Flesh Worn Stone, by John Burks

If I had realized this book fell squarely in the horror genre, I'd not have read it.

The hero, Steven, has a wonderful life.  Until his kids are killed and he and his wife are kidnapped, taken to a remote island along with other similar captives.   Leaving this world requires winning the "game" five times, the game meaning committing murder or rape on another victim, or cutting off one's own limb.

He finds out that many of the participants actually paid to end up in this experience.  And learns how it was that he ended up there.

The writing was captivating which is why I read the book to the end.  But I can't recommend it because I'm such an anti-horror reader that I really didn't enjoy it at all.

Flesh Worn Stone (The Game - Book One)

A Cold Day for Murder, by Dana Stabenow

This novel introduces hero Kate Shugak as the first of a series.  The setting is Alaska; Shugak is an Aleut who left her village for an education and career in law enforcement, and who ended up back home.  She's there to hide from the world, sulk and deal with her personal issues, but a case of missing lawmen pulls her out of her cabin to solve the mystery.

This is a very good novel, with a great setting; I also find it educational about the Aleuts and their issues.

A Cold Day for Murder (Kate Shugak #1)

Perfectible Animals: A Dystopian Thriller, by Thomas Norwood

This novel tells the story of a scientist trying to save his wife from illness while weaponizing contagious diseases for the military in a messed-up 2065.   It is almost impossible to read.   I'm not sure what a good editor would do to fix it; maybe just burn it and find a new client.

And oh my gosh, there's a series here... I have no explanation for that.


Perfectible Animals: A Dystopian Thriller (BioGenesis Book 1)

Created, The Destroyer, by Warren Murphy

Ugh.  Think 1940s pulp fiction novel written today.  The hero, Remo Williams, is a NY City police officer who is framed for a murder and about to be executed in prison when he is rescued by the shadowy operation (which framed him in the first place) and trained as an assassin.

This might be interesting if it weren't set in a misogynistic retro world.   It is the first of a series that I will not be reading.

Created, The Destroyer (The Destroyer #1)

The Goal, by Eliyahu Goldratt

Dr. Goldratt introduces the theory of constraints (TOC) through a very long narrative.  The hero of this story, Al Rogo, is a plant manager with big work problems (and big personal problems too).   His mentor, Jonah, guides him towards an understanding of how to make his plant successful via a measured explanation of TOC so that Rogo (and the reader) can internalize each step as he moves forward.

This is very much lean production or Toyota Production System thinking.  As such, it can apply to virtually any throughput system.

Using a narrative to explain the methodology is a good news / bad news approach.  The good news is that for readers who would find a traditional text on lean manufacturing too dry, or who have trouble mapping the information to their own problems, this probably is a great alternative.   The bad news is that folks who just want to get to the meat of the system have to instead plod through the story line and have no way to just get to the approach directly.

Still, there are good, common sense nuggets in this book.  For example:

• It takes a while, but Rogo finally realizes how to articulate the goal of his plant.  It is not the internal metrics of pseudo-efficiency, that allow him to take credit for a robot system's high performance even as inventory piles up and deliveries are delayed!  Rather it is:  "To make money by increasing net profit, while simultaneously increasing return on investment, and simultaneously increasing cash flow." [p48]  You might say "doh!" but the story explains how easy it is to miss the big picture.
• Understanding to goal allows Rogo (12 pages later) to find out that the measurements associated with his goals are throughput, inventory and operational expense.  "Throughput ... is the rate at which the system generates money through sales." [p60]  "Inventory is all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell." [p60]  "Operational expense... is all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput." [p61]
• Eventually (another 26 pages), Rogo learns that he can't get these three measurements into balance without understanding the impact of statistical fluctuations on dependent events. [p88]
• And so it goes.  For 377 pages.  

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

Blackout, by Mira Grant

This is the last of Ms. Grant's trilogy; I read it almost immediately after finishing the second volume, and between both books I've neglected both chores and sleep.  It was worth it.

Unfortunately there is very little I can say about this novel that won't be a spoiler.  It is a certainty that if you've read the first two volumes, you'll want to read this one.   I'll say this much:  the ending is good.

Blackout (The Newsflesh Trilogy)

Deadline (The Newsflesh Trilogy), by Mira Grant

In this sequel to "Feed," Ms. Grant has done two unusual things:  she made a second volume nearly as good as the first, and she changed the voice of the novel from (mostly) Georgia to (mostly) her brother Shaun - and pulled off the difference in tone brilliantly.

To get you up to speed, "Feed"was a post apocalyptic zombie novel that had people going about their lives just fine, albeit with some modifications to keep the nasty creatures at bay.  But there were cities and highways and jobs.  I point this out just to differentiate it from the scorched earth school of zombie books.   And it was less about zombies than it was a book with zombies in it.   Our narrator was Georgina, a journalist who worked with her brother Shaun.

In this sequel Shaun takes over as narrator as the story continues to look at why after so many years of well funded government -run research, zombie outbreaks have not abated.   This is a bit more of a zombie book than its predecessor, but it is more a story about people and how they address their situation.

I recommend it, and look forward to reading volume three.

Deadline (The Newsflesh Trilogy)

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, by Joe Bageant

This book, in spite of its odd title, should be required reading.  For liberals, so they can better appreciate how the typical working class conservative voter came to his or her perspective.  And to recognize why the average American thinks they're daft.  For conservatives, especially those in the working class, so that they can understand how it is that they are manipulated to reliably vote against their own self interest.

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War

Up with Lo, by Roman Hellwigi

This is a rather odd book; the main character, Lo, is the devil on earth.   Living mostly in New York, he seems to get along well, wrapping his tail around his leg beneath his suit trousers and managing to fit his hooves into normal men's shoes.   So you mostly forget about his immortality, or notice that he's not actually doing any evil deeds so much as hanging out like any other extremely wealthy New Yorker who happens to remember the past thousand years fairly well, and before that only occasionally.

As a trilogy, there are two more books to read.  I liked this one well enough, but I'm not sure if I'll bother to read the sequel.

Up with Lo (The Lo Trilogy (Book I))

The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker

This is a wonderful novel, certainly a candidate for my 2014 list of the "best books I've read" this year.

The story takes place in 1899.  The golem is named Chava; she was created by a dangerous rabbi who practiced Kabbalistic magic for a client who was traveling from Europe to New York.  Meanwhile, a jinni, captured by a wizard and trapped in a flask for a thousand years, also ends up in New York.   The two meet, and drama ensues.

The character development, plot, well everything about this novel is simply outstanding.

The Golem and the Jinni