A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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...

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...

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 ...

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 tha...

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...

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 ca...