32. The Secret Place

By Tana French (518 pp ebook) I like Tana French books but they always get to a point where they feel long. But also I can't stop until I finish. In this one the murder takes place in a girls' school. I liked the detectives, too.

31. The Fifth Season

By N.K. Jemisin (449 pp) This book is amazing! I could hardly put it down. I had insomnia and I was glad because I could get up and read some more. I don't even know how to describe it in a sentence or two. It's a fantasy set in a far future earth where the earth is unstable. Leaders rely on orogenes--people with power to control earth surface(ish) to calm earthquakes and volcanos. This is a severely lacking description. Better if you don't know what you're in for when you start. Highly recommended.

30. The Headless Cupid

By Zilpha Keatley Snyder (203 pp) We've been making a loop of the free little libraries in our area mostly to drop off books but picking them up if we can't resist. I LOVED ZKS in middle school and haven't read this book since then so I was curious to see how it held up. It seems like all the old stuff has problematic racist and sexist stuff and this book is no different. The story concerns a newly blended family. The girl would rather live with her father but she can't because he doesn't have a wife to take care of her. There's a scene where the kids play a game of master and slave to get the kids to get some work done. GULP. But those issues aside, it's still a fun story. The family has just moved into an old house that may or may not be haunted. Creepy things keep happening.

29. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

 By Lois McMaster Bujold (573 pp)

I enjoyed this book but I expected to love it. The Vorkosigan series gets so many good reviews and I loved Bujold's Chalion books. (Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls.) I think part of the problem is that this book is something like 15th in the series and even though it's about a side character, there's a lot of history. I got bogged down with all the characters and world-building backstory stuff. This book is about Ivan who gets mixed up with a overthrown family and accidentally gets a wife. I'm going to go back and start at the beginning of the series.