The Coroner by M R Hall

A vulnerable boy hangs himself inside a secure young offenders' centre. A teenage girl is found dead of a heroin overdose. Then, after dealing with these two cases, Coroner Harry Marshall suddenly dies, apparently from natural causes. 

Jenny Cooper - freshly divorced and recovering from a minor breakdown - is now the coroner for the Severn Vale. As she embarks on a new life, she cannot escape the demons of her past: an egotistical ex-husband with a new girlfriend, an estranged son and an increasing reliance on antidepressants.

I eventually enjoyed the book, but it took me a while to get into it.  The plot was a bit obvious and quite a few cliched characters.  The Coroner with the drug and alcohol problem after a nasty divorce and with a difficult teenage son.  The Welsh copper who is out to show up the English copper.  Big business doing shady deals with a self-important little man on a local council.

 All was solved and most of the right people went to jail in the end.

The House Between Tides by Sarah Maine

Following the death of her last living relative, Hetty Deveraux leaves London and her strained relationship behind for Muirlan, her ancestral home in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. She intends to renovate the ruinous house into a hotel, but the shocking discovery of human remains brings her ambitious restoration plans to an abrupt halt before they even begin. Few physical clues are left to identify the body, but one thing is certain: this person did not die a natural death.

Hungry for answers, Hetty discovers that Muirlan was once the refuge of her distant relative Theo Blake, the acclaimed painter and naturalist who brought his new bride, Beatrice, there in 1910. Yet ancient gossip and a handful of leads reveal that their marriage was far from perfect; Beatrice eventually vanished from the island, never to return, and Theo withdrew from society, his paintings becoming increasingly dark and disturbing.

What happened between them has remained a mystery, but as Hetty listens to the locals and studies the masterful paintings produced by Theo during his short-lived marriage, she uncovers secrets that still reverberate through the small island community—and will lead her to the identity of the long-hidden body.

Told in 2 timelines 1910 and 2010. I preferred the 1910 timeline. Hetty in 2010 was a bit annoying.

Overall it struggled to hold my attention.

Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz

'Do you need my help?'
It was the first question he asked. 
They called him when they had nowhere else to turn.

As a boy Evan Smoak was taken from an orphanage.
Raised and trained in a top secret programme, he was sent to bad places to do things the government denied ever happened.

Then he broke with the programme, using what he'd learned to vanish. Now he helps the desperate and deserving.

Great story, great twists, great writing and a likeable assassin.  I'll be looking for the next in the series.

To Siri, With Love by Judith Newman

Writer Judith Newman never had any illusions that her family was 'normal'. She and her husband keep separate apartments-his filled with twin grand pianos as befits a former opera singer; hers filled with the clutter and chaos of twin adolescent boys conceived late in life. And one of those boys is Gus, her sweet, complicated, autistic 13-year-old.

With refreshing honesty, To Siri With Love chronicles one year in the life of Gus and the family around him -- a family with the same crazy ups and downs as any other. And at the heart of the book lies Gus's passionate friendship with Siri, Apple's 'intelligent personal assistant'. Unlike her human counterparts, Siri always has the right answers to Gus's incessant stream of questions about the intricacies of national rail schedules, or box turtle varieties, and she never runs out of patience. She always makes sure Gus enunciates and even teaches him manners by way of her warm yet polite tone and her programmed insistence on civility.

It is a mix of sad, warm and funny.  She's not the best mother, didn't know anything about autism but she loves her boys.

Black Monday by R Scott Reiss

When a Muslim cleric predicts planes will fall from the sky, America braces for a terrorist attack. But when the prediction proves true, the real cause is far more terrifying: a microbe that eats oil, effectively destroying all gas-operated mechanisms. Gillette, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control, understands the devastation that the microbe could wreak. But his far-more-chilling theory is that the microbe is synthetic and the work of terrorists. When no one will listen, Gillette must take it upon himself to stop the epidemic only he can foresee. As the world's economy grinds to a crashing halt, Gillette races against the clock to find the source of the microbe and its antidote.

Lots of action.  It says a lot about how those in charge in America can only see Muslims as the enemy and can't even think of other Americans as terrorists.

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

'So tell me, Dr Maxwell, if the whole of History lay before you ... where would you go? What would you like to witness?' 

When Madeleine Maxwell is recruited by the St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, she discovers the historians there don't just study the past - they revisit it.

But one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And she soon discovers it's not just History she's fighting... 

The premise that historians are wandering around history rather than a library is a fun one. The fact that this is invariably a dangerous activity and one with an alarming mortality rate adds another dimension to the story.

A clever plot with a lot of twists and turns. Lots of humour, and some odd sayings that I will try to remember for an appropriate time..."like laxatives through a short grandmother" was one of my favourites.

The only thing that was a negative for me was there was no emotional connection with any of the characters. It felt more like I was watching what was happening rather than being in the middle of it.

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

This is the way the world ends: by gradually slowing down. When scientists reveal that the earth’s rotation has been extended by 56 minutes, there is a minor panic. Twelve-year-old Julia doesn’t really recognize what’s happening—sure, her drama-queen mother starts hoarding food, and she loses some school friends when their families leave town, but at first, life seems to go on as usual. Until the slowdown continues, and it isn’t only by an hour anymore—the days keep stretching, with no apparent return to normal.

An unsettling, engaging read that I couldn't put down.  It ended with a WOW!

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

In the murky haze of a London morning in 1886, piano tuner Edgar Drake receives a letter that presents to him a challenge certain to change his life forever. Accepting the post offered to him by the Burma and East India Division of Her Majesty's Army, he leaves wife and work to embark on a three month mission across the seas. But Edgar is not going to be fighting for his country. His travels are the direct result of a request by highly respected Major Surgeon Anthony Carroll, secured in the Shan States. He has asked that a specialist piano tuner be paid to travel from England and mend his Erard Grand. But why?

Beautiful, haunting descriptions of the landscape. A strange, almost mystical story. The feeling of this book, if not the actual story will stay with me a while.

I don't like it when the hero, even an unremarkable, bespectacled piano tuner, die at the end.

Golden In Death by J D Robb

When Kent Abner - baby doctor, model husband and father, good neighbour - is found dead in his town house in the West Village, Detective Eve Dallas and her team have a real mystery on their hands. Who would want to kill such a good man? They know how, where and when he was killed but why did someone want him dead? 

Then a second victim is discovered and as Spring arrives in New York City, Eve finds herself in a race against time to track down a serial killer with a motive she can't fathom and a weapon of choice which could wipe out half of Manhattan.

This book was disappointing.  Not bad, JD Robb couldn't write a bad book...just disappointing.

It was an improbable reason for murder...all going back 8 years to when the murderers were in high school.  The thread she has been building for the past few books about a farm in the middle of nowhere seems to have ended in this one with a whimper rather than the big thing she seemed to be building it towards.  And there wasn't enough Roarke.

Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga by Todd Alexander

Todd and Jeff have had enough of the city. Sick of the daily grind and workaday corporate shenanigans, they throw caution to the wind and buy 100 acres in the renowned Hunter Valley wine region, intent on living a golden bucolic life and building a fabulous B&B, where they can offer the joys of country life to heart-weary souls.

Todd will cook, Jeff will renovate. They have a vineyard, they can make wine. They have space, they can grow their own food. They have everything they need to make their dreams come true.

How hard can it be?

Charming, funny and delightful, a pleasure to read. I really enjoyed it. 

Double Dating With The Dead by Karen Kelley

Psychic Selena James is having the kind of week that makes her happy to talk to the dead. First, famously skeptical (and sinfully sexy) writer, Trent Sanders, called her delusional on TV. Next, her outraged mother publicly challenged him to spend two weeks with Selena at the haunted Garvey Hotel. Now, if Selena can't prove ghosts exist, she'll answer to Trent's private wager: one night in his bed. It doesn't take any psychic abilities to know Trent could satisfy a woman's every fantasy. And she may find out very soon, if the two sex-starved ghosts in residence have their way. . .

Trent Sanders doesn't believe in anything he can't see, taste, or touch, and what he sees right now he would definitely enjoying tasting and touching. Selena James might be a bit kooky, but she's also blessed with a body that could certainly raise the dead, if not talk to them. She's even got a wicked sense of humor, like when she pinched his butt and insisted it wasn't her, but one of the "ghosts." Riiiiiight. But as things move from "haunted" to extremely hot, Trent's starting to believe the paranormal is a one-way--make that four-way--ticket to paradise. . .

Chic lit with ghosts...and annoying characters.

Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs

Tensions between the fae and humans are coming to a head. And when coyote shapeshifter Mercy and her Alpha werewolf mate, Adam, are called upon to stop a rampaging troll, they find themselves with something that could be used to make the fae back down and forestall out-and-out war: a human child stolen long ago by the fae.

Defying the most powerful werewolf in the country, the humans, and the fae, Mercy, Adam, and their pack choose to protect the boy no matter what the cost. But who will protect them from a boy who is fire touched?

I love this series. The very best of urban fantasy - complex world-building, likeable characters and lots of action.

The Summer Before The War by Helen Simonson

East Sussex, 1914. It's the end of an idyllic summer and Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha in the pretty coastal town of Rye. Casting aside the recent sabre rattling over the Balkans, Agatha has more immediate concerns; she has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master.

When Beatrice Nash arrives, it is clear she is significantly more free thinking and attractive than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be. For her part, mourning the death of her beloved father who has left her penniless, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing.

But just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape, and the colourful characters that populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For despite Agatha's reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. Soon, everything will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war.

There are so many strands to the story - the class structure, the way in which women are viewed, homosexuality, the treatment of refugees but they are all woven together skilfully and in an understated way. It's a very clever, very enjoyable, quiet read. No action but a lot happens.