2011 action, dir. Ernie Barbarash, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins: IMDb / allmovie. Two assassins find themselves working together on one last job.
2019 SF/mystery; fifty-ninth (roughly, or 48th novel) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. Lyle had cleaned up and got out of the gang life, and things were starting to look up for him. So when he's found dead of an overdose, Lieutenant Eve Dallas is already suspicious.
2015 horror comedy, dir. Todd Strauss-Schulson, Taissa Farmiga, Malin Akerman: IMDb / allmovie. Max misses her mother Amanda, who died in a car crash having never transcended her role in Camp Bloodbath, a schlock horror film of the 1980s. After an anniversary screening goes wrong, Max and some friends find themselves living, and dying, in the world of that film.
I often heard about this RPG convention when it was running some years ago, but it stopped before I got round to attending. The organisers have started it again, so I went along to find out more.
2016-2017 seinen manga adaptation in 22 episodes: AniDB, vt "March Comes in Like a Lion". Kiriyama Rei is a young professional shōgi player, but is profoundly lonely.
Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.
Apex is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Jason Sizemore among others.
Human Punishment is a social deduction game designed by Stefan Godot.
1990 cozy American detective fiction; ninth of MacLeod's novels of Boston Brahmin Sarah Kelling and art investigator Max Bittersohn. Sarah's Aunt Emma steps in for an ailing friend to play hostess on a private island off the Maine coast, to a party of treasure-hunters who may also harbour criminals.
2006 mystery; first in Cleeves' Shetland Island series. In a village near Lerwick, two schoolgirls visit the local mad old man, on a bet. Five days later, one of them is dead. The old man was blamed, though not convicted, when a young girl vanished eight years ago and was never found, so everyone assumes he's done it again; Inspector Jimmy Perez tries to move beyond the automatic assumption of guilt and find out what's really happened this time.
As part of the procedure for making sure a large set of work-related data remains intact and recoverable, I keep backups at home.
2006 science fiction, seventh of The Company series. Alec Checkerfield forges ahead with his plan to rescue the Botanist Mendoza and take on the might of Dr Zeus and the Company. But he's not entirely himself, because his two past lives are sharing residence of his mind and body…
2014 Australian zombie horror, dir. Kiah Roache-Turner, Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradley: IMDb / allmovie. vt Wyrmwood. After a night of shooting stars, most people seem to have turned into zombies; Barry sets out to rescue his sister Brooke. But the military seem to know more than they're saying. vt Wyrmwood.
2017 military SF. In the near future, pilots have been made obsolete by a wide variety of drones, but there's still plenty of employment for soldiers as private military companies fill the gaps left by failing states. Former pilot True Brighton works for one of the "good" PMCs, but information picked up on a mission suggests that there's more to the death of her son than she'd thought…
The Dark Times, edited by Lee Williams, is a fanzine that follows on from Demonground and Protodimension in dealing with "the horror-conspiracy-weirdness gaming genres", beginning with Dark Conspiracy and drifting into nearby areas.
2009 mystery, first in the Kate Shackleton series (amateur detection). Kate's husband went missing in action in 1918; unable to locate him, she turned her hand to finding other vanished people. Now in 1922 an old VAD friend wants to find her missing father, who vanished after a possible suicide attempt. Some people don't want the past dug up.
Back to the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
1976 thriller or romantic suspense. After the death of her father, Bryony Ashley returns to Ashley Court; the place is going to ruin for lack of income, and it won't be hers anyway, but there's still business to take care of. But her father tried to leave her a warning…
2017 superhero-related, 8 episodes. David Haller is schizophrenic, or so everybody tells him; but maybe that's what having world-shaking superpowers does for you.
2005 science fiction, sixth of The Company series. Executive Facilitator General Labienus muses on his long life.
The 1 Player Guild is a group of solo game players, communicating through BoardGameGeek. This was the third get-together for the UK contingent, and we were in the upstairs room of a pub in Silverstone.
With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2016 mystery story, first of the Lady Sherlock series. Charlotte Holmes has an analytical mind, but feels constrained by the roles expected of her by Victorian society. So she does something Frightful…
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I hate everything.)
2004 science fiction, fifth of The Company series. The Botanist Mendoza has been imprisoned in time, left to fend for herself in 150,000 BC. But a man crashes a stolen time-shuttle on her island… a man she's met before, though he hasn't met her.
1998 mystery; sixth in Brett's Mrs Pargeter series (amateur sleuthing). The late Mr Pargeter was a criminal mastermind, though his wife "knew nothing about that"; now the dying widow of a thief who worked for him wants to restore all her stolen paintings to their rightful owners, and of course Mrs Pargeter agrees to help.