Books in October

The lake has turned. It happens over about a week every October, and this year I watched it. In summer it's blue, a blue that surprises people who come from the coasts, and then one morning it's gone a hard gray-green, the color of an old bottle, and it stays that way until spring. The waves get taller. The wind changes direction and stays changed. Up on the hill the birches have gone yellow and the maples red, and the hawk counters at Hawk Ridge have been out every clear day with their binoculars and their clipboards, counting the birds going south.

And the evenings are long again, which means reading. In summer I read in snatches, on the beach, in the car. In October I read properly, in the chair by the window, with a blanket I'm not too proud to use.

What I've had in the chair this month:

• Beast in View, Margaret Millar. Jonah recommended it last New Year's Eve and I've finally done as I was told. He was right, again. It's short, and cold, and strange, and I won't say a word about it, because the whole pleasure is not knowing.
• Brat Farrar, Josephine Tey. A reread, seven years after Ruth Ann sent me to it. A young man turns up claiming to be a family's son, lost years ago, and he isn't, and everyone half wants him to be. Tey is very good at people who want something to be true.
• The Expendable Man, Dorothy B. Hughes. After In a Lonely Place I wanted more of her. A young doctor driving across the desert gives a girl a ride, and that's all I'll say, because the book is built to catch you out about something, and it caught me. I had to put it down twice and walk around the kitchen.
• The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler. Every fall, for the rain in it. Duluth doesn't do rain the way Los Angeles does in that book, but the wind off the lake does a fair impression.

What do you read when the weather turns?