SECRETS OF A SCANDALOUS HEIRESS by Theresa Romain

January 10, 2015

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Matchmaker Trilogy (Book 3)

As usual, I’m starting a series at the end, which doesn’t seem to matter much.

The scandalous heiress is Augusta Meredith, a very wealthy young woman, but the money was earned by her parents, not inherited, which doesn’t sit well with the ton. When she goes off to Bath she decides to masquerade as a widow, Mrs. Flowers, because she thinks a widow is held to lower standards of behavior than a single girl, and she’s probably right – to a point.

Josiah Everett, known as Joss, is also looked down on for his dark skin; his grandmother was from Calcutta and married an English soldier. But when Joss and Augusta get together, the pages fly by.

This is a fast, fun read and I enjoyed it.

1/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

SECRETS OF A SCANDALOUS HEIRESS by Theresa Romain. Sourcebooks Casablanca (January 6, 2015). ISBN 978-1402284052. 320p.

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A DANGEROUS MAN by Connie Brockway

January 9, 2015

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I’ve been reading more romances than I ever have before, and I find a lot of these authors through a co-worker, Barbara, who orders all the paperbacks for my branch. She has been reading romance for years and often steers me to writers I may not have heard of. That was the case here; I was going on vacation and wanted a couple of paperbacks to take to the beach and this was one that she put in my hands.

Normally, we weed our paperbacks on a regular basis, which means we pull the old books to make room for the new. Except Barbara has some favorites like this one from 1996 that she refuses to pull.

A Dangerous Man starts off slowly. We meet Mercy Coltrane, an American heiress who has come to England to find her brother. She tries to enlist the Earl of Perth, Hart Moreland, in her search. She knew Hart back in Texas when he worked as a hired gunslinger for her father, and even saved her life when she was being held at gunpoint.

Hart is trying to forget his past and see his sisters wed. He doesn’t want the ton to know about his past, and is afraid Mercy will ruin everything. All the British aristocrats are mesmerized by the beautiful, vivacious American, including the Duke who is to marry Hart’s sister.

The book is slow going until a little ways past the middle. Hart is a damaged character and it becomes obvious that Mercy will be able to save him. Once their characters start interacting, the book moves along nicely and then gets pretty hot by the end. There was a lot of wooden characters to get through to reach that point and I’m not sure it was worth it.

1/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

A DANGEROUS MAN by Connie Brockway. Berkley (October 1, 2013). ISBN 978-0425253953. 384p.

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THE STRANGE LIBRARY by Haruki Murakami

January 8, 2015

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Translated by Ted Goossen

This is an odd little book. First of all, the designer is Chip Kidd, who regular readers of this blog know I am obsessed with. He has created some of the most iconic book covers around, and this is no exception. In fact, it reminded me a bit of The Cheese Monkeys, a book Chip Kidd wrote and designed.

The Strange Library is a sort of hybrid hardcover/paperback. The cover feels like stiff cardboard rather than paper, and lifts upward, with the bottom part opening downward. The paper is nice and heavy as well.

The text is large, and there are several full page illustrations throughout so this is a very fast read. Kidd explores Murakami’s nightmares beautifully.

The story revolves around a boy who visits the library to research a report. The librarian intimidates him into staying late and studying, with other worldly results in this fantastic story bordering on horror. There are only a few characters; besides the boy and the librarian there is a man in sheep’s clothing and a beautiful young wraith. It’s scary and fun.

This is a book I will happily find room for on my shelves; beautiful, weird and memorable.

1/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

THE STRANGE LIBRARY by Haruki Murakami. Knopf (December 2, 2014). ISBN 978-0385354301. 96p.

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THE WICKED DEEDS OF DANIEL MACKENZIE by Jennifer Ashley

January 7, 2015

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Mackenzies Series (Book 6)

This is the sixth book in the series, and my first read from this author. This was an unusual historical for me. It is set in England and France, and the main protagonist, Violet Bastien, is a famous medium, along with her mother.

It turns out her mother has a gift, but Violet has a way with machinery, and machinations. She’s able to produce scary knocking sounds, shadows, eerie lights and so forth, all the better to fool her clients and increase her payments.

Daniel Mackenzie is a wealthy lord and an engineer who is equally fascinated with machinery, and is designing a race car. When he wins at a card game, the loser offers to repay the debt by introducing him to Violet.

Daniel quickly realizes she is a fraud but is completely intrigued with her inventions.  In a moment of panic, Violet bashes him in the head and thinks she’s killed him. She dumps his body at the door of a nearby doctor and hightails it to France.

Daniel isn’t dead and he follows her,  learning about Violet’s past but falling in love with her smarts and her sense of adventure. This story had an intriguing premise that is never really fulfilled; the history was more interesting than the characters, so I doubt I’ll be reading any more of these.

1/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

THE WICKED DEEDS OF DANIEL MACKENZIE by Jennifer Ashley. Berkley (October 1, 2013). ISBN 978-0425253953. 384p.

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GAME by Barry Lyga

January 5, 2015

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The Sequel to I Hunt Killers

Things haven’t gotten any easier for Jazz Dent in the wake of his participation in the hunt for the Impressionist. While that killer is safely behind bars, Billy Dent has managed to escape and Jazz is almost certain he holds some responsibility.

But Jazz doesn’t have time to worry about Billy at this point. A new killer is on the move in New York City and the police there have approached Jazz for help. It seems his work in solving Lobo’s Nod’s recent case has gained some attention and has finally made the authorities admit that Jazz’s particular upbringing could be useful in hunting down serial killers.

This second in the Jasper Dent series is an excellent follow up to I Hunt Killers. It picks up just months after the end of its predecessor, immediately addressing all of the questions that one left in its wake. Of course by the end there’s a whole slew of new questions. (And it’s a cliffhanger of an ending if ever there was one.)

This time around Jazz is even more concerned about his potential in following in his dad’s footsteps – in spite of all of his efforts – and that’s thanks mostly to the fact that Billy is once again out on the streets. Jazz is plagued by his father’s voice both figuratively and ultimately literally.

This second installment also brings Jazz’s friends, Howie and Connie, even further into the mix. Howie is stuck in Lobo’s Nod helping with Jazz’s crazy grandmother and meeting his friend’s long lost aunt for the first time. Connie, on the other hand, tries to follow Jazz to NYC and lands in hot water with her parents. Their involvement with Jazz not only leads to their discovering some big news about their friend but also places them both in potentially big danger.

1/15 Becky LeJeune

GAME by Barry Lyga. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (June 17, 2014). ISBN: 978-0316125857. 544p.

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I HUNT KILLERS by Barry Lyga

January 4, 2015

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Jasper “Jazz” Dent wants nothing more than to be an ordinary teen. But that’s kind of impossible when you’re the son of William Cornelius Dent, probably THE most notorious serial killer. From the very start, Billy raised Jazz to think and plan like a killer.

Fortunately for Jazz, Billy was finally caught and has since been serving so many consecutive life sentences that he’ll never see the light of day.

But that doesn’t mean Jazz is free of him. The teen spends much of his time terrified that he might actually be just like his father. So when a killer strikes in Jazz’s tiny hometown of Lobo’s Nod, he makes it his mission to help solve the crime by putting his particular skills and knowledge to work.

Barry Lyga’s Jasper Dent series is like a teen mashup of Dexter and Criminal Minds. Of course unlike Dexter, Jazz isn’t actually a sociopath. At least he hopes not.

It might seem strange to have a teen detective with so much direct access to the police and the crime scene (which is the case with this series) but I think Lyga does a great job setting the story up in a way that is almost believable. Anything that stretches the imagination too far is forgivable in my opinion because I Hunt Killers is just that much of a fun read.

I Hunt Killers should most definitely come with a warning. Anyone who thinks a book about serial killers might be less dark or graphic simply because it’s meant for a teen audience would be very mistaken in this case; I Hunt Killers is quite dark indeed.

1/15 Becky LeJeune

I HUNT KILLERS by Barry Lyga. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (April 2, 2013). ISBN: 978-0316125833. 384p.

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GRAY MOUNTAIN by John Grisham

January 2, 2015

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I used to love John Grisham. The Firm, A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief were all favorites. I also loved the non-legal books like Playing for Pizza, Calico Joe and A Painted House. But somewhere along the way, I lost patience with the legal thrillers, especially when the main characters, generally well educated lawyers, started doing incredibly stupid stuff. I stopped reading them, tried again with The Litigators because my library patrons raved about it, but again found the main character too stupid to live. I gave up. Then came Gray Mountain.

I heard it may be the first book of a series, and I liked the environmental angle so I picked it up and read it in a day (okay, I was on vacation.) I loved it. Welcome back to my reading circle, Mr. Grisham.

The story revolves around Samantha Kofer, a Columbia Law School grad with a great six-figure job for one of the behemoth law firms on Wall Street. And then there was Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis and all those big law firms started cutting and cutting. Samantha got a good deal – she could take a one year furlough, do some good work pro bono, keep her medical benefits and maybe, just maybe, after the year is up she might get her job back.

The pro bono jobs were going fast; Samantha received nine rejection letters in her first day of applying. Until she heard from the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in Brady, Virginia, a small town in the Appalachia’s. And so she moved to Virginia, at least temporarily, to work at the all girl clinic.

For the first time, Samantha likes her work and feels useful. She actually gets to help people and they appreciate her help. Until her first black lung case – a huge problem with all the mining in Appalachia. When she finds evidence that the coal company and their lawyers hid evidence, people start dying.

I learned a lot about coal mining today and what the miners go through, none of it good. I really liked these characters and the setting, and the stupidity was left to minor characters, a much welcome change. I would love to read more about Samantha and her life in Brady and hope the rumors about a series come to pass.

1/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

GRAY MOUNTAIN by John Grisham. Doubleday; First Edition edition (October 21, 2014). ISBN 978-0385537148. 384p.

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THE BAKER STREET LETTERS by Michael Robertson

December 22, 2014

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Reggie Heath got a great deal on his new office lease, but if he’d read the paperwork he’d have understood why. It’s his brother who points it out to him – a clause that stipulates that they, the holders of the new lease at 221 Baker Street, are responsible for handling correspondence addressed to a certain famed and fictional detective.

When Reggie’s brother Nigel becomes overly interested in one of the letters he hightails to America to track down the letter’s writer. But Reggie only realizes his brother is gone after discovering a dead body in his office. Reggie is almost certain there must be a connection and is forced to follow his brother to Los Angeles where they both find themselves in the midst of a decades-old mystery.

This first in Robertson’s series is quite fun! It’s a light mystery paying a bit of homage to Holmes while not being overly focused on Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation. Rather the premise is that Reggie and Nigel – two trained lawyers – are dragged into a mystery thanks to the address alone. (Which means you don’t have to be a Sherlock Holmes aficionado to enjoy this one.)

The Baker Street Letters is the first in the series. To date there are three additional titles that follow.

12/14 Becky LeJeune

THE BAKER STREET LETTERS by Michael Robertson. Minotaur Books; Reprint edition (February 1, 2011). ISBN: 978-0312650643. 288p.

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THE THREE by Sarah Lotz

December 21, 2014

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Four flights – all originating from different countries and each one from a different airline – crash on the same day, stirring up a whirlwind of controversy. But it’s not just the crashes themselves that have people talking. The crashes are the sort no one walks away from, and yet three of the flights have one survivor each. These survivors – all of them young children – and an odd phone message left by one of the dying passengers have spurred movements claiming everything from aliens to Armageddon. Are these children really harbingers of some biblical apocalypse or are they to become the victims of mass hysteria?

The Three is told in a very atypical way. It’s set up as being a book written in the immediate aftermath of the crash. The writer, Elspeth Martins, interviews the family members, airline officials, religious personalities… anyone and everyone with something to say about the crashes and the surviving children. Those interviews, correspondence, recordings, and even emails and online chats are The Three.

The Three is a quite disturbing read. It begins ominously and becomes more so as the book progresses. There is a definite supernatural aspect but that takes a serious backseat for most of the book. It is horror but not in the gore and monsters sense. It’s the human kind of horror. The way people react to the magnificent. The way people turn miracles into monstrosities. The way people handle the things they simply can’t understand.

12/14 Becky LeJeune

THE THREE by Sarah Lotz. Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition (May 20, 2014). ISBN: 978-0316242905. 480p.

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OUTLANDER by Diana Gabaldon

December 20, 2014

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Narrated by Davina Porter

Many years ago, in a bookstore that is now just a footnote in history, a co-worker who became one of my closest friends insisted I read Outlander. It was shelved in Romance, I didn’t read romance and I resisted – but like any good bookseller, and any good friend, she wore me down and I capitulated. That book was almost 700 pages and I tore through it in a weekend, I literally could not put it down. I remember perching it on my kitchen counter while I made (burned?) dinner. But that was a long time ago, the 1990’s, so why am I writing about it now?

Well, like millions of other Outlander fans, I waited with hope and a tiny bit of cynicism for the Starz network series based on that book – and I fell in love with it all over again. And lest you think this is some woman’s thing, I have to tell you my husband has been listening to the audio version of this series and also loves it, and the TV series as well. Starz did an amazing job, from the casting to the location to the costumes to following the story Diana Gabaldon gifted us with while adding to it with stunning scenery and fantastic acting. Alas, this is not a review of the TV series (but watch it, people! You can watch the first episode for free)

My friend who had insisted I read Outlander also suggested the audio books. My first thought was I had read them already, why would I listen to books I had already read? Then my husband started listening and told me how fantastic the reader, Davina Porter, was. Then came the TV series and I decided that listening to the book would be a nice way to pass the time until the series picked up again. And I am ever so glad I did.

There are eight books in the series, and here they are in order:

1. Outlander
2. Dragonfly in Amber
3. Voyager
4. The Drums of Autumn
5. The Fiery Cross
6. A Breath of Snow and Ashes
7. An Echo in the Bone
8. Written in My Own Heart’s Blood

That 700 page first book in the series is also the shortest, so it has been many years and thousands of pages since I read Outlander. Listening to the fabulous Davina Porter brought it all back plus so much more, all those fascinating little details I had forgotten. It took me quite a while to read all 33+ hours; I have only a 10 minute commute to work, but I enjoyed every minute of it.

Outlander is one of those stories that is really hard to pin down. As I said, my bookstore had it in romance, other bookstores shelve it in science fiction/fantasy or just fiction. The basic premise is that our heroine Claire is a World War II nurse in England at the end of the war. She is married to Frank Randall, and they are rekindling their relationship after a long separation due to the war with a trip to Scotland. Claire visits a display of stones, rather like Stonehenge, but when she touches the stones, she finds herself back in 18th century Scotland. There she meets a long distant relative of her husband’s, the villainous Black Jack Randall, and she is forced into marrying a Scot, Jamie Fraser, who keeps her out of Randall’s clutches and probably jail. These are wild times in Scotland, just preceding the Jacobite rebellion, and Gabaldon does her homework. Claire and Jamie have incredible chemistry and their adventures keep the pages flying by.

Outlander was Gabaldon’s first novel. She was a college professor, a scientist and a researcher so when she decided to write fiction, she thought it would be easier to research it then to just make it up, and her attention to detail is astounding and completely fascinating. Gabaldon put serious thought into the time period – she saw an episode of Dr. Who where the good doctor ends up in Scotland and she decided that men in kilts were the way to go. As for Claire, she needed a protagonist who could easily adapt to the hardships of that earlier time period, so she created this nurse who had been through severe deprivation during the war, not to mention was battlefield ready, and her characters were born.

Outlander is a real love letter to Scotland – both the book and the TV series. I am now listening to Dragonfly in Amber, the second book in the series, which is even longer. I’ve taken to listening while I cook, which is much safer than trying to read!

12/14 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

OUTLANDER by Diana Gabaldon. Recorded Books. Audible.com Release Date: July 13, 2006. ASIN: B000GW8NVA. Listening Length: 33 hours and 8 minutes

Trade Paperback: Bantam; Mti edition (July 1, 2014). ISBN: 978-0553393705. 672p.

Note: I really don’t recommend the mass market paperbacks of these books, they are so unwieldy and I find them difficult to read, the books are just too big. And don’t forget you can get them at your local library!

3 Comments | Book Reviews, Fiction, Romance, Sci-Fi/Fantasy | Tagged: , | Permalink
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