Karen’s Blog

Faithless by Karin Slaughter


If Karin Slaughter had been born into a family with a different name, do you think she’d still be writing suspense novels? Just wondering … I mean, would you pick up a cookbook by someone with that last name? I bet it would give you pause …The book titled Faithless is one of hers I read when I picked it up at the BEA in 2005. I recently found it again in a box, and it was a good book. It was a mystery that wasn’t entirely predictable, which is always a good thing. The main characters are a small-town Georgia pediatrician/coroner, her family, her policeman ex-and-future husband (they’re divorced but reconciling) and his detective subordinate, Lena. Nearly everyone in the story has a complicated back-story, and that includes the murder victim at the heart of the story. She was a member of a very religious family that runs a communal farm in the adjacent county, which also brings in employees from among the homeless in Atlanta, with varying successes.This is not a story for the innocent or naive, it includes characters dealing with abortion, brutally abusive relationships, graphic violence, infidelity, and religious issues, good and bad, among other less prickly matters. But you do get a feel for the people involved, and few of them completely fit the stereotype to which they are initially assigned.

I found it a quick read, but a good, absorbing one, and because I also run a pet website Pet of the Day.com I have to say the pediatricians two rescue greyhounds do also figure into the story, but more of in a comic-relief sort of role. The book is not all dark and serious, it does have some light-hearted moments, and all in all is a good, satisfying read. I recommend it to anyone who likes a good mystery, but isn’t too squeamish about just about anything.

I realize that in yesterday’s post, I told you I have only shut three books that freaked me out. Each time I eventually finished the book, but I figure I should tell you what three books they were.

Book one: The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

When I was a child, I always wanted a pet rabbit. I got little stuffed animal bunnies every year for Easter, but Dad said I had to wait until I owned my own house before I could have a pet bunny. (Which I now have.) So when I read the classic children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, and it got to the part where they were going to burn up the beloved stuffed bunny because it had been exposed to the child’s illness, just like the bedclothes, I slammed the book shut. I had been reading it at the school library, so I just left it there. I didn’t finish it until I was 20 years old, and took care of a little girl in exchange for a place to stay. She checked it out of the library, and I had to read it to her. Well, with big hazel eyes hanging on my every word I had to keep going, and imagine my relief when the bunny gets to be real! Whew! 

Book two: The Books of Blood: Book 1 by Clive Barker

I have been a horror and science fiction fan since I can remember, so picked up this book from the “New Releases” section of the Newton Library. I don’t remember precisely the story - it’s a collection of short stories - that made me slam the book shut, but I clearly remember thinking Do the librarians KNOW what is in this book they put on their shelves? Still, the stories were good, if completely gross in parts, and I had checked it out, so finished the book so I could return it to the library. And I have read everything of his I could find since then, and even met him at a BEA signing, and he was a perfectly nice person. Of course then he was signing Abarat, a far nicer story!  

Book three: Misery by Stephen King

 Okay, you’ve probably all seen the movie, but have you all read the book? Like all King’s books that make it to movie form, things get changed. I have never seen the movie, but I have seen snippets enough to now that, in the movie version, she takes a sledge hammer to the author’s leg or legs, so he cannot leave her. But in the book, it’s an axe. I physically jumped when the axe severed his lower leg, slammed the book shut and left the room, horrified. An hour or so later, I picked the book back up, and finished it, but that was the first and last time a book made me jump.

Any books ever freaked you out?

Blackbox by Nick Walker

This was a strange little book. Very different than anything I’ve read, but also the ending, which I should have caught on to earlier, made me think ewww, ick! Mind you, horror doesn’t usually gross me out, and only three books of the literally thousands I have read in my life have ever made me shut them because I was a little freaked out. Yes, I did then open them again, and continue, but each gave me pause. This one would have too, had I caught on earlier.

The title refers to the “black box” - although it is actually orange - we always hear about investigators searching for in airline disasters. The story is set around several characters, all involved or somehow connected to aviation - an ex-stewardess, pilot, air-traffic controller, people afraid of flying trying to get help, therapists (or a fake therapist) trying to deal with the anxieties and phobias … The story is set in 840 chapters, so many are very brief. It is an engaging novel to read, especially as it keeps shifting voices, characters and perspectives, and I was curious as to how it all would fit together eventually.

Even as I read it, this story seemed to play out like a movie in my head, and I could easily picture it being made into one … Then I reached the ending, and was horrified at the thought of it ever being filmed. Read it if you want, particularly if air travel fascinates, delights or scares you, but don’t say I didn’t warn you …

Sold by Patricia McCormick

A compelling cover, with the dark eyes of a young girl staring out from behind her scarf, and I was interested. The book is being marketed by Hyperion Teens, but I didn’t know that when I started to read. Slavery still exists in the modern world.


Sold is the story of a 13-year-old Nepalese girl, Lakshmi. It starts with her simple life on the slopes of the “swallow-tailed mountain” that is her home. She lives with her mother, stepfather and baby brother, and her beloved baby Goat, Tali, who is a friend as well as a pet, and even goes to school with her. They are poor, and the disabled stepfather’s gambling uses every bit of the family’s meager earnings. Though their lives are not a very happy, she and her mother live with hope.


But when drought, then floods destroy their crops, Lakshmi is told she is being sent to work as a maid in the city. So begins her terrible journey, as she has actually, as the title tells you, been sold. In her case, she is sold to a brothel, and the story tells the nightmare so many real girls live.


The book is a quick read, but quite compelling. It manages to tell of the horrors Lakshmi faces without getting so graphic as to get it banned from certain libraries or bookstores. The characters feel genuine, tragically so, and the Author’s Note at the end tells the real and terrible facts of present-day slavery and the sex trade.


A great book, small in size, but powerful in impact. I recommend it to anyone, at least anyone with a heart.