I have just been steered towards Air by Geoff Ryman, and whilst that did not grab me I am intrigued by his very weird (even by SF standards) book The Child Garden: is anyone else familiar with this and/or any of his other output?

I have also stumbled upon the publisher Newcon Press which seems to host some interesting authors including Mercurio D Rivera (an anagram perhaps?) whose collection Event Horizon I have just started reading http://www.newconpress.co.uk

I finished Sara Paretsky's latest V. I. Warshawski mystery, Pay Dirt. It's a series I've read from the beginning with characters I really like. In this one, Vic is still struggling from a previous case that led to a tragic death, but she agrees to go to Kansas for a weekend to watch Angela, her favorite college player, perform on the basketball court. Of course, trouble finds Vic when one of Angela's roommates goes missing and leads her to a party house on disputed land. She finds the roommate and gets her help, but suspicion falls on her, especially when she finds a body in the basement of the same house a few days later. Her attempts to clear herself lead to a much deeper mystery that affects the whole town.

I just started Sparrow House by Alix E. Harrow, who also wrote The Ten Thousand Doors of January, which I read several years ago and really liked. It's a stand-alone fantasy about an old house owned by the mysterious Arthur Sparrow. A poor young woman gets a job there cleaning. She's had strange dreams about the place for years, but only took the job for the money to allow her brilliant younger brother go to a better school.

Lex,
I just looked up The Child Garden and decided to get it. Ryman's other works don't interest me much, but I've always been interested in stories about genetic engineering or mutations. Margaret Attwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy, Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books, and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis all deal with the subject in interesting and also cautionary ways.

Thanks for that LadyK I will have to give Sara Paretsky a try: I seem to remember a film or TV series about V. i. Warshawski but I do not think I have previously read any of the books.

On the SF front I have been delving into The British Library series of Science Fiction Classics, including several compendiums of themed short stories collated by Mike Ashley: good stuff and inexpensive (at least on Kindle).

Having finished and enjoyed Dark Eden, I was doubtful about the second book in the series and went straight to the third book Daughter of Eden which tied up all the loose ends quite nicely: I may or may not have missed out in so doing!

I finished Sparrow House, which had some nice twists and an unexpected but good ending.

I'm now rereading the first book in the Glass Library series, The Librarian of Crooked Lane by C.J. Archer. I read it about two and a half years ago and want to refresh my memory before I begin the next book in the series.

I'm on Book 10 of the Foreigner series. If anything, I'm enjoying them more this time around. It's been decades since I read them. I think this is the first one I hadn't already read -- I kept buying them without reading them.

I am about half way through the first one and really enjoying it: a smart concept having a physically humanoid alien with an impenetrably tricky and alien psyche, and of course the humans as the foreigners!

Cherryh is a master in creating believeable alien cultures with which humans must interact. I first got hooked on her works when I discovered her Faded Sun trilogy in the late 1970s. Those, and some of her other works, such as Downbelow Station and Cyteen, are moving up in my reread pile.

Cherryh takes up two full shelves in my bookcase, more than any other writer. She is prolific, of course, but her books are almost all wonderful. I would say she's my favourite writer of speculative fiction.

The only other set of books taking up that much real estate is my Terry Pratchett's Disc World series, the ones with the weird and wonderful cover art.

We have similar book shelves, Hagatha. Since I didn't start reading the Discworld books until 2008, most of them are in paperback. I organized them in order and just gobbled them up one after the other.

I finished The Medici Manuscript, the second of the Glass Library books, and am alread halfway through the third called The Untitled Books. The stories take place in London after WWI, and they're mysteries combined with magic. Sylvia Ashe is the assistant librarian in a library that contains all kinds of books about magic, and Gabe Glass is a consultant to Scotland Yard when cases concern magic. Aside from a few dialogue mistakes that are a bit jarring for the time and place, such as the use of loan for lend, Archer's writing is good. I like her cast of characters and nice plot twists.

Move over Jack Reacher - here comes Ben Koenig: M W Craven has gone from strength to strength https://mwcraven.com

I'm on book 16 of Foreigner. I'll be quite sad when the series is done; I'm quite fond of some of the characters now.

I have the second book of the series in my queue, but got sidetracked by a couple of the most recent Jo Nesbo offerings and a doorstop of an anthology called The Time Traveller's Almanac!

I love those SF/Fantasy anthologies. I have about 2 dozen of the Year's Best series of anthologies, perfect for when family members visit because we're all SF fans.

I love SF anthologies too. Have not dozens but a number of the Year's best SF.

I just found a paperback of Asimov's Stars Like Dust. Hadn't read it before. Not an anthology.
Solid SF of course but doesn't make it to the top ten list. If you stumble on it it's worth reading but it's not worth making extra efforts get the book.

I have just enjoyed reading Mickey 7, and I think there may be a sequel: I also know that there is a film in the works.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57693457-mickey7

I am starting M W Craven's Fearless and can't wait to unfold Ben Koenig's exploits.

Starting Starsight by Brandon Sanderson.

Reading my way through Old Man's War books by John Scalzi. I read the first three years ago and thought I would start again and read through all 6.
Its an enjoyable construction, and much more interesting than simply being an ongoing narrative. While events do move on, book four goes back over the event in book three but from a different person's perspective, and book 5 is more a set of short stories set in the world that has been created to that point. Which is where I am currently.
Enjoying it a a lot.

I really enjoyed that John Scalzi series, and in a not dissimilar vein the Frontlines series by Marko Kloos.

Thanks Lex, I will check it out

I finished two books before going on my London trip. C. J. Archer's The Dead Letter Delivery is a good addition to the series, but if the main characters don't get together soon, I'm going to scream! Enough decorum already!

The second book is a strange and wonderful one that Lex mentioned, The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman. In a future tropical London, organics have replaced electronics, people are educated by viruses and can eat by photosynthesizing. However, very few of them live past age forty. The main character, Milena, is immune to the viruses and always feels alone until she meets a genetically engineered polar woman who changes her life in unexpected ways. The book is unlike anything I've ever encountered before. It's jam-packed with new ideas that I'm still mulling over.

I was disappointed that I didn't get to my usual bookstore stops in London this year: Waterstones, Foyles, and the Southbank Centre Book Market under Waterloo Bridge. I always find a few treasures to bring home with me. I did get to read a fun mystery I took with me called The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood. While swimming in the Thames, Judith, a feisty 77-year-old crossword compiler hears a gunshot and later learns that her neighbor across the river has disappeared. She ends up finding his body, and later joins forces with a dog walker named Suzie and Becks, the vicar's wife, to try to solve two more murders. Each woman has strengths (some untried until needed) that help the cases along.

You have a great way with words when you describe these books, LadyKestrel!

Thanks so much, Oldbroad! I enjoy doing them, but I have to say thank goodness for the edit button!

Must read the Marlow book, Lady K. They made a TV series of it a few months back, Marlow is only about 5 miles down the road from us and it was fun spotting all the local landmarks.

He's written a second ome - "Death Comed to Marlow"

Thanks for that, UW! I'll keep an eye out for it.

I zipped through J. D. Robb’s 8th Eve Dallas mystery, Conspiracy in Death, and right now I'm rereading Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde because his long-awaited second book in the series, Red Side Story, arrived. Fforde has invented a strange future world called Chromatacia, ruled by a Colortocracy, in which conformity is most important and all know their place in the color spectrum. Or do they?