1899 thriller, collection of short stories from 1898 with new material. A. J. Raffles, prominent society man and cricketer, leads a double life as a burglar.
2002 non-fiction: an experienced foreign reporter gives his views on the fundamental psychological brokenness of war.
This GURPS Fantasy-Tech supplement deals with upgrades, plausible or otherwise, to low-tech mêlée weapons.
2007 historical mystery, fourth of Shaw's series. In 1898, Vanessa Weatherburn investigates a young woman whose body was found floating in the Cam.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.
1998 mystery; fourth of Cutler's novels of Sophie Rivers, a teacher in a sixth-form college in Birmingham. Sophie's cousin Andy is a rock legend, planning to retire and devote himself to good causes; but it seems that someone wants him dead.
After a long break while I was busy doing other things, I've returned to Harpoon. I really need to rewrite the support software from scratch, but it just about holds up.
This first Dungeon Fantasy Encounters book deals with an abandoned (but monster-infested) tower offering portals into other worlds.
1970 classic English detective fiction; twenty-sixth of Marsh's novels of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. Various people have gathered for an expensive but exclusive tour of the sights of Rome; some of them are Bad Lots, and some of them will die.
2003 non-fiction; the story of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, and of Herman Mudgett or H. H. Holmes, America's first serial killer.
2017 ongoing comedic fantasy manga adaptation in 10 episodes: Anidb, vt "Konosuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!". Kazuma continues to live in an MMORPG world.
Pyramid, edited by Steven Marsh, is the monthly GURPS supplement containing short articles with a loose linking theme. This time it's a return to thaumatology, looking at magic and what to do with it.
1998 thriller; third of Granger's novels of Fran Varady, would-be actress and amateur sleuth. Fran's working in her friend Ganesh's corner shop when a man stumbles in, obviously injured, then leaves once he's cleaned himself up a bit. But now sinister characters are hanging around the shop, and around Fran herself.
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal.)
Burgle Bros., by Tim Fowers, is a cooperative heist game for 1-4 players.
2017 SF/mystery; fifty-fifth (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. (Or 44th novel, I think. At some point I may renumber these reviews.) On the road on a snowy night, Homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband Roarke find a naked, blood-stained and delirious woman who claims to have been attacked by the Devil.
I played the new edition of Mansions of Madness last year, and wasn't hugely impressed. But there's now an editor to allow people to write their own scenarios.
This short book is a survey of histories of the Second World War.
Pyramid, edited by Steven Marsh, is the monthly GURPS supplement containing short articles with a loose linking theme. This time it's the last of the three issues promised during the Dungeon Fantasy RPG kickstarter. (It's well timed, as hardcopies of the books were reaching Kickstarter supporters as it came out, and they're now available to the public.)
1983 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction, second book of the Uplift series. In a universe where every known intelligent species has been "uplifted" to sapience by an earlier species, humanity is the sole exception, and it's breaking interstellar politics; if humans hadn't already uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees before first contact, it would be even worse. An exploration vessel from Earth (mostly dolphin-crewed, with some humans and one chimpanzee) has found something amazing, but has made a forced landing on an unknown world while evading alien fleets.
Back to the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
For over a hundred years, the Royal Navy had been expecting to win the next Trafalgar. On 31 May 1916 off the Danish coast they got their chance, and it didn't go as well as might have been hoped.
This is what I brought back from Essen. (Things for other people are not included.)
1968 classic English detective fiction; twenty-fifth of Marsh's novels of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. Worn down by having to be too much in public, Agatha Troy takes a river cruise in fen country. But nobody is quite what they seem, and soon one of them will be dead.
At the end of October I went back to Internationale Spieltage SPIEL, or "Essen" as it's generally known in the boardgaming world.
1988 mystery; second in Brett's Mrs Pargeter series (amateur sleuthing). Mrs Pargeter moves into one of a small cluster of new houses, but it seems that the previous occupant may have come to a bad end.
1968 classic English detective fiction; nineteenth and last of Allingham's novels of Albert Campion, finished after her death by her husband. A hamlet on the Essex marshes is keeping secrets, and apparently some of them are worth murdering for.