Friday Finds!

I've enjoyed everyone else's Friday Finds for a while now, and darn it...its time to join this meme!

Thanks to MizB for hosting this fun Friday meme!

I actually read about my find a few weeks ago, but I'm still super excited to read it. My favorite, Dean Koontz has a new book coming out in November, Breathless. I can't wait to get my paws on it!

From Amazon:
Grady Adams lives a simple, solitary life deep in the Colorado mountains. Here the thirty-five-year-old carpenter works out of a converted barn, crafting exquisite one-of-a-kind furniture. There’s little about this strong yet gentle man to suggest the experiences that have alienated him from the contemporary world. But that is about to change.

One day, while hiking, Grady spots a pair of stunningly beautiful furred animals unlike anything he’s ever seen. They flee the instant they detect his presence, but the mystery of that brief encounter remains. In the days ahead, Grady will approach the creatures again, gaining their trust but coming no closer to solving their mystery. For this he enlists the help of an old friend, veterinarian Camellia “Cammy” Rivers, who, in turn, is stunned—and enchanted—by Grady’s new “pets.” But while Grady and Cammy carefully observe these enigmatic animals for clues to their origin, they, too, are being watched.

Soon Grady’s home and hundreds of square miles of surrounding wilderness will be placed under quarantine by Homeland Security. And Grady, Cammy, and the two creatures they’ve come to feel they must protect at all costs find themselves virtual prisoners—and the unwilling focus of an army of biologists, naturalists, and research scientists. But it’s a stunning event no one could have foreseen that convinces Grady and Cammy to do the unthinkable: to escape with the two creatures on a riveting race for freedom

What great books did you discover this past week? Share your FRIDAY FINDS with us! And check out other Friday Finds here!

Books you've just GOTTA read!! #2

(Or our favorite under-appreciated, under-loved, long-forgotten or never heard of books that we know you'll love just as much as we do when we convince you to finally read them!...phew....books....)

This week's featured books come from Jill at Rhapsody in Books. (Thanks Jill!!) On Tuesday, Doomsday Book was featured and today is Jill's other suggestion, “This is the Way The World Ends” by James Morrow.

From SFF.net:

In 1995, George Paxton is an ordinary American living an ordinary life in an ordinary town. Content as a tombstone carver and family man, George lacks only one thing: a fashionable "scopas" survival suit--complete with sanitary facilities and a Colt.45--to protect his daughter in the event of nuclear war.

Then, through a twist of fate, George secures the coveted suit, a deluxe golden model, for the price of a mere signature. Unfortunately, what he signs proves to be a diabolical pact affirming his complicity in the escalating arms race, and as the war that could never happen happens, George is whisked into the past and the future to face the consequences of his actions.

Jill once more provided me with an excellent review of this book for this feature:

This satiric noir sci-fi novel is about a global nuclear holocaust from the point of view of the victims – i.e., the dead, who place the survivors on trial for having killed them. In spite of a plot that could be dreadfully sad, Morrow has a wicked sense of humor that will appeal to fans of Kurt Vonnegut and even Jonathan Swift.

One of the blurbs calls this book “a surrealistic, dark comedy” which I think captures its tone precisely. What I love so much about this book is that it hits the mark in so many ways.

I first read this many years ago, and found to my delight (or dismay!) that when I reread it last year, it didn’t seem dated at all. And when the trial finally yields the motive for the disaster, even as you laugh out loud you will want to stand up and shout in terror, “This could actually happen!!!”

I found some interesting comments the author made which have piqued my interest even more!

At first blush, a critic might bracket This Is the Way the World Ends with other post-holocaust fiction. From Alas, Babylon through A Canticle for Leibowitz to Riddley Walker, this genre has commonly styled itself an avatar of hope. My goal lay elsewhere. I began with the assumption that most people would prefer to exercise hope before the warheads arrive. I wanted to speak for victims, not celebrate survivors.

Even the most elaborate nuclear exchange would probably fail to extinguish Homo sapiens. Some of us will muddle through. In This Is the Way the World Ends, though, I decided to use self-extinction as a metaphor for the legions who won't make it. It's all very well to valorize our species's undoubted resilience, but a mass grave is hardly a fit monument to such sentiments.

Reading Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth., I was particularly impressed by one line: "The right vantage point from which to view a holocaust is that of a corpse." It struck me that most nuclear-war fiction is really a kind of pornography, inviting us to identify with winners while the losers, the corpses, drop away. So how might a novelist assume the vantage point of the dead? Through recourse, I reasoned, to the tools of speculative fiction. Eventually I hit upon the conceit of "the unadmitted," the generations whose births were canceled by the extinction. I gave them flesh and a temporary lease on life.

Reprinted from SFWA Bulletin

This book has grabbed me just like Jill's other suggestion, and I'm on my way to the bookstore to snag a copy. If your local bookstore is out of stock, (it's been around for a while) and you just can't wait, here you go....

Y'all come back now, I'll be featuring James Morrow one more time, hopefully pretty soon! And next week, a reader named Deslily has three favorite authors for the project.

Review (sort of): Last Known Address by Theresa Schwegel

From Amazon
Recently transferred from homicide to sex crimes, Chicago police detective Sloane Pearson pursues a serial rapist in Edgar-winner Schwegel's gritty fourth crime novel. Called in to interview the second in a series of victims who were beaten, raped and nearly strangled to death, Pearson knows the only way she'll have a case is if the traumatized woman will talk. But without a crime scene or detailed description of the attacker, Pearson's leads dry up fast. As she retraces the victims' steps, she uncovers a common thread that winds from the dilapidated blocks where the rapes occurred to one of the city's glitzy property development companies.


I picked up Last Known Address and started reading it a week ago. Today, I'm on page 119. That's 17 pages a day. Now, I know I'm not the worlds fastest reader, but I'm sure as heck not the slowest either. It has become obvious to me that I'm just not diggin' this book.

First, I thought the problem was that it was part of a series, because from the first page, I felt like I was missing something. According to Amazon, the main character was "introduced" in Schwegel's previous novel, Probable Cause. I guess its possible that Probable Cause fleshed out the main character of Last Known Address and that to get into this book, I should have read that one first. And I might....maybe....someday....I guess its possible....then I could pick up Last Known Address and try again. Maybe.

Schwegel's protagonist, Sloane Pearson, kind of irritated me. Okay, I get it, she's a woman in a man's world. The big bad men are sexist and offensive. Sheesh...get over it. It's like a fireman complaining that he'd love his job if it wasn't so hot. A farmer complaining about the amount of cow$#&! he shovels. Well...duh!!...Whaddya' expect?? When my oldest daughter would play street hockey with her big brother and all his friends, 9 times out of 10, she'd appear in the house crying because she got bumped or hurt. "I warned you," said I, applying ice and hugs, "If you want to play with the big boys, you'd better learn to play rough." Maybe because I grew up on a farm, and then spent the last 33 years around construction crews, I tend to be immune from sexist comments. Maybe I just have a really thick hide; all the humbug about the rotten comments from the male co-workers....seriously? I would like to think that a woman in a "man's world" would be smart enough to know that you can't beat 'em, you gotta join 'em. Earn some damn respect, stop being such a wimp, curse like a sailor. In other words...kwitcher bitchin'....

I know...I know... I'm cranky and cantankerous. In the first 119 pages, this story was all over the place. Sloane is unhappy in her relationship and is looking for a new place, but without her boyfriend knowing... kind of. She's interviewing victims... sort of. Investigating the rapes, well, a little. Trying to address her issues of an aging father, ...eh...here and there...In short, she's just sort of meandering along, unfocused and maybe a little depressed.

I guess I'm done with this one. Time's a'wastin' and there are just too many books on the Towering Teetering To Be Read Stack to spend anymore time on this one.

My rating:

Books you've just GOTTA read!! #1

(Or our favorite under-appreciated, under-loved, long-forgotten or never heard of books that we know you'll love just as much as we do when we convince you to finally read them!...phew....books....)

Last month, while hoping to interest everyone in my current favorite Under-appreciated book, Big Sid's Vincati, I asked what your favorite under-appreciated book was. And did I get answers! We are a passionate bunch about books we love. And I'll admit, I hadn't heard of many of these books. So, starting today, I'm going to add a regular feature to the blog....and here is the first installment.....*drumroll please......

This week's featured books come from Jill at Rhapsody in Books! (Thanks Jill!!)



Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

From Amazon:
Connie Willis labored five years on this story of a history student in 2048 who is transported to an English village in the 14th century. The student arrives mistakenly on the eve of the onset of the Black Plague. Her dealings with a family of "contemps" in 1348 and with her historian cohorts lead to complications as the book unfolds into a surprisingly dark, deep conclusion. The book, which won Hugo and Nebula Awards, draws upon Willis' understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

Jill brought this book to my attention, and she was kind enough to send me this terrific review on the book:

There are two settings in this book: the Oxford University History Department in 2054, and Medieval England in 1348.

In 2054, Oxford is using time travel to amend and correct historical records, and so it allows Kivrin, a young woman studying history, to go back to 1320 for research. Unfortunately, an error drops her 28 years later, right into the time period of the Bubonic Plague.

The book alternates between 2054 and 1348 as the historians try to get Kivrin back, and as Kivrin fights for her life. As we get to know the people with whom Kivrin stays in 1348 and learn to care about them, we live through the Plague as vividly and poignantly as she does. And we live through Kivrin’s terror that she may never get back.

Connie Willis is a remarkable author for several reasons. One is that she so thoroughly researches her work that this account of Medieval England is as extensive and accurate as any you will get in any academic study. The second is that books by Willis focus extensively on miscommunications – sentences only half spoken, or misunderstood, or never conveyed, or conveyed too late, or lost in dreams. The tragic as well as comedic consequences of not communicating well are a recurring theme in her work and serve to provide dramatic tension as well as sociological commentary.

This book is classified as scifi rather than historical fiction, but it could certainly be well-suited in either category.

If you'd like to read a bit more about the plot, you can head over to the Wikipedia entry, which is more detailed, but might give away a little too much. After reading the Wikipedia entry and Jill's review, I'm hooked! Even though I hardly ever read this type of book, it's time to expand my horizons a bit. Doomsday Book is now right up there at the top of my list, and I can't wait to read it!

This first entry into my "Books I've Got To Read" project is a book I can't wait to get my hands on. Thanks so much to Jill for bringing it to my attention!!

Come back Thursday for Jill's other "Books you've just GOTTA read" selection!!

Mailbox Monday

I've been absent from this meme for far too long, and have missed sharing the books that come into my home. This week I had a couple of books show up, but my stacks of books all around the house have been growing so quickly, I should go back and list everything I haven't listed from the weeks I was absent, but I'm also a bit lazy and just don't want to round them all up for a photo shoot.

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia of The Printed Page. Check it out, and see what other readers are finding in their mailboxes! What books came into your home last week?



The Rapture by Liz Jensen

It is a June unlike any other before, with temperatures soaring to asphyxiating heights. All across the world, freak weather patterns—and the life-shattering catastrophes they entail—have become the norm. The twenty-first century has entered a new phase.

But Gabrielle Fox’s main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her life after a devastating car accident that has left her disconnected from the world, a prisoner of her own guilt and grief. Determined to make a fresh start, and shake off memories of her wrecked past, she leaves London for a temporary posting as an art therapist at Oxsmith Adolescent Secure Psychiatric Hospital, home to one hundred of the most dangerous children in the country. Among them: the teenage killer Bethany Krall.

Despite two years of therapy, Bethany is in no way rehabilitated and remains militantly nonchalant about the bloody, brutal death she inflicted on her mother. Raised in evangelistic hellfire, the teenager is violent, caustic, unruly, and cruelly intuitive. She is also insistent that her electroshock treatments enable her to foresee natural disasters—a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion.

But as Gabrielle delves further into Bethany’s psyche, she begins to note alarming parallels between her patient’s paranoid disaster fantasies and actual incidents of geological and meteorological upheaval—coincidences her professionalism tells her to ignore but that her heart cannot. When a brilliant physicist enters the equation, the disruptive tension mounts—and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator or a harbinger of global disaster on a scale never seen before? Where does science end and faith begin? And what can love mean in “interesting times”?

With gothic intensity, Liz Jensen conjures the increasingly unnerving relationship between the traumatized therapist and her fascinating, deeply calculating patient. As Bethany’s warnings continue to prove accurate beyond fluke and she begins to offer scientifically precise hints of a final, world-altering cataclysm, Gabrielle is confronted with a series of devastating choices in a world in which belief has become as precious - and as murderous—as life itself.



Sacrifice by S.J. Bolton

After sending an email to Ms. Bolton and thanking her for the opportunity to read her second novel, Awakening, she was kind enough to send me a signed copy of her first novel, Sacrifice. I can't wait to dig into it!

In this masterful debut that starts off as a mystery and becomes much more, Tora Hamilton is an outsider at her new home on the rocky, windswept Shetland Islands, a hundred miles from the northeastern tip of Scotland. Though her husband grew up here, it’s the first time he’s been back in twenty years. Digging in the peat on their new property, Tora unearths a human body, at first glance a centuries-old bog body, interesting but not uncommon. But realizing that the body is in fact much newer, that the woman’s heart has been cut out, and that she was killed within a few days of bearing a child, Tora, herself an obstetrician, becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her—even when the police, her colleagues, and eventually her husband warn her against getting involved.

Sacrifice is a bone-chilling, spellbinding debut about secrets worth killing for that will grip readers from its beginning to its startling end.

Let's discuss Faith

Since I read and reviewed Fear God by Mr. Pat, I've been thinking a lot about faith. The one thing that every religion appears to have in common is the expectation of faith. And I think I'm not really very good at that. Dictionary.com defines faith as:

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief, trust.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4. often Faith Christianity The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
6. A set of principles or beliefs.

I was raised in the Mormon religion, and I'll be the first to admit, that even though I really wanted to fit in, I just didn't. There was always, for me, the overwhelming question of WHY? Why did God say I could never, as a female, hold the same positions of power as my brother? Why was I relegated to membership in the Relief Society instead of the Elders Quorum? If my intelligence and abilities were equal to the task, then why would God reject me out of hand, based solely on the fact that I was missing a Y chromosome? I asked this question, not because I had a burning desire to be part of the male hierarchy, but because I simply wanted to know why I couldn't be. I'm pretty sure it was akin to not wanting a cookie until someone tells you that you can't have one, then the damn cookie is all you can think about.

Over the years, I received a couple of answers, the women within the church pretty much stuck by the "Because that's what the Prophet says", and I was by struck their casual and blind acceptance of this. The men would attempt to answer me, but mostly the answer was "Because God said so." Again, not the answer I'm looking for. It just seemed illogical that God would create women with curiosity and intelligence equal to men and then relegate them to a lesser role. One well meaning home teacher in the church, thought long and hard about my question, and a couple of weeks later, stopped by my house with the perfect answer. He said, "It was God's way of paying men back because they couldn't have babies." Really? So would a woman, born sterile be a candidate for priesthood? Because it seems like her life must really be worthless in the eyes of God if not.

As you can imagine, I didn't make a good Mormon, and I moved on. For a solid year, all I read was books on Mormonism and books on Christianity. I delved into the theology of both, had some issues with Christian theology that made me stumble a bit, but figured out how I believed. After I left the Mormon Church, I was re-baptized into a Christian church, mostly as a statement to myself that I'd left the church of my childhood behind. On the day of my Baptism, a devout Christian lady, who I'd known all my life, came up to me and said, "The angels are dancing in heaven today, you're going to lead your family out of Mormonism and into the light of God".

Yikes...no pressure there. Right then, I realized that while I may know who and what I believe in, once again, my beliefs weren't necessarily shared by those around me. I had no intention of telling my 100 year old grandma that her religion was wrong. Heck, it was right for her, not me, its none of my business.

But I realized then, that every religion wants to convert you, Sure its because the members of the church have faith that their path to God is the proper one, and its only because they care about you that they want you to join them. But unless you're a Shaker, you want converts.

And its all a question of faith. I envy those with faith. I really want to have that simple faith that so many of my loved ones have. On my side of the family, the faith my brother and his wife have in the Mormon doctrine, or the simple pure and really beautiful faith of my mom-in-law in her Christian doctrine. A few years ago, I read an article that even Mother Teresa had problems with faith,

"Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.
— Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979"

.
And even though I was glad to see that a woman of faith like her had misgivings similar to mine, mostly it made her just seem more human to me. For Mother Teresa to keep on going, even when she too, must have sometimes wondered, "why?" is a remarkable thing.

Now I know I'm sounding like a screaming feminist here, and I'm not. I chose the most traditional path a woman can choose. I'm a stay at home mom, married 33 years. I wanted to be home with my kids, so I opened a daycare and have helped raise more kids than I can remember. I can potty train with the best of them, Barney really doesn't annoy me, (but Dora the Explorer does) and I just loved Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. Robert Munsch is my favorite author of childrens books, because Love you Forever is the best childrens book ever written. And I do a great Grover voice when I read The Monster at the End of the Book.

I think I just don't like being told what to do. (My husband, when I'm asking for an opinion or advice, points out that I'm going to do what I want anyway. He's right, but I just like his input....) Especially by men claiming to speak for God. That's a pretty big claim and in my mind, you'd better be able to back it up. And backing it up with a convenient new prophecy, what can I say, I get suspicious of your motives. Any religion in its most fundamental form seems to become problematic for me, but the fundamentalist of all religions are insistent that theirs is the only true path. Fundamentalist Christians, who insist the Bible is correct and exact, but don't take into consideration that it is a translation, be it King James or New International. And really, how do we know? Isn't it a little vain on our part to assume that God's day is 24 hours, like ours? After all, the day's are different on other planets. Couldn't Gods day in Genesis be one hundred thousand of ours? And if that is possible, then doesn't the possibility exist that the Book is a more subjective discussion than some of us want to believe? The Book of Mormon, translated from Golden Plates that Joseph Smith received from and subsequently returned to the Angel Moroni. Smith translated them by putting a "seer stone" called the Urim and Thummim into a hat, looking into the hat and dictating what he saw. It is a matter of faith to believe this in the Mormon church. Fundamentalist Islam, which dictates Sharia law and abominable treatment of women.

So, how does one find faith in all this? I absolutely think its a wondrous thing, and I've always envied the simple faith of others. Faith in the existence of God is easy for me, but faith in religion is almost impossible for me to maintain. Does one need religion to understand God? Must we follow a specific creed to see Him after our death? For that matter, is there an after? Are there unborn souls in heaven waiting to be born, as some religions believe? Or do our souls come into being at our birth/conception? (Not gonna touch that birth/conception argument....totally un-winnable on either side.) Why do we fight each other in the name of God? Is it because one belief system really trumps all, or is it because our frail human egos insist it must be so? Do you find faith difficult or easy to maintain? How do you find and keep faith?

Review: Fear God and the Shadow of the Muslim Sword by Mr. Pat

In the mid 1980’s, I decided it was time to decide, once and for all what my religious beliefs were. After a year of theological study and research, and pretty much a lifetime of questioning, I left the church of my childhood. In doing so, I became an apostate to that particular religion, and accordingly, my eternal soul will be judged severely when the Judgment Day arrives. Yup---I’m goin’ to hell. I’d spent the first 22 years of my life really trying to believe this particular theology. I went to church, listened to the stories, sang the songs, but I always wanted to know “why?” I assumed that if God gave me the mind He did, then He expected me to use it, but my questions were never exactly appreciated the way I thought they should be, nor answered very clearly.

After 9/11, like many Americans, I realized that I didn’t know very much about Islam, other than some splinter groups really hated us and seemed bent on destroying us. Can I hear a “well…duh…where have you been for the past 20 years?…” I toddled off to the library in an effort to educate myself, and lordy…the book I picked up, 800 plus pages; it started roughly 2000 years ago and was really, painfully detailed. I made my way through the beginnings, but didn’t get too far past Muhammad’s early life, before I sort of gave up. More and more books all purporting to “explain” Islam arrived on the shelves of the local bookstores, but I began to notice that depending upon the author, each book took a very different slant. Not knowing what I could read for an unbiased description of the religion left me relying on whatever information was being fed to me through the media. And we all know how reliable our media is! Because of my own previous religious research into Christianity and religion I grew up with, I’d developed a healthy skepticism for authors of religious based books that want me to believe them without question.

Fear God and The Shadow of the Muslim Sword by Mr. Pat is a book that could serve as a wake-up call to the western world. (Mr. Pat is a pseudonym for Patrick Roelle, whose bio you can read HERE.) The book attempts to explain Islam and the Muslim world. And mostly, it shows us that, in its very heart, Islam is pretty much unexplainable. The holy book, the Qur’an, wasn’t written until years after the death of its prophet, and was one of at least 25 different versions. All other versions were destroyed when this one was accepted, and its acceptance wasn’t based on the content, but because it was written in the dialect of Muhammad’s tribe. Muhammad’s Hadith, a biographical book about his stories and instructions that with the Qur’an comprise the laws of Islam wasn’t written until 130 years after his death. And who knows how much folklore had added to his tales by that time? Add to that the nuances of the Arabic language, where a verse in the Qur’an can be completely interpreted in two entirely different ways, with both interpretations correct and its just impossible for this western mind to understand the pull this religion has on its followers. Are there no Muslims who ask, “But…WHY?”, as I did of my childhood church?

After 9/11 and the worldwide Muslim extremist attacks that have occurred since then, I think a lot of people feel worried about the burgeoning Muslim populations. Mr. Pat explains my concerns better than I can in the following passage:

“…If we take the low side of the Muslim community’s own estimate, we can assume there are 6 million Muslims in America. If we make another assumption that only 10 percent are inclined to violence against secular society, that means there are 600,000 radicals in our midst. If we further assume that only 10 percent of the radicals have the discipline to carry out their beliefs through action that still leaves 60,000. And, if we further assume that only 10 percent of those have the means and the opportunity, we have 6,000 men and women freely roaming this country who would think nothing of carrying a tactical nuclear weapon in the back of a van and setting it off in Times Square of in the stands of the Super Bowl. Our politically correct society that believes racial profiling and waterboarding is un-American needs to come to terms with the reality of the figures.”

This book explains the basis and meanings behind what modern and moderate Muslims say, as well as what sharia law is, and what it means for a society that follows it. (Here’s a little hint, rape is not a crime in Islam for a man. Sharia assumes the woman enticed the man, and rape is fornication, therefore, the woman is flogged.) Mr. Pat explains clearly the differences between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This is a slim volume, but it is packed with research, including 194 footnotes. The author attempts a non-biased approach to the discussion, but really, when you read examples such as the one I just cited, it’s pretty hard to remain unbiased.

Fear God and the Shadow of the Muslim Sword is a fascinating, serious attempt to explain the inexplicable. We would be well advised to take notice.

My rating: (Which should be higher, but the book sort of freaked me out)

Review: The 8th Confession by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

In James Patterson and Maxine Paetro’s eighth outing in the Women’s Murder Club series, The 8th Confession, San Francisco’s wealthy are being targeted. A killer has conceived the perfect murder, and when the city’s most prominent couple fall victim to the killer, SFPD Detective Lindsay Boxer catches the case. As she and her partner, Detective Rich Conklin investigate the crime, another brutal murder occurs; this time the victim is a preacher who works with the homeless. His murder seems to be largely ignored until reporter Cindy Thomas starts nosing around and discovers that this seemingly beloved preacher is not what he appeared to be. Add in a rolling meth lab, some snakes, vengeful wack-job, a budding romance and wrap it all up nicely by the last chapter, and there you go…vintage Patterson.

James Patterson’s books are always fun to read. It’s sort of like watching C.S.I., you pretty much know what direction the story is going, there’s usually a couple of odd little tangents the story goes off on, that end up being pertinent to the conclusion, enough personal interaction to make you feel like you know the characters, and a good, if not predictable conclusion. Patterson and Paetro do a good job of making sure none of the regular characters remain static in any of the series. Everyone in the series manages to make an appearance and move their own story line along. And they do a bang-up job of moving those folks forward chronologically while keeping the plot moving along. When there’s a cast of characters this size, I’m not sure that’s an easy thing to do either. I’ve read the whole series, but I think its written in a way that would allow someone to come in part way and still be able to figure out who’s who and what’s what. Which is something else that may not be an easy thing for an author to accomplish.

The 8th Confession is a fun, fast read and if you’re a fan of the series, it’s a must read.

My rating:

Review: The Shimmer by David Morrell

Dan Page, a police officer, comes home one afternoon to find his wife is gone, leaving behind a note that simply says, “gone to see my mother”. But Dan’s mother-in-law claims to know nothing about a visit and his wife, Tori isn’t there either. Dan puts out a missing persons bulletin and tracks Tori down to a small town in Texas. Rostov, Texas attracts hundreds of visitors each year to watch the mysterious “Rostov lights”, which appear like dancing glowing orbs. Not everyone can see the lights, but those who can are drawn to them and compelled to visit this tiny town.

A gunman arrives one evening and begins to scream, “Go back to hell where you belong” at the lights, and then turns his weapon on crowds of people watching the lights. More people are drawn to Rostov because of the massacre, TV cameras abound and the stage is set for even more bloody confrontations.

The Shimmer by David Morrell is based on Morrell’s interest in a similar phenomenon just outside of the little bitty town of Marfa, Texas. Morrell came across an article in 2004, a sort of “fluff” piece about the Marfa lights, and while reading up on them discovered that Marfa was also the location used in filming the movie Giant, with James Dean. Only David Morrell could take these two little unrelated bits of trivia, do some research, find stuff linking them together and then write a suspense thriller like this! Sort of like a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing, but without the Bacon. (*snicker, snicker….)(hey...stop rolling your eyes...)

Cops, wives, ambitious reporters, unexplained phenomenon, creepy manipulative military guys in Humvees, and research scientists; this book manages to tie all these weird, disparate threads together and forms a well-told and wonderfully inventive story.

The Shimmer hits the bookstores today, July 7. Go git yerself a copy….it’s good….

My rating:

Review: A Thread of Truth by Marie Bostwick

After years of abuse, Ivy Peterman and her two little kids hit the road, with nothing but the car and the clothes they’re all wearing. Ivy’s husband is a real charmer, and even though he’s got Ivy convinced that she’s worthless and can’t survive without him, when he finally hits their daughter instead of whomping on Ivy, she’s had enough and she hightails it. (Which shows remarkable restraint on her part, frankly an ice pick in his ear would have solved the problem quite nicely.) (But then the story would have been over too soon.) (Hah!! Triple parentheses just like Fabuloso! Take that Fabuloso!!)

Ivy finds a nice little town to hide out in, and starts to rebuild her life. She finds friends, but the kind that she keeps at arms length, because she’s afraid hubby-dearest will find her and she’ll have to run again, so why bother making close friends. She finds a job at the local quilt shop, Cobbled Court Quilts, and life is really looking up. Then a popular quilting TV show comes to town to shoot an episode at the shop. (For all you non-quilters..yes…there are in fact popular quilt shows, we even have our stars that we’d all like to meet someday, sort of like rock and roll, but with needles, patterns and fabrics…lots and lots of gorgeous fabrics….oh..but I digress…..)

When a promo for the show is shown on-air, Ivy is shown for a split second and it’s enough for her husband, (Supreme Ass of all the worlds Jackasses) to locate her. This time though, Ivy has a whole group of friends standing behind her as she stands her ground.

Marie Bostwick’s novel A Thread of Truth is the second in her Cobbled Court Quilt series. I haven’t read the first, but that wasn’t a problem. The author does a fine job of introducing her characters and filling in the background for us first time readers. But not in the “repeat the whole first book” way that would annoy the return reader. I really admired how well this seemingly sweet author managed to nail the abuse and the behavior of the abuser. Bostwick writes graciously, without any gratuitous sex or violence, but when it’s called for, this lady can write an intimidating scene of brutality. She does an excellent job in the portrayal of the abused wife as well, making Ivy unapproachable and guarded, sweetly vulnerable. My interest was also caught by the peripheral characters, and I’ll be adding Bostwick’s first novel, A Single Thread to that aforementioned “Teetering Tower O’ TBR” books.

My rating:

Review: No One You Know by Michelle Richmond

Twenty years ago, Ellie Enderlin’s sister was murdered and the crime went unsolved. Lila was a student at Stanford, an up-and-coming mathematician with a bright future, the genius daughter that is a source of obvious pride in her family. Her death changed their family forever. Now, two decades later, Ellie comes into possession of Lila’s notebook, a book she carried with her everywhere she went. The notebook sends Ellie on a search to uncover the secrets that Lila kept, and the truth of her life and death.

In Michelle Richmond’s, second novel, No One You Know, we meet a family at the worst time in their lives, and through the eyes of the youngest daughter can see the ramifications of their loss. Ellie has always defined herself as the “bad daughter”, not because she’s “bad”, but because her sister, Lila, was the “good daughter” and if there is a “good daughter” then it stands to reason there is a “bad” one. Ellie has never felt like she has had the drive or ambition of her brilliant older sister, and it seemed to me, has sort of felt like a loser all her life. It was interesting in the novel to see how Ellie learned about her sister, about who she really was, not the idealized version that Ellie had built up in her mind.

“But the fact was that she had been twenty-two years old when she died, old enough to know what she was doing, old enough to understand what an affair might do to a marriage. I tried to chase the thoughts away. To even contemplate that Lila might have been at fault in anyway felt wrong. In my story, she had always been blameless.”

The slow changes that we see Ellie undergo in the novel make it worth the read. Ellie has spent most of her life guarded and self-contained, sort of the “love ‘em and leave ‘em” type. I enjoyed the slow unfurling of both the storyline and Ellie. And the book is chockfull of great lines about storytelling:

“A story does not only belong to the one who is telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who is listening.”

Lest we forget, Lila was a mathematician, so of course, math plays an interesting part in the novel as well. I spent a couple of minutes playing around with the Goldbach Conjecture before I remembered that I stink at math and don’t like math. But when a story contains a line like “Every even integer greater than two can be expressed as the sum of two primes…” you just gotta start thinking, “hmmm….28, 14 and 14…no…13 and 15….yeah, that’s it….oh wait…I hate math….”

I liked Richmond’s writing style; she sets the scene quite nicely, with a flair for description that makes it easy to “see” what she sees. (But without the lyrical poetic stuff that takes three paragraphs to say, “It was foggy” that some authors use…) I liked her character development; she has an eye for detail that really brings the people on the pages to life. I haven’t read her first book, A Year of Fog, but after finishing No One You Know, I was curious enough to head to Amazon and check it out. It sounds like an interesting read as well, and I’ll be adding it to my teetering tower o’ To Be Read books. (aka…the teetering tower o’ TBR…nice alliteration, huh?)

My rating:

Review: Drood by Dan Simmons

In Dan Simmons, Drood, Charles Dickens is traveling with his secret mistress when their train is in a terrible accident. Dickens is at the height of popularity, a famous and successful writer, but when the accident happens, he changes. He begins living a kind of double life, on the one hand a successful author, and happy family man, and on the other, a frequenter of the dark seamier side of life that the slums of London offers. Drood is based upon historical details of Dickens life and Simmons uses the voice of another writer, Wilke Collens as the narrator as it tries to make sense of the last mysterious years of Dickens life.

What to say about Drood? Mr. Simmons……Dan….buddy, pal, I love you, really I do. The Terror was freakin’ awesome. Summer of Night, A Winter Haunting, Darwin’s Blade…really liked them all. Drood was, well, reaaally long. I mean reaaaaallllly loooooong. The descriptions of London, in a word, marvelous, and thank God I didn’t live back then. Dear Lord, it must have stunk to high heaven! But I just couldn’t get into this book. I tried; I put it down and came back to it countless times. I made it about halfway and I finally just gave up.

Readers everywhere just love this book, so I guess my tastes are just a bit too plebian. It was sort of like a movie that everyone loves and I don’t. I think sometimes I just have to connect in some way with at least one character before I can find something to love about a book or movie. And I just found everyone in Drood to be downright unlikable. Since I just really didn’t care who Drood was, I found all the folderol about finding him weird and pointless. So pointless, in fact, that Drood has officially joined Follow Me, Life of Pi, and The Historian as wildly popular books that I did not finish. (I’m telling you, I’m a bourgeois Philistine…I know I am….)

My rating:

Review: The Lost Quilter by Jennifer Chiaverini

In The Runaway Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini, a runaway slave named Joanna was introduced to Chiaverini’s readers. Joanna’s bid for freedom was short lived. She was returned to a plantation in Virgina by slave catchers, leaving behind a beautiful quilt and a son. In Chiaverini’s newest addition to her Elm Creek Quilts series, The Lost Quilter, we finally learn what became of Joanna. Through old letters found by the Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson, an old diary belonging to Sylvia’s aunt and the quilt itself, we can discover the legacy Joanna left behind.

Chiaverini’s series are a delight. Quilter or not, there is something in these books for everyone. (Okay, maybe not everyone…they are absolutely chick lit, but chick lit without gratuitous sex, bad language, questionable judgment and with a sort of refinement to them) I’ve been a big fan of the series since the first book; The Quilter’s Apprentice and I’ve really enjoyed how the author keeps the series going. Some of the novels follow individual characters, some follow the cast of characters as a group and yet other novels, like The Lost Quilter use the characters and location as a jumping off point to other characters and other times. The author has a love of history and tells us anecdotes about the Civil War era that brings it to life.

“Not long after that, Joanna learned from Mrs. Ames’s Jenny that a few days before, in the very early hours of the morning while the officers were ashore, a slave harbor pilot named Robert Smalls had commandeered a Confederate transport steamer. He brought his family and a dozen other slaves on board, turned the ship toward the open sea, blew the proper whistle signal to each Confederate fort to secure permission to pass, and sailed out to the Union blockade, where he raised the white flag and turned over the ship to a Union captain. Joanna was thrilled by his story of daring and courage, and she wished with all her heart that she had known Robert Smalls and could have joined those families on board the Planter.”

True story--I looked it up, I always like it when a novelist tosses in a bit of verifiable history!

I'd recommend any of the Elm Creek Quilt Series, of course, if you’re not a quilter, then just read the novels, but if you’re a quilter too, you might want to check out the line of quilt project books that Chiaverini has written too. She not only uses quilts in her novels, but she also makes the quilts she writes about. That kind of authenticity is rare, and its so much fun to pick up one of her novels and see on the inside cover, artwork made up of the quilt blocks she uses in the novel. And its really nice to know you can give one of her books to your Grandma for her birthday and not be embarrassed when they read it!

My rating:

Review: Fifty is Not a Four-Letter Word by Linda Kelsey

Hope Lyndhurst-Steele is turning 50 and she’s freaking out. Her life is so perfect that it’s like a happy Lifetime movie; the hip magazine job, marvelous husband, loving son, and lots of friends, and yet, she’s freaking out. As is typical in life, just when everything is perfect, life turns to crap. Hope loses her job and her spiral into cloying self-pity strains her marriage. Her son decides that she is, in fact, a pain in the butt and her mom has announced that she'll be shuffling off this mortal coil soon. The stress gets to be a bit much so Hope takes off on a solitary weekend in Paris, and succeeds in jump-starting her libido. When she returns home, planning to jump start something/someone else, her husband surprises her with the old, “Welcome home honey, I’m leaving” bit. When life goes to crap, it really goes to crap…

Fifty is Not a Four-Letter Word by Linda Kelsey shows us how one middle aged, depressed, self-absorbed woman can finally begin to grow up a bit. The novel was both funny and sad. It begins as almost an ode to feminist think, where high-powered career women aspire to “have-it-all” without acknowledging the effect their choices can have on those around them. It was interesting to see how Hope’s character came to understand better the nuances of all those around her, and to lose her dogged determination to be defined by her career and professional accomplishments rather than any personal beliefs, actions and attitudes.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit, but not the way I thought I would. I had thought I would empathize with Hope, I turned 50 a couple of years ago, but it never bothered me. Fifty wasn’t a four-letter word for me and based on the title, (which I love) I expected a story where the character might be a bit like me. And that was pretty much the only thing I shared with the book; that I agreed with the title! Hope and I had absolutely nothing in common. But I sort of liked her anyway. I’m the polar opposite of her, and I’ve always suspected there was something wrong with my girl DNA since I don’t like the shopping, parties, lunches, etc. life that the women in the book seem to be so absorbed in;---but I sort of liked her anyway. My kids don’t seem to disregard me, I’ve never had a high-powered career, I couldn’t find a caterer or a decorator if my life depended on it;---but I sort of liked her anyway. And I kind of think that might just be a sign of a successful story, when you really can’t fathom what it would be like to be the protagonist, but you still sort of like them.

My rating:

Review: The Alexander Cipher by Will Adams

The Alexander Cipher by Will Adams is an adventurous novel that has it all. Political machinations, ethnic strife, power-hungry corporate types, greedy antiquities dealers, mercenaries, sick children, desperate parents, brainy scientific types and beautiful women. Sort of like Matthew Reilly, but better edited, without all the damn italics and exclamation points!! (Sorry, when I think Reilly, I think !! OH BOY!! Exclamation points!!!) But, I digress….

Will Adams debut novel features a slightly nere’do well Egyptologist, Daniel Knox, who everyone seems to love to hate. His life long interest in Alexander the Great puts him right in the thick of things when the bad guy, Nicolas Dragoumis,(who is some kind of cuckoo and wildly wealthy) learns that Alexander’s tomb may have been discovered. Nicolas has some wacky belief that the tomb contains secrets and treasures that will cause Macedonia to become an independent state once more, and he has the wealth, power and obsession to see his beliefs through. It's up to our hero, Daniel, and of course, his newly discovered gorgeous sidekick, Gaille, to stop him and save the antiquities. (Sort of like an Indiana Jones meets James Bond thing, but without MI-6 and spiffy weapons and toys.) And of course, there is history between Gaille and Daniel that has to be resolved for their adventure to be a success.

I’m a little bit of an ancient history buff, so I found the well-researched novel interesting, although occasionally confusing. There is a large cast of characters and apparently my old brain had a little trouble keeping up. Once I figured everyone out though, I really enjoyed the book. It’s a bit slow here and there, but overall, a good solid read.

My rating:

Wow!! I'm a whole year old today!!

So, sing along......

Today's is my birthday...Happy Birthday to me......dum dee dum....okay, so I can't carry a tune!

My first blogging year is behind and I've had so much fun! I've met some wonderful people, talked with some spectacular authors, and enjoyed more than I can say this little peek into the publishing world!

Thanks to everyone who's ever read my blog! I hope I can get better and better, all you fellow book bloggers have set the bar pretty high, and I'm hoping I can get as good at this as all of you are!

Still singing......;o)Today is my birthday....Happy birthday to me....as I walk off into the morning sun......(with a couple of books under my arm...)

(Take a peek at my blog-o-versary giveaway by clicking HERE!)

Review: Follow Me by Joanna Scott

I’ve been trying to figure out how to review Joanna Scott’s novel, Follow Me for the longest time. I was supposed to participate in the blog tour, way back when, and I completely bailed. At the time, I blamed my inability to get into this book on the fact that I had pneumonia and felt like snail slime. But I did read a couple other books when I was sick and enjoyed them. I decided to pull the book of the shelf and look through it this morning prior to (finally) writing my review. I place little post-it tabs throughout books I read. An interesting phrase may be noted, a word I don’t know, just something that caught my eye. I guess my feelings about Follow Me can be summed up with a couple of paragraphs I marked in the book and the note I made to myself on the post-it.

“Scrappy changeling, there and not there, transforming herself with a snap of her fingers. Good-bye, hello. Dear Sally, I’m your namesake. Wait for me. You should listen to what I have to say. I have the advantage, after all, of living in your future. I know what’s in store for you. Of course, that makes it more difficult to be accurate in my description of the past and keep the facts compatible.”

Or another marked passage,

“Touch your fingertip to a bubble. Feel the pop of cold. Cold, clear water squeezed from subterranean stone. Water seeping into the spring, filling the basin, spilling over the mossy slate ledge, flowing with a persistence peculiar to rivers, tumbling across a wide plateau, over a hillock, and down, down, down, for two hundred and sixty curving miles to the lake.” …..And it goes on and on and on…..

Both post-its say the same thing…..”WTF???” Apparently I was a bit, shall we say, bemused by the writing style. (Note to self…avoid all forms of novels described as “lyrical” by wiser, smarter and classier fellow bloggers…)

Yup, sorry, I hated it. Didn’t get past page 184. And that took me a week. Don’t get me wrong. I really wanted to like it. And I tried. I could even see my Grandma in Sally. I hoped I’d figure out that my grandma, like Sally, started out as a relatively happy girl and the crap in her life made her into such a bitter, cantankerous old biddy. And maybe Sally and Grandma were a lot alike. I’ll never know because the author’s stream of consciousness description’s that just went on and on drove me nuts. And no…it wasn’t just the pain pills and cough syrup talkin’ either! I re-read a couple of pages today, and nope, still can’t read it!

I think it’s probably a pretty good book, but I’m just possibly too shallow for it. So, I’m sorry, Joanna. I think you’re a perfectly lovely person, but this former farm girl is just too uncultured and borderline Redneck to appreciate it!

My rating—is not fair because I didn’t even finish the book, but what the heck, it’s my blog and I can darn well be unfair….

Review: Awakening by S.J. Bolton

Claire Benning is a damaged, isolated and almost monastic veterinary wildlife surgeon. The organization she works at rehabilitates injured and sick wildlife, and she spends her days saving everyone from badgers to roe deer. When a neighbor in her tiny village dies of snakebite, Claire is asked in for a consult as the local snake expert. She finds the victim has died of the snake venom, but of much higher concentrations than is possible from one snake. As it becomes apparent that a human, not a snake, is the cause of death, more snakes appear and more attacks ensue. Joining with a local constabulary and an eccentric world-renowned snake expert, Claire strives to discover who is behind these attacks as people continue to die.

S.J. Bolton’s second novel, Awakening caught my interest from page one. Bolton manages to build her characters slowly, the same way we get to know people in our lives. We find out the reason for Claire’s reclusiveness quite early on, but the cause isn’t given to us until much further into the book. Claire’s relationships with those around her, her dogged determination to remain aloof and alone, and the slow eroding of those walls she’s built around herself are a cornerstone of this book. While the title, Awakening, leads us to believe it refers to the behavior of the snakes, it also refers to Claire herself. The author does a bang-up job of incorporating into the story the practices of a little known sect of snake handlers in the United States, and the background information regarding them is delivered to the reader perfectly. Bolton knows that people are nuts and often truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

Lots of snakes figure in the book, and I know snakes can creep a lot of people out. But nevertheless, this is a great mystery. Oh, I’m such a Smarty-Pants; I had the whole plot figured out by about page 153. I was dead wrong, but until the last couple of chapters, I was feeling pretty smug. And I do so love being wrong when it comes to the ending of a book.

S.J. Bolton was an author that I’m not familiar with. But I’ll be picking up her first novel, Sacrifice and adding it to my teetering tower of “To Be Read” books on my next trip to the bookstore.

My rating:

Review: The Boneman's Daughters by Ted Dekker

Leave it to Ted Dekker to come up with a novel way to totally creep us out. In Boneman’s Daughter, Dekker gives us the story of a sicko (of course) serial killer who is searching for the “perfect daughter”. (Because after all, even serial killers deserve adoring devotion and unswerving loyalty… Ick) The Bone Man kidnaps girls and when they just can’t live up to his expectations, (thinking their kidnapper is the best thing ever and being so happy to live with him) he smashes their bones until they die. (Over-react much?)

Ryan Evans is a military intelligence (I know—that’s considered an oxymoron by some) officer, recently returned from the Middle East. He was captured there, and oddly enough, forced to watch the deaths of innocents by the same methods the Boneman uses. Weird coincidence, huh. Get past it..it sets up the whole story! He is filled with regrets, his family is gone because of the dedication he had to his work and the job he gave his life to has pretty much messed him up. He’s got an angry ex, a kid named Bethany that won’t speak to him, and major mental issues from his captivity.

Until the Boneman take his daughter. (Note to bad guys..don’t piss off military types…) Now the FBI is on Ryan’s tail, because his past makes him the perfect patsy for the Boneman’s crimes, Ryan is on the Boneman’s tail, and Boneman is trying to make sure Bethany is the perfect daughter. And we know what happens if she isn’t.

I love Ted Dekker. Not only can he write terrific, freaky-deaky Christian Sci-Fi, like the Circle Trilogy,(and really…who the heck else can even think of the genre) he also writes great mysteries. I’ll grant you, the premise here was a bit contrived. I mean, what are the odds that a Middle Eastern wack-job has the same penchant for breaking bones as an All American Serial Killer. (Dekker does explain where both of the characters predilections come from, but I still thought it was a stretch.) I will say I appreciated the ending, I expected the whole “justice will prevail, law and order…blah blah blah bit. I forgot this is Ted Dekker and he’s not one for conventional, easy endings. But I did just re-read the last page, and I’m sort of wondering if….hmm….can Boneman return??? I think that might, (mind you, I said, MIGHT) just be possible!

My rating:

Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card!!

My "Blog-o'versary" is coming up on June 23 and I'll be a whole year old! Wow...time's just flyin' by! In honor of my "momentous occasion", I'm giving away a $25 Amazon gift card to some lucky reader. I'm gonna put a little twist on it though.

Have you ever read a book and loved it, only to learn that it doesn't find the great success you'd expect? Maybe because its from a small publishing house, or maybe because its badly marketed? It's not only frustrating for us, the readers, but imagine how it must feel to be the author. To put heart and soul into a book, to know its really good, and yet....phhhhtttt....tepid sales.

I'm a huge advocate for a book I read this year, and first I want to encourage all of you to get out there and buy this book. The publishers have completely blown it, they've marketed this book as a niche book in a narrow, restrictive genre, and its just soooo much more!

Big Sid's Vincati is simply the best book I've read this year. My review is HERE. But don't take my word for it, you can read other reviews on AMAZON as well. And yet another review is HERE. Even Stanley Fish at the NY Times likes it! (It just takes him a while to get to it in his posting.) Everyone I've given this book to has loved it. Young, old, male, female, motorcycle guy and housewife. I can't find a negative review out there and believe me, I've looked! So, I'm asking the blogging community to get behind this book and send it flying off the shelves!

So--here's what you do to enter this giveaway.

First..leave me a comment with your favorite under-appreciated and under-loved book. That'll get you one entry.

Second--Blog or tweet about this giveaway, that's entry #2!

Third--Blog or tweet about Big Sid's Vincati. Help me get the word out there and let's see if we can generate some buzz. That'll get you another entry.

Fourth..Read Big Sid's and review it! Leave me a link to the review and that'll get you three more entries!

All total, you can get 6 entries for the giveaway and you'll read a great book while you're at it.

I'll be sending the gift card electronically, so the contest is open worldwide. I want to give you all time to get the book and read it for those last three entries, so I'm going to run it for one month. I'll randomize the entries and draw a winner on JULY 18!!

C'mon world...let's get together and help a deserving book find great success!! You can buy the book at your local store or here's a link to the Amazon page. (And to prove to y'all that my intentions are pure, I'm not putting up the Amazon associates link that might make me a few pennies on the sale!)

The Ever-Changing Rules of Health

Chocolate's a great start, bring on the margaritas and chips.....

Review: Fragment by Warren Fahy

A long-range research ship called the Trident is filming a reality show called Sealife in the debut novel, Fragment by Warren Fahy. The show’s cast includes bright young scientists and is directed for a woman searching for the right drama to re-energize her career. The ship is drawn to a tiny island, Henders Island, so far from any human contact that it only appears in one small notation in a ships log from 1791. This island isn’t a mutant anomaly, or a lost world frozen in time, or a modern day version of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Instead, it is a place unlike anything anyone in the world has ever seen; a place that has evolved over countless eons, on a completely different path than the rest of our planet. A place where one life form after another threatens to destroy anything put in front of it, and could cause worldwide devastation if it were to ever leave the island. In the midst of this chaotic ecosystem, a species is discovered that must be saved against all odds.

When I finished reading Fragment, my first thought was, “there’s no way this is a debut novel”, the writing is just too good. So I toddled off to my computer and googled away. It seems I’m wrong; it most certainly is Warren Fahy’s debut novel. Although he has been a bookseller, editor and the lead writer for RockStar Games Red Dead Revolver, as well as the author of a few articles, this is his first novel. I’m not of the video game generation, so the Red Dead bit…okay, means nothin’ to me. But I’ll say I wasn’t surprised. I’ve watched my kid play some video games and the creatures in the games are fantastical and imaginative. (Okay, and lots of times creepy, gory and weird too!) The imagination of the author in creating the creatures on Henders Island is sort of reminiscent of a video game, but with lots of detail, scientific research and information. Kind of like a video game for literate grown-ups!

I was lucky enough to score an Advanced Readers Copy and didn’t realize until the end of the book that there was both a map of the island in the back, as well as pencil drawings of a couple of the creatures. This brought me to the authors website, where there are some really beautiful renderings of some scenes from the book, as well as links to drawings of all the creatures. It was interesting to me that the pictures were pretty much as I’d imagined the creatures to look. The descriptive talents of Fahy are so terrific, that the pictures only enhanced the book for me, I was sort of glad I’d envisioned the critters for myself before I looked at the sketches and paintings. But, when you read the book, or if you’re curious, you should take a peek at Fahy’s website. You can find it HERE.

I’d really love to see more books by Fahy, his style, imagination and creativity made the book a compulsive pleasure to read. Another one of those multi-tasking books, where you read while you cook, clean, wait at Starbucks for coffee, at red-lights waiting for green, etc.

Fragment hit the bookstores on June 16, look for it, its really good!

My rating:

Review: Afraid by Jack Kilborn

In the nice quiet little town of Safe Haven, Wisconsin the peace and solitude is shattered when a helicopter crashes nearby. Suddenly the sleepy little town, with only one road in or out, and no full time police force is in a struggle for its survival. Contained within the helicopter and unleashed by the crash is a force bent on the total annihilation of the entire population of the town. People in the town begin to die violent and gory deaths and it’s on the shoulders of a single mom waitress, a firefighter and a county sheriff near retirement to stop.

Jack Kilborn’s Afraid is a great example of the suspense thriller genre. The heroes of the story are likable average folks, who find stores of courage and bravery when needed. The bad guys are scary, relentless and more than a little insane. The plot has unexpected twists, which led to lots of multi-tasking on my part. I was glad the book was a paperback; it’s so much easier to stir the spaghetti sauce while reading that way! Sadly, I haven’t figure out how to continue reading while washing the dishes, and when I vacuumed while reading the book, I think I missed a lot of spots. Yep, one of those can’t put it down books. The kind of book that when you finish, you head to the internet to find what else this guy has written so you can add it to your wish list.

Oh…and it’s a pseudonym for author J.A. Konrath, who is the author of the Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels series. I’ve not heard of this series, but I’m going to start with book one, Whiskey Sour and work my way through the list. I like this guys style!

My rating:

So--Who is this Mysterious Fabuloso??

Many have asked, and the only answer I can give, you must read out loud, with a deep voice in eastern European accented English.

"I dare not disclose the identity of FABULOSO. This is a sacred trust, that I will not violate....." *insert dramatic music here.....

Alright..you can stop reading out loud with the eastern European accent......

No really, I'm not telling.....Hey...stop with the accent already.......

Guest Reviewer: The Strain reviewed by Fabuloso!!

Today I have a guest reviewer, who prefers to be known as FABULOSO!! Uh...okay then....introducing....*drumroll please.....the debut review of.........*more drumroll....

Fabuloso

The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

This is the “popping of my [review] cherry” and I would be remiss to not thank myself for having that extra glass of Scotch. I’ve read some reviews about the book online and I tooooo will start with the obligatory “I am a fan of Guillermo del Toro’s films” blah, blah—P-p-Pan’s Labyrinth; Hellboy I & II; and even…Blade II! (Wesley Snipes + Kris Kristofferson = Oscar…or should have if the Academy wasn’t racist) (Interestingly, the vampires in The Strain remind me of the mutant vampires in Blade II) (Wow! Triple parentheses! How often do you see that?)

Because I’m a fan of Guillermo del Toro and because he is the master of creepy creatures, I distracted myself wondering how this was going to look on film. It was kind of like reading a book after seeing the movie—except the movie hasn’t been made yet.

The first two chapters—featuring the gentle giant Sardu’s ill-fated hunting trip and the tragic death of the passengers on flight whatever—of this epic tale grab you by the short hairs and don’t let go…until Chapter 3 when they let go (much to the relief of my short hairs). I didn’t have great expectations for this book and Sr. del Toro didn’t disappoint.

Halfway through the book our protagonists still don’t know what the f@*% happened on the plane and I’m thinking “didn’t they read the back cover of the book?” Three-quarters of the way through the book, when they’re still figuring things out, I came to realize what most of you already knew—that this is the first book of a trilogy and wasn’t going to have a tidy ending (didn’t I read the back cover of the book?). Although I really enjoyed the book, and can’t wait to see the pared down film, the author(s) spent so much time developing “the strain” that the ending was abrupt and unsatisfying. Again, I can’t wait to see the movie. Check out the trailer for the book below.

Submitted by Fabuloso