Life is full of serendipitous little discoveries.
A couple of years ago I Googled "Puttering in the Study" just to see if anyone else had used the phrase, and
it turned out this one
weblog had - The View From the Foothills by Will Duquette. Since this must obviously be a brilliant guy, I added him to me RSS reader and have enjoying his posts on books, Catholicism, family and kids and various other subjects.
Well, several weeks ago he mentioned the Laundry Files books by sci-fi author Charles Stross. The books are about a computer programmer who works for an obscure British security agency trying to preserve the world as we know it from being invaded by the monsters of Lovercraft's universe, which it turns out can penetrate our reality if people do too much math.
Well, to me any citation to Lovecraft's unique reality (simply using the words eldritch or gibbering makes me short of breath) is a stratospheric indicator of merit, so I started on the books right away, and have now devoured all four Stross has written to date. Plus two more in a different series, which I'll get to later. They are not always easy reads - he uses complex computer jargon, British slang, and sometimes doesn't describe things completely (not that that's a bad thing) so you have to read a little more slowly that the usual Berry/Rollins potboiler but the creativity and writing skill is a pleasure to follow. I highly recommend them.