Aleksandra is a married mother of two living the life of a Russian peasant on their farm - until the war begins and her husband is drafted into the Red Army. And then the Nazis arrive. After helping her Jewish neighbour, Aleksandra and her kids must escape into the woods where they discover the Russian resistance to the German invasion: guerrilla fighters made up of non-army Russians called Partisans. So begins Aleksandra’s war where she does things she would never tell her husband… if she ever sees him again.
British Intelligence Agent George Smiley interviews a potential candidate for a role in the Foreign Office but decides against hiring the chap. The man, apparently mortally upset at being turned down, offs himself that night, blaming Smiley’s decision in his suicide note! When Smiley visits the man’s widow the following morning he picks up the phone for a call intended for the deceased - but why would a man choosing to end it all that night then arrange for an early morning wake up call?
In a weird tag-team move, Matt Fraction has taken over Batman from his Sex Criminals co-creator/artist Chip Zdarsky, so both the artist and writer of Sex Crimz have written Batman runs one after the other! What’s that aboot!?
Makina’s brother crossed over to America - “the Big Chilango” - chasing a spurious land deal. Gone for a while, she now makes the Mexico-USA border crossing herself in search of him, with a message from their mother. Will she find him - is he even still alive?
Marian, a young teacher, arrives at remote Gaze (heh) Castle believing she is to act as governess to a wealthy family’s children - only to find that there are no children and that she is meant to be the companion to the lady of the house, Hannah Crean-Smith. But why is she so isolated and… trapped? And where is her husband?
Damon Galgut recounts three journeyings he went on at different times during his adult life in In a Strange Room - and they’re all mostly kinda meh!The first one sees a young Damon meeting a handsome young German chap while hiking in Greece. They decide to meet up again and attempt a much longer, more arduous hike in Lesotho - but will their tenuous friendship (and possible romance) survive the gauntlet?
The first Hawthorne & Horowitz novel, The Word is Murder, is being adapted into a movie - but someone’s moidered the actor playing Hawthorne! Whodunit?1Who cares?? is the better question. A Deadly Episode - the sixth novel in the Hawthorne & Horowitz series - is a sign that the series has run its course. That or Anthony Horowitz should really take a break from it until he has a worthwhile story to tell, because A Deadly Episode is absolutely fucking awful - boredom physically manifested in book form.
After a lifetime of playing fast and loose with anything and everyone in her way, Babs’ devil-may-care attitude for her latest drug-dealing scheme is going to blow up in her face: infringing on the opioid turf of a Canadian gangster known only as Ogopogo sends a dangerous emissary her way in the form of The Man. Meanwhile, her wayward youngest daughter Sis has gone missing at a time when her years-long plans to rejuvenate her dead former industrial town of Waterville, Maine, are about to possibly bear fruit with significant investment funding. Enemies near and far mass, violence is everywhere and a righteous fire threatens to engulf them all.
