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still read four books. OK, one was barely 150 pages but...

The Deep Deep Snow by Brian Freeman - A small town sheriff cuts short a nighttime fishing excursion and returns home to find an abandoned infant on his doorstep, whom he adopts. Decades later, his daughter is on the force with him, investigating the case of a missing teenager. This was a decent thriller, with twists and turns...and of course being set in a small town means everyone's either lying or keeping secrets. When Dad ran out of things to read one day, I gave him this one (he actually read it before me) and he thought it was decent...which is a bit unusual because he often doesn't like what I like. B+, maybe an A-.

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraida - If someone asked me to sum up, in the most general way possible, Japanese fiction, I would do so with just two words: magical cats. The cat in this novella (this was my 150 page read) isn't quite as magical as the cats in some of the other Japanese fiction I've read; he's more mystical, and a bit inspiring. I wasn't even sure at first that this was fiction, as it reads a lot like a memoir. A nice little book but beware--the cat does NOT get a happy ending. And for that, I cannot give the book higher than a B, even though I mostly enjoyed the story and TH's writing style.

The Morningside by Tea Obreht - Set in yet another dystopian future where flooding is ruining the planet, The Morningside is about an 11 year old girl and her mother who are part of a refugee program and are living with the mom's aunt in the crumbling but still stately luxury apartment building, the Morningside. At first, I thought I'd read this before as the beginning chapters as a lot of the set up is reminiscent of Awake the Floating City by Susanna Kwan, but then the premises veer sharply away from one another. I don't want to give too much away but I will say this: the Morningside is set in a land that seems to be the US but isn't specifically named, and our heroines come from a fictitious land that is reminiscent of Central American countries, and despite being written in 2024, The Morningside is relevant to, and even somewhat prescient regarding the current situation regarding immigration. There was one thread that I thought was going to be the main premise--a somewhat supernatural one that I was finding really intriguing--but then it fades somewhat and the story becomes something else entirely. Which is why I'm giving the book an A- and not an A because darn it, I wanted the first premise to be the one that's followed through <g>.

The Only One Left by Riley Sager - In 1929, 17 year old Lenora Hope kills her entire family: mother, father and younger sister. In 1980...something, a young woman desperate for employment takes a job as Lenora's caregiver, in the very house where the murders took place. She wants to believe Lenora isn't a murderess, and Lenora insists she isn't...but is she lying? I was all set to give this book a rare A+ but the last 30 pages or so took a few twists too many for my taste, so I had to bump my rating down to a solid A. Still a very, very enjoyable read...but I passed on passing it along to Dad to read, knowing he'd also hate the excessive, and IMO unnecessary, twists at the end.