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Finished Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal, which was on the library's New Books shelf. This one was a standalone occult espionage mystery adventure set during WWI, where Britain has secretly leveraged the use of spiritualist mediums to get information from soldiers killed at the front, and of course there's a threat to that which leads to murders which need to be solved and a nefarious plot to be thwarted.
This was a lighter-hearted, more cozy-esque feeling read than I was expecting, given the setting and premise and the opening (which I agree with the author's note in the back is much improved from the dinner party idea she was originally going to go with until fellow Tor author John Scalzi suggested otherwise), but still had touching as well as tragic emotional moments. And I was surprised but pleased that what seemed be fairly standard devotedly romantic and dastardly villain identification subplots eventually played out in ways which made for a nice bit of misdirection for a few things. Also, there were brief cameos by author J. R. R. Tolkien and one of the Doctors Who, I think, which were fun to spot.
Medium recommend (pun intended). While I wouldn't consider it a standout book, the story is fairly entertaining, the characters and ideas are mostly engaging (I like that there was some going-over of the logistics of how spirit-enabling and blocking would work, as well as the practical aspects of secret communications), and the author includes a note in the back about some of the real history she drew upon (with recommended reading mentions), as well as what she took creative liberties with, which is always nice to have included in any quasi-historical work.
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