2003 crime. Michael Forsythe left Belfast for America, but wasn't surprised when he ended up a petty criminal. After a betrayal, he sets out to get his revenge.
2010 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. Historians from Oxford in 2060 are visiting England in 1940, but things are going oddly wrong. Warning: this is going to be a bit of a rant.
A perenially tempting idea in financial policy is hypothecation (or "earmarking"): dedicate the money raised from tax A to pay specifically for thing B, as distinct from putting all the revenue into a single account and using ongoing political processes to decide where it's spent. In the naïve household accounts model of national finances, this makes sense: the money I save from giving up smoking goes into the holiday fund. Why, in general, doesn't it get done at the national scale?
1992 comic fantasy, first of the Pine Cove series. Travis has been living with the demon Catch for nearly ninety years – the immortality and invulnerability aren't bad, but the murders are getting to him. He's finally tracked down a way of ending the pact, but it won't be easy.
2004 fantasy, novel adaptation: AniDB, vt "Howl no Ugoku Shiro". Sophie is an apprentice hat-maker, until in one busy day she is assisted by a handsome man beset by enemies, then gets cursed with old age. She sets off into the wilderness to see if she can break the curse.
1996 mystery; fifth in Brett's Mrs Pargeter series (amateur sleuthing). Mrs Pargeter is having a house built, but a body turns up in the wine cellar, her builder is arrested, and he won't say anything to defend himself. What's going on?
1986 dieselpunk fantasy: AniDB, vt "Laputa: Castle in the Sky" and "Castle in the Sky". Pazu the engineer's apprentice catches a girl falling from the sky; bad people are after her, and all is not what it seems as various factions hunt for the legendary floating city Laputa.
2018 science fiction, first of a planned series. On the generation ship Olympia, life is stratified into the Executives and everyone else. Oichi Angelis is an everyone else, but one with a hidden asset.
Since December of 2016 I've been offering 3d printing services via 3dhubs. From the end of this month, it won't happen any more.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.
2009 young adult steampunk SF, first of a trilogy. In an alternate 1914, the German Clanker powers build massive legged war machines, while the English Darwinists engineer creatures to serve their purposes. But none of that stops the Archduke Franz Ferdinand from being assassinated.
1988 fantasy: AniDB, vt "My Neighbor Totoro". Perhaps some time in the 1950s, a university professor and his two young daughters move to the countryside to be near his hospitalised wife; the house and woods prove to be full of magical creatures.
I bought Ascendancy (and the three currently-available expansions) at UK Games Expo, and I've just got it to the table.
2017 fantasy novella in the World of the Five Gods (formerly known as Chalion), third by internal chronology in the Penric sub-series (though published after Penric's Mission). A temple-trained sorcerer is murdered in the woods, and her demon is missing; Locator Oswyl looks for the killer, while Penric looks for the demon.
Back to the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.
2007 modern fantasy novel. In a world where magic ebbs and flows unpredictably, Kate Daniels is a mercenary who specialises in magical creatures. But her mentor has been murdered, and someone seems to be trying to start a war between the vampires and werecreatures of Atlanta.
Pyramid, edited by Steven Marsh, is the monthly GURPS supplement containing short articles with a loose linking theme. This time it's post-apocalyptic material, and more for The Fantasy Trip.
1993 mystery, third in Perry's William Monk series (Victorian investigation). In 1857, General Thaddeus Carlyon, a military hero, dies in an accident during a dinner party; but when the police decide it might have been murder, his widow confesses. She is sure to be hanged, but the justification she gives for her action is clearly false; Monk the private investigator, Oliver Rathbone the barrister, and Hester Latterly the nurse returned from the Crimea, work together to dig out what really happened.
2017-2018 mystery show, 11 episodes. In 1920s Toronto, Frankie Drake, former Signals rider, and her partner Trudy Clarke, are the city's first female private detectives.
A friend introduced my wife to Healthy Back Bags, and we're both rather impressed with them.
1988, cosy American detective fiction; third of MacLeod's novels (as "Alisa Craig") of Dittany Henbit and the Lobelia Falls Grub-and-Stakers Gardening & Roving Club. There's a collection of antique theatrical memorabilia looking for a new home, and its owner sets a contest: whoever writes and produces the best new play, on a vaguely Canadian subject, will get it for their town. The Club gets together a two-act drama based on The Shooting of Dan McGrew, but complications follow.
Star Realms Frontiers is the new expanded version of Star Realms, by Darwin Kastle.
1953 science fiction, first of a series. Joe Kenmore goes to work on the construction of the space platform, the first step in humanity's road to the stars, but finds it beset by sabotage.
Who Goes There? is a new heavyweight social deduction game for 3-6 players, by Anthony Coffey and Jesse Labbe.
2018 science fiction novella, sequel to Artificial Condition. People are asking questions about the mysteriously vanished SecUnit from the planetary survey incident, and Murderbot (that same SecUnit) reckons the best way to distract attention is to bolster the case against the company which caused the incident.
Human Era is a new social deduction game by Zach and Jake Given.
2016 fantasy novella in the World of the Five Gods (formerly known as Chalion). This one follows directly from Penric's Mission; the demon-ridden sorcerer tries to get a discredited general and his widowed sister to the safety of a foreign court. But Penric is injured, and the minimal funds they had for their escape have run out.
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I hate everything.)