Angels Fall

Normally, I do not read Nora Roberts. Or Danielle Steel. Or Sandra Brown. Or any other author who writes a typical romance. I don't like them.
However, some of these authors have leaned lately towards the romantic suspense which I enjoy from time to time. Some I've outright loved and this one was one of the better ones I've read.
In Nora Roberts, ANGELS FALL, (GP Putnam's Sons, c2006, ISBN 0-399-15372-1)Reece Gilmore has come to Angel's Fist, Wyoming and decided to settle down, temporarily.

Reece was the sole survivor of a brutal massacre in Boston where she lived (side note: I lived in Weston, MA working as a nanny a lifetime ago, which is just about 15 minutes from Boston-- a very cool place to live) and worked as a chef.
She's been running from her nightmares when she lands in Wyoming and takes up a job as a cook in a local diner. While out one day she witnesses a murder and sinister things begin to happen. Is she going crazy or is someone out to gaslight her?
This was a good, quick read with enjoyable characters and a setting that seems exotic to my cornfields and small town politics, although Roberts' grasp on small town living was dead-on. Her love interest, Brody, a sexy, brooding author type is a definite plus as well.
The first sentence:

Reece Gilmore smoked through the tough knuckles of Angel's Fist in an overheating Chevy Cavalier.

I have her book, NORTHERN LIGHTS, on my shelf to read soon as well as the rest of the Eve Dallas books of the IN DEATH series.

Grave Sight

GRAVE SIGHT by Charlaine Harris (Berkley Prime Crime, c2005, ISBN 0-425-21289-0) is different from her other books, which isn't necessarily a bad thing...only different.
In this book, the first in a series, Harper Connelly and Tolliver Lang, step-siblings are in Sarne, Arkansas for a job. When Harper was a teenager, she was struck by lightning and now has the ability to 'feel' dead people. She and Tolliver travel cross-country as consultants using her abilities in a free-lance style.

This book has an interesting premise to it although I'm not sure yet how I feel entirely about the characters. It's also written in first person which has never been my favorite, however, I will read the second book before passing judgement.

On the other hand, her Sookie Stackhouse books are also written in first person, and I adore those, but if I remember correctly, it took me until book three of that series before I swore I would read each and every one forthcoming. So there may just be more to these characters that I'm not grasping, yet. We'll see how it goes.

This book begins:

The silent witnesses lie everywhere, passing from one form of matter to another, gradually becoming unrecognizable to their nearest and dearest.

Stripped

STRIPPED by Brian Freeman (St. Martin's Minotaur, c2006, ISBN 978-0-312-34044-5) is the second book in his series featuring Jonathan Stride and Serena Dial.

In this book, Jonathan is working the streets of Las Vegas where he landed at the end of his last book. He is involved with Serena and working with Amanda Gillen, a cop on the force, who nobody seems to care for, but Jonathan likes her.

The story centers around the mysterious death of Amira Luz, a Vegas showgirl in the 1960's who was murdered. Someone is avenging her death, present day, and working his way up the ladder.
This book is told in four parts and I enjoyed the fluid writing although this book has a great many characters to keep track of. I preferred his first book, IMMORAL, better but only because of the Midwest element (and I'm a Midwest girl), however the supporting characters in this book were more real to me, so it's a draw. I'll just look forward to the next book to serve as the deciding the vote. I am glad I found Freeman upon his debut and I look forward to his next book, whether it be an installment in this series or something new.

This book starts out:

She slipped the robe off her shoulders, and the white silk gathered in a pod of accordion folds at her feet.

NaNoWriMo

I am a participant in NaNoWriMo every year (except for last year when I was too lazy) and every year I have a great time with it.

I've actually only "won" it twice, in 2003 and 2004 but I've been participating since 2001.

For those who are not familiar with it, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and during the month of November, the goal is to author a novel with 50,000 words in the thirty days. And the motto? No plot...no problem.

I will probably not get a lot of reading done. But I will get a lot of writing done.

I'll post my progress occasionally, here.

Hurricane

HURRICANE by Karen Harper (Mira, c2006, ISBN 0-7783-2307-2) blew me away!
Set in Gladesport, Florida near the Florida Keys and the Everglades, Julie Minton and Zack Brockman are in search of their teenaged children who went missing while on a Jet Ski ride. Normally there'd be no problem, but a hurricane is moving in...and fast.

Unfortunately, evidence leads the two to suspect foul play and as the hurricane moves closer and closer, it becomes a race against the clock and Mother Nature.

It starts with a radio broadcast:

All right, heads up everybody out there on this lovely morning.

This book was fast moving and I think the setting had everything to do with that. The tension that the hurricane caused and the fight to find their children in time caused for great suspense, despite the ubiquitous romance that popped up right in the middle of the ratrace. This was a very fun book to read and I am excited (and dismayed!) that I have found yet another author of whom I will be reading more. How tall can a stack get before it topples and buries a person? Are there any mysteries written about a body found buried under books?

The Perfect Family

THE PERFECT FAMILY by Carla Cassidy (Signet Eclipse, c2005, ISBN 0-451-21390-4) surprised me.

Set in Cass Creek, Missouri (a suburb of Kansas City) Marissa Jamison is trying to piece her life back together. A little over a year ago her husband, a member of the local fire department, was run down in a grocery store parking lot after stopping to get some milk. Now, raising two kids alone, Marissa thinks things are getting back on track when Alex Kincaid, her highschool sweetheart, comes back inter her life.

And then the "Gift Bow Killer" strikes and the victims all relate to Marissa somehow. Someone wants to be a part of Marissa's life and it looks like they will stop at nothing to make--the perfect family.

This book surprised because I found it in the trunk of my car, which is not uncommon but I think it jumped to the top of a stack or something because I don't recall buying it, putting it there, nothing. I was meeting my husband for lunch and he was on a call and told me it'd be a while so I went looking for something to read while I waited at the station and found this book in the corner of my trunk by an author I'd never heard of before let alone read, but, it had a purple cover and I like purple. So, I picked it up and by the time my husband called to cancel lunch, I had read 150 pages of it and didn't want to put it down. It had really great timing with the suspense and I will definitely search out more books by this author. I will recommend this book to my patrons who enjoy Mariah Stewart and Allison Brennen as I saw several similarities.

The first sentence:

It was a perfect evening.

Smitten

SMITTEN by Janet Evanovich (Harper Torch, c1990 and 2006, ISBN 0-06-059887-5) is a re-release of one of her earlier books.

Lizabeth Kane is living in Chase Mills, Pennsylvania and takes a job working for Matt Hallahan with his construction company, even though she knows absolutely nothing about construction. Her house is in need of much repair, her Aunt Elise Hawkins (the prototype for Grandma Mazur) has come to watch over her two boys for the summer and there's a flasher streaking thru the neighborhood and has his sights (and other body parts) aimed at Lizabeth while she has her sights on Matt.

This book was good for a quick, typical fluffy read; it was very entertaining but had little substance. I had to actually peruse it before writing up my review in the book that I keep because from the time I finished it and went to jot down my thoughts about it, I had forgotten all of the key elements to the plot.

However, as I said, it was typical for her re-releases (not the best of hers I've read but definitely better than some other authors I've tried)and since she is my guilty pleasure, I enjoyed myself while in between the covers of this book.

The first sentence:

When Lizabeth Kane was five years old she wanted to grow up to be a fairy.

Killer Instinct

I was a virgin to Robert W. Walker's books but that's not a bad thing because now I'm not any longer and I really enjoyed myself. A LOT.

KILLER INSTINCT (Diamond Books, c1992, ISBN 1-55773-743-6)is the first book in Walker's Jessica Coran series. Dr. Jessica Coran is an FBI medical examiner, brought into a case by Otto Boutine, featuring a killer who is draining his victims of their blood in vampire-like fashion across the Midwest.

The book begins:

Something akin to a fetid spirit moved past the sheriff and his deputy when the warped cabin door creaked open, revealing a black crypt.

For me, this was a fast-paced story with interesting characters and a good, solid plot. The only thing I didn't care for was Walker's overabundant use of ellipses (you know...the dot dot dot...thing) which distracted me to a great degree but I continued on to enjoy the story, trying to ignore the punctuation until I was finished with the reading. Sometimes I succeeded...sometimes not.
I loved that the book featured the Midwest (Wisconsin, Iowa City, IA and Chicago, IL)since this is where I make my home. I always find it refreshing to see in print a book that isn't set in New York, California, Florida or Texas.
I have given the author the benefit of the doubt as this book was published fourteen years ago and writing styles change as an author continues with his/her craft. Because of that, I will read the next book in the series because I truly enjoyed Dr. Coran's story.
She's the kind of gal with which I'd get together to drink coffee and discuss disembowelments. That's my kind of girl.

Triptych

Karin Slaughter is darker, bleaker and better with this stand-alone, TRIPTYCH (Delacorte Press, c2006, ISBN 978-0-385-33946-9), in my opinion.
The book begins:

Detective Michael Ormewood listened to the football game on the radio as he drove down DeKalb Avenue toward Grady Homes.

John Shelley is newly paroled from prison after doing a stint of 25 years after his conviction for the rape and murder of 15-year-old Mary Alice Finney. But there's a problem for John: similar murders are occuring and the similarities could land John back to prison, someplace he does not what to go.

Angie Polaski works undercover for the Vice Squad and meets John while working the streets and Will Trent is an agent with the GBI,(Georgia Bureau of Investigation) brought in to work on the cases in question.
The three make up the triptych of the story, their lives paralleling each others in more ways than one.

Okay, so this book is not for the weak-stomached. I have written before that I thought I was jaded to violence in books, grit and gore, that nothing seemed to bother me anymore in the books I read.

This book bothered me. On several levels. And there was one scene...I was reading on the couch and my jaw literally dropped because the revelation sucker-punched me right in the head and I had to read it again just to make sure I read it correctly. And then I read it one more time, just to make sure.

This book is not recommended for people who won't read about crimes against women or crimes against children and I wouldn't call the graphic violence gratuitous, but be warned that there is quite a bit of it. I would recommend it however, to everyone else. Even those people who really like her Grant County series.
Just leave a light on for this one.

Snow Blind

SNOW BLIND is the latest book by PJ Tracy (GP Putnam, c2006, ISBN 0-399-15339-6) and wowzer, this book, the 4th in the Monkeewrench series, is one zinger of a book.

Set in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it starts with the discovery of two police officers murdered and rolled up into snowmen during a snowman building contest. When another cop is found in the same fashion several towns away it becomes apparent that something is afoot. Grace McBride and the rest of the Monkeewrench gang team up with their computer sleuthing skills to aid Leo Magozzi, Gino Rolseth and Iris Rikker, the new sheriff to Dundas County, by trying to find a common denominator to the slain police officers before it becomes too late.

The book begins:

They had to sit for a time after dragging the body so far in the heat-two young women in sleeveless summer dresses, hugging their knees on the hillside while the hot wind danced in their hair and crept up their skirts and a dead man lay behind them.

There are many positives about this book including the break-neck pacing and the mystery wrapped up in a mystery. If there was anything negative to be said about this book, it would be that the Monkeewrench only plays a small part in this book as opposed to the others. If you're looking for a Monkeewrench book, this isn't it. But if you're looking for a great read, check this one out.