TV recap: The 100 season two, episode four - Many Happy Returns

Last time on The 100, Clarke and Anya escaped from Mount Weather, and then Anya knocked Clarke out. Finn murdered a Grounder during his search for information about the whereabouts of Clarke and the other members of The 100, and Kane headed off on a quest to make peace with the Grounders.

Comic book review: Captain America - The Chosen by David Morrell andMitch Breitweiser

If you know me, even a little bit, you probably know that I am a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In fact, I'm a full-on MCU fangirl.

But I've still never read a Marvel comic book, until now. I randomly picked a few Marvel comic books at the library, choosing based on title, look and plot, and the first one I delved into was Captain America - The Chosen.

Captain America lies dying in a bunker in Washington D.C. while in Afghanistan a young soldier, Corporal James Newman, is bone tired, missing his wife and baby, and ready to give up. When his convoy gets involved in a battle in an Afghan village, Newman is helped by Captain America. Or is he?

As a first comic book, I think this was a pretty good one. The first thing I noticed (obviously) were Mitch Breitweiser's gorgeous illustrations, and the colouring of the whole series. Set primarily in battle-scarred Afghanistan, there's a real sense of the way the colour is leached out of Newman's world in every panel. Everyone and everything is brown and yellow, covered in dust; even the American flag in the first panels of the first chapter is seen through a haze of sand.

Book review: All Involved by Ryan Gattis

Ryan Gattis couldn't have known that his second novel, All Involved, would be coming out at a time when America was once again in the midst of an explosive discourse about race relations, but maybe he suspected the circumstances for that discourse would materialise sooner rather than later, if his character Antonio Delgado is anything to go by.

In All Involved, Gattis' fictionalisation of six days during the 1992 riots in LA, Delgado, while high (he's always high) and on a joyride, reflects on LA's past history, realising that riots about race come round every 20 to 30 years. Delgado says the city is due another riot in 2022 or "before, I dunno". And while the epicentre wasn't LA and while the city-wide rioting of 1992 has mostly been replaced by angry protests, America is in uproar again following a series of cases of white police officers shooting dead black men, and not facing appropriate consequences for their actions.

TV recap: The 100 season two, episode three - Reapercussions

Last time on The 100, Clarke became ever more suspicious of the Mountain Men, and discovered they were using Grounders' blood to treat their wounded - and in doing so found Anya. Meanwhile, Finn broke Bellamy and Murphy out of Camp Jaha's jail, and along with Sterling and Monroe, they set out to find their friends.

TV recap: The 100 season two, episode two - Inclement Weather

Last time on The 100, Clarke was suspicious of the Mountain Men, despite the clean clothes and chocolate cake they provide. In the forest, poison running through Octavia's blood led Lincoln to leave her to go find an antidote, while Bellamy attempted to rescue Finn from the Grounders and succeeded in getting himself captured. Luckily, Kane came to the rescue, but arrested Bellamy and took him back to Camp Jaha, where the adult survivors of The Ark have settled. And the real Jaha, resigned to being alone until his death on The Ark, heard a baby crying.

Book review: Long Way Home by Eva Dolan

It's not difficult to find a decent crime novel, but I've found it hard to find crime novels that stay true to the genre but also manage to add something different. Eva Dolan's Long Way Home is one of those rare crime novels that is definitely crime, but is also so much more.

When detectives Zigic and Ferreira, of Peterborough's hate crime squad, are called to the case of a man found burnt to death in a shed, they quickly realise that the case is more complicated than it first looks. As they investigate further, they discover communities full of prejudice, and a city still coming to terms with the fact that its make up has completely changed.

At its centre, Long Way Home is a murder mystery, but it's far from a straightforward one. Dolan fills her novel with twists and turns, and from the terror-filled beginning keeps her reader guessing as to what's going to happen next, and how everything is linked. The novel is intricately plotted, and sprawling without ever feeling out of control. Part of its charm is its well formed, flawed characters, who are always believable and who therefore make the novel believable. Both Zigic and Ferreira, as well as their colleagues, are great additions to the detective genre and I look forward to seeing them in further novels (I hope).