Kim's Recommendations...
"The
true felicity of a lover of books
is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender...
as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book.
This I call reading."
~Edith
Wharton
Goddess
By Mistake
P.C. Cast
An estate
sale specializing in Oklahoma Gothic heralds high school teacher Shannon Parker's
unwitting transformation into an ancient Celtic world replete with divine
intervention, shape-shifters, war and centaur romance.
~This is a book that cannot be defined by a single genre.
It's a fantasy that will have you laughing out loud. Add to that some steamy
romance and you have a book that will make you sigh with disappointment as
you inevitably finish it all too soon. Good news, though--There's a sequel
in the works.
Visit P.C. Cast at her website,
www.pccast.net
The
Eyre Affair
Jasper Fforde
Great Britain
circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected
pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Baconians are
trying to convince the world that Francis Bacon really wrote Shakespeare,
there are riots between the Surrealists and Impressionists, and thousands
of men are named John Milton, an homage to the real Milton and a very confusing
situation for the police. Amidst all this, Acheron Hades, Third Most Wanted
Man In the World, steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and
kills a minor character, who then disappears from every volume of the novel
ever printed! But that's just a prelude. Hades' real target is the beloved
Jane Eyre, and it's not long before he plucks her from the pages of Bronte's
novel. Enter Thursday Next. She's the Special Operative's renowned literary
detective, and she drives a Porsche. With the help of her uncle Mycroft's
Prose Portal, Thursday enters the novel to rescue Jane Eyre from this heinous
act of literary homicide. It's tricky business, all these interlopers running
about Thornfield, and deceptions run rampant as their paths cross with Jane,
Rochester, and Miss Fairfax.
~If you like your classic literature with a bit of a twist,
you have to try Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. It features the trials and
tribulations of SpecOps agent Thursday Next.
-->And for even more
comments on Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair, see Michelle's recommendations!
Visit Jasper
Fforde and Thursday
Next on the net
Guilty
Pleasures
Laurell K. Hamilton
In
Guilty Pleasures, Hamilton introduces Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. Anita's
small, dark, and dangerous. But when the city's most powerful vampire comes
to her for help, Anita is faced with her greatest fear--a man capable of arousing
in her a hunger strong enough to match his own...
~Guilty
Pleasures is an appropriate title for the 1st installment in this series of
books about Anita Blake, vampire hunter, necromancer, and animator. Hamilton
has a wonderful talent for melding genres together--in this case, romantic
suspense/fantasy/horror. In my mind, though, what really makes this book and
the entire series a knockout is the cast of supporting characters. Whether
they be comic relief, hero, villain, or somewhere in between, they are multidimensional
characters that invite the reader to share in their adventures!
Also
recommended-Hamilton's Meredith Gentry series!
A complete
list of books in the Anita Blake series can be found here.
Visit Laurell
K Hamilton and Anita Blake to find out about the soon-to-be-released Cerulean
Sins
Cabinet
of Curiosities
Douglas Preston, Lincoln
Child
"In
nineteenth-century New York, the public flocked to collections of strange
and grotesque oddities called ‘cabinets of curiosities’. Now, in
lower Manhattan, a modern apartment tower is slated to rise on the site of
one of the old cabinets. But when the excavators break into a basement, they
uncover a charnel pit of horror: the remains of thirty-six people murdered
and gruesomely dismembered over 130 years ago by an unknown serial killer."
"In the aftermath, Museum archaeologist Nora Kelly is visited by an enigmatic,
silver-eyed FBI agent who is obsessed with the mystery of the bodies. Together,
Special Agent Pendergast and Nora Kelly embark on an investigation that will
take them from the gleaming skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan to the crumbling
archives of the Museum, from a mass grave under a Chinatown brownstone to
a house of abominations on Riverside Drive. Their search unearths the faint
whisper of a mysterious doctor who once roamed the city...a genius who carried
out medical experiments on living human beings." But just as Nora and
Pendergast begin to unravel the clues to the century-old killings, a fresh
spree of murder and surgical mutilation erupts around them...and New York
City is awash in terror.
Never
Burn a Witch
M.R. Sellars
In 1484,
then Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull-- a decree giving the endorsement
of the church to the inquisitors of the day who hunted, tortured, tried and
ultimately murdered those accused of heresy-- especially the practice of WitchCraft.
Modern day Witches refer to this dark period of history as "The Burning
Times." Rowan Gant returns to face a nightmare long thought to be a distant memory. A killer
armed with gross misinterpretations of the Holy Bible and a 15th century Witch
Hunting Manual known as the Malleus Maleficarum has resurrected the Inquisition
and the members of the Pagan community of St. Louis are his prey.With
the unspeakable horrors of "The Burning Times" being played out
across the metropolitan area, Rowan is again enlisted by Homicide Detective
Benjamin Storm and the Major Case Squad to help solve the crimes--all the
while knowing full well that his religion makes him a potential target.
Storm
Front
Jim Butcher
Harry Dresden--Wizard
Lost items found. Paranormal investigations.
Consulting. Advice. Reasonable rates.
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment.
Harry Dresden
is the best at what he does. Well, technically, he's the only at what he does.
So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal creativity or capability,
they come to him for answers. For the "everyday" world is actually
full of strange and magical things--and most of them don't play too well with
humans. That's where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a--well, whatever.
There's just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when the
police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black
magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's magic, there's a black
mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name. And that's when things
start to get... interesting. Magic. It can get a guy killed.
Read the
whole series!
Memoirs
of a Papillon
Genevieve as told to Dennis
Fried
Want to
know what your dog really thinks of you? In this hilarious exposé,
Genevieve, a two-year-old papillon, takes you into the inner sanctum of dogdom,
revealing canine secrets never before shared with humans. Genevieve sinks
her teeth into such topics as driving tips for dogs, the tragedy of doorbells
in TV commercials, measuring the intelligence of humans, finding a reason
for cats, how prehistoric dogs saved the caveman's bacon, converting
your house into an agility course, and productive kitchen behavior.
Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
J. K. Rowling
As Harry
enters his fifth year at wizard school, it seems the bonds "of friendship
and trust" have never been more sorely tested. Lord Voldemort's rise
has opened a rift in the wizarding world between those who believe the truth
about his return, and those who prefer to believe it's all madness and lies
-- just more trouble from Harry Potter.
~After
just finishing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in a little over
24 hours I find myself simply stunned. Without giving any of the plot away,
suffice it to say that Rowling has continued the evolution of her characters
and in addition has penned an incredible storyline which to me strongly mirrors
Germany as Hitler was rising to power. From the Ministry of Magic who is too
afraid and too involved in its own internal squabbles to admit that Lord Voldemort
is back and gathering followers, to the resistant group (The Order of the
Phoenix), you can't help but see the parallels. In addition, this is a new
portrayal of Harry himself as for the first time he sees himself disbelieved
and ridiculed by the wizarding world at large. Once again he is supported
by his loyal friends who assist him in getting through some of the darkest
times he has ever been through. Even so, it is the well meaning intentions
of some of them that cause the most trouble. Rowling has once again made her
characters well rounded and multidimensional. None of them are perfect and
it is some of the wisest that make mistakes purely out of their love and concern
for Harry. All I can say is Bravo! Ms. Rowling and I can't wait for the next
book in this extraordinary series!
Monkeewrench
P. J. Tracy
When people
start dying in strange ways in Minneapolis, everyone wonders what the murderer
will do next--everyone except the employees of Monkeewrench Software, who
are all too aware that their new serial-killer computer game is the model
for the crimes. They go to the police with the what, where, and when of the
next murders and quickly become suspects themselves as the killer strikes
again exactly as they predict. Does the closely knit group of coworkers know
something they're not telling about the all-important who and why? The missing
pieces come eventually from an unlikely source as a rural Wisconsin sheriff
links his own chilling case to the Minneapolis murders.
Sunshine
Robin McKinley
There are places in the
world where darkness rules, where it is unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that.
But there hadn't been any trouble out at the lake for years, and she needed
a place to be alone for a while.Unfortunately, she wasn't alone. She never
heard them coming. Of course you don't, when they're vampires.They took her
clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled
her to the wall of an abandoned mansion--within easy reach of a figure stirring
in the moonlight.She knows that he is a vampire. She knows that she's to be
his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she wil be dead. Yet, as
dawn breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is
he who needs her to help him to survive the day...
War
of the Flowers
Tad Williams
Returning
to the fantasy genre that made him a coast-to-coast best-selling phenomenon,
Tad Williams has written a new stand-alone contemporary novel set in Northern
California--and also in the strange parallel world that coexists in the farthest
reaches of the imagination. Theo
Vilmos is a thirty-year-old lead singer in a not terribly successful rock
band. Once, he had enormous, almost magical, charisma both onstage and off--but
now, life has taken its toll on Theo. Hitting an all-time low, he seeks refuge
in a islolated cabin in the woods--and reads an odd memoir written by a dead
relative who believed he had visited the magical world of Faerie. And before
Theo can disregard the account as the writings of a madman, he, too, is drawn
to a place beyond his wildest dreams... a place filled with what will be, and has always
been, his destiny.
