Category: Meme

Lots of new books have come into my house the last couple of weeks. Two review books, but also four new purchases. One day I will stop myself……

First, the purchases:

And now the two review books, the first is a novella, the second is a full length novel.

Four books from Paperbackswap’s Box-of-Books feature this week:

And one review book that I requested from Blogging for Books … because I have absolutely NO SELF-CONTROL when I say I’m not taking on any review books this year (and I’ve already committed to about 5 in the next few months…… ugh!!)

Claudia Morgan-Brown finally has it all. Pregnant with a much-wanted first baby, she has a happy family of two young stepsons and a loving husband. When Claudia hires Zoe to help her around the house in anticipation of the baby’s arrival, it seems like the answer to her prayers. But despite Zoe’s glowing recommendations and instant rapport with the children, there’s something about her that Claudia cannot trust.

Moreover, there has been a series of violent attacks on pregnant women in the area, and Claudia becomes acutely aware of her vulnerability. With her husband out of town for work, who will be there to protect her? And why does she still feel so unsettled about Zoe? Realizing appearances can be deceiving even in a seemingly perfect world, Claudia digs deeper into Zoe’s blurry past and begins to wonder – how far would someone go to have a child of her own?

Just a couple of books from Paperbackswap this week:

A week’s holiday in a luxurious Yorkshire time-share is just what Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Duncan Kincaid needs. But the discovery of a body floating in the whirlpool bath ends Kincaid’s vacation before it’s begun. One of his new acquaintances at Followdale House is dead; another is a killer. Despite a distinct lack of cooperation from the local constabulary, Kincaid’s keen sense of duty won’t allow him to ignore the heinous crime, impelling him to send for his enthusiastic young assistant, Sergeant Gemma James. But the stakes are raised dramatically when a second murder occurs, and Kincaid and James find themselves in a determined hunt for a fiendish felon who enjoys homicide a bit too much.

Once, Nick Kotlar tried to save his father. From the angry questions. From the accusations. From a piece of evidence that only Nick knew about and that he destroyed – for his father. But in the Red Scare of 1950 Walter Kotlar could not be saved. Branded a spy, he fled the country, leaving behind a wife, a young son – and a key witness lying dead below her D.C. hotel room.

Now, twenty years later, Nick will get a second chance. Because a beautiful journalist has brought a message from his long-lost father, and Nick will follow her into Soviet-occupied Prague for a painful reunion. Confronting a father he barely remembers and a secret that could change everything, Nick knows he must return to the place where it all began: to unravel a lie, to penetrate a deadly conspiracy, and to expose the one person who knew the truth – and watched a family be destroyed.

Just one book this week. An e-galley from an author I’ve reviewed in the past. (Why, why, why can I *never* follow through with not accepting review books?! Oh, maybe because a really great one comes through and I can’t resist!)

In Susanna Calkins’s next richly drawn mystery set in 17th century England, Lucy Campion, formerly a ladies’ maid in the local magistrate’s household, has now found gainful employment as a printer’s apprentice. On a freezing winter afternoon in 1667, she accompanies the magistrate’s daughter, Sarah, to the home of a severely injured Quaker man to record his dying words, a common practice of the time. The man, having been trampled by a horse and cart the night before, only has a few hours left to live. Lucy scribbles down the Quaker man’s last utterances, but she’s unprepared for what he reveals to her—that someone deliberately pushed him into the path of the horse, because of a secret he had recently uncovered.

Fearful that Sarah might be traveling in the company of a murderer, Lucy feels compelled to seek the truth, with the help of the magistrate’s son, Adam, and the local constable. But delving into the dead man’s background might prove more dangerous than any of them had imagined.

In The Masque of a Murderer, Susanna Calkins has once again combined finely wrought characters, a richly detailed historical atmosphere, and a tightly-plotted mystery into a compelling read.

I finally took the time to skip to the next town over (only about 10 minutes) to scope out my new local used book store. I was so stoked, because my local used book store in Kentucky had closed last year, and all I was stuck with was a Books-a-Million (ugh). After our move though, I have a Barnes & Noble (yay!) and a used book store.

I have a feeling I will be using this used book store more and more seeing as how my local library is more than a tad bit disappointing (I was spoiled and had a GREAT library system in my old town…) and Paperbackswap is now implementing a yearly fee, which I still have not decided whether or not I want to stick around.

Anyway, on to the books:

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we had created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.

Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives – the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them.

On a frigid New Year’s Eve in Minneapolis, a young woman is found brutally murdered – the ninth so far this year in a string of grisly slayings. Homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska fear that it’s the work of a serial killer they call Doc Holiday, a transient who has brought his gruesome game to a new and more terrifying level. But as Kovac and Liska uncover the truth, they find that the monsters in the ninth girl’s life may live closer to home. And even as another young woman disappears, they have to ask the question: Which is the greater evil – the devil you know or the devil you don’t?

For more than two years, he held Seattle in a terror grip. A cold-blooded killer who abducted young mothers right in front of their sons and murdered them execution style. Then, as suddenly as the killings began, they seemed to stop.

Susan Blanchette is looking forward to a relaxing weekend getaway with her fiancé, Allen, and young son, Matthew. But something about the remote lake house doesn’t feel right. A woman vanished from the area a year ago, and now Susan thinks she’s spotted someone lurking around the property. And when Allen disappears, her fear grows…

A psychopath has returned, ready to strike again. Someone who can’t resist the urge to kill, who derives pleasure from others’ pain, and who is drawing nearer to Susan as each minute of the weekend ticks by. But she’s just one pawn at the heart of a killer’s deadly game. A killer who is unrelenting, unstoppable, and absolutely vicious…

Detective Alex Cross is a family man at heart – nothing matters more to him than his children, his grandmother, and his wife, Bree. His love of his family is his anchor, giving him the strength to confront evil in his work. One man knows this deeply, a genius set on proving that he is the greatest criminal mind of all, and he uses Alex’s strength as a weapon against him.

When the ones Cross loves are in danger, he will do anything to protect him. But if he even tries, they will die.

Cross My Hear is the most devastating and unexpected novel of James Patterson’s career. Is this the end of Alex Cross?

Two books this week, both from Paperbackswap (when will I learn to stay off that site?!):

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

When Dirk Pitt intercepts a rogue blimp on a deadly course, authorities find four dead men aboard. None of them ,however, is the wealthy American financier who set out aboard the antique airship on an ocean treasure hunt in the Bermuda Triangle. He and his crew have disappeared, and the dead men are discovered to be Soviet cosmonauts. Meanwhile, the President of the United States is informed that a covert group of U.S. industrialists successfully placed a secret colony on the moon nearly three decades previously. Now, a Soviet mission is poised to land on the moon, and what they find there may lead to nuclear war. Threatened in space, the Russians are about to strike a savage blow in Cuba. From the cold ocean depths to a Cuban torture chamber to the CIA headquarters at Langley, Pitt is racing to defuse an international conspiracy that threatens to shatter the earth.

Two books this week, both from Paperbackswap:

Japan, 1945: Two U.S. bombers take off with atomic bombs. Only one gets through.

The Pacific, 1993: A Japanese cargo ship bound for the United States is instantly, thunderously vaporized, taking with it a Norwegian vessel. Japanese fanatics have developed a chilling plan to devastate and destroy the Western powers. From the ocean depths to the discovery of cache of lost Nazi loot, Dirk Pitt is untangling a savage conspiracy and igniting a daring counterattack. While Washington bureaucrats scramble, a brutal industrialist commands his blackmail scheme from a secret island control center. And Dirk Pitt, the dauntless hero of Sahara and Inca Gold, is taking on death-dealing robots and a human-hunting descendant of samurai warriors. Pitt alone controls the West’s secret ace in the hole: a tidal wave of destruction waiting to be triggered on the ocean floor!

There have been many words used to describe the Kennedy boys … handsome, aggressive, charismatic, charming, volatile, red-blooded, and sexy. This book investigates the latter descriptions, an in-depth probe into the more sensual aspects of the Kennedy mystique.

Here are Jack and Bob and Ted and all the girls you’ve ever heard whispered or gossiped about, a few you never heard of, and, too, those gals who somehow fell onto the front pages … Judy and Marilyn and Lee and Angie and Kim and Rita and Page and Jayne and Janet and Mary and Candy and Mariella and Rhonda and Amanda and Joan and Maria and more girls than anyone would have thought possible…