Construction has begun on the first of the Type 26 frigates. How have things changed since I looked at the design in late 2015?
1997 mystery; third of Cutler's novels of Sophie Rivers, a teacher in a sixth-form college in Birmingham. Seconded to a new college for a project, Sophie finds the proximity to her home and the high equipment budget don't compensate for a strange managerial attitude… or for murder.
This long-running games convention had another instance at the start of July. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2014 fantasy. Triss has survived a fall in the river, but she doesn't feel quite right: she's permanently hungry, her memories are fuzzy, and her sister refuses to talk to her.
2016, 10 episodes. Horror comedy by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan: the survivors of the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority house massacre are now running a hospital, but they haven't got away from masked killers.
1955 classic English detective fiction; eighteenth of Marsh's novels of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. The quiet village of Swevenings has seen two deaths recently: Sir Harold Lacklander of the Foreign Service died of old age and heart failure, leaving his memoirs to his good friend and neighbour Colonel Cartarette to edit and publish. But now someone's stove the Colonel's head in.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey, on an evening that was slightly cooler but still fairly sweaty.
2012 fantasy. In the underground city of Caverna, Neverfell was found with no memories, aged five, in a cheese-vat. Seven years later, she sets out to catch an escaped rabbit, and ends up finding her place in the world.
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal.)
1974 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning military science fiction. William Mandella is a conscript in Earth's first interstellar war; it starts off looking an awful lot like Vietnam.