Book 76: "The Servants" by Michael Marshall Smith

Eleven-year-old Mark has moved to a large eighteenth century house on the Brighton seafront with his seriously ill mother and his new stepfather. For some reason Mark hasn't started school in Brighton, so his days are sent learning to skateboard and trying to get the better of his stepfather. Not realising how ill his mother is, Mark thinks his stepfather is deliberately preventing his mother from doing anything interesting, and restricting Mark's access to her.

But once Mark meets the old lady who rents the basement flat in their house, he finds that strange things happen when he goes through the door from her flat into the unconverted servants' quarters.

This short book was a birthday or Christmas present from my brother. The author is new to me, but apparently he mostly writes science fiction, so this ghost story was a bit of a departure for him. It has been nominated for both the British and World Fantasy Awards.

Spooky but not scary, "The Servants" is a book that grew on me as it went along. The only thing that annoyed me about it was that house was described using the American usage 1st floor/2nd floor instead of ground floor/1st floor. Since the house was in England and Mark was English, it really jarred.

Book 77: "The Ballad of Peckham Rye" by Muriel Spark

'You are a terror and a treat,' Dougal said.
'You look to me like an Okapi,' he said.
'A what?'
'An Okapi is a rare beast from the Congo. It looks a little like a deer, but it tries to be a giraffe. It has stripes and it stretches its neck as far as possible and its ears are like a donkey's. It is a little bit of everything. here are only a few in captivity. It is very shy.'
'Wy do you say I'm like it?'
'Because you're so shy.'
'Me shy?'
'Yes. You haven't told me about your love affair with Mr. Druce. You're too shy.'
'Oh, that's only a friendship. You've got it all wrong. What makes you think it's a love affair? Who told you that?'
'I've got second sight.'

When Dougal Douglas (aka Douglas Dougal and Mr Dougal-Douglas) comes to live in 1950s Peckham and gets a job in HR for a local company, he seems to cause trouble wherever he goes. He claims to be a devil, and likes to get people to feel the bumps on his head that he says are the remains of his horns, although his friend Humphrey is sure that they are just cysts.

I like Muriel Spark, but hadn't read this book before. I picked it up at a charity book sale at work, and it was well worth 25p .

Book 78: "The Robots of Dawn" by Isaac Asimov

Since his trip off-world to the planet Solaria, plainclothesman Elijah Baley has founded a group of people who go outside the cities in their spare time. Although he still finds being outside difficult, he hopes that the younger members of the group, such as his son Bentley will one day get the chance to settle on another planet.

As he has been trying unsuccessfully to get permission to travel to the planet Aurora, Elijah Baley is pleased to be summoned there to find out who 'killed' a humaniform robot, and he is even happier to meet up with his old friend R. Daneel Olivaw again. But the case has political ramifications, and failure to clear Hans Fastolfe's name could mean that Earthmen will never get the chance to live on other worlds.

Book 79: "Don't Mess With Mrs In-Between" by Liz Evans

I eased them open to let in the sea breezes and the gulls' incessant squarking, and then spread Barbra's photo collection over the desk.
She had a camera with an automatic motor; by keeping her finger on the shot button she'd captured half a dozen views of each person from the moment they left the shop door until they were a few yards down the street.
I grouped them into subjects. There were three of them. Barbra was intending to leave her money to a man, a woman ... and a parrot.

Grace has been short of work recently but her boss calls her into his office and asks her to take on a case for a friend of his - a millionaire's widow who wants to find out the names and addresses of three people whose photos she took in a nearby village. She is planning to change her will and leave these random strangers all her money, as she doesn't get on with her yobbish son and suspects him of trying to kill her.

As usual Grace isn't having much luck; the detective agency and her flat are both broken into, her best friend and fellow detective Annie is thinking of moving to London, her parents have more or less disowned her and her friends seem to have forgotten her birthday. Her luck with men doesn't seem to be getting any better either. An amusing and enjoyable addition to the Grace Smith series.