Isaac Vainio is a librarian and a libriomancer, a special kind of magic-user who has the ability to make objects from books manifest in reality.  Removed from field work due to an inability to control his magic under stress, Isaac is working a more mundane job as a librarian in a small-town Michigan public library and doing database duty on the side for his other employers, Die Zwelf Portenaere—the Porters.  However, the Porters—a magical organization founded by Johannes Gutenberg to manage libriomancy—are under attack, and Isaac, off-duty or no, is no exception. Narrowly saved from vampires by the intercession of a dryad friend, Isaac soon discovers that all the different species of vampires—all of whom were originally created out of books, in a unique genre twist—have banded together to fight against what they perceive as attacks by the Porters. The few Porters Isaac can reach, however, have no idea what’s going on and Isaac, along with dryad Lena Greenwood and Smudge the fire spider, fling themselves into the investigation, trying to first convince the vampires that the Porters are no threat and second to discover just who the villain actually is and what he’s done with the Porters’ founder, Gutenberg himself.

Fast-paced, funny, unique, intelligent, and entirely engaging, this series opener is an absolute hit. Librarians and booklovers of all stripes will be trying to master libriomancy themselves after a visit to Hines’ world.

Nesbo’s flawed but brilliant detective, Harry Hole, faces down Norway’s first known serial killer in this fifth entry in the series.  Dubbed “the Snowman,” the serial killer abducts and, presumably, kills women, one per year, taking his victims on the first snowy day of the winter. He’s been operating for years but because there were no bodies found, it took the police far too long to pick up on the pattern. But now, suddenly, the killer has escalated his efforts, leaving one victim’s head perched on top of a snowman and taking several others out of sequence. Now Harry, Oslo’s only detective to have caught a serial killer previously, must escalate his own efforts to not only determine how the killer is picking his victims, but who the killer is…before more women fall prey to the Snowman.

Fast-paced and littered with twists, red-herrings, and thrills, The Snowman is sure to appeal to mystery fans. Despite being book five in the series, a reader with no previous experience of Harry Hole’s misadventures can enjoy this title from the get-go.

Before reading The Millstone, I spent years wanting to read a Margaret Drabble novel but never got around to it.  She is what you would call a serious writer.  To quote the LA Times, she is “as meticulous as Jane Austen, and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh.”  So I knew The Millstone would be literary and well-written, and it was.  But what came as a surprise to me was how easily readable the novel was and how much I was completely drawn into the main character’s life.  The novel, one of Drabble’s early works, is set in 1960s London.  The narrator is a young woman who has an unplanned pregnancy as a result of a casual love affair.  This isn’t your typical unplanned pregnancy story; the narrator is highly educated, independent, and strong.  She does not weep for her circumstances nor expects anyone to weep for her.  The Millstone was a wonderful read, and I greatly enjoyed the 1960s London setting.  I will most definitely be reading more of Drabble’s novels.  I hope that you give her a go as well…if you have not done so already.  Also--as an aside-- Margaret Drabble is A.S. Byatt’s sister.   

Ruiz Zafon returns to the Barcelona of his The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game in this short novel which connects the characters and time periods of the previous two installments. Daniel Sempere, the young hero of The Shadow of the Wind, is now a married man, assisting his father in running their small bookstore. Business isn’t good, which is why it initially seems a blessing when a disfigured stranger buys a rare and expensive copy of The Count of Monte Cristo.  However, the man leaves the book behind with a note addressed to Daniel’s friend Fermín Romero de Torres—“ For Fermín Romero de Torres, who came back from among the dead and holds the key to the future.”  This single sentence inspires Daniel to investigate the stranger and, by extension, Fermín.  What he discovers has wider-reaching consequences than he could ever have anticipated, touching on not only Fermin’s mysterious past and prior incarceration as a political prisoner but upon the death of Daniel’s mother Isabella and the writing of a strange book by the nearly forgotten author (and fellow prisoner to Fermín) David Martin—The Angel’s Game.

The storylines begun in Ruiz Zafon’s first two books of the Cemetary of Forgotten Books series begin to interweave here in exciting ways. While shorter and perhaps a shade less complex and rich than the previous two installments, Ruiz Zafon’s fans will not want to miss The Prisoner of Heaven.  An open ending promises more to the story.