Triple Play

By Elizabeth Gunn

Police detective Jake Hines has a bizarre murder on his hands and, in the small city where he lives, people are naturally frightened, even more so when the gruesome details of the murder are leaked to the press. When a second gruesome murder occurs, the pressure is on law enforcement to stop what looks like a kinky serial killer running amok. For these two murdered men were each posed on a softball diamond, dressed in softball regalia, with portions of their anatomy hacked off and a photo attached to each body capturing the cruel tableau.
But Jake isn't convinced the murders are the work of a serial killer. It seems to him that the details of the murders indicate a killer who is sending a brutal message to someone. However, what that message is only the killer and his victims understand.

This was an OK story, a pretty typical entry in the mystery genre. Jake is an OK guy with a shady background, having been found as a baby in a dumpster and then growing up in a series of less-than-nurturing foster homes. He is recently divorced and just starting to recover from the fact of his wife leaving him for another man. As far as fiction detectives go, he is pretty white bread, despite being of mixed race. He's a pretty average guy living a pretty average life in a pretty average town which also describes this story: pretty average.

Lamb

By Christopher Moore

The story of Jesus, starting from his boyhood days and covering all the territory not mentioned in the Bible, all of it total fiction, of course. Another title for the book could have been The Lighter Side of Jesus.
So in this book Jesus is a strange little kid with strange abilities and powers and his best friend is Biff, who sticks by him through thick and thin, traveling with Jesus, or as he is called in the story, Joshua, to Kabul, China, and India, eventually ending up back in the Holy Land to study under John the Baptist and then start his own ministry. In the book, the author has Jesus studying Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism. He also has him studying kung fu and judo, which the author puns is Jew-do, or the way of the Jew. It was invented just for Jesus because he didn't want to study self defense using weapons. There is lots of silly stuff like that as when Jesus, after studying with a yogi in India, climbs inside a large clay wine jar but then can't get back out and Biff has to break the jar to set him free. One of the silliest is Biff and Jesus using the mild profanity jeez, which of course is really just a way of saying Jesus. Oh, and we are told that wuss is the same word back then as it is now. There's lots of goofy stuff like that.
On the other hand, even though this Jesus is able to take and make a joke and is not above a mild obscenity like "fuckstick" (whatever that is), this novel has a more serious side. Jesus searches for the truth, persevering even though God doesn't answer his prayers, except on one occasion and the only response Jesus gets from God is a terse, "fuck em." This Jesus is a little more vulgar than perhaps Christians would like to think, but the author doesn't trample on or deny his divine nature and doesn't portray him as a nutcase of a faker. Throughout the novel, it is clear that he really is the Son of God and he really is the Messiah.
So, even though the story is a bit irreverent, I must say I like this version of Jesus better than the deadly serious Jesus who goes about blighting fig trees just because they don't have any figs on them, which they wouldn't since it wasn't fig season (Mark 11: 12-14). That Jesus is just plain scary. But Moore's Jesus likes to have fun and laugh and joke around and simply is more lovable. I enjoyed the story a lot but have to say it is probably not for everyone.

The Free Lunch

By Spider Robinson

Dreamworld, a high-tech amusement park beloved by all, has a couple of stowaways living in its underground structures. Annie has lived in the park since it was first built and has assumed a mythic identity to park employees as Mother Elf. Mike, a boy fleeing from an unhappy home life, finds a new home under Annie's wing behind the scenes at Dreamworld.
Annie doesn't just sponge off Dreamworld, though. She also works behind the scenes to keep the park functioning like it should and to protect it from its enemies. For even though everyone loves Dreamworld, there is someone who hates it, or more truly, hates its founders. This person would love to besmirch Dreamworld and his spies are constantly on the the lookout for opportunities to do so.
The park is staffed mostly by little people, dwarfs and midgets. So when Annie discovers that more dwarfs are leaving the park than are entering it, she and Mike have to figure out how and why. But the park's enemy has discovered the discrepancy and he is sure it is the key to bringing down the park's founders. And he thinks Mother Elf is just the person to answer his questions so he sends his thugs to grab her and Mike, who they mistake for her son. But with the help of the extra dwarfs, Mike and Annie just may be able to save the one place on Earth that they care about the more than anything.

This was an OK story. It was often a little dull and the whole antagonism between the park's founders and their enemy wasn't that believable. Nor was the reason for the extra dwarfs presence at the park. Also, Mike's super-intelligence was just too much. It's a pretty thin structure to hang a plot on.

Trophy Hunt

By C.J. Box

Game Warden Joe Pickett is out fishing one day with his daughter when they discover the carcass of a dead moose that looks like it has been mutilated in a way that is very similar to mutilations to livestock reported by ranchers and farmers throughout the years. Shortly after this, a rogue grizzly bear is reported to be in the area and ranchers are also reporting they have mutilated cattle. Pickett is drawn into the investigation on the chance that the mutilations are being done by wild animals, or even by the rogue grizzly.
During the course of the investigation, two men die and their bodies are mutilated just like the cows and the moose. Something wacky is going on and Pickett seems to be in the thick of it.

This book starts out really great. The whole moose incident with its mysterious occurrences and the assault on a friend's horses while two kids are standing right next to the corral and the night Pickett's black dog runs off after something and the dog comes home with its hair changed to white and the grizzly bear who is there and yet isn't at the same time are all really intriguing. All kinds of possibilities are floated, including aliens, cults, mining interests, terrorists and occult beings. The thing that bothered me about the book was that a lot of the mysterious occurrences at the beginning of the story, like the feeling of pressure and the dizziness that Joe and his daughter experienced are never explained nor is what frightened Joe's dog so badly as to turn its hair from black to white. At the end they are just passed off as unexplainable. I mean, I didn't really care about the two dead people as much as what was the answer to those mysteries and the author cops out by saying it is something we can't understand. Pshaw!

Sweet and Deadly

By Charlaine Harris

Catherine Linton has returned to her hometown, moving into her childhood home after her parents' recent death six months ago. They died in a car crash caused by someone tampering with their vehicle. Who did it and why is unknown. Catherine's dad was a beloved local physician in the small town where they lived and why anyone would want to kill him & his wife is a mystery.
One morning Catherine stumbles across the body of her father's former nurse whose head has been bashed in and her body dumped in an abandoned house on farmland that Catherine inherited from her parents. As the police investigate the murdered woman they discover that she was blackmailing people and also doing illegal abortions. Perhaps this woman found out something while working for Catherine's dad and then tried to use that info to blackmail the wrong person, a person who may have already been willing to kill to protect that secret.
It's a small town and, realizing the killer could be any one of her neighbors or friends leaves Catherine chilled and fighting a descent into the depression that almost consumed her when her parents died. Yet she manages to hang on and eventually unearth the information that points directly at the evil person behind four murders.

This was a typical murder mystery, nothing special or particularly captivating about this story. Catherine is an OK heroine if somewhat of a cold fish. Indeed she is described as a person who doesn't say much, given the nickname of the Sphinx when in high school. She's a person that is hard to warm up to, in the story and as a character the reader is supposed to care about. When the reason behind the murders is revealed, it is a bit of a stretch to think that anyone would kill to keep a secret like that hidden and why the killer felt compelled to do so is never really explained in any real depth. It's an OK story.
Charlaine Harris is better known for her Sookie Stackhouse stories. This story is not of that genre. It contains no vampires, werewolves or witches. It's just a regular type murder mystery, nothing supernatural. Just a heads up for those who might pick up the book expecting something like the Stackhouse stories.

Black Range Tales

By James A. McKenna

The mostly true tales of McKenna's years prospecting and mining in the Black Range in southwestern New Mexico in the 1880s. Lots of adventure and encounters with critters and Apaches and it paints a pretty clear picture of the life of the average prospector.
Some snippets from the book:

Then Tom pulled off the blankets and showed his find. The dealer tested the gold, finding it almost pure, and when he hung the nugget on his scale it tipped them at well-nigh a hundred pounds. Tom walked out of that dealer's shop worth thousands of dollars. A cast of the nugget was made and sent to a Frisco bank. So far as I know it was the largest nugget ever found in the United States...

Many prospectors stopped here and were never seen again though their horses and mules could be traced to the spot. At times the owner would go to Independence to fill up with booze, trading watches and ornaments for whiskey and other things that he wanted. After the Governor's brother disappeared, the Governor sent detectives to find a trace of him if possible... Not not long after this a doctor rode the stage to the new mining camp, stopping for lunch at Hayway Meadows. The pickled meat was put on the table, and the doctor thought the bones were not from an animal but from a human. Hiding some away, when he got to Independence, he made some tests and found they were human bones, sure enough. The sheriff and a posse going to The Meadows arrested the keeper. Searching the station they found many articles belonging to the Governor's brother and many belonging to lost prospectors. They got a confession, he showing them the graves of eight missing men, also testifying there was a gang from Arizona to California murdering nearly all single travelers who stopped at their stations...

My the cutthroats and thieves! They seemed to come here from all parts of the world. One of them named Kennedy is said to have murdered twenty-five men. At the new town called Elizabeth Town crime became so bad that Vigilantes were formed, and Kennedy was one of the first to be hung. The six-shooter was the only law. The stages were held up almost every day by such outlaws at Henderson, Coal-Oil Johnny, Joe McCurdy and Stewart. The county officials offered three thousand dollars reward for anyone caught robbing the stage.

A fascinating book of tales recounting McKenna & friends experiences, a look back at life in the Wild West, very interesting reading.

Dave Barry Turns 40

By Dave Barry

Barry looks at what it means to be middle aged, in his own hilarious way, poking fun at himself and at all of us as we attempt to cope with growing older.
Once again, Dave Barry comes through, with his usual funny take on getting up there. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even though it is a little dated since it was first published in 1990. It's always a pleasure just to sit down and read a book just for the sheer fun of it, for the chance to forget life's cares for a little while and have a chuckle. Thanks, Dave.

A Boy's Own Story

By Edmund White

The young narrator of this story (who never reveals his name) is not very comfortable with himself. In his early teens, he finds that his sexual fantasies all center on men, even on his own father. Growing up in the 1950s, being homosexual is not what he wants to be. His dad earns a good living but he is a cold and distant father and eventually leaves his family to take up with a young woman.
Trying to cope with his homosexuality, the boy turns to religion, he turns to psychiatry, he even falls for a girl but he still finds himself yearning for a male lover. He has several trysts with other males but doesn't find that lover, that one special guy. By the end of the story he turns out to be a manipulative little bitch.

Supposedly this is based on the author's own life. Many readers have really loved this book, finding the author's writing wonderful. I saw it was on one of those "1000 books you must read before you die" lists. I don't know why, though, unless the list compilers feel that you shouldn't die without reading about how homosexual men have sex. I actually found it pretty gross. But I must admit I am not one who enjoys reading explicit descriptions of sexual acts, gay or straight. But never mind that. Forget the sex. I just found the whole story to be a big yawn. It never really touched me. The boy was creepy, his dad was creepy, his mom was creepy, his shrink was creepy and he closes the story with a creepy sex act with a creepy teacher at his creepy school. It was all pretty repulsive.

The Penny Pinchers Club

By Sarah Strohmeyer

Kat doesn't think about her life or her marriage much. She knows money is tight but that doesn't stop her from spending too much or lying to her husband Griff about it. Then one day she finds two condom wrappers in her husband pants' pocket after he comes home from a trip. She also finds a receipt that seems to indicate that Griff lied about his whereabouts one night. She begins to have doubts about the state of her marriage. When she finds out that he has a secret bank account and a secret credit card and she finds some emails of Griff's where he claims he will end "it" after their daughter graduates high school it seems pretty clear to Kat that her marriage is on the rocks.
She is advised to start saving money to pay for her divorce since the attorney she is thinking of hiring wants several thousand dollars to handle her case. So Kat joins the Penny Pinchers, a club that helps members cut expenses and shop more economically.
About this time Kat finds out that an old lover she almost married is newly divorced and back in town. This guy is Mr. Moneybags and not only is he ready to hire Kat to decorate his mansion, he also makes it perfectly clear that he never got over her and still considers her the love of his life. (No wonder his marriage failed.)
So Kat is on the horns of a dilemma. Does she reconnect with Mr. Moneybags and partake of the sweet life where she will never have to pinch pennies again? Or does she refuse to give up on her marriage and her husband, who even though he doesn't earn a lot of money, still can rock her world? She may figure it out eventually but will it be before her hubby finds out she spent the night with Mr. Moneybags? 'Fraid not. Looks like it's a good thing she joined Penny Pinchers and saved up all that money for her divorce lawyer.

This was an OK story. Spoiler here: Kat's problem is she jumps to conclusions and is less than open and honest with her husband. Any fool, reading those emails, could see that he wasn't necessarily referring to divorce. So not only is Kat deceptive and a spendthrift, she is also abysmally stupid. I mean, what person who really wants to save their marriage spends the night with a person of the opposite sex? Only a complete moron. I never really cared about Kat, she is just too stupid to live. It's hard to see what those two great guys ever saw in her. She must be great in the sack, that's the only explanation.

Primal Needs

By Susan Sizemore

Joe and Sid were partners in business until one weekend when business turned into pleasure. Even though Sid (who's a female) knew it was a really bad idea she let herself fall in love with Joe and spend that forbidden weekend in his arms. The problem is that Sid is a vampire and Joe is a werewolf and the two are not supposed to mix and if the other vampires find out, Joe is a dead dog. So to protect Joe, Sid pulled a vampire mind trick on him and erased his memory of their passion. But Joe knew what she had done, and with a little help from a witch, he was able to recover the memories. But he is extremely angry at Sid for what she did.
In the meantime, over the course of a couple years, Sid has had a baby vampire boy and been forced to give him to a special nursery for baby boy vampires equipped to deal with their wild ways and the vampires pulled the same kind of mind trick on Sid that she had done to Joe, to ease her grief at giving up her baby. (Getting rid of the kid is really necessary to the plot otherwise he might get in the way of Joe & Sid getting back together and having lots of passionate supernatural sex.)
Joe has joined a mercenary group composed of various supernatural beings working together to thwart a gang of outlaw supernaturals who desire nothing more than world domination. A series of fires and bombings have been traced to these outlaws and Joe's group is in thick of the investigation and Sid finds herself drawn into it also and once again working with Joe.
Joe can't forgive her but their passion is very much alive and between bouts of investigation they manage to find time for lots of sex. Joe may hate Sid but he still wants her. Gradually they work out their differences but once again Joe's life is in danger from the righteous anger of Sid's fellow vampires. Also, Sid's dad is in love with an old lady in a nursing home that he loved back when he was a soldier in WW II. And the old lady gets kidnapped by the outlaw gang and turned into a young lady so Sid's dad and the former old lady can have lots of passionate sex. Duh! It's not like he would want to pork a wrinkled old crone no matter how much he might have loved when she was young and juicy. So of course she has to become young again.

Another entree in the vampire chronicles that seem to be the new hot romance literature any more. At least in this one the vampires have some of the old vampire problems: garlic, sunshine, stake through the heart, blood thirst. But in this series they deal with them by taking medications. It enables them to blend into normal society better. So that part was acceptable. What wasn't acceptable was how disjointed this story seemed. The many references to occurrences in previous novels in the series were jarring and confusing. They serve as reminders to readers familiar with the previous novels but to someone who is not, it is too much info. Plus the story is in the midst of the Joe & Sid plot when suddenly a new plot is plopped down out of nowhere involving Sid's dad and stuff that happened back in the 1940s. It was kind of contrived tying the two plots together and I never did understand the explanation of how the old lady got young again. Was it the potion she was subjected to or was it the bite of her vampire lover? It wasn't made clear or maybe I just wasn't following that part too well. Bottom line, this is just another typical entry in the new vampire lit where vampires are just regular folks and not at all the evil blood suckers of the night that they used to be. Ho-hum...

Julie & Julia

By Julie Powell

Julie Powell was at a time in her life when things didn't seem so good. She had moved to New York City from Texas with her husband Eric in order to become an actress. This had not worked out. Instead she found herself working as a secretary in various temp positions which lead to a full time job at a government agency. It was a job that neither inspired her or fulfilled her, that was frequently aggravating and that was going nowhere. Then she found out that she had a medical condition that might prevent her from becoming pregnant, if and when she & Eric decided they wanted to start a family. Also, she was 29, facing 30 and all that that means.
Feeling dissatisfied with life and talking about it to her husband, he suggested she go to cooking school and when she turned that down, suggested she try blogging. And somehow the two ideas came together. But instead of cooking school, she would attempt to make all the recipes in Julia Child's cook book, MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING, Volume I of II, which contains 524 recipes, within the space of one year and record her progress online in a blog. And so the story begins...
Not being familiar with the Julia Child cookbook, I didn't know what exactly she was taking on. Now, this cookbook sure as hell ain't no BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS or BETTY CROCKER type cookbook. No, this is the cookbook from hell. In this book you learn to make gelatin from scratch, which involves cooking calves feet until they produce the requisite jelling properties. It involves making your own mayonnaise and making broths from scratch. It involves splitting bones to get the marrow out to use in recipes. It involves cutting up a live lobster. This cookbook doesn't even want you to use boughten ladyfingers in recipes calling for them because the quality isn't up to Julia Child's high standards.
So this was quite a daunting goal she set for herself, never mind the chore of blogging about it nearly every day. But it turns out that Julie is quite an entertaining writer who doesn't mind sharing all her trials and tribulations with the world, even those incidents that many would keep hidden until death, like the time maggots were living under her dish drainer in the kitchen. EWWW! It wasn't long before Julie had quite a loyal following and eventually she attracted national attention. And it all ended with Julie succeeding in making all the recipes in the space of one year, getting a book deal, quitting her tedious government job, and now her book has been made into a movie starring Meryl Streep. What a deal.

I really enjoyed this book. Julie, like I said, writes a very entertaining story and following along as she masters the cookbook was fun, surprising, and informative. I never realized how much of French cooking involves simply masses of butter, just gobs and gobs of it. Some of the recipes Julie made took days to complete, requiring several pages of instructions in the cookbook. It really was quite an accomplishment making all those recipes, never mind that she did it all in just one year! What a woman and what a great book she has written.

Black Sun

By Robert Leininger

The sun gets sunspots. These are dark spots on the surface of the sun that are cooler than the rest of the surface. What if a sunspot occurred that just kept getting bigger and bigger? Since sunspots are cooler than normal, the sun would become cooler. And the effect on the Earth's climate would be devastating.
This is the premise for BLACK SUN.
Astrophysicist Maurice Tyler has predicted just such an event and it looks like his prediction is coming true. Certain elements within the government don't want Tyler's predictions made public, ostensibly to avoid widespread panic. In a misguided attempt to silence Tyler, a thug is sent to threaten him, with nasty consequences involving Tyler and a sexy female reporter who has been sent to get the scoop on Tyler's prediction. After confronting the thug, it quickly becomes apparent that the sun is cooling rapidly as daytime temperatures in July sink to wintry lows. Fearing more government thugs may be after him, Tyler and the woman, Gail, set off from Tyler's home in Arizona for California where Gail's young daughter is staying with her sister. The closer they get to their destination the more brutal conditions become, with ever increasing cold, snow and ice and a population in panic. Gail and Tyler fight their way to her daughter only to realized they are trapped in Los Angeles by the widespread panic and looting, with fires and destruction all around them. Somehow they have to get out of California and back to Tyler's place in rural Arizona where he has a shelter ready and stocked with everything necessary to survive the sun's brief but fatal decline.

When I first started reading this book, I thought it would be stupid. But it turns out to be a first rate story about an hopefully implausible but certainly frightening scenario. Although Tyler is the main character, the reporter Gail isn't just along as a love interest, she certainly holds her own in this tale of survival under the most trying circumstances. I can't judge the scientific accuracy of the premise of the story but it makes for a good tale. I especially enjoyed that Gail isn't waiting to be rescued but is an active participant in her own survival. This science fiction thriller is an exciting and gripping read.

13 Is the New 18

By Beth J. Harpaz

The author tells about how she coped with her son's transformation from little boy to restless teenager the year he turned 13. From a sweet, smart youngster to a gangly, deep-voiced young man in the space of a few short months, from a good student to an indifferent one, from spending time with his family to preferring to spend time on the streets hanging out with his friends. An exasperating, kind of scary time for his parents who realized pretty quick that there wasn't a lot they could do to keep their kid on the straight and narrow, that it would be mostly up to the young man himself. After a year fraught with guilt (her inner voice insists she is "a terrible mother") Beth sees her son pull himself out of his slump, gain new maturity and set his feet back on the straight path without getting himself in too much trouble, beyond an incident at prom involving alcohol and getting mugged on the street by a gang of toughs.

A pretty readable story, although the author's repeated declarations that she is a terrible mother wear a little thin after awhile. She's not a terrible mother and her kid is just a typical kid.

A Redbird Christmas

By Fannie Flagg

Oswald Campbell isn't doing well at all. Suffering from a bad liver from years of drinking too much and bad lungs from years of smoking, Oswald has been told by his doctor that it is time to get his affairs in order. His doctor also advises Oswald to move away from Chicago to some place warmer to prolong what little he has left of his life. The doctor recommends a quiet, Southern backwater in Alabama, Lost River.
So Oswald moves to Lost River and discovers that maybe his life isn't quite over yet. Because Lost River, a very tiny community, welcomes him with open arms, with good food, good companions, peace and quiet and with a beautiful, warm environment.
Perched on the banks of Lost River, Oswald discovers the community is a mecca for migrating birds and he takes up an old interest that he never took the time to develop before, painting. He spends many hours quietly perched on the banks of the river, painting pictures mainly of birds. He gets so good at it he even manages to sell some of his works, generating a nice little extra income for himself.
But this story isn't just about how Oswald finds a new life for himself. It is also about a little crippled girl whose best friend in the world is a Jack, a cardinal, a little red bird that lives at the local grocery store.
Jack was irreparably injured as a young bird but was rescued by the owner of the grocery and he became a kind of mascot for the store, allowed to roam freely throughout the building. The little girl, Patsy, poor, unhealthy and neglected, became fascinated by the little bird and spent most of her time at the store and the two became great friends. That little redbird becomes the light of Patsy's blighted life.
But Lost River is a healing place, as Oswald can attest. And little Patsy may have a chance at a better life in the welcoming arms of the folks at Lost River.

I love this story. This is the second time I have read this book and I enjoyed it just as much this time as the first time. Lost River sounds like heaven on earth and the people of it are the kind of people anyone would wish to know. Yes, it is a total, escapist fantasy and such a place and such people don't really exist anywhere. But it so nice to take a break from the daily grind and go to a world where the folks are warm and welcoming, the climate is balmy and welcoming and where can miracles happen.

Everyone Is Beautiful

By Katherine Center

Lanie Coate and her husband Peter have just moved from Houston to Cambridge, Massachusetts with their three little boys. For Lanie it is a real change since she is leaving behind a home and family and friends that she has had all her life. But it is Peter's big chance to make it as a composer and she is willing to give it all up for him.
Their youngest child is under a year old and still nursing and Lanie hasn't managed to lose the baby weight yet, as is brought home to her very rudely when a stranger at the park asks her when her baby is due. So Lanie signs up for a gym and starts going to it to workout almost every night, even though it means Peter has to take precious time from his composing to look after the kids.
Surprisingly, Lanie chances to meet an acquaintance, Amanda, from high school who also has a young daughter and they strike up a friendship. Amanda is married to a very successful man and, compared to what the struggling Lanie & Peter have, is living the good life. She has a beautiful home, nice clothes, a quiet, well-behaved daughter, a rich husband. Plus Amanda is a beautiful woman, slim and always well-dressed and well-groomed. The opposite of Lanie, who is struggling with her weight, has three active little boys, and whose husband is just starting out in his profession and so money is very tight.
Still Lanie is trying to make the best of things and gets involved with a photography class when her mom sends her her old cameras. Lanie, who used to be quite a good painter, is now turning her artist's eye to photographs and it turns out she has a real knack for it. But problems arise when her teacher puts the move on her right in front of Peter resulting in a fist-fight and Peter maybe leaving home for good.

This was an OK story. Throughout the story, Lanie is pretty hard on herself, describing a life out of control with bratty kids, messy house, burned dinners and other such chaos. But in reality she manages pretty well, creating time to exercise, build friendships, take classes, and pursue her interest in photography. She is painted as a kind of sad sack but it turns out she really isn't one. Anymore than anyone is who is trying to raise three active little ones. So, even though she is struggling, she is only struggling with the things that everyone has to. It doesn't exactly make for the most compelling reading.

Love Bites

By Lynsay Sands

Rachel works in the morgue. One night a guy is brought in who was the victim of a car bomb. As she starts to prepare his body for the post mortem, she notices some rather odds things about his injuries. Like they seem to not be as bad as when his body was first brought in. And like maybe he has a heartbeat. But before she can take a closer look, a man bursts into the morgue and screams that the victim is a vampire and he wants to behead him with a large ax. Just as he swings the ax, Rachel, anxious to protect what maybe not a dead body but a living patient, steps in front of the ax and takes the brunt of it. It is a fatal blow. The man, seeing what he has done, flees.
Etienne, the dead body, wakes up to find Rachel dying. The only thing he can do to save her is to make her like him, a vampire. He and his family sneak her out of the hospital and to his house, there to guide her through the process of learning about the vampire life and, incidentally, to fall in love.

Like so many modern vampires, Etienne and family are not like the old-fashioned vamps. Yes, sun is a problem, but can be tolerated briefly. Garlic, crosses, holy water are not effective against them and they rely on packaged blood for nourishment. Biting people is frowned upon and those who do are dealt with by the vampire community. Oh and the vampirism is the result of a type of nano that lives off blood and keeps the vampire's body healthy and strong. As Rachel discovers when she completes the change over and finds that her breasts are perkier than she can ever remember. Also her scars disappear, including the fatal blow that almost resulted in her death. Which makes me wonder, if old injuries heal themselves, does that include her hymen? Which would of course continue to repair itself after each act of intercourse...
Anyway, this story is basically a romance novel with a vampire twist. It has lots of graphic sex scenes including one in which Rachel gives Etienne a blow job and finishes it off by biting his penis and drinking his blood. It's pretty gross. Not as gross as the blowjob talked about by the whore in PELIKAN, but still it's right up there. The story isn't too long on plot as most of the story scene never leaves Etienne's house except for a two brief excursions, one to a vampire night club and another to Etienne's mom's house. In fact, until the end when the ax guy finally makes his reappearance, there just isn't much happening at all. Just a lot sex. It's really just porn for women. I'm not a fan of it and, adding in the rather thin plot, I have to say I didn't really care for the book. There are several more in the series, of which I plan to read none.

Candy

By Kevin Brooks

Joe is a good kid from a good family. But then he meets and falls for a young street whore named Candy. Candy works for a bad guy pimp,Iggy, who controls her through her addiction to heroin. And Iggy doesn't care for Joe and Candy becoming buddies and he threatens to cut Joe's throat. But Joe can't stop thinking about her and he tracks Iggy to the house where he is keeping Candy. Joe manages to sneak in to see Candy but Iggy finds out and in the confrontation Candy busts him over the head and she and Joe escape, knowing that Iggy will do his worst to find them.
Joe takes Candy to a cottage his dad owns and stays with her as she goes through withdrawal but Iggy finds them and this time someone is going to die.

This was a pretty good story. Some parts were a little hard to swallow, like that Joe just happens to have a deserted cottage where he can take Candy and that his sister, who is a nurse, would let a kid like him take a drug addict to such a place unsupervised and all alone. Heroin withdrawal is not a pretty thing and it's hard to believe a nurse would agree to a kid handling it all on his own. Still it was pretty engrossing.

The Nonsuch Lure

By Mary Luke

A successful business man finds himself drawn back to a landscape he visited as a little boy, the site of Henry VIII's pleasure palace, the Nonsuch, of which only ruins remain. The man, Andrew Moffat, finds out that the site is being investigated by archaeologists and he decides to visit England and return to the site he remembered from his childhood. While strolling on the grounds he is suddenly taken ill at a particular location in the old ruin.
Still his fascination remains with the site and with the family that owned the land before King Henry took it to build his palace on and in particular he is fascinated by Chloe Cuddington, the beautiful daughter of that family whose portrait he has seen the home of a distant relative of hers.
Realizing his fascination is turning into an obsession he pays a visit to a doctor friend in London and the doctor uses hypnosis to regress Andrew back into a previous life, the life of a young Virginia planter who also visited England and who also became enamored of a Chloe Cuddington, an indirect descendant of the Chloe in the painting.
This young planter experienced the same illness that Andrew did in the exact same location and his experience was deadly, killing him and leaving the beautiful young Chloe to die of a broken heart within a few years.
For something evil lingers at the site of the ruined palace, something that is hateful and jealous and willing to kill to protect the secret of the palace, the Nonsuch Lure.

This was a pretty good story, about eternal love, past lives, karma and reincarnation. Even if you don't believe in reincarnation, still it was an engrossing tale and it was touching reading about a love strong enough to span the centuries. And about the mystery of the Lure and what it is and what demonic spirit guards it. I also enjoyed the background story of the Nonsuch Palace, which really existed and which was later torn down to pay for gambling debts. An ignominious end to what was described by the people of its time as one of the most magnificent and amazing palaces in England.

Seance for a Vampire

By Fred Saberhagen

Number 8 in The Dracula Series.

In Saberhagen's series, vampires are people too. They are just a tad different, that's all. Sure they want to suck your blood, but they wouldn't mind being your pal too.
Anyway, in this story, Sherlock Holmes and Watson are called upon to investigate a phony psychic who has supposedly conjured up the spirit of young woman who recently drowned. The woman's fiancee is sure her grieving parents are being scammed and wants Holmes to prove it. He invites the two investigators to the parents' house to attend the seance.
So Holmes and Watson attend the seance, and sure enough, the dead girl appears. She claims she will never be able to rest in peace until an ancient wrong is righted and treasure stolen by an ancestor of the family is returned to its rightful owner. In the uproar that follows, Watson notices that the so-called spirit has no reflection. Holmes is attacked and carried off by some immensely strong attacker and disappears.
Watson, having prior experience with vampires, is pretty sure the spirit girl is in fact not dead but a vampire and he is also afraid that Holmes is now in the clutches of whatever vampire turned the girl into one. Fearing for Holmes' life, Watson contacts Dracula for help. Dracula, it turns out, is related to Holmes and is willing to help Watson in finding the kidnapped Holmes.
The course of their investigation puts them on the trail of a pirate who lost his treasure and blames the vampire girl's family for it. This vampire is a little bit nuts and totally barking up the wrong tree as far as his treasure goes.
Anyways, after rescuing Holmes from an early grave, they track the pirate vampire to Russia and confront him in his sumptuous home. (A home so sumptuous it makes you wonder why the pirate vampire is so intent upon getting the treasure because he sure doesn't seem to be hurting for money.)

I was not familiar with this series before I read this book. To jump into a series without starting at the beginning is a bit jarring. Especially Dracula turning up as a friend of the family and ready to lend a helping hand when needed, that was odd. But never mind that, the story just never touched me. Maybe because the women in the story are mainly only props to be used and abused and put aside. They get raped, turned into vampires, sucked on, entranced, killed, staked, kidnapped and driven insane, but they never really get much of a say in the story. They are just there to be the pathetic victims and that's all. Also, the Dracula character is pretty much a wet fish. He pulls a few vampire tricks but never gets to confront the killer vampire and at the end of the story he misses out on all the action because he gets hypnotized by Rasputin who gets to make a surprise appearance at the end of the story. Bottom line, this story was just not that interesting.

Sea of Memory

By Erri De Luca

A sixteen-year-old boy is spending his summer on an Italian island. It's the 1950s and Naples, his home town, is still full of American soldiers. So even though World War II is over, its effects are everywhere. The boy, whose name is never given, has questions about the war but the adults around him just want to put it in the past.
The boy spends his days out on a fishing boy, learning the trade of the fisherman. The man who operates the boat sometimes imparts a little information about how he spent the war and the boy soaks it all up.
The boy meets a girl, Caia, and becomes smitten. She is a little older than him and seems like she has a secret burden. He finds out that she is Jewish, a fact she prefers the group she hangs out with not to know. The boy becomes her confidant, and she sometimes imagines her dead father talks to her through him from some trick of gesturing that the boy has that reminds her of her father.
As the summer goes on, and the boy comes to feel more deeply the role the Italians played as allies of Germany. He especially sympathizes with Caia, who lost her whole family during the war. His rage and guilt become focused on the many German tourists who are vacationing on the island and he carries out a kind of stupid and pointless revenge against a few of them.

It is strange reading about a teenage obsession, knowing that a crush will most likely pass and that the boy's revenge is the product of an immature mind. All that youthful passion, thrown away in an act that really has no purpose other than to relieve some of the boy's stress, guilt and rage. The reader follows along as a young man's feelings take to him places that may ruin and will probably change the rest of his life. You never find out the consequences of his actions, but even if he is never caught, surely such a drastic step must affect and skew his outlook permanently. He will always be the person who did that terrible thing just as the Germans will always be the people who did that terrible thing, the Holocaust.
But is it a good read? I found it slow going and rather dull. Took me several days to read a very short novel, only 118 pages. Normally I could do that in one sitting. I'm not saying it's a bad read, but it just didn't grab me. Also the abrupt ending was a let down. The boy does his dirty deed but we are not told its effect or the consequences. I can only rate this one fair.