Stayed up last night to read
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's charming low-key urban fantasy
The Godmother, one of my Fictionwise purchases from the recent wishlist discount sale.
The premise is that in an otherwise not-overtly-magical world, fairy godmothers occasionally do intervene to help their charges live happily ever after, but they try to do it in a Granny Weatherwax-style "headology" way. So this was really closer to magical realism and an imaginative mash-up of social services frustrations and fairy tale tropes set in Seattle, which is across the border from me, so it was nice to recognize some of the local placenames.
I liked this a lot and have already sought out the sequels at the library and will also be buying their e-book editions when there's a good sale to bring the price down.
But first I will be finishing
Jo Walton's
Ha'Penny and
Half a Crown, part of her thus-far excellent post-WWII alternate-universe fascist Britain murder mystery/political thriller trilogy which I went specifically to the library to get.
I'll have to say that book 2 is even more enjoyable, since while the detective inspector is the same (and a good mixture of competent and constrained), the "upper-class twit" who supplies the secondary viewpoint this time is a much different and more interesting character who's very definitely based on the
Mitford sisters, though I'm not quite sure which one she's supposed to be (barring the obvious exceptions).