A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

The Complaints by Ian Rankin

2012-01-18T19:39:00.000-05:00

Ian Rankin is the well known British author of the Inpector Rebus series and other novels. The Complaints introduces a new character, Inspector Malcolm Fox. The second Fox novel caught my eye on the list of new arrivals on the online catalog, and I decided to read the first one before I read the second one. Overall, this is a good mystery with old fashioned detective work--gathering of information and following the threads of connections until the true story emerges. In a way it feels like this kind of story--one where the main character's career is targeted for a take down as part of a deal to make something else go away--that comes later in a series rather than right out of the gate in the first book. But no matter: it makes for a compelling read.

The setting is the gritty city of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the early months of 2009 while the city is in the midst of the real estate bust and teetering toward an economic downturn. These developments play into the plot mechanism of the story itself.

Malcolm Fox is with the Complaints and Conduct division, referred to (and despised) by other cops as the Complaints. This is the division that investigates other cops accused of corruption and other unsavory deeds. Here in the U.S. its equivalent is often called Internal Affairs.

Fox is asked to help 'the Chop Shop,' the division that investigates cyber crimes involving sex trafficking and child pornography rings, gather intelligence and surveillance on a young, up and coming detective named Jamie Breck. Breck was recently discovered to have a tenuous connection to an international, online child exploitation ring, and before long Fox is sucked into a much more complex investigation compromised by a seemingly unrelated incident that threatens both Fox's and Breck's careers.

Just after Fox begins checking out Breck, Fox's sister's abusive boyfriend turns up dead at a condo development site. By coincidence Breck is assigned the case, thus complicating Fox's involvement in the Chop Shop inquiry into Breck. As the homicide investigation progresses with few leads, Fox is targeted by Breck's superior, Billy Giles, who is an embittered friend of another cop recently suspended and soon to be indicted as the result of one of Fox's investigations. Meanwhile, Fox and Breck walk a dangerous line as Breck allows Fox more access and involvement in the homicide investigation in which Fox himself is a person of interest, and thus, should steer clear of. When Giles has the slightest excuse to get Fox suspended, he takes it, resulting in the suspensions of both Fox and Breck pending further inquiry.

Both left with time on their hands, Fox and Breck decide not to leave well enough alone and instead team up to continue their own investigation into the murder which is eventually linked to disappearing-presumed-dead developers with ties to organized crime. The deeper Fox and Breck delve into these mysteries and the timing of the investigations into both them and the murder and the links to the timing of a previous investigation's wrap up, the more everything stinks of a set up with Fox and Breck manipulated to be the fall guys. This all begs the questions: how far up the chain of command at headquarters does the corruption and conspiracy go? Who can they trust? And can they even trust each other?

Mystery fans will enjoy the serpentine twists of this story, and I recommend you check it out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Shock Wave by John Sandford

2012-01-11T16:41:00.000-05:00

I know, I know. It's been a very long time since I've posted a review--because it's a very long time since I've read a book. I'd started a few, but finished none and was fretting about how long this dry spell would last when along comes Shock Wave by John Sandford. It is the latest installment in the Virgil Flowers series, and it picks up about six months after the end of the last novel in the series. There was a wait for the book--and I think there still might be a long list of holds for the book. It was a very fast read--it only took me a few days to read it.

Shock Wave is so titled because of the rash of bombings at the story's center. It tells of the latest, big investigation for Virgil Flowers, the sometime writer and eternal fisherman who is also the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's top investigator and the governor's "third most favorite troublemaker."

On his day off, Virgil is called in to investigate when a bomb detonates at the new PyeMart construction site in Butternut Falls, Minnesota, killing the construction superintendent and severely traumatizing the civil engineer. The bombing follows in the wake of one that targeted PyeMart's corporate headquarters and its CEO in Michigan and proves to be only the first in a wave of bombings targeting PyeMart's latest expansion in Minnesota.

What Virgil finds in Butternut Falls is a town on the edge of economic destruction and brought to its knees by the controversial new PyeMart that, once open for business, will gut downtown mom and pop businesses and possibly pollute the nearby river and lake famous for its fishing prospects. The incoming PyeMart has local business owners and environmentalists alike up in arms. Adding to the powder keg of local tensions is the sketchy nature of the town council's about face in approving PyeMart's building permits: though there's no proof, it's common knowledge among locals that three city council members and the mayor were bought by PyeMart in order to get the construction approved.

At first Virgil's focus is tracking down the bomber as his supply of TNT though diminished by the recent bombs remains more than enough to level city hall, but eventually his investigation extends to include local corruption when evidence of bribery comes to light. Virgil deals in information and this investigation is no different with a suspect list a mile long and motives hard to dig up. Plus there's the fact that bombers are elusive to catch to begin with. When a viable suspect with motive, means, know how and balls finally emerges, hard evidence linking that person to the bombs is hard to come by and proves as elusive as finding a viable suspect.

Suspenseful, heart pounding, and puzzling, the reader wonders if Virgil has finally met his match. This book is hard to put down and, like all the other Flowers novels, proves to be quick read. I recommend you pick up this book the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill

2011-11-15T18:46:00.001-05:00

The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill is the first of the Simon Serrailler mysteries. Hill has written countless other books of fiction, non-fiction and a few children's books in addition to the Serrailler mysteries. This is the first book by Hill that I've read. Before I go on, I have a confession to make. About halfway through the book in the midst of a (failed) quest to find the proper pronunciation of the surname Serrailler (I hate it when there are words or names with ambiguous or unclear pronunciations in a book!) I read a spoiler regarding a central character's fate, and it nearly spoiled the entire book for me, and for a split second I considered ditching the book entirely. However, denial is a wonderful thing sometimes, and then the next girl went missing, and the story picked up immediately with this development, and I decided I had to finish it because I had to know who the culprit was and maybe that really bad thing doesn't really happen to that character? I also read that the second Serrailler book is better so I'm still on the fence about whether I'll actually read through the series or not.

Hill is a British author and the story is set in Britain. Specifically it is set in the small city/town of Lafferton. The dialog is light on the British dialect too depending on the character who's speaking. The story follows multiple threads of narrative among various residents of Lafferton, among them, Simon's sister, who's a local doctor who cares deeply for her patients. A close reader who pays attention to the clues set forth by the chapters from the perspective of the culprit will deduce his/her identity long before the story comes right out and reveals it.

Unbeknownst to Simon and greater Lafferton, an anonymous and previously unknown serial killer stalks the residents of the town. When DS Freya Graffham, a new arrival to both Lafferton and its police force, catches a missing persons case that yields few leads, few clues and a blank picture of the solitary, private missing woman who left no family or friends, Graffham knows there's something more sinister to the disappearance. However, absent concrete evidence to this end, her superior won't let her waste more resources on a case that is going no where fast. Instead Graffham continues working the case in her spare time and off hours based on her instinct that there is something buried beneath the surface. A look into past unsolved missing persons cases in Lafferton yields a few more cases of missing persons with tenuous similarities to Graffham's current case. A pattern soon begins to take shape: of people who disappear while out for a walk alone on the Hill in Lafferton, people who are never seen again.

In the subplots of the various residents' stories a theme in which New Age, alternative medicine and its effectiveness is examined as well as the various charlatans that prey upon the vulnerable people seeking cures for various ailments. How does this connect to the disappeared?

One quibble I have with this novel is that while it is billed as a Serrailler mystery, the man himself is on the back burner, and he is rarely seen and thus remains an enigma even by novel's end. This is frustrating because the reader wants to know more about him. However, Freya Graffham is clearly the star of this story while the series headliner plays a minor supporting role. Even Serrailler's sister has a larger role than he does.

Hill crafts a slow burning mystery that is as much about the disappeared and the serial killer as it is about examining alternative medicine and the residents of Lafferton connected in various ways to the Serrailler family. One can't help but fear that the calculating, diabolical person responsible for the disappearances is someone familiar or close to the Serrailler family, a family steeped in the medical profession.

The heart pounding climax is followed by a nail biting, sad ending. The characters, even minor characters, are vividly drawn and the reader feels they know something of them, except for Simon Serrailler who remains an opaque, enigmatic and flat character. Everything we know about him is second hand, shared in dialog or conversation between other characters rather than learned by seeing the story through his eyes and experience. For this reason, considering the novel is called a Simon Serrailler mystery and is one of a series of Serrailler mysteries, I'm disappointed and feel as if it's false advertising to call it a Serrailler mystery. As a result I feel rather ambiguous or indifferent towards this novel. It is available for borrowing in county.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Love Goddess' Cooking School by Melissa Senate

2011-11-08T19:03:00.000-05:00

Melissa Senate is a well established novelist apparently. She's had at least one novel adapted for a TV movie on the ABC Family channel. The Love Goddess' Cooking School is not her first novel--it is her TENTH! But for the fact that the text of the novel itself is rife with typos throughout the entire book, one would think that it is a debut. There are missing words, words in the wrong form, etc. For whatever reason this book had a crap copy editor and the mistakes kind of take a little away from the story. They're just enough of a distraction when they pop up that they pull the reader out of the story a little bit because you have to go back and read it again to make sure that yes, that really is a typo, and then you have to go back and read it again to figure out what that typo should be corrected to. It's a shame because it's a charming story, and I enjoyed reading it, except for all the typos.

When Holly's 16, her Italian grandmother, Camilla, reads her Po River stones for Holly's love fortune: Holly's one true love will like sa cordula, a nasty, detestable, old world delicacy of stuffed lamb intestines and peas. Yes, you read that right. Stuffed. Lamb. Intestines. Which is even worse than stuffed pig's stomach, Pennsylvania Dutch delicacy as it were.

Anyway. In the years following college Holly has trailed one man after another across the country and back again and cross country again, content to allow her love life and relationships dictate her life and where she lives it. Meanwhile, she's 30 now and has endured an endless string of go nowhere, dead end relationships with men of whom none liked sa cordula and thus, were not her true love. This knowledge serves as small comfort for a broken heart when Holly's latest relationship ends suddenly. Despairing that true love may not be in the cards for her, Holly also realizes that she's neglected finding herself and establishing an enjoyable career for the sake of seeking a lasting love.

In the wake of Holly's most recent failed love affair and shattered heart, she returns home to her grandmother's small bungalow on insular Blue Crab Island, off the coast of Portland, Maine. Her grandmother, a proprietor of a famous fortune telling business, successful Italian cooking school, and Italian food take out business, comforts Holly. But two weeks after Holly's return, her grandmother dies, leaving Holly everything--the businesses and the bungalow. Despite the fact that she's not all knowing like her grandmother and cannot cook to save her life, Holly is determined and desperate to keep the cooking businesses going as a legacy to her grandmother. Before long Holly realizes that cooking isn't just a tribute to her grandmother, it's also a comfort to her and has turned out to be something that she loves doing.

As Holly struggles to keep the businesses going, she bonds with the students of her first, tiny cooking class, forming friendships and healing broken hearts and finally finding a home for herself. On the surface this is a love story, however, it is also about the healing powers of food and friendship.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Evenfall by Liz Michalski

2011-11-02T19:20:00.002-04:00

Since I finished The Everafter I've had a bit of trouble finding a book that I like enough and that catches enough of my interest to want to finish it. I've started a book, read fifty pages or read over a hundred pages, and decided that no, it just isn't worth it, and I don't really care to finish it, so I don't. I've gone through several books this way: starting them only to never finish them. I'm hoping that Evenfall by Liz Michalski is the end of that spell because, Lord, that is no fun at all. Evenfall is the debut novel of Michalski. It's a novel that drips in regret--that is, two of its main characters' lives are steeped in it, and the third main character is 'thisclose' to heading that way if she doesn't open up her eyes, see what's in front of her, grow a pair and kick that two timing, money grubbing lover to the curb real fast.

Evenfall's chapters rotate among three perspectives. Frank, the recently dead beloved uncle, whose spirit haunts the farmhouse passed down the generations of his family, spends his days dwelling on the past: mainly about what was, what should have been and the consequences of the actions taken in response to events beyond his control. Of one thing Frank is sure: he made the wrong choice by marrying the wrong sister and staying in rural Hartman, Connecticut.

Gert, the old, prickly aunt, who abandoned both Frank and her family when it became clear that leaving Hartman with Frank was no longer possible; she was driven by the determination that staying was not a decision she could live with. The years she spent away from home, the decisions she's made to cut out of her life the people she once loved most, have cost her dearly.

Andie, beloved niece of Frank and Gert, returns to her uncle Frank's Hartman farm and the only stable home she's ever known to help her aunt Gert clean it out and ready it for sale. Andie's still healing from a failed love affair with a man both poorly matched and unfaithful to her; she hopes to spend a quiet summer alone with her aunt before moving on to a job in the fall. Instead she falls into another love affair with a man ten years younger than her, whom she used to babysit and who has loved her for years.

As much about the sacrifices we make for ourselves and for our families and the regrets left in the wake of these sacrifices when life and love doesn't turn out as we planned. In the end is the cost of the sacrifice worth the weight of the regret? Do we make peace with the life we have or do we let the bitterness of disappointed dreams change us?

I recommend you check this book out the next time you visit the library.

The Everafter by Amy Huntley

2011-10-21T14:30:00.000-04:00

Published in 2009 The Everafter is Amy Huntley's first and (thus far) only novel. It's a fast, suspenseful, and sad read--I read it in a day. Unfortunately, it is not available in county; I requested it through Inter-library Loan.

Madison Stanton wakes up dead in an endless, dark void populated only by the glowing objects she lost during her lifetime. She discovers each object is a portal to the moment in her life when she lost that object. She can use these objects to relive those moments to see her family and friends again who were involved in those moments, but there are rules. If she finds an object while reliving that moment, it disappears from the void and she can never return to that moment in her life. She can change the moments' outcomes, but in changing them, she also changes herself in imperceptible but monumental ways.

Using these objects Madison slowly pieces together who she was, who her family and friends were, when she died, and, she hopes eventually, how and why she died. But Madison isn't the only one who died that day--who else died and why? Can she use her lost objects to change her fate? Or is she only able to use them to reveal how and why she died? When the disturbing truth of her death is revealed, will Madison be ready to move on?

Equal parts haunting, heart wrenching and tragic, this is a young adult novel that has many layers--there's the metaphysics of Madison's spirit void and how she's able to travel back to various moments in her life and there are the moments in her life relived and retold throughout the novel. This is a novel as much about life and death as it is about a coming of age with the unique spin that the adolescent's coming of age happens after she is dead. It is a novel about the experiences and people who make us who we are and a story about letting go.

I recommend you check it out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

In The Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming

2011-10-20T18:15:00.000-04:00

In The Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming is the first in a mystery series starring an Episcopalian priest, Clare Ferguson, and Miller's Kill chief of police, Russ Van Alstyne. I mentioned in a previous entry there was a second mystery novel that I'd read and liked well enough but didn't like the characters enough to want to read the rest of the series. This is that novel. This title was on the book club list for a library in the Philadelphia area that our book club will be reading next year, and I decided that I wanted to read it too.

The Reverend Clare Ferguson is new to Miller's Kill and St. Alban's parish, a tiny town and Episcopalian parish in upstate New York. One bitterly cold winter evening Clare, just two weeks into shepherding her new flock, discovers a newborn baby boy bundled in blankets inside a box left on the steps of her church. When the body of a local teenage girl is discovered in the snow out on the frigid shores of the kill, Van Alstyne instinctively knows she is connected to both the baby boy and St. Alban's Church in some way. But the girl herself was not a parishioner, so who is her connection to Clare's church?

As Clare struggles to guide her extremely conservative congregation into serving the needs of their community, she is drawn into the ensuing investigation and a new friendship with Van Alstyne. Meanwhile, the pressures of an infertile couple bent on taking in the abandoned baby collide with the perverse dysfunction that infects the murdered girl's family. Class lines between the poverty stricken that her upper middle class congregation deems 'undesirables' are examined through the lenses of the foster care system and adoption.

As the story hurtles towards a pulse pounding, hair raising, disturbing resolution to the mysteries of the baby's parentage, the identity of the murderer and the murderer's motives, the reader will find this a hard book to put down. I recommend this read for hard core mystery fans who are tired of mysteries starring police detectives and forensic specialists. Check it out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Still Life by Louise Penny

2011-10-19T18:57:00.001-04:00

Still Life is Louise Penny's first novel in the series that features Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Life is a good book and a gripping mystery; however, the characters didn't make enough of an impact on me to want to read the entire series. This was also the case with the next book I'll review.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to the tiny village of Three Pines to investigate the suspicious death of Jane Neal, a beloved local woman found dead of a mysterious wound on a path through the woods near her house. In addition to the difficulty of proving the death was a homicide warranting a thorough investigation or a hunting accident, the investigation is hampered by the negligence and arrogance of Agent Yvette Nichol, new to Gamache's team. Meanwhile, Gamache, master of observation and detail, is convinced the suspicious death has roots sprung from seeds planted and left festering for decades.

I have to say that Nichol really irked me. Okay, if I'm honest, she infuriated me on multiple levels. Nichol is a young officer eager to move up the ranks of the police and is recently promoted to Gamache's homicide squad. She's not bright, quite immature, has a bad attitude and very poor interpersonal skills. And Gamache is determined to take her under his wing and mentor her.

In a story and a mystery that has several turns that reveal shocking revelations, one finds that the pages keep turning until one suddenly finds themselves at the surprising ending that unmasks the cruel and cunning murderer hiding in plain sight. Mystery fans will love this book--and probably the series. I recommend you check it out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Saint's Gate by Carla Neggers

2011-10-12T18:42:00.000-04:00

Saint's Gate is the first in a series by Carla Neggers that will star an ex-nun turned FBI agent and her deep cover FBI operative lover, which is really only a minor spoiler because let's face it, savvy readers will know right from the outset that these two will hook up by novel's end. I have a hard and fast rule that when an author starts the first lines of the first chapter with a main character's first and last names, as Neggers does with this one, I ditch the book because it always strikes me as a lazy way to start a story and probably a sign of mediocre writing. However, something about the story of Saint's Gate grabbed me. Neggers sets up an intriguing mystery with an unusual heroine at the center of the story. The art history and iconography elements add interest to what could be a run of the mill procedural FBI caper.

FBI special agent Emma Sharpe works on an elite team that tracks dangerous, high end art thieves who are often well funded. Out of the blue Sharpe is called home to Maine by Sister Joan, a member of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart, a convent whose mission is art conservation, restoration and education. It is where Sharpe was once a novice before she left to work a year for her family's art recovery and authentication firm after which she joined the FBI. Sharpe's specialization in art recovery and related crimes as well as her history with the convent make her the person to whom Sister Joan turns for help when a certain piece of art comes to the convent. But before the sister can tell Sharpe what concerns her, she's murdered and the artwork disappears.

Enter FBI deep cover operative Colin Donovan, fresh off a dangerous assignment and taking some much needed downtime in his native Maine; Donovan is enlisted by his friend, Father Bracken, the local priest serving the convent, to look into the nun's murder and by Sharpe's supervisor to keep eye on her. Before long Sharpe realizes that both the stolen art and Sister Joan's murder may be related to another piece of artwork depicting a saint that was Sharpe's favorite as a child. But that piece is now missing from her family's firm's attic vault. What does it all mean? How is it connected to her family? And what story do the missing artworks tell that someone would kill to keep hidden?

Despite some plot developments verging on the implausible, the book is an engaging, easy, and suspenseful read. The story is as hard to put down for the developing romance as it is for the mystery. You can check this book out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

In Search of the Rose Notes by Emily Arsenault

2011-10-06T19:15:00.000-04:00

In Search of the Rose Notes is Emily Arsenault's follow up to The Broken Teaglass, a novel previously reviewed here on the blog. I was looking back at previous posts and when I clicked through Teaglass' I decided to head to amazon to see if Arsenault had published a follow up yet. Sometimes these new authors can be tricky--some take forever to publish another novel, some never publish another novel. I'm still waiting for Ronlyn Domingue's follow up novel to The Mercy of Thin Air--and I've been waiting five years for it! I'm also wondering when Katherine Howe will publish a follow up novel to The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. Anyway I went to amazon and that's how found out Arsenault had published a second novel.

While Notes doesn't have as unique a premise as the setting of a dictionary company, poetry plays an integral role in this novel. The narrative is split between 1990 in the months leading up to and those following the disappearance of Nora's best friend, Charlotte's babysitter, Rose, whom the girls idolized, and 2006 in the wake of the discovery of Rose's bones buried in wicker by a pond shore that spurs a short lived reunion between the currently estranged friends.

The 1990 narrative is told from the perspective of eleven year old Nora, who sees and intuits things about Rose that Charlotte doesn't see or refuses to acknowledge. It's clear that there are currents of secrets running beneath the surface that eleven year old Nora cannot grasp.

The 2006 narrative sheds light on the current estrangement, personalities and dispositions of Charlotte and Nora as they recall that last summer with Rose and struggle to make sense of the discovery of her body so many years later. Communication between the two friends is stinted, frought with their shared assumptions regarding past history, marked by the tragedy of Rose's disappearance, and prone to misunderstandings due to false assumptions.

When Nora discovers a series of anonymous poems entitled "You" that were published in the high school literary magazine her senior year, years after Rose's disappearance and then discovers Rose's long forgotten dream log the girls kept that long ago summer, Nora realizes the poems were drawn verbatim from Rose's dream log. Both Nora and Charlotte each assume the other wrote and submitted the poems only to find that neither of them did. But if neither girl wrote the poems, then who did? And how are they connected to Rose's disappearance?

This is a novel as much about the boundaries and dynamics of friendship as it is a mystery about a disappeared girl. The story of Nora, Rose, and Charlotte easily and completely sucks the reader into its pages and the novel reads fast. The characters are distinctly drawn--though readers will find themselves exasperated with Charlotte. Ultimately the resolution is quietly devastating.

I recommend you check this book out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Coming Up For Air by Patti Callahan Henry

2011-10-04T19:25:00.000-04:00

Coming Up For Air is the first book by Patti Callahan Henry that I've read. I enjoyed it--great story made even better by great writing and vivid characters.

Ellie's mother is controlling and a force to be reckoned with but in the wake of her sudden death, Ellie becomes unmoored as she realizes she has come to a crossroads in both her life and her marriage. Ellie admits a heart breaking realization to herself: her marriage is loveless and she can choose to stay and allow it to wither what's left of her heart and soul or she can choose another path; a path that won't end with her becoming a numb, emotionless, steely woman like her mother.

Rusty, Ellie's husband, shows only the kind, charming self to the public, but Ellie knows he has another darker side, prone to cruel words and temper tantrums that he shows to her. While he's never raised a hand to her, Ellie's come to realize that she mistook his ways of controlling for ways of loving. And she's tired of it. One might also describe Rusty's behavior as borderline verbally abusive.

All these years Ellie's lived with the regret of what might have been with her first love, Hutch, had she not allowed her controlling mother to drive a wedge between them to manipulate the end of their love affair under the guise of protecting Ellie. Hutch comes back into Ellie's life after her mother's death because he wishes to finish some interviews and research he's been doing on her mother's life for a museum display. He tells Ellie about her mother's mysterious, nebulous, and, until now unknown to her family, involvement with the civil rights movement.

A hidden journal that her mother kept for most of her life is discovered in a locked drawer in her closet when Ellie's packing up her mother's clothes. In its pages Ellie finds a girl who grew up to be a woman different from the one she knew as her mother--a passionate woman, a woman in love with a mysterious, nameless man also involved with the civil rights movement before a disastrous Freedom Ride spells the beginning of the end of the love affair that shattered her mother's heart.

With the revelation of Ellie's mother's failed love affair and broken heart one wonders how much this experience influences her mother's actions to orchestrate the end of her daughter's love affair. One also wishes for a more satisfying confrontational resolution to the situation with Rusty, but that would have been out of character for Ellie. Part romance, part history, party mystery, I recommend you pick up this great read the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Burning Soul by John Connolly

2011-09-29T19:12:00.000-04:00

The Burning Soul is the latest installment of the Charlie Parker series. With Connolly's books it's sometimes hard to write reviews--the plots often have multiple strands that connect by the conclusion and it's hard to balance how much to include in the review to convey the flavor of the story without giving the entire thing away. There is more hinting in this book that something bad is coming Parker's way at some point and that (possibly) something else bad is keeping tabs on him unless the entity keeping tabs is the same nastiness headed his way in which case it's not fair that evil's doing reconnaissance on an unsuspecting Parker!

Pastor's Bay is a tiny, insulated town on the Maine coast whose inhabitants are wary of outsiders and protective of its own citizens. It has its small town, small time, petty crime, but little does it know that big government is luring some big city, big time, nasty criminals to its environs to orchestrate a take down of said criminals. As most things do in this world, these plans go to hell and several people end up dead by the end of this ill advised operation.

Randall Haight keeps to himself, works from home and is determined not to mess up the second chance he's been given under a new identity after he and a friend did their time for murdering a girl when they were fourteen. Haight's come to cherish his anonymous, mundane, haunted existence in Pastor's Bay until he starts receiving photos in the mail--photos that make clear that someone knows his secret, knows his true identity, knows his crime and is determined to make him squirm. To resolve the issue Haight turns to his attorney who turns to Charlie Parker to investigate the identity and motive of Haight's harasser.

When another fourteen year old girl disappears from Pastor's Bay, Charlie realizes there may be a much more sinister motive driving the person targeting Haight if that someone is setting up a scapegoat to take the blame for the missing girl. As Charlie delves into Haight's case and the periphery of the case of the missing girl, he can't shake the feeling that Haight is lying. When anonymous texts are sent to Charlie's phone questioning the ethics and behavior of the Pastor's Bay police chief and accusing the chief of telling lies, Charlie starts looking into the chief's past, too. In a story in which the truth is hidden by a veneer of lies and everyone's true motives are less than clear, one wonders what the lies hide and why and what the cost of revealing those lies will be for Charlie, for Haight and for Pastor's Bay.

This is an intricate, dark thriller with dual narrative threads. Connolly's books are always page turners, but when focus switches to the secondary story line before it connects with the main narrative, the action slows down. However, without the secondary story line's presence from the start, the resolution of the main narrative would fly out of thin air because so often the players of the secondary story line connect with the main story line. Despite these minor quibbles, this is a first rate, must read for fans of the Parker series. As a longtime fan myself, I find I'm more worried about the fact that Charlie's daughter seems to have some sense of the otherworldliness of her father and the implication that some ravens are spying on Charlie at the behest of an as yet unseen big bad villain. I recommend you check out this book the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly

2011-09-22T18:22:00.000-04:00

The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly probably could have done with a closer editorial eye. I get the impression that there were passages from this book in which certain people might have been referred to by the wrong name; however, most of these were the passages in which one of Jo March's letters were being related, so I'm not sure if that was case or if it was a case of certain characters were known by more than one name and this was not explained properly. While this is a stand alone book, I recommend the reader read the book Little Women by Louisa May Alcott before reading this one or at the very least familiarize themselves with that novel's storyline and characters because Donnelly assumes her reader has more than just a passing knowledge of Little Women characters and storyline which is what I have. I've never read the book--though I have seen parts of a movie adaptation (or the entire movie adaptation, I can't really remember, it was a long time ago) that had Winona Ryder and Batman, I mean, Christian Bale, in it. Other than the confusion over characters mentioned in the letters in this book, I enjoyed Donnelly's novel.

The story follows three British sisters, daughters of an American expatriate mother and British father, who are the modern day descendants of Jo March, one of the sisters portrayed in the classic novel by Louisa May Alcott. The Atwater sisters are as different from each other as the March sisters were from each other.

Lulu is adrift in her life and her career; she's at loose ends as to what she wants to do with herself and despairs that she'll never meet a man who'll love and accept her for who she is. One can't help but feel for Lulu because she's the one that gets ganged up on by her well meaning sisters and parents who only want her to finally decide what it is she wants to do for a career. And working successive dead end jobs in an antiques store, a skeevy pub, as a dogwalker and in a toy shop are not acceptable uses of a degree in biochemistry according to Lulu's family.

Elder sister Emma, responsible, sensible, dependable, and sophisticated, is planning a wedding; youngest sister Sophie, flighty, beautiful, dramatic (and let's be honest, the one who annoyed me the most) is on the cusp of the successful theater acting career that she's always wanted. Lulu, prickly, direct, aimless professionally, hopeless romantically, is the black sheep of the family. After discovering a cache of her great-great-grandmother Jo March's letters in her parents' attic, Lulu discovers a kindred spirit in Jo who was an equally prickly, direct, socially awkward, independent, intelligent personality. It is in these letters and in what they share about Jo's life and family that Lulu finds comfort, solace, and hope because in the end her great-great-grandmother led a full life with a husband and children, and she was beloved and fiercely adored by her family.

The story follows the lives, familial relationships and dynamics of the three sisters. The sisters are vividly, distinctively portrayed as three dimensional characters individual from one another. Fans of Little Women and readers who enjoy stories with female relationships at their center will enjoy this novel. I recommend you pick it up the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley

2011-09-20T18:24:00.000-04:00

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley is part historical novel and part romance with a dash of family history. I first saw this book in Target and wrote down the title hoping that one of the libraries would get it (because I don't buy my books; I borrow them from the library). It took a long time but one of the libraries did eventually get a copy and I borrowed it. I liked this book enough that I looked up Kearsley's other books, but a couple of them seemed like they kind of had similar plots with time travelling historical romances. They didn't really pique my interest.

Best selling historical fiction novelist Carrie McClelland is struggling with her current novel, set in France amidst the intrigue of the exiled Scottish court of the last Stewart king. Upon stumbling on the beautiful atmospheric ruins of Slains castle, whose resident noble family is at the heart of an ill fated Jacobite plot to land the Stewart king on Scotland's shores, Carrie knows she must reverse course with her novel and set it instead at Slains.

After relocating to Cruden Bay, home to Slains, Carrie finds that her story and characters flow and take shape as if they have a life of their own. Channeling a story rife with exquisite historical details that she has never researched and therefore cannot know, Carrie is chilled to discover that perhaps her connection to these past events is rooted in some sort of ancestral memory passed down the generations and that the story she channels is actually that of her ancestor, Sophia Paterson. Embarking upon a romance that strangely parallels her own ancestor's ill fated romance with a soldier, Carrie continues her all consuming journey into the past as she writes her book.

This novel is rich with the flavor of the Scottish dialect and spirit, heavy with searing betrayals, intrigues and tragedies that make it hard to put down until the stories of both Carrie and Sophia are resolved. Historical romance lovers will enjoy this book. I recommend you check it out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

White Heat by M.J. McGrath

2011-09-14T19:42:00.000-04:00

M.J. McGrath is a British author who has written several non-fiction books about the Arctic and its native cultures; McGrath makes her fiction debut with White Heat, a story set in the isolated, Inuit Canadian tundra with a half Inuit protagonist. All murder mysteries convey a sense of urgency especially when more people start dropping dead; in the instance of White Heat, the remote, cold, and inherently dangerous environment of the arctic adds to the sense of urgency and danger--if the murderer doesn't get to you, the frigid weather will if one's not careful.

Edie is the best guide on Ellesmere Island, but when she takes two American men out on the tundra for a routine hunting trip and one is shot and killed, a puzzling and dangerous mystery is uncovered --and promptly dismissed by her community's mayor. More bodies fall in the wake of the first murder as the dead man's travel companion disappears on a later expedition guided by her beloved stepson, Joe, who also gets caught up in the middle of a perplexing and terrifying situation. When Joe inexplicably commits suicide, Edie is left unmoored by her grief and spirals back into the depths of alcoholism after a hard won period of sobriety.

The mayor and even Joe's blood family accept his suicide at face value and are content to sweep the unexplained disappearance of the American explorer under the rug without further investigation. However, Edie realizes it's up to her to find the answers to the shooting death of the first American, the whereabouts of the disappeared American, and the unanswered questions surrounding Joe's death. To this end Edie sets out on a secret days long search of the isolated, thawing summer tundra to search for clues about what happened on Joe's ill fated expedition. What she finds on a beach and in a cave is even more frightening and bewildering as Edie realizes there's more at work than she can fathom and that she must be careful about whom she trusts with the information she digs up. Her unofficial investigation leads her hundreds of years into her family's past and across an ocean to another Inuit community.

This is a masterful, nail biting mystery that is unwound over many months and enriched by the Inuit language and culture depicted within its pages. This is a story in which the arctic setting becomes as much a character demanding of respect of the human characters. I'm not sure if this is intended as a stand alone novel or the advent of a new series. I'm hoping new series--I'd like to read more about what happens to Edie.

This book is available at the library; I highly recommend you check it out. Mystery lovers will especially appreciate this read.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson

2011-09-08T18:14:00.000-04:00

The Lantern is Deborah Lawrenson's debut novel. It's very atmospheric, foreboding, suspenseful, lyrical, and haunting. The lush, isolated landscape of the French countryside becomes its own character in the novel.

Eve meets Dom, an older gentleman, by chance while on a job in Switzerland. Immediately the two embark upon a whirlwind love affair that continues after both return to London. Dom, a previously married man, is mysterious, closed off about his past, and given to mercurial and dark moods. Their love affair exists in its own isolated bubble--neither makes much effort to introduce the other to family or friends, especially Dom, who insists on compartmentalizing his past and his present; he refuses to discuss the former with Eve because he claims it is too painful.

When Dom proposes moving to an isolated, run down, long uninhabited estate in the Provence countryside, Eve agrees to go with him that summer. But as the two pass the summer in France, Eve realizes she needs to know more about Rachel, Dom's mysterious former wife whom he refuses to talk about. As summer fades into autumn, Eve embarks upon a research project determined to find out more about Rachel through her own means even as she becomes aware of the growing distance between herself and Dom.

Interspersed with the present story is the story of Benedicte, the previous resident and former owner of the haunted estate upon which Eve and Dom now reside. Born and raised there, Benedicte spent nearly her entire life on the estate and as she tells her story a dark, cruel streak emerges in her childhood that is rooted in the twisted and dark nature of her brother Pierre, who tore the wings off butterflies, flayed kittens, stole things and was not above abusing and using his own sister.

When Benedicte's and Dom's complete histories emerge, it is tragic, terrifying and harrowing--and not what the reader expects.

I recommend you check out this book the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

South of Superior by Ellen Airgood

2011-09-01T18:42:00.000-04:00

Ellen Airgood is a diner manager in Michigan, and South of Superior is her debut novel. This is the kind of novel that reads fast. A lot happens while at the same time nothing really happens--it's one of those kind of stories.

Chicago raised Madeline Stone still reels from the death of her beloved adoptive mother, Emmy, a year ago. Abandoned by her mother, rejected by her grandfather, who refused to raise her and from whom she remained estranged for the rest of his life, Madeline accepts an invitation from Gladys, her grandfather's girlfriend, and Glady's sister, Arbutus, to return to tiny McAllaster, Michigan, town of her birth, to assist in caring for Arbutus, who's become crippled by arthritis.

McAllaster is a tiny, one street town on the coast of Lake Superior where less than 1000 people live year round. The natives struggle to make ends meet while the rich out of towners summer in mansions built on the lake shore that drive up taxes and drive out native McAllaster residents. The economic situation of the main characters and their fellow natives becomes almost another character in the story as Gladys heads for a legal showdown with wealthy interlopers bent on changing 'how things have been done in McAllaster for generations.'

Upon arriving in McAllaster, Madeline develops an uneasy and difficult rapport with Gladys, who reluctantly doles out bits of Madeline's Stone family history piece by piece. However, Madeline is there for Arbutus in whom she senses a kindred spirit with Emmy. There's also a romance or two thrown in there for good measure.

It seems as if the story splits itself between too many plots--there's the conflict between McAllaster natives and the new establishment, Madeline's mystery shrouded family history, the weird tension between Gladys and Madeline, and the romantic subplots. The story never really decides which one to focus on to the detriment of all the threads running through the story. As a result Gladys' and Madeline's tension seems manufactured for drama while Madeline's family history reveals no great revelation. Nevertheless the book has the kind of ending that leaves a smile on the reader's face.

This book is on shelf at the library--check it out the next time you visit!

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Emily's Ghost by Denise Giardina

2011-08-25T18:27:00.000-04:00

Emily's Ghost is the first novel I've read by Denise Giardina, but it's not Giardina's first novel. Even though the book is based on real life people, it is important to note (and not forget) that this is a novel of historical fiction, and, based on some readings I've done online, great liberties were taken in the portrayal of the characters based on real people and the relationships and dynamics between said characters. I've also read other online reviews of the novel--some people liked it, others didn't. One person took extreme issue with the title because it is misleading. The subtitle is "A Novel of the Bronte Sisters," and I must admit the subtitle did puzzle me a bit because the novel and title clearly focus on Emily Bronte. I thought the subtitle made it sound as if this might be the first in a series. Whether this is true or not, I have no idea. I'm not sure that I would read subsequent novels in this series.

I felt as if this novel was a little slow to start, but once you read through the first several chapters, you get sucked in pretty quickly to the world of the characters and their story. Anyone who's read a bit about the Bronte sisters and knows their fates can't help but feel a pallor of doom hanging over the family as the story develops.

Emily is the odd sister; she wears no petticoats and her hair wild about her shoulders; she walks alone upon her beloved moors and has no regard for or desire to adhere to the social mores of the day. She has no time for men and no interest in marrying because she does not wish to give up her freedom. With an active imagination and inner life, Emily writes poetry and stories and harbors a desire to write a novel.

When her father hires a new, young curate named William Weightman to help out with the church duties, a unexpected and growing friendship blooms between Weightman and Emily. But death and tragedy stalk the poor inhabitants of Haworth and the Bronte family is not immune when tragedy visits them as well, and Weightman's and Emily's friendship is forced to continue long beyond this life.

Ultimately this is a fascinating portrait of a family and the difficult, complicated dynamics among the sisters. This leads to a harrowing, heartbreaking, even more tragic end when the literary legacies of two of the sisters is left in the hands of the third sister, who understood the other two least.

This book is available in the library. Check it out the next time you visit!

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott

2011-08-18T18:53:00.000-04:00

The End of Everything is the first novel that I've read by Megan Abbott. It is not the author's first novel. I looked up Abbott's previous titles because I liked this one enough and the titles listed on the inside cover were pretty kick ass--like you know how sometimes you can tell you'll want to read a book just by the title alone? Or an intriguing title is enough to get you look it up on Amazon to find out what it's about? Well, that's why I looked up previous Abbott titles--totally forgetting that I already did this weeks ago and, when the photos of the book covers came up on Amazon, it all came back to me. Because the covers make the books look like pulp crime fiction titles. I don't know if they're really that or not, but it was enough (for now) for me to decide that I don't want to read any of the previous titles. I may change my mind in the future, but the descriptions of the plots didn't really redeem the book covers enough to make me want to read them. Maybe someday I will, but not right now. That's a little disappointing because I really liked The End of Everything, even though I feel like it's probably an entirely different genre and writing style than the author's previous novels.

Lizzie and Evie are thirteen, best friends, "body-close," and inseparable when Evie disappears on her walk home from school one afternoon. Lizzie, the last one to see her, is the key--in more ways than she realizes at first. Because as Lizzie examines the last moments she spent with Evie, the last months of their friendship, she sees that hindsight reveals that things were changing incrementally in their friendship and in Evie. Lizzie realizes that even though they may no longer have been "body-close," there are still things she knows bone deep. There are secrets Evie kept from her parents, from her sister, even from Lizzie, even as she tried obliquely and subtly to show these secrets to Lizzie, to make her know them, too, in the months leading up to her disappearance. Things and secrets that Lizzie was too innocent and naive to intuit at the time, but which later examination reveals.

Lizzie knows these things, knows who took Evie, knows why he took Evie, but she is still a child after all and these are heavy things for an innocent child to piece together to show the adults in her life and difficult, too, because most of what she knows is locked up in memories dredged up with intense introspection, furtive detective work completed in the darkness of night, and the bone deep, gut instinct that tells her that Evie still lives somewhere, somehow, waiting to be found. And Lizzie is the only one who still really believes this, while all the adults in her life prepare themselves for the worst as the investigation and Evie's disappearance drag on for over a week.

This is a haunting, nail biting mystery thriller wrapped up in the crucible of the months that forced Lizzie to come of age, to see that the world is complex and was never simple at all. This is a story about a friendship seen mostly through the eyes of one of those friends as much as it is about a child's disappearance and its effects wrought on that child's family and friends. I recommend you check this book out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Where She Went by Gayle Forman

2011-08-17T19:35:00.000-04:00

Where She Went is the sequel and follow up to Gayle Forman's debut novel, If I Stay, a novel that was previously reviewed here on the blog. If I Stay was devastating and suspenseful and it is available here at the library. I recommend you read it before you read Where She Went which is also available here at the library.

If I Stay was told from the perspective of Mia in the wake of the car crash that killed her entire family; it took place over the several days she spent in a coma as she decided whether to stay or die with the rest of her family. Where She Went is told from Adam's perspective. Adam was Mia's boyfriend and much like Mia reminisced about memories shared with her family and boyfriend throughout her coma, Adam shares his own perspective on that fateful week and the years since that have been spent estranged from Mia.

Over three years have passed since the horrific crash that took the lives of Mia's parents and brother and nearly hers too. Both Mia and Adam have gone one to realize their wildest and most dearly held dreams: Mia has graduated from Julliard while Adam has skyrocketed to fame with his band. It's been three years since Mia cut off all contact with Adam after moving across the country. And three years that Adam has spent grieving Mia's family and the end of his relationship with Mia. Three years of increasingly claustrophobic, panic attack inducing fame that has been inching Adam ever closer to the edge without Mia's grounding influence in his life.

Adam hasn't been coping well with fame or his break up with Mia despite the fact that he's fallen into the stereotypical, cliched rocker lifestyle. Estranged from his band, he's leading an ever more isolated existence. Then on a stopover in New York City before flying to London to start a tour that he dreads, Adam stumbles upon Mia's debut concert at Carnegie Hall and, on a whim, buys a ticket. After he's called backstage to meet Mia, the two decide to go on one last jaunt around New York City before parting ways. Adam hopes he'll get some closure and some answers from Mia, but before the night is through both Mia and Adam will have gotten more than just the answers each sought from the other.

Forman vividly and viscerally portrays the edge upon which Adam teeters--and throughout the book, the reader wonders if he'll tip over it only to crash in spectacular flames or will he finally come to some sort of peace with his life. This is a tale of letting go, of relationships broken and reconciled, and of making peace with the paths one chooses in life.

I recommend you check out this book this next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Fallen by Karin Slaughter

2011-08-11T18:18:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure how many of you are Karin Slaughter fans. Over the space of her previous two or three releases I've become a hard core fan due to the vivid characters, twisty mysteries and first rate writing. Really, it's because the merger of the Atlanta series starring Will Trent and Faith Mitchell with the Grant County series starring Dr. Sara Linton that the series has really taken off for me as a reader. Fallen is Slaughter's highly, highly anticipated follow up to Broken. I'm already looking forward to the follow up to Fallen.

When Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Faith Mitchell arrives at her mother's house, she finds a bloody hand print on the front door and a trail of blood leading from the door back to the locked shed where Faith's mother keeps her gun. Faith sees her infant daughter hidden in the locked shed and that her mother's gun safe is open. The gun inside it is gone. Faith knows her mother's in trouble, so she calls for back up and rather than wait, she goes into the house, looking for her mother. Instead she finds a dead man and then stumbles upon a hostage situation in her mother's bedroom. The hostage taker demands a trade--whatever it is that he's looking for in exchange for Faith's mother. But Faith has no idea what the intruders are looking for or what they might be referring to. Unfortunately the hostage situation heads south and when both men end up dead, there's no one left to question about the events that took place in the house prior to Faith's arrival, the whereabouts of her mother or the motives for any of it.

Following a jurisdictional dispute between the GBI and the Atlanta Police Department, the APD wins jurisdiction, leaving Faith's partner, Will Trent and her boss Amanda Wagner (also a longtime Mitchell family friend) on the outside of an investigation in which APD pegs Faith as a possible suspect. Will has no choice but to ride shotgun with his boss as they track down former members of Faith's mother's corrupt narcotics unit to piece together why an Asian gang has targeted Faith's mother and what that gang is looking for. What neither Will nor Faith can fathom is that this vendetta against her mother may have its origins in her personal life rather than her work life, and when the dust settles, the fabric of Faith's family may never be the same again.

In the midst of the investigation, there are developments in both Will's and Dr. Linton's personal lives. I don't want to give too much away, but there's a harrowing, brutal confrontation between Will and his estranged, abusive wife, Angie. This is one woman who doesn't let go easily, and thus, the drama that she stirs up will not end pretty.

I highly, highly recommend you pick up this book the next time you visit the library. Unless you haven't read any Slaughter books in which case I recommend you start at the beginning of the series and read them in order--you won't regret it.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Sister by Rosamund Lupton

2011-08-03T19:10:00.000-04:00

Sister is the debut novel by the British author Rosamund Lupton. It is an impressive, haunting, harrowing, and heartbreaking debut.

When their mother calls Bee in New York to tell her that her younger sister, Tess, has been missing for four days, Bee catches the next flight to London. She expects to find Tess and deliver the usual lecture about responsibility. Instead her sister's body is found in a nearby park. And despite the police ruling the death a suicide and her family's acceptance of this ruling, Bee is adamant that she knows her sister, that she knows her well enough to know that Tess would never take her own life. Determined to find her sister's murderer, Bee moves into Tess's apartment and begins her own investigation predicated on the certainty of the closeness of the relationship between herself and Tess.

The story is structured as a long letter that Bee has written to Tess to explain to her sister why she was murdered, who her murderer is, and how Bee failed her sister. Beautiful, poignant prose details the days leading up to the discovery of Tess's body and Bee's subsequent struggle to put the pieces together of her sister's final days. Bee hopes the pieces together will reveal a larger picture that points to the identity of Tess's murderer--someone whose cruel manipulations are chilling in their disregard for human life.

Thanks to Bee's insistence on chronological order of events, the suspense is ratcheted up as the reader follows along with Bee's investigation, as Bee drops hints and references foreshadowing later discoveries and as it becomes apparent that Bee herself is not safe from the reach of the dangerous murderer who claimed her sister. In a story in which neither the narrator nor the reader knows exactly who the murderer is and therefore doesn't know who to trust, this book becomes a nail biting page turner. The reader will find this grief soaked story incredibly poignant, equal parts terrifying and sorrowful and very hard to put down especially through the last chapters when some heart stopping twists are revealed.

I highly recommend you check this book out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen

2011-07-28T18:10:00.000-04:00

The Silent Girl is the latest installment in the Rizzoli and Isles series by Tess Gerritsen. I have since finished this book and moved on to another good one that I'll be reviewing probably next week. This was a very satisfying installment in the series, and it had a bit of a surprise twist in the true identity of one of the supporting characters. Considering the role this particular character played in the book, it makes me wonder if he will also make an appearance in the next book in the series.

Before I move on to the review, I want to share some exciting book news. Fallen, Karin Slaughter's newest book has finally arrived here at the library. People. I CAN BARELY CONTAIN MYSELF. I still have about half of a book left before I can start Fallen. I think I know what I'll be doing this weekend.

A Jane Doe's cleanly severed hand turns up in a Chinatown alleyway in Boston, and Rizzoli is called to investigate. A police search finds the rest of Jane Doe atop the roof of an abandoned building that all of Chinatown believes haunted and cursed due to the ground floor restaurant that was the scene of a mass murder/suicide two decades ago. The only clues are two silver hairs left on the Jane Doe and these clues lead to an unlikely and bewildering suspect. As Rizzoli and Isles delve deeper into the murder, bodies start piling up, and the investigation leads the detectives to re-examine the Chinatown murder/suicide as well as the disappearances of the daughters of two of the families of the victims.

The setting of Chinatown, an insular community weary of outsiders and police, adds an intriguing and mysterious layer to these bewildering murders with roots that go back two decades. Suspenseful and frightening, this page turner was hard to put down--this is one book that keeps some shocking revelations for its last pages.

I recommend you check out this book the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

2011-07-20T18:24:00.000-04:00

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is Ransom Riggs' debut novel. After reading the book in its entirety I can only say that what started out with such promise, ended in a blaze of mixed feelings. I'm not sure how I feel about it. The ending leaves several issues unresolved and is more of a beginning than an ending. While the jacket blurb makes no mention of this being the first book in a potential series, the ending makes it clear that there must be at least one planned sequel.

Jacob's grandfather told him fantastical stories about the children he grew up with in an orphanage on a remote island off the coast of Wales. There was the girl who could create fire with her bare hands, the boy who was filled bees, and the levitating girl among others. When Jacob stopped believing the stories, his grandfather stopped telling them. Years later when Jacob's 15, his grandfather dies suddenly and with his last words he sends Jacob on a journey to discover the secrets of his beloved grandfather's past. Of the stories his grandfather told, which were true and which were merely embellishments? Jacob's about to find out when he travels with his father to the remote island where his grandfather fled as war darkened the European continent. What Jacob finds on the island is tragic and stretches far beyond the limits of imagination.

The more Jacob learns about the strange world from which his grandfather came, the more he realizes the special talents they had in common. However, strange talents bring strange dangers, and the longer the home hides its secrets from Jacob, the less prepared he'll be when those strange dangers finally rear their ugly heads. And by then it might be too late to save the strange sanctuary where his grandfather grew up.

The book starts out as a historical/family history mystery story before veering toward the fantastical, science fiction genre about a hundred pages in. This is one of those books for which one must reserve judgment until the final page. As such I can't say I recommend this book--but if you like strange, fantastical stories, you just might enjoy this one.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Glass Demon by Helen Grant

2011-07-14T17:14:00.000-04:00

The Glass Demon is Helen Grant's follow up to The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, a book previously reviewed on this blog back in June. The Glass Demon is every bit as gripping as Grant's debut, starting from the killer first lines. Demon is a dark and sinister, modern myth, and, like its predecessor, takes place in Germany. Grant is expert at evoking the claustrophobia and clique-ishness of small town life where locals close ranks against outsiders and rumors and gossip fly like nobody's business.

In the wake of a career setback, Lin's father uproots the family from their home in England and packs them off to the remote German countryside to spend the year living in a rundown castle in the middle of a forest. When the family arrives, they come across an old man lying dead in an orchard, the ground around him littered with shattered glass, and when Lin's father refuses to report the corpse to the police, the reader knows this cannot bode well. Indeed the family discovers that their castle has no internet, no cell phone reception and no phone land line and as the story progresses this technological isolation of the family from the nearby town and help takes a sinister and dangerous turn.

Lin's father's on the trail of a set of very valuable, very ancient, long vanished stained glass windows steeped in myth and bloody legend. In fact locals believe the windows that once adorned a nearby abbey before it was dismantled to be cursed and better off lost to the sands of time and history. When other corpses turn up also surrounded by shattered glass and later sinister incidents occur leaving more shattered glass in their wake, it's clear to Lind, if no one else in her family, that the locals are intent on warning her father off the trail of the windows and running her family out of their town.

Even as Lin is preoccupied with these dark occurrences, she's blinded to the insidious disorder taking root in her sister's psyche and body. When Lin finally does see what's right in front of her, she realizes she has no one to turn to for the help her sister needs. In the end, for better or worse, Lin decides that if she wants answers, she's going to have to be the one to find them because her vain father, drama queen mother and conflict avoiding sister will be no help in this hunt.

In addition to the disturbing and frightening events driving this family to its breaking point, Grant adds another layer to the story in the portrayal of the dynamics of this family. Specifically the parents' lack of parental concern and failure to respond to parental responsibilities are just as distressing as the external threats to the family. Many times it seems like Lin is the only family member with the common sense, gumption and courage to take action even as she realizes that she cannot count on any of her family members for back up or support.

I highly recommend this book. It's a fast read and hard to put down especially during its extremely frightening conclusion.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton

2011-07-13T18:18:00.000-04:00

Now You See Me is S.J. Bolton's newest release. I've been waiting since the last one I read which means I've been waiting nearly a year. It's been a long, hard wait. Then it finally FINALLY dropped and then... the library's copy took a month to get here from Amazon. A MONTH! I refrained from asking after it every day even though I wanted to. But when it arrived it came with two or three other titles I really wanted to read so I'm willing to forgive because it brought friends.

I must say that Now You See Me was worth the wait. My immediate feeling after reading the last chapter was that it was Bolton's best novel yet. And now I have to wait another year for the next one. This was a very quick read. The action starts literally on the first page, and it's very hard to put down. It's thrilling, suspenseful, frightening, and disturbing.

Detective Constable Lacy Flint is thrown into the middle of a bloody murder scene when a terrifying and dangerous serial murderer leaves his first victim to bleed out all over Lacy's car. Barred from the murder team because she is evidence and her eye witness testimony can't be tainted should the case ever go to court, Lacy is again drawn in when the murderer sends a chilling letter to an amateur reporter that calls out Lacy and likens the killer to a modern day Jack the Ripper.

As the investigation and events unfold it becomes clear the cunning killer is purposefully targeting Lacy. But why and is his attention connected to whatever dark secrets Lacy keeps buried in her past? Or is she merely a random obsession of an anonymous killer who shares a fascination with Jack the Ripper?

The story is bolstered by the historical detail of the Jack the Ripper murders that occurred in late 1800's London. Another layer is added to this story when one considers that those crimes remain unsolved and have since become steeped in myth and legend. The present story is filled with twists right up to the last pages. It is indeed Bolton's most intricate, complicated, darkest and best thriller yet.

I highly recommend you check out this title the next time you visit the library. But make sure you have a free day before you start it because you won't put it down until you've read the whole book.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Last Will of Moira Leahy by Therese Walsh

2011-06-30T19:21:00.000-04:00

The Last Will of Moira Leahy is Therese Walsh's debut novel. It's breathtaking, heart pounding, tragic, and there's a bit of an unexpected twist to one part of the story that leads to a slightly hokey scene near the end, but I enjoyed the book. The author does an expert job of drawing the characters--especially the smarmy, sinister 'villain.'

Moira and Maeve are twins who were once so close they spoke their own language and knew what the other was feeling. In their sixteenth year Moira, driven by jealousy and spurned affections, embarks on a secret love affair built on betrayal and deception. The consequences irrevocably rend her family in pieces and destroy her relationship with her twin forever.

Over nine years later Maeve has left home and is teaching at a university. She's left behind her beloved music and blocked out her past at the expense of love and friendships. She buries herself in her work and keeps her almost boyfriend at a distance. However, now her life is starting to fracture-- she's seeing her sister everywhere, suffering from nightmares and waking dreams. Her boyfriend has left the country and gone incommunicado, and her bitter mother continues to avoid her.

When Maeve spies a keris, an ancient Javanese knife, at an auction, it reminds her of a similar keris she lost in the sea as a child, and she has to have it. After she buys it and brings it home, inexplicable things start happening. The blade is warm to the touch, and cryptic notes are nailed to Maeve's office door while she feels the eyes of an unknown observer upon her. Encouraged by her father and her roommate, Maeve travels to Rome to find out more about her Javanese blade and to rendezvous with her absent boyfriend. In Rome a mysterious and sinister adventure awaits her, and it's clear that the blade is leading her on a personal journey of self discovery and reawakening.

I must admit that before the big reveal of the tragedy Maeve suffers nine years prior, that my twist-y sense was tingling. I could sense a twist coming but the twist I thought was coming (and was actually praying wasn't coming) was not the one that came in the end. For this I'm glad because I believe I already read a book by Brunonia Barry that had that twist. Ultimately this is a fascinating, page turning, vivid read, and I recommend you check it out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek

2011-06-20T19:00:00.000-04:00

The Summer We Read Gatsby is Danielle Ganek's second novel. I haven't read her first one, but since Summer was pretty good, and I'm now thinking about trying out her debut novel. Ganek writes long chapters which is something I don't appreciate because of the way I read a book. However, after the first few chapters, the chapters and the book go very quickly once you get caught up its fictional world. This is largely due to the witty writing and the vivid characters as well as the bits of mysterious intrigue about a 'thing of utmost value,' a stolen painting, and a gorgeous house guest with a strange, murky past who refuses to leave.

Peck and Cassie's beloved Aunt Lydia, the last of their paternal relatives, has died. Lydia's will bequeaths her summer home in the Hamptons and all its contents to her nieces with specific instructions to spend a final month in the house during which Lydia hopes that they'll find something of utmost value before they liquidate her possessions and sell the house. However, Peck and Cassie are clueless as to what Lydia means by something of utmost value. Is it a valuable objet d'art hidden amidst the many pieces of anonymous, worthless art and furniture Lydia left behind? Or is it something intangible like the meaning of love and family? Or is it hidden in the locked safe in Lydia's bedroom closet that no one has the combination for and no one can crack?

Besides Peck and Cassie, there is also the gorgeous Biggsy, the previous summer's starving artist still in residence over the garage who stayed on through the winter most probably unbeknownst to Lydia. Biggsy, mysterious and manipulative, has wasted no time ingratiating himself with Peck and Cassie while both an old family friend and a long time neighbor each warn Cassie that the artist cannot be trusted. Conflicting details of Biggsy's past reveal that he may have a more sinister side than either sister realizes.

Then there's the matter of the painting that goes missing from over the living room mantel the night of the sisters' first party at the house. Who stole it and why? And was the painting the valuable Lydia referenced in her will?

I highly recommend you pick up this book the next time you visit the library. You won't regret it.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Graveminder by Melissa Mars

2011-06-17T12:06:00.000-04:00

Graveminder by Melissa Marr is the author's first adult novel. She's well known in the young adult fiction world for her best selling Wicked Lovely series that details the exploits of some royal courts in the fey world. While neither the book jacket nor the author's website says that Graveminder is the start a new series, the book itself has that kind of feeling to it because there a lot of questions left open regarding some minor characters in the book etc. I also read in the press release for the Graveminder (which you can find at the author's website) that the book is already being developed into a television series. This intrigues me, and I will say that I'm more likely to watch the series than read it. Unless the tv series turns out be crap or populated by annoying actors that I hate, in which case I won't be watching it either.

Graveminder sets forth a unique world contained in a small town, and it also puts a new spin on the undead concept (they are called Hungry Dead in the book). Marr's undead are more vampire than zombie though the newly undead have zombie-ish qualities until they gain strength. It's an intriguing concept. The story itself is what kept me reading less so than the writer's style or writing (which to be honest, while not the worst writing I've read, is also not the best writing I've read). Though just to be clear Marr's undead are not called vampires in the book.

Rebekkah Barrow is called home to insular, peculiar Claysville when her beloved grandmother Maylene is murdered. A wandering nomad who has spent years constantly moving, avoiding the only home she's ever known and the only man she's ever loved, Rebekkah plans to stay in Claysville just long enough to see her grandmother properly buried according to the town's strict funeral laws and to observe the eccentric traditions Maylene taught her while they attended all those funerals years ago. In Claysville there wasn't a death or funeral that Maylene didn't attend in order to properly mind the dead to ensure they "stayed where she put them."

Unfortunately Maylene never explained the very specific purposes and motivations behind these traditions or what happens when they aren't observed by a graveminder. Claysville is a very special place, a very odd place, and Rebekkah finds out that her future and her destiny is tied up in the town, having been decided for her directly by Maylene several years ago and indirectly by the town's founders hundreds of years ago. You see in Claysville there's a very thin line between the worlds of the dead and the living thanks to a contract the town founders signed in which those born within town limits received protection from disease in return for never leaving town. Now it's Rebekkah's turn to fulfill the terms of that contract with the help of her Undertaker, who's the only person who can escort her over into the land of the dead.

I recommend this book for fans of mysteries with supernatural overtones. Check it out the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Invisible Boy by Cornelia Read

2011-06-16T18:47:00.000-04:00

Invisible Boy is Cornelia Read's third and most recent installment in the Madeline Dare series. Thus far each book in the series takes place about a year after its predecessor in a different setting. This makes me wonder where we'll find Madeline and her husband living in the next book especially considering the life altering development in their personal lives that was revealed in the closing pages of the book. Might we next find them in Ohio living near Madeline's friend Ellis who last made an appearance in the debut Dare novel? We'll have to wait until next year to find out because if the author follows her previous pattern of releasing a new novel every two years, the next one won't drop until sometime in 2012.

By now we all know how trouble follows Madeline, and it shows up like clockwork on a yearly basis despite Madeline putting geographical distance between herself and the site of her previous encounters with life endangering trouble with a capital T. In the wake of the crazy train that wrecked in the last book it's hard to believe that Read will succeed in spinning another yarn equally as twisted and knotted, but she does.

Now living in New York City, Madeline connects with a distant cousin from the Ludlam branch of her storied, Yankee family tree. The cousin, Cate, is restoring an ancestral Ludlam family cemetery out in Queens. Madeline volunteers to assist with this project. This is unfortunate because it is in the wild, tangled jungle of overgrown underbrush that Madeline stumbles upon the skeleton of a small boy while clearing away the overgrown weeds with a machete.

In the months that follow Madeline bonds with the homicide detective assigned to the case and with Cate as the case prepares to go to trial. When Madeline's hit by a car outside the cemetery where the skeleton was found, it's unclear whether she was the specific target or the victim of a random incident. The homicide detective digs into the case and shares the details of the boy's tragic and brief life. It's revealed he was a victim of horrendous, physical abuse, the third generation marked by violet tragedy in a family too familiar with domestic violence.

This book was hard to put down and a page turner. Madeline is a sharp as ever. Meanwhile, the minor subplot of the mental deterioration of a boarding school friend feels slightly superfluous and pointless. It's also slightly disappointing that while Madeline is a wonderful three dimensional character, the same cannot be said about her husband, a character who has played minor roles to varying degrees over these three books and is arguably the most important person in Madeline's life. Frequently the author relegates him to a life off screen (so to speak) by sending him on business trips or away to work.

I highly recommend you check out this book the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Crazy School by Cornelia Read

2011-06-15T18:59:00.000-04:00

The Crazy School is the second installment in Cornelia Read's Madeline Dare series. The Crazy School, both as a book and as a place, is populated by characters who are all different kinds of crazy for all different kinds of reasons. A Field of Darkness (Crazy's predecessor) started off with a killer first line/paragraph that set the bar and tone for the rest of that novel. The Crazy School doesn't have that distinction. However, the book very quickly hooks the reader--once the story gets going, it's very hard to put down, and the chapters fly by.

It's the year after the events of A Field of Darkness. While these events are referenced obliquely once or twice, it would be very easy for someone to jump into the series starting with this book and then catch up with the first one. Me, I like to read a series in order. Okay, let's just be honest: I HAVE to read a series in order, so I started with the first one and continued on through the third and most recent installment (the review for that one will be forthcoming).

It's 1989, and Madeline has finally made it out of Syracuse, New York, to settle in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts where she's found work at a boarding school for troubled teens. The school is strict with its students and its faculty, requiring them to adhere to eccentric rules. Both students and teachers are expected to abstain from smoking and caffeine...and participate in mandatory group and individual therapy sessions.

Unfortunately trouble finds Madeline wherever she goes because it's not long before two troubled and recently disciplined students are found dead in an apparent double suicide. However, Madeline doesn't believe they killed themselves despite the fact that the couple had recently confided an unwanted pregnancy to her and sworn her to secrecy. When she shares her suspicions with the police investigating the suicides, the tables quickly turn, and Madeline is arrested for the homicides. It's immediately clear to readers and to Madeline (but not necessarily the police) that someone is doing an artful job of framing her. As Madeline cobbles together bits of information, it becomes apparent that the current mad machinations are rooted in a twisted, horrifying tragedy perpetrated a decade ago, an ocean away and on another continent.

Who killed these students and why? And who can Madeline trust at the school to help her track down the real murderer? After the ending of the previous Dare book, it's extremely hard for the reader to trust that things are as they appear when it comes to who's on the straight and narrow and who's involved in diabolical misdeeds. There is also the fact that after reading S.J. Bolton's debut novel, Sacrifice, I am nearly always suspicious of authority figures and just who can be trusted and who cannot be trusted when it comes to the life and death issues revolving around a whodunit murder/conspiracy mystery. Reading Sacrifice will do that to a person. Granted the majority of the time these fears are unwarranted once the book has been all read and done.

I highly recommend you pick up this book the next time you're at the library--it's got great characters, a great mystery, great suspense, and it's hard to put down right up to the very last page.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read

2011-06-14T19:17:00.000-04:00

A Field of Darkness is the first in a new series. Read has released two more installments after this one (and the reviews for those will be forthcoming). There is a marked difference in the feel and tone between Field and its successors. It makes me wonder if maybe the first one was first intended as a stand alone novel. Nevertheless this (and its successors) is a gripping mystery story related by a sharp tongued, witty narrator. It's a page turner, very hard to put down and is populated with elements that always seem to intrigue me: family history, fairy tales and murder.

It's 1988, and Madeline Dare is unhappily ensconced in Syracuse, New York, her husband's hometown. Though she writes for a local, free, weekly newspaper, she is the opposite of the intrepid, investigative reporter chomping at the bit for her big break. Madeline is quite happy writing the fluff lifestyle and home pieces for the newspaper. Then a chilling, unsolved, double murder drops into her lap, and she is reluctantly cast in the role of fledgling investigative journalist.

In 1969 two sisters were murdered and their bodies dumped in a field. The murders were never solved, and the girls were never identified. Madeline discovers a set of dog tags baring her favorite cousin's name was found recently in the same field where those bodies were dumped. She determines to ascertain the nature of her cousin's involvement before taking what she knows to the police--lest an innocent man get pegged as a murderer.

Through research, awkwardly bungled interviews, and old fashioned detective work, Madeline churns up enough information to identify both the girls and a likely suspect, who, besides being equal parts nasty, scummy, and dangerous, is former law enforcement. When her equally nasty boss catches wind of what she's doing, Madeline reluctantly agrees to take the assignment of an update feature on the cold murder case. As a result she is forced to continue her investigation, to build an airtight case both for her story and for the authorities. Just as Madeline starts cranking up her investigation, a witness turns up dead, and she realizes that it's not just about laying a decades old case to rest--it's about smoking out a still alive and active murderer before others, including Madeline herself, die so the murderer can keep his secrets buried.

I highly recommend you pick up this book the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

As Husbands Go by Susan Isaacs

2011-06-09T18:46:00.000-04:00

As Husbands Go is the first book by Susan Isaacs that I've read. I was on the fence for the first fifty pages or so about whether or not I was going to finish reading it or abandon ship. I feel as if the blurb on the inside book flap is slightly misleading (and I always feel gypped when I find this the case with a book)--the blurb makes it sound as if the mystery and intrigue and flashy granny are larger parts of the book than they turn out to be. The mystery and intrigue don't get cranked up in earnest until at least halfway into the book and the flashy granny doesn't make an appearance until halfway through and doesn't become a fixture until well past the point. So those were my main quibbles with the book for the most part.

I like the clever dual meaning of the title. And the characters who populate the story are wild, witty, hilarious, and superficial (though quite self aware of their own superficiality). It is largely the characters' personalities and the clash of personalities that make the story so interesting and for me, it was more the characters as opposed to the story that kept me reading (though it was the characters in the first place that had me on the fence to begin with before they hooked me). Honestly the hysterical narrator grates a little at the outset, but as the story takes off, and she settles down so does the hysteria.

Susie is living the good life with her plastic surgeon husband Jonah and their wild, three year old, triplet sons. Their marriage and home life are happy ones of exhausted contentment. Until one morning when Susie wakes to a nightmare: Jonah never made it home that night and no one, not his practice partners, not his parents, not his wife, has any idea of where he could be. Frantically Susie calls the local police to report her husband missing and as the search drags on for days, she barely holds herself together for her boys.

When Jonah is found stabbed to death in a wannabe-upscale call girl's Manhattan apartment, Susie's life is shattered while all hell breaks loose in the midst of the tabloid frenzy that ensues. In the weeks following Jonah's death Susie clings to what she knows to be true of her life and marriage and of her husband: that they were happy and that Jonah wouldn't cheat on her. The circumstances of Jonah's death do not ring true with Susie. When she realizes that the authorities and her in-laws immediately glommed onto the obvious culprit in Jonah's death to the exclusion of thoroughly checking other avenues of investigation, Susie is determined to find the answers and the truth about what happened to her husband and why.

Susie is aided in her one woman pursuit of the truth and justice by her no-nonsense, glamorous, previously estranged grandmother. Susie soon embarks upon a search ripe with questionable actions that only spiral downward as the story progresses. One can only hope that Susie's actions don't come back to bite in the ass before the story closes.

I recommend you pick up this book the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant

2011-06-08T18:28:00.000-04:00

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is Helen Grant's debut novel; her follow up, The Glass Demon, drops this month. I had to get The Vanishing through Interlibrary Loan because it is not available in county. It is a great book, was worth the wait, and I hope some library in county gets a copy sometime. Scratch that--I hope more that somebody gets The Glass Demon in county because I also want to read that and will have to wait six months before I can request it through ILL otherwise (hint, hint).

The setting is small town Germany in 1999; the story is narrated by a girl many years after the events of the year she was ten years old.

Pia is like any other girl in her small hometown until her grandmother explodes in flames at the family's Advent dinner due to granny's overzealous use of hair spray in close proximity to an open flame. After this happens the story of the ordeal in all its many false incarnations spreads like wildfire all over town and through school. Pia becomes a social pariah that only the least popular kid in school, StinkStefan, dares to befriend. Before long the two become inseparable .

During the village's Karneval parade, a girl Pia's age named Katharina Linden disappears without a trace. Despite the town's thorough search not a clue comes to light as to the whereabouts of Katharina or her fate. Meanwhile, Pia determines to find out what happened to Katharina. Fueled by kindly Herr Schiller's fantastical tales of witches, curses and hauntings that plagued the town's history, Pia is convinced that some supernatural, fantastical being is to be blamed for Katharina's disappearance.

Katharina's disappearance mirrors the disappearances of other little girls from the town many decades prior. The first disappearance resulted in the estrangement of two brothers. What the town doesn't know until it is too late is that Katharina is only the first of several girls who will disappear that year, unwitting victims in a madman's plot to exact revenge for a decades old perceived betrayal.

A hair raising, heart pounding ending reveals a disturbing twist to the identity of the villain. A page turner to the very end, this is one book that is hard to put down. I highly recommend you request it the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Language of Secrets by Dianne Dixon

2011-06-07T18:32:00.000-04:00

The Language of Secrets is Dianne Dixon's debut novel. It's a gripping, suspenseful, heartbreaking mystery that reveals a heinous, selfish crime that's been buried for decades by lies and by secrets. The saddest (and perhaps most frustrating) part is that the reader is privy to the complete story due to a narrative that alternates between the present in which the protagonist does his best to dig up the answers to resolve the puzzle that is his past and the events as they occur in the past.

Justin moves back to California for a job and, urged by his wife, returns to his childhood home to reconnect with his parents from whom he's been estranged for years. But he's too late because his mother and father have died and when Justin tracks down their graves, he is shocked to discover a third next to theirs that bears his own name and the date of his death years before.

This bewildering and shocking discovery sets Justin on a journey into his past guided by his disjointed and spotty memories. Slowly more memories emerge from his childhood. From these memories he is able to slowly put the pieces together about what happened to him all those years ago. And the picture that emerges is an ugly one darkly colored by adultery and revenge.

I recommend you check out this book the next time you visit the library!

--reviewed by Ms. Angie

Men and Dogs by Katie Crouch

2011-06-02T19:28:00.000-04:00

Men and Dogs by Katie Crouch is the author's second novel. I haven't read her first one, and I'm not sure if I will. Men and Dogs is a good book, but it wasn't one that just blew me away and made me an instant fan of the author and think, oh my god, let me read ALL of her books and every future book she releases because she is so good! Part of this is because the ending is not tied up in a neat little bow, and the mystery with which the protagonist is obsessed and that builds throughout the book doesn't reach any sort of concrete resolution. And I was expecting something along these lines the way the mystery was billed on the inside flap blurb and then gathers steam throughout the book. Ultimately I think the book is more about the protagonist's journey to make peace with the unanswered questions concerning the tragedy of her childhood as opposed to being about solving for once and for all the uncertainty of her father's fate with which she's been obsessed for her entire adult life.

Hannah's father disappeared the year she turned 11. He went out fishing one day and never came back. His boat was found and the only passenger aboard was the family's golden retriever, Tucker. Buzz, Hannah's father, is nowhere to be found and presumed dead by everyone (except Hannah) despite the fact that his body was never found.

Hannah's 35 now and the disappearance of her father has left her profoundly scarred and profoundly screwed up. As a result her life is slowly disintegrating around her, and she reluctantly returns home to South Carolina to recuperate from a drunken, three story fall that marked the death knell of her marriage. Upon her return home, Hannah rediscovers the boxes of old photos belonging to her father that she'd hidden away years ago. In them she finds some hard truths, but will they lead her to the ultimate truth she seeks: the certain fate of her father all those years ago.

Let's face some hard truths about Hannah herself, shall we? Our dear protagonist is seriously messed up--she's an adulterer and a drunk. Her obsession with finding the truth about where her father went and why (she believes, in contrast to the rest of her family, that he is still alive) has driven a wedge of estrangement between her and her mother, stepfather and brother for many years. Yet for all her flaws all you want for her is to find out the truth so she can get on with her life.

I recommend you check out this book the next time you're at the library. Fans of family dramas with a side of mystery will enjoy this book.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems edited by Harold Bloom

2011-05-25T18:43:00.000-04:00

Harold Bloom is a prolific, highly decorated literary scholar who has taught at both Harvard and Yale. The library has one of his books about Shakespeare. Now we have this book, too: Till I End My Song. It's a volume of last poems (or poems that Bloom has deemed last poems for whatever reason) by illustrious poets spanning several centuries.

It is an intriguing and fascinating premise that is diminished and slightly soured by the pretentious tone of the editor's introductions for each poem. A glaring oversight is the severe under representation of female poets. One is nearly 150 pages into the volume and has read the last poems of thirty-four male poets before Bloom presents (finally) the last poem of Emily Bronte, the first female poet he spotlights.

This book is available at the library, and lovers of poetry will enjoy this volume.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Island by Elin Hilderbrand

2011-05-24T19:10:00.000-04:00

Have you ever gone through a spell where you just don't feel like reading? For a while there I was reading and reviewing like the world was about to end (which it was supposed to at 6 p.m. Saturday or so I'm told) and then I hit a wall. I went through several books that I started and didn't finish. Then I decided to reserve a bunch, and, in the meantime, I borrowed a few from another library in an attempt to throw everything at the wall and see what stuck. Now most of the books I reserved have come in, and there's a pile of books to read at home. Hopefully the dry spell is over.

The Island by Elin Hilderbrand is one of the last books I read before the reader's block started, and I just never got around to typing up the review. It's the second Hilderbrand book that I've read.

The rotating third person perspective gives the reader insight into the inner lives' of the characters and their past heartbreaks. The island life and setting draws the reader in as much as the story and characters.

Chess has it all, a great job, a great life, and a great fiance; on paper her life is perfect, but life isn't meant to be perfect, and Chess has carried around a messy secret for a long time: you can't choose who you love. Months out from the wedding, Chess calls her mother in the middle of the night: the wedding's off because she doesn't love her fiance and she's left him. Chess begs her mother, Birdie, to break the news to the family and clean up her mess. Then Chess goes incommunicado and refuses to return her mother's phone calls or her sister, Tate's or her aunt India's. Chess quits her job, returns home and refuses to divulge the details of "all the things that have happened." One night unexpected news of a tragedy sends Chess into a tailspin.

The tragedy prompts Birdie to decide to take Chess, her daughter Tate, and her widowed sister India to their remote ancestral summer home on Tuckernuck Island off Nantucket for a month to engage in some girl bonding. She hopes this will be a time for them to reconnect and to heal. As the month progresses each woman's story emerges and each woman must work through her own issues and choices regarding their lives and loves.

I recommend you check out this book the next time you're in the library especially if you're a fan of Elin Hilderbrand.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

2011-04-11T18:27:00.000-04:00

The Tiger's Wife is Tea Obreht's debut novel; Obreht has made some prestigious young writers to watch lists (she's only 25), and thus, her debut novel was highly anticipated by many and has received rave reviews. The novel is well written, but I must admit that I felt like the book was building up to an ending that never came. While there aren't any fairy tale overtones to the story, parts of it are heavily drawn from the Godfather Death fairy tale.

A doctor in an unnamed Balkan country still healing from a harrowing and brutal years long civil war that literally split the country in two, Natalia is on her way to inoculate the children of a remote and rural orphanage when she receives word that her beloved grandfather has died at a remote clinic nearby. What follows is Natalia's attempt to make sense of both her grandfather's life and his death, specifically why he died where he died. Natalia's grandfather's life and death are inexplicably tied to several encounters he had over the years with a mysterious man who seems to never age and who claims to be deathless. An encounter early in his life with a woman his village dubbed the tiger's wife and an escaped tiger feared by the village was also a thread that ran through her grandfather's entire life and all the stories he ever told.

The stories of Natalia's grandfather and the tiger's wife and the deathless man as well as the stories of the war years and a mysterious, illness riddled family determined to dig up an entire vineyard in a quest to find both the source and the cure of their illness expertly draw the reader in to this novel.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden

2011-03-24T15:57:00.001-04:00

For those of you who enjoy poetry I'm sharing this link to the poem "Funeral Blues" by W. H. Auden. The last stanza of the poem was used as an epigraph for the previously reviewed (see below) Pack Up The Moon by Anna McPartlin. The novel's title comes from a line in the last stanza of "Funeral Blues." I rather enjoyed the poem after I looked it up in its entirety and thought others would too.

Wystan Hughes Auden (1907-1973) was born in York, England, but later achieved U.S. citizenship. In addition to poetry, he also wrote many prose essays and reviews on a variety of themes that he also addressed in verse. He was also involved in performance art and documentaries. After teaching stints at the University of Michigan and Swarthmore College, Auden worked in Europe for the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey at the close of the second World War. Upon completing this work he returned to the U.S. where he continued his teaching career at several American universities. Towards the end of his life Auden spent several years teaching poetry at Oxford University in England where he'd moved his winter home; he died in Vienna, Austria, where he spent summers. [from Wikipedia]

Pack Up The Moon by Anna McPartlin

2011-03-24T15:30:00.000-04:00

I loved Pack Up The Moon the debut novel by Anna McPartlin, whose follow ups to this debut I have also read and reviewed for this blog. In my review for Apart From The Crowd, which is the novel after this one but was written before Alexandra, Gone, which was the first McPartlin novel I read and reviewed, I thought that Apart was not as well written as Alexandra and that perhaps this reflected the novelist's growth as a writer between Apart and Alexandra. But having read Pack Up and found it as well written and as good as Alexandra, I've now come to the conclusion that for whatever reason, there was just something a little off with the writing in Apart. I loved Pack Up The Moon and I love Anna McPartlin--she has most definitely gained another fan. I'll refrain from worrying about when her next novel will drop until after I've finished As Sure As The Sun which is the last McPartlin novel I haven't read.

Have I said I loved this book? Well, I did, and it was hard to put down after I was sucked into the lives of the wonderful, vibrant characters. You know you're reading a good book when all you want to do is read it rather than do anything else.

Emma is happy with her boyfriend, John, her first and only love; they've been together over ten years since they were sixteen. Emma thinks they have their whole lives ahead of them with a future that holds marriage and children. Struck in the street by a car, John's pronounced dead at the hospital, and Emma's world is shattered. Enveloped by a haze of grief, guilt, pain, and sadness, Emma and John's close knit group of friends rally together to carry each other and Emma through the pain of rebuilding a new normal without John. Some friendly advice from your intrepid reviewer: keep some tissues handy through the first incredibly sad and heart wrenching first chapters that detail John's death and funeral.

In any McPartlin novel the characters are the best part--they're funny, bold, and vividly drawn. Each character in this novel is no exception as each has their own distinctive personality. There's Clodagh, who's unlucky in love and only wants to find her Mr. Right; Anne and Richard have a seemingly happy marriage that's fast headed for crisis after a move to the Irish countryside; Sean is the ladies' man who has slept his way through all the women in Ireland because he can't have the one woman he's secretly been in love with for over a decade.

Ultimately this is a vivid, witty, heartwarming story of lifelong friendships, of letting go and moving on, and realizing that sometimes your future has been right in front of you all this time. I highly recommend this book, and lately, people, "highly recommend" doesn't come easily from this reviewer. Check this book out the next time you're in the library--you won't regret it.

--Reviewed by Ms.Angie

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (A Memoir of Going Home) by Rhoda Janzen

2011-03-23T17:03:00.000-04:00

Every time I review a non-fiction book on this blog, I always say non-fiction isn't normally my book of choice, but every once in a while I find one that I actually finish reading as opposed to jettisoning after only two chapters. This is the first memoir that I've read. I started this book and after two chapters I was undecided as to whether or not to continue reading. In the meantime I read another chapter and just like that a switch flipped and I was in it for the rest of the book.

As someone from Pennsylvania Dutch country and who is 100% Pennsylvania German, I assumed the Mennonite of the title was of this history, heritage, and extraction. Our own Mennonites (and Amish as well others of German heritage) immigrated to PA from Germany in the eighteenth century. As someone who has been researching family history for many years, I've read a little bit about this early German immigration. There were several waves of German immigrants to the New World starting as early as the seventeenth century (something I was surprised to learn recently) and continuing into the eighteenth century (when my ancestors immigrated) and beyond.

There were several options for these seventeenth and eighteenth century Germans fleeing the war-torn area we now know as Germany; one of these options was to migrate to America; another option was to migrate to Russia. Janzen's Mennonites took the latter option. After living the Ukraine for several generations, her grandparents immigrated to Canada. Finally her parents settled in California where they raised Janzen and her siblings in a large Mennonite community. Who knew there was a large Mennonite community in California? I didn't until I read Janzen's memoir.

Janzen has left her Mennonite faith and culture far behind in both years, geography, and lifestyle. However, through the course of some life changing events that lead her to return home for an extended visit for the first time in years, she comes to realize that her Mennonite upbringing had a much more profound and far reaching influence on the paths she chose in life. After Janzen's husband leaves her for Bob from Gay.com, she suffers serious injuries in a devastating car wreck. She returns home to her parents in California to recuperate physically and emotionally. Throughout her memoir Janzen recounts memories from her Mennonite childhood, experiences throughout her tumultuous marriage, details of her husband's demons and their effects on their relationship and her life, and experiences and conversations that take place throughout her visit home.

This memoir is by turns insightful, introspective and hilarious. The difference in tone between the mocking irreverence used when discussing various Mennonite customs and relatives and the insightful discussion and analysis of her life choices is pronounced enough to make one wonder if there are two different books in this memoir. I felt as if the later discussion and portrayal of her marriage--revealed to be controlling and abusive--came a little out of left field after the caring and sensitive characterization of her husband and how he cared for her after surgery. I appreciated most the discussion of her family history and how her family came to North America because of my own genealogical hobby.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern

2011-03-22T14:44:00.000-04:00

Lately it seems I've amassed a canon of Irish writers that I follow. Besides the newly discovered Anna McPartlin, there's also Tana French and Cecelia Ahern; all three of these stellar writers set their novels in Ireland. I also read John Connolly's Charlie Parker series set in Maine; it details the misadventures of an American private investigator to whom trouble and evil are attracted like a moth to flame. All of these fine writers write from different genres, and I highly recommend you pick up one of their books sometime--in the cases of Connolly and French you may have to read with all the lights on, but you won't regret it.

Tamara found her father after he committed suicide. In the wake of his death Tamara and her mother are forced to sell their house and everything they own when the massive debts accrued and hidden from them by her father are finally revealed. Tamara's mother is consumed by her grief and has withdrawn from the world, including from her own daughter who is the only one who believes that her mother needs help. Eventually Tamara and her mother move in with her mother's brother, Arthur and his wife, Rosaleen, who live in the rural Irish countryside far from the big city of Dublin that Tamara loves.

From the first day it's clear to Tamara that silent Arthur and odd Rosaleen are hiding secrets from her about her family's history, relationships and dynamics. It's also clear that both Arthur and Rosaleen know more than they let on and lead Tamara to erroneous assumptions about the recent history of the ruined castle whose grounds Arthur cares for. Then Tamara discovers a diary in which her handwriting details the events of the next day, and her world is turned upside down again when Tamara realizes that she's not imagining things, and the events detailed come true each day.

The book of tomorrow guides Tamara as she navigates the secrets in her family and in the town. Soon it's clear that the secrets her family holds are ones hidden in the foundation upon which her entire identity is built. Is the book here for Tamara to change her future or to reveal the hidden revelations of her past? Will the truth set her free or will it only cause more heartache for her and her mother?

The tension and strangeness of the characters' behaviors portrayed vividly and authentically intensify the suspense of the question of what is being hidden from Tamara and why. The narrator is unusually self aware for her age--Tamara knows and freely admits to the reader that she's not the best person, but, despite her flaws, she is determined to protect her mother and to find the truth. The reader will root for Tamara when it becomes clear that Rosaleen is not being truthful with Tamara or with Arthur about daily household events for her own motives. This is a story that quickly sucks the reader into the lives of its characters.

I recommend you pick it up the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards

2011-02-23T16:10:00.000-05:00

This is the second novel by Kim Edwards, whose debut novel was The Memory Keeper's Daughter. I have not read The Memory Keeper's Daughter. Something about the plot just didn't appeal to me. However, I just recently finished her follow up, The Lake of Dreams, which was wonderful, and so I may have to revisit Keeper's Daughter. Tension and suspense are palpable in The Lake of Dreams not just in the plot but also between characters. I must say that the narrator, Lucy, makes some questionable decisions when it comes to her actions, and this is where some of the suspense and tension comes from for me: will she be caught out in her actions?

Edwards weaves a tri-part interconnected story made up of some fascinating strands. I highly enjoyed the family history/genealogical hunt aspect of the novel as genealogy has long been a hobby/obsession of mine. In addition I also liked the women's suffrage movement details that figured into the story as women's rights is another issue that is dear to me.

Lucy is a woman adrift in the world in more ways than one. Ever since her father's sudden death a decade ago she's lived out of state or overseas, returned home annually for brief visits, and disconnected from the daily lives of her family and hometown both of which are in for some profound changes. But for all she's accomplished in her life, she feels as if all she's ever done is circle back to the single most life altering tragedy of her life tethered by grief and an unwillingness to let go of her father's memory and truly move on with her life.

Lucy returns home to The Lake of Dreams, a small village in the lakes region of New York state. She finds myriad, rapid moving changes to the town, to the land, and to her family. She quickly realizes that even more life altering changes are on the horizon for both town and family in which long unresolved tensions and revelations in both her family and the town threaten to obliterate everything Lucy ever thought she knew about her family and its history.

When she discovers a long hidden cache of flyers and articles related to the women's suffrage movement dating back to 1913, Lucy stumbles upon a long buried family secret and a long lost female ancestor that's been erased from the family lore. As Lucy's hunt for answers about this family story progresses, she realizes that the answers she finds may not be the ones she wants to know and will most certainly alter the dynamics and the lore that is her family's dearly held foundation and heritage.

In this engrossing, intriguing story, a family's history, a region's connections to women's suffrage, and an early twentieth century stained glass artisan are all inexplicably intertwined. It is clear that the events and dynamics of the distant past shaped Lucy's family yesterday and continue to shape it today. This is a great read, and I highly recommend you check it out the next time you're in the library--you won't regret it.

--Reviewed by Ms.Angie

Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman

2011-02-15T18:59:00.000-05:00

Arcadia Falls is the latest release from Carol Goodman. I've read all of her books, sometimes for better or for worse. This is one of her better ones. In previous novels the resolution of the present day mystery sometimes came out of left field because more time was spent developing the historical mystery to the neglect of the present day mystery. This was not the case with Arcadia Falls in which the sixty year old historical mystery is so intertwined with the present day mystery that solving the historical mystery is prerequisite to understanding the present day mystery. Granted the twist at the end is highly improbable, but it still gives the reader a good feeling because ultimately everyone turns out to be where it is that they belong.

This book has similarities in superficial details of the narrator's life and setting with Goodman's first novel, The Lake of Dead Languages. Meg, the narrator, flees the city to the rural New York campus of an eccentric, arts based private school steeped in pagan lore and the traditions of its founders who were the original inhabitants of the arts colony from which the school was born. Meg and her moody teenage daughter Sally are still mourning the loss of husband and father respectively after his sudden death a year ago. Left in dire financial debt by her husband, Meg is forced to sell off most of their possessions and their house to pay the bills; she's also forced to take a job as an English teacher at a rural, exclusive private school. The position is perfect for her because it also offers housing for her and her daughter, and it was founded in the 1930's by two female artists, Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt, whose folklore collections are the subject of Meg's doctoral thesis.

Soon after Meg and Sally's arrival on campus the school holds its fall, pagan flavored festival to kick off the school year. When one of the female students is discovered to be missing and then later found dead close to the spot where Lily Eberhardt fell to her death the entire student body is shaken. As the school year progresses and Meg dives back into her research the story of the school's founding women emerges from a long lost journal uncovered one night by Meg. The events of the past parallel current events on campus, and it becomes clear those long past events' ripples continue to capsize those in their wake today. While Meg struggles to piece together what happened that long ago winter night when Lily died, she copes with the ever widening emotional distance between herself and her daughter.

Astute readers will piece together and guess the implications and outcomes of this story in which jealousy and tensions between mothers and daughters plays a central, disturbing theme. But don't think once you've guessed the solution to the mystery that the story's done because it still has a few twists to throw out before the close of the novel. This is a must read for Goodman fans and those who enjoy folklore and fairy tales. I recommend you check out this book the next time you're in the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman

2011-02-10T16:36:00.000-05:00

The Red Garden is Hoffman's latest release. I've read several of her books--the first of which was The Ice Queen--however, I haven't read her two books released prior to Garden. I just couldn't get into them. The Red Garden is similar to The Blackbird House in that it is a series of vignettes connected by setting.

This series of vignettes follows the inhabitants of a tiny Massachusetts village starting with its founding in the mid-eighteenth century through the present day. Charactered by the intermarried generations of descendants of its original settlers, the vignettes follow the fortunes, loves, and tragedies of these families and the town in which many are born, live and die through harsh winters, wars and epidemics.

Beautifully, lyrically written, this absorbing book is hard to put down as the reader greedily turns the pages to follow the generations of these families through the years. I recommend you pick up this book the next time you visit the library; it is a must read for every Hoffman fan, and a good place to start for those unfamiliar with her magical work.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt

2011-02-09T16:29:00.000-05:00

Pictures of You is the first book by Caroline Leavitt that I've read. It's a story that sucks you in and makes the book hard to put down until the very last page because you're just hoping really hard that things will end up the way you want them for the two main adult characters. I must admit that in the end, that is in the book's end, I felt a huge let down. While the author says the book ends the way it does so that readers will think about the characters afterwards and what might come next for them after the end of the book, that is not what I thought about when the book ended. I thought why? Why is this book? What is the point of the entire book if that is how it is going to end? WHY? I'm really writing this into more of a big deal than it is to me--I was disappointed in the ending. It gives me pause about trying out Leavitt's other books--will their endings disappoint me too? I figure I'll try out one and see how it goes, but if the disappointing endings become epidemic, I'll have to give her up.

April and Isabelle are both from Cape Cod and are both women on the run from their respective marriages when their cars collide on a faraway, fog shrouded road. Of the two women only Isabelle walks away while April leaves behind a husband and an eight year old son sick with asthma to grieve her sudden inexplicable death. Isabelle, already devastated by the sudden revelation of her husband's long term infidelity, is shattered by the car accident and the weight she carries over April's death. Charlie and Sam, April's husband and son, struggle amid their grief with the unexplained questions April left in her wake. Why was she on that road to begin with? Why was there a suitcase in her car? And where was she headed?

As Isabelle grieves and struggles to move on with her life she forms a bond with Sam after a chance encounter. Soon Sam is seeking her out despite his father's admonishments to stay away from her. Then Charlie realizes that Sam's doing better after his visits with Isabelle, and Charlie decides to put his son's needs first and allow him to spend time with Isabelle.

Both Isabelle and April are the product of dysfunctional parents and childhood traumas. While Isabelle seems to have grown into a relatively well adjusted adult, April, as her story is told, is revealed to be unstable, dysfunctional and insecure in ways even her husband and son were unaware.

Back to the ending. I have mixed feelings about it--it's not your typical happy ending for either character. It's not that I need everything tied up in a neat little bow with sparkles on top, but I also don't want it ending with the characters settling and forever being passing ships in the ocean. It's heart-wrenching and frustrating that ultimately Sam finds out that he was lied to by both his mother and his father about different things at different times for different reasons. Now I'm done obsessing over the ending. And I really don't know if I should end this with my customary recommendation. Maybe you should read it yourself so you can decide. Let me know whether you would recommend this novel in the comments.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Diviner's Tale by Bradford Morrow

2011-02-03T18:08:00.000-05:00

The Diviner's Tale by Bradford Morrow was recently featured on BookPage's homepage and then reviewed in its February issue. I enjoy the reviews in BookPage, but month to month it's really hit or miss as far as finding books in the reviews that I'm actually interested in reading. Before I read this one I looked up Morrow's other books to see if he might have other titles I'd be interested in reading in case I liked The Diviner's Tale. Unfortunately his other titles' subjects/plots don't really interest me so I may have to wait to see his next one to read another of his books.

Beautifully and lyrically written the tale this novel tells is an unusual one of a modern day diviner. A diviner or a dowser is a person who uses a rod to guide them in locating water on people's land. It is a supernatural, mysterious, and dying art that until recently admitted only men to its fraternity.

Cassandra is the fifth generation and first female dowser in her family. A single mother of twins who makes ends meet by substitute teaching part-time and divining the rest of the time, Cassandra has always secretly regarded herself as a fraud in her archaic chosen profession. She has also been plagued all her life by visions of the future that her father dubbed 'forevisioning'. It is a phenomenon Cassandra regards as separate and different from divining and refers to as her 'monster' when the visions come back to plague her at different times in her life while threatening to pull her back into the darkness she suffered in her adolescence. Between her forevisions and her divining, the residents of her rural town in upstate New York regard Cassandra with a mix of superstition, fear, and skepticism.

One day while divining on an isolated and remote piece of land, Cassandra comes upon a girl hanging from a tree. Shocked and shaken, when Cassandra returns with the sheriff's department the hanging girl has vanished. While the woods remain pristine and untouched, they give away no indication of the disturbance that the hanging and subsequent removal of the girl would have left behind. A search of the woods yields up a frightened, mute, runaway girl and the ensuing investigation and resulting gossip and rumors regarding Cassandra's involvement in the girl's discovery leave her smarting and worrying about her damaged credibility and reputation. At the end of the school year Cassandra packs up her boys and flees to the family's isolated Maine island retreat. However, her problems have followed right on her heels to Maine. After Cassandra returns home she decides to handle her problems her way for better or for worse.

While it is clear to the reader that things may not be as they seem and that something sinister awaits Cassandra, these things aren't so clear to Cassandra and her family and friends, all of whom worry that she may be losing her grip on reality. As the story progresses it becomes clear that the key to the present mystery lies in a possibly shattering, traumatic event buried in Cassandra's past. One also has to consider that given her background in therapy and the medications prescribed to her in her youth to control her hallucinations and the lastings effects these may have had on Cassandra's mental stability and the reliability of Cassandra's character and narration. For a good part of this book I was wondering if indeed Cassandra was an unreliable narrator and was crazy--yet Cassandra herself worries about her sanity, so is she really losing her grip on reality or is someone going to an awful lot of trouble to make her think so?

This was highly intriguing read that was hard to put down. I recommend you pick it up the next time you visit the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

2011-01-26T18:53:00.000-05:00

Remarkable Creatures is not the first Tracy Chevalier novel that I've read, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Previously I've read The Virgin Blue and possibly another one. I find that I always enjoy her novels and often they are hard to put down despite the long chapters. Usually long chapters annoy me because I like to read a book by chapter, and I don't like to go away from it or put it down in the middle of a chapter. Indeed sometimes long chapters are enough to put me off a book entirely. And don't even get me started on Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea--an entire book made up of ONE chapter: it was enough to drive me to distraction.

Set in early nineteenth century England, the chapters alternate between two narrators: Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot. Anning and Philpot are two female historical figures that influenced fossil science despite the restrictions set upon their gender by nature of the time period. The novel tells the engrossing story of the lives and work of two very different women separated by age, class, education and station in life but bound by a passion for fossil hunting upon the beaches of Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire, England. The story is told over a span of two decades beginning with the spinster Philpot sisters' move to the quiet, small, coastal village of Lyme Regis. Chevalier does a tremendous job of creating distinctive voices for the two narrators.

As much as the story is about the contributions that Anning and Philpot made to the field of geology through discovery of fossils of previously unknown, long extinct species, it is also about the friendship between these two remarkable women. It is also a story of the coming of age of both women in their own time. Readers of historical fiction, especially those who enjoy reading about women's early contributions to the scientific field, will love this book. I recommend you pick it up the next time you're in the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Apart From The Crowd by Anna McPartlin

2011-01-20T19:28:00.000-05:00

This is McPartlin's second novel after Pack Up The Moon (which I have not read yet); it is also the second McPartlin novel I've read. Alexandra, Gone, the first one I read, is actually her fourth novel. I can tell the difference between the two novels as far as writing craft goes, and Apart From The Crowd is slow getting started until it sets up its characters and its story. The story takes a good hundred pages or so to get rolling, but once it goes the reader will be glad they hung in there because the sparks of sharp wit and vivid characterization that ran so thoroughly through Alexandra, Gone are present in this one. Music plays an integral role in the characters' lives as it did to the plot in Alexandra, Gone.

The novel alternates between the third person perspective of four characters: Penny, Ivan, and Mary, all Irish; and Sam, an American. Each character has their own demons and past tragedies and misfortunes that need exorcising and that have in different ways marked them forever. The novel is set in Kenmare, Ireland, a small town where everyone knows everyone else's secrets no matter how hard they try to hide them, heal them, bury them, or run from them.

Mary, called Mary of the Sorrows by townsfolk due to the inordinate number of tragedies that have marked her from birth, has her father and her best friends and her work to keep her busy. She's completely closed herself off from love and new acquaintance, and thus she has no time for the handsome new neighbor named Sam who moves in next door. However, in the wake of an injury requiring Mary's care and that he take up residence on her living room floor to recover, the two form a tentative friendship.

Ivan, Mary's cousin and best friend, is still recovering from his wife taking his kids and running off to England with her lover the year before. Lately his kids have been withdrawing from him, and he can't help but worry that he's losing them for good and that something is terribly wrong in their English home.

Penny, Mary's best friend, has been carrying on an affair for the past five years with her first love who's the love of her life. Unfortunately he's married with kids and ultimately chooses his kids over Penny. Left devastated by the end of her affair and her lover's move to Cork, Penny drowns her sorrows in beer, wine and vodka. Soon she becomes jealous of Mary's burgeoning friendship with Sam. Penny is determined to dig up the man's secrets and expose them in a scathing article in her newspaper. She embarks on a research project that cannot end well for anyone once all of Sam's secrets are exposed to Mary and the entire town.

Sam is seeking refuge from a lifestyle and an addiction that nearly killed him and destroyed his relationship with his family. However, Sam's addiction is the symptom of devastating personal demons stemming from a highly traumatic incident from his teen years. It has haunted him and derailed his life ever since.

This story is is as much about people working through the issues that haunt them and hold them back as it is about the boundaries and bindings of friendship. I recommend you check out this title the next time you're at the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Come Sunday by Isla Morley

2011-01-19T18:13:00.000-05:00

Come Sunday is the debut novel by South African ex-patriot Isla Morley, who lives in California.

Abbe grew up in apartheid South Africa while the country was rumbling painfully toward progressive reform and revolution. The daughter of an alcoholic, controlling, malicious, violent and abusive father and a mother whose spirit, heart and family are broken and trampled down to dust by her husband and unhappy marriage, Abbe fell for the opposite type of man for her husband: Greg. A methodist preacher-man, Greg lives his life by the tenets of Christ: forgiving, quiet, dispassionate and forever turning the other cheek and refusing to fight back. Now a wife and mother and years into her marriage Abbe longs for passion and a reprieve from the boredom that permeates her marriage and her life in idyllic Hawaii where her husband shepherds a reluctant and increasingly mutinous flock.

Upon returning to a friend's house where they left their three year old daughter while they went to a movie, Greg and Abbe walk into every parent's nightmare: their daughter has been struck by a car and rushed to the hospital where she dies in surgery. Devastated, Greg and Abbe retreat into themselves and withdraw from each other, each coping with their grief in their own ways. Increasingly consumed by her grief and sorrow and withdrawing from church, friends, and the world, Abbe spends her days and weeks in her home watching the clocks and completing the daily ritual of winding the grandfather clocks. As deeply hidden secrets and truths come to light in Abbe's marriage, she recalls her childhood in South Africa and the weeks and years that led up to the deaths of her parents and beloved grandmother. It becomes clear that her childhood also holds long buried secrets and that Abbe and her brother have different recollections and perspectives on their mother and their childhood.

Infused with the culture and steeped with the superstition of her South African homeland, this vividly and beautifully written story is tragic and heartbreaking. Complicated characters and complex story alike grab the reader and won't let go until the last page. I highly recommend you check out this book the next time you're in the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Alexandra, Gone by Anna McPartlin

2011-01-11T19:23:00.000-05:00

This book has made me a fan of Anna McPartlin. There's only one other title by McPartlin in the county library system, and after I've read that one I either have to track the others down through ILL or recommend her other titles be added to our library. Unless I hate the one at home in which case I won't bother with the others. McPartlin is an Irish writer; she lives in Ireland and her novels are set in Ireland. In Ireland and the UK Alexandra, Gone was published as So What If I'm Broken and apparently, according to her website, McPartlin hated the latter title and much preferred the title under which the novel was published in the US. I don't know that I hate the UK title, but the US title makes more sense. Having read the novel, I'm not really sure the UK title fits the story and we all know how annoying it is when a title has no connection to the story--please see The Dead Travel Fast's review from a couple weeks ago for a refresher.

As girls Alexandra and Jane were best friends. Then Jane got pregnant at 17 and left school to raise her son while Alexandra went away for college. The friends lost touch and haven't seen each other since. Years later when coincidence puts Jane and her self-absorbed, unstable, creative genius sister, Elle in an elevator with Tom, Alexandra's desperate husband, and a stranger named Leslie. Tom is desperate because months ago Alexandra vanished from a Dublin suburb and since then has not been seen nor heard from and all leads on the case have gone cold.

After their meeting in the elevator, a friendship blooms between the four former strangers who become united in one cause: raising awareness about Alexandra's disappearance in an effort to bring her home. While Alexandra's mysterious disappearance and unknown fate are the impetus for the friends' bond and for the story, the story's focus is not the stereotypical whodunit mystery of where Alexandra has gone. Instead this is the story of the months after her disappearance as told from the perspective of her friends and family and its effects on their lives and relationships. Jane, Tom, Elle and Jane each have their own demons with which to wrestle and through their friendship each finds the strength to move on.

Capable of both humor and heartrendingly sad passages throughout the story, this is a beautifully written novel that is hard to put down. The friends' journeys are as compelling as the mystery of Alexandra's disappearance. I recommend you check out this book the next time you're in the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Once Upon A Day by Lisa Tucker

2011-01-04T19:35:00.000-05:00

This is apparently the second novel by Lisa Tucker that I've read. This realization only dawned on me when I was at least halfway through the book. Previously I've read and reviewed The Promised World which was released after Once Upon A Day. Both novels share similar themes of a terribly dysfunctional family with tragic secrets long buried in the past that are the key to resolving the issues the families face in the present. This was a thoroughly absorbing book and turned out to be quite the page turner. However, in a way I feel as if the ending left me hanging just a bit.

Dorothea and her brother Jimmy were raised in total isolation and seclusion from the modern day world, society and people by their father who is controlling and overprotective in the extreme. One could argue that his brand of overprotective borders on abuse or neglect as it is left both children extremely ill prepared to deal with and relate to the outside world. Then Jimmy moves to the city and when their father sickens and Jimmy's letters cease, Dorothea follows her brother to the big city to find him and bring him home to their father. Dorothea's mission is complicated thousand fold by the facts that she has never had any contact with the outside world and her knowledge of history, society and technology stops at the 1950's thanks to the way she was raised and educated by her father.

Upon her arrival in the city, happenstance puts her in Stephen Spaulding's cab. Stephen himself has ceased living and has cut off most contact with friends and family in the wake of the crushing grief and trauma from an unspeakable tragedy two years ago. A former physician, he reluctantly takes Dorothea under his wing and the two of them trail Jimmy to several of his former addresses before he is finally found in the county hospital psychiatric ward after suffering a nervous breakdown that resulted in gruesome self-mutilation. The reality of Jimmy's situation and condition is heartbreaking in so many ways because it is due to both his upbringing and their father's refusal to divulge any details about the family's past. It is this past and the answers it holds that are the key to healing Jimmy.

There are two suspenseful stories told in this book. There is the story of the tragedy that resulted in the disintegration of Dorothea's and Jimmy's family over a period of several years, and there is also the story of the present as Dorothea and Jimmy try piece together their past as everyone rumbles toward a shocking revelation regarding the secrets and lies their father told them. Beautifully written, at turns humorous and gut wrenching, this book is hard to put down until the last page.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Charlie St. Cloud by Ben Sherman

2010-12-29T19:44:00.000-05:00

You've heard of the artist formerly known as Prince who is now known as Prince (again). Well, this is the novel formerly published as The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud. Its title (which I quite like a lot better than its current incarnation) was shortened to Charlie St. Cloud when it was adapted as a major motion picture. I have not yet seen the film, and I thought I should read the book before I see the film. And I'm glad I did. Charlie St. Cloud (the character) is a six-foot-three, twenty eight year old man played by Zach Efron who is neither six-foot-three nor twenty eight years old. I'm not sure how I feel about the younger, shorter St. Cloud because, let's face it, Efron can't pull off a twenty eight year old man yet. I'm trying to reserve judgment until I see the movie, but still there are already mixed feelings about the casting choice for the lead character.

When Charlie's fifteen and his brother, Sam, twelve, the boys' are in a horrific car accident while out doing that which they shouldn't: joyriding in a neighbor's car while neither boy has a license. In the immediate aftermath of the crash, both boys are killed. However, Charlie is miraculously revived en route to the hospital while Sam is not. In the in-between while both brothers are dead they make a promise to each other: neither brother will leave the other behind.

When Charlie is brought back, he returns with a gift. When the sun goes down Sam emerges from the twilight and the brothers spend their nights together playing ball and going swimming. Charlie's gift works only within the confines of the Waterside Cemetery where Sam is buried and where Charlie works as caretaker. Charlie can also see other recently dead and in addition to his other duties in the cemetery, he helps the dead move on to the next level. However, Charlie's gift comes at a price: he can never stray far from the borders of the cemetery, and he must never miss a twilight meeting with Sam or his gift and Sam both begin to fade. As a result of the promise the brothers made, they are bound to each other and to the cemetery and neither one is able to move on.

Then Charlie meets Tess, a young woman and proprietor of a sail making firm. Tess deeply misses her father, who died suddenly two years previously. Since then she's lived an adventurous and daring existence until a nearly deadly practice voyage scares her to death. She meets Charlie after this near death experience and only a week before she's due to embark upon a history making solo circumnavigation sail of the world.

Both Tess and Charlie have been crippled in their lives in different ways by their overwhelming grief. When they meet both question for the first time the ways in which they have chosen to live their lives and cope with their grief. Was the cost of their grief worth what they've missed and is it too late to change?

The cleverly, skillfully written book will have the reader returning to previous passages to re-read them when the truth is revealed. This is a haunting, thought provoking book, and I recommend you check it out the next time you're in the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Dead Travel Fast by Deanna Raybourn

2010-12-28T19:21:00.000-05:00

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

Dead Connection by Charlie Price

2010-12-22T19:34:00.000-05:00

Dead Connection is the debut Young Adult fiction novel from Charlie Price. In a blurb on the book jacket the author Christ Crutcher calls Dead Connection witty and humorous or maybe he used the word funny. Witty I agree with but I'm not sure I would use humorous or funny to describe this novel. Considering its subject matter, it's not particularly serious or dark, but I wouldn't call it funny. It is well written, well plotted, and always suspenseful--nail-bitingly so in some parts. Its mystery is twisty and just when you think everything's been figured out, a wrench gets thrown into the works. There is a subtle supernatural element that is integral to the plot that is done well, too. The novel tells its story in rotating third person point of view that helps develop the story from multiple perspectives that serves to heighten the thrilling suspense. Sometimes the device of rotating point of view annoys me because usually just when things really start happening from one point of view is when the action shifts to the next point of view. However, the short chapters in this novel alleviated this annoyance and helped keep the pace moving at a quick clip.

Murray's in high school and he's an outcast without any friends. He spends his free time in the cemetery near his home where his only friends, Dearly and Beloved, 'live.' The quotes are necessary because, well, Murray can talk to the dead and they talk back; they are his only friends. If he concentrates really hard, he can see them, too, in his mind's eye. Recently a new voice has emerged from the ether of the cemetery, and although at first all Murray can discern are garbles and static and fragments of words, he can tell the voice is in distress. Murray is befriended by Pearl, the cemetery caretaker's daughter, who urges him to track down the voice and figure out to whom it belongs. Thus, both Murray and Pearl stumble upon a local mystery that has the town wound tight due to the stagnating investigation that has failed to yield any answers.

Meanwhile, Officer Gates is determined to lay to rest and resolve the investigation of the disappearance of a local teenage girl no matter where it leads or from whom the leads emerge. Robert, a recovering paranoid schizophrenic readjusting to society after committal, struggles to recall some important information he wanted to tell someone. And peace officer Billups, a bitter, nasty man, begins a downward spiral into alcohol addiction that will destroy his life and career and possibly take Murray down with him.

The satisfying ending doesn't wrap everything up too neatly with a bow. In fact, it may just leave a little too much hanging up in the air for some readers, though the reader will be able to guess where the story is headed after the last sentence. In the end Murray has what he's never had before: a family and a friend, both of the living variety, who will support him and stand by him no matter how unbelievable his ability seems to be.

I recommend you check out this read the next time you're at the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

A Thief In The House of Memory by Tim Wynne-Jones

2010-12-16T18:31:00.000-05:00

A Thief In The House of Memory is a Young Adult fiction novel by Tim Wynne-Jones, and it's quite a fast read--I read it in about four hours. It's a well written, well crafted mystery for younger readers.

When Declan discovers the corpse of a would be burglar in the vacant, old mansion that's been in his family for generations, it unleashes a flood of memories of his long gone mother. The memories are so vivid and tangible they're like visions being played out before his eyes. These long dormant memories spur Declan to think about his mother and her abandonment of their family more than he has in a long time. Soon Declan is unraveling the long buried, serpentine mystery of his mother's disappearance. However, he's blocked at several turns by an emotionally distant father who lives hundreds of years in the past and who resists Declan's every attempt to talk about his mother. Declan struggles to fill in the blank spot in his memories that surrounds the time she left and the mystery of who she really was as a person, a wife and a mother.

The characters and their relationships with each other are as well developed as the story itself. Once you pick up this book, you'll find it hard to put it down until after the poignant conclusion.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Bad Blood by John Sandford

2010-11-24T18:27:00.000-05:00

This is the fourth Virgil Flowers novel by John Sandford, and it's called Bad Blood. When I got to page 179 I found a nasty surprise: half of that page was missing. And the wait list for the book still had eight people on it. I finally just broke down and read around the part that was missing and continued on with the book. I couldn't wait for months until it came in to finish it--patience is not one of my virtues.

This is Flowers' biggest case since the bodies that were dumped at various veterans' memorials, and this case is much bigger and much nastier. A county sheriff calls Flowers in to investigate the suicide of a teen boy being held in her jail for the murder of a middle aged farmer, who, upon closer inspection, turns out to be far from the upstanding citizen most people thought he was. When the correctional officer on duty at the time of the boy's suicide also turns up dead, it becomes clear this case is bigger than a single murder. Flowers' investigation reveals a connection to an unsolved Iowa murder whose victim was a local girl with ties to the same private church to which both the farmer and the correctional officer also belonged.

Unfortunately, Flowers' investigation is hindered by a secretive, cult like church whose membership keeps to themselves and resists the intrusion of outsiders. Through questionable methods Flowers stumbles upon the church's invasive, nasty secret with far reaching side effects that will bring down the church in a hail of deadly fire and bullets leaving broken families, damaged children, and dead bodies in its wake.

Readers won't be able to put down this highly suspenseful page turner especially during the nail biting climax.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

2010-11-18T19:40:00.000-05:00

If I Stay is Gayle Forman's first novel. I first read a review about it in BookPage a while ago. Then I was at a book sale over the summer and was surprised to find it there because it was such a recent release. It was the find of that particular book sale (which was not really impressive as far as book sales go). I finally got around to reading it recently. It's a short, fast read.

Seventeen year old Mia has a perfect life: she loves her family, her best friend and her boyfriend. Her music studies as a talented and gifted cellist are going so well that it's probable she'll be accepted at Juilliard to further her studies in music.

One day while out for a drive with her parents and younger brother, their car is broadsided by a truck. The crash is horrific and gruesome and her parents are killed instantly while the fate of her brother is unknown. Mia is hanging on to life by a thread. By now she has realized she's having an out of body experience and once she gets to the hospital she realizes that her life and her death are up to her. She can stay or she can go, but before she makes her decision she must witness the effects her parents' deaths and her precarious health have wrought on the rest of the family and friends that she'll leave behind.

As Mia struggles through a final decision, the reader sees the hospital through Mia's eyes as Mia observes the doctor's, nurses, and her family and friends fight to save her. Mia looks back on the important moments and people in her life as she comes to terms with every she's lost and how easy it is to give up.

This book is coming soon to the library. I recommend you pick this book up the next time you come to the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Rough Country by John Sandford

2010-11-10T17:58:00.000-05:00

Rough Country is the third installment in the adventures of Virgil Flowers, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension super agent. The series is written by John Sandford.

Flowers, the BCA's go to guy for cases that are especially difficult or in need of a quick turn around, is on a much needed vacation in the wake of the events that closed the previous Flowers novel. (This shouldn't deter one from jumping in feet first mid-series; although it's smart to start at the beginning anyway because you'll go back to the beginning to read the ones you missed.) Those events have also made Flowers a minor celebrity due to a New York Times Magazine article series the wannabe writer wrote about the investigation that was subsequently picked up and run by every local paper in Minnesota, and Flowers isn't sure he likes being a minor celebrity.

Flowers' vacation is interrupted by a phone call from his boss who pulls him off vacation to investigate a murder nearby in a county whose sheriff's department is already stretched thin due to another case that's grabbed the media spotlight. Erica McDill, a hotshot ad executive from the Twin Cities, is murdered by a sniper while on a solo canoe excursion at a remote, exclusive, upstate resort that caters to a women only clientele. Scarce forensic evidence complicates a case that is steeped with several viable suspects who have scads of motives.

Flowers operates in information: his philosophy is that the more information he culls on the victim, the crime and the other parties connected and/or involved with the victim and/or the crime the higher the chance that something will shake loose that breaks the case. In this particular case there's loads of information but not much forensic evidence to point definitively to a specific suspect or motive. Then a two year old unsolved Iowa murder comes to light whose victim shared several connections with McDill and to further complicate the investigation two more crimes are committed whose victims have tenuous ties to the original case.

This is a quick read with a perplexing mystery. There's also an obvious suspect or two that both Flowers and reader will struggle to tease out just how and why they killed McDill. I recommend you pick up this book--you won't regret it.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Promised World by Lisa Tucker

2010-11-04T19:14:00.000-04:00

The Promised World by Lisa Tucker is only available in county in large print. I normally avoid the large print editions because I don't like them. But I didn't feel like requesting it through ILL, so I just read one of the large print copies in the county. It's one of those books that once you pick it up and it's in your hands and you're reading it--well, it's hard to put down because it draws you in to its pages. But it's also the kind of book that once you put it down for whatever reason before you've finished it, you realize it's hard to pick up again because you dread what might be coming next for the characters. Is anybody else like that--do you avoid reading a book (no matter how good) because you dread the outcome for the characters and the travails they might have to suffer before the end of the book? I've found myself having these feelings with more than one book. It's hard to put down, but it's also hard to pick up again because you're afraid of what's going to happen next. Well, not really afraid, it's more like you dread it.

Lila and Billy are twins who share an extremely close bond. However, as close as they are, when Billy commits suicide by cop, Lila is shocked and devastated. Then Lila finds out that there were secrets--in his life and in their shared past--that Billy kept from her. Not least of these were the facts that he was in the middle of a contentious divorce and was being investigated for abusing his middle child, William.

This is a story that unfolds from four perspectives: Lila, Billy's devastated twin for whom his death triggers both a mental breakdown and a journey of self-discovery; his grieving eight year old son William, the child Billy was accused of abusing; his soon-to-be ex-wife Ashley, who even in the wake of his death cannot escape the family curse about which Billy ranted and believed responsible for all the hardship and bad luck his young family has withstood; and Lila's husband, Patrick, whose world is rocked by the lies his wife told him about her past. This is a deeply disturbing, puzzling, and suspenseful novel about a family dealing with both a tragic loss and a painful, twisted past that has extended its reach to take hold of this family's future to wreak as much damage as possible.

When her brother dies, Lila realizes that she remembers nothing of her childhood except dark, deeply fragmented bits and pieces and that most of what she does know is the product of the stories Billy told her. These stories he made up though they have a kernel of truth at their center and that he told to protect her from the catastrophic trauma of abuse that she suffered at the hands of a cruel monster. Lila's husband realizes that despite the lies she told him about her past and his belief that his wife has never loved him that he must stand by her to see her through this tragedy and to help her put together the pieces of her fragmented, traumatic childhood.

Meanwhile, Ashley, who has taken up with an old high school crush that turns out to be bad news, has cut off all contact between her children and Lila. Pearl, Billy's oldest daughter who was a daddy's girl, determines to understand her father and his torments the way her mother never could. She's determined to get her mother's new boyfriend out of their lives for good and to do so Pearl hatches a twisted plan whose consequences may destroy both her and her younger brother as well as her family forever. It is a plan that brings back into their family the cruel monster that Billy and Lila fled all those years ago. This is a monster whose true nature Pearl cannot understand--largely because her father, also a victim of its insidious mental abuse, never realized its true nature.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

2010-11-03T17:14:00.000-04:00

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 included--off the scent of the true culprits.

Someone is murdering veterans in Minnesota. A lemon is shoved into the mouth of the victim before his body is dumped in a symbolic fashion in the literal shadow of the local veterans' monuments, and Virgil Flowers is on the case. While veterans keep dying, Flowers' keeps digging until his investigation reveals a connection between all the dead men that goes back several decades and across an entire ocean to Vietnam in the waning days of the war. A local man put together a group of men--mostly all veterans of the war--to return to Vietnam and move out a shipment of heavy construction equipment abandoned by the American government in the wake of the American military withdrawal from the country. Things go according to plan until a loose cannon in the group cuts down an entire Vietnamese family living adjacent to their work site.

Flowers is certain that the killings--by now it's obvious they're committed by a professional assassin--stem directly from the massacre in Vietnam all those years ago. All the dead men were in the group who was stealing the equipment. But who hired the hits: the man who massacred an entire family and wants to keep it under wraps or some other as yet unknown person connected to the massacred family? And how does a left wing anti-war activist with a Vietnamese wife and, it turns out, ties to the CIA (that cannot proved) figure into the present day murders?

As always Flowers makes a love connection in this case, but how closely tied is his lady love to the murders? And how smart is it for the investigator to get involved with a potential witness or daughter of a potential suspect? The fast developing investigation hums along at a quick clip in this fast read and while perceptive readers will spot the probable culprit well before Flowers, this novel is definitely worth the read.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Daily Scoldings by Beryl Barclay

2010-10-21T18:42:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, there was a boy who lost three coins. Distressed, he searched for his missing money. He came upon a girl who was delighted because she had found three coins. [He] told her what he had lost. The girl's joy quickly faded as she handed her coins to the boy. Seeing how sad she was, the boy could feel no happiness. He said, "I cannot say for certain these coins belong to me. Let's ask the wise owl what to do." The boy and girl explained it to the owl. The owl reached into his own pocket and produced a coin. He gave two coins to the boy and two coins to the girl. He said, "Today we each have lost a coin." The children were content. Never did they consider the peculiar, creepy implausibility of a talking owl with pocket change. Be alert.

from March 5

Daily Scoldings: A Bracing Tonic of Criticism, Rebuke, and Punitive Inspiration for Better Living by Beryl Barclay was recently mailed to this blog for review. I'm not sure how I feel about being mailed books for review--mixed feelings I guess because I do have my own list of books to read--not all of which I succeed in reading in their entirety. If a book can't hook me and keep me reading, I discard it and move to the next one. There are too many books to read to struggle to finish one when I could fly through another in a fraction of that time. However, I had recently read Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern, the hilarious chronicle of the wisdom that has come from the mouth the author's father over the years. In a way Daily Scoldings reminded me of the pearls of wisdom shared in My Dad Says.

I must say the title of Daily Scoldings pretty much sums up what the book is about. Meant to be read like a desk calendar that has a joke or anecdote of the day, each day in Daily Scoldings provides a swift kick in the butt. This might be imparted in a snarky two or three liner or in a parable. And I must say the parables are my favorite by far because these aren't your typical Biblical parables. Barclay's parables are quirky, insightful and often end with a twist and it's the twist at the end that I so enjoy. Many of the anecdotes imparted in Barclay's unique voice are humorous and make you think--hmm, she has point (especially when it comes to creepy, wise owls).

This book is coming soon to the library. I recommend you pick it up and brace yourself for some better living.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Project 17 by Laurie Faria Stolarz

2010-10-12T18:27:00.000-04:00

I'm always on the lookout for good young adult fiction because some YA fic is just as good or better than some adult fiction I read. I've reviewed quite a few YA titles in the past. Project 17 by Laurie Faria Stolarz is the latest young adult fiction title that I've read and it is a quick read with short chapters (my favorite) of rotating narrators. We see the story unfold from multiple viewpoints, and while this can be quite effective in some novels, it seems to hinder the story development in this one. This is a spooky, but not scary, eerie read. The teenage voices of the narrators are differentiated between the various teens, but Stolarz fails to create distinctive, unique voices and when the chapters are right next to each other, it's easy to tell that it's the same person writing all the voices. The rotating narrators detract also from the atmosphere of what could easily be a wickedly terrifying night in a damaged and condemned state asylum that clearly retains some of what has transpired within its walls in years past.

Derik, Greta, Liza, Tony, Mimi and Chet are high school seniors who float in different social circles. Derik assembles this mismatched bunch to break in to the long abandoned Danvers State Hospital outside Boston on the eve of its scheduled demolition. The former mental institution, long rumored to be haunted, is steeped in local lore, dark secrets and the heavy atmosphere of a building that has witnessed too many years of human cruelties, tragedies and illnesses. Derik's mission is to tape the night the group spends there, edit the film, and submit it to a reality TV channel's contest. As the teens trek onto the hospital grounds its clear Danvers is already weaving its dark effects and thoroughly spooking the teens before they even enter the building complex.

Each teen is in Danvers that night for their own personal reasons, but they each have escape in mind. Whether it's escaping a volatile, abusive home life for a night, the chance to escape the family business upon graduation or an effort to escape a prestigious ivy league college's wait list, each teen in that group has a lot riding on seeing this extracurricular project through to completion. The question is, is it worth the price that Danvers will surely call due before the night is through?

Anyone who enjoys a spooky, subtle ghost story will enjoy this book.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen

2010-10-11T18:04:00.000-04:00

It's been a long, long wait for Tess Gerritsen's latest, Ice Cold. Throughout my wait I've been obsessing about the massive spoiler revealed in the jacket blurb. Is it for real or will it turn out to be a fake out because who puts that kind of major development involving a character upon which the series focuses on the book jacket instead of saving it for the mother of all shocking story lines for the unsuspecting reader? That is the conundrum I've been pondering for several months ever since Amazon posted the blurb on the book's page.

The first few chapters seem off to a slow start that's compounded by the slight awkwardness of the diction in the first chapters describing what is surely (one way or another) the end of the affair for Dr. Maura Isles and her beloved Father Daniel Brophy (a Catholic priest with whom she's been having an affair for over a year!). Then the story and the suspense crank up into a scary, thrilling page turner that's hard to put down.

Isles is in Wyoming at a forensic pathologists' conference where she reconnects with Doug, a former fellow medical student. Doug convinces Maura to join him, his daughter, and two of his friends on a weekend excursion to a secluded ski lodge. Maura, at a difficult emotional crossroads, impulsively decides to join the travel party. The group takes their rented SUV and when the GPS takes them on a wrong tun, the trip slides sideways steadily and rapidly towards disaster.

When a charred body turns up in the burned wreckage of Doug's rented SUV, it is identified as Isles and Detective Jane Rizzoli, her FBI agent husband Gabriel Dean and Anthony Sansone escort the body back to Boston for burial. However, this mystery is just getting cranked up and there are far more devious and far darker forces at work behind Isles' and her travel party's disappearance and murders.

Before long Rizzoli meets up with a social worker who tells her about a secretive, reclusive, isolated, polygamous cult that shuns and expels its teenage boys so the older men have less competition for the young girls. The outrage doesn't end there when the social worker shares her suspicions that the charismatic cult leader buys off cops, town officials and judges in efforts to avoid legal repercussions and jail time. In a town and county where the sheriff and any number of local law enforcement could be in the back pocket of this cult, who can Jane trust to run a clean investigation, to find the still unaccounted for Isles, and to see that the cult leader answers for his crimes?

The possibility of corrupt law enforcement reminds me of S.J. Bolton's debut novel (is it time for the fourth one yet? No? Still another seven months to go?), Sacrifice, in which law enforcement and local government officials were members of a murderous cult. It only makes the action more terrifying when you don't know who might be revealed to be in bed in with the bad guys.

I recommend you pick up this novel-- it is another satisfying installment to the Rizzoli and Isles series.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Faithful Place by Tana French

2010-10-06T15:34:00.000-04:00

This is Tana French's third novel. You can always count on French to turn in a spectacularly written and plotted novel. I've read all of her novels thus far and I've never been disappointed. Faithful Place follows Frank Mackey, who made his first appearance as Detective Cassie Maddox's old undercover boss who pulls her back in for one more undercover operation that ends in disaster. Just where Faithful Place's story is in the chronology in relation to The Likeness and In the Woods, I'm not sure--there aren't any clues that give it away and none of the other characters from previous novels make any cameos in this one. If there were clues in The Likeness that hinted at the placement of Faithful's chronology, well, I read that one over a year ago and I don't remember them anymore. Right now is about the time I start wondering and digging around for clues as to what French's next novel will entail. Will it be about an entirely new character? Will an old character return for an encore? I wonder, I wonder.

Faithful Place's tone stands in stark contrast to the tone of The Likeness. I remember when I read Likeness I was afraid to read it for fear of the fulfillment of the pervasive sense of foreboding that haunted each chapter in the book. Faithful, while depicting events that are in some ways even darker than those depicted in Likeness, did not exude the same sense of dark foreboding as its predecessor. Perhaps this had a lot to do with the vivid, shall we say colorful, characters that French draws so masterfully. This is a gripping page turner, and, with this novel especially, French's talent for creating a distinct and unique voice for her narrator is on display.

Frank Mackey, the undercover detective who nearly wrecked Cassie Maddox's life in the previous novel, returns as the narrator whose past comes back to haunt him with a vengeance. I do not want to be Frank Mackey on a good day. Mackey has been estranged from his crazy, working class family, save for his baby sister, for over two decades. He thinks he's finally made it out of his old neighborhood, Faithful Place. Then one evening Frank returns home to several frantic messages from Jackie, his younger sister. Jackie, along with the rest of the family, is in a panic thanks to a suitcase that's been uncovered in a long abandoned and derelict house on Frank's old street where much of his family still live. Upon further investigation, Frank verifies that the case does indeed belong to Rose Daly, his first love with whom he made plans to run away to England as teenagers. Both Rose and Frank were determined to make it out of the Place, even if it meant they might never be able to see their families or come home again thanks to a nasty on going feud of murky origins between the Dalys and the Mackeys.

On the night the two planned to make their getaway, Frank waited for Rose out at the top of the street for hours in the cold, but Rose never showed. Frank, assuming she changed her mind, ditched him and set off on her own for England, leaves the Place, cuts off all contact with his family, and makes his way elsewhere in the city of Dublin where he eventually becomes a cop. However, Frank never forgets Rose, in fact, her specter haunts every romantic relationship he has after her, and every few years he runs checks, hoping something will come up to tell him where Rose is and why she never met him that night. But Frank never finds anything that points to Rose until his sister calls him twenty years later with the news that Rose's case has turned up.

The reappearance of Rose's case reopens old wounds and Frank's instincts tell him that it points to a far more ominous explanation for why Rose never made their rendezvous that night. So Frank is reluctantly drawn back to his old stomping grounds and to his family (most of each of whom occupy different places on the crazy spectrum) to resolve what really happened to Rose. Unfortunately upon Frank's arrival, events start developing at a fast clip well on their way to spinning out of control. He finds that once both his family and his old neighborhood both have their claws hooked in him again they won't release him until they've drawn their share of blood. And events are set in motion by the discovery of Rose's case that will claim and disfigure more lives and by the mystery's resolution Frank has relearned a hard lesson of how those we love most are capable of wreaking the most damage on us.

I highly recommend you pick up this novel and any of French's others if you haven't already.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Beautiful Malice by Rebecca James

2010-09-29T18:39:00.000-04:00

Beautiful Malice is the first novel for Rebecca James, who lives in Australia. It wasn't until I was about halfway through the book that I realized that while the author is Australian, the book takes place in the United States. I suppose I let the confusion of place setting bother me more that it really should have. Ultimately, it took a lot longer to read this book than it normally would have (I was reading another one: thank you Food For The Dead) and also if I'm honest, I was afraid. You can tell right from the first lines that something bad--really bad--is going to happen to the narrator, and knowing this wasn't conducive to reading. It's like if I don't read it--it's not gonna happen to the characters and they'll be just fine! Yes. I know the characters aren't real people, but sometimes they feel real.

From the very beginning of the very first lines, one feels as if they are on a one way trip on a speeding train that is quickly picking up even more speed on its way to a fiery and spectacular wreck--and, as they say, it's hard to rip one's eyes away from a train wreck. One knows this cannot end well for a narrator who has already survived what no one should have to survive.

The narrative unfolds in three alternating parts: there are the chapters that recount the events that take place in the present of the novel; these are interspersed between chapters that recount the events and months leading up to the emotional train wreck that takes place at least four years in the past. These chapters are also interspersed with those that tell the story of the family tragedy that occurred several years before that and that set the stage for the emotional train wreck that occurred four years in the past.

Katherine's a young, single mother now and she's trying to raise a little girl without letting the grief, sorrow and tragedy that defines her also define and stain her little girl's life. Years after her sister, Rachel's, murder Katherine moves to the city, changes her name and is determined to remain as anonymous as possible in order to finish high school. She's vowed to keep to herself, to keep her secrets even closer and to maintain a solitary existence at school. Instead beautiful, popular Alice singles out Katherine to befriend. Soon Alice introduces Katherine to Robbie, Alice's maltreated boyfriend, who loves Alice despite the toxicity of their relationship. The three become a tight and inseparable trio. Under Alice's magnetic, charming, kind and generous exterior there are disturbing cracks in the perfect facade she presents to the world. The fissures in Alice's personality run deep and dark and hide the disturbing and devastating secrets that she keeps from her friends. Too late Katherine realizes that Alice's shiny magnetism hides cruel narcissistic and cold streaks that run deep and manifest themselves in brutal acts of cruelty, selfishness, infidelity and other betrayals that threaten both Robbie and Katherine. Robbie knows well Alice's moods and tendencies but he loves her and is willing to endure them if it means Alice will remain in his life, but Katherine, still vulnerable in the wake of her sister's murder, is only beginning to learn just what Alice is capable of.

Katherine's story of her sister's murder--the event that changed her forever right down to the very fiber of her being--is breathtaking and heart-pounding in its terror. The terror, the darkness, and the uncertainty of what's to come for her and her sister that night is vividly portrayed just as the dark twistedness of what Alice has planned for Katherine permeates each chapter of the novel. And when Alice's own secrets and her endgame are finally laid bare, it is devastating, brutal, insane, and diabolical.

I highly recommend you try this novel.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Food For The Dead: On The Trail of New England's Vampires by Michael E. Bell

2010-09-22T19:50:00.000-04:00

Food For The Dead: On The Trail of New England's Vampires is written by Rhode Island folklorist Michael E. Bell; it was published about ten years ago--way before the current vampire craze spawned by Twilight and True Blood and their compatriots. The author spent two decades tracing the origin of the legends of New England's vampires, and the New England legend is not your stereotypical, Hollywood vampire.

Bell uses interviews, newspaper and other published accounts, as well as town records to research various local, Rhode Island vampire legends. He also utilizes genealogical research to trace the origin of several vampire legends back to a single Rhode Island family. Bell paints an intriguing, fascinating and, at times, puzzling picture of Rhode Island's own vampire legend.

In eighteenth and nineteenth century America a bloody, deadly and mysterious ghoul was stalking its citizens, indeed, entire families in some instances: this was the ever dreaded disease consumption, now known as tuberculosis. In New England when certain families lost multiple members in quick succession to the disease and when medicine and science failed to stop the disease's progressive death march, a community determined the most likely recently deceased corpse that's wandering from its grave to visit its family members who then fall ill, waste away, and die. The community then exhumes said corpse, performs an autopsy to see if blood still exists in the heart and if it does--a sure indication that the corpse is undead--they cut out the heart and burn it to ash. In some instances the ashes are then fed to sick family members in order to cure them of the wasting disease. It is both a desperate and a gruesome act undertaken by a community at its wit's end that hoping to save itself before the disease spreads beyond a family to decimate the community.

For me the most enjoyable parts of this book are the ones that recount Bell's many interviews with the locals--historians, descendants of involved families--and his searches for corroborating genealogical, newspaper and other documentation to prove that the families named in these legends actually existed. The parts that analyze the spread of folklore tradition, the historical account of consumption, etc. while necessary and insightful, serve to slow down the narrative. Especially interesting to me were the genealogical connections that emerged from his research to show how many of the various families involved in several legends are linked through marriage and community connections.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys folklore, an unusual vampire legend, local history and genealogy.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb

2010-09-08T19:01:00.000-04:00

The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb is a spooky ghost story. Spooky. Creepy.

One day out of the blue Hallie James receives a bewildering and shocking missive from an attorney on Grand Manitou Island, Michigan, that shatters everything she ever knew about her past and about her father. The letter claims that Hallie's mother, Madlyn Crane, a famous photographer, has not been dead for thirty years as her father, who refused to speak of her mother, maintained. What's more the lawyer says Crane has only recently died and he needs to speak to Hallie regarding her mother's will. Hallie finds that not only did her mother, Annie, not die in a house fire three decades ago, but that wasn't even her name--and Hallie and her father have been living under assumed names all these years. Unfortunately her father's unable to shed light on why he fled the island all those years ago and faked their deaths because he's deep in the weeds of early onset Alzheimer's.

Upon her return to the island in blustery November, Hallie finds a close knit, insular, suspicious community and an isolated, long extinct way of life. From the moment she sets foot on the island, Hallie sees visions and strange things happen to her. Can Hallie see ghosts and visions of the past? Is someone playing tricks on her? Or is she going mad?

Hallie is immediately confronted by the cloud of mystery and suffering that hangs over the island due to the thirty year old unsolved murder of one of Hallie's childhood girlfriends in which her father was heavily implicated. She decides that for her to live peacefully on the island, she needs to get to the bottom of the mystery in order to clear her father's name. Meanwhile, Iris, the ancient and creepy housekeeper who kept house and history for Hallie's mother's family tells Hallie the spooky, odd, and tragic tale of her great-grandparents, her grandfather and Hallie's own tale--the tale of Halycon Crane.

In general this is a well-drawn story. There are places the writing is a bit sappy with its turn of phrase, while in others it rises above this to show the author's potential. Ghost story lovers who appreciate a splash of romance with the spooks and scares will love this tale.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs

2010-09-02T19:58:00.000-04:00

I just finished Spider Bones--the latest release in Kathy Reichs' Dr. Temperance Brennan series. It was on my own personal list of (in some cases very highly) anticipated summer blockbuster book releases. I look forward to some book releases with a higher degree of trepidation, anticipation and excitement than I do most movie releases. In some cases (this means you Karin Slaughter, S.J. Bolton, John Connolly and this summer, Tess Gerritsen), I'm nearly beside myself with obsessing over what the next book will be about and what will happen to the characters (this is especially true for the series I read).

This summer was an especially busy summer of book releases. It began in May with Brunonia Barry's The Map of True Places, her follow up to The Lace Reader (which in the end didn't live up to her debut but was still good nonetheless). Then came Broken by Karin Slaughter--it did not disappoint. Karin Slaughter never disappoints. John Connolly's The Whisperers and Tana French's Faithful Place both dropped the same July day. I've read The Whisperers and just received Faithful Place this week (it's on the pile at home to read).

Joshilyn Jackson's Backseat Saints was released in early June. I haven't read it. I had it for several weeks and when I finally bit the bullet and started it, I couldn't finish it. A review I'd read earlier turned me off of that one, and I couldn't abide the narrator so I ditched it after a couple chapters. I may come back to it later or I may not. Spider Bones finally came in. I'm now only waiting for Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen. I'm number one on the reserve list so someone better hurry up and return their copy so I can get it already. Ice Cold is the title that I've been beside myself about ever since I read Amazon's synopsis a few months before its release. I hope that what it says is going to happen in that book is a big fake out or that review will be one long freak out and sob fest the likes of which haven't been seen since I read Slaughter's Beyond Reach. No one saw that twist coming and its reverberations are still being felt two books later (and I still can't believe Slaughter did what she did! Karin Slaughter, you know what I'm talking about!).

On to Spider Bones. Much as I love the series--book and TV--I'm beginning to think that Kathy Reichs isn't half the writer that Karin Slaughter or John Connolly are. This suspicion has been sneaking its way through my brain for the past few installations of the Brennan series. I can't help but wonder if the early books are the same as the later ones or if its just that my tastes and critiques have become more discerning. One thing I must say for the series: the books are quick reads. I read Spider Bones in two days. It is a fast developing, page turning read. I've decided that Brennan is neurotic at times and when this quality comes through it grates a little on my nerves. She's at her best when she's not quite so chipper and neurotic.

The body of John Lowery, a Vietnam veteran, is pulled from a lake in Quebec, Canada. He's the victim of a bizarre autoerotic asphyxiation stunt gone horribly awry except Lowery returned from Vietnam in a flag draped casket and is currently planted in the cemetery in his hometown in North Carolina. Thus begins the mother of all complicated story lines.

Brennan is called in to identify the remains in Quebec and then to exhume the remains in NC and then to accompany them to the military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii. Their mission is to identify remains of unidentified soldiers and locate the remains of unaccounted for soldiers from past military conflicts in which the US has been involved and then return them home. Upon arrival at JPAC Brennan is tasked with assisting in the re-identification of the remains exhumed in NC. Before long more digging and research yield another set of unidentified remains left in storage at the facility since the '70's that are also linked to Lowery, whose dog tags are found with remains.

So. Who does this third set of remains belong to? How much more complicated can this plot get? It turns out--a lot. I'm still not sure I have it all straight. And to top it off there are two other subplots vying for attention in this novel--three if you count the off-again, possibly heading toward on-again, romance between Brennan and her boy wonder detective Ryan. It all adds up to one jam packed, over stuffed story that careens toward a rather quick and tidy resolution that comes off as implausible and a little rushed.

This will not disappoint long time Brennan/Reichs fans.

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

2010-09-01T18:21:00.000-04:00

Then all of a sudden there's a flash of white in front of the car. Lindsay yells something--words I can't make out ... suddenly the car is flipping off the road and into the black mouth of the woods. I hear a horrible, screeching sound--metal on metal, glass shattering, a car folding in two--and smell fire. I have time to wonder whether Lindsay had put out her cigarette--

And then--

That's when it happens. The moment of death is full of heat and sound and pain bigger than anything, a funnel of burning heat splitting me in two, something searing and scorching and tearing, and if screaming were a feeling it would be this.

from page 80

Before I Fall is the heart wrenching debut novel by Lauren Oliver. I first read about it in BookPage, and then looked it up on Amazon for more information. Recently one of the county libraries acquired a copy and I put a reserve in for it and was surprised at the thickness of the book when it arrived. It has some heft to it.

Samantha has it all: three great best friends, a cute boyfriend, good grades, a nice family and hard won popularity in school. One night there's a party where they've been drinking and where there's a been a bewildering, disturbing and upsetting confrontation between her friends and Juliet Sykes, a girl they've cruelly dubbed "Psycho" and ostracized at school. On the way home Samantha and her friends, Lindsay, Ally, and Elody, get into a horrific car wreck in which Samantha dies a hot and painful death. The next morning she wakes up in her bedroom convinced it's all been a really bad dream until she realizes it's still Friday, February 12, and she still has the rest of the day to get through before she dies again.

In seven chapters the following seven days unspool a mystery surrounding the circumstances that led up to her death. Can Samantha change her last day enough to alter her fate? Or is she doomed to die young? And why has she been given this chance to relive her last day over seven times?

As Samantha's mysterious week unfolds she realizes the ripple effects that each change and event of the day elicits and a picture emerges--an unflattering one of the popular crowd and how they treat others on the outside of their circle. It's revealed that even the popular girls have their own secrets about which they do not speak, not even among themselves.

The book explores the effects the popular crowd has on the school environment and the little cruelties that build up into a mountain of hurt in a teen's life--a mountain that seems insurmountable. It is also an extremely, poignantly beautiful coming of age story for Samantha, who has only a week to do what others get a lifetime of chances for.

I highly recommend you pick up this book.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

2010-08-24T18:57:00.000-04:00

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is being adapted into a film for release in the next year or so. The film has quite a bit of critical buzz flying around it even though no one's seen it yet. The book itself was critically acclaimed as is most of Ishiguro's work apparently. One reviewer called it a "gothic tour de force." Now I'm reading this book and I'm thinking, this isn't gothic. Because when I think gothic I think horror and supernatural and evil. And I also think I should know because I took a class in Gothic and Horror Literature in college. However, the more I thought about it, the more I remembered what gothic means in literature and art: the natural order of things in the world is twisted and reversed and turned upside down. Now. By that definition, Never Let Go is indeed gothic because things in its world are majorly and sadly twisted.

Kathy H. has been a carer for the past twelve years and she's tired--she's ready to begin the next phase of her life and that's making donations. Now "donating" and "making donations" and "donors" are words that are for the most part treated rather cryptically throughout the book. It is only by reading between the lines that the reader figures out what exactly is being donated. It's never spelled out or explained thoroughly. Nor is it ever explained why donations are made or to whom or how these donations have come to pass.

As Kathy readies herself for the transition, she recalls her time at the idyllic and isolated boarding school Hailsham where the guardians constantly remind their charges how special they are, how they've been brought into this world for a specific purpose, how they're different from 'normal' people. Kathy remembers her time there specifically in the context of her friendships with Ruth and Tommy, two friends with whom she's reconnected long after all three have left Hailsham. Tommy and Kathy build a friendship and attempt to piece bits of cryptic information together to shed light on that which the guardians have told them and not told them.

Before long one realizes that life at Hailsham as well as the information shared with its students regarding their purpose and origins are all carefully orchestrated and timed and manipulated. Master of all manipulators is Ruth, who is infuriating in many ways, and who is determined to drive a permanent wedge between Kathy and Tommy, for her own inexplicable reasons. This is as much the story of a friendship, its eventual shattering, and then its rebuilding as it is about the secrets of Hailsham, the origins of its students, and that which makes them so special.

Lyrical, suspenseful, and mysterious, this is a hard book to put down. The perceptive reader will guess the dark secret at the center of Hailsham students' specialness in the first chapters all the while hoping that by book's end it will be revealed that they've guessed wrong. The ending itself is as bleak as the world depicted in Never Let Me Go--a world in which students are created for a specific purpose, only to be discarded after completion like a worn out machine.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Tomorrow River by Lesley Kagen

2010-08-18T15:31:00.004-04:00

Nobody knows who Sam's father is except for Blind Beezy and she's not telling. I know it wasn't Carl Bell. (Thank the Lord. I've seen pictures of him. The man looked like he got dropped off a bridge at dawn and nobody bothered picking him up 'til dusk.)

from page 113

This is the second novel I've read by Lesley Kagen, the previous one, Whistling In The Dark, was previously reviewed on this blog. There were others between Whistling and Tomorrow River, but I haven't read them. It seems Kagen has found a niche in the use of the child or child-like narrator for her novels. In some ways this can provide for entertaining and lively writing because sometimes only a child can believably and colorfully make certain observations and tell it like it is. In other ways it's frustrating because many times the reader can make so many more leaps in piecing the story together and ends up knowing so much more than the narrator due to the observations and accounts shared, but because the narrator lacks the life experience and is to a certain extent naive, she doesn't really realize what she knows. There is also the helpless factor; children are often at the mercy of the adults around them, and no matter how badly these adults treat them, children can lack the means and the wherewithal to get help out of the bad situation and this is extremely frustrating, infuriating, and heartbreaking as a reader to witness.

While beautifully written and thoroughly suspenseful, I can't help but feel that Tomorrow River is too much like Whistling In The Dark. This owes in large part to the narrator and the general plot element of children in peril and left largely to their own devices while they try to piece to together and solve a mystery that is too grown up for them.

It's 1969 in Lexington, Virginia, and Shenandoah and Woody are eleven year old twins whose mother disappeared late one night the year before. Since then Woody has ceased speaking, Shenandoah has determined that it's up to her to track down their mama once and for all, and their father has slid down to the bottom of the whiskey bottle to cope with his grief and has forbidden the girls to leave the house. It's up to Shenandoah to shield both girls from the brutal abuse and mistreatment rained down on them by their father in the midst of his drunken rages.

While Shenandoah and, on the surface, the townsfolk believe their mother ran off, there are other clues in Shenandoah's observations of her father's behavior and the remarks of other townsfolk that hint that the girls' mother may never be coming back alive. Throughout the novel, Shenandoah, an intelligent spitfire, in her childlike naiveté relates past family squabbles and events occurring in the months and years leading up to her mother's disappearance. However, Shenandoah doesn't realize the extent to which her idyllic family has become shattered and dysfunctional. She also recalls mysterious bumps and bruises appearing on her "accident prone" mother and her father's need to know the whereabouts at all times of her mother and together these clue the reader into what may have been going on in that house long before Shenandoah's mother went missing.

Slowly a brutal, disturbed picture emerges of a family ruled by its domineering, controlling, verbally and physically abusive patriarchs who take pleasure in raining down cruel and vile pranks on the smaller, helpless members of the family: the women and children. By the end of the book the story takes a turn from the dark and disturbed to the dark, disturbed and unbelievable. The characters are vividly drawn from the terrifying, dangerous men to the precocious narrator with colorful ideas and opinions of her own. While this is a good read, I'm not sure if I'll read any future Kagen releases unless she departs from her rote child narrator. I suppose I'll take it on a case by case basis.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Broken by Karin Slaughter

2010-08-16T18:55:00.005-04:00

Before I begin the formal review there are a few things I need to get off my chest in the wake of finishing this book; I'll do so without giving away too many (or any) spoilers.

The OUTRAGE!: the identity of Detective Lena Adams' new beau; the low depths to which Grant County's interim chief has sunk and brought the police force down with him; agent Will Trent's wife, Angie's, sixth sense/nasty habit of reappearing in his life just when he's slipping away from her. Thank God for small miracles though because while Angie was certainly referred to during the book, the broad didn't make an appearance. One sign that I've become way too invested in these characters is that I'd like to employ John Connolly's odd pair of assassins, Louis and Angel, to contract out a hit on Angie; do you think Karin Slaughter and John Connolly could work out a special cross over?

Hallelujah: Dr. Sara Linton and agent Will Trent are both back. There is no hallelujah for the return of Detective Lena Adams, while in the wake of Chief Jeffrey Tolliver's death the Grant County police department is clearly long been in a downward spiral into corruption.

Broken is Karin Slaughter's follow up to Undone. Sara's hometown, rife with memories of her life with Jeffrey, is still a painful place for her to be even four years after his death. It's her first time back, and Sara is still devastated and emotional in regards to both her husband's death and Lena Adams, the woman she deems responsible for it. Sadly Sara's grief and physical distance from her parents have also translated into an ever encroaching emotional distance. Meanwhile, Lena is trying her darnedest to get herself out of law enforcement and into crime scene investigation, while also getting herself out of Grant County and the moral mire into which the police department has sunk before she, too, is dragged down with it.

Late one rainy night the body of a pretty young college girl is fished out of the local lake; initially pegged as a suicide, Lena immediately realizes the girl was first murdered and then dumped in the lake. Upon arriving at the girl's last known address Lena and interim chief Frank Wallace confront a masked intruder holding a knife. Things immediately fly out of control, culminating with one officer flown to the hospital fighting for his life while Frank and Lena arrest Tommy Brahm, a former patient of Sara's, whose low IQ renders him incapable of the cunning and planning required for the college girl's murder. But appearances being what they are, Lena and Frank and the entire local police force are convinced of Tommy's guilt, bolstered by his confession and subsequent brutally gruesome suicide in his holding cell.

On hand for the discovery of Tommy's body, Sara immediately realizes he was incapable of the murder and jumps to the conclusion that it was Lena's negligence that allowed Tommy the means to kill himself while in police custody. Hellbent on ensuring Lena pays this time for her screw ups, Sara instigates a witch hunt by calling in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Agent Will Trent is sent to investigate both suicide and the homicide; meanwhile his investigation is frustrated, obstructed and stonewalled at every turn and opportunity by Frank, Lena and the local cops. As the investigation proceeds and more information turns up it becomes apparent that both Tommy and the girl were involved in something shady enough to get them killed. It also becomes clear that more than one party was complicit in these deaths.

With Will sent to investigate the police force's culpability in Tommy's suicide, Lena is at first determined to do the right thing and divulge the truth, including all the mistakes made by both her and Frank that led to their fellow officer's injury. Instead Frank gets to her first, threatens to pin everything on her and destroy her both professionally and personally in the process unless she assists him in the cover up and obstruction of Will's investigation. Lena's behavior is outrageous as always, and Frank is scum of the earth awful--together Frank and Lena's scenes are infuriating.

Slaughter's suspenseful plot is balanced with much character development for Will, Sara and Lena, especially for Sara. It is as much the finely crafted complex mysteries as future developments in the lives of these characters that keeps drawing readers back to this series. I highly recommend both this book and this series for crime mystery readers or anyone else looking for a good book to read.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

A Treasury of Royal Scandals by Michael Farquhar

2010-08-12T16:40:00.004-04:00

The title of Michael Farquhar's A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories of History's Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes and Emperors pretty much says all you need to know about this entertaining little tome. The stories related about different monarchs and popes are wicked, wild, shocking, salacious, sometimes amusing, and other times disturbing. Some categories of chapters seem heavily weighted towards representation of the English monarchy. This read is entertaining and only enhanced by the conversational, colorful writing style. People who enjoy stories starring royalty or are avid royal watchers will love this book.

Blood Harvest by S. J. Bolton

2010-08-09T19:01:00.004-04:00

Blood Harvest is S.J. Bolton's third release; she has another upcoming but just when it's coming out in the UK and then how long it takes to get to the States, I don't yet know. I haven't investigated that yet (and believe me I will...), but I have discovered her blog in which there are hints about the upcoming book and upcoming, possibly returning, characters. I can't wait. It'll be hard, but I'll survive. I just started Karin Slaughter's latest release, and I'm still waiting (somewhat apprehensively I might add) for Tess Gerritsen's newest title to come in on reserve.

Blood Harvest differs slightly from her previous titles, Sacrifice and Awakening, in that it has a third person narrator as opposed to a first person narrator. There are similarities, though; for example, one of main characters suffers from a physical handicap that leads to insecurity or reclusion, but since it's a third person narrator the reader doesn't have as much of a window into the character's inner life and how it effects them as in previous books. There's also the recurrence of encounters with another nasty gang of youths which are highly anxiety inducing for character and reader both.

Harry is the new vicar assigned to the local parish; Evi, a psychiatrist, is still coming to terms with a damaged sciatic nerve that's painful and detrimental to her mobility; Gillian, a grieving mother who uses alcohol to cope, has just started treatment with Evi.

The Fletcher family has just moved to tiny Heptonclough where small children have disappeared in the past decade. The family's young children have attracted the attentions of some mysterious, possibly supernatural, probably malevolent, being connected to the village's history and pagan tradition. Soon it becomes clear that the Fletcher children are being targeted by a far more dangerous, as yet unknown, human individual; then two Fletcher children disappear.

Soon the story takes a turn from the pagan traditions the town still keeps to shed light on the dark blackness at the center of the town. Before long it becomes clear that if both the Fletcher parents and the police are to solve the mystery of who's been targeting children and find the missing Fletchers before it's too late, Evi and Harry must pool their resources and share with each other what they know of the town's history to form a more complete picture of what's going down. The search for the missing children is the beginning of a breath holding, heart pounding, page turning, terrifying ride to the shockingly twisted and disturbed conclusion from which no one will emerge unscathed.

You won't be able to put this book down once the mystery gets cranked up to full, thrilling capacity. This being the most recent Bolton release, it'll be a long wait until May 2011 when the next is currently scheduled for release in the UK; unfortunately, its US release usually comes a few months after that. [In the couple days between beginning this post and finishing it, I went to the author's website to find more information about the upcoming novel.] Luckily, there's a preview of the prologue for Now You See Me posted; if the rest of the book is any reflection of the posted preview it will be another thrilling, fast read. But only read it your peril--the mystery's jumpstarted pretty much from the first sentence. You can visit S.J. Bolton online here.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Nine

2010-08-05T18:37:00.003-04:00

Occasionally I also review movies on this blog and, lately, it appears the books have taken over because it's been a long, long time since I've reviewed a movie. Recently I sat through the movie/musical Nine; I'm not sure why I sat through the entire movie because that's two hours of my life I'll never get back. I was hoping that the end would explain a couple things and that would make the whole two hours worth it. It didn't and it wasn't.

Nine is the latest movie musical directed by Rob Marshall of Chicago fame; he had a huge, critically acclaimed hit with that one. Not so much of either with Nine. Nine is based on a Broadway play, and it stars Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard, and Daniel Day-Lewis. Oscar winners all, but even they couldn't save it. The immensely talented cast, specifically and especially the women, are disappointingly and sadly wasted, and they all deserve better than this.

Guido Contini, an unlikeable and unsympathetic character, is a famous writer-director in Italy; he's made art, he's had hits that subsequently brought him fame, and then he's had his last two movies that were huge flops. These only serve to intensify the extreme pressure upon him to produce not just another movie, but another hit, another return to the art that characterized his earlier career. Too bad a case of writer's block is keeping him from writing the script for his newest movie that's due to start shooting in a week. That's right. A week. The star's lined up; the sets have been built; costumes are ready; producers have invested in the movie; hell, they've even got a title for this movie. But without a script there is no movie. And therein lies the problem.

The deterioration of Guido's professional life mirrors the deterioration of his personal life and as both crumble around his ears one has to ask: what's the point? There are hints in flashbacks to his childhood, but these are never fully realized. What's the point of these flashbacks? What's the point of these glimpses into his inner life and daydreams that are manifested in musical numbers? What is the point? These questions are never answered by the end of the movie leading to a disappointed viewer who feels as if she's wasted the last two hours.

I don't recommend this movie except only for the hardcore, die hard musical fans out there. Everyone else will be disappointed.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Whisperers by John Connolly

2010-08-03T18:56:00.005-04:00

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 installment deals peripherally with how America's treating her veterans, specifically the ones from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the main focus is some veterans who unwittingly brought back some supernatural nastiness from the dusty desert hell that was Iraq. For some reason I'm not sure how I feel about the Iraq war's incursion into Parker's world; for me it just doesn't ring true, and that's really the only aspect of the book that gives me reservations.

Charlie Parker is retained by one Bennett Patchett, a grieving father of an Iraq War veteran who committed suicide. Except everyone who Charlie talks to about this particular veteran maintains that Patchett's son was able to leave the war back in the desert when he returned home and that this particular veteran shouldn't be dead and shouldn't have fallen victim to the skyrocketing suicide rates common to returning veterans and currently serving soldiers. It's Parker's job to look into the personal business and relationship of one of Patchett's employees whom the old man believes is embroiled in a domestic violence situation. The target of the investigation served in Iraq with Patchett's son and the father places the blame for his son's suicide at the feet of this former soldier because his son was involved in whatever scheme his brother in arms was running.

No sooner has Parker begun making inquiries before he attracts the unwanted attention of the former soldier and his soldier buddies who jump Parker one night, torture him for information on why he's snooping, and warn him off the case. Instead of ceasing and desisting, the fires of anger and vengeance burn bright in Parker's soul, and he calls in some heavy duty, scary reinforcements--the kind with lots of guns and that hail from New York. With Angel and Louis on the scene one can hardly wait to see what happens when these two arrive to tangle with the Iraq war veterans who think they're bad-ass.

In a parallel but as yet unconnected storyline: a walking, talking cancerous tumor who goes by the name Herod, among other aliases, exacts a harrowing and cruel punishment upon a subcontractor who's double crossed him. Hot on Herod's heels is the man known as the Collector of souls forfeited. Attached to each of these dubious men are shadowy specters; the Collector is accompanied by the souls of those he's collected over the years, while the malevolent specter attached to Herod has ties to dark beings vanquished by Parker in the past and is called Captain by Herod.

This is suspenseful, thrilling, and page turning and is enhanced by the often delightfully colorful turn of phrase in descriptions of the cast of colorful characters. Once more there are hints in this book of the role Parker is to play in what one might call the ultimate confrontation with the ultimate baddie of the Parker universe: the Captain a.k.a. Mr. Goodkind a.k.a. the evil one known by many names. One can't help but feel slightly apprehensive for the beloved Parker: if even Mr. Goodkind fears Parker then that which is coming for Parker in the future must be some kind of hell in a hand basket that can't end well for our hero.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Awakening by S.J. Bolton

2010-07-29T18:48:00.006-04:00

It's official: I'm now a hardcore S.J. Bolton fan after reading her second novel, Awakening. It may not be as terrifying as her first, Sacrifice, but what it lacks in terrifying, it makes up for in creepiness--literally and figuratively. It is equally as hard to put down; when I was away from it, I was seriously wishing I was home reading it. I have her third novel at home waiting for me after I finish John Connolly's latest Charlie Parker installment (another equally gripping read). The only disheartening thing is that after Blood Harvest, Bolton's next book, I'll have to wait, impatiently, for her fourth release.

Like Bolton's first book the setting plays an important role in the fabric of the story; it is set in a tiny village in Dorset County, England, which has seen its snake population increase seemingly exponentially and inexplicably.

Clara's a wildlife veterinarian and a near recluse who seeks the quiet solitude of an extremely low key and low profile lifestyle in response to a lifetime of taunts, harassment, and bullying due to a facial disfigurement incurred as an infant. Her physical disfigurement is the result of a horrifying, harrowing, and sickening childhood accident that left her not just physically scarred but also emotionally scarred and damaged as well.

Clara sought out her tiny village in hopes of leading a nearly invisible, solitary life, but five years on, the snake population in the surrounding countryside explodes in scores of mostly harmless grass snakes that turn up unexpectedly in various village homes. However, among the swarms of grass snakes appear a handful of dangerous and poisonous adder snakes and one very deadly taipan snake, native to tropical climes not found in Britain. Thus, it's made clear the appearance of the snakes in village houses are deliberate incidents set in motion by a shadowy, unknown individual with murky motives.

Unwillingly drawn into the mystery, and before long forced to dig for information to clear herself, Clara does some research into the village's past and uncovers a mysterious church fire in 1958 that resulted in the deaths of several individuals and the exodus from the village of a pair of brothers belonging to the Witcher family. The more Clara uncovers the more she is convinced that the Witcher family holds the key to the bewildering past and current events happening in the village. Before long the deaths of elderly individuals with connections to the 1958 fire land Clara in hot water with the local police. When she becomes their main suspect, it's obvious in the interrogation room that the local detectives are convinced she's the murderer largely due to her physical disfigurement; before long the interrogation devolves into a cruel series of taunts from the detectives in one of the most harrowing, tensest, cruelest scenes of the entire book.

This second Bolton book is as much about the mystery of the snakes and the murders as it is about a growing experience for Clara, who will emerge from her self imposed recluse lifestyle by the end of the book. Suspenseful and hard to put down, this book quickly turns into a frantic, fast read.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault

2010-07-27T19:07:00.003-04:00

The Broken Teaglass is Emily Arenault's debut novel and it features a rather unique mystery that needs some good, old fashioned sleuthing to solve.

Billy's a recent college graduate who is hired as a lexicographer in training at the Samuelson Company, home of America's premiere and most prestigious dictionary. Samuelson is home to a rather odd work atmosphere fueled by the academic, intellectual, sometimes socially awkward staff. At work Billy meets Mona, another junior editor, hired about a year ago. Together they stumble upon two mysterious citations that come from a book that doesn't exist, written by an author who doesn't exist, published by a company that never existed.

It appears the citations themselves were written in 1985 by another junior editor. Billy's extremely reluctantly dragged into this office intrigue and mystery by Mona, who craves an adventure amidst the monotony of the Samuelson office. Mona's determined to track down the identity of the writer and solve the mystery of the corpse mentioned in the few citations they've managed to stumble upon. It becomes clear that if Billy and Mona hope to discover all of the mysterious citations attributed to The Broken Teaglass that are hidden in the citation file, they must begin a a deliberate and systematic hunt through the remaining files.

As they discover the story and put it back together piece by piece a close reading of the citations yields clues to the identities of the mysterious Red referenced in some of the citations, and Scout, who's clearly another young editor at Samuelson. By this time Billy and Mona realize that the characters and the mystery are connected to the company where bizarre undercurrents simmer under its reserved, academic veneer. Another citation yields the name of the corpse which is enough for Mona to conduct a newspaper search that provides independent confirmation and other clues to the mystery told in the citations.

At first Billy's reluctantly drawn in and dragged along in Mona's efforts to solve this mystery; he hopes it might lead to a romance with Mona, but it soon becomes clear that the mixed signals Mona's been sending mean that a romance won't happen. This leads Billy to wonder just what this is really all about and where this will lead. Soon Billy becomes obsessed with the story told in the citations as a rather significant anniversary approaches for him that triggers a personal existential crisis.

This is an interesting mystery told in a unique setting and provides a rare look into the world of dictionary editing. Oddly, the book itself reads like a page turner. Anyone who loves words, not necessarily etymology, but rather the usage of words and how it shifts and evolves over time, will love this story. Mystery lovers will enjoy the return to old fashioned sleuthing and analyzing of the citations for clues. I recommend this book for literary mystery lovers.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Contest Video! Keith Richards, Please Have Sympathy for America's Public Libraries!

2010-07-24T10:39:00.005-04:00

In recent weeks the Matthews Public Library has begun a campaign to bring Keith Richards to a special reception to be held at the library to celebrate the release of his upcoming memoir. The official campaign central is located at the following Facebook page: Keith Richards, Please Have Sympathy For America's Public Libraries! Visit the page to become a member of the group today--it's a prerequisite to entering the YouTube contest!

To help spread the word we've opened a contest on YouTube at the following link Contest Video! Keith Richards, Please Have Sympathy For America's Public Libraries! Here are the details: How many Jagger/Richards songs do the librarians (and the puppets) refer to in the video? Just the number is needed to win, not the song titles. The winner will be chosen on Sunday, August 15, 2010, and will receive a $50 gift certificate to amazon.com. Please add your answer to the comment bar below the video. The winner must also be a member of the Facebook group, "Keith Richards, Please Have Sympathy For America's Public Libraries!" Good luck and have fun!

Wow! Just imagine all the books you could buy on Amazon with that gift certificate! Please join the campaign today and then enter the contest on YouTube.

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

2010-07-21T17:42:00.002-04:00

Some stories don't get told. Some stories you hold on to. To stand and watch and hold it in your arms was not cowardice. To look straight at the beast and feel its breath on your flanks and not to turn--one could carry the world that way.
from page 309

I recently read The Postmistress by Sarah Blake; it was a long wait before it came in. I have mixed feelings about it... It's beautifully written, enough so that I'm thinking about looking up other Blake books, however, I'm not so sure there's a point because I feel as if nothing happened in this one when clearly things have happened. Maybe it's due to the ending which was a kind of non-ending for me; I felt as if it wrapped right before the end of the story and now it's like, what was the point of all that?

It's 1940 and the second world war is underway in Europe while America watches and listens and holds her breath, uncertain of the future and unwilling to send her boys over to die in a fight that isn't hers. The Postmistress tells the overlapping stories of Miss Iris James, the spinster postmaster of tiny Franklin, Massachusetts; Emma Fitch, the new doctor's new wife; and Frankie Bard, intrepid radio gal, a reporter who files stories with the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Emma, orphaned since childhood, has been alone in the world until she marries Will, Franklin's newly minted doctor. Then tragedy propels Will across the ocean to London to volunteer in the city's hospitals that are overrun by victims of the relentless Blitz of fiery destruction and devastation that Germany rains down on the city. Back in Massachusetts, Iris and Emma listen to the reports that Frankie files over the radio; they are accounts of life in Blitz ravaged London and then they are accounts of her experiences travelling throughout Germany and Vichy France. What Frankie can't say over the airwaves, what the German censors black out, is the plight of Europe's Jews. They are travelling, trying desperately to get out before they're deported to camps or killed, before they disappear, and it's these encounters, with the silent, desperate, disappearing masses, that make an indelible mark on Frankie. She's determined to bring these stories back to London and to America.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Ruined by Paula Morris

2010-07-20T18:59:00.004-04:00

Ruined by Paula Morris wants to be a ghost story, and it is, but it's a little lite on the ghost and haunting elements.

Rebecca's a New Yorker, but when her father must go to China for half a year to work, Rebecca is reluctantly shipped off to post-Katrina New Orleans to live with her father's old friend, "aunt" Claudia and her daughter, Aurelia. They are her father's only family, whom she barely knows. At her new, exclusive, all girls school, Rebecca quickly runs afoul of the in crowd girls who belong to the rich, influential, "old line" New Orleans families and who rule the school. Shunned by these girls and the rest of the school's students who follow their lead lest they too become social pariahs, Rebecca feels isolated, outcast, and bewildered by the homogeneous, closed society that closes ranks against outsiders.

Late one night in the Lafayette cemetery across the street from her aunt's house, Rebecca meets Lisette, a light skinned, black Creole girl who has haunted the cemetery and various other places in the neighborhood since her murder during the city's yellow fever epidemic of 1853. She's befriended by this strange ghost who tells the story of both her death and the subsequent curse brought down on the family and the house of her murderer that haunts the family to this day. Rebecca is also befriended by Anton, a boy who belongs to an old line family and a member of the same upper class, in crowd that shuns her at school. However, warnings from hostile in crowd members and her own aunt, who tell her that she doesn't really know Anton and that she needs to steer clear of the Greys, Bowmans and Suttons in particular because they belong to a different world combine with Anton's sporadic, sparse contact and bewildering behavior to make Rebecca suspicious of his motives for befriending her. It's clear there's more to aunt Claudia's warning, more to the history between the families, and more to her father's odd behavior than is being shared with Rebecca.

The setting of New Orleans and its flavor and unique, colorful atmosphere add to the story, but the author's heavy handed references to hurricane Katrina and its damage and aftermath detract from the story. In the end, the resolution and reveal of all the big secrets of the story are obvious, while the climax of the action in the cemetery comes off as a bit unbelievable even in a story that has a ghost for a supporting character.

Die hard, young adult ghost story fans will enjoy this book.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

The Lost: A Search For Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn

2010-07-08T15:27:00.005-04:00

Every Bolechower we had talked to until that night had survived by not moving: by staying perfectly still for days and weeks and months in attics, in haylofts, in cellars, in secret compartments, in holes dug into the forest floor, and in the strangest, most confining prison of all, the fragile prison of a false identity. The last story we were to hear was, like a story you might hear in an epic poem, a Greek myth, a story of perpetual movement, of ceaseless wandering."
from page 416

The Lost: A Search For Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn is non-fiction. Because I know well my difficult relationship with non-fiction, I know I usually start the book but never finish it. I can't help it. With non-fiction you always know the outcome and there isn't any suspense. So it's very rarely that I pick up a non-fiction book to read because I know that chances are I won't finish it and what's the point reading something you know you won't finish when you can be reading something that you know you will finish. This is what happened with The Lost several years ago when I started it the first time: I never made it past the first chapter largely due to the structure of the narrative and the author's writing style and the very long, very long, chapters. This time when I picked up the book I was determined to finish it, and I did many days later.

Mendelsohn's prose is beautiful and meticulous but very dense and labyrinthine in that many times by the time you reach the end of a sentence it's taken so many turns that you've forgotten how it started and are forced to re-read it from the beginning more than once before you've finally tweezed out its meaning. This is representative of the larger structure of the book: stories within stories and seemingly unrelated tangents that repeatedly diverge from the main narrative. However, these divergences are actually related thematically to the rest of the narrative.

This is an account of the author's analysis of his motivations and interest in his family's tragedy wracked history and his long journey in an effort to finally illuminate the mysterious and heartbreaking fates of the great-uncle and great-aunt, who, along with their four daughters, were "killed by the Nazis" in Europe during World War II. It is an effort to bring closure to his family's greatest tragedy by finally answering the questions of how, when, why, and by whose hand they died. But six decades have by now passed. Who is left and what documents survive that can help solve this mystery? It becomes clear to both reader and author that for some one will only ever be able to speculate as to the details of the deaths of these long dead ancestors.

Mendelsohn journeys far both emotionally and geographically in his search for his lost six of six million. This is a fascinating, heartbreaking, poignant, thought provoking narrative that I recommend for anyone who is also a family historian or who is a Holocaust historian. In the end Mendelsohn's story becomes as much about the story of the annihilation of one Ukrainian town's Jews--and the survival of the 48 out of 6,000 Jews in that town--as it is a story of the search for the fates of six dead out of six million killed in the Holocaust, for his family. It is a story that is at once beautiful, harrowing, and horrifying for the accounts of that which the Jews had to endure to survive, had to suffer in the hours before their deaths, and the indignities to which their corpses were subjected. It's nearly unimaginable that for many of the dead, nothing survives: neither photographs nor details of how or when or where they died. For too many victims the only witness was God.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Neighborhood Watch by Cammie McGovern

2010-06-30T19:13:00.004-04:00

Some children hover adoringly forever, others want nothing from you but their freedom. I know that. I've been watching mothers with their children all my life. I've never thought it would be easy, but I also never pictured heartbreak like this: estrangement, mental illness, love that grows an edge and expresses itself only in the pain it inflicts

from page 103

It didn't take long to finish this book (as compared to the one I read right after this: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake from which I took a break of several days before I decided to finish reading the last half in one night). I've never read anything by Cammie McGovern, but I think I'll try some of her other books. This particular novel, I think, will have a special place in every librarian's heart because the narrator is a former librarian who goes away for a murder she believes she committed but didn't really. That's right. And no, the murder victim was not a patron from her library.

Betsy is a mousy, former librarian who has spent the last twelve years in prison for a neighbor's murder that, it turns out, she did not commit. Upon her release, she is advised by her attorney to poke around the old neighborhood and contact former neighbors in an effort to put the pieces together that will reveal who really killed Linda Sue that long ago night. And so Betsy returns to her old neighborhood where everyone who once lived there while she did has since moved away--all except Marianne and Roland who have taken her in and provided her a place to stay in the wake of her release from prison.

Betsy embarks upon a reflective journey of introspection: examining both her memories of that night and the days leading up to it and her perceptions of events occurring at the time, analyzing those perceptions and the lives of her neighbors, the secrets they kept and how these memories and perceptions reflect upon the present. Betsy realizes that both her married neighbor and her husband's childhood friend, Geoffrey, had secrets of their own to hide. Not least of which was Geoffrey's affair with Linda Sue that everyone believed made Betsy jealous enough to kill her in the midst of a somnambulatory episode.

Slowly Betsy's narration reveals the incidents of damage suffered during her childhood that are alluded to and that first sparked her somnambulatory episodes and the unexplained infertility that has robbed Betsy of the children she wanted so much have caused their damage. Indeed it was damage enough for Betsy to confess to a murder she didn't commit because in that moment she no longer cared about her future or what it held for her. All of this leads the reader to wonder just how reliable is she as a narrator. Consider her childhood trauma, her somnambulatory episodes, the brood of children that live so vividly in her imagination, and her years spent in prison because while Betsy claims to have an unusual memory for small details from years ago, she also admits that certain periods are for her a blur or a blank.

Soon it becomes clear that Marianne and Roland have secrets they want to keep hidden, and the more Betsy discovers of their secrets, the more she wonders just how it is connected to the events that took place on the day Linda Sue was killed.

This beautifully written book reads almost like a thriller; it was a page turner right up to the last page.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Sacrifice by S. J. Bolton

2010-06-29T16:24:00.005-04:00

It may have been a long while since my last post, but that doesn't mean I haven't been reading. Recently for a couple days I was reading three books at once which doesn't usually bode well for me--this often means one or two get pushed aside in favor of finishing the one that sucks me in, never to return to the other two. However, I did finish one of the three: Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake; I made a push one evening to finish reading the entire last half of the book. I thought maybe the ending would make it worth it. I was wrong. It has an interesting concept: a girl discovers on her ninth birthday that she can taste in the food she eats the emotions of the person who prepared it. There is also her brother and his mysterious secret that was not resolved to my satisfaction and her father's avoidance of hospitals at all costs issue that was kind of pointless. I've also been reading a book about royalty and their salacious scandals. Very interesting, but it's taken a back seat to Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost. This post isn't really about any of those; instead it's about an awesome, newly discovered author called S.J. Bolton who hails from Britain and how I sacrificed my Saturday to read her debut novel.

Sacrifice by S.J. Bolton takes place on Britain's Shetland Islands, which lay far to the north of Great Britain. The islands and their folklore are a major character in the story.

While digging a grave for her beloved horse, Tora Hamilton unearths the corpse of a woman from the peat bog. It's a find that is not at all unusual until the nail polish on the corpse's fingers and toe nails reveals that the woman's brutal death occurred far too recently for the corpse to be a hundreds years old archaeological find like similar corpses dug up in other peat bogs. Before long Tora is pulled into the police investigation, and it becomes clear through her own research and detective work that those who cruelly cut out the bog victim's heart are deeply embedded in Shetland's social and governmental infrastructures and who also happen to be members of a sick and twisted ritualistic cult that believes its heritage descends directly from creatures of Shetland legend and lore.

The most important questions for Tora are what happened to the baby the bog victim delivered a week before she died? How many other women have fallen victim to this cult, and who else belongs to the cult? Who can she trust with her discoveries, to bring justice for the victims, and to shut down the cult?

This is a heart pounding, page turning, terrifying thriller that's difficult to put down. The fascinating historical and social detail that makes Shetland its own character in the novel, the wickedly twisted resolution, and a story that takes several shocking turns all contribute to the thrill ride that is Sacrifice. I've already put requests in for Bolton's next two books.

I highly recommend this novel, but be warned: it's not for the faint of heart or for those who don't have a large chunk of uninterrupted time in which to read it!

--reviewed by Ms. Angie

What Is Mine by Anne Holt

2010-05-19T19:10:00.004-04:00

It is nearly one month to the day since I've posted a review. Tomorrow it will be exactly one month. I don't know what happened. I've had a review ready for a while, and I just haven't posted. In the meantime I read another book or two. I've read The Angel Makers by Jessica Gregson. I just finished it a couple days ago. It was very hard to find, and I finally broke down and bought a used copy on amazon. Other than the many typos, it was a good read. But that's not the book I'm reviewing.

What Is Mine by Anne Holt is the first in a series. When I started reading it, I swore I read somewhere that it was the first of a trilogy, but upon further investigation after finishing it and reserving its follow up, I found out that it is not a trilogy. In the follow up the two characters are married. What? They weren't even dating yet at the end of What Is Mine! Anyway. I digress.

What Is Mine is from a highly acclaimed Norwegian crime writer-- I believe Holt was an attorney and has spent time as a minister in Norwegian government, and she has lived in the U.S. This makes me think she could have written the book in English rather than writing it in Norwegian before the publisher had it translated into English for American consumption. I usually have a strict policy against reading translations of novels. It's one of many quirks I have when it comes to reading. I always feel like something gets lost between the novel in its original language and its English translation.

Spring has just arrived in Norway and with it has come a dangerous and scary string of crimes: a girl is abducted and then a few days later a young boy is taken; a few days following this, the boy is returned--dead and wrapped up like a gift--to his parents. The boy's corpse is accompanied by a chilling message: now you've got what you deserve. Several days later another girl disappears off a city bus and is soon couriered in a box back to her mother with the same message attached. The string of child murders continues as the citizens of Norway panic over the safety of their children.

The police struggle with an investigation that yields few leads, less forensic evidence and a mysterious and unknown cause of death for the dead children whose parents are not connected in any way. Detective Inspector Adam Stubo is leading the investigation into the abductions when he sees Johanne Vik commenting on the case on TV. Stubo decides to enlist her reluctant help in building a profile of the killer. It's clear there's a slowly building tentative romance between these two; however, both Stubo and Vik are unable to and clueless about how to make the first move to get it started.

Vik, a lawyer with a B.A. in psychology and experience working for the FBI likes her life the way it is--her young daughter is finally healthy, and she's researching another book. This one addresses the effects the media has on criminal cases while they're tried in court. Soon she becomes entangled in a decades old case: a man, who always maintained his innocence, was tried and convicted of murdering an eight year old girl a half century ago while the evidence against him was shaky at best. Nearly a decade into his incarceration he's released without explanation or fanfare and told to keep his mouth shut. What is the mystery surrounding these circumstances and are they related to the current child abductions?

I mentioned before that this was an English translation from the original Norwegian. The main place this shows up is in the abundance of ellipses in the dialog-- is this on purpose? Is it a function of the translation? How am I supposed to interpret this? To me ellipses connote hesitation and tentativeness and after a while this gets annoying. However, the story itself is a page turner of short chapters (I love short chapters) that alternate viewpoints. The developments are fast paced and gripping making this a heart pounding, suspenseful mystery.

This novel is available in county; if you enjoy a good mystery, you should try this one. Crime novel lovers will also like this novel.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne

2010-04-20T17:47:00.003-04:00

Brixton Beach is a hard book to come by. It has very limited availability on Amazon--and only in the used market place. Luckily ILL was able to locate a copy for me to borrow; not so lucky with the other title I was looking for and was forced to break down and buy a used copy of off Amazon. Tearne is a British writer but is Sri Lanka born.

The book opens upon a scene of terrifying chaos. Simon, a London doctor is frantically searching for a loved one amid the chaotic aftermath of a bombing on the London tube. The scene is bewildering and heart pounding and vividly drawn.

In the next chapter we flash back to Sri Lanka; it is 1973 and Alice is nine. Her mother, Sita, is expecting a new baby. Sita is Singhalese; Stanley, Alice's father, is Tamil. In Sri Lanka the Tamils are a bitterly oppressed group and are seen as less civilized by the Singhalese, who are the ruling ethnic group. There's friction and tension slowly building to a violent conflict of civil war between the oppressed and discriminated against and the oppressive government and military. Stanley has plans eventually to move his young family to England where his younger brother has been living for years. He dreams of better opportunities for himself, and he wants to escape the growing violence and prejudice and oppression he suffers in his homeland.

This is the story of a family and its misfortunes as they are caught up in the tensions that threaten to tear their beloved country apart. It is also about the rising tensions and violence in a country that is rolling painfully and dangerously towards a bloody, violent civil war. The story of Sri Lanka is mirrored in the life of Fonseka family and the ensuing tragedies that threaten the fabric and cohesiveness of their family. The book tells the story of the years and decades leading up to the events portrayed in the opening chapter.

The writer vividly portrays the atmosphere and environment of Sri Lanka, which becomes another character in the story. The isolation felt by Alice, cut off with little communication with her family left behind in Sri Lanka, is convincingly and heartbreakingly drawn. The reader can't help but hope that there's a happy ending for Alice when so many close to her never found their happy endings.

I highly recommend this novel.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

2010-04-05T16:16:00.003-04:00

When the end came, it seemed to do so completely out of the blue, and it wasn't until long afterward that I was able to see that there was a chain of events leading up to it. Some of those events had nothing to do with us, the Morrisons, but were solely the concern of the Pyes, who lived on a farm about a mile away and were our nearest neighbors." from page seven

I must confess that it took me longer than it really needed to in order to finish the novel Crow Lake by Mary Lawson. The entire story is building up to the big catastrophe that forever destroys all the hopes and dreams the Morrison clan ever dared to hope and dream for its future. In the eyes of the narrator, it is even worse than the tragedy of the car crash that claimed both parents' lives one evening on the heels of some good news the family has received and celebrated. Now you can see why I dreaded getting to the end of a book that drips in foreboding like nobody's business. What can be a worse tragedy for a family than when both parents die at the same time leaving two teens, a seven year old and a year old baby behind?

Kate Morrison is a zoologist living in southern Ontario. Thanks to childhood trauma stemming from her parents' deaths and the ensuing "catastrophe" that destroyed her family, she is emotionally estranged from her siblings and unable to truly connect and open up to her boyfriend. Granted this also stems from the way she was raised: her parents were of Presbyterian stock that weren't given to expressing emotion and discouraged overly emotional displays. This is vastly different from the way Kate's boyfriend was raised as an only child in a household in which emotion erupted and spilled all over the place.

Kate's about seven when her parents are killed in a car crash. Rather than split up the family, the oldest boy, Luke, forgoes a college education in order to raise his younger sisters, and hopefully give younger brother, Matt, who is considered the real brains in the family, a chance at a college education in a year when he graduates from high school.

This is the beautiful, insightful tale of how the Morrison children's lives were derailed by the deaths of their parents and the events that followed in the first year after the tragedy. Throughout the narrative Kate makes an effort to pinpoint the exact spot, the exact catalyst, that set everything else in motion leading to another catastrophe. It is clear that events cascaded, falling like dominoes until the last domino fell.

In the end Kate realizes that the true tragedy that came to wreck her family, specifically her relationship with her beloved brother and mentor, Matt, who taught her all there is to know about nature and pond life, is not that which she had first perceived it to be. Instead it was her misperception of it all that robbed her of her relationship with her brother and prevented him from re-establishing a connection with her years later after she has ended her estrangement from her siblings.

Ultimately this is a riveting, page turning narrative of a woman's recount and analysis of the events, incidents, and perceptions that lead to estrangement from her family and finally to the healing and re-interpretation of events that was required for her to come back to them and the brother who mentored her when she was a girl. Kate's a deeply logical, rational, analytical person, socially awkward and unable to understand and feel emotions, specifically empathy. But logic and rationality can never understand the complicated emotions and events that lead the dysfunction of a neighboring family to infect her own.

I highly recommend you read this book.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie