Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker, 304 pages

As COVID-19 starts ravaging the world, so do the racist allegations that Chinese people (and all Asian Americans, by association) are to blame. It's against this backdrop that Cora Zeng witnesses her sister get pushed in front of a subway car, one of many officially ignored deaths of women in Chinatown in 2020. And Cora would know, as she's a crime scene cleaner tasked with removing all traces of these women and their gruesome deaths (all ruled suicides, incidentally) from their apartments. However, while dealing with the gross details of her job and the grief over her sister, Cora doesn't have time for traditions like the Hungry Ghost Festival. But ignoring the hungry ghosts is a mistake, as Cora soon learns.

This is a fantastic horror novel that combines supernatural horror with the very real horrors of racism and sexism in a terrifying and creative way. An excellent book for fans of The Eyes Are the Best Part or the works of Stephen Graham Jones.

Past Lying

Past Lying by Val McDermid, 452 pages

It's late March 2020, and DCI Karen Pirie and her team at the Historic Crimes Unit are bored to tears with nothing to do during COVID lockdown when a call comes in from the National Library with a possible lead in a cold case. Late thriller author Jake Stein donated his personal archives to the library upon his death, and as archivists started to go through his belongings, they discovered an unpublished manuscript that matches very closely the details of an unsolved case of a missing woman. Now Pirie and her team must figure out how to reopen the case under the tight restrictions of lockdown.

I love the premise for this book, the seventh in McDermid's Karen Pirie series, though I was a bit surprised by how mobile the HCU team was during Scotland's strict lockdown regulations — I seriously thought they'd be doing all of the interviews via Zoom, yet they were meeting people in the park and sitting 6 feet away instead. That said, this was a remarkably quick and engaging read for 450 pages, and even though I figured out several of the twists WAY early, I still enjoyed the book, particularly the relationship between Pirie and her two teammates. I haven't read the other books in this series, but I'll probably put them on my TBR to check out at some future date.

Romantic Comedy

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (2023) 305 pages

It's no accident that the backdrop of this book reminds one of Saturday Night Live. In her acknowledgement section, Sittenfeld lists the most humongous list of materials related to the long-running show, which she drew upon to get the full flavor of The Night Owls (TNO). Sally is a writer for TNO, and although she reminds me a bit of Liz Lemon from Thirty Rock, Sally's character is deeper, with a better story line.

Sally had married young, but her husband was done with the marriage when she got her job at TNO. He'd never expected her to be successful in her attempts to get onboard. Since then, Sally has had only one relationship that she wished would have gone further, but ultimately, she's grateful for her career at TNO over these past 10 years, and for the close friends she has made at the show.

It's April 2018. A good-looking and talented musical guest, Noah Brewster, is also the host of the upcoming show. Sally works with him on the sketches, and she's not sure if he's feeling the sparks that she is, but she decides that if the feeling is real, that it won't last. She's just not as desirable as other women Noah has reportedly dated. Good-looking women will pair up with ordinary men, but the reverse just doesn't happen.

Sittenfeld leans into this concept and takes it two years into the future, during the Covid lockdown. Sally gets an email from Noah and starts corresponding with him. Their interactions are mostly fun, but also reveal their inner feelings. Could their relationship work in the real world, or is heartbreak inevitable?

Revenge of the Librarians

Revenge of the Librarians by Tom Gauld, 180 pages

In this 2022 collection of cartoons, Gauld (a cartoonist for The New Yorker and The Guardian) offers up short, humorous takes on books, libraries, authors, and the COVID-19 pandemic during which most of these cartoons were created. They're smart, relatable, and funny, and I found myself cackling heartily MANY times during the short amount of time it took to devour the book. Highly recommended to fans of books, libraries, and humor.