Betty's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 28 Sep 2024 15:40:30 -0700 60 Betty's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Italian Shoes 8119003 The bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander series delivers a “short, beautiful, and ultimately life-affirming novel� about the path to self-acceptance (Booklist). From the prize-winning “master of atmosphere� comes the surprising and affecting story of a man well past middle age who suddenly finds himself on the threshold of renewal (The Boston Globe). Living on a tiny island that is surrounded by ice during the long winter months, Fredrik Welin is so lost to the world that he cuts a hole in the ice every morning and lowers himself into the freezing water to remind himself that he is alive. Haunted by memories of the terrible mistake that drove him to this island and away from a successful career as a surgeon, he lives in a stasis so complete that an anthill grows undisturbed in his living room. When an unexpected visitor disrupts this frigid existence, Frederik begins an eccentric, elegiac journey―one that displays the full height of Henning Mankell’s storytelling powers. A deeply human tale of loss and redemption, Italian Shoes is “a voyage into the soul of a man� expertly crafted with “snares that Mankell has hidden with a hunter’s skill inside this spectral landscape� (The Guardian). “Beautiful.� ―The Boston Globe “A fine meditation on love and loss.� ―The Sunday Telegraph “Intense and precisely detailed.... A hopeful account of a man released from self-imposed withdrawal.� ―The Independent “The creator of police detective Kurt Wallander presents a tale of mortal reckoning in which all the deaths are natural but none the less powerful.� ―Kirkus Reviews]]> 256 Henning Mankell 1595585087 Betty 4 arlington-library 3.80 2006 Italian Shoes
author: Henning Mankell
name: Betty
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2011/09/19
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: arlington-library
review:
Not a mystery, Mankell fans! A very good, yet profoundly sad, novel about a man who has isolated himself against the world as much as possible over the past 12 years. The sudden, unexpected appearance of an old lover--the main love of his life, in fact--sets the narrator on a path that forces him to confront his past and himself. Often painful to read--the mistakes, the aversions, the lies, and betrayals common to every life--"Italian Shoes" nonetheless makes the case that it's never too late (the narrator is 66 years old) to atone for one's errors--however embarrassing and discomforting that may be. Only one shocking, unexpected act about 50 or 60 pages before the novel's end felt wrong, felt like a puzzling misstep on Mankell's part. But apart from that, for years Mankell's mysteries have transcended the genre; with "Italian Shoes" he goes headlong into "straight" fiction, albeit with the same fascination in characters troubled and intimidated by intimacy, yet in deep need of connection with others.
]]> <![CDATA[Griselda Takes Flight (Bright's Pond #3)]]> 11183612
But Griselda's newfound freedom-and her flight time with handsome pilot, Cliff-is hampered by other happenings in town. Like the gold digger who prances around town and is supposedly engaged to Stella Kincaid's brother-the lottery winner who is in a coma. And there's Ivy Slocum's dog, Al Capone, whose adventures continue long after they should.

When Chief of Police Mildred Blessing starts investigating the gold digger, however, things really heat up-for Griselda and all the residents of the unique Pennsylvania hamlet called Bright's Pond!]]> 384 Joyce Magnin 1426726430 Betty 4 funny, kindle, mystery
But Griselda’s newfound freedom—and her flight time with handsome pilot, Cliff—is hampered by other happenings in town. Like the gold digger who prances around town and is supposedly engaged to Stella Kincaid’s brother—the lottery winner who is in a coma. And there’s Ivy Slocum’s dog, Al Capone, whose adventures continue long after they should.

When Chief of Police Mildred Blessing starts investigating the gold digger, however, things really heat up—for Griselda and all the residents of the unique Pennsylvania hamlet called Bright’s Pond.

Merged review:

Now that her morbidly obese sister, Agnes Sparrow, is comfortably dieting at the Greenbrier Nursing Home, Griselda learns to fly—literally—after a pilot makes an emergency landing and creates quite a ruckus in the otherwise sleepy town of Bright’s Pond.

But Griselda’s newfound freedom—and her flight time with handsome pilot, Cliff—is hampered by other happenings in town. Like the gold digger who prances around town and is supposedly engaged to Stella Kincaid’s brother—the lottery winner who is in a coma. And there’s Ivy Slocum’s dog, Al Capone, whose adventures continue long after they should.

When Chief of Police Mildred Blessing starts investigating the gold digger, however, things really heat up—for Griselda and all the residents of the unique Pennsylvania hamlet called Bright’s Pond.]]> 3.71 2011 Griselda Takes Flight (Bright's Pond #3)
author: Joyce Magnin
name: Betty
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/10
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: funny, kindle, mystery
review:
Now that her morbidly obese sister, Agnes Sparrow, is comfortably dieting at the Greenbrier Nursing Home, Griselda learns to fly—literally—after a pilot makes an emergency landing and creates quite a ruckus in the otherwise sleepy town of Bright’s Pond.

But Griselda’s newfound freedom—and her flight time with handsome pilot, Cliff—is hampered by other happenings in town. Like the gold digger who prances around town and is supposedly engaged to Stella Kincaid’s brother—the lottery winner who is in a coma. And there’s Ivy Slocum’s dog, Al Capone, whose adventures continue long after they should.

When Chief of Police Mildred Blessing starts investigating the gold digger, however, things really heat up—for Griselda and all the residents of the unique Pennsylvania hamlet called Bright’s Pond.

Merged review:

Now that her morbidly obese sister, Agnes Sparrow, is comfortably dieting at the Greenbrier Nursing Home, Griselda learns to fly—literally—after a pilot makes an emergency landing and creates quite a ruckus in the otherwise sleepy town of Bright’s Pond.

But Griselda’s newfound freedom—and her flight time with handsome pilot, Cliff—is hampered by other happenings in town. Like the gold digger who prances around town and is supposedly engaged to Stella Kincaid’s brother—the lottery winner who is in a coma. And there’s Ivy Slocum’s dog, Al Capone, whose adventures continue long after they should.

When Chief of Police Mildred Blessing starts investigating the gold digger, however, things really heat up—for Griselda and all the residents of the unique Pennsylvania hamlet called Bright’s Pond.
]]> Antiques Roadkill 20077478 Moving back in with her eccentric, larger-than-life mother, Brandy Borne finds small-town Serenity anything but serene. It seems an unscrupulous antiques dealer has swindled Vivian out of the family's heirlooms. But when he is found run over in a country lane, Brandy becomes Murder Suspect Number One--with her mother coming in a very close second. . .

The list of other suspects is impressive--the victim's business seems to have been based on bilking seniors out of their possessions. And when the Borne "girls" uncover a few very unsavory Serenity secrets, they become targets for a murderer whose favorite hobby seems to be collecting victims.

]]> 289 Barbara Allan 0758272790 Betty 3 mystery, kindle 3.86 2006 Antiques Roadkill
author: Barbara Allan
name: Betty
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/03/23
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
Going home again is never easy, especially when a quirky, high-maintenance Shih Tzu is your most intimate companion, but Brandy Borne is determined to make a new start in her quaint hometown on the banks of the Mississippi. Bruised but not broken, she moves back in with her larger-than-life mother, eccentric Vivian Borne, amateur actress, loyal Red Hat, and world-class gossip, and prepares to get along with her social-climbing older sister, Peggy Sue. Brandy arrives to find small-town Serenity anything but serene. It seems Clint Carson, an unscrupulous antiques dealer, has swindled Vivian out of the family’s heirlooms. But when Brandy impulsively confronts him, her outburst amounts to about as much as what Carson paid for the Borne antiques. And when Carson is found run over in a country lane near his farmhouse, Brandy has made herself Murder Suspect Number One, with her mother coming in a very close second.
]]> <![CDATA[Beer Is Proof God Loves Us: Reaching for the Soul of Beer and Brewing (FT Press Science)]]> 9403794 220 Charles W. Bamforth 0132172992 Betty 1 non-fiction
Unfortunately, my enjoyment of the former was often ruined by the latter. Bamforth's insights into the death of the UK pub culture, his experiences working with Bass and the various unions early in his brewing career, homilies on the absurdities of the temperance movement, and informative comments on the effect of globalization on the beer world are well-told and enjoyable to read.

Bamforth quickly loses me, however, when he touts the high-quality product that his employer, Anheuser-Busch, produces. It is one thing to make the argument that Budweiser is amazingly consistent, regardless of where it produced. That is quite true and their consistency is quite impressive. However, let it lie at that--do not attempt to parlay consistency into drinkability. Fast-food chains make remarkably consistent burgers--that doesn't make them steak.

So, to whom would I recommend this book? It will be enjoyable to anyone who has a true interest in beer, particularly its history and role in society. It is very likely to appeal to a home brewer or someone who frequents brewpubs and perhaps "foodies". It is not likely to appeal to a casual reader otherwise. While it is at times humorous, it is not "funny" in the comedic sense. The potential reader should understand that this is essentially a text book (about half of it is made up by references and footnotes). ]]> 3.34 2010 Beer Is Proof God Loves Us: Reaching for the Soul of Beer and Brewing (FT Press Science)
author: Charles W. Bamforth
name: Betty
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2010
rating: 1
read at: 2011/06/01
date added: 2012/08/25
shelves: non-fiction
review:
Charlie Bamforth's tribute to beer is a strange mixture of interesting historical tidbits (often including the author) and the author's personal opinions on beer itself.

Unfortunately, my enjoyment of the former was often ruined by the latter. Bamforth's insights into the death of the UK pub culture, his experiences working with Bass and the various unions early in his brewing career, homilies on the absurdities of the temperance movement, and informative comments on the effect of globalization on the beer world are well-told and enjoyable to read.

Bamforth quickly loses me, however, when he touts the high-quality product that his employer, Anheuser-Busch, produces. It is one thing to make the argument that Budweiser is amazingly consistent, regardless of where it produced. That is quite true and their consistency is quite impressive. However, let it lie at that--do not attempt to parlay consistency into drinkability. Fast-food chains make remarkably consistent burgers--that doesn't make them steak.

So, to whom would I recommend this book? It will be enjoyable to anyone who has a true interest in beer, particularly its history and role in society. It is very likely to appeal to a home brewer or someone who frequents brewpubs and perhaps "foodies". It is not likely to appeal to a casual reader otherwise. While it is at times humorous, it is not "funny" in the comedic sense. The potential reader should understand that this is essentially a text book (about half of it is made up by references and footnotes).
]]> <![CDATA[Russian Roulette (Hannibal Jones Mystery Series)]]> 6205870 268 Austin S. Camacho 0979478847 Betty 3 kindle, mystery 4.37 2009 Russian Roulette (Hannibal Jones Mystery Series)
author: Austin S. Camacho
name: Betty
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2012/06/18
date added: 2012/06/18
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
Washington D.C.'s professional troubleshooter, Hannibal Jones, is enraged when he is forced to take a case at gunpoint. His client is a Russian assassin who will kill Hannibal's beloved, Cindy Santiago, if Hannibal refuses to help him. With no choice, Hannibal agrees to investigate the smooth, wealthy Algerian who has stolen the heart of the woman his new client loves. At first the case looks simple - what woman would not choose a rich African businessman over a professional killer? His view changes when evidence surfaces connecting the Algerian to Russian mob money and the apparent suicide of the girl's father several years earlier. Further investigation reveals that the Algerian may not be who he says he is. Then more deaths follow, closing in on the Algerian and the girl. At first working only to protect Cindy's life, Hannibal is soon chasing the truth for its own sake and must fight his way through past lies, present jealousies and the Red Mafiya to learn the real reason that death is stalking the couple. Hannibal peels the Algerian's history like an onion, each layer revealing a false identity. His search for the truth leads to a dramatic shootout on Roosevelt Island, side-by-side with his murderous client.
]]> <![CDATA[I Shall Not Want (The Psalm 23 Mysteries, #2)]]> 7964726 279 Debbie Viguié 142670190X Betty 3 kindle, mystery ]]> 4.08 2010 I Shall Not Want (The Psalm 23 Mysteries, #2)
author: Debbie Viguié
name: Betty
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2012/06/18
date added: 2012/06/18
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
Presbyterian church secretary Cindy Preston and rabbi Jeremiah Silverman, introduced in The Lord Is My Shepherd (2010), team up again to solve another murder. This time the deceased is the personal assistant to Joseph Tyler, a wealthy member of Cindy’s church who’s launching a new program to pair up homeless people with rescue dogs. Cindy and Jeremiah are trying to stay out of the way of the investigation of the assistant’s murder—their last amateur-sleuthing foray landed them in the sights of a serial killer—but when homeless people begin getting killed and their dogs stolen, keeping out of it is no longer an option. Cindy and Jeremiah are two extremely likable protagonists, and the story is elaborate enough to keep readers interested but not so convoluted as to weigh the novel down. Though this is no cozy, the author does have a light touch—the danger to our heroes is real, but we’re never in any doubt that they’ll scrape through. --David Pitt

]]> <![CDATA[Silenced by the Yams (Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #3)]]> 13492322
This third book in the popular Barbara Marr Murder Mystery Series brings Barb out of the suburbs and into the slimy, urban world of bright lights, nightly news, and drive-by shootings. Luckily, she never loses her sense of humor or her ability to befriend some decidedly quirky characters.]]> 144 Karen Cantwell 0983750238 Betty 2 kindle, mystery ]]> 4.00 2012 Silenced by the Yams (Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #3)
author: Karen Cantwell
name: Betty
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2012/06/18
date added: 2012/06/18
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
This is the third title in the Barbara Marr mystery series and it's the best one yet. With so many laugh-out-loud scenes, it's hard to put the book down. In this story, we find Barbara happily reunited with her husband, Howard, the FBI agent. Life is settling down and getting back to normal or so she thinks. When Barbara is invited to a local movie screening, she's thrilled, that is, until the film director Kurt Baugh keels over and dies right in front of her after eating the yams. It's bad enough that the director is dead, but it's her ex-mafia friend Frankie, who catered the event and he is now the #1 suspect. Never one to leave things alone when she should, Barbara feels it's up to her to follow the clues that could possibly exonerate Frankie.

]]> <![CDATA[The Grave Gourmet (Capucine Culinary Mystery, #1)]]> 7721497 296 Alexander Campion 0758246692 Betty 3 kindle
With everyone else tied up, Le Commissaire Talon assigns twenty-eight years old Parisian Police Detective Capucine Le Tellier for the lead on the case; her first field crime scene assignment as her work has been office reviews of white collar crime. She receives insider help on the restaurant side of her investigation from her dining critic husband, Alexandre. At Renault, she learns the firm is working on a fuel efficiency process that would allow vehicles to run on one third the amount of gas; and that several countries and rival companies have industrial spies trying to steal the secret. Capucine knows if she wants more homicide work, she must resolve the case with its international implications as well as the country's frenzy over an icon being murdered.

With a lighthearted look at the City of Lights through the eyes of delightful droll Parisians and foreign nationals, readers will enjoy dining in Paris with Capucine (who is not remotely close in performance to The Pink Panther of Inspector Clouseau) as their tour guide. The Grave Gourmet is a wonderful French police procedural that highlights the industrial espionage threat to nations and companies as even allies spy on one another. Alexander Campion provides a mesmeric opening act starring a magnifico female protagonist.
]]> 2.71 2010 The Grave Gourmet (Capucine Culinary Mystery, #1)
author: Alexander Campion
name: Betty
average rating: 2.71
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2012/06/18
date added: 2012/06/18
shelves: kindle
review:
Chef Jean-Basile Labrousse owns the three-star Diapason restaurant. When he kicks a bag of squash in his freezer, it feels more like meat to him. He opens the bag to find the body of Jean-Louis Delage, the president-directeur general of Renault; who dined there earlier in the evening with his attorney.

With everyone else tied up, Le Commissaire Talon assigns twenty-eight years old Parisian Police Detective Capucine Le Tellier for the lead on the case; her first field crime scene assignment as her work has been office reviews of white collar crime. She receives insider help on the restaurant side of her investigation from her dining critic husband, Alexandre. At Renault, she learns the firm is working on a fuel efficiency process that would allow vehicles to run on one third the amount of gas; and that several countries and rival companies have industrial spies trying to steal the secret. Capucine knows if she wants more homicide work, she must resolve the case with its international implications as well as the country's frenzy over an icon being murdered.

With a lighthearted look at the City of Lights through the eyes of delightful droll Parisians and foreign nationals, readers will enjoy dining in Paris with Capucine (who is not remotely close in performance to The Pink Panther of Inspector Clouseau) as their tour guide. The Grave Gourmet is a wonderful French police procedural that highlights the industrial espionage threat to nations and companies as even allies spy on one another. Alexander Campion provides a mesmeric opening act starring a magnifico female protagonist.

]]> <![CDATA[The Hamlet (The Snopes Trilogy, #1)]]> 12995 The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation. Flem Snopes -- wily, energetic, a man of shady origins -- quickly comes to dominate the town and its people with his cunning and guile.]]> 409 William Faulkner 0679736530 Betty 4 kindle
Although Faulkner had introduced the character of Flem Snopes in a short story of the early 30s, as well as including various members of the Snopes family in previous novels, it was in The Hamlet that the author gave his full energies to the story of the rise of Flem from sharecropper cabin to stately mansion, and the slow but inexorable infiltration of other members of the Snopes family into Yoknapatawpha society. The book is divided into four episodes in which Faulkner, using both comedy and tragedy, plumbs the depths of human emotion, from passion to implacable inhumanity, and in so doing creates some of his most enduring characters. The Snopes family is seen, collectively, by the good citizens of Frenchman's Bend as insane, unsanitary, immoral and unscupulous - all traits shared by the good citizens of Frenchman's Bend in one degree or another - and as a group of outsiders defiling the established order. But when Faulkner considers each of the Snopes tribe individually, these stereotypes are ameliorated and that member is detached from the rest of the family. Each of the Snopes considered demonstrates admirable traits: Eck is seen as honest and hard working; the idiot Ike is seen, in a perverse way, as loyal and sympathetic; even the murderer, Mink, has his noble qualities. Only Flem is devoid of any good qualities. He is depicted as emotionless, rapacious and isolated from his fellow man; and although he is eventually successful in achieving his aims, it is clear that Faulkner has little use for such individuals.

But with Faulkner (when he is at his best), it is just as important how the story is told as the story told. And in this work he is at his best. Two episodes deserve particular attention: the obsession of the school teacher, Labove, for Eula Varner, his thirteen year old pupil; and the affair between the idiot, Ike, and the cow. Both episodes are concerned with obsession, but in the former it is obsession predominated by passion while with the Ike episode, it is obsession produced by idealized love. Faulkner's style in both episodes border on rhetorical perfection. Eula is described as "the supreme primal uterus" who "tranquilly abrogates the whole long sum of human thinking and suffering which is called knowledge, education, wisdom, at once supremely unchaste and inviolable." The description of Ike's love for the cow could just probably contain some of the very best prose that Faulkner ever wrote. Using a style that is almost luminous, the author is able to transform a story of bestiality into a moving testament on human love, while Ike is made into a truly sympathetic character, one who confuses the concept of love, and loses the distinction between female animal and human female.

Faulkner was eventually to expand the story of the Snopes into a trilogy, with The Town and The Mansion being published in the late 1950s. But these other novels were only an unremarkable conclusion to what he began with The Hamlet, arguably the last great book that he wrote.
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Ah, the romance, March 7, 2007
By
John Cullom (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
For all its attempts to elucidate the economic and social structures that led to the decline of the south, this book is best in its portrayal and critique of romance. The section introducing Eula Varner as an object of desire is one of the most compelling before the opening passages of Lolita (forgive me twice):

her entire appearance suggested some symbology out of the old Dionysic times--honey in sunlight and bursting grapes, the writhen bleeding of the crushed fecundated vine beneath the hard rapacious trampling goat-hoof.

I mean, come on, passages like that just make you feel ashamed of the shallowness of your own emotions, vocuabulary, and existence. Oh, and that intensity goes on for almost 20 pages.

****SPOILER ALERT (Sort of)****

And if that gets you revved up, the book escalates the language and shifts to another starcrossed couple, an idiot ward of Flem, Ike, and a neighbor's wandering cow. Here's Ike trying to soothe the spooked cow:

trying to tell her how this violent viloation of her maiden't delicacy is no shame, since such is the very iron imperishable warp of the fabric of love.

The book is worth reading for those two sections. Much of the rest drags. It's filled with stories that Faulkner finds humorous and they are set to the laugh track of Ratliff who is constantly telling the reader what they should find humorous. It's about as effective as Jim smirking into the camera throughout the 3rd season of The Office to let the audience know what a delightful practical joke he's just played.

In all, this is worthwhile, but this falls in the middle of an incredible period of Faulkner's career, and even when you're reading it you come across huge passages that remind you how disappointed you are in him.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars READ THIS GREAT BOOK, October 20, 2006
By
Ethan Cooper (Big Apple) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
Faulkner assembled much of THE HAMLET from short stories, where his themes were courtship, lust, love, and obsession or where the average person succumbs to greed or foolishness and is victimized in business.

Take the subject of love. In THE HAMLET, Faulkner examines obsessive and unrequited love through his characters Labove (an achiever obsessed with untouchable beauty) and Ike Snopes (a retarded man in love with a cow); ambivalent love through the experience of Mink Snopes (a vicious murder) and Jack Houston (a guilty widower); and loveless marriage through the lives of Eula Varner and Mrs. Armstid, who are at the top and bottom of social hierarchy. Each of these characters is unique and fully realized. Yet each suffers from cruel variations of a single force.

Not to be a pedant: But Robert Penn Warren described THE HAMLET as: "...a sequence of contrasting or paralleling stories" where Faulkner's "...movement was not linear but spiral, passing over the same point again and again, but at different altitudes." This is exactly right.

At the same time, THE HAMLET is about Faulkner's writing. Here's one quick example, with this great author writing about the weather. "It was a gray day, of the color and texture of iron, one of those windless days of a plastic rigidity too dead to make or release snow even, in which even light did not alter but seemed to appear complete out of nothing at dawn and would expire into darkness without gradation." Great isn't it?

Even so, I was surprised by one aspect of THE HAMLET. It is: terrible things happen to all the characters. This even includes Flem Snopes who is a winner in the male world of business but surely locked in a loveless marriage. Yet despite their cruel fates, Faulkner's amazing characters persevere. As he said when accepting his Nobel: "When the last ding-dong of doom has clanged, ...there will still be one more sound: ...a puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this...." READ THIS GREAT BOOK
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Major Faulkner, March 29, 2006
By
John Wraith "Studio Gangsta" (Rural Virginia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
I'm not sure how exactly to say this without sounding closed-minded and elitist, so I'll apologize right off the bat for that. But I'm not sure the people who disparage this novel on this website quite "get it," and I think part of the reason might be that most of those people aren't from the South. This is an episodic, rambling, distinctly Southern story, told in an episodic, rambling, distinctly Southern way. That's just how things work down here, and I realize it's not that way in Hoboken (which is fine too). It's also a very rural setting, so that may turn some people off or lead to some misunderstanding.

Having said that, this book is a major Faulkner work, meaning it's great, not merely good. It's his most explicit critique of capitalism and his most explicit commentary on love in all its forms, and it's a very funny one at that -- again, it's from a Southern angle, though; if you've lived in an industrial rather than rural society your whole life, it may not appeal to you as much. Like most Faulkner, you have to settle into the prose and the pace.

The characters The Hamlet introduces are among Faulkner's most memorable: the rapacious Flem, the wonderful Ratliff, the oddly moving (trust me) Ike, etc. Faulkner has been accused of exploiting his poor whites in this novel, but I think his surprisingly sympathetic treatment of Mink in the trilogy counters this charge pretty well.

I've read everything Faulkner's ever written at least once (two to four times, for his major works), and this is my favorite. If you think Anse is funny in As I Lay Dying, or Virgil and Fonzio in Sanctuary, you'd probably really enjoy this book. It's the only time you'll ever hear a teenage girl rebuff her schoolteacher's inappropriate sexual advance with the command, "Stop pawing me. You old headless horseman Ichabod Crane." Priceless.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars first and best of the trilogy, February 16, 2006
By
GerryO "book addict" (denver) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
The Hamlet is an episodic, sometimes uneven novel of jealosy, avarice , and poverty. Some of Faulkner's best characters including Flem and Eula Snopes (Varner), Ratliff the cagy sewing machine salesman, an Houston, the luckless cow-owner. All in all good stuff not as difficult to read as some of Bill's stuff.

Unfortunately the trilogy goes downhill from here, it was many years before he wrote The Town. The Mansion I thought was a stronger book. Give The Hamlet a try, some vintage Faulkner here.
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4.0 out of 5 stars I love faulkner too, October 25, 2005
By
Geronimo Pratt (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
This is, as mentioned by the previous reviewer, good faulkner, not great faulkner, which means that this book has moments that are completely mesmerizing, other moments where you just don't really understand, and others that make you scratch your head and say , "damn, he's so good"; actually most of the book is like that.

For those of you who are seasoned faulker readers, I would this book along with "Sartoris" as an equal, that is, how a family comes to power in Jefferson, usurping the old order, becoming the new order, and then decaying again.

Faulkner was such a serious and funny writer, at the same time, he just gets better with age. I hope to eventually get to them all; this one is pretty good, I would recommend it but only after you have read about 3 or 4 of his others.

The germ of this novel can be traced back as far as 1927 to a short story entitled "Spotted Horses" which was incorporated into the novel in Book 4. In fact, a total of four Faulkner short stories made their way into the novel at different points, but to label The Hamlet as simply a collection of previously written short stories is to miss both the uniformity of the novel and a chance to experience Faulkner's creative mind at work. If the reader takes the time to compare the original of the incorporated short stories ("Spotted Horses", "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard", "Fool About a Horse", and "The Hound") with the rewritten versions that made their way into the novel, that person can only marvel at Faulkner's ability to revise previous work into a new art form that has only a limited kinship with the original - the same kind of artistic genius that inspired Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Although Faulkner had introduced the character of Flem Snopes in a short story of the early 30s, as well as including various members of the Snopes family in previous novels, it was in The Hamlet that the author gave his full energies to the story of the rise of Flem from sharecropper cabin to stately mansion, and the slow but inexorable infiltration of other members of the Snopes family into Yoknapatawpha society. The book is divided into four episodes in which Faulkner, using both comedy and tragedy, plumbs the depths of human emotion, from passion to implacable inhumanity, and in so doing creates some of his most enduring characters. The Snopes family is seen, collectively, by the good citizens of Frenchman's Bend as insane, unsanitary, immoral and unscupulous - all traits shared by the good citizens of Frenchman's Bend in one degree or another - and as a group of outsiders defiling the established order. But when Faulkner considers each of the Snopes tribe individually, these stereotypes are ameliorated and that member is detached from the rest of the family. Each of the Snopes considered demonstrates admirable traits: Eck is seen as honest and hard working; the idiot Ike is seen, in a perverse way, as loyal and sympathetic; even the murderer, Mink, has his noble qualities. Only Flem is devoid of any good qualities. He is depicted as emotionless, rapacious and isolated from his fellow man; and although he is eventually successful in achieving his aims, it is clear that Faulkner has little use for such individuals.

But with Faulkner (when he is at his best), it is just as important how the story is told as the story told. And in this work he is at his best. Two episodes deserve particular attention: the obsession of the school teacher, Labove, for Eula Varner, his thirteen year old pupil; and the affair between the idiot, Ike, and the cow. Both episodes are concerned with obsession, but in the former it is obsession predominated by passion while with the Ike episode, it is obsession produced by idealized love. Faulkner's style in both episodes border on rhetorical perfection. Eula is described as "the supreme primal uterus" who "tranquilly abrogates the whole long sum of human thinking and suffering which is called knowledge, education, wisdom, at once supremely unchaste and inviolable." The description of Ike's love for the cow could just probably contain some of the very best prose that Faulkner ever wrote. Using a style that is almost luminous, the author is able to transform a story of bestiality into a moving testament on human love, while Ike is made into a truly sympathetic character, one who confuses the concept of love, and loses the distinction between female animal and human female.

Faulkner was eventually to expand the story of the Snopes into a trilogy, with The Town and The Mansion being published in the late 1950s. But these other novels were only an unremarkable conclusion to what he began with The Hamlet, arguably the last great book that he wrote.
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Ah, the romance, March 7, 2007
By
John Cullom (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
For all its attempts to elucidate the economic and social structures that led to the decline of the south, this book is best in its portrayal and critique of romance. The section introducing Eula Varner as an object of desire is one of the most compelling before the opening passages of Lolita (forgive me twice):

her entire appearance suggested some symbology out of the old Dionysic times--honey in sunlight and bursting grapes, the writhen bleeding of the crushed fecundated vine beneath the hard rapacious trampling goat-hoof.

I mean, come on, passages like that just make you feel ashamed of the shallowness of your own emotions, vocuabulary, and existence. Oh, and that intensity goes on for almost 20 pages.

****SPOILER ALERT (Sort of)****

And if that gets you revved up, the book escalates the language and shifts to another starcrossed couple, an idiot ward of Flem, Ike, and a neighbor's wandering cow. Here's Ike trying to soothe the spooked cow:

trying to tell her how this violent viloation of her maiden't delicacy is no shame, since such is the very iron imperishable warp of the fabric of love.

The book is worth reading for those two sections. Much of the rest drags. It's filled with stories that Faulkner finds humorous and they are set to the laugh track of Ratliff who is constantly telling the reader what they should find humorous. It's about as effective as Jim smirking into the camera throughout the 3rd season of The Office to let the audience know what a delightful practical joke he's just played.

In all, this is worthwhile, but this falls in the middle of an incredible period of Faulkner's career, and even when you're reading it you come across huge passages that remind you how disappointed you are in him.

Faulkner assembled much of THE HAMLET from short stories, where his themes were courtship, lust, love, and obsession or where the average person succumbs to greed or foolishness and is victimized in business.

Take the subject of love. In THE HAMLET, Faulkner examines obsessive and unrequited love through his characters Labove (an achiever obsessed with untouchable beauty) and Ike Snopes (a retarded man in love with a cow); ambivalent love through the experience of Mink Snopes (a vicious murder) and Jack Houston (a guilty widower); and loveless marriage through the lives of Eula Varner and Mrs. Armstid, who are at the top and bottom of social hierarchy. Each of these characters is unique and fully realized. Yet each suffers from cruel variations of a single force.

Not to be a pedant: But Robert Penn Warren described THE HAMLET as: "...a sequence of contrasting or paralleling stories" where Faulkner's "...movement was not linear but spiral, passing over the same point again and again, but at different altitudes." This is exactly right.


]]> 3.87 1940 The Hamlet (The Snopes Trilogy, #1)
author: William Faulkner
name: Betty
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1940
rating: 4
read at: 2012/06/18
date added: 2012/06/18
shelves: kindle
review:
The germ of this novel can be traced back as far as 1927 to a short story entitled "Spotted Horses" which was incorporated into the novel in Book 4. In fact, a total of four Faulkner short stories made their way into the novel at different points, but to label The Hamlet as simply a collection of previously written short stories is to miss both the uniformity of the novel and a chance to experience Faulkner's creative mind at work. If the reader takes the time to compare the original of the incorporated short stories ("Spotted Horses", "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard", "Fool About a Horse", and "The Hound") with the rewritten versions that made their way into the novel, that person can only marvel at Faulkner's ability to revise previous work into a new art form that has only a limited kinship with the original - the same kind of artistic genius that inspired Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Although Faulkner had introduced the character of Flem Snopes in a short story of the early 30s, as well as including various members of the Snopes family in previous novels, it was in The Hamlet that the author gave his full energies to the story of the rise of Flem from sharecropper cabin to stately mansion, and the slow but inexorable infiltration of other members of the Snopes family into Yoknapatawpha society. The book is divided into four episodes in which Faulkner, using both comedy and tragedy, plumbs the depths of human emotion, from passion to implacable inhumanity, and in so doing creates some of his most enduring characters. The Snopes family is seen, collectively, by the good citizens of Frenchman's Bend as insane, unsanitary, immoral and unscupulous - all traits shared by the good citizens of Frenchman's Bend in one degree or another - and as a group of outsiders defiling the established order. But when Faulkner considers each of the Snopes tribe individually, these stereotypes are ameliorated and that member is detached from the rest of the family. Each of the Snopes considered demonstrates admirable traits: Eck is seen as honest and hard working; the idiot Ike is seen, in a perverse way, as loyal and sympathetic; even the murderer, Mink, has his noble qualities. Only Flem is devoid of any good qualities. He is depicted as emotionless, rapacious and isolated from his fellow man; and although he is eventually successful in achieving his aims, it is clear that Faulkner has little use for such individuals.

But with Faulkner (when he is at his best), it is just as important how the story is told as the story told. And in this work he is at his best. Two episodes deserve particular attention: the obsession of the school teacher, Labove, for Eula Varner, his thirteen year old pupil; and the affair between the idiot, Ike, and the cow. Both episodes are concerned with obsession, but in the former it is obsession predominated by passion while with the Ike episode, it is obsession produced by idealized love. Faulkner's style in both episodes border on rhetorical perfection. Eula is described as "the supreme primal uterus" who "tranquilly abrogates the whole long sum of human thinking and suffering which is called knowledge, education, wisdom, at once supremely unchaste and inviolable." The description of Ike's love for the cow could just probably contain some of the very best prose that Faulkner ever wrote. Using a style that is almost luminous, the author is able to transform a story of bestiality into a moving testament on human love, while Ike is made into a truly sympathetic character, one who confuses the concept of love, and loses the distinction between female animal and human female.

Faulkner was eventually to expand the story of the Snopes into a trilogy, with The Town and The Mansion being published in the late 1950s. But these other novels were only an unremarkable conclusion to what he began with The Hamlet, arguably the last great book that he wrote.
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Ah, the romance, March 7, 2007
By
John Cullom (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
For all its attempts to elucidate the economic and social structures that led to the decline of the south, this book is best in its portrayal and critique of romance. The section introducing Eula Varner as an object of desire is one of the most compelling before the opening passages of Lolita (forgive me twice):

her entire appearance suggested some symbology out of the old Dionysic times--honey in sunlight and bursting grapes, the writhen bleeding of the crushed fecundated vine beneath the hard rapacious trampling goat-hoof.

I mean, come on, passages like that just make you feel ashamed of the shallowness of your own emotions, vocuabulary, and existence. Oh, and that intensity goes on for almost 20 pages.

****SPOILER ALERT (Sort of)****

And if that gets you revved up, the book escalates the language and shifts to another starcrossed couple, an idiot ward of Flem, Ike, and a neighbor's wandering cow. Here's Ike trying to soothe the spooked cow:

trying to tell her how this violent viloation of her maiden't delicacy is no shame, since such is the very iron imperishable warp of the fabric of love.

The book is worth reading for those two sections. Much of the rest drags. It's filled with stories that Faulkner finds humorous and they are set to the laugh track of Ratliff who is constantly telling the reader what they should find humorous. It's about as effective as Jim smirking into the camera throughout the 3rd season of The Office to let the audience know what a delightful practical joke he's just played.

In all, this is worthwhile, but this falls in the middle of an incredible period of Faulkner's career, and even when you're reading it you come across huge passages that remind you how disappointed you are in him.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars READ THIS GREAT BOOK, October 20, 2006
By
Ethan Cooper (Big Apple) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
Faulkner assembled much of THE HAMLET from short stories, where his themes were courtship, lust, love, and obsession or where the average person succumbs to greed or foolishness and is victimized in business.

Take the subject of love. In THE HAMLET, Faulkner examines obsessive and unrequited love through his characters Labove (an achiever obsessed with untouchable beauty) and Ike Snopes (a retarded man in love with a cow); ambivalent love through the experience of Mink Snopes (a vicious murder) and Jack Houston (a guilty widower); and loveless marriage through the lives of Eula Varner and Mrs. Armstid, who are at the top and bottom of social hierarchy. Each of these characters is unique and fully realized. Yet each suffers from cruel variations of a single force.

Not to be a pedant: But Robert Penn Warren described THE HAMLET as: "...a sequence of contrasting or paralleling stories" where Faulkner's "...movement was not linear but spiral, passing over the same point again and again, but at different altitudes." This is exactly right.

At the same time, THE HAMLET is about Faulkner's writing. Here's one quick example, with this great author writing about the weather. "It was a gray day, of the color and texture of iron, one of those windless days of a plastic rigidity too dead to make or release snow even, in which even light did not alter but seemed to appear complete out of nothing at dawn and would expire into darkness without gradation." Great isn't it?

Even so, I was surprised by one aspect of THE HAMLET. It is: terrible things happen to all the characters. This even includes Flem Snopes who is a winner in the male world of business but surely locked in a loveless marriage. Yet despite their cruel fates, Faulkner's amazing characters persevere. As he said when accepting his Nobel: "When the last ding-dong of doom has clanged, ...there will still be one more sound: ...a puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this...." READ THIS GREAT BOOK
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Major Faulkner, March 29, 2006
By
John Wraith "Studio Gangsta" (Rural Virginia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
I'm not sure how exactly to say this without sounding closed-minded and elitist, so I'll apologize right off the bat for that. But I'm not sure the people who disparage this novel on this website quite "get it," and I think part of the reason might be that most of those people aren't from the South. This is an episodic, rambling, distinctly Southern story, told in an episodic, rambling, distinctly Southern way. That's just how things work down here, and I realize it's not that way in Hoboken (which is fine too). It's also a very rural setting, so that may turn some people off or lead to some misunderstanding.

Having said that, this book is a major Faulkner work, meaning it's great, not merely good. It's his most explicit critique of capitalism and his most explicit commentary on love in all its forms, and it's a very funny one at that -- again, it's from a Southern angle, though; if you've lived in an industrial rather than rural society your whole life, it may not appeal to you as much. Like most Faulkner, you have to settle into the prose and the pace.

The characters The Hamlet introduces are among Faulkner's most memorable: the rapacious Flem, the wonderful Ratliff, the oddly moving (trust me) Ike, etc. Faulkner has been accused of exploiting his poor whites in this novel, but I think his surprisingly sympathetic treatment of Mink in the trilogy counters this charge pretty well.

I've read everything Faulkner's ever written at least once (two to four times, for his major works), and this is my favorite. If you think Anse is funny in As I Lay Dying, or Virgil and Fonzio in Sanctuary, you'd probably really enjoy this book. It's the only time you'll ever hear a teenage girl rebuff her schoolteacher's inappropriate sexual advance with the command, "Stop pawing me. You old headless horseman Ichabod Crane." Priceless.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars first and best of the trilogy, February 16, 2006
By
GerryO "book addict" (denver) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
The Hamlet is an episodic, sometimes uneven novel of jealosy, avarice , and poverty. Some of Faulkner's best characters including Flem and Eula Snopes (Varner), Ratliff the cagy sewing machine salesman, an Houston, the luckless cow-owner. All in all good stuff not as difficult to read as some of Bill's stuff.

Unfortunately the trilogy goes downhill from here, it was many years before he wrote The Town. The Mansion I thought was a stronger book. Give The Hamlet a try, some vintage Faulkner here.
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4.0 out of 5 stars I love faulkner too, October 25, 2005
By
Geronimo Pratt (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
This is, as mentioned by the previous reviewer, good faulkner, not great faulkner, which means that this book has moments that are completely mesmerizing, other moments where you just don't really understand, and others that make you scratch your head and say , "damn, he's so good"; actually most of the book is like that.

For those of you who are seasoned faulker readers, I would this book along with "Sartoris" as an equal, that is, how a family comes to power in Jefferson, usurping the old order, becoming the new order, and then decaying again.

Faulkner was such a serious and funny writer, at the same time, he just gets better with age. I hope to eventually get to them all; this one is pretty good, I would recommend it but only after you have read about 3 or 4 of his others.

The germ of this novel can be traced back as far as 1927 to a short story entitled "Spotted Horses" which was incorporated into the novel in Book 4. In fact, a total of four Faulkner short stories made their way into the novel at different points, but to label The Hamlet as simply a collection of previously written short stories is to miss both the uniformity of the novel and a chance to experience Faulkner's creative mind at work. If the reader takes the time to compare the original of the incorporated short stories ("Spotted Horses", "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard", "Fool About a Horse", and "The Hound") with the rewritten versions that made their way into the novel, that person can only marvel at Faulkner's ability to revise previous work into a new art form that has only a limited kinship with the original - the same kind of artistic genius that inspired Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Although Faulkner had introduced the character of Flem Snopes in a short story of the early 30s, as well as including various members of the Snopes family in previous novels, it was in The Hamlet that the author gave his full energies to the story of the rise of Flem from sharecropper cabin to stately mansion, and the slow but inexorable infiltration of other members of the Snopes family into Yoknapatawpha society. The book is divided into four episodes in which Faulkner, using both comedy and tragedy, plumbs the depths of human emotion, from passion to implacable inhumanity, and in so doing creates some of his most enduring characters. The Snopes family is seen, collectively, by the good citizens of Frenchman's Bend as insane, unsanitary, immoral and unscupulous - all traits shared by the good citizens of Frenchman's Bend in one degree or another - and as a group of outsiders defiling the established order. But when Faulkner considers each of the Snopes tribe individually, these stereotypes are ameliorated and that member is detached from the rest of the family. Each of the Snopes considered demonstrates admirable traits: Eck is seen as honest and hard working; the idiot Ike is seen, in a perverse way, as loyal and sympathetic; even the murderer, Mink, has his noble qualities. Only Flem is devoid of any good qualities. He is depicted as emotionless, rapacious and isolated from his fellow man; and although he is eventually successful in achieving his aims, it is clear that Faulkner has little use for such individuals.

But with Faulkner (when he is at his best), it is just as important how the story is told as the story told. And in this work he is at his best. Two episodes deserve particular attention: the obsession of the school teacher, Labove, for Eula Varner, his thirteen year old pupil; and the affair between the idiot, Ike, and the cow. Both episodes are concerned with obsession, but in the former it is obsession predominated by passion while with the Ike episode, it is obsession produced by idealized love. Faulkner's style in both episodes border on rhetorical perfection. Eula is described as "the supreme primal uterus" who "tranquilly abrogates the whole long sum of human thinking and suffering which is called knowledge, education, wisdom, at once supremely unchaste and inviolable." The description of Ike's love for the cow could just probably contain some of the very best prose that Faulkner ever wrote. Using a style that is almost luminous, the author is able to transform a story of bestiality into a moving testament on human love, while Ike is made into a truly sympathetic character, one who confuses the concept of love, and loses the distinction between female animal and human female.

Faulkner was eventually to expand the story of the Snopes into a trilogy, with The Town and The Mansion being published in the late 1950s. But these other novels were only an unremarkable conclusion to what he began with The Hamlet, arguably the last great book that he wrote.
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Ah, the romance, March 7, 2007
By
John Cullom (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Hamlet (Paperback)
For all its attempts to elucidate the economic and social structures that led to the decline of the south, this book is best in its portrayal and critique of romance. The section introducing Eula Varner as an object of desire is one of the most compelling before the opening passages of Lolita (forgive me twice):

her entire appearance suggested some symbology out of the old Dionysic times--honey in sunlight and bursting grapes, the writhen bleeding of the crushed fecundated vine beneath the hard rapacious trampling goat-hoof.

I mean, come on, passages like that just make you feel ashamed of the shallowness of your own emotions, vocuabulary, and existence. Oh, and that intensity goes on for almost 20 pages.

****SPOILER ALERT (Sort of)****

And if that gets you revved up, the book escalates the language and shifts to another starcrossed couple, an idiot ward of Flem, Ike, and a neighbor's wandering cow. Here's Ike trying to soothe the spooked cow:

trying to tell her how this violent viloation of her maiden't delicacy is no shame, since such is the very iron imperishable warp of the fabric of love.

The book is worth reading for those two sections. Much of the rest drags. It's filled with stories that Faulkner finds humorous and they are set to the laugh track of Ratliff who is constantly telling the reader what they should find humorous. It's about as effective as Jim smirking into the camera throughout the 3rd season of The Office to let the audience know what a delightful practical joke he's just played.

In all, this is worthwhile, but this falls in the middle of an incredible period of Faulkner's career, and even when you're reading it you come across huge passages that remind you how disappointed you are in him.

Faulkner assembled much of THE HAMLET from short stories, where his themes were courtship, lust, love, and obsession or where the average person succumbs to greed or foolishness and is victimized in business.

Take the subject of love. In THE HAMLET, Faulkner examines obsessive and unrequited love through his characters Labove (an achiever obsessed with untouchable beauty) and Ike Snopes (a retarded man in love with a cow); ambivalent love through the experience of Mink Snopes (a vicious murder) and Jack Houston (a guilty widower); and loveless marriage through the lives of Eula Varner and Mrs. Armstid, who are at the top and bottom of social hierarchy. Each of these characters is unique and fully realized. Yet each suffers from cruel variations of a single force.

Not to be a pedant: But Robert Penn Warren described THE HAMLET as: "...a sequence of contrasting or paralleling stories" where Faulkner's "...movement was not linear but spiral, passing over the same point again and again, but at different altitudes." This is exactly right.



]]> <![CDATA[The List (The Konrath Dark Thriller Collective #1)]]> 6416365 YOU WON'T GUESS THE BIGGEST TWIST IN THRILLER FICTION...

A billionaire Senator with money to burn...
A thirty year old science experiment, about to be revealed...
Seven people, marked for death, not for what they know, but for what they are...

THE LIST by JA Konrath
History is about to repeat itself

If you are a more sensitive (or adventurous) reader, the Konrath scale rates specific categories from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) to give you some idea if this is your kind of book.

THE LIST
Scary - 6
Violent - 6
Funny - 7
Sexy - 4
Crossovers - Includes characters from the Konrath Dark Thriller Collective, the Jack Daniels thrillers, the Codename: Chandler series, and the Timecaster series.]]> 311 J.A. Konrath Betty 3 mystery, kindle The suspense is tight and the premise is not past the realm of probability.
I don't want to mention much else because I don't want to give anything away!

The plot was interesting at first. I was intrigue to find out about the number tattoos on the bottom of the foot and how these tattoos connected the character. But as the story progressed and things began to fall into place, it become clear that the plot was pretty outlandish. Completely and totally unrealistic, in order to enjoy The List. I sort of had to suspend my disbelief and just roll with it. As the story progressed I had to suspend my disbelief even more, Kornath throw in everything but the kitchen skin in his plot.

While the pace was fast there was not much character development. The characters were just there, I wanted to see what was going to happen to them but I wasn't invested in them. The lack of character development did not take away from my enjoyment of the story but I did notice that I could have cared less if one of the main characters lived or died.
]]> 3.71 2009 The List (The Konrath Dark Thriller Collective #1)
author: J.A. Konrath
name: Betty
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2012/06/05
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
Now I feel like I owe Joe money! I was completely entertained from start to finish. I truly could not put it down. Bert and Roy, two of the main characters, had me laughing out loud. Tom is the hero. He's a cop assigned to a homicide and the body has a mysterious tattoo just like the one oh his foot. Joan is a victim turned heroine and she is my kind of woman....strong AND kicks butt. I can't stand the kind of woman who gets tied to the railroad tracks whimpering "save me, save me".
The suspense is tight and the premise is not past the realm of probability.
I don't want to mention much else because I don't want to give anything away!

The plot was interesting at first. I was intrigue to find out about the number tattoos on the bottom of the foot and how these tattoos connected the character. But as the story progressed and things began to fall into place, it become clear that the plot was pretty outlandish. Completely and totally unrealistic, in order to enjoy The List. I sort of had to suspend my disbelief and just roll with it. As the story progressed I had to suspend my disbelief even more, Kornath throw in everything but the kitchen skin in his plot.

While the pace was fast there was not much character development. The characters were just there, I wanted to see what was going to happen to them but I wasn't invested in them. The lack of character development did not take away from my enjoyment of the story but I did notice that I could have cared less if one of the main characters lived or died.

]]> The Sidhe Princess 12857470 42 Loucinda McGary Betty 3 fantasy, kindle
Moira is also a part of another realm, a strange world that borders her family's property where she sees other beings with unearthly powers.

Compelled to return to fens where the strange inhabitants reside, Moira befriends a sidhe princess, who offers her a chance to see into the future.

As with all of her novels, Ms. McGary's knowledge of the locale and folklore lend an authentic flavor to her settings. Her command of the language and strong characterization make for a captivating read.

The Sidhe Princess is a beautiful story, a cautionary fairytale, in which the author's lyrical voice shines.]]> 3.34 2011 The Sidhe Princess
author: Loucinda McGary
name: Betty
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2012/06/05
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: fantasy, kindle
review:
Sixteen-year-old Moira Mullins has a gift. Or is it a curse? Moira, recently released from a mental institution, grapples with loneliness as she attempts to readjust to life with her parents in a small village in Northern Ireland. Her only sister has taken a job in Philadelphia and Moira fears she will never see her again.

Moira is also a part of another realm, a strange world that borders her family's property where she sees other beings with unearthly powers.

Compelled to return to fens where the strange inhabitants reside, Moira befriends a sidhe princess, who offers her a chance to see into the future.

As with all of her novels, Ms. McGary's knowledge of the locale and folklore lend an authentic flavor to her settings. Her command of the language and strong characterization make for a captivating read.

The Sidhe Princess is a beautiful story, a cautionary fairytale, in which the author's lyrical voice shines.
]]> Remix 8875132
REMIX is a feel-good page turner, that you won't want to put down until you reach the satisfying ending.

Now available as an Audible audio book.

Oracle, AMAZON VINE VOICE REVIEWER , " This is a highly addictive novel, a good old-fashioned murder mystery with a dash of 21st century celebrity glamour. I struggled to put it down. Lexi Revellian is great at crafting a plot that moves at speed but her biggest talent is in creating characters that the reader can really care about, characters that seem like old friends as the novel draws to a close. Overall, Remix is great fun, extremely entertaining and - dare I say it - would make an excellent transition to the small or big screen."

Full length 75,000 words, by the author of REPLICA, ICE DIARIES and WOLF BY THE EARS .]]> 278 Lexi Revellian 0956642209 Betty 4 kindle, mystery 3.57 2010 Remix
author: Lexi Revellian
name: Betty
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2012/06/05
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
The initially implausible situation -- a young woman meets a man and his dog whom she finds camped out on her rooftop terrace and invites them in for breakfast -- is somehow made quite believable. The author accomplishes this magical feat by giving us a narrator/protagonist who is real, likable, interesting and layered. The pacing works and the writing never gets in its own way. While there's certainly a chick-lit quality to this -- Caz is single, young, attractive and has more than one character interested in pursuing a romance with her, this lacks the whinging quality of a lot of that genre and should appeal to anyone (male or female) who likes a good mystery. If Caz continues to find herself involved with investigations, I'll be happy to follow her adventures.
]]> <![CDATA[Blame It On The Mistletoe (Bright's Pond #4)]]> 11297115 Is There Really a Fountain of Youth in Paradise?

Welcome back to Bright’s Pond, where strange happenings are afoot at the Greenbrier Nursing Home. Strange even for Bright’s Pond.

The residents suddenly act like kids again—riding trikes, climbing trees, and—of all things—falling in love. Some of the townsfolk blame it on the crooked new gazebo, or its builder, a quirky little man who quotes Don Quixote, collects water from the fountain at the Paradise trailer park, and disappears on a regular basis.

While Chief of Police Mildred Blessing investigates the mystery, Griselda and her friends deal with a luau Thanksgiving, preparations for the Christmas pageant, and maybe even an upcoming wedding.

]]> 368 Joyce Magnin 142671162X Betty 3 funny, kindle
What's going on at the Greenbriar Nursing home? Resident's riding trikes down the halls? Seniors making out in the gazebo? This is strange even by Bright's Pond standards. Who or what could be responsible? Is it the fault of the new gazeebo, or the strange elusive man who built it for the residents? Maybe it's drugs or something in the water. Police chief Mildred Blessing has her hands full trying to solve this one.

Meanwhile elsewhere in Bright's Pond folks must contend with a luau thanksgiving, a Christmas pageant with live camels and the on again off again romance between Griselda and Zeb. Do I hear wedding bells?

Though lighthearted, this book is no ball of fluff. It is well written and entertaining. It will leave you laughing, and feeling just a little bit better about your own life. The delightfuly quirky characters, like none you've ever imagined, are so real you'll feel like you've always known them.
]]> 3.56 2011 Blame It On The Mistletoe (Bright's Pond #4)
author: Joyce Magnin
name: Betty
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: funny, kindle
review:
Welcome back to Bright's Pond where the residents make even your strangest relatives seem normal.

What's going on at the Greenbriar Nursing home? Resident's riding trikes down the halls? Seniors making out in the gazebo? This is strange even by Bright's Pond standards. Who or what could be responsible? Is it the fault of the new gazeebo, or the strange elusive man who built it for the residents? Maybe it's drugs or something in the water. Police chief Mildred Blessing has her hands full trying to solve this one.

Meanwhile elsewhere in Bright's Pond folks must contend with a luau thanksgiving, a Christmas pageant with live camels and the on again off again romance between Griselda and Zeb. Do I hear wedding bells?

Though lighthearted, this book is no ball of fluff. It is well written and entertaining. It will leave you laughing, and feeling just a little bit better about your own life. The delightfuly quirky characters, like none you've ever imagined, are so real you'll feel like you've always known them.

]]> <![CDATA[Death Benefits (Southern Fraud Thriller, #2)]]> 13455364
Fraud investigator Julia Jackson is back in action, and her next assignment throws her straight into the crosshairs of a desperate man who will do anything to keep his secret safe.

Late one night, a car burns on a lonely rural road, and the discovery of a body—charred beyond recognition—in the driver’s seat sets in motion a series of deadly events. And when the wife of the supposedly deceased driver demands her husband’s million-dollar life insurance payout before the autopsy can be completed, fraud investigators Julia Jackson and Mark Vincent must determine exactly how the victim died and at whose hands.

As Julia and Vincent tangle with angry suspects, another man is working behind the scenes to sever his connection to the body by any means necessary.

Soon Julia and Vincent realize they are not dealing with an average death benefits scam, but with a potential serial killer. (Approximately 77,000 words)

The six-book Southern Fraud Thriller series blends gripping suspense with a hint of Southern charm and a slow-burn romance.]]> 261 J.W. Becton 0983782342 Betty 3 mystery, kindle
When a dead body is discovered, special agents Julia Jackson and Mark Vincent are left with many questions. They must determine if this is a simple death benefits case or something more. Kathy Vanderbilt has one million reasons why she would want her husband dead, but she might not be the only one. In addition to uncovering this mystery, Julia is still secretly working on discovering the identity of her sister's rapist. With another lead, Julia must try to keep those closest to her from getting involved.

It is Becton's ability to create vivid scenes for her readers that helps make them feel a part of the story. Whether her characters are in the office, interviewing a suspect, or on the scene, it is easy to see, feel and relate to them. Part of what makes the reader a part of the story are the characters. They are real characters, with real issues, and can be found in anyone's community. In Julia and Helena's relationship, I can visualize conversations I have with my best friend over a cup of coffee. Vincent's desire to reconnect with his estranged son makes him more than a steamy piece of eye candy oozing masculinity. And who doesn't know, or want to know, a feisty, blue-haired lady like Mrs. Twilley who cracks readers up with her expressions and ability to wield a cane? Let's not forget Kathy Vanderbilt who represents the southern redneck who needs her "respects." Let me say, Becton knows her southern lifestyle, and I could see many facets of my southern friends in her characters. That made it all the more enjoyable.

Adding to the reality of her descriptions and characters is the dialog, which is natural and not forced, especially the banter between Julia and Vincent. Beware: smiling, chuckling, and sighing might be the result of experiencing a conversation with Vincent, leaving the reader eager for the next novel to find out exactly what is in store for Julia and Vincent.

While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I was left with a few unanswered questions. I am not sure those questions will be answered in the next book, but I am anxious to find out more about Tricia's rapist coming to justice and to see what awaits Vincent and Julia. No doubt there will be more swoon-worthy moments involving Vincent.]]> 3.86 2012 Death Benefits (Southern Fraud Thriller, #2)
author: J.W. Becton
name: Betty
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2012/06/05
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
Becton hits readers with another thriller. Starting with page one, the reader is dropped right into the action. From imagery to characters and banter, Becton continually gains and keeps her reader's attention. I was so absorbed in the investigation, I found myself taking mental notes as I tried to uncover this mystery alongside the special agents. As the climax approached, I was right there in the action with Julia and Vincent.

When a dead body is discovered, special agents Julia Jackson and Mark Vincent are left with many questions. They must determine if this is a simple death benefits case or something more. Kathy Vanderbilt has one million reasons why she would want her husband dead, but she might not be the only one. In addition to uncovering this mystery, Julia is still secretly working on discovering the identity of her sister's rapist. With another lead, Julia must try to keep those closest to her from getting involved.

It is Becton's ability to create vivid scenes for her readers that helps make them feel a part of the story. Whether her characters are in the office, interviewing a suspect, or on the scene, it is easy to see, feel and relate to them. Part of what makes the reader a part of the story are the characters. They are real characters, with real issues, and can be found in anyone's community. In Julia and Helena's relationship, I can visualize conversations I have with my best friend over a cup of coffee. Vincent's desire to reconnect with his estranged son makes him more than a steamy piece of eye candy oozing masculinity. And who doesn't know, or want to know, a feisty, blue-haired lady like Mrs. Twilley who cracks readers up with her expressions and ability to wield a cane? Let's not forget Kathy Vanderbilt who represents the southern redneck who needs her "respects." Let me say, Becton knows her southern lifestyle, and I could see many facets of my southern friends in her characters. That made it all the more enjoyable.

Adding to the reality of her descriptions and characters is the dialog, which is natural and not forced, especially the banter between Julia and Vincent. Beware: smiling, chuckling, and sighing might be the result of experiencing a conversation with Vincent, leaving the reader eager for the next novel to find out exactly what is in store for Julia and Vincent.

While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I was left with a few unanswered questions. I am not sure those questions will be answered in the next book, but I am anxious to find out more about Tricia's rapist coming to justice and to see what awaits Vincent and Julia. No doubt there will be more swoon-worthy moments involving Vincent.
]]> Dream Lover 13450030 323 Suzanne Jenkins 1468126237 Betty 4 kindle 3.83 2012 Dream Lover
author: Suzanne Jenkins
name: Betty
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2012/06/05
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: kindle
review:
Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse! .... Dream Lover, by Suzanne Jenkins, 3rd of the series answers so many questions and opens up so many more....WOW....Pam is an amazing woman! She is strong and logical and down to earth and sensible! She thinks with her head and not her heart.....although that was broken,... She is kind, gentle and secure in spite of what has evolved in the past 6 months of her life. Gosh....how does she remain so focused! Some surprises in this story, leaving the reader thinking and re-thinking long after the last page is turned...Suzanne Jenkins does a superb job of developing her characters and making the reader smile and cry on the same page! I could feel their joy and their pain and felt very connected to situations...Great Read!!!!!
]]> Don't You Forget About Me 12919098 After a wealthy man of high reputation suffers a heart attack and dies, three women are left to grapple with
the aftermath of his death and the twisted details of their past in this riveting fiction novel.
The story, a continuation of Jenkins� Pam of Babylon (2011), sets out to explore the life and grief of the
wife, the sister-in-law and the mistress of Jack, the deceased. From the beginning, the reader understands that all
three women are aware of their positions in Jack's life and to each other. Jack's wife, Pam, knows that he was
engaged in a long-term affair with her younger sister, Marie. What's more, the mistress, Sandra, is pregnant with
his child. But surprisingly, these are not the most shocking twists that Jenkins lays out. Little do the three women
know that there is more that ties them to Jack and to each other than meets the eye. As secrets unfold—some
deceptive, some deadly—the women are left intimately bound by their past and by a future that can never break
free from Jack. Jenkins writes with a fast-paced, scenic style, pushing the story forward and wasting little time on interior monologue or back
story. Perhaps this is one of the best aspects of the novel—a page-turner, the story remains immediate, rarely breaking from forward motion.
Jenkins develops characters not by describing them, but by placing them in conflict and context with new people, places and situations. What's
more, the novel never fully resolves the conflicts it opens up, leaving room for the next book to explore the aftermath of the characters' secrets and
decisions. The characters are sympathetic, round and believable; watching them grapple with difficult decisions creates an engaging, dynamic
read.
An exciting, surprising story that leaves the reader hungry for the next book.
Kirkus Indie, Kirkus Media LLC, 6411 Burleson Rd., Austin, TX 78744
indie@kirkusreviews.]]> 338 Suzanne Jenkins 1466219009 Betty 4 kindle
But the more they learn about Jack and his nefarious past, the more they begin to question everything they thought they ever knew about him. Not only did Jack carelessly cheat on each of them, without thought to the harm he was causing, but the women are stunned to discover a secret of Jack that he never revealed.

As the women try to piece together the real life story of Jack, they begin to deal with their own lives differently, as well. They must deal with Jack’s heartbroken mother, who knew nothing about her son’s clandestine dealings in life. The tragedy also takes a toll on their working lives, and most of all it takes a toll on them, robbing them of sleep, hope, and even dreams. But with a sense of shared sisterhood, a little laughter, and a whole lot of determination, these brave women forge brave new lives that are full of promise.

The novel probes the difficulties in thinking that we can ever really know a person, even a loved one. All the women in Don’t You Forget About Me wonder if they had been really and truly loved by Jack, or if he had simply played them for fools. They question their own blindness to his faults and how they allowed themselves to believe that they might have had it all, when what they had was really more of a dream. The book investigates modern social problems with grace and warmth. Infidelity, it uncovers, can do more than break hearts. In showing some of the worst things that can happen in relationships,it also teases us to imagine the best, a world in which loyalty, devotion and fidelity are prized. As the characters grow and change, they have the possibility for those things.

Don’t You Forget About Me is a tale of love lost and then found again. A sequel to Pam of Babylon, Don’t You Forget About Me can also be read all on its own. You will not like this book if many characters and lot of twists and turns is not your cup of tea.
]]> 3.55 2011 Don't You Forget About Me
author: Suzanne Jenkins
name: Betty
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2012/05/22
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: kindle
review:
When charming, seemingly devoted Jack Smith dies, his wife and his two girlfriends are astonished to learn that they were not the only love of his life, and that, in fact, Jack was a rogue who was carrying on secret existences with other women. Shattered by grief and stunned by Jack’s betrayals, these three women, Pam Smith, Marie Fabian, and Sandra Benson, find themselves suddenly thrown together. They could have despised one another, jealously guarding their private memories of their time with Jack and hating those they perceived to be their rivals, but instead, the women begin to realize there might be strength in numbers and in shared pain. Slowly, they begin to open their hearts to one another. They bind together to try to make sense of their lives and to try to heal the terrible shock.

But the more they learn about Jack and his nefarious past, the more they begin to question everything they thought they ever knew about him. Not only did Jack carelessly cheat on each of them, without thought to the harm he was causing, but the women are stunned to discover a secret of Jack that he never revealed.

As the women try to piece together the real life story of Jack, they begin to deal with their own lives differently, as well. They must deal with Jack’s heartbroken mother, who knew nothing about her son’s clandestine dealings in life. The tragedy also takes a toll on their working lives, and most of all it takes a toll on them, robbing them of sleep, hope, and even dreams. But with a sense of shared sisterhood, a little laughter, and a whole lot of determination, these brave women forge brave new lives that are full of promise.

The novel probes the difficulties in thinking that we can ever really know a person, even a loved one. All the women in Don’t You Forget About Me wonder if they had been really and truly loved by Jack, or if he had simply played them for fools. They question their own blindness to his faults and how they allowed themselves to believe that they might have had it all, when what they had was really more of a dream. The book investigates modern social problems with grace and warmth. Infidelity, it uncovers, can do more than break hearts. In showing some of the worst things that can happen in relationships,it also teases us to imagine the best, a world in which loyalty, devotion and fidelity are prized. As the characters grow and change, they have the possibility for those things.

Don’t You Forget About Me is a tale of love lost and then found again. A sequel to Pam of Babylon, Don’t You Forget About Me can also be read all on its own. You will not like this book if many characters and lot of twists and turns is not your cup of tea.

]]> Pam of Babylon 12263164
The first in a series of five books.

Deemed "an intriguing first novel" by Kirkus Reviews, this poignant tale follows Pam, a beautiful Long Island housewife who learns of her husband’s dark secrets only after his sudden death

Her seemingly perfect life is shattered when her husband dies of a heart attack and she comes face to face with his lies and infidelities.

This poignant, affecting drama follows a courageous widow who confronts the horror of a destructive marriage when the people her husband left behind come to share their painful stories.]]> 330 Suzanne Jenkins 1461135923 Betty 4 kindle See all Editorial Reviews ]]> 3.42 2011 Pam of Babylon
author: Suzanne Jenkins
name: Betty
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2012/05/22
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: kindle
review:
Pam Smith is a Long Island housewife who spends her weekdays preparing for her husband Jack to return every weekend from the city. Their life is a perfect picture of Americana, a modern Norman Rockwell painting of success, comfort, and the love of family and friends. Then, on a Saturday that seems no different than any other, tragedy strikes and Pam faces the greatest challenge of her previously charmed life. A riveting plot, shocking twists, and almost unbearable tension mark Suzanne Jenkins� debut, a heart-wrenching examination of lives suddenly and irrevocably torn apart. On his routine weekend trip home, Jack has a heart attack on the train and Pam soon finds herself on a trip to identify his body. Theoretically, this should give her some form of closure, but instead it is the moment her life takes an unexpected trip down the rabbit hole of intrigue and past sins come shockingly to life. Pam must confront a series of revelations that unmask a life she realizes she only thought she knew, and the losses and disappointments she discovers give color and understanding to a man markedly different than he appeared. Uncovering secrets and betrayals far worse than her most vivid nightmare, Pam retreats to their meticulous Babylon beach house, the one refuge she has to put the pieces of her life together and move toward ultimate forgiveness. A fascinating, multiple point of view character study about confronting mistakes and omissions in life, Jenkins� novel demonstrates the devastating consequences of our actions and how they can reverberate through generations. But it is through forgiveness that Pam finds redemption and strength, eschewing the option of victimization for one of power and, ultimately, personal peace. Affecting in its fast pacing and spare, evocative prose, Pam of Babylon is a powerful reminder for us all to strive to be better people.
See all Editorial Reviews
]]> The Legend of Lady Maclaoch 9486864 Centuries ago a vengeful curse buried itself deep into the history of the MacLaoch clan and become a legendary tale told by all those not cursed by its words.

In present-day Scotland, the laird and chieftain of the MacLaoch clan is an ex-Royal Air Force fighter pilot who has been past the gates of hell and returned a changed man. Rowan MacLaoch does battle with wartime memories and a family curse that threaten to consume him—unaware that his life and that of the history of the clan will be changed forever by the arrival of an American woman.

Cole Baker, a feisty recent graduate of a master’s program, stumbles upon the ancient curse while researching her bloodlines. Moved by the history of the MacLaoch clan and the mystery of its chief, she digs into the legend that had been anything but quiet for centuries.

On their quest for answers, Cole and Rowan travel to places they have never before been and become witnesses to things they have never before fathomed. The legend—one started with blood—will end with more shed as its creator finally exacts her justice.]]> 260 Becky Banks Betty 4 ]]> 4.05 2011 The Legend of Lady Maclaoch
author: Becky Banks
name: Betty
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2012/06/05
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: kindle, historical-fiction, mystery
review:
Totally enjoyed this paranormal romance set in Scotland. Bound by a centuries-old curse, two descendants of lovers torn apart by clan warfare are drawn together by chemistry. . .and who wouldn't love a hot laird who lives in a castle, riddled by old war wounds and too much conscience? From the moment our curly-haired heroine sets off to find her oddly-named ancestor we know she's destined for something great. Enemies are slightly farfetched and over the top in the form of jealous sidekicks but overall Banks' prose races along and her descriptions of Scottish whiskey "smokey and silken as honey" and the velvety green countryside make me want to go find my roots too... a land where redheads abound, imagine that! Light a fire, curl up with a glass and escape into the Legend of Lady Maclaoch for a very good time.

]]> <![CDATA[The Ambassador's Wife (Inspector Samuel Tay, #1)]]> 1994577
Both women. Both Americans. Both beaten viciously and shot in the head. Both stripped naked and lewdly displayed.

The FBI says it’s terrorism, but the whispers on the street tell a different story. A serial killer may be stalking American women all across Asia.

Inspector Samuel Tay of Singapore CID is something of a reluctant policeman. He’s a little overweight, a little lonely, a little cranky, and he smokes way too much. Thinking back, he can’t even remember why he became a police detective in the first place. He talks about quitting all the time, but he hasn’t. Because the thing is, he’s very, very good at what he does.

When bodies of American women start turning up, Singapore CID calls in Inspector Tay. It’s a high profile case, and he’s the best they have.

Then why is it, Tay soon begins to wonder, that nobody seems to want him to find the women’s killer? Not the FBI, not the American ambassador, not even his bosses at CID.

When international politics takes over a murder case, the truth is the next victim.]]> 361 Jake Needham Betty 3 kindle, mystery More, yes - more... Because the same thing happens to a woman in Pattaya, a very notourious locality near Bangkok.
Same cause of death, but much more important to the Americans, who yet wanted to cover up the Singapore killing as a Terroristic act.
The Pattaya woman was politically obviously much more important than the first, murdered in Singapore. So the CIA, FBI and what other abbreviations You want, are all sniffing around.
A culprit - a Thai-muslim terrorist, fitting the profile perfectly, is soon found and - justifiably "stopped" when he wants to get away. But there is a very sad "collateral victim", too.

But Sam Tay has yet made the acquaintance of one John August.
And he will see, that sometimes the law protects the real culprit.
And sometimes there is the need of someone who is very, but very very good in bending the law to make justice.
]]> 3.67 2008 The Ambassador's Wife (Inspector Samuel Tay, #1)
author: Jake Needham
name: Betty
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2012/05/22
date added: 2012/05/22
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
The Ambassador's Wife is a great mystery thriller by Jake Needham. His mystery that features Police Detective Sam Tay is great read. Say Tay investigates the brutal murder of an Ambassador'e wife in the Marriot Hotel in Singapore. Another murder occurs in Pattaya just outside of Bangkok that is exactly like the first murder. Or is it?
More, yes - more... Because the same thing happens to a woman in Pattaya, a very notourious locality near Bangkok.
Same cause of death, but much more important to the Americans, who yet wanted to cover up the Singapore killing as a Terroristic act.
The Pattaya woman was politically obviously much more important than the first, murdered in Singapore. So the CIA, FBI and what other abbreviations You want, are all sniffing around.
A culprit - a Thai-muslim terrorist, fitting the profile perfectly, is soon found and - justifiably "stopped" when he wants to get away. But there is a very sad "collateral victim", too.

But Sam Tay has yet made the acquaintance of one John August.
And he will see, that sometimes the law protects the real culprit.
And sometimes there is the need of someone who is very, but very very good in bending the law to make justice.

]]> <![CDATA[God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World]]> 12198515
The Inquisition conducted its last execution in 1826 � the victim was a Spanish schoolmaster convicted of heresy. But as Cullen Murphy shows in this provocative new work, not only did its offices survive into the twentieth century, in the modern world its spirit is more influential than ever.

God’s Jury encompasses the diverse stories of the Knights Templar, Torquemada, Galileo, and Graham Greene. Established by the Catholic Church in 1231, the Inquisition continued in one form or another for almost seven hundred years. Though associated with the persecution of heretics and Jews � and with burning at the stake � its targets were more numerous and its techniques more ambitious. The Inquisition pioneered surveillance and censorship and “scientific� interrogation. As time went on, its methods and mindset spread far beyond the Church to become tools of secular persecution. Traveling from freshly opened Vatican archives to the detention camps of Guantánamo to the filing cabinets of the Third Reich, Murphy traces the Inquisition and its legacy.

With the combination of vivid immediacy and learned analysis that characterized his acclaimed Are We Rome? , Murphy puts a human face on a familiar but little-known piece of our past, and argues that only by understanding the Inquisition can we hope to explain the making of the present.]]> 310 Cullen Murphy 0618091564 Betty 2 arlington-library, kindle 3.71 2012 God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World
author: Cullen Murphy
name: Betty
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2012/05/22
date added: 2012/05/22
shelves: arlington-library, kindle
review:
Slow history of the various Inquisitions we've been subjected to over time.
]]> <![CDATA[KnitLit the Third: We Spin More Yarns]]> 159300
With more than seventy contributors casting on here, you’ll meet enthusiasts—okay, knit-aholics—who know the frustration of having one’s needles confiscated at the airport. You’ll sympathize with owners of lush “problem skeins� that are impossible to knit. You’ll encounter the mysteries of never-matching baby booties–and the adventures of one suspicious knitter who’s convinced that a fellow knitting blogger is really a celebrity author in disguise. For those who approach this art from a more spiritual perspective, there are the stories that remind us of the power of a simple stitch. From the mother whose project provides comfort during her troubled pregnancy to a woman compelled to make dozens of blankets for Afghan refugees, each knitted and purled row offers the potential to heal ourselves.

And so we spin on. KnitLit the Third is the latest in a pattern of poignant, hilarious, bittersweet, and inspiring yarns—created by and for lovers of the craft.]]> 272 Linda Roghaar 1400097606 Betty 2 arlington-library, kindle Short essays on knitting 3.69 2005 KnitLit the Third: We Spin More Yarns
author: Linda Roghaar
name: Betty
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2012/05/18
date added: 2012/05/22
shelves: arlington-library, kindle
review:
Short essays on knitting
]]> <![CDATA[The Convict's Sword (Sugawara Akitada, #6)]]> 6160969 The latest in the "terrifically imaginative" (The Wall Street Journal) Akitada mystery series brings eleventh-century Japan to life

I. J. Parker's phenomenal Akitada mystery series has been gaining fans with each new novel. The latest, The Convict's Sword, is the most fully realized installment to date, weaving history, drama, mystery, romance, and adventure into a story of passion and redemption. Lord Sugawara Akitada, the senior secretary in the Ministry of Justice, must find the mysterious killer of a man condemned to live in exile for a crime he did not commit. Meanwhile, Akitada's retainer, Tora, investigates the sudden death of a blind street singer, whose past life is a bigger mystery than anyone thought. Told in Parker's clever, vivid prose, The Convict's Sword is a must-read for those who love well-written mysteries in an exotic setting.]]> 416 I.J. Parker 0143115790 Betty 4 ]]> 3.86 2009 The Convict's Sword (Sugawara Akitada, #6)
author: I.J. Parker
name: Betty
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2012/05/22
date added: 2012/05/22
shelves: historical-fiction, mystery, kindle
review:
The brutal murder of Tomoe, a blind street singer, offers a stark contrast to the beautiful morning that greets Lord Sugawara Akitada and his beloved wife Tamako. Akitada, who serves as Senior Secretary in the Ministry of Justice, has recently been testy and restless at work. The solution, he realizes, is to fulfill a past promise to ferret out the killer of his friend Haseo, even though this could imperil his position in the royal court. The only clue in the murder of Haseo, a former convict unjustly condemned, is the weapon: a sword. Tomoe's killing presents a more pressing mystery. The prime suspect is Tora, one of Akitada's three lieutenants, reportedly apprehended near the body with knife in hand. Amazingly, Tora's elder cohort Seimei theorizes that the hotheaded young man might indeed be guilty. Akitada uneasily presses for Tora's release so that he can help find the killer. The case only grows more complex when it's discovered that Tomoe may have been a prostitute. A rift in Akitada's marriage and a health scare for Seimei provide further complications. At length, despite a scarcity of clues, the investigation comes full circle, leading to the solution of Haseo's murder as well.

]]> Alchemy 7919198 366 Mike Wood 143925382X Betty 3 kindle
I really, really enjoyed this book. The characters were delightful and the book was filled with humor and little memories of growing up in the 1980s. The action is slow at times, with the ramblings of a 15 year old boy, but that adds charm to the story and gives us insight into Al. A few surprises here and there in this book. And one thing that I have a hard time believing would have happened in the 1980s. Overall, a fun little read with lots of memorable snippets!

As it turns out, he finds his father in Provincetown. The father is gay and has HIV. They reconcile, but Cammie moves back for Florida.]]> 3.64 2010 Alchemy
author: Mike Wood
name: Betty
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2012/05/20
date added: 2012/05/20
shelves: kindle
review:
In this book, Mike Wood gives us a chance to relive a small piece of 1984 with his 15 y.o. protagonist, Albert E. Newman. Al has a hole in his heart that hasn't healed. His scientist father disappeared from his life 4 years ago, and his mother has not given him answers. No one has. So Al dreams that his father's experiments in alchemy are the real reason he took off - he imagines plots of kidnapping and conspiracy. Summer visitor, Cammie is fascinated by the idea of a plot. When Al finds a notebook of his father's, he convinces her to help him figure out the mystery.

I really, really enjoyed this book. The characters were delightful and the book was filled with humor and little memories of growing up in the 1980s. The action is slow at times, with the ramblings of a 15 year old boy, but that adds charm to the story and gives us insight into Al. A few surprises here and there in this book. And one thing that I have a hard time believing would have happened in the 1980s. Overall, a fun little read with lots of memorable snippets!

As it turns out, he finds his father in Provincetown. The father is gay and has HIV. They reconcile, but Cammie moves back for Florida.
]]> Vestal Virgin 9926698
*New York Times bestselling author Terry Brooks says,
"A writer of real talent, a promising new voice."
*New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen says, "Suzanne Tyrpak weaves a spell that utterly enchants and delights. Her writing is pure magic."
Please Due to the setting and the times, the book includes several scenes involving deviant sex--suggestive rather than graphic--and not more than a few paragraphs.]]> 338 Suzanne Tyrpak Betty 3 3.38 2010 Vestal Virgin
author: Suzanne Tyrpak
name: Betty
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/05/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hetaera (Agathon's Daughter #1)]]> 13268215 Hetaera--suspense in ancient Athens, is Book One of the Agathon's Daughter Trilogy.

Born a bastard and a slave, Hestia has a gift: the power to read people's hearts. And yet, the secrets of her own heart remain a mystery. Hestia's keen intellect makes her a match for any man. But even a literate slave has little control over destiny. Sold to a prominent statesman with sadistic tendencies, Hestia becomes his hetaera (consort). As her wealth and fame increase so does her despair. She dreams of freedom, but she faces enemies at every turn. When Hestia is accused of murder, the mystery of her past unravels and fate takes another turn.

Hetaera: Agathon's Daughter was awarded third place in the Maui Writers Rupert Hughes writing competition.

Due to the subject matter, there are some sexual scenes--suggestive rather than explicit.]]> 224 Suzanne Tyrpak Betty 3 historical-fiction, kindle
His mother sells her to an evil man who turns out to be the father of the man Hestia thinks is Agathon's son--Hestia is really Agathon's daughter.]]> 3.70 2011 Hetaera (Agathon's Daughter #1)
author: Suzanne Tyrpak
name: Betty
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2012/05/20
date added: 2012/05/20
shelves: historical-fiction, kindle
review:
Hestia is a slave in the household of Agathon. As he dies she learns a secret that will change the course of her life. Agathon's wife is a most unpleasant woman; unhappy with her lot and looking to change it. The choices she makes send her on a very dangerous path. Agathon's son thinks he will be in control of his life after his father's death but soon learns that is not the case. He has strong feelings for Hestia but his mother's plans for him do not include his loving a slave.

His mother sells her to an evil man who turns out to be the father of the man Hestia thinks is Agathon's son--Hestia is really Agathon's daughter.
]]> The Essene Conspiracy 10944874 306 S. Eric Wachtel 0615426468 Betty 3 mystery, kindle
A lot about Hasidic Jews who want to blow up the Temple Mount and establish a new Israel.]]> 3.56 2011 The Essene Conspiracy
author: S. Eric Wachtel
name: Betty
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2012/05/20
date added: 2012/05/20
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
A high ranking Israeli minister has been murdered in Jerusalem. Muslim terrorists are suspected, but no group has claimed responsibility. Finding a barely legible name scribbled on a blood-stained card in the shirt pocket of the slain minister, the Director of Israeli Intelligence calls upon international security consultant Harry McClure to investigate a possible American connection to the brutal crime. McClure soon uncovers a sophisticated Wall Street money-laundering scheme channeling large sums of U.S. currency into secret Israeli bank accounts controlled by a clandestine Messianic brotherhood plotting to overthrow the Israeli government and reclaim Jerusalem's Temple Mount. The clock is ticking as Israeli Intelligence, aided by McClure, race to organize a preemptive eleventh-hour strategy aimed at thwarting the brotherhood's imminent attack.

A lot about Hasidic Jews who want to blow up the Temple Mount and establish a new Israel.
]]> Sealed Correspondence 13163006 406 Richard Rudomanski 1466411597 Betty 2 mystery, kindle
TERRIBLE COPY-EDITING.]]> 3.45 2011 Sealed Correspondence
author: Richard Rudomanski
name: Betty
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2012/05/20
date added: 2012/05/20
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
Despised shipping tycoon, Enrico Brosconni, is a mogul with an obsession, exceptionally rare antiques. Christina Sheppard is a world renowned dealer out of Manhattan. Her photographic memory is as legendary as her ability to unlock the cleverly crafted compartments of the world’s greatest works. And famed historian, Randolph Hancock, is about to make an incredulous claim: there are secret documents hidden inside the centuries old desk. What all three have in common is a priceless antique, and the fact, that, their lives are about to change—forever! Sealed Correspondence: a centuries old secret that could plunge an already disgruntled nation into chaos.

TERRIBLE COPY-EDITING.
]]> Divine Intervention 913848 260 Cheryl Kaye Tardif 1412035910 Betty 3 mystery, kindle Someone is burning folks up around Victoria, B.C. and the Divine crew is sent to investigate. The killer left behind a “clue� in form of a Gemini lighter. Just like the one Jasi received in the mail awhile ago. Hmmm. Upon arrival they are immediately saddled with Brandon Walsh, top fire scene investigator and ‘way better looking than someone has a right to be.
There are several suspects, many thoughts from the fires and corpses and it all seems to link to a very nasty foster mother named Charlotte Foreman. But Charlotte did in a fire a month ago along with a 4-yr old girl she was caring for. Who was out to get Charlotte and then also caused a local Doctor to burn to death?
Ms. Tardiff does a great job of winding plots, sub-plots and lust around our heroes. This plus the interesting futuristic gadgets used by the team make the book a great summer tale of murder, mystery and other things.]]> 3.72 2004 Divine Intervention
author: Cheryl Kaye Tardif
name: Betty
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2012/05/20
date added: 2012/05/20
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
Divine Intervention has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, let’s get that out of the way right off. It does have to do with a group of people who have a bit extra in their genetic make-up: and they all work for Matthew Divine. Ben can read minds with a touch, Natassia read the last moments of someone’s life by being with their corpse and Jasi, well; Jasi reads fires.
Someone is burning folks up around Victoria, B.C. and the Divine crew is sent to investigate. The killer left behind a “clue� in form of a Gemini lighter. Just like the one Jasi received in the mail awhile ago. Hmmm. Upon arrival they are immediately saddled with Brandon Walsh, top fire scene investigator and ‘way better looking than someone has a right to be.
There are several suspects, many thoughts from the fires and corpses and it all seems to link to a very nasty foster mother named Charlotte Foreman. But Charlotte did in a fire a month ago along with a 4-yr old girl she was caring for. Who was out to get Charlotte and then also caused a local Doctor to burn to death?
Ms. Tardiff does a great job of winding plots, sub-plots and lust around our heroes. This plus the interesting futuristic gadgets used by the team make the book a great summer tale of murder, mystery and other things.
]]> <![CDATA[Lie Down in Green Pastures (The Psalm 23 Mysteries, #3)]]> 9576736
The two unlikely companions continue to forge a strong friendship as they explore personal history and faith with each passing adventure.

This third volume in the Psalm 23 Mysteries series finds Jeremiah and Cindy matching wits with an unscrupulous land developer. In a fast-paced story set around St. Patrick's Day, murder invades an idyllic landscape, challenging them to save hundreds of teens even as they try to discover the source of their unexpected danger.]]> 263 Debbie Viguié 1426701918 Betty 3 kindle, mystery
I liked that we got to know more about Mark (a police detective we have gotten to know throughout the series) and also focused more on Jeremiah and his abilities which shine further light into his past life before his life as a reformed rabbi. Frankly it was nice seeing the focus go off of Cindy for a bit. The part of the book that focused primarily on Jeremiah was very well written and interesting.


Good section when Jeremiah and some kids get chased by killers and have to defend themselves in the wilderness--the river is rising.]]> 4.11 2010 Lie Down in Green Pastures (The Psalm 23 Mysteries, #3)
author: Debbie Viguié
name: Betty
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2012/05/20
date added: 2012/05/20
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
Cindy's church. Jeremiah, being very observant, is pretty sure that the driver of the other car was already dead before the impact. Cindy contacts the police, and once again, Jeremiah and Cindy become involved in yet another murder mystery involving their small town.

I liked that we got to know more about Mark (a police detective we have gotten to know throughout the series) and also focused more on Jeremiah and his abilities which shine further light into his past life before his life as a reformed rabbi. Frankly it was nice seeing the focus go off of Cindy for a bit. The part of the book that focused primarily on Jeremiah was very well written and interesting.


Good section when Jeremiah and some kids get chased by killers and have to defend themselves in the wilderness--the river is rising.
]]> <![CDATA[Murder at Thumb Butte (Steve Dancy Tales #3)]]> 12070269
Can Dancy discover the true killer before his friend stretches a rope on the courthouse square?]]> 240 James D. Best Betty 2 kindle, mystery Murder at Thumb Butte is a mystery that occurs in Prescott, the territorial capital of Arizona. The story is about the murder of a crook that had defrauded most of the leading citizens of the town. Murder at Thumb Butte is an rousing mystery filled with old friends from the other Steve Dancy novels, but it is not necessary to read the previous episodes.]]> 4.03 2011 Murder at Thumb Butte (Steve Dancy Tales #3)
author: James D. Best
name: Betty
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2012/04/27
date added: 2012/04/27
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:

Murder at Thumb Butte is a mystery that occurs in Prescott, the territorial capital of Arizona. The story is about the murder of a crook that had defrauded most of the leading citizens of the town. Murder at Thumb Butte is an rousing mystery filled with old friends from the other Steve Dancy novels, but it is not necessary to read the previous episodes.
]]> <![CDATA[Black Arrow (Sugawara Akitada, #3)]]> 296266
I. J. Parker's engrossing historical novels bring eleventh-century Japan to life in all its colorful, treacherous glory. As Black Arrow opens, Sugawara Akitada assumes his new post as provisional governor of Echigo, a frigid province in the far north notorious for its hostility to outsiders. But the snow that threatens to completely isolate the region is the least of his problems-which include a local uprising, a series of brutal murders, and a mystery that's as old as the frozen hills and a lot more dangerous. Superbly written and rich in period detail, Black Arrow is another bravura performance from a master of the historical thriller.]]> 356 I.J. Parker 0143035614 Betty 4 arlington-library, kindle 3.89 2003 Black Arrow (Sugawara Akitada, #3)
author: I.J. Parker
name: Betty
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2012/04/27
date added: 2012/04/27
shelves: arlington-library, kindle
review:
Parker turns in the fourth mystery rooted in her fascination with eleventh-century Japan and featuring Sugawara Akitada, a young nobleman down on his luck who has accepted various governmental administrative positions. Akitada ends up investigating murder and other mayhem while trying to govern a hostile population and hold his own family together. A dark secret is at the center of this novel, culminating in the surprise confession of a family member controlling the grand castle in a bone-chilling northern province. Themes familiar to many cultures--the healing power of love, the inherent corruption of government, socioeconomic stratification, and the power of individual honor--permeate the pages. Numerous characters besides Akitada are repeat performers from the previous Parker cast, but Parker wisely presumes no prior knowledge. The historical research is impressive, the prose crisp, and Parker's ability to universalize the human condition makes for a satisfying tale.
]]> <![CDATA[Simon Said (Professor Simon Shaw, #1)]]> 11073499 211 Sarah R. Shaber 1933523654 Betty 3 kindle, mystery 3.68 1997 Simon Said (Professor Simon Shaw, #1)
author: Sarah R. Shaber
name: Betty
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2012/04/27
date added: 2012/04/27
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
Simon Shaw, Pulitzer Prize-winning history professor at a small, private college in Raleigh, assists police in identifying a body discovered behind an historic house on campus. Although the victim, a young heiress, died in 1926, Shaw feels compelled to find out who killed her. His quest, plus the attentions of a police lawyer interested in the case, pull him out of a depression caused by his recent divorce and departmental politics?but then someone tries to kill him.
]]> <![CDATA[The Selkie Spell (Seal Island Trilogy #1)]]> 13020731 alternate cover edition is here

American doctor Tara Moore wants to disappear. On the run from an abusive husband, she seeks shelter on a windswept Irish island and dismisses the villagers' speculation that she is descended from a selkie—a magical creature who is bewitching the island. But when a ghostly woman appears to her with a warning, Tara realizes it was more than chance that brought her to this island. Desperate to escape a dark and dangerous past, she struggles against a passionate attraction to handsome islander, Dominic O'Sullivan. But the enchantment of the island soon overpowers her and she falls helpless under its spell. Caught between magic and reality, Tara must find a way to wield both when a dangerous stranger from her past arrives, threatening to destroy the lives of everyone on the island.]]> 276 Sophie Moss Betty 5 kindle 3.74 2011 The Selkie Spell (Seal Island Trilogy #1)
author: Sophie Moss
name: Betty
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2012/04/27
date added: 2012/04/27
shelves: kindle
review:
In this modern-day fairy tale romance, American doctor Tara Moore’s life is transformed when she travels to an enchanted Irish island and discovers she has the power to break a 200-year-old curse. At first, Tara laughs off the villagers� speculation that she is descended from a selkie—a magical creature who is bewitching the island. But when a ghostly woman appears to her with a warning, Tara realizes it was more than chance that brought her to this island. Desperate to escape a dark and dangerous past, Tara struggles against a passionate attraction to handsome islander Dominic O’Sullivan. But the enchantment of the island soon overpowers her and she falls helpless under its spell. Caught between magic and reality, Tara must find a way to wield both when a dangerous stranger from her past arrives, threatening to destroy the lives of everyone on the island.
]]> Indiscretions of Archie 18098 215 P.G. Wodehouse 0742632598 Betty 3 funny, kindle Poor Archie--he is thrilled to marry his beloved Lucille, the daughter of a millionaire hotelier. But his lack of money, occupation, and tact displease his new father-in-law, and Archie finds it close to impossible to placate the "man- eating fish."
]]> 3.84 1921 Indiscretions of Archie
author: P.G. Wodehouse
name: Betty
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1921
rating: 3
read at: 2012/04/27
date added: 2012/04/27
shelves: funny, kindle
review:

Poor Archie--he is thrilled to marry his beloved Lucille, the daughter of a millionaire hotelier. But his lack of money, occupation, and tact displease his new father-in-law, and Archie finds it close to impossible to placate the "man- eating fish."

]]> Ilium (Ilium, #1) 3973 731 Dan Simmons 0380817926 Betty 3
Much of the history of the TW, and the gods, but the story gets too convoluted and breaks down.]]> 4.02 2003 Ilium (Ilium, #1)
author: Dan Simmons
name: Betty
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2012/04/27
date added: 2012/04/27
shelves: arlington-library, kindle, historical-fiction
review:
The Trojan War rages at the foot of Olympos Mons on Mars -- observed and influenced from on high by Zeus and his immortal family -- and twenty-first-century professor Thomas Hockenberry is there to play a role in the insidious private wars of vengeful gods and goddesses. On Earth, a small band of the few remaining humans pursues a lost past and devastating truth -- as four sentient machines depart from Jovian space to investigate, perhaps terminate, the potentially catastrophic emissions emanating from a mountaintop miles above the terraformed surface of the Red Planet.

Much of the history of the TW, and the gods, but the story gets too convoluted and breaks down.
]]> <![CDATA[The Fires of the Gods (Sugawara Akitada #8)]]> 9210895 A Sugawara Akitada Novel - Eleventh-century Japan. Sugawara Akitada’s ailing wife is expecting a child, and when he loses his job and tries to confront the nobleman who is responsible for his dismissal, he ends up suspected of his murder. With no income and a growing family to support, Akitada desperately plunges into the investigation of this crime, aided by his faithful servant Tora, inadvertently placing not only his own life, but also the lives of his wife and child, in grave danger . . .

]]> 247 I.J. Parker 0727869892 Betty 4 3.95 2010 The Fires of the Gods (Sugawara Akitada #8)
author: I.J. Parker
name: Betty
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2012/04/27
date added: 2012/04/27
shelves: kindle, mystery, historical-fiction
review:
Ministry of justice senior secretary Sugawara Akitada is already on edge with the impending birth of his second child, having lost his firstborn to illness, when he receives devastating professional news. As a result of interference by controller Kiyowara Kane, Akitada has been demoted to junior secretary, with his incompetent subordinate promoted to his old position. The outraged Akitada seeks an interview with Kane, only to be left waiting in the antechamber without getting an explanation for the slander campaign against him. To make matters worse, he soon comes under suspicion of murder, and he must disobey his superiors to solve the crime himself and clear his name. Parker masterfully blends action and detection while making the attitudes and customs of the period accessible. (Apr.)
]]> <![CDATA[Rashomon Gate (Sugawara Akitada, #2)]]> 384646 378 I.J. Parker 0143035606 Betty 4 From the author of The Dragon Scroll comes an ingenious new novel of murder and malfeasance in ancient Japan, featuring the detective Sugawara Akitada. The son of reduced nobility forced to toil in the Ministry of Justice, Akitada is relieved when an old friend, Professor Hirata, asks him to investigate a friend’s blackmail. Taking a post at the Imperial University, he is soon sidetracked from his primary case by the murder of a young girl and the mysterious disappearance of an old man—a disappearance that the Emperor himself declares a miracle. Rashomon Gate is a mystery of magnificent complexity and historical detail that will leave readers yearning for more.]]> 3.84 2002 Rashomon Gate (Sugawara Akitada, #2)
author: I.J. Parker
name: Betty
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2012/04/27
date added: 2012/04/27
shelves: mystery, historical-fiction, kindle
review:

From the author of The Dragon Scroll comes an ingenious new novel of murder and malfeasance in ancient Japan, featuring the detective Sugawara Akitada. The son of reduced nobility forced to toil in the Ministry of Justice, Akitada is relieved when an old friend, Professor Hirata, asks him to investigate a friend’s blackmail. Taking a post at the Imperial University, he is soon sidetracked from his primary case by the murder of a young girl and the mysterious disappearance of an old man—a disappearance that the Emperor himself declares a miracle. Rashomon Gate is a mystery of magnificent complexity and historical detail that will leave readers yearning for more.
]]> <![CDATA[Death on an Autumn River (Sugawara Akitada #9)]]> 13183379 392 I.J. Parker Betty 4 kindle, mystery 3.94 2011 Death on an Autumn River (Sugawara Akitada #9)
author: I.J. Parker
name: Betty
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2012/04/27
date added: 2012/04/27
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
On a river journey to Naniwa to unmask officials selling information to pirates, Akitada witnesses the recovery of a body. The image of the drowned child prostitute follows him as his own problems and disasters multiply. Someone is sabotaging his investigation. His young clerk disappears, Akitada is attacked by two thugs, and armed men brutalize his family in the capital. When Tora joins his master, they both fall into the hands of the pirates and must fight a battle to the death to escape. But ultimately it is the tragic story of the dead girl that will haunt Akitada most.
]]> <![CDATA[Mary Ann in Autumn (Tales of the City, #8)]]> 7978315
Twenty years have passed since Mary Ann Singleton left her husband and child in San Francisco to pursue her dream of a television career in New York. Now a pair of personal calamities has driven her back to the city of her youth and into the arms of her oldest friend, Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, a gardener happily ensconced with his much-younger husband.

Mary Ann finds temporary refuge in the couple's backyard cottage, where, at the unnerving age of fifty-seven, she licks her wounds and takes stock of her mistakes. Soon, with the help of Facebook and a few old friends, she begins to reengage with life, only to confront fresh terrors when her checkered past comes back to haunt her in a way she could never have imagined.

After the intimate first-person narrative of Maupin's last novel, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn marks the author's return to the multicharacter plotlines and darkly comic themes of his earlier work. Among those caught in Mary Ann's orbit are her estranged daughter, Shawna, a popular sex blogger; Jake Greenleaf, Michael's transgendered gardening assistant; socialite DeDe Halcyon-Wilson; and the indefatigable Anna Madrigal, Mary Ann's former landlady at 28 Barbary Lane.

More than three decades in the making, Armistead Maupin's legendary Tales of the City series rolls into a new age, still sassy, irreverent, and curious, and still exploring the boundaries of the human experience with insight, compassion, and mordant wit.]]> 304 Armistead Maupin 0061470880 Betty 5 arlington-library
Now we travel full circle as Mary Ann once again returns to the City, this time not as a sweet young girl full of hope but as an older, sadder woman seeking solace. Mary Ann's prefect life in Darien had fallen apart. Her trophy husband had disappointed her, her support system had crumbled when she needed it most so once again Mary Ann had turned to logical family, primarily Michael (Mouse) Tolliver, much to the discomfort of his husband Ben. As Michael helps Mary Ann the pair reconnect, enabling her to seek out her (and our) old friends, DeDe and D'Or, Anna, and Shawna. As always with this series the various seemingly unrelated plot lines twist through the story until they ultimately combine into a satisfying climax.
]]> 4.02 2010 Mary Ann in Autumn (Tales of the City, #8)
author: Armistead Maupin
name: Betty
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2011/09/20
date added: 2012/04/15
shelves: arlington-library
review:
The TALES OF THE CITY series begins with Mary Ann Singleton's decision to remain in San Francisco. We first see the other characters through her eyes as she begins to explore her new home and gather her logical (as opposed to biological) family around her.. When the first series of six books concluded Mary Ann abandoned her home and friends for yet another new life in New York, leaving many readers - this one included - feeling as though they had been let down by an old friend. When Maupin at last returned to the series with MICHAEL TOLLIVER LIVES readers were delighted to once again catch up with old friends from Barbary Lane but rather saddened that Mary Ann only passed through the story.

Now we travel full circle as Mary Ann once again returns to the City, this time not as a sweet young girl full of hope but as an older, sadder woman seeking solace. Mary Ann's prefect life in Darien had fallen apart. Her trophy husband had disappointed her, her support system had crumbled when she needed it most so once again Mary Ann had turned to logical family, primarily Michael (Mouse) Tolliver, much to the discomfort of his husband Ben. As Michael helps Mary Ann the pair reconnect, enabling her to seek out her (and our) old friends, DeDe and D'Or, Anna, and Shawna. As always with this series the various seemingly unrelated plot lines twist through the story until they ultimately combine into a satisfying climax.

]]> <![CDATA[A Shot in the Bark (Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries, #1)]]> 13395539 an alternate cover edition can be found here

Would you recognize a serial killer if you talked to one every day? Artist Lia Anderson doesn’t, and neither does anyone else who frequents the Mount Airy Dog Park. But a violent death brings Detective Peter Dourson into the close-knit group, and he is convinced someone is not who they seem. As the investigation uncovers secrets, Lia struggles to cope with warring emotions while a killer watches and plans.

(about 60,000 words)]]> 203 C.A. Newsome 0996374256 Betty 2 kindle, mystery 3.79 2011 A Shot in the Bark (Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries, #1)
author: C.A. Newsome
name: Betty
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2012/01/03
date added: 2012/04/02
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
Okay--the cop has to pretend to be detached and not attracted to the heroine, who is an artist--a designer of gardens. Several murders.
]]> The Moses Legacy 11082626 407 Adam Palmer 1847561845 Betty 3 kindle
Daniel is an expert on Semitic languages, but more importantly a disciple of Gabrielle's uncle. It is this "past" between Daniel and Gaby that provides the love interest.

Soon however - as is inevitable in thrillers of this kind - things start to "happen". Happen as in people getting killed, people being tracked via their mobile phones and people going down with mysterious illnesses that produce red lesions on the skin. Throw in a secretive private organization in Washington DC, a pretty Irish girl recruited by the Mossad, and some ancient secrets held by the Samaritans and Jordanian Bedouin, and you have all the makings of a ruddy-good, fast-paced, ripping yarn.]]> 3.56 2011 The Moses Legacy
author: Adam Palmer
name: Betty
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/03/18
shelves: kindle
review:
A conspiracy thriller of the "ancient meets modern" genre. The story begins when an archaeological dig led by tall, statuesque, Austrian blonde Gabrielle Gusack, finds fragments of stone bearing writing in an ancient script known as "proto-Sinaitic." Excited by the discovery, Gabrielle persuades Egyptian antiquities supremo Akil Mansoor - who bears more than a passing resemblance to Zahi Hawass - to let her call in the aid of Daniel Klein.

Daniel is an expert on Semitic languages, but more importantly a disciple of Gabrielle's uncle. It is this "past" between Daniel and Gaby that provides the love interest.

Soon however - as is inevitable in thrillers of this kind - things start to "happen". Happen as in people getting killed, people being tracked via their mobile phones and people going down with mysterious illnesses that produce red lesions on the skin. Throw in a secretive private organization in Washington DC, a pretty Irish girl recruited by the Mossad, and some ancient secrets held by the Samaritans and Jordanian Bedouin, and you have all the makings of a ruddy-good, fast-paced, ripping yarn.
]]> Dombey and Son 50827 880 Charles Dickens 0812967437 Betty 4 kindle
Very long book. Obviously written for putting out in sections.
]]> 3.94 1848 Dombey and Son
author: Charles Dickens
name: Betty
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1848
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/03/18
shelves: kindle
review:
The novel itself is not the best that Dickens has to offer. Paul Dombey is not a likable character, but Dickens doesn't really explore the character as much as he should have. The real lead character is Florence Dombey, his neglected daughter. The novel would have been much better had Dickens explored some of the relationships more in depth. Some of the other characters are also overly chatty and annoying to the point of distraction.

Very long book. Obviously written for putting out in sections.

]]> Don Juan in Hankey, PA 13133247 308 Gale Martin Betty 2 kindle
But the reality is that the Hankey Opera Company stands on the brink of financial ruin. They think mounting an ambitious production of Mozart's 'Don Giovanni,' a popular opera about history's most legendary womanizer, will solve their problems. It turns out to be the most disastrous decision the guild has ever made.

First, the leading man pulls out of his contract. Then, they chance their future on an up-and-coming Argentine baritone with marquee-idol looks who begins behaving exactly like a modern-day Don Juan. His insatiable need for sex is dragging the opera company down with him.

Guild members begin acting like characters straight out of the opera: the scorned lover, the determined flirt and her overly jealous boyfriend, and the pimping manservant devoted to his bad-boy master.
]]> 4.20 2011 Don Juan in Hankey, PA
author: Gale Martin
name: Betty
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2012/02/24
date added: 2012/02/24
shelves: kindle
review:
A socialite, a retired dermatologist, a hometown opera singer, a balloon entrepreneur who talks to dead people, and a bipolar ketchup heiress had lofty dreams of turning their local opera house into Lincoln Center on the Schuylkill River.

But the reality is that the Hankey Opera Company stands on the brink of financial ruin. They think mounting an ambitious production of Mozart's 'Don Giovanni,' a popular opera about history's most legendary womanizer, will solve their problems. It turns out to be the most disastrous decision the guild has ever made.

First, the leading man pulls out of his contract. Then, they chance their future on an up-and-coming Argentine baritone with marquee-idol looks who begins behaving exactly like a modern-day Don Juan. His insatiable need for sex is dragging the opera company down with him.

Guild members begin acting like characters straight out of the opera: the scorned lover, the determined flirt and her overly jealous boyfriend, and the pimping manservant devoted to his bad-boy master.

]]> <![CDATA[The Witch Of Prague & Other Stories]]> 3673665 464 F. Marion Crawford 1840220902 Betty 3 kindle 3.77 2008 The Witch Of Prague & Other Stories
author: F. Marion Crawford
name: Betty
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2012/02/24
date added: 2012/02/24
shelves: kindle
review:
Man searches world for the woman he loves, gets to Prague and falls under the spell of a hypnotist/witch. Truth and good finally prevail.
]]> <![CDATA[Manhasset Stories: A Baby Boomer Looks Back]]> 13245677 74 Suzanne McLain Rosenwasser 0615523110 Betty 2 biography-auto, kindle 4.17 2011 Manhasset Stories: A Baby Boomer Looks Back
author: Suzanne McLain Rosenwasser
name: Betty
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2012/02/24
date added: 2012/02/24
shelves: biography-auto, kindle
review:
Growing up in Manhasset--Born in the 40's Catholic School, Jones Beach
]]> Three Moons Over Sedona 6494313 314 Sherry Hartzler 0979382211 Betty 4 kindle 3.71 2009 Three Moons Over Sedona
author: Sherry Hartzler
name: Betty
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2012/02/24
date added: 2012/02/24
shelves: kindle
review:
Widow gets in her husband's car and drives--finally winding up in Arizona, where she meets new friends and makes a new life--Starts as a cook and winds up owning the restaurant, meeting a new man, helping people, starting all over again.
]]> Too Fat For Europe 11959130 0 Joe Leibovich Betty 2 funny, kindle 2.56 2011 Too Fat For Europe
author: Joe Leibovich
name: Betty
average rating: 2.56
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2012/02/24
date added: 2012/02/24
shelves: funny, kindle
review:
Travelogue -- Couple goes to England, Paris, Rome.
]]> <![CDATA[Ketchup is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves]]> 13145995
It’s not always pretty but it’s real. Whether she's stuffing cabbage in her bra� dealing with defiant yet determined daughters� yelling at the F.B.I... or explaining the birds and the bees to her preschooler� you’re sure to find dozens of humorous and relatable situations.

From the creator of Robin's Chicks, one of the South’s most popular blogs on motherhood, misunderstandings and musings, comes a collection of essays that will not only make you laugh and cry, but realize that you’re not alone in your journey.

Sit back and relax, pour yourself some “mommy juice,� throw a fresh diaper on your baby and deadbolt the bedroom door to keep your kids out� because once you start reading you'll be too busy wiping away tears of laughter to wipe anybody's butt.


"With the humor of Bombeck and the warmth of a best girlfriend, Robin O'Bryant gives every mom permission to not be perfect. The chapter on road-tripping with three tiny children and a flu-stricken husband was one of the funniest things I've ever read. Pour yourself some "mommy juice" and enjoy meeting Robin and her "chicks." Celia Rivenbark, New York Times bestselling author of You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

“Sitting down with Ketchup is a Vegetable is like sitting down with a hot cup of coffee -if the coffee was witty, insightful and also a mommy. Laugh out loud, witty observations from my favorite mom on Twitter!� Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, bestselling author of Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay, and Naptime Is the New Happy Hour

"A book about motherhood that will make you nod with recognition, while simultaneously reminding you to schedule a hysterectomy." -Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess and author of Let's Pretend This Never Happened]]> 266 Robin O'Bryant Betty 3 funny, kindle
A lot about breast feeding.
]]> 3.89 2011 Ketchup is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves
author: Robin O'Bryant
name: Betty
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2012/02/24
date added: 2012/02/24
shelves: funny, kindle
review:
ou’ve got to have a strong stomach for this book, and, if you’re a mother, you probably do. However, I still have intrusive thoughts from all the detailed accounts of both parents and children having diarrhea and vomiting. Luckily, the details of the author’s 38F size breasts haven’t stuck with me as much. But in all, isn’t it a good thing when you think about a book after you have read it?

A lot about breast feeding.

]]> <![CDATA[Citizen Insane (Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #2)]]> 12817723 166 Karen Cantwell 0983750254 Betty 2 3.93 2011 Citizen Insane (Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #2)
author: Karen Cantwell
name: Betty
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2012/02/24
date added: 2012/02/24
shelves:
review:
Not memorable. At the end, her boyfriend arranges a wedding while she has her nails done. One plot point is about a yearbook, all pictures are of one child.
]]> Mozart's Wife 1443452 354 Juliet Waldron 0759943109 Betty 3 kindle, historical-fiction 3.67 2001 Mozart's Wife
author: Juliet Waldron
name: Betty
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2012/02/24
date added: 2012/02/24
shelves: kindle, historical-fiction
review:
Had a sad life, even though he died at 35.
]]> <![CDATA[Spying in High Heels (High Heels, #1)]]> 204479 250 Gemma Halliday Betty 3 kindle, mystery 3.71 2006 Spying in High Heels (High Heels, #1)
author: Gemma Halliday
name: Betty
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/01/29
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:

]]> The Bridge 13323872 From the bestselling author ofThe Scavenger’s Daughterscomes a heart-warming ★novella-length story�, inspired by real events set on a famous bridge where birth parents leave their children in the hopes of giving them a better future than they can provide. This story will leave you feeling the utmost warmth of compassion, and reaching for a box of tissue.

In present day China, an old woman’s house sits opposite an ancient bridge. Not just any bridge—but a special one because it has always been known as The Lucky Bridge. In olden days it was said that to walk over it during a marriage ceremony, or at the beginning of the New Year would bring the traveler good luck. Because of its reputation, over the years it has also become a popular place for young mothers to abandon their children. What to some may seem cruel is in reality their final gift to their offspring—one last chance to send them off to their new destinies with luck on their side. Jing, an old woman, is the unofficial and often reluctant guardian of the bridge. When no one else will, Jing steps in to prevent the children from frostbite, abuse and hunger, and then she delivers them safely to the orphanage. This has been her routine for many years, but what does Jing do when the latest child, a blind boy, burrows deep into her heart?

ReadThe Bridgeto see how Fei Fei’s life is changed by the love of a lonely old woman. The Bridge is a short story of 17,000 words, approximately 72 pages. Fei Fei’s character is based on a real orphaned boy that Kay Bratt met during her time in China.

Don't miss these other great books by Kay Bratt! More China-inspired works include the bestselling series called Tales of the Scavenger’s Daughters, The Sworn Sisters, Silent Tears; A Journey of Hope in a Chinese Orphanage,and Chasing China; A Daughter’s Quest for Truth.]]> 51 Kay Bratt Betty 3
Read 'The Bridge' to see how Fei Fei's life is changed by the love of a lonely old woman. The Bridge is a short story of 17,000 words, approximately 72 pages. Fei Fei's character is based on a real orphaned boy that Kay Bratt met during her time in China.]]> 4.04 2011 The Bridge
author: Kay Bratt
name: Betty
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2012/01/29
date added: 2012/01/29
shelves:
review:
In present day China, an old woman's house sits opposite an ancient bridge. Not just any bridge--but a special one because it has always been known as The Lucky Bridge. In olden days it was said that to walk over it during a marriage ceremony, or at the beginning of the New Year would bring the traveler good luck. Because of its reputation, over the years it has also become a popular place for young mothers to abandon their children. What to some may seem cruel is in reality their final gift to their offspring--one last chance to send them off to their new destinies with luck on their side. Jing, an old woman, is the unofficial and often reluctant guardian of the bridge. When no one else will, Jing steps in to prevent the children from frostbite, abuse and hunger, and then she delivers them safely to the orphanage. This has been her routine for many years, but what does Jing do when the latest child, a blind boy, burrows deep into her heart?

Read 'The Bridge' to see how Fei Fei's life is changed by the love of a lonely old woman. The Bridge is a short story of 17,000 words, approximately 72 pages. Fei Fei's character is based on a real orphaned boy that Kay Bratt met during her time in China.
]]> Crooked Lines 11911954 245 Ann Hall Marshall Betty 4 kindle 3.00 2010 Crooked Lines
author: Ann Hall Marshall
name: Betty
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/26
date added: 2012/01/29
shelves: kindle
review:
Is the Bishop making a deal with the Devil? During the Great Depression, a tycoon with dark secrets in his past approaches Bishop Leo McNaulty of the Pittsburgh diocese. Ever the savvy businessman, George Keane, elderly but unrepentant, offers to anonymously fund a new cathedral with ten million dollars. In exchange, he wants an on-site priest to provide deathbed absolution -- his only chance for eternal salvation. Weighing the needs of his poverty-wracked diocese against the ethical quagmire he s entering, Bishop McNaulty assigns recently-ordained Father Ted Ames to this unusual post; he concocts a cover assignment that Ames is to revise the Baltimore catechism to be more relevant to adolescents. Frustrated with this task, for which his sheltered upbringing and celibate nature have left him ill-prepared, Father Ames gets advice from Dori Capellini, a high-spirited Catholic college student. Despite mutual good intentions and pure motives, their shared work sparks unsuspected passions and they veer toward a forbidden love affair. Meanwhile, timid Father Mark McMillan, a priest of fifteen years, loving God sincerely but desperate for human love, seeks to withdraw from his vocation, to be legally defrocked. Will he fall from grace, or will a compassionate, middle-aged nurse who sings like a lark, turn out to be his salvation? These people face their challenges, sometimes bravely, sometimes close to despair, as they struggle through to bittersweet conclusions.
]]> Capitol Reflections 2399401 400 Jonathan Javitt 0977954536 Betty 4 kindle, mystery 3.59 2008 Capitol Reflections
author: Jonathan Javitt
name: Betty
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/29
date added: 2012/01/29
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
Fans of The X-Files may enjoy this science-fiction thriller, the debut novel by Dr. Javitt, whose impressive government credentials aren't quite matched by the sophistication of his plot. Chair of President Bush's Health Subcommittee of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee and an epidemiologist, Javitt imagines a recent past-2005-in which the threat of genetically modified food has become a reality. When Marci Newman, a workaholic New York City attorney, dies after a mysterious seizure, Newman's best friend, Gwen Maulder, who's a division chief with the Food and Drug Administration, investigates. Aided by her ex-Secret Service husband, Jack, and her former flame and current Washington Post columnist Mark Stern, Maulder finds that Newman's seizure may be part of an epidemic that may be connected with coffee-seller Pequod's, the new mega-company that has overtaken Starbuck's. The bad guys are led by Hawaiian senator Henry Broome, whose past includes several murders and the theft of some genetics research from his Princeton roommate. The writing and pacing are adequate, and Javitt throws in a nice twist at the end, but the action sequences tend to overwhelm the science.
]]> Looking for Class 243240 352 Bruce Feiler 006052703X Betty 3 3.40 1993 Looking for Class
author: Bruce Feiler
name: Betty
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2012/01/16
date added: 2012/01/29
shelves: arlington-library, biography-auto
review:
An irresistible, entertaining peek into the privileged realm of Wordsworth and Wodehouse, Chelsea Clinton and Hugh Grant, Looking for Class offers a hilarious account of one man’s year at Oxford and Cambridge -- the garden parties and formal balls, the high-minded debates and drinking Olympics. From rowing in an exclusive regatta to learning lessons in love from a Rhodes Scholar, Bruce Feiler’s enlightening, eye-popping adventure will forever change your view of the British upper class, a world romanticized but rarely seen.
]]> <![CDATA[L. A. Dead (Stone Barrington, #6)]]> 1426554 410 Stuart Woods 0451204115 Betty 4 arlington-library 3.95 2000 L. A. Dead (Stone Barrington, #6)
author: Stuart Woods
name: Betty
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/23
date added: 2012/01/29
shelves: arlington-library
review:
his latest installment in Woods's Stone Barrington thriller series finds the lawyer/sleuth from New York back in Los Angeles on a murder case in which everyone, even the accused, lazes along, enjoying life in sunny Southern California. In his sixth outing (following 1999's Worst Fears Realized), Barrington is surrounded by his usual cast of friends, acquaintances and casual sex partners. The biggest change here is that his ex-lover, Arrington Calder, stands accused of murdering her husband, movie star and renowned man-about-town Vance Calder, found dead of a gunshot wound in the couple's Bel Air mansion. Upon hearing the news, Barrington, in Italy for his imminent wedding to the lovely but unpredictable Dolce Bianchi, rushes to L.A. to take over Arrington's defense. Not much of substance happens next; there's plenty of rambunctious sex, lots of light banter, a few tiffs and a minimal bit of sleuthing. Barrington checks out who left the size-12 shoe imprint near the murder scene and does his best to avoid Dolce, who took exception to her fianc 's sudden departure from the nuptials and is now stalking him. The whole case ends abruptly and with little suspense, and everyone goes along his or her merry way. Woods's desultory plottingDit is never made entirely clear who really killed Vance CalderDand chatty dialogue may not suit hardcore thriller or mystery readers, but Barrington's fans will likely welcome the detective's newest California-chic adventure.
]]> Persuasion 2156 249 Jane Austen 0192802631 Betty 4 historical-fiction, kindle Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne's family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate. All the tension of the novel revolves around one question: Will Anne and Wentworth be reunited in their love?

Jane Austin once compared her writing to painting on a little bit of ivory, 2 inches square. Readers of Persuasion will discover that neither her skill for delicate, ironic observations on social custom, love, and marriage nor her ability to apply a sharp focus lens to English manners and morals has deserted her in her final finished work]]> 4.15 1817 Persuasion
author: Jane Austen
name: Betty
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1817
rating: 4
read at: 2011/12/07
date added: 2012/01/17
shelves: historical-fiction, kindle
review:

Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne's family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate. All the tension of the novel revolves around one question: Will Anne and Wentworth be reunited in their love?

Jane Austin once compared her writing to painting on a little bit of ivory, 2 inches square. Readers of Persuasion will discover that neither her skill for delicate, ironic observations on social custom, love, and marriage nor her ability to apply a sharp focus lens to English manners and morals has deserted her in her final finished work
]]> The Perfect Plan 11856527
For Blade and Angel, everyday is about their next high. Tired of the daily jobs needed to support their habit, Blade hatches a scheme for a bank heist. It's the perfect plan.

Suddenly things go terribly wrong. Their plan crumbles and now they're forced to find a way out of this mess. And if that's not enough, someone in the bank just killed a hostage and it wasn't them.

This psychological thriller is around 6,000 words. That's about twenty-two pages or forty minutes of your lunch break. Enjoy.]]> 0 Ty Hutchinson Betty 4 mystery, kindle 3.01 2011 The Perfect Plan
author: Ty Hutchinson
name: Betty
average rating: 3.01
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/01
date added: 2012/01/17
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
Short book about a bank robbery in which 12 people were hostages. They did one at a time and it turns out that the last two hostages were in fact serial killers who bumped off everyone else in the bank. Nice twist at the end.
]]> <![CDATA[Absolute Liability (A Southern Fraud Thriller, #1)]]> 11921200 275 J.W. Becton 098378230X Betty 3 mystery, kindle
A woman is taken at gunpoint from the downtown office of Southeastern Insurance, and the police believe the victim is Special Agent Julia Jackson. Only it isn't true.

Now, with the help of her new partner Mark Vincent, state fraud investigator Julia Jackson must find justice for the woman who was taken in her place.

As Vincent and Julia begin to unravel the multimillion-dollar frauds that led to the abduction, they encounter a cast of quirky characters, one of whom will go to desperate lengths to hide a deadly secret. Things only become more dangerous as bodies begin accumulating around town, and Julia must discover the truth before the abductor comes to rectify his mistake. Meet Julia Jackson. Apparently, she's been abducted....

A woman is taken at gunpoint from the downtown office of Southeastern Insurance, and the police believe the victim is Special Agent Julia Jackson. Only it isn't true.

Now, with the help of her new partner Mark Vincent, state fraud investigator Julia Jackson must find justice for the woman who was taken in her place.

As Vincent and Julia begin to unravel the multimillion-dollar frauds that led to the abduction, they encounter a cast of quirky characters, one of whom will go to desperate lengths to hide a deadly secret. Things only become more dangerous as bodies begin accumulating around town, and Julia must discover the truth before the abductor comes to rectify his mistake. ]]> 3.70 2011 Absolute Liability (A Southern Fraud Thriller, #1)
author: J.W. Becton
name: Betty
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2012/01/05
date added: 2012/01/17
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
Meet Julia Jackson. Apparently, she's been abducted....

A woman is taken at gunpoint from the downtown office of Southeastern Insurance, and the police believe the victim is Special Agent Julia Jackson. Only it isn't true.

Now, with the help of her new partner Mark Vincent, state fraud investigator Julia Jackson must find justice for the woman who was taken in her place.

As Vincent and Julia begin to unravel the multimillion-dollar frauds that led to the abduction, they encounter a cast of quirky characters, one of whom will go to desperate lengths to hide a deadly secret. Things only become more dangerous as bodies begin accumulating around town, and Julia must discover the truth before the abductor comes to rectify his mistake. Meet Julia Jackson. Apparently, she's been abducted....

A woman is taken at gunpoint from the downtown office of Southeastern Insurance, and the police believe the victim is Special Agent Julia Jackson. Only it isn't true.

Now, with the help of her new partner Mark Vincent, state fraud investigator Julia Jackson must find justice for the woman who was taken in her place.

As Vincent and Julia begin to unravel the multimillion-dollar frauds that led to the abduction, they encounter a cast of quirky characters, one of whom will go to desperate lengths to hide a deadly secret. Things only become more dangerous as bodies begin accumulating around town, and Julia must discover the truth before the abductor comes to rectify his mistake.
]]> <![CDATA[A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]> 162898
Written in 1889, Mark 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' is one of literature's first genre mash-ups and one of the first works to feature time travel. It is one of the best known Twain stories, and also one of his most unique. Twain uses the work to launch a social commentary on contemporary society, a thinly veiled critique of the contemporary times despite the Old World setting.

While the dark pessimism that would fully blossom in Twain's later works can be discerned in 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, ' the novel will nevertheless be remembered primarily for its wild leaps of imagination, brilliant wit, and entertaining storytelling.]]> 480 Mark Twain Betty 2 3.80 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
author: Mark Twain
name: Betty
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1889
rating: 2
read at: 2012/01/07
date added: 2012/01/17
shelves: historical-fiction, funny, kindle
review:
Too long, contrived, Although it's a classic, I didn't like it.
]]> <![CDATA[Cankered Roots (Alex and Briggie, #1)]]> 1393917 227 G.G. Vandagriff 0875798330 Betty 2 mystery, kindle
Since then she's joined the LDS church and become a certified geneologist, and she needs to get information from her parents to complete her geneology.

Her parents are noticable upset by her request. She leaves frustrated. That night her father is murdered. Although she is one of the suspects (and partially because of it), she's determined to find her father's killer and find out why he was killed. She's sure the key to unlocking the mystery is somewhere in her family history. The more she delves, the more dangerous things become until her own life hangs in the balance.

It's confusing because a soldier from WWI has assumed the identity of her GF. She has to find the descendants of the real soldier, as well as to determine what happened to her GF
]]> 3.73 1994 Cankered Roots (Alex and Briggie, #1)
author: G.G. Vandagriff
name: Betty
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1994
rating: 2
read at: 2012/01/09
date added: 2012/01/17
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
Alex has been estranged from her parents for years. They weren't even there for her when her husband died in a plane accident.

Since then she's joined the LDS church and become a certified geneologist, and she needs to get information from her parents to complete her geneology.

Her parents are noticable upset by her request. She leaves frustrated. That night her father is murdered. Although she is one of the suspects (and partially because of it), she's determined to find her father's killer and find out why he was killed. She's sure the key to unlocking the mystery is somewhere in her family history. The more she delves, the more dangerous things become until her own life hangs in the balance.

It's confusing because a soldier from WWI has assumed the identity of her GF. She has to find the descendants of the real soldier, as well as to determine what happened to her GF

]]> <![CDATA[The Great Detectives (From Vidocq to Sam Spade)]]> 11783887 77 William S. Shepard Betty 2 kindle, non-fiction 3.64 2011 The Great Detectives (From Vidocq to Sam Spade)
author: William S. Shepard
name: Betty
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2012/01/16
date added: 2012/01/17
shelves: kindle, non-fiction
review:
Short, fact-filled book. The essays cover Vidocq to Philip Marlowe the authors and their famous detective creations. Some useful information for those that want to delve more into the history of mystery writers and their characters.
]]> <![CDATA[Charlotte Collins: A Continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice]]> 8885679 248 Jennifer Becton 1453740473 Betty 4 historical-fiction, kindle Charlotte Collins: A Continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
by Jennifer Becton (ŷ Author)
3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 134 ratings · 49 reviews
When Charlotte Lucas married Mr. Collins in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, she believed herself to be fortunate indeed. Her nuptials gained her a comfortable home and financial security. If she acquired these things at the expense of true love, it did not matter one whit. To Charlotte, love in marriage was nothing more than a pleasant coincidence.

As the years of her marriage dragged by, Charlotte began to question her idea of love as she suffered continual embarrassment at her husband's simpering and fawning manners. When Mr. Collins dies, finally relieving everyone of his tedious conversation, she must work feverishly to secure her income and home. She gives no further thought to the possibility of love until her flighty sister Maria begs her to act as her chaperone in place of their ailing parents. Hoping to prevent Maria from also entering an unhappy union, Charlotte agrees, and they are quickly thrust into a world of country dances, dinner parties, and marriageable gentlemen.

But when an unprincipled gentleman compromises Charlotte's reputation, her romantic thoughts disappear at the possibility of losing her independence. As she struggles to extricate herself from her slander, her situation reveals both the nature of each gentleman and of true love.

Buzz about Charlotte Collins: With Charlotte Collins, Jennifer Becton mines the rich vein of literary characters who've vanished into the mists of history. Her newly widowed Charlotte is an expert in social nuance, but does she know her own heart as well? Charming, witty, and grounded in period detail, Becton's debut novel will make Jane Austen fa]]> 3.68 2010 Charlotte Collins: A Continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
author: Jennifer Becton
name: Betty
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/10
date added: 2012/01/17
shelves: historical-fiction, kindle
review:
Charlotte Collins: A Continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
Charlotte Collins: A Continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
by Jennifer Becton (ŷ Author)
3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 134 ratings · 49 reviews
When Charlotte Lucas married Mr. Collins in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, she believed herself to be fortunate indeed. Her nuptials gained her a comfortable home and financial security. If she acquired these things at the expense of true love, it did not matter one whit. To Charlotte, love in marriage was nothing more than a pleasant coincidence.

As the years of her marriage dragged by, Charlotte began to question her idea of love as she suffered continual embarrassment at her husband's simpering and fawning manners. When Mr. Collins dies, finally relieving everyone of his tedious conversation, she must work feverishly to secure her income and home. She gives no further thought to the possibility of love until her flighty sister Maria begs her to act as her chaperone in place of their ailing parents. Hoping to prevent Maria from also entering an unhappy union, Charlotte agrees, and they are quickly thrust into a world of country dances, dinner parties, and marriageable gentlemen.

But when an unprincipled gentleman compromises Charlotte's reputation, her romantic thoughts disappear at the possibility of losing her independence. As she struggles to extricate herself from her slander, her situation reveals both the nature of each gentleman and of true love.

Buzz about Charlotte Collins: With Charlotte Collins, Jennifer Becton mines the rich vein of literary characters who've vanished into the mists of history. Her newly widowed Charlotte is an expert in social nuance, but does she know her own heart as well? Charming, witty, and grounded in period detail, Becton's debut novel will make Jane Austen fa
]]> <![CDATA[Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses]]> 6574672 496 Bruce Feiler 0061804827 Betty 5
And what he ends up with is part travel book, part religious meditation on faith, and part biblical academia. I really enjoyed this, but I think it depends on your familiarity with the stories and incidents of the first 5 books of the Bible, and your level of tolerance for the beliefs contained within. It's not a polemic - it doesn't ask the reader to believe the same way the author does - but it does assume a certain level of belief in a divine God, the God of at least Christianity and Judaism and Islam. Still, it's a fascinating look at the people who live in the region most touched by the mythologies of the Bible, and their considered responses to it, while gently touching on the political unstableness that results from different religions and cultures holding to different ideas of God contained within the same territory and the same sites. ]]> 4.15 2001 Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
author: Bruce Feiler
name: Betty
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2012/01/13
date added: 2012/01/17
shelves: arlington-library, non-fiction
review:
reading of the first 5 books of the Bible (the Pentateuch, the Torah) by retracing the path of the Israelites and pilgramage to noted 'holy sites'. Feiler sums up his approach towards the end of the book as: "We asked everybody basically the same question: "What does the Bible mean to you?" And everybody had an answer." (p. 408)

And what he ends up with is part travel book, part religious meditation on faith, and part biblical academia. I really enjoyed this, but I think it depends on your familiarity with the stories and incidents of the first 5 books of the Bible, and your level of tolerance for the beliefs contained within. It's not a polemic - it doesn't ask the reader to believe the same way the author does - but it does assume a certain level of belief in a divine God, the God of at least Christianity and Judaism and Islam. Still, it's a fascinating look at the people who live in the region most touched by the mythologies of the Bible, and their considered responses to it, while gently touching on the political unstableness that results from different religions and cultures holding to different ideas of God contained within the same territory and the same sites.
]]> Legwork 1654993 224 Katy Munger 0380791366 Betty 3 kindle, mystery 3.56 1997 Legwork
author: Katy Munger
name: Betty
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2011/12/08
date added: 2011/12/18
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
She's smart, talented and durable, but Casey Jones has had more than her share of bad luck in life--including doing legwork for a blimp-sized P.I. who exercises few muscles below the jawline. Casey's latest assignment is to guard a politician running for the Senate. When the corpse of a real estate magnate is found in her client's car, Casey must clear the candidate's name before the election.
]]> <![CDATA[Michal (The Wives of King David, #1)]]> 6140017 382 Jill Eileen Smith 0800733207 Betty 3 kindle The younger daughter of King Solomon, Michal is
haunted by her father's unpredictable moods and competition from her beautiful older sister. As a girl, Michal quickly falls for the handsome young harpist David. But soon after their romance begins, David must flee for his life, leaving Michal at her father's mercy in the prison that is King Saul's palace.

Will Michal ever be reunited with David? Or is she doomed to remain separated from him forever?

Against the backdrop of opulent palace life, raging war, and daring desert escapes, Jill Eileen Smith takes you on an emotional journey as Michal deals with love, loss, and personal transformation as the first wife of King David.]]> 3.89 2009 Michal (The Wives of King David, #1)
author: Jill Eileen Smith
name: Betty
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2011/12/10
date added: 2011/12/18
shelves: kindle
review:

The younger daughter of King Solomon, Michal is
haunted by her father's unpredictable moods and competition from her beautiful older sister. As a girl, Michal quickly falls for the handsome young harpist David. But soon after their romance begins, David must flee for his life, leaving Michal at her father's mercy in the prison that is King Saul's palace.

Will Michal ever be reunited with David? Or is she doomed to remain separated from him forever?

Against the backdrop of opulent palace life, raging war, and daring desert escapes, Jill Eileen Smith takes you on an emotional journey as Michal deals with love, loss, and personal transformation as the first wife of King David.
]]> <![CDATA[Deadly Stillwater (McRyan Mystery, #2)]]> 7154088
The ruggedly handsome Mac McRyan, a fourth-generation cop, is faced with a complicated brazen daytime kidnapping, a media storm surrounding the case, and political scrutiny. It is a case of betrayal and revenge that will ultimately strike at the soul of the St. Paul Police Department. From the searing streets of St. Paul to the icy shores of Lake Superior to the murky waters of the St. Croix River, "Deadly Stillwater" is a non-stop rush you won't be able to put down until its last thrilling minute.]]> 378 Roger Stelljes 1592983073 Betty 3 kindle, mystery
Not Memorable]]> 3.77 2009 Deadly Stillwater (McRyan Mystery, #2)
author: Roger Stelljes
name: Betty
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2011/12/12
date added: 2011/12/18
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
Deadly Stillwater, where Mac McRyan is confronted with the kidnapping of Shannon Hisle, taken in a brazen daylight attack outside a restaurant on one of St. Paul's busiest streets. And Shannon Hisle isn't just anyone. She's the only daughter of St. Paul's most prominent, successful and politically connected lawyer. Mac knows that every political lever will be pulled, that the FBI will be coming in, that the St. Paul Mayor, not his biggest fan, will be scrutinizing his every move and that the media storm will be every bit as intense as the heat wave blazing the Twin Cities. What's more, while all of the signs point to a straightforward kidnapping for ransom, Mac's instincts tell him otherwise, especially after the kidnappers call just hours after the abduction and skip the ransom demand. "Why not ask for the ransom?" he wonders. While everyone assumes the ransom demand will come soon enough, the failure to make the demand gives Mac pause, and for good reason. For the Hisle abduction is just the beginning in a case of betrayal and revenge sixteen years in the making that will ultimately strike at the heart and soul of the St. Paul Police Department.

Not Memorable
]]> <![CDATA[Free-Range Knitter: The Yarn Harlot Writes Again]]> 10821878 The author of Yarn Harlot returns with more hilarious personal stories about all the ups and downs of being a knitter.Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (a.k.a. the Yarn Harlot) returns to pen another hilarious, insightful, and poignant collection of essays surrounding her favorite knitting, knitters, and what happens when you get those two things anywhere near ordinary people. Free-Range Knitters shares stories of knitting horrors and triumphs and knitting successes and defeats, but, mostly, it shares stories about the human condition that ring true for everyone—especially if you have to have a rather large amount of yarn in your house.Praise for Yarn Harlot“Stephanie Pearl-McPhee turns both typical and unique knitting experiences into very funny and articulate prose.� —Meg Swansen, Schoolhouse Press“I laughed until my stitches fell helplessly from my needles!� —Lucy Neatby, author of Cool Socks Warm Feet“A sort of David Sedaris-like take on knitting—laugh-out-loud funny most of the time and poignantly reflective when it’s not cracking you up.� —Library Journal]]> 242 Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Betty 4 kindle, funny, non-fiction
Stephanie is a master at fostering reflection through story-telling. The first story, about a very young knitter named Annabelle, holds many layers of meaning about incredibly important things. And the last story, about a very old knitter, who needed no yarn to knit, let me close the book with a sense of fulfilment. We knitters, as well as non-knitters (who would love this book) are so very lucky to have someone like Stephanie spinning tales for us, with her sharp and shiny wit rising so naturally from an honest heart. ]]> 4.29 2008 Free-Range Knitter: The Yarn Harlot Writes Again
author: Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
name: Betty
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2011/12/01
date added: 2011/12/18
shelves: kindle, funny, non-fiction
review:
This fine book is about knitting, yes, but really not so much about knitting as about what happens when knitting is part of life. The stories and essays glide and ripple and twist, carrying the reader pellmell into intimate contact with men, women, children, animals, ideas, and humor - and always the light of knitting is leaking through, shining its innocence, tough love, and grace onto stumbling humanity.

Stephanie is a master at fostering reflection through story-telling. The first story, about a very young knitter named Annabelle, holds many layers of meaning about incredibly important things. And the last story, about a very old knitter, who needed no yarn to knit, let me close the book with a sense of fulfilment. We knitters, as well as non-knitters (who would love this book) are so very lucky to have someone like Stephanie spinning tales for us, with her sharp and shiny wit rising so naturally from an honest heart.
]]> Taking Out the Trailer Trash 11875828
Charlene is not alone, she has people to help her out or maybe get her killed. Gus is a good looking cop with a secret past. Maggie looks like everybody’s idea of a perfect grandma, but Charlene finds out she was once the richest madam in the Dixie Mafia. Dave, who may or may not be on the FBI’s most wanted list, is a ZZ Top look alike with the hots for Paula Deen.

Will secrets from the past be the death of her or will Charlene along with Boo, Loretta, and Jinx, her trio of neurotic animals make it out alive?]]> 220 Janice Ivy Betty 4 mystery, kindle
Things seem to be working out just great until the murders start.

Who is killing people at the Happy Times RV Park? Charlene intends to find out, with the help of a senior citizen ex-madam, a fugitive from the 60s, and a good looking cop with a shady past.]]> 3.77 2011 Taking Out the Trailer Trash
author: Janice Ivy
name: Betty
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2011/12/17
date added: 2011/12/18
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
Charlene’s first novel has just been published and she couldn’t be happier. Unfortunately, being a published author isn’t quite as lucrative as she had hoped. She needs a day job that will give her time to finish her second novel before the money from the first one runs out. Managing a small RV park on the Mississippi Gulf Coast seems like the perfect gig. It’s close to the beach, the rent is paid, and the job demands are minimal.

Things seem to be working out just great until the murders start.

Who is killing people at the Happy Times RV Park? Charlene intends to find out, with the help of a senior citizen ex-madam, a fugitive from the 60s, and a good looking cop with a shady past.
]]> <![CDATA[Eye Sleuth (A Yoko Kamimura Mystery, #1)]]> 12641580
Frustrated by the dismissive attitude of Detective Dan Riley at the 13th Precinct, Yoko vows to turn sleuth, but work and bizarre events keep her scrambling. Not even a prestigious conference 3,000 miles away in England in the tranquil coastal city of Bournemouth and a visit to Christchurch's 11th- century priory are havens for Yoko.

Now she is in the killer's cross-hairs and the chase is on...in and around the Gramercy Park area, sometimes at No 34, New York's first coop building, sometimes at the abandoned Quaker Meeting House and eventually at the famous Pete's Tavern.]]> 208 Hazel Dawkins Betty 4 kindle, mystery
Frustrated by the dismissive attitude of Detective Dan Riley at the 13th Precinct, Yoko vows to turn sleuth, but work and bizarre events keep her scrambling. Not even a prestigious conference 3,000 miles away in England in the tranquil coastal city of Bournemouth and a visit to Christchurch's 11th- century priory are havens for Yoko.

Now she is in the killer's cross-hairs and the chase is on...in and around the Gramercy Park area, sometimes at No 34, New York's first coop building, sometimes at the abandoned Quaker Meeting House and eventually at the famous Pete's Tavern.]]> 3.50 2011 Eye Sleuth (A Yoko Kamimura Mystery, #1)
author: Hazel Dawkins
name: Betty
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2011/12/17
date added: 2011/12/18
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
Dr. Yoko Kamimura's safe, predictable routine as a behavioral optometrist at the College of Optometry in New York is shattering. When the stranger who comes up to Yoko on East 23rd Street and warns her of danger is shot to death, safe and predictable switches to murder and mayhem. The very next day, there's a catastrophe at the iconic National Arts Club and Yoko's godmother is left in a coma after a vicious attack.

Frustrated by the dismissive attitude of Detective Dan Riley at the 13th Precinct, Yoko vows to turn sleuth, but work and bizarre events keep her scrambling. Not even a prestigious conference 3,000 miles away in England in the tranquil coastal city of Bournemouth and a visit to Christchurch's 11th- century priory are havens for Yoko.

Now she is in the killer's cross-hairs and the chase is on...in and around the Gramercy Park area, sometimes at No 34, New York's first coop building, sometimes at the abandoned Quaker Meeting House and eventually at the famous Pete's Tavern.
]]> Martin Chuzzlewit 1990 Martin Chuzzlewit - his sixth novel - Dickens declared it 'immeasurably the best of my stories.' He was already famous as the author of The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist.

Set partly in America, which Dickens had visited in 1842, the novel includes a searing satire on the United States. Martin Chuzzlewit is the story of two Chuzzlewits, Martin and Jonas, who have inherited the characteristic Chuzzlewit selfishness. It contrasts their diverse fates of moral redemption and worldly success for one, with increasingly desperate crime for the other. This powerful black comedy involves hypocrisy, greed and blackmail, as well as the most famous of Dickens's grotesques, Mrs Gamp.]]> 829 Charles Dickens 0140436146 Betty 5 kindle 3.83 1844 Martin Chuzzlewit
author: Charles Dickens
name: Betty
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1844
rating: 5
read at: 2011/12/16
date added: 2011/12/18
shelves: kindle
review:
With this novel, Dickens left behind the shallow characters that sometimes marred his early works, and developed full-fledged people. Pecksniff and his daughters are marvelous creations that make one cringe with embarassment while laughing at their incredible selfishness. Tom Pinch is another character in a distinguished line of "too good to be true" Dickensian personalities, but he is shown to suffer and grow into a believable human being. The American episodes are biting in their satire, but overall they are on the money. Dickens' contempt for American armchair philosophers and "freedom-loving" slave owners fueled some of his most pointed social commentary. As always, there is a happy ending, but the plot is more complex than anything Dickens had written before.
]]> Pencils Make Good Darts 12131280 118 Dan Balman Betty 2 kindle, non-fiction
Don't remember it a week later. Will reread]]> 2.86 2011 Pencils Make Good Darts
author: Dan Balman
name: Betty
average rating: 2.86
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2011/11/25
date added: 2011/12/08
shelves: kindle, non-fiction
review:
This was cute. Although it had me laughing out loud on occasion, I can only give it three stars. This, more than anything, is a result of it not being what I expected. Each chapter represents a totally new story and "chapter" of the authors' life. It was comical, but there was no timeline (stories jumped from being married and having kids, to being a kid, to joining the military). It would make good reading for those times when you only have a few moments and do not want to get into a long book.

Don't remember it a week later. Will reread
]]> Julius Katz Mysteries 10329765 100 Dave Zeltserman Betty 3 kindle, mystery
Julius Katz, for those of you who don't know, is a brilliant detective from Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose personality, but not his appearance and habits, is modeled after Nero Wolfe. Archie, in this case, is not Katz's flesh-and-blood assistant and legman, but rather a two-inch square computer chip that has an artificial intelligence of its - or his - own. Katz wears Archie as a tie clip, and Archie narrates the stories.

Obviously, this series started out as a pastiche of/tribute to Rex Stout's classic body of work featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, but even before the first story was over Zeltserman had molded it into something more by giving Julius and Archie their own personalities and capturing them so perfectly. Julius isn't as eccentric and infuriating as Wolfe, and Archie the computer doesn't have Archie Goodwin's wiseass self-confidence. The dynamic between their characters and the voice that Zeltserman develops make for a very appealing combination. The stories are well-plotted traditional mysteries, to boot, a form that's not nearly as common as it once was.
]]> 3.60 2010 Julius Katz Mysteries
author: Dave Zeltserman
name: Betty
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2011/12/01
date added: 2011/12/08
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
I read Dave Zeltserman's first Julius Katz and Archie story, titled simply "Julius Katz", a couple of years ago in EQMM, before it won the Shamus Award. I missed the second tale in the series, "Archie's Been Framed". Luckily for me, and for you if you haven't sampled this series yet, both stories are now available in the e-book JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES.

Julius Katz, for those of you who don't know, is a brilliant detective from Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose personality, but not his appearance and habits, is modeled after Nero Wolfe. Archie, in this case, is not Katz's flesh-and-blood assistant and legman, but rather a two-inch square computer chip that has an artificial intelligence of its - or his - own. Katz wears Archie as a tie clip, and Archie narrates the stories.

Obviously, this series started out as a pastiche of/tribute to Rex Stout's classic body of work featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, but even before the first story was over Zeltserman had molded it into something more by giving Julius and Archie their own personalities and capturing them so perfectly. Julius isn't as eccentric and infuriating as Wolfe, and Archie the computer doesn't have Archie Goodwin's wiseass self-confidence. The dynamic between their characters and the voice that Zeltserman develops make for a very appealing combination. The stories are well-plotted traditional mysteries, to boot, a form that's not nearly as common as it once was.

]]> <![CDATA[Cold Turkey (Events Unlimited, #1)]]> 2603778 274 Janice Bennett 1419951777 Betty 3 kindle, mystery ]]> 3.76 2006 Cold Turkey (Events Unlimited, #1)
author: Janice Bennett
name: Betty
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2011/12/01
date added: 2011/12/08
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
This is a suggestive romance (love scenes are not graphic) First in Events Unlimited series. When Annike McKinley returns to her Aunt Gerda's home for Thanksgiving she finds the body of Clifford Brody, C.P.A., bleeding all over her aunt's tax receipts. While Sheriff Owen Sarkisian and the crime team track mud through the house, the Service Club of Upper River Gulch Environs (the SCOURGEs) sticks Annike with organizing the town's Thanksgiving weekend activities, which gives her the opportunity to investigate the murder on her own to clear the chief suspect—her beloved aunt. She's soon up to her neck in pancake breakfasts, pie-eating contests, community dinners—and a raffle prize that threatens to take over her life.After ordering Annike to stop interfering, Sarkisian is forced to beg the aid of her accounting skills to help unravel the case. She keeps a tight rein on her growing enjoyment of his company, though, for as the widow of a former sheriff of the county she is determined not to get romantically involved with another law officer. Then one of the suspects is found dead, stripped to his boxers and socks in a vat of apricot brandy. Before the murderer is captured, both Annike and Sarkisian narrowly avoid adding to the body count

]]> Dust 10476364 - Kenneth Oppel, New York Times bestselling author of AIRBORN and THE BOUNDLESS. "Well-chosen imagery, skillfully crafted sentences, and a remarkably effective sense of atmosphere distinguish Slade's work." - Kirkus reviews, Starred "This beautifully written novel features strong character development, an authentic setting, and some genuinely spooky moments." - Voice of Youth Advocates, Starred *Winner of the $15,000 Governor General’s Award *An American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults *Nominated for an Edgar Award (Mystery Writers of America) *Over 90,000 copies sold A rainmaker brings rain to a drought-stricken town, but the children begin to disappear... Strange things are happening in Horshoe, a Dust Bowl farm town in the Depression-era prairies. Young Matthew Steelgate has vanished on a walk into town. His brother, Robert, knows that he has to find Matthew. He has to figure out why the hens are frightened and their eggs full of blood. Why a broken jar he discovers in the grass echoes with the sad sound of a little girl’s voice. Why, most frighteningly of all, his parents seem lost in a comforting dream. Matthew forgotten, his memory abandoned. Robert has a duty to find his brother. If only that duty didn’t lead him inexorably to Abram Harsich, the ivory-skinned man who dazzles the townspeople with magic mirrors and bewitches the children with his beautiful butterfly. If only Robert could stay safely away from the ominous, supernatural stranger who brings rain to Horshoe. A haunting and compelling read! Order DUST today!]]> 192 Arthur Slade 0986855510 Betty 3 kindle, sci-fi 3.52 2001 Dust
author: Arthur Slade
name: Betty
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2011/11/29
date added: 2011/12/08
shelves: kindle, sci-fi
review:
Magical Realisim at its best. Robert's younger brother vanishes on the way to town. A rainmaker soon appears. Things aren't what they seem and people are forgetting what they ought to remember. All but Robert. Arthur Slade imbue's DUST with magic to spare. A wonderful read.
]]> <![CDATA[For Time & Eternity (Sister Wife Book 1)]]> 11088752 2011 Christy Award finalist!All Camilla Deardon knows of the Mormons camping nearby is the songs she hears floating on the breeze. Then she meets one of them—a young man named Nathan Fox. Never did she imagine he would be so handsome, so charming, especially after Mama and Papa’s warnings to stay away. Though she knows she should obey her parents, Camilla can’t refuse her heart. But even Nathan’s promises cannot prepare her for what she will face in Utah.]]> 363 Allison Pittman 141434581X Betty 4 historical-fiction, kindle
In 1850 Iowa at the Deardon dairy farm and Camilla Deardon hears the Mormons singing from their camp nearby. Even though she is a Christian and her father warns her to stay away from them it is the music and the sound of the familiar songs that draws her to their camp. It is there that she meets Nathan Fox and falls in love with him. Despite what her parents have to say Camilla leaves her home, marries Nathan and makes the trip with him and the others to Utah.

This is a story about a marriage between what starts out as a couple then grows when the decision is made that Mormon men are allowed to marry more than one woman. Camilla now has to learn to share her husband with other women who are also his wife. This is a story about the conflict between the Christian faith and Mormon beliefs. ]]> 3.75 2010 For Time & Eternity (Sister Wife Book 1)
author: Allison Pittman
name: Betty
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2011/11/13
date added: 2011/11/20
shelves: historical-fiction, kindle
review:
Allison Pittman in her new book, "For Time & Eternity" Book One in The Sister Wife series published by Tyndale gives us an insight into the Mormon culture in a brand new and unique manner.

In 1850 Iowa at the Deardon dairy farm and Camilla Deardon hears the Mormons singing from their camp nearby. Even though she is a Christian and her father warns her to stay away from them it is the music and the sound of the familiar songs that draws her to their camp. It is there that she meets Nathan Fox and falls in love with him. Despite what her parents have to say Camilla leaves her home, marries Nathan and makes the trip with him and the others to Utah.

This is a story about a marriage between what starts out as a couple then grows when the decision is made that Mormon men are allowed to marry more than one woman. Camilla now has to learn to share her husband with other women who are also his wife. This is a story about the conflict between the Christian faith and Mormon beliefs.
]]> Songbird Under a German Moon 12954570 320 Tricia Goyer 1609363043 Betty 0 3.49 2010 Songbird Under a German Moon
author: Tricia Goyer
name: Betty
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/11/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin]]> 6329460 Written initially to guide his son, Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is a lively, spellbinding account of his unique and eventful life, now a classic of world literature that is sure to inspire and delight readers everywhere.

Few men could compare to Benjamin Franklin. Virtually self-taught, he excelled as an athlete, a man of letters, a printer, a scientist, a wit, an inventor, an editor, and a writer, and he was probably the most successful diplomat in American history. David Hume hailed him as the first great philosopher and great man of letters in the New World.]]> 154 Benjamin Franklin Betty 5 biography-auto, kindle This is the book the set the new style for writing an autobiography. It tells of his early trials as a youth, apprentice, journeyman and finally master printer. The most important thing I learned from this book was the statement that:

“It was about this time I conceiv'd the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wish'd to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into.�

He then goes on the list the virtues and the method he uses to perfect himself. I followed this method, and have advised it to others while serving as a Bishop, and all using it found success.

�1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.�(less) ]]> 3.60 1791 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
author: Benjamin Franklin
name: Betty
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1791
rating: 5
read at: 2011/11/14
date added: 2011/11/20
shelves: biography-auto, kindle
review:

This is the book the set the new style for writing an autobiography. It tells of his early trials as a youth, apprentice, journeyman and finally master printer. The most important thing I learned from this book was the statement that:

“It was about this time I conceiv'd the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wish'd to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into.�

He then goes on the list the virtues and the method he uses to perfect himself. I followed this method, and have advised it to others while serving as a Bishop, and all using it found success.

�1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.�(less)
]]> Before the Season Ends 8608254
Trouble at home sends the young woman to her aunt's townhome in the fashionable Mayfair district of London. There she finds worse troubles than those that prompted her flight from home. Ariana is soon neck-deep in high society and at odds with Mr. Phillip Mornay, London's current darling rogue. Then a scandal changes Ariana forever. Her heart, her faith, and her future are all at stake in an unexpected adventure that gains even the Prince Regent's attention.

Will Ariana's faith survive this test? And what about her heart? For it's Ariana's heart that most threatens to betray the truths she has always believed in. When she finds herself backed against a wall, betrothed to the wrong young man, how can it ever turn out right?

Jane Austen readers and fans of Regency romances everywhere will love Before the Season Ends.]]> 326 Linore Rose Burkard 0736931236 Betty 4 3.68 2005 Before the Season Ends
author: Linore Rose Burkard
name: Betty
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2011/11/16
date added: 2011/11/20
shelves: romance, kindle, historical-fiction
review:
n her debut novel of what she calls “spirited romance for the Jane Austen soul,� author Linore Rose Burkard tells the intriguing story of Miss Ariana Forsythe, a young woman caught between her love for a man who doesn’t share her faith and her resolution to marry only a fellow believer in Christ. Trouble at home sends the young woman to her aunt’s townhome in the fashionable Mayfair district of London. There she finds worse troubles than those that prompted her flight from home. Ariana is soon neck–deep in high society and at odds with Mr. Phillip Mornay, London’s current darling rogue. Then a scandal changes Ariana forever. Her heart, her faith, and her future are all at stake in an unexpected adventure that gains even the Prince Regent’s attention. Will Ariana’s faith survive this test? And what about her heart? For it’s Ariana’s heart that most threatens to betray the truths she has always believed in. Ends.(less)
]]> <![CDATA[Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise (Bright's Pond #2)]]> 8077591 400 Joyce Magnin 1426707665 Betty 3 kindle
BOOK STOPPED IN MIDDLE.]]> 3.75 2010 Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise (Bright's Pond #2)
author: Joyce Magnin
name: Betty
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2011/11/11
date added: 2011/11/20
shelves: kindle
review:
Newly widowed Charlotte Figg purchases a double-wide trailer sight unseen and moves to the Paradise Trailer Park with her dog, Lucky. Unfortunately, neither the trailer nor Paradise are what Charlotte expected. Her trailer is a ramshackle old place in need of major repair, and the people of Paradise are harboring more secrets than Bayer has aspirin. Charlotte’s new friend Rose Tattoo learns that Charlotte played softball and convinces her to rally the women of Paradise into a team. Reluctant at first, Charlotte warms to the notion and is soon coaching the Paradise Angels. Meanwhile, Charlotte discovers that the manager of Paradise, Fergus Wrinkel, abuses his wife, Suzy. Charlotte sets out to find a way to save Suzy from Fergus and in the process comes to a difficult realization about her own painful marriage.

BOOK STOPPED IN MIDDLE.
]]> <![CDATA[Night of the Aurora (Salmon Run, #1)]]> 11482064 A massive aurora.
A spaceship hidden under the ice and snow.


For Hawk and Zach Callahan, getting to the small town of Salmon Run presents the first challenge. From the moment they arrive the locals freely share their opinions. While still in Cordova an old prospector declares the two cheechakos unprepared for the realities of an Alaskan winter and goes about fixing it. A failed sled-dog takes an unwelcome liking to Hawk, giving rise to an old phobia. The young native Sasha attaches herself to Zach, much to his disgust. They think they have it made when they board the unique train that will take them through a dark roadless wilderness to their new home.


The same night a massive display of the Aurora Borealis lights up the sky.
Resulting in the Solar Express train powering down all by itself, stranding its passengers.
Only, the energetic aurora affected something else out in the wilderness.


Welcome to Salmon Run, Alaska! A place of wild animals, wild lands, and wild inhabitants...oh, and native legends come alive and an interplanetary alien conflict at their backdoor. A fun contemporary science fiction series for teens, young adults, and adults of all ages.


Books in the Salmon Run series in
Night of the Aurora
Alien Winter
The Singing Lakes
Secret Illusions
Specter of the White Death
Aurora Equinox
Breakup - Alaska Style
The Legend of Crazy Uncle George]]> 165 J.A. Marlow 1937042006 Betty 3 kindle
While still in Cordova, an old prospector declares the two greenhorns unprepared for the realities of an Alaskan winter. Sasha, a young native girl, attaches herself to Zach, much to his disgust. A failed sled-dog won't leave Hawk alone, giving rise to an old phobia. They think they have it made once they get to the Solar Express, the unique train that will take them through a dark road-less wilderness to their new home.

The same night a massive display of the Aurora Borealis lights up the sky.

The Solar Express shuts down, stranding its passengers in the middle of nowhere. Hidden beneath the snow and ice, and under the path of the rescuers, an alien spaceship also feels the effects of the light show.

Cut off from the rescuers and trapped inside the spaceship, Zach and Sasha must ally themselves with a pair of aliens before either the malfunctioning security systems or the native Alaskan wildlife kills them.]]> 3.74 2011 Night of the Aurora (Salmon Run, #1)
author: J.A. Marlow
name: Betty
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2011/11/15
date added: 2011/11/20
shelves: kindle
review:
Zach Callahan and his father, Hawk, arrive in Alaska to begin a new life. Anxious to arrive at the lodge crazy Uncle George left them, they find the first challenge is just getting to Salmon Run.

While still in Cordova, an old prospector declares the two greenhorns unprepared for the realities of an Alaskan winter. Sasha, a young native girl, attaches herself to Zach, much to his disgust. A failed sled-dog won't leave Hawk alone, giving rise to an old phobia. They think they have it made once they get to the Solar Express, the unique train that will take them through a dark road-less wilderness to their new home.

The same night a massive display of the Aurora Borealis lights up the sky.

The Solar Express shuts down, stranding its passengers in the middle of nowhere. Hidden beneath the snow and ice, and under the path of the rescuers, an alien spaceship also feels the effects of the light show.

Cut off from the rescuers and trapped inside the spaceship, Zach and Sasha must ally themselves with a pair of aliens before either the malfunctioning security systems or the native Alaskan wildlife kills them.
]]> <![CDATA[Dark Quarry (Mike Angel Mystery #1)]]> 10791555
Burdened by the unsolved murder of his father, a career NYPD lieutenant whose “voice� warns whenever danger is near, 30-year-old Mike Angel is a Korean vet and bored private investigator of insurance fraud. When a wealthy ex-college buddy hires him to tail Joe Ambler, a petty blackmailer, Mike fixates on Kimbra, a stunning beauty who kills the blackmailer. Mike impulsively helps her dispose of the body and finds himself on the wrong side of the law.

Mike discovers the dead man was the grandson of a feared and legendary mob leader, founder of Detroit’s Purple Gang of the 1920s and 30s. The same week, a well-dressed thug comes looking for Ambler, and the wealthy buddy who hired Mike runs off with Kimbra and is murdered in the Bahamas.

Kimbra disappears. While searching for her Mike stumbles across connections to the Russian-Cuban branch of the ring responsible for a string of unsolved murders in three states. The discovery leads to a chain of events and a frame up. Mike is convicted of murder, and is sent to the federal prison at Trenton, where the warden enlists him in a jailbreak with a hardened criminal with ties to the Purple gang. After Mike escapes, he is helped by an attractive but single-minded newspaper woman, Heddy McBright.

Mike locates the witness and evidence that will clear him, and discovers the frame and the escape were both setups. After a shootout, a crooked judge yanks Mike’s investigator’s license so he moves to Chicago to follow leads to more remnants of the Purple gang. He sets up an office and is helped by Molly Bennett who becomes his main love interest and a major character in the series, along with Rick Anthony, Mike’s late father’s partner on the NYPD, who becomes Mike’s partner. Mikes struggles with alcohol and commitment to Molly, and is sidetracked his efforts to nail the kingpins of the gang.

Sex, deception, murders, shootouts, more sex, and crooked officials, take Mike on a dangerous mission to the final showdown at mob headquarters outside the small town of Mattoon, Illinois, where he hopes to discover who killed his father and save the life of Nika, a woman he has fallen for.]]> 240 David H. Fears 0971486867 Betty 3 mystery, kindle Burdened by the unsolved murder of his father, a career NYPD lieutenant whose “voice� warns whenever danger is near, 30-year-old Mike Angel is a Korean vet and bored private investigator of insurance fraud. When a wealthy ex-college buddy hires him to tail Joe Ambler, a petty blackmailer, Mike fixates on Kimbra, a stunning beauty who kills the blackmailer. Mike impulsively helps her dispose of the body and finds himself on the wrong side of the law.
Mike discovers the dead man was the grandson of a feared and legendary mob leader, founder of Detroit’s Purple Gang of the 1920s and 30s. The same week, a well-dressed thug comes looking for Ambler, and the wealthy buddy who hired Mike runs off with Kimbra and is murdered in the Bahamas.

Kimbra disappears. While searching for her Mike stumbles across connections to the Russian-Cuban branch of the ring responsible for a string of unsolved murders in three states. The discovery leads to a chain of events and a frame up. Mike is convicted of murder, and is sent to the federal prison at Trenton, where the warden enlists him in a jailbreak with a hardened criminal with ties to the Purple gang.

Mike locates the witness and evidence that will clear him, and discovers the frame and the escape were both setups. After a shootout, a crooked judge yanks Mike’s investigator’s license so he moves to Chicago to follow leads to more remnants of the Purple gang. He sets up an office and is helped by Molly Bennett who becomes his main love interest and a major character in the series, along with Rick Anthony, Mike’s late father’s partner on the NYPD, who becomes Mike’s partner. Mikes struggles with alcohol and commitment to Molly, and is sidetracked his efforts to nail the kingpins of the gang. ]]> 3.38 2010 Dark Quarry (Mike Angel Mystery #1)
author: David H. Fears
name: Betty
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2011/11/16
date added: 2011/11/20
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:

Burdened by the unsolved murder of his father, a career NYPD lieutenant whose “voice� warns whenever danger is near, 30-year-old Mike Angel is a Korean vet and bored private investigator of insurance fraud. When a wealthy ex-college buddy hires him to tail Joe Ambler, a petty blackmailer, Mike fixates on Kimbra, a stunning beauty who kills the blackmailer. Mike impulsively helps her dispose of the body and finds himself on the wrong side of the law.
Mike discovers the dead man was the grandson of a feared and legendary mob leader, founder of Detroit’s Purple Gang of the 1920s and 30s. The same week, a well-dressed thug comes looking for Ambler, and the wealthy buddy who hired Mike runs off with Kimbra and is murdered in the Bahamas.

Kimbra disappears. While searching for her Mike stumbles across connections to the Russian-Cuban branch of the ring responsible for a string of unsolved murders in three states. The discovery leads to a chain of events and a frame up. Mike is convicted of murder, and is sent to the federal prison at Trenton, where the warden enlists him in a jailbreak with a hardened criminal with ties to the Purple gang.

Mike locates the witness and evidence that will clear him, and discovers the frame and the escape were both setups. After a shootout, a crooked judge yanks Mike’s investigator’s license so he moves to Chicago to follow leads to more remnants of the Purple gang. He sets up an office and is helped by Molly Bennett who becomes his main love interest and a major character in the series, along with Rick Anthony, Mike’s late father’s partner on the NYPD, who becomes Mike’s partner. Mikes struggles with alcohol and commitment to Molly, and is sidetracked his efforts to nail the kingpins of the gang.
]]> <![CDATA[The Swerve: How the World Became Modern]]> 10954979
Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.

The copying and translation of this ancient book—the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age—fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.]]> 356 Stephen Greenblatt 0393064476 Betty 5 3.81 2011 The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
author: Stephen Greenblatt
name: Betty
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2011/11/19
date added: 2011/11/19
shelves: non-fiction, arlington-library, biography-auto
review:
The writings of the 1st C poet and philosopher Lucretius were lost in the middle ages and discovered by a Florentine named Poggio, who was obsessed with early manuscripts. Book shows the influence of Lucretius and the Epicureans on everyone from Machiavelli on. Wonder history of the 15th C church and the papacy.
]]> Happy Accidents: A Memoir 10604115 In the summer of 1974, a fourteen-year-old girl in Dolton, Illinois, had a dream. A dream to become an actress, like her idols Ron Howard and Vicki Lawrence. But it was a long way from the South Side of Chicago to Hollywood, and it didn't help that she'd recently dropped out of the school play, The Ugly Duckling. Or that the Hollywood casting directors she wrote to replied that "professional training was a requirement."

But the funny thing is, it all came true. Through a series of Happy Accidents, Jane Lynch created an improbable and hilarious path to success. In those early years, despite her dreams, she was also consumed with anxiety, feeling out of place in both her body and her family. To deal with her worries about her sexuality, she escaped in positive ways such as joining a high school chorus not unlike the one in Glee but also found destructive outlets. She started drinking almost every night her freshman year of high school and developed a mean and judgmental streak that turned her into a real- life Sue Sylvester.

Then, at thirty-one, she started to get her life together. She was finally able to embrace her sexuality, come out to her parents, and quit drinking for good. Soon after, a Frosted Flakes commercial and a chance meeting in a coffee shop led to a role in the Christopher Guest movie Best in Show, which helped her get cast in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Similar coincidences and chance meetings led to roles in movies starring Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, and even Meryl Streep in 2009's Julie & Julia. Then, of course, came the two lucky accidents that truly changed her life. Getting lost in a hotel led to an introduction to her future wife, Lara. Then, a series she'd signed up for abruptly got canceled, making it possible for her to take the role of Sue Sylvester in Glee, which made her a megastar.

Today, Jane Lynch has finally found the contentment she thought she'd never have. Part comic memoir and part inspirational narrative, this is a book equally for the rabid Glee fan and for anyone who needs a new perspective on life, love, and success.

WITH A FOREWORD BY CAROL BURNETT

Excerpt from Happy Accidents:

If I could go back in time and talk to my twenty-year-old self, the first thing I would say is: "Lose the perm." Secondly I would say: "Relax. Really. Just relax. Don't sweat it."

I can't remember a time when I wasn't anxious and fearful that the parade would pass me by. And I was sure there was someone or something outside of myself with all the answers. I had a driving, anxiety-filled ambition. I wanted to be a working actor so badly. I wanted to belong and feel like I was valued and seen. Well, now I am a working actor, and I guarantee you it's not because I suffered or worried over it.

As I look back, the road to where I am today has been a series of happy accidents I was either smart or stupid enough to take advantage of. I thought I had to have a plan, a strategy. Turns out I just had to be ready and willing to take chances, look at what's right in front of me, and put my heart into everything I do. All that anxiety and fear didn't help, nor did it fuel anything useful. My final piece of advice to twenty-year-old me: Be easy on your sweet self. And don't drink Miller Lite tall boys in the morning.




]]> 304 Jane Lynch 1401341764 Betty 1 3.70 2011 Happy Accidents: A Memoir
author: Jane Lynch
name: Betty
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2011
rating: 1
read at: 2011/11/14
date added: 2011/11/19
shelves: biography-auto, arlington-library
review:
Jane Lynch (Glee) tells of her early days in show business, lesbianism, drinking problems.
]]> The Glory of Green (Green #3) 11069935 owner is settling down with one of their own.However, the beloved small-town journalist is about to be blown away-by tragedy and by the grace that enfolds her in her third year in Green, Louisiana.]]> 260 Judy Christie 1426727437 Betty 4 kindle
Life is full of possibilities, and the community of Green is tickled pink that their newspaper owner is settling down with one of their own.

However, the beloved small-town journalist is about to be blown away—by tragedy and by the grace that enfolds her in her third year in Green, Louisiana.

Big tornado interrupts the wedding and blows away her home. ]]> 4.02 2011 The Glory of Green (Green #3)
author: Judy Christie
name: Betty
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/03
date added: 2011/10/28
shelves: kindle
review:
With wedding plans well underway, Lois Barker plots to gracefully get rid of her groom’s catfish collection—stuffed, ceramic, woven. Her husband-to-be, Chris, on the other hand, has decided to get rid of something else: his homestead, which he gives to a needy Mexican family at church.

Life is full of possibilities, and the community of Green is tickled pink that their newspaper owner is settling down with one of their own.

However, the beloved small-town journalist is about to be blown away—by tragedy and by the grace that enfolds her in her third year in Green, Louisiana.

Big tornado interrupts the wedding and blows away her home.
]]> <![CDATA[A Brisket, a Casket (A Deadly Deli Mystery, #1)]]> 10781586 Murder's on the menu in this savory debut.Gwen (nee Katz) Silver heard the brisket at her uncle's Jewish deli, Murray the Pastrami Swami--the only one of its kind in Nashville, Tennessee--was "to die for." But she didn't realize that meant literally. . .When Gwen learns she's inherited Murray's, the native New Yorker leaves her chaotic career and messy divorce behind to start over in Nashville. But the venture seems doomed from the start. Murray's taken his recipes and secret list of food suppliers to the grave with him, and ruthless real estate developer Royce Sinclair will stop at nothing to try and sandwich Murray's into his already overstuffed portfolio. Then, on Kosher Karaoke Night, longtime customer Buster Sergeant bites into his brisket. . .and bites the dust. The coroner says food poisoning, but Gwen's not convinced. Now, with the help of hunky police detective Beau McClintock, "Nashville Katz"--as Gwen is quickly nicknamed--will find herself adding "private investigator" to her resume--and a new love to her life.A native of Brooklyn, New York, Delia Rosen is the author of A Brisket, A Casket and One Foot in the Gravy. She now lives in Maine. She spends her time between writing and searching for good bagels.]]> 273 Delia Rosen 0758262809 Betty 3 mystery, kindle Gwen (nee Katz) Silver heard the brisket at her uncle’s Jewish deli, Murray the Pastrami Swami—the only one of its kind in Nashville, Tennessee—was “to die for.� But she didn’t realize that meant literally�

When Gwen learns she’s inherited Murray’s, the native New Yorker leaves her chaotic career and messy divorce behind to start over in Nashville. But the venture seems doomed from the start. Murray’s taken his recipes and secret list of food suppliers to the grave with him, and ruthless real estate developer Royce Sinclair will stop at nothing to try and sandwich Murray’s into his already overstuffed portfolio. Then, on Kosher Karaoke Night, longtime customer Buster Sergeant bites into his brisket…and bites the dust. The coroner says food poisoning, but Gwen’s not convinced. Now, with the help of hunky police detective Beau McClintock, “Nashville Katz”—as Gwen is quickly nicknamed—will find herself adding “private investigator� to her resume—and a new love to her life. ]]> 3.47 2010 A Brisket, a Casket (A Deadly Deli Mystery, #1)
author: Delia Rosen
name: Betty
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2011/10/08
date added: 2011/10/28
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:

Gwen (nee Katz) Silver heard the brisket at her uncle’s Jewish deli, Murray the Pastrami Swami—the only one of its kind in Nashville, Tennessee—was “to die for.� But she didn’t realize that meant literally�

When Gwen learns she’s inherited Murray’s, the native New Yorker leaves her chaotic career and messy divorce behind to start over in Nashville. But the venture seems doomed from the start. Murray’s taken his recipes and secret list of food suppliers to the grave with him, and ruthless real estate developer Royce Sinclair will stop at nothing to try and sandwich Murray’s into his already overstuffed portfolio. Then, on Kosher Karaoke Night, longtime customer Buster Sergeant bites into his brisket…and bites the dust. The coroner says food poisoning, but Gwen’s not convinced. Now, with the help of hunky police detective Beau McClintock, “Nashville Katz”—as Gwen is quickly nicknamed—will find herself adding “private investigator� to her resume—and a new love to her life.
]]> Walking on Broken Glass 10202426 354 Christa Allan 1426710429 Betty 4 kindle
If this sound like a heavy, mirthless book, it's not. Yes, it's a serious subject. And as Leah travels closer to sobriety and further from her alcohol induced fog, her emotions become raw and exposed. You're going to feel her pain. But you're also going to enjoy her sassy sense of humor, even as she's struggling with the creation of her new, addiction-free life. You may even laugh out loud.

Walking on Broken Glass is a stunning debut novel you won't want to miss. Author Christa Allan takes an honest look at life in rehab and the aftermath. Kudos to her for showing us not only the challenges of Leah, but of the family surrounding her. There is no easy ending in this story. In fact, it ends with a new question that's left unanswered. This is the only part of the book that bothered me, because I'm the type that likes experience how the story ends. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized it was probably the most realistic ending. Because life rarely ties up all the questions in a neat little bow.
]]> 3.53 2009 Walking on Broken Glass
author: Christa Allan
name: Betty
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/12
date added: 2011/10/28
shelves: kindle
review:
Leah Thornton drinks to numb herself against a life that's too painful to feel. She doesn't acknowledge how serious her problem is until her best friend has the guts to confront her with it. Leah's husband, Carl, is living in an alternate reality of his own. He thinks she's overreacting when she says she's checking herself into rehab. But Leah's determined to follow through, and Carl reluctantly goes along with it.

If this sound like a heavy, mirthless book, it's not. Yes, it's a serious subject. And as Leah travels closer to sobriety and further from her alcohol induced fog, her emotions become raw and exposed. You're going to feel her pain. But you're also going to enjoy her sassy sense of humor, even as she's struggling with the creation of her new, addiction-free life. You may even laugh out loud.

Walking on Broken Glass is a stunning debut novel you won't want to miss. Author Christa Allan takes an honest look at life in rehab and the aftermath. Kudos to her for showing us not only the challenges of Leah, but of the family surrounding her. There is no easy ending in this story. In fact, it ends with a new question that's left unanswered. This is the only part of the book that bothered me, because I'm the type that likes experience how the story ends. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized it was probably the most realistic ending. Because life rarely ties up all the questions in a neat little bow.

]]> <![CDATA[Charlie Woodchuck is a Minor Niner (Snowy Cove, #1)]]> 12856939
Just when she thinks the first week of high school can’t get any more weird, Charlie discovers she may be adopted. According to her Science textbook, her eyes should be blue, not brown.

Now the girl with the boy’s name will have to use her detective skills to uncover the mystery of her identity. She'll need the help of best friend Stacy, expert blackmailer, and new friend Ross, expert class clown.

Before the year ends, Charlie will face down the biggest bullies of the all-powerful members of Snowy Cove’s School Board. The Board doesn't like what Charlie's been up to, and they're all out of doughnuts.]]> 175 Dalya Moon Betty 4 kindle
Just when she thinks the first week of high school can't get any more weird, Charlie discovers she may be adopted. According to the genetics section in her Science textbook, her eyes should be blue, not brown.

Before she graduates from the ninth grade, the girl with the boy's name and the wrong eye color will employ her detective skills to discover her true identity. She'll use power tools to build fantastical wood creations, and before the year ends, she'll face down the biggest bullies of all: the all-powerful members of Snowy Cove's School Board, which doesn't want girls to take shop.]]> 3.33 2011 Charlie Woodchuck is a Minor Niner (Snowy Cove, #1)
author: Dalya Moon
name: Betty
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/15
date added: 2011/10/28
shelves: kindle
review:
Charlie Woodchuck is the most minor of niners. She's the youngest girl at Snowy Cove High School, and so clueless, she wore leg warmers and acid-wash jeans on her first day. Big mistake! Almost as big a mistake as signing up for a boys-only shop class.

Just when she thinks the first week of high school can't get any more weird, Charlie discovers she may be adopted. According to the genetics section in her Science textbook, her eyes should be blue, not brown.

Before she graduates from the ninth grade, the girl with the boy's name and the wrong eye color will employ her detective skills to discover her true identity. She'll use power tools to build fantastical wood creations, and before the year ends, she'll face down the biggest bullies of all: the all-powerful members of Snowy Cove's School Board, which doesn't want girls to take shop.
]]> <![CDATA[The Traitor's Wife: A Novel of the Reign of Edward II]]> 8410455 The Traitor's Wife, Susan Higginbotham.

From the bedchamber to the battlefield, through treachery and fidelity, one woman is
imprisoned by the secrets of the crown.


It is an age where passion reigns and treachery runs as thick as blood. Young Eleanor has two men in her life: her uncle King Edward II, and her husband Hugh le Despenser, a mere knight but the newfound favorite of the king. She has no desire to meddle in royal affairs�she wishes for a serene, simple life with her family. But as political unrest sweeps the land, Eleanor, sharply intelligent yet blindly naïve, becomes the only woman each man can trust.


Fiercely devoted to both her husband and her king, Eleanor holds the secret that could destroy all of England�and discovers the choices no woman should have to make.


At its heart, The Traitor's Wife is a unique love story that every reader will connect with.


Gold Medalist, historical / military fiction, 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards � Includes bonus reading group guide


***



PRAISE FOR THE TRAITOR'S WIFE:


"Conveys emotions and relationships quite poignantly... entertaining historical fiction."

Kirkus Discoveries


"Higginbotham's talents lie not only in her capacity for detailed genealogical research of the period, but also in her skill in bringing these historical figures to life with passion, a wonderful sense of humor, honor, and love."

Historical Novels Review Online


"Higginbotham has stirred to life a girl who is naive and passionate, impulsive and loyal... an endearing, involving story, made so by the unconventional characters of Eleanor and Edward."

Reviewer's Choice


"Higginbotham makes history come alive... The Traitor's Wife is a tale of intrigue, betrayal, loyalty, and passion."

BookPleasures


"All the ingredients for a great tale: [love], treason, war, and murder. Couple this with Higginbotham's clear passion and knack for accuracy, and this book is a can't miss... this novel was a joy to read."

Read and Review

"Higginbotham makes history come alive…The Traitor's Wife is a tale of intrigue, betrayal, loyalty, and passion."

Book Pleasures


"Beautifully researched and incredibly captivating, The Traitor's Wife is a book you won't want to put down. Susan Higginbotham's vivid portrayal of life during Edward II's tumultuous reign makes for fascinating reading. Highly recommended!"

Michelle Moran, bestselling author of The Heretic Queen

]]> 514 Susan Higginbotham Betty 4 historical-fiction, kindle But loyalty has its price…After Edward's first lover is killed, he becomes enamoredd of Hugh.

Moving from royal palaces to prison cells, from the battlefield to the bedchamber, between hope and despair, treachery and fidelity, hatred and abiding love, The Traitor’s Wife is a tale of an extraordinary woman living in extraordinary times.
]]> 3.84 2005 The Traitor's Wife: A Novel of the Reign of Edward II
author: Susan Higginbotham
name: Betty
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/22
date added: 2011/10/28
shelves: historical-fiction, kindle
review:
In fourteenth-century England, young Eleanor de Clare, favorite niece of King Edward II, whose gay relationship causes much trouble in the kingdom, is delighted with her marriage to Hugh le Despenser and her appointment to Queen Isabella’s household as a lady-in-waiting. 
It soon becomes apparent, however, that Eleanor’s beloved uncle is not the king the nobles of the land—or his queen—expected. Hugh’s unbridled ambition and his intimate relationship with Edward arouse widespread resentment, even as Eleanor remains fiercely loyal to her husband and to her king.
But loyalty has its price…After Edward's first lover is killed, he becomes enamoredd of Hugh.

Moving from royal palaces to prison cells, from the battlefield to the bedchamber, between hope and despair, treachery and fidelity, hatred and abiding love, The Traitor’s Wife is a tale of an extraordinary woman living in extraordinary times.

]]> The Clicking of Cuthbert 11647958 220 P.G. Wodehouse Betty 4 funny, kindle
The Oldest Member of the club sums up all aspects of golf in the most wonderful language , such as the following description of weekend golfers ‘Like all Saturday foursomes, it is in difficulties. One of the patients is zigzagging about the fairway like a liner pursued by submarines. Two others seem to be digging for buried treasure or killing snakes. The remaining cripple, who has just foozled a mashie-shot, is blaming his caddie.�
]]> 4.07 1922 The Clicking of Cuthbert
author: P.G. Wodehouse
name: Betty
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1922
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/13
date added: 2011/10/28
shelves: funny, kindle
review:
However I was mistaken to be suspicious, these stories mixing the trials and tribulations of golf with the golfer’s attempts to succeed in love or other worthwhile pursuits really are a triumph.

The Oldest Member of the club sums up all aspects of golf in the most wonderful language , such as the following description of weekend golfers ‘Like all Saturday foursomes, it is in difficulties. One of the patients is zigzagging about the fairway like a liner pursued by submarines. Two others seem to be digging for buried treasure or killing snakes. The remaining cripple, who has just foozled a mashie-shot, is blaming his caddie.�

]]> The Perfect Plan 11814805 35 Ty Hutchinson Betty 3 3.24 2011 The Perfect Plan
author: Ty Hutchinson
name: Betty
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/10/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bootscootin' Blahniks (The Bootscootin' Books #1)]]> 9056848 301 D.D. Scott Betty 3 funny, kindle 3.57 2010 Bootscootin' Blahniks (The Bootscootin' Books #1)
author: D.D. Scott
name: Betty
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2011/10/25
date added: 2011/10/28
shelves: funny, kindle
review:
Manhattan apparel designer Roxy Rae Vaughn, who's also a still-in-the-closet, country line dancing queen, wants to be a fashion success story. Tired of being nothing more than a Fifth Avenue up-and-comer, thanks to her elitist parents, Roxy moves to Nashville, Tennessee and opens a boutique in a local tractor supply store, the only retail space she can afford. Short on cash and way, way down on luck, she rear-ends a pick-up truck belonging to a tomato-growin', bootscootin' cowboy who is anything but the perfect fit for her career plans, although he is her ideal dance partner. Can Roxy accept that her best fit is on the dance floor moving to her own style and her cowboy's lead?Tomato farmer by day and bootscootin' instructor by night Zayne McDonald doesn't give a damn about winning Nashville's heirloom tomato contest, even though his late father did. Zayne wants to honor his father, but what he really wants is to line dance his way to a winner's spotlight. When he and Roxy are discovered by a huge dance show producer, Zayne learns it's partnering with Roxy that's his winning hybrid mix. That is, if he can keep her and the tomato contest away from Beefsteak Jack Baudlin, the toughest tomato man in CMT country.
]]> The Dead Saint 11464057 480 Marilyn Brown Oden 1426727305 Betty 4 mystery, kindle
When a medal the player wore—a medal Lynn had promised to return to the man's family—disappears, Lynn is thrust into a suspenseful and fast-moving journey through four assassinations, an attempt on her life, conflicts with a mysterious and ancient society, and a behind-the-scenes conspiracy that reaches all the way to the White House.

The turbulent, unstoppable intrigue challenges Lynn mentally, physically, and spiritually as she engages in a desperate battle with an opponent who is just as determined to kill as Lynn is to stop him even though she has no idea where—or who—he will strike next.


The Bishop and her husband travel to Europe--Bosnia, I think, to find the secret behind a top-level administration official who is undermining the presidency. She's gotten a secret message from the President, but her contact is killed before he can act on it, so she has to.]]> 3.56 2010 The Dead Saint
author: Marilyn Brown Oden
name: Betty
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/16
date added: 2011/10/28
shelves: mystery, kindle
review:
It begins with a single gunshot, and Bishop Lynn Peterson watches in horror as a good friend, who is a member of the New Orleans Saints, collapses on the street.

When a medal the player wore—a medal Lynn had promised to return to the man's family—disappears, Lynn is thrust into a suspenseful and fast-moving journey through four assassinations, an attempt on her life, conflicts with a mysterious and ancient society, and a behind-the-scenes conspiracy that reaches all the way to the White House.

The turbulent, unstoppable intrigue challenges Lynn mentally, physically, and spiritually as she engages in a desperate battle with an opponent who is just as determined to kill as Lynn is to stop him even though she has no idea where—or who—he will strike next.


The Bishop and her husband travel to Europe--Bosnia, I think, to find the secret behind a top-level administration official who is undermining the presidency. She's gotten a secret message from the President, but her contact is killed before he can act on it, so she has to.
]]> <![CDATA[My Lunatic Life (Lunatic Life, #1)]]> 12466577 158 Sharon Sala 1611940389 Betty 4 kindle, mystery
When the book starts, she and Uncle Pat have moved again and she is starting her senior year of high school. She starts out with her usual routine of trying to blend in and not draw attention to herself, but when the cheerleaders demand that she move from the table she is sitting at (THEIR table), she decides enough is enough! It's her last year and she's not just gonna take it any more! She stands up to them and is immediately put on their hit list. Instead of hiding her talent, she starts using it, sometimes to help people (a teacher who doesn't know her babysitter is stealing money from her, and a boy who is having a seizure in one of the boy's bathrooms), and sometimes just to get people off her back and out of her face (usually the aforementioned cheerleaders!). When the head cheerleader, Bethany, is kidnapped, Tara starts getting psychic flashes that only last moments where she sees what Bethany sees and feels what Bethany feels.
]]> 3.89 2011 My Lunatic Life (Lunatic Life, #1)
author: Sharon Sala
name: Betty
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/19
date added: 2011/10/28
shelves: kindle, mystery
review:
Tara Luna leads a very unusual life. First, she is being raised by her Uncle Pat, who is a displaced hippie who moves her from place to place, never staying for very long. He has been raising her since she was a baby, when her parents died in a car accident. Second, her two best friends are Milllicent and Henry, ghosts who have been with her for as long as she can remember. Third, she's psychic, although she has tried very hard to hide it from everyone. When she was younger she used to try to tell her Uncle Pat about her visions and her "friends", but he told her not to talk about, that he didn't believe in that stuff at all. She learned that it's hard enough always being the new girl without everyone thinking she was crazy to boot.

When the book starts, she and Uncle Pat have moved again and she is starting her senior year of high school. She starts out with her usual routine of trying to blend in and not draw attention to herself, but when the cheerleaders demand that she move from the table she is sitting at (THEIR table), she decides enough is enough! It's her last year and she's not just gonna take it any more! She stands up to them and is immediately put on their hit list. Instead of hiding her talent, she starts using it, sometimes to help people (a teacher who doesn't know her babysitter is stealing money from her, and a boy who is having a seizure in one of the boy's bathrooms), and sometimes just to get people off her back and out of her face (usually the aforementioned cheerleaders!). When the head cheerleader, Bethany, is kidnapped, Tara starts getting psychic flashes that only last moments where she sees what Bethany sees and feels what Bethany feels.

]]> Waterfall (River of Time) 12387898 0 Lisa Tawn Bergren 1609812603 Betty 1 romance 3.53 2011 Waterfall (River of Time)
author: Lisa Tawn Bergren
name: Betty
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2011
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2011/10/21
shelves: romance
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cecilia; a story of modern Rome]]> 9495418 440 F. Marion Crawford 1177877554 Betty 4 kindle 4.00 1902 Cecilia; a story of modern Rome
author: F. Marion Crawford
name: Betty
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1902
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/13
date added: 2011/10/13
shelves: kindle
review:
Wealthy young girl in Rome in 1902 is a reincarnated Vestal Virgin. She's very attracted to the best friend of her fiance. BF is a man reincarnated from an early Christian with whom the VV had been in love.
]]> <![CDATA[Murder Most Persuasive (An Elizabeth Parker Mystery, #3)]]> 10780409
This grisly discovery not only unearths old questions about what really happened to the stolen money, but it brings Detective Joe Muldoon back into the family’s lives. Eight years ago Elizabeth’s cousin Ann reluctantly broke off her relationship with Joe due to family pressure. Ann always regretted that decisionand now fears that it is too late for her and Joe–especially after she becomes the main suspect.

In this clever and entertaining mystery, rich with echoes ofJane Austen’s Persuasion, Elizabeth tries to match wits against a killer who’s had an eight-year head start as she also tries her hand at matchmaking. Mystery lovers are in for a treat.]]> 304 Tracy Kiely 0312699417 Betty 4
The book is written from the point of view of Elizabeth Parker, Martin's niece. Elizabeth is very, very fond of Jane Austen. She and her Aunt Winnie (Martin's sister) are given to inserting quotes from the Austen oeuvre into their daily conversation. Elizabeth also has a reputation in the family as a detective, having "assisted" the police on two earlier murder investigations involving the family.

The detective assigned to the case is Joe Muldoon, who happened to be involved with Martin's other daughter Ann, years earlier. Their relationship was quashed by Ann's aunt Laura, who thought that Joe wasn't good enough for her niece.

This nod to Austen's Persuasion, which one might expect to be awkward or heavy-handed, is actually quite seamless and slips into the plot quite comfortably. Also, the idea of a young woman being discouraged from marrying a man she loves because of his "prospects" is not at all far-fetched in conjunction with a high-society family from the East Coast.

Like Austen, Kiely is snarkily funny. Her Elizabeth is underemployed and has little on which to use her intellect and wit, and so interferes in police investigations and mocks whenever she can. ]]> 3.69 2011 Murder Most Persuasive (An Elizabeth Parker Mystery, #3)
author: Tracy Kiely
name: Betty
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/13
date added: 2011/10/13
shelves: arlington-library, funny, mystery
review:
Martin Reynolds sold his vacation home in Maryland shortly before he died, with the proceeds to be divided between his three children. When the new owners begin renovations, they find a body buried underneath the pool, which turns out have been the former fiancé of Martin's daughter Reggie. Michael Barrow had disappeared the day after Reggie broke off their engagement, along with a million dollars from the Reynold's family business, where he worked. It was assumed that he'd absconded with the money upon realizing that he'd no longer have a job.

The book is written from the point of view of Elizabeth Parker, Martin's niece. Elizabeth is very, very fond of Jane Austen. She and her Aunt Winnie (Martin's sister) are given to inserting quotes from the Austen oeuvre into their daily conversation. Elizabeth also has a reputation in the family as a detective, having "assisted" the police on two earlier murder investigations involving the family.

The detective assigned to the case is Joe Muldoon, who happened to be involved with Martin's other daughter Ann, years earlier. Their relationship was quashed by Ann's aunt Laura, who thought that Joe wasn't good enough for her niece.

This nod to Austen's Persuasion, which one might expect to be awkward or heavy-handed, is actually quite seamless and slips into the plot quite comfortably. Also, the idea of a young woman being discouraged from marrying a man she loves because of his "prospects" is not at all far-fetched in conjunction with a high-society family from the East Coast.

Like Austen, Kiely is snarkily funny. Her Elizabeth is underemployed and has little on which to use her intellect and wit, and so interferes in police investigations and mocks whenever she can.
]]> The Heart Of Rome 8436469 272 F. Marion Crawford 141916564X Betty 5 kindle ]]> 4.12 1903 The Heart Of Rome
author: F. Marion Crawford
name: Betty
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1903
rating: 5
read at: 2011/10/05
date added: 2011/10/05
shelves: kindle
review:
Historical novel set in 18thC Rome. The family of the heroine is suddenly impoverished--her selfish mother leaves her with a social-climbing woman who's married to Baron Volterra--the man mainly responsible for the fall of the Conti family. An architect (Malipieri) moves into the the Conti palace to search for lost treasure. When he falls in love with Sabina, the young heroine, she goes with him to see the treasure and they are trapped by "lost water." She spends the night in his room and her reputation is ruined. He married when young to save the reputation of the lover of his dead friend and has never lived with his wife, who saves the day when she comes to Rome and suggests that they go to Switzerland to get a divorce.

]]> <![CDATA[Half-Price Homicide (Dead-End Job Mystery, #9)]]> 7248431
At Snapdragon, a high-end designer consignment shop, Helen is at the beck and call of snobby- yet frugal-customers. That alone is a deadly combination, especially with Chrissy, a drool-worthy fashionista who walks in with a purse to sell, and ends up screaming at her husband and another customer.

Helen is used to dealing with snobby women, controlling husbands, and fashionable politicians. But she's about to have to handle a brand new type of unsatisfied customer-a murderer. Chrissy is found dead in Snapdragon's dressing room, with the hand-painted scarf Helen was just holding tied around her neck. And Helen goes from being low on society's totem pole to high on the police's suspect list.]]> 272 Elaine Viets 0451229894 Betty 3 mystery, arlington-library
Meanwhile she works at Snapdragon, a high class consignment shop. One of the repeat customers Chrissy comes in with a purse to sell, but her husband follows her to the shop. They end up in a shouting match; broken up by the store owner. Chrissy enters a dressing room to try on a dress. When the proprietor enters to see how it looks on her, Chrissy is dead. Helen knows the woman was murdered as there is blood on a décor pineapple. When she returns from St. Louis, she is shocked that her employer has lost so many customers and considers closing the shop. With Phil's help, Helen investigates the homicide hoping to find the killer and keep the store open.

The Dead-End Job mysteries (see Killer Cuts) are always fun to read due to the heroine but Half-Price Homicide is especially a delight as long story arcs are completed and new ones begin; making this a must for series fans. Meanwhile Rob tries to blackmail his ex wife, but she refuses knowing she will return to St. Louis to end the legal travesty. Her time in Missouri is interesting while her sleuthing in Florida is clever as both subplots blend together smoothly in a fascinating major move forward for Helen. ]]> 3.73 2010 Half-Price Homicide (Dead-End Job Mystery, #9)
author: Elaine Viets
name: Betty
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2011/09/27
date added: 2011/09/30
shelves: mystery, arlington-library
review:
When the judge awarded Rob half his wife's earnings for life, Helen Hawthorne refuses to pay this outrageous alimony. She leaves her affluent home in St. Louis and goes on the run until she reaches Fort Lauderdale where she works at a series of dead end jobs. Helen also meets her fiancé private investigator Phil at the apartment complex they both live in. Phil wants to marry her, but before they can Helen must return to St. Louis to fix her legal and financial liabilities.

Meanwhile she works at Snapdragon, a high class consignment shop. One of the repeat customers Chrissy comes in with a purse to sell, but her husband follows her to the shop. They end up in a shouting match; broken up by the store owner. Chrissy enters a dressing room to try on a dress. When the proprietor enters to see how it looks on her, Chrissy is dead. Helen knows the woman was murdered as there is blood on a décor pineapple. When she returns from St. Louis, she is shocked that her employer has lost so many customers and considers closing the shop. With Phil's help, Helen investigates the homicide hoping to find the killer and keep the store open.

The Dead-End Job mysteries (see Killer Cuts) are always fun to read due to the heroine but Half-Price Homicide is especially a delight as long story arcs are completed and new ones begin; making this a must for series fans. Meanwhile Rob tries to blackmail his ex wife, but she refuses knowing she will return to St. Louis to end the legal travesty. Her time in Missouri is interesting while her sleuthing in Florida is clever as both subplots blend together smoothly in a fascinating major move forward for Helen.
]]> <![CDATA[Murder at Longbourn (An Elizabeth Parker Mystery, #1)]]> 6601157

A die-hard fan of Jane Austen novels and the traditional English mystery,Tracy Kielyhas combined elements of both for this truly delightful and witty debut.

Planning New Year’s resolutions to rid her life of all things unhealthy, Elizabeth Parker has dumped fatty foods, processed sugar, and her two-timing boyfriend. Indeed, the invitation to join her Aunt Winnie foraHow to Host a Murder Party on New Year’s Eve at Winnie’s new Cape Cod B and B comes just in time.But when the local wealthy miser ends up the unscripted victim, Elizabeth must unearth old secrets and new motives in order to clear her beloved aunt of suspicion. The suspects include the town gossip, a haughty rich woman, and an antiques business owner much enamored of his benefactress, a Mrs. Kristell Dubois. If that isn’t bad enough, Elizabeth must also contend with her childhood nemesis, Peter McGowan---a man she suspects has only matured in chronological years---and her suspicions about his family’s interest in Winnie’s inn.

Yesterday, her only worry was of ever finding her Mr. Darcy. Now she has a murder to solve. Is it any wonder her resolution to achieve inner poise is in tatters?

By reimagining characters and themes lifted from the treasured classic Pride and Prejudice, and crafting an expert, intricate mystery, Tracy Kiely has brought to life something very special: a new cozy series that is clever, vibrant, and utterly disarming.

]]> 320 Tracy Kiely 0312537565 Betty 5
Winnifred Reynolds is eccentric, unconventional, and wealthy. She has an affinity for Jane Austen, drives like a maniac, and is a delightfully quirky character. The other guest attending this murder dinner party are just as colorful and uniquely defined. Henry and Joan Anderson are middle-aged antique business owners, who are grateful recipients of patronage from the esteemed Mrs. Kristell Dubois. Gerald Ramsey, a wealthy and unfriendly man, shows up with an unpleasant and acrimonious disposition. Daniel Simms, originally from England, is extremely attractive and aggressively pursues Elizabeth (to her delight), but is rumored to be having and affair with Lauren Ramsey, Gerald's younger wife. Polly, Gerald's daughter from a previous marriage, appears to be sullen and reserved, how does she live with such a controlling and disagreeable father? Wealthy and widowed Linnet Westin is new to the neighborhood and has invited her high school friend Jackie Tanner to come live with her as a companion. Jackie Tanner is well-known for her gaudy and over-sized hats and her penchant for sharing the latest gossip.

Soon the acting troupe arrives for the Murder Mystery and everything seems to be underway for a pleasant evening full of suspense and intrigue until the lights go out and the wrong person is found lying dead... Instead of finding one of the actors "dead" after the lights are turned back on, they find one of the dinner guests' lifeless form on the carpet. When the police determine that the murderer is a guest at the dinner party everyone becomes a suspect. The tension escalates when the police ascertain that Aunt Winnie has the strongest motive for murder and peg her as their prime suspect. Elizabeth, determined to clear her aunt's name, takes it upon herself to find the true culprit. Alas, Elizabeth is no Nancy Drew and clumsily and comically bungles up the investigation for the police department and she begrudgingly accepts assistance from Peter. ]]> 3.55 2009 Murder at Longbourn (An Elizabeth Parker Mystery, #1)
author: Tracy Kiely
name: Betty
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/01/01
date added: 2011/09/30
shelves: arlington-library, mystery, funny
review:
Elizabeth Parker is not enthusiastically looking forward to bringing in the New Year. She was just dumped by her two-timing boyfriend, is on her way to Cape Cod to help her Aunt Winny host a Murder Mystery Dinner Party, and she has just discovered that she will be spending the weekend with her childhood nemesis, Peter McGowan. Elizabeth, recollecting how Peter McGowan tortured and tormented her when they were children, seriously doubts that he has lost his immature and mischievous ways in the last fifteen years. The only thing Elizabeth has to look forward to this weekend is spending time with her Aunt Winny at her charming new bed-and-breakfast, The Inn at Longbourn.

Winnifred Reynolds is eccentric, unconventional, and wealthy. She has an affinity for Jane Austen, drives like a maniac, and is a delightfully quirky character. The other guest attending this murder dinner party are just as colorful and uniquely defined. Henry and Joan Anderson are middle-aged antique business owners, who are grateful recipients of patronage from the esteemed Mrs. Kristell Dubois. Gerald Ramsey, a wealthy and unfriendly man, shows up with an unpleasant and acrimonious disposition. Daniel Simms, originally from England, is extremely attractive and aggressively pursues Elizabeth (to her delight), but is rumored to be having and affair with Lauren Ramsey, Gerald's younger wife. Polly, Gerald's daughter from a previous marriage, appears to be sullen and reserved, how does she live with such a controlling and disagreeable father? Wealthy and widowed Linnet Westin is new to the neighborhood and has invited her high school friend Jackie Tanner to come live with her as a companion. Jackie Tanner is well-known for her gaudy and over-sized hats and her penchant for sharing the latest gossip.

Soon the acting troupe arrives for the Murder Mystery and everything seems to be underway for a pleasant evening full of suspense and intrigue until the lights go out and the wrong person is found lying dead... Instead of finding one of the actors "dead" after the lights are turned back on, they find one of the dinner guests' lifeless form on the carpet. When the police determine that the murderer is a guest at the dinner party everyone becomes a suspect. The tension escalates when the police ascertain that Aunt Winnie has the strongest motive for murder and peg her as their prime suspect. Elizabeth, determined to clear her aunt's name, takes it upon herself to find the true culprit. Alas, Elizabeth is no Nancy Drew and clumsily and comically bungles up the investigation for the police department and she begrudgingly accepts assistance from Peter.
]]>