Goodreads: Kipuka Blues

Kipuka Blues by Michael Warren Lucas

The mystery of Absolute takes a few more twists, but still doesn't make any sense. And if that weren't enough, now the town has to deal with Danger. Not Nick Danger or Carlos Danger. Just Danger. Lake Huron has a personality disorder. Kevin is still adamant that he's not a cop and he's certainly not Kevin. The town's power vacuum has people who want to fill it, despite his best efforts to leave everything very laissez faire and commune like. The girls are growing up, and their anarcho-syndicalist household also suffers some growing pains in an absence of leadership. And now Absolute offers the population the opportunity to be the very best you that you can be.
And by the end of the book, you'll know what a kipuka is. You can't beat that.

Goodreads: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

This book was particularly affecting because I'm reading it under quarantine. The claustrophobic atmosphere sings isolation and stasis, and after reading the book (staying up all night) it took me hours to shake off the feeling that I was living inside the book. We watch the family through Merricat's slightly feral, brutally honest, and just a touch off kilter viewpoint. Six years ago something awful happened to the Blackwoods, and ever since that day our protagonist Merricat has been using her powers of magical realism to maintain everything as it has always been. Items on shelves or desks may be removed to dust under them, but they must be replaced exactly as they were. Tuesday and Friday were days to go to town, Monday was tidying day, and Wednesday was tea with Mrs. Clarke. And everything is going just fine until CHARLES shows up.
Fuck Charles. Right in the ear. With his creepy cloying politeness covering an avaricious and ever so subtly sexual insinuation into the family as the replacement for the missing patriarchal figure. He's going to fix this family, make them into a normal household who has a proper respect for finances.
But his first mistake is smugly underestimating Merricat.