The Dead Travel Fast by Deanna Raybourn

I did some reading over the holiday weekend that in the run up to the holiday I hadn't had as much time to do. I read two and a half books and am halfway through another. Reviews to follow on those. This review is for Deanna Raybourn's The Dead Travel Fast-- a rare stand alone novel for the author, who has the Lady Grey mystery series to keep her busy. I wish she had more stand alone novels because I really liked this one, and currently I'm avoiding getting sucked into another series or author to follow. There are too many authors/series that I already follow, and sometimes it is agony waiting for the next release or installment to drop--AGONY!

I could easily turn this post into one that obsesses over the new books that I'm waiting for (im)patiently to drop in 2011, but I won't. It'll be hard, but I will restrain myself and return to the title at hand: The Dead Travel Fast. Now. As an aside: with most books you can see why they are titled what they are--the titles make sense and connect to or relate to the story. With other books one puzzles over the title and wonders what its connection is to the story because, well, it doesn't make sense. This is one of those books: its title doesn't really make any sense to me. There aren't any dead travelling fast or really travelling anywhere in this book.

In the wake of her beloved grandfather's death, Theodora Lestrange, determined to earn her keep as a writer, takes leave of her beloved sister and Scottish homeland with a small inheritance and three dresses to her name. No easy feat in 1853, she travels across an ocean and a continent to a remote castle that oversees an impoverished village in the Transylvanian countryside to visit a much loved boarding school friend, Cosmina. Cosmina is due to be married to Count Andrei Dragulescu, the master of the castle and village alike. Upon Theodora's arrival, all is not as she expected it both regarding her beloved friend's betrothal and the machinations and manipulations of those who live within castle walls. The villagers themselves are intensely held in thrall of the terrifying legends of strigoi (vampires) and werewolves who are said to plague the surrounding forests at night.

When a serving maid is found murdered in the castle all signs point to the visitation of a strigoi whose origins are much closer to the family and whose intention seems to be the destruction of clan Dragulescu. It becomes clear to both Theodora and Count Andrei, between whom a heady romantic attraction and affair has developed, that no one who lives at the castle, especially Theodora, is safe. Theodora, torn between believing the villagers' legends of the sinister supernatural or hunting for a much more believable, logical human cause for the misfortunes befalling the castle inhabitants, realizes too late that all is not as it seems both within the castle walls and among those she believed her friends.

Gothic, dark, Victorian are all words that describe this thrilling story with a romance at its heart shot heavily through with the haunting, mysterious, mythological, historically steeped atmosphere of a cold, decaying, remote Transylvanian castle built into the side of the Carpathian mountain range. It is breathlessly suspenseful as much for the intrigue as the Victorian romance. It is a story that takes several darkly unexpected, pulse pounding twists before arriving at its shocking, bloodcurdling conclusion. A vividly drawn atmosphere and vibrant characters depicted in the gothic Victorian style in addition to the mysterious, dark intrigue of the murders and their provenance make this book hard to put down.

I highly recommend you check it out the next time you're at the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip. I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage. The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it. It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger. Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read. Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one. Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment. The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story. It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve. Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week. This particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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