August 2 - I didn't have time to update this website in June and July, but I did manage to read a few novels worth recommending. Those in June, all by reliably good writers, ranged from California to Weimar Germany to contemporary Spain, Germany, and Sweden.

By far my favorite is the last volume of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series, Luftslottet som Sprängdes, published in Sweden in 2007. It is just as good as the first two, and the English translation is coming out in October as The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. If you have not read this trilogy featuring hacker Lisbeth Salander and investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist, get started now. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire are both available in English. These are all long novels, but crisply written and fast reads. If you are impatient and read even moderately well another language they are available in, it's worth trying to practice your reading. They are available in French, Spanish, German, Dutch, and other languages.

Robert Wilson's The Ignorance of Blood is also the last in a series - four thrillers set in Seville and featuring police investigator Javier Falcón. Like Le Carré's latest, A Most Wanted Man, set in Hamburg, Wilson's series is rich with both local color and a complex contemporary international milieu of both terrorism and international crime networks.

With Shadow and Light, Jonathan Rabb steps back in history to Berlin in the 1920s, with a preview of the Nazi period, a follow-up to his earlier Rosa. Pronzini's Schemers is the latest in his Nameless Detective series, following two parallel cases in his usual San Francisco and surrounding northern California setting.