A collection of mystery stories, arguably a fix-up novel. The first story was published in 1901, and the book was first published in 1925. It's available on Gutenberg.
The Old Man in the Corner was apparently once famous: he's one of the fictional detectives whom Agatha Christie spoofs in her 1920s Partners in Crime. I don't have the sense that it's read much nowadays. To the extent that Orczy is remembered today, it's probably for The Scarlet Pimpernel.
The second Martin Hench novel. Parts of it are set on Catalina Island during the dotcom bubble. Other parts are more recent, although still some years earlier than Red Team Blues, and some of them are uncomfortably topical.
The title is a word coined by J. K. Galbraith referring to undiscovered embezzlement: the time “when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.” It was a useful concept in Galbraith's day, and it still is.
The first Martin Hench novel, and, at least as currently planned, the last in chronological order: the sixty-seven year old freelance forensic accountant doing one last job before his retirement. It's set in the Bay Area, including places that are very familiar to me, and it takes place in the intersection between big money, technology, and crime. (If you think that maybe cryptocurrency is involved, you're right.)
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction writer, and this book is published by a science fiction publisher, Tor Books, and in some ways it feels like science fiction, but it isn't. It takes place in probably about the same year as it was published, 2023. The characters and some of the corporations are made up, but the world isn't. We're already living in the future.
A reimagining of Huckleberry Finn, told from the point of view of the man whom Huck calls Jim. It deserves all the attention it's been getting.
A big part of the book is the difference between what James is really like and what the whites see when they look at him—which is partly, although not entirely, a matter of what he chooses to show them. Here's one bitterly funny scene where he's giving a language lesson to his daughter and some of the other children.
“Good, good. You all are really sharp today. Okay, let's imagine now that it's a grease fire. She's left bacon unattended on the stove. Mrs. Holiday is about to throw water on it. What do you say? Rachel?”
Rachel paused. “Missums, that water gone make it wurs!”
“Of course, that's true, but what's the problem with that?”
Virgil said, “You're telling her she's doing the wrong thing.”
I nodded. “So, what should you say?”
Lizzie looked at the ceiling and spoke while thinking it through. “Would you like for me to get some sand?”
“Correct approach, but you didn't translate it.”
She nodded. “Oh, Lawd, missums ma'am, you wan fo me to gets some sand?”
“Good.”
If Christie is to be believed, air travel in the 1930s was very different than it is in the 2020s.
Not exactly a sequel to The Element of Fire. Both books take place in the fictional country of Ile-Rien, but The Death of the Necromancer takes place more than a century later. The capital city of Vienne now has gas lighting and telegraphs and railroads; there's a strong Sherlock Holmes or Arsène Lupin vibe. And yes, necromancy shows up right in the first chapter.