apprehensive since early reviews have been… well, let’s just say mixed…

The Blurb says: Jeffrey Lockhart’s father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say “an uncertain farewell” to her as she surrenders her body.

Don DeLillo’s seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant new novel weighs the darkness of the world—terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague—against the beauty and humanity of everyday life; love, awe, “the intimate touch of earth and sun.”

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Fantasy Crime

NetGalley again. I fell in love with Angela Slatter’s writing when I came across her in the anthology Fearie Stories. I then went on to read her own excellent collection Sourdough and Other Stories. And she also wrote one of my favourite stories from the anthology Horrorology. This is her first full length novel – waaaaaay outside my comfort zone, but she’s so good… fingers crossed!

The Blurb says: Verity Fassbinder has her feet in two worlds. The daughter of one human and one Weyrd parent, she has very little power herself, but does claim unusual strength – and the ability to walk between us and the other – as a couple of her talents. As such a rarity, she is charged with keeping the peace between both races, and ensuring the Weyrd remain hidden from us.

But now Sirens are dying, illegal wine made from the tears of human children is for sale – and in the hands of those Weyrd who hold with the old ways – and someone has released an unknown and terrifyingly destructive force on the streets of Brisbane. And Verity must investigate – or risk ancient forces carving our world apart.

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Crime

Courtesy of the publisher, Orenda Books. The third book to be translated in my new favourite series, though who knows where it fits chronologically since the books are being translated out of order. The dream team of Ragnar Jónasson writing, Quentin Bates translating and Ari Thór Arason detecting… a summer highlight!

The Blurb says: On the shores of a tranquil fjord in Northern Iceland, a man is brutally beaten to death on a bright summer’s night. As the 24-hour light of the arctic summer is transformed into darkness by an ash cloud from a recent volcanic eruption, a young reporter leaves Reykajvik to investigate on her own, unaware that an innocent person’s life hangs in the balance. Ari Thór Arason and his colleagues on the tiny police force in Siglufjörður struggle with an increasingly perplexing case, while their own serious personal problems push them to the limit. What secrets does the dead man harbour, and what is the young reporter hiding? As silent, unspoken horrors from the past threaten them all, and the darkness deepens, it’s a race against time to find the killer before someone else dies…

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NB All blurbs taken from Goodreads. The first three are all from my 20 Books of Summer list.

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So…what do you think? Do any of these tempt you?