Happy Friday, all!  I’ve been hopping around genres this week, from World War II historical fiction, to World War I ghosts, to some very fun urban fantasy that takes the gothic canon and turns it on its head.

I started the week in 1930s London with Julia Kelly’s The Whispers of War, about the experiences of a German girl who is pegged as an enemy alien in World War II London, and the two good friends who go to bat to keep her from being placed in an internment camp.

When the air gets crisp and the pumpkins appear on doorsteps, I start looking around for good ghost stories, and it never really does get much better than a Simone St. James novel.  I went back to one of my favorites, Silence for the Dead, set in the immediate aftermath of World War I, in an abandoned mansion turned psychiatric ward, where a woman desperate for a place to hide masquerades as a nurse– but finds that while she may be able to handle the work, the worst threats in Portis House don’t come from the patients.

Right now, I’m in the middle of a book recommended by my best friend: Strange Practice, the first in the Greta Helsing series about a very human doctor whose practice involves treating the supernatural who would like to remain incognito among the normal folks of London.  Vampires like Lord Ruthven of Polidori’s The Vampyre (who knew he was real and not just code for Lord Byron on a bad day??) and ghouls and goodness only knows what else.  So. Much. Fun.  Highly recommended for fellow fans of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London books or Laura Resnick’s Esther Diamond.

What have you been reading this week?