What Fiction are you reading this week, October 26, 2025?

[hermetic]

This discussion thread is pinned.

Wise words.

I just started reading Falling by T.J. Newman. A few pages in I started thinking it sounded familiar. Well, duh. I just listened to the audio book last month. Oh well.

I listened to Black River Orchard by chuck Wendig, creepiest story ever. I may never eat an apple again. Definitely not for the feint of heart.

Now listening to Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney. Grady Green is a best-selling author whose wife was an investigative journalist. She vanishes one night while driving home. A year later he is unable to write, or sleep, so he rents a cabin on a sparsely populated Scottish Isle. Strange things start happening, but are they real? This is an intriguing tale.

Stay safe out there and have a happy Halloween!

[cbabe]

1. A couple of oldies for comfort: Penny/Grey Wolf, Proof of Life/Jance, and

Shattered/Dick Francis.

Side note on the wonder and power of books:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-smuggled-book-changed-his-life-now-he-s-built-500-prison-libraries/ar-AA1P7h97

A smuggled book changed his life. Now he’s built 500 prison libraries.

Story by Maggie Penman

Reginald Dwayne Betts carjacked a man who was asleep in his car in a parking lot in Fairfax County, Virginia. Betts, who was 16 at the time, was tried as an adult and spent nearly a decade in state prison, much of that time in solitary confinement.

Books weren’t allowed in “the hole.” But the men in the prison devised a pulley system using torn sheets and pillowcases to pass books from the general population to people in solitary.

“Imagine yourself as a teenager, 17 years old, in solitary confinement, and you’re just calling out, ‘Yo, somebody send me a book,’” Betts said. “Somebody sent me Dudley Randall’s ‘The Black Poets,’ and it radically changed my life.”

Betts started writing every day and reading anything he could get his hands on. Books transformed him, he says, revealing that other ways of living were possible.

When Betts got out, he earned his bachelor’s degree, then a law degree from Yale Law School. He became a poet and an advocate for prison reform, as well as a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient for his work with his nonprofit Freedom Reads, which installs libraries in prisons across the country.

…

In August, Freedom Reads opened its 500th library at the York Correctional Institution, Connecticut’s prison for women. Betts read from “Doggerel,” and all the women who attended received a copy, lining up for him to sign it. One of the inmates decorated the wall with a mural celebrating the milestone and shared the organization’s slogan: Freedom begins with a book.

//


Donate link

https://freedomreads.org/

[hermetic]

3. Very nice, thank you.

Eagerly awaiting Penny's The Black Wolf, due out next month.

[cbabe]

6. Also breath holding waiting for black wolf. 'The one you feed.'

[mentalsolstice]

2. I thought you had read "Falling."

I read it based on the good reviews here. I Beautiful Ugly on my bookshelf, just waiting. I just started Hazel Says No by Jessica Berger Gross. It’s a culture shock when a Jewish family moves from NYC to rural Maine.

[hermetic]

4. Yeah,

I read it when I was having all those surgeries and my brain got a bit slurred.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. At the moment I'm only reading non-fiction,

"A City on Mars" by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith about space travel so far. It's amazing, and essentially says we humans may well never be able to colonize the Moon or Mars, and getting to any other stars may well be impossible. Sigh.

I'm also working my way through "Zoobiquity" by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bower, about the connections between humans and our animals. Quite interesting.

[txwhitedove]

9. Facinating. Found both of those books at my library. Thanks.

[rsdsharp]

7. I'm reading Clive Cussler's The Devil's Sea by Dirk Cussler.

Pretty standard Dirk Pitt offering, although I’m not quite sure what’s going on yet. It involves Chinese hypersonic missiles, exploration for diamonds on the sea floor, a typhoon, and Tibetan religious symbols carved from a meteorite. It will be interesting to see how it comes together.

[hermetic]

8. Yeah, sounds like a lot

"..only Dirk Pitt and his children can unravel the mysteries that will preserve a religion, save a nation…and save the world from war."

Popular; lots of 5 star reviews.

[txwhitedove]

10. Good quote in your pic. Lovely after the rain morning here.

Tried reading non-fiction We are the Leaders We've Been Looking For by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. Sorry, guys, DNF. Did not finish. I like Mr Glaude and listen to his tv commentaries. However, this book of many quotes of other authors and icons did not inspire as hoped. Made me want to read Toni Morrison, whom he quotes a lot. The title itself is inspirational for We The People.

Now reading Touch Not The Cat, classic suspense novel by Mary Stewart. Though written years ago, time has not diminished this intelligent, page turning mystery. "When Bryony Ashley's father dies under mysterious circumstances, his final words are a cryptic warning to her. She returns from abroad to Ashley Court: the tumbledown ancestral home of the Ashley family, all blessed with 'the gift' of being able to speak to each other without words. Ashley Court is full of secrets. What did her father's message mean? What lies at the centre of the overgrown maze in the gardens? And who is trying to prevent Bryony from discovering the truth?"

[hermetic]

11. That sounds like a good one

I should see if my library still has any of her books. It's getting hard to find anything I like these days.

I was wondering if you were getting any weather there. Hope it stays calm.

[hermetic]

12. Ahh, yes, Mary Stewart

I loved her books about Arthur and Merlin. Library has a few audios so I have The Crystal Cave next up. Cool!

[Bayard]

13. Finished, "The Resort," by Bentley Little yesterday

Good and beastly.

We've been rearranging furniture today, and I'm organizing my library better. Will start a new book later this evening.

[LogDog75]

14. The Picasso Heist by James Patterson and Howard Roughan

This is one of his better books that isn't part of a recurring series. The story centers around an unknown Picasso painting found in the attic of a French woman who died. The picture is going to auction and is expected to command $100 million. One young woman and her brother plan a swindle using a fake copy of the painting involving a famous clothes designers, two mob bosses, a Chinese mobster, an ambitious district attorney, and the FBI. There's a reason for the swindle that involves her father being in prison.

There are plenty of twists and turns involving the characters and it might seem a bit confusing but in the end it all comes together.