The Scorpio Races

 The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater, 409 pages.

Every November on the island of Thisby men ride in the deadly Scorpio Races. The mounts are not normal horses, but capaill uisce, carnivorous water horses who eat raw meat and long for the sea. Sean Kendrick is nineteen and a four-time champion who understands the water horses like nobody else. Puck Connolly is a girl who never expected to be the first woman to ride in the race, but she's willing to take extreme measures to get what she needs. 

This was an interesting take on the myth of the kelpie. Stiefvater built a really excellent sense of place into Thisby, and there is a very isolated feeling that suffuses the atmosphere of this book that I think is pretty effective. Although I'm not sure I liked this book quite as much as some of the people who recommended it to me, I did still definitely like it. That being said, I'm not totally sure what kind of reader I would recommend this strange, slow, young adult novel to. 

The Comforts of Home

The Comforts of Home: a Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler Mystery / Susan Hill, 305 p.

I jumped into the middle (#9) of this series to find the main character recuperating from a horrific accident which presumably occurred in the previous installment.  Simon spends his rehab period on a remote Scottish island, where he happens to get caught up in a local murder case.  Meanwhile, back home in Lafferton, the force is struggling with an outbreak of arson, while a bereaved mother demands that the case of her daughter's disappearance be reopened.