Humouress in 2021; fourth quarter (thread 4). To 75 ... and beyond

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December

✔     92) 200 Light Chicken Dishes published by Hamlyn
✔     91) The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman (2021)
✔     90) Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor (2013)
✔     89) The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty
✔     88) Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy (2021)
 87) Lhind the Thief by Sherwood Smith

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November

 86) The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein (1989)
✔       85) The Durrells of Corfu by Michael Haag (2017)
 84) War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi (2019)
✔     83) Barefoot Pirate by Sherwood Smith (2010)

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October

✔       82)The Little Brooklyn Bakery by Julie Caplin (2018)
 81) A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (2014)
 80) You'd Be Mine by Erin Hahn
✔       79) Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie (2000)
✔     78) The Lost Princess by Connie Glynn (2019)
✔     77) Good Enough by Jen Petro-Roy (2019)
✔       76) One Summer in Italy by Sue Moorcroft (2018)

      

 75) The Annotated Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
✔       74) Beyond by Mercedes Lackey (2021)

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September

✔     73) Marian Halcombe by Brenda W. Clough (2021)
✔     72) Princess in Practice by Connie Glynn (2018)
✔     71) Vardaesia by Lynette Noni (2019)
✔     70) Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron (2021)
✔     69) The Little Café in Copenhagen by Julie Caplin (2018)
✔       68) FINNA by Nino Cipri (2020)
✔     67) Cast in Courtlight by Michelle Sagara (2006)
✔       66) We Three Heroes by Lynette Noni (2018)

August

✔     65) Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher (2017)
✔  64) Undercover Princess by Connie Glynn (2017)
✔     63) Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (2001)
✔  62) Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey (1971)
✔     61) Alanna; the first adventure by Tamora Pierce (1983)
✔       60) Touchstone by Melanie Rawn (2012)
✔       59) The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams (2019)
✔     58) Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

July

✔     57) The Siege of Macindaw by John Flanagan (2007)
✔       56) Midlife Bounty Hunter by Shannon Mayer (2020)
✔     55) A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèli Clark (2016)
✔       54) Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara (2005)
✔  53) Esme's Gift by Elizabeth Foster (2019)
✔     52) The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt (1962)
✔  51) Balance of Trade by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (2004)
✔       50) Raisins and Almonds by Kerry Greenwood (1997)
✔     49) The President's Hat by Antoine Lauraine (2013)
✔        48) A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews by Annie Darling (2018)
✔     47) Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief by Maurice Leblanc (this collection 2007)

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June

✔     46) The Candle and the Flame by Nafiza Azad (2019)
✔     45) Graevale by Lynette Noni (2018)
✔   44) Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (2012)
✔   43) Bound in Blood by P.C. Hodgell (2010)
✔   42) Sorcerer's Son by Phyllis Eisenstein (1990)
✔     41) Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop by Annie Darling (2018)
✔   40) Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots (2020)

May

✔  39) The Sorcerer in the North by John Flanagan (2006)
✔     38) Crystal Dragon by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (2005)
✔     37) Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (2016)
✔          36) An Offer From a Gentleman by Julia Quinn (2001)
✔       35) The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn (2006)
✔       34) The Duke and I by Julia Quinn (2000)
✔     33) Beyond the Empire by K.B. Wagers (2017)
✔     32) Draekora by Lynette Noni (2017)
✔     31) True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop by Annie Darling (2017)
✔  30) Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz (2001)
✔     29) The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Power by Ryan North & Erica Henderson (2017)
✔     28) Who's That Earl by Susanna Craig (2020)

April

✔     27) Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis & Tracey Hickman (1984)
✔       26) Fifth Quarter by Tanya Huff (1995)
✔     25) After the Crown by K.B. Wagers (2016)
✔       24) The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts by Annie Darling (2016)
✔     23) Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley (2007)
✔     22) Frostgilded by Stephanie Burgis (2020)
✔     21) The Left-handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix (2020)
✔     20) The Switch by Beth O'Leary (2020)

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March
✔     19) Mister Monday by Garth Nix (2003)
✔  18) Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz (2000)
✔  17) One Fell Sweep by Ilona Andrews (2016)
✔     16) The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren (2019)
✔     15) Behind the Throne by K.B. Wagers (2016)
✔     14) The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (2020)
✔  13) Blue Moon Rising by Simon Green (1992)
✔  12) The Politeness of Princes and Other School Stories by P.G. Wodehouse (1912/ 2002)
✔     11) The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary (2019)
✔  10) The Time of Green Magic by Hilary McKay (2020)
✔      9) In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren (2020)

February

✔     8) Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho (2015)
✔     7) An Assembly Such as This by Pamela Aidan (2003)
✔     6) The Glass Magician by Caroline Stevermer (2020)

January

✔       5) A Spy in the House by Y.S. Lee
 4) Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear (2006)
✔     3) Crystal Soldier by Sharon Lee & Miller (2004)
✔     2) Sweep in Peace by Ilona Andrews (2015)
✔       1) City of Brass by S. Chakraborty (2017)

Do you mean the ones with my previous quarters' reading?

She'd often shared with him her fantasy of getting on the plane from Stanstead Airport for breakfast and arriving at a pavement café in Italy in time for lunch, even before his health had made such an adventure impossible. Sophie grinned, though her eyes swam. Half her life he'd cared for her and half her life she'd cared for him.

I can’t let myself cry. That’s what Mom wants me to do. She wants me to collapse in exhaustion and admit I need help. She wants me to admit I’m sad and hungry and tired. To let other people feed me like I’m a baby and they’re waiting with a spoonful of mushed peas.
Mushed peas are gross. Food is gross.
Mom thinks that once I’m locked behind these doors, everything’s going to be all right. Like they can give me a magic pill, or a course of antibiotics with the side effect of “recovery.” Things will go back to normal and I’ll be the old Riley again.
I don’t know who “the old Riley” is anymore, though. And there are no antibiotics that will get rid of my thoughts, which are way too powerful to be silenced. They tell me I’m not good enough. They tell me to be skinnier and prettier. To run more and eat less.
They tell me that everything about me is wrong.
Those thoughts are part of me now. These people here, the doctors and the nurses and the counselors and the nutritionists—they can’t take them away. I don’t want them to take them away.
I’d be fat then.
I don’t want to be fat.
Then I’d be nothing at all.

‘Secret treasure and pink demons!’ Lola whispered in the near silent library. ‘I think I love this school.’

“Jamie Barclay and I made up a mother test.”
“How cute of you,” Sophie said. “No.”
“It’s just four questions,” Dillie said, her cupid’s-bow mouth drooping with disappointment. “Four little questions. Please.”
Sophie sighed. Maybe if she flunked Dill’s test . . . “Shoot.”
Dillie straightened in her chair. “Okay. These are multiple choice to make it easy.”
...
Dillie sat back. “Perfect score.”
“What?”
Dillie nodded. “My dad picked the exact same answers. Even the different answer on number four.”
“You gave your father a mother test?”
“No, I gave him a father test,” Dillie said.

It didn‘t help that his dad‘s .22 was gone from the locked gun cabinet. “Anybody could have taken it,” he told Wes. “The key‘s on the top, up where Dillie can‘t reach it, but we weren‘t trying to keep anybody else out.

“My name.” Then he walks away, toward his soldiers, and turns. Everything is a grand gesture with him. On the battlefield, he would have been shot at least thirteen times by now. “My name. Is Godswill Ugochukwu Emmanuel Chukwudi. Brigadier General of the Free Biafran Army. Middle Striker for the Biafran Super Eagles Football Team and Current Record-Holder in Goals Scored during the League Season. But that is too long a title, and if I send you into battle and you say yes, you will be killed before you can finish saying the whole thing. So. You may call me General.”

come the end of winter the wolves will be released from these pens to live freely in the Scottish Highlands. They are here specifically for a rewilding effort in a broader attempt to slow climate change, and on an experimental basis.
“What we have here in Scotland,” Evan says, “is an ecosystem in crisis. We urgently need to rewild. If we can extend woodland cover by a hundred thousand hectares by 2026 then we could dramatically reduce CO2 emissions that contribute to climate change and we could provide habitats for native species. The only way to do this is to control the herbivore population, and the simplest, most effective way to do that is to reintroduce a keystone predator species that was here long before we were. The vital predation element of the ecosystem has been missing in this land for hundreds of years, since wolves were hunted to extinction. Killing the wolves was a massive blunder on our part. Ecosystems need apex predators because they elicit dynamic ecological changes that ripple down the food chain, and these are known as ‘trophic cascades.’ With their return the landscape will change for the better—more habitats for wildlife will be created, soil health increased, flood waters reduced, carbon emissions captured. Animals of all shapes and sizes will return to these lands.”

Over the next three days, I did not breathe.
Well, I probably did breathe, otherwise I’d be dead.
But it really seemed as if there was no time to breathe.
We ran out of the lawyers’ office, and then we kept on running.
Planning, packing, folding, zipping, visiting the seamstress for new frocks. I read my parents’ instructions over and over, and had nightmares about losing them or spilling lemonade on them. “The ink has run!” I screamed in my sleep. “I can’t read the words!”
Of course, we had to race to the bank to collect the treasure chest from the vault.
It turned out to be very small, the size of a large shoe box. For a moment, I thought it shimmered with jewels, but those were only glued-on sequins.
Accompanying the chest was a small sack of silver coins “for expenses” on my journey. “Handy,” sniffed Aunt Isabelle, but then she pivoted and ran out of the bank.
As we raced about, Aunt Isabelle drilled me on the dangers of Dark Mages.
“How can you tell if somebody’s a witch?”
“They often look confused. They wear socks with sandals.”
“Good. What do you do if you see one?”
“Stay quiet. Try to blend in.”
“How do you know a Sterling Silver Fox?”
“Lots of jewelry. Sharp ears.”
“What do you do if you see one?”
“Laugh loudly. They can’t stand the sound of laughter.”
“How do you know a Whisperer?”
I paused. A Whisperer was the most frightening Dark Mage. The others tended to leave you alone unless you bothered them, but Whisperers kidnapped children.
“But I won’t see a Whisperer, will I? They’re all safely bound in the Whispering Kingdom?”
“True.” Aunt Isabelle nodded. “But what if a Whisperer escapes? How do you know a Whisperer?”
“They don’t escape, do they?”
“Bronte. How do you know a Whisperer?”
I sighed. “They never cut their hair. You hear a voice in your head like burning steel.”
“What do you do if you see a Whisperer?”
“Run.”
“How fast?”
“As fast as I can.”
“Faster, Bronte. Faster.”
We went through all the other Dark Mages—ghouls, radish gnomes, fire sirens, and so on—and covered other dangers too. Getting my new frocks muddy. Forgetting to say thank you. That kind of thing.

Dramatis Thingummy
Dr Edward Bairstow Director of St Mary’s. Tall, authoritative. Early 50s. Holds together a volatile mix of technicians, historians, kitchen staff, security teams and the sometimes explosive Research and Development Section.

Mrs Partridge PA to Director. Not to be crossed.

Historians
Madeleine Maxwell (Max) Historian. In her late 20s. Short, red-haired, engaging, impatient, self-deprecating, with a murky past and a precarious future.

Tim Peterson Historian, late 20s. Tall and shaggy. A good friend.

Kalinda Black Historian. Blonde and blue-eyed. Looks like a Disney princess. Possibly drinks the blood of recently qualified trainees. Recipient of Mr Dieter’s affections.

Helen’s final medical briefing was even worse. She gave us a depressingly long list of the circumstances and/or injuries which would result in us being deemed not fit for purpose. It seemed anything more serious than a slight headache would result in us being returned to sender.
I shifted restlessly in my seat. Beside me, Peterson whispered, ‘Bloody hell, Max, we’ve got to stop including these amateurs. We’ll never get anything done at this rate.’
Unfortunately, at that moment, Helen stopped talking and his voice was heard around the Hall with disastrous clarity.
You can say this about historians, we may be the tea-drenched disaster-magnets of St Mary’s but bloody hell, can we think quickly when we have to. He turned in his seat, fixed a startled Ian Guthrie with a glare, and said, ‘Sh!’
It didn’t save him. I did what I could, but she separated him from the herd and when she’d finished with him, a vengeful Ian Guthrie was waiting.
Afterwards, I took him for a drink and said fondly, ‘Idiot.’

Last night I dreamed of the house Gerry and I lived in when we were first married. We opened a door and found a new room we hadn't ever seen before, and we were full of schemes as to what to do with it.
I don't know what age Gerry was, he was just Gerry, but I was me now. Two people who never met, touching and laughing and making plans. A pot plant here, a coffee table there. The stuff of love.
When I woke up and realized Gerry had gone, my heart broke once again, and I sobbed and sobbed. I imagine if you could hear all the morning tears in this place it would sound like birdsong.

Last night I dreamed of the house Gerry and I lived in when we were
first married. We opened a door and found a new room we hadn't ever seen before, and we were full of schemes as to what to do with it.
I don't know what age Gerry was, he was just Gerry, but I was me now. Two people who never met, touching and laughing and making plans. A pot plant here, a coffee table there. The stuff of love.
When I woke up and realized Gerry had gone, my heart broke once again, and I sobbed and sobbed. I imagine if you could hear all the morning tears in this place it would sound like birdsong.