New Zodiac Ophiuchus - The 13th of Zodiac

Ophiuchus (pronounced off-ee-YOO-cuss) represents a man with a snake coiled around his waist. He holds the head of the snake in his left hand and its tail in his right hand. The snake is represented by the constellation serpent


The Greeks identified him as Asclepius, the god of medicine. Asclepius was the son of Apollo and Coronis (although some say that his mother was Arsinoë). The story goes that Coronis two-timed Apollo by sleeping with a mortal, Ischys, while she was pregnant by Apollo. A crow brought Apollo the unwelcome news, but instead of the expected reward the crow, which until then had been snow-white, was cursed by Apollo and turned black.


In a rage of jealousy, Apollo shot Coronis with an arrow. Rather than see his child perish with her, Apollo snatched the unborn baby from its mother’s womb as the flames of the funeral pyre engulfed her, and took the infant to Chiron, the wise centaur (represented in the sky by the constellation Centaurus).


Chiron raised Asclepius as his own son, teaching him the arts of healing and hunting. Asclepius became so skilled in medicine that not only could he save lives, he could also raise the dead.

The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel

High speed freeway system in and around Los Angeles cut, crisscrosses and unexpectedly turned ramps to and from the detour. This toll road is a perfect metaphor for the plot, intricate moves faster than the latest novel of Michael Connelly's Lincoln Lawyer. Widely praised for his series to sell display an on-again, off again LAPD detective Harry Bosch, Connelly again has taken an occasional forays out into a stand-alone novel full of new characters and new angle, but is still based in the genre of crime. 

The first legal thriller Lincoln lawyer Connelly and is one of the best novels are written, if not better. This is high praise for a writer whose 15 other books - including bloodwork Poet, which was made into a film starring Clint Eastwood, cover and narrows, which is regarded as a model of writing crime. LA defender protagonist here is Mickey Haller, who makes the best use of time making the most of the work from the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, then, the title of the book. 

Stories: All New Tales [book review]

[Gemma Reilly] A new anthology collated by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, and finds a collection that seamlessly fuses multiple genres .

Only Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio could have pitched the idea for Stories to their publishers and not been met with blank looks, awkward fidgeting and a polite but firm ‘no thanks’. Stories is a marketing department’s nightmare: no obvious genre, no clear indication of which shelf it ought to sit on in Waterstone’s, too literary to be called ‘fantasy’, too fantastical to be called ‘literary’.

And that’s the whole point.

With this anthology of all-new short fiction, Gaiman and Sarrantonio set out to show us that genre classifications are irrelevant and often restrictive - if a tale is gripping enough, the reader won’t care. As it turns out, they’re absolutely right.