So, I know I said yesterday’s book was a “thriller” but really had more to it than that. Well, this book is a “mystery” that is just the opposite. There are no lingering questions, nothing disturbing, just a simple mystery book, like many others. It’s “A Regan Reilly Mystery,” so I guess it’s just one in a line of them, and it is a pleasant diversion, just a little break from reality. I have a signed copy of this, as I stood in a (very long) line to get a signed book at the BEA from Mary Higgins Clark, the very famous mystery writer, and she was doing a joint signing with her daughter, who while not as famous as her mother, is pretty well known.


A quick aside: I was startled when I got to the front of the line and met them, at the amount of make-up they were both wearing. It was frankly a little scary, and I thought “this is a crowd of book people, no one cares, really, how you’ll photograph, they just like your books. It was just plain odd, and while I don;t know how old either woman is, I thought it was trying to make them look younger but instead aged them a lot. Just odd, have to say, made me a little sad for them.


Anyway, the book is a quick read, and you kind of have it figured out by at least halfway through, but there are a few mildly surprising moments. Many of the characters are predictable, or just cartoonish – “Jimmy” the shell museum man, whose speech and mannerisms are stilted of no discernible reason, “Glenn,” the snarky but always smiling hotel worker, the evil older twins, the newly enageed couple, the man-hungry gal, and even the “best friend who always needs rescuing,” but every ends as it should, and is almost too pat. Read it in a day, a pleasant little diversion, like candy – fun while you’re at it, but pretty formulaic and forgettable afterwards. Set in Hawaii, but that doesn’t seem to matter much, aside from token objects, you get the feeling it could have taken place almost anywhere with a beach. But I’m sure it sold a ton, anyway!

This is one of those books that’s kind of hard to classify – it says it’s a “thriller” and it certainly fits that genre well, but it also has a certain amount of history, including World War II era, and occult as well as some gruesome characters, the dark underside of humainty and modern culture and explicit gore. It is darkly fascinating and you learn about places that are quite real, like the ossuary at Sedlec in the Czech Republic, which is a chapel decorated with intricate displays of human bones, and ceratin myths that have surrounded the place, as well as ones original to this book. None of the characters are pure, or even very sympathetic, and though we root for the protagonist and his group on cohorts, you somehow know, through the whole book, that no one is going to live happily ever after, if indeed any lives – or was alive in the first place, or was a fallen angel, and therefor not dead or alive, exactly.


Not for the squeamish, but there is a good deal to figure out as you read, and it kept me absorbed. All in all somewhat disturbing, but an interesting book anyway. If you are not in need of cheering up, or being reminded that there is good in the world, look elsewhere.

by David Baldacci

I have read his stuff before, and liked it, good modern mystery writer. So I figured I would like this one, but ended up being surprised at how much I liked it. It’s not the normal mystery where you can figure out, halfway through, “who dun it” and just keep reading to see if you are right. There are plenty of potential villains in this apparent ‘serial killer” comes to a small town sort of story, as there are plenty of not-very-likable characters from almost the very start.


As with other books, it is set in Virginia, and has enough local color to feel fairly genuine. It features private detectives Sean King and Michelle Maxwell – both (disgraced) former Secret Service agents, but years apart in age. As well as local flavor, there are plenty of multidimensional characters, some of which are almost – but not quite caricatures and there’s plenty of sex, sexual innuendo and violence, so I’d not really let a kid read it, but for adults who like a good mystery to ponder, go for it!

It’s not that I haven’t been reading, life has just been a bit busy to be reviewing books. I finally finished this one recently, it was given to me by a friend, and I’ve had it by my bedside for night time reading when I didn’t have much else. It was just a book that didn’t seem to need to be rushed, there wasn’t much anything urgent about it, so I’d just read a few pages at a time.


It’s a thick book, over 540 pages, and that’s the soft cover version. I had read Labyrinth by Kate Mosse before and enjoyed it, so was looking forward to this one as well. It just seemed to move slowly along, and if you’ve read Labyrinth, it all seems kind of echoey, like “oh, another one of these ‘people haunted by ancestor’s troubles, driven by mysterious urges to solve past mysteries. It’s always a genetically connected individual, again a female main character trying to find out about her own past and stumbling across her ancestor’s troubles, and getting involved with a man from her own time connected to ancestor’s past love as well.


Always a young woman in the past is the hero of her times, and the current-day woman is somewhat adrift, finding her own self.


There’s a good bit of history of the Carsacone region of France, and some Paris history around the time of the French revolution. This one focusses on Tarot cards, and Tarot readings, so maybe that’s why I wasn’t too wrapped up in it, as Tarot (forgive me, true believers) has always seems kinda hokey and made-up to be sinister or believable. So that part didn’t grab my attention, maybe if it interests you, you’ll find the story moving along a bit faster. As it was, it was just okay, and the ending, while pretty darned predictable if you’ve read Labyrinth, was somewhat satisfying. It just wasn’t suspenseful.


If Tarot fascinates you, or French history, or Carsacone France region, maybe you’ll enjoy it more, I just found it a pleasant but not thrilling diversion, worth reading if you don’t have to spend a lot to get it.


I know, damning with faint praise, but it was just okay. Labyrinth was so much better, that this kinda disappointed me.

I have know of Neil Gaiman a long time, as he was the first artists to use the Macintosh to create a graphic novel, back in the ancient days when I was studying illustration at Mass Art. Stood in line for a couple hours at the BEA when it was in Los Angeles to get him to sign Coraline when it came out.


His book that came out this October, of course, considering its genre, is The Graveyard Book. It’s a wonderful, kind of scary but ultimately very sweet story of a little boy whose family was murdered when he was just a toddler. He wanders out into the night as the evil man Jack searches for him, and toddles and crawls through the gates and into the neighboring cemetery. The residents of the cemetery, mostly ghosts of long-dead individuals come to a hasty decision to hide the child, as the ghost of his newly-dead mother passes by and implores them to protect her baby, before she fades away. An old childless couple Mister and Mistress Owens, dead for over 200 years, convince the others that they should protect and raise the child, and so they do, with the help of Silas, the only one who lives there that can leave the cemetery. He’s not a ghost, likely a vampire, but that’s never spelled out.


They name him Nobody Owens, Bod for short, and he grows and thrives in the shadows and among the shades, learning from everyone from the oldest among them, a Roman citizen, to Victorian schoolteachers, and the many children who died at early ages. He learns useful things, like Fading and Disappearing, and Dreamwalking as well as his letters, from the gravestones.


One day he encounters a little girl, whose family is now living in his former house, and their friendship eventually leads to his discovery by the evil Jack, which puts everything and everyone he has grown to love at risk.


It’s a wonderful book, just won a Newbury Award so I am not the only one who thinks so! It is full of creepy, scary things, and wonderful characters from throughout many time periods on the English countryside, and is just a great book. Very young children might be scared, but I doubt it. Really, I recommend it to anyone who loves a good scary story.

Okay, good, thick and satisfying book – my only gripe with it is the cover. The cover shows a little blonde girl in a dark coat standing looking helpless in dark woods, but the abductee in the book, Gracie Brice, albeit a blonde, ten-year-old girl, is never the weak or helpless kind. In fact, she’s the tough, no-nonsense star of her school’s soccer team, dreaming of maybe being the next Mia Hamm, when she’s not dreaming of a country music career. When she’s abducted, she’s still in her soccer uniform, after a game her father is ineptly videotaping, and her mother has missed – as usual.

Her parents are the nerdy, socially awkward but brilliant John Brice, whose software company will make him a billionaire in a few days, and the beautiful, smart, tough-as-nails Elizabeth Brice, attorney you never want to oppose in court. Or anywhere else, for that matter. She is a former US Attorney, and fled to Dallas, TX and marriage after a case gone horribly wrong ten years before. Gracie’s little brother, Sam, and grandmother Kate – Ben’s wife though they have been separated for years – are left to try and cope with the whirl of Press, law enforcement and even psychics who descend on the town and the family.

But when Gracie is abducted, the person she immediately thinks of who will find her is her grandfather, Ben Brice, a Vietnam Vet, former POW, Purple Heart recipient, obvious PTSD victim and reclusive drunk.

To all this add a vendetta, a White Supremacist plot, and family secrets that John never knew existed, and you have a fascinating book. Everything ends up tying together in ways that were not apparent at the start – and how the tangled mass of events is resolved is very well played as well.

Excellent book, and a real page-turner. And while Gracie is at one point running through trees, it is not a dark forest, it’s a snow-covered mountain, she’s not wearing a black heavy coat and she never stands helplessly still. I do so hate when the cover artists hasn’t read the book.

Ignore the cover – they changed it for the paperback, but still got it wrong – her uniform was blue, not red – but read the book if you like a good mystery, and aren’t squeamish, as Ben still relives the Vietnam War in his head every time he closes his eyes.

A sad little, tragic little story, but one that is not without hope or resolution. Maybe I am in the minority, having never been forced to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” in high school. I don’t think we ever had to read anything even remotely as recent, frankly.

But certainly I know of the book – in fact one of my older siblings must have had to read it, as there was a copy around the house, but I never was interested in killing any birds for fun, and kinda liked mockingbirds, what with their “holey” wings and excellent mimickry. So I never read it. Later I learned of the movie, and that the book was more about people, but never did read it. And I haven’t read anything Truman Capote wrote either, but know his reputation as an odd, high-voiced strange little man who liked to shock people.

This book imagines the end of Truman Capote’s life, his final days with his housekeeper, and his desperate reaching out to Nelle – whom the rest of the world calls Harper Lee. They were childhood friends, and were even “married” at age 6 and 7 in a pretend ceremony that her mother even played the piano for. His mother sent him to live with relatives in Alabama in the summer, and there he and Nelle connected and formed a strong bond and lifelong, if later strained, relationship.

The book just covers a short time period, in which Capote, in his house in Palm Springs, and Nelle, in the home she shares with protective older sister Alice in Alabama, are visited by ghosts of the family whose death he chronicled in “In Cold Blood.” We relive pieces of their shared childhoods, and memories of times they spent together as adults, until she became a famous writer as well, and Capote resented her “stealing his thunder” and they became estranged.

Now, 20 years later, he is sick and dying, reaching out to haunt her, and, in his own warped way, make amends for the damage he inflicted on her. She has questions for him, but no way of reaching him – this is long before the days of caller ID, and the mysterious packages have no return address.

I know that this is based on some facts, and it is a very sad tale of two children grown older, but who never, in a way, really lost that treasured bit of childhood, remembered deep inside.

Sad, sad story, but with a hopeful ending, the feeling kind of lingers with you long after you’ve finished the book and closed the cover.

Remember the old Almond Growers’ commercial – “A can a day, that’s all we ask?” I’m adapting it to “a book a day, that’s what I’ll read!”


I pulled this book, Gregor the Overlander, from a box of book at the bottom of a pile, which turned out to be a box I hadn’t gotten to from the 2003 BEA – so this may be not “new” to some of you, but it was to me.


You know how fantasy books are usually set, if not at first, in rural or long-ago type places with forests and fire and knights and all that? This one is different. The story begins in an apartment building in New York City, where we meet the main character, eleven-year-old Gregor. He’s watching his baby sister, Boots, and sorta keeping an eye on his grandmother while his mom is at work. It’s a miserably hot summer day, their sister LIzzie is gone to summer camp, and his Dad has been missing for over two years – Gregor has the number down to the date.


When he goes to the basement to do laundry, his chore for the day, everything changes. Boots (actual name Margaret) crawls after a ball he’s been throwing for her, and finds a loose air vent. He sees her crawling in and goes to get her, and they both end up falling into another realm that exists below our own.


They encounter pale, translucent-skinned humans, giant cockroaches which delight Boots, 6-foot tall rats – what New York kid hasn’t heard about giant rats living in the sewers, right? And had nightmares about giant cockroaches and spiders and bats – all of which not only dwell down here, but speak and interact with the humans as well.


Gregor is a good big brother, though a bit of a worrier, just wants to get home before his mother finds them missing. Instead he ends up leading an unlikely band of creatures on a quest to find his father, who it turns out is down here but a prisoner of the bad guys – the rats – and to fulfill a prophecy written 600 years before, by the guy who founded the human colony below.


So it has all the elements of a classic coming-of-age story, but with an urban and grimy twist. Boots, the two-year-old, is a great character, loves the “beeg bugs” and the giant bats. Gregor’s love for her and his need to rescue their father keeps them both going, and she charms various creatures just by being her cheery two-year-old self, in a very believable way.


It’s such a fun book, and a real page-turner. I pulled it from the box yesterday, and finished it today between bouts of pushing slush, even though I have a couple other books in process – one of which is pretty terrible, and the other good but dense. I’ll tell you about those another day, okay?


Meanwhile, I heartily recommend this book to anyone old enough to read, and not too old to enjoy a good book. I liked it so much I didn’t even mind the “sequel alert” and am sure by now other books have followed.

I just read a whole book today – pulled it out of my box of signed books from the 2007 Book Expo. Burning of the Marriage Hat is an odd sort of book. It’s a novel, but doesn’t feel like one. It feels more like a memoir, and I suppose that’s what the author intended.

The main character in the book is Wyoming, and the mind set of the upper plains and small-town America on the dry and windblown northern plains. Okay, the narrator is actually a woman named Katherine, one of four daughters of an abusive marriage, and the family scapegoat. The story is her journey trying to find out the truth about the women in her family, and simultaneously trying to figure out her own life, and her relationship with Cynthia, the daughter she was forced to give up for adoption when, in 1966, she was an unmarried pregnant teenager. She is driving over much of the book to the fictional town of Brown Rock, and worries about the cowboy in the pickup truck who seems to be following her. But the feel of the terrain is ever-present.

Wyoming was the earliest state to give voting rights to women, in an effort to draw more women to move there, but Katherine believes not only did it not work then, but that many of the men of Wyoming today don’t understand women and how to relate to them. It certainly holds true for her own father, and from all reports to her grandfather, who is rumored to have killed her grandmother Naomi when her father was a child.

Bothered by visits from Naomi’s ghost, Katherine travels to the town in Wyoming where Naomi lived and died. The more she learns of her grandparents and their relationships, the abuse and attitudes of the people, the more she wonders how her own choices in life are a result of her family’s difficult and tragic history.

Unlike most novels, there is no neat, tidy ending, just an ending. And in the back is a list of other works on women’s rights, domestic violence and other relevant topics. That’s the only time the book feels like a “Women’s Issues” book – otherwise, it feels like a memoir of a life still unfolding. There’s not a lot of closure, or a big dramatic climax, just a steady unfolding of events and discoveries.

Doesn’t make me want to move to Wyoming, though.