Joining me this week is my new reviewing buddy, Nanette Morton! She’s a writer who lives in Ontario and we have been posting together on a couple of internet forums for quite some time. She loves to read and I always value her opinion on new books, so I know that her reviews will be a great addition. We’ll be working through some of the backlog of books I’ve got for review, in between work and finding time for her own writing.

First up, Double Mayhem (A Seekers Mystery) by Sam Berretti:

Double Mayhem has the makings of a good thriller. Protagonist Doris Watson, engineer, ex-Marine and likeable klutz, is on a forgettable blind date when she finds herself at the center of a covert government operation. Intrigued, she agrees to perform a safe and simple transaction, only to find that nothing is what it seems to be. The people that Doris trusts could turn out to be her worst enemies.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. You know the rules: grab your current read, open to a random page and share a two sentence teaser with us (no spoilers!). Be sure to tell us about the book, so we can add it to our TBR list!

This week, another Teaser from one of the new additions to my library, Charles Todd’s A Question of Honor. I have really enjoyed Todd’s Bess Crawford series, and I am looking forward to finishing this one!

 ”As long as that photograph was locked away in an attic, all well and good. But if whoever it is learned that the house was for sale, he would have a very good reason to worry that when the attics were emptied, the photograph and whatever else is up there might come to light.”

Now, don’t you wonder what was in that photo??? Check back and find out!

This week, I actually did a little happy dance when I opened the mail. I know that my fellow reviewers know that special moment of glee when you get a terrific new book that you were really hoping for but didn’t think you’d get. The object of my affections is first on my list this week.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel is Neil Gaiman’s first new novels for adults since Anansi Boys and I am thrilled to have a chance to review it!

“Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie – magical, comforting, wise beyond her years – promised to protect him, no matter what.”

I am taking this one with me on my business trip this week, in the hopes of getting to it right away!

I don’t recall requesting Point Doom by Dan Fante, but it certainly sounds like my kind of book:

“Failed private investigator JD Fiorella was a pro at finding trouble. Mixing it up with the wrong people in New York, he escaped to L.A.—only to hit rock-bottom after too many nightmares and too much booze.

Now forty-six and sober, JD is working hard to get it together. Living in Malibu at his mother’s house in Point Dume, he’s got a new job selling used cars with his friend Woody and a new girlfriend. But just as things are looking up, JD discovers a gruesome murder. Now the ex-private detective has to make a choice.

Determined to exact vengeance, he follows a twisting trail of clues that leads him to unexpected truths about himself and his new life—and to a psychopathic killer with an eerie connection to his past. And, as JD soon learns, this time there’s no easy way out.”

 

And I am pretty sure I didn’t request The Wonder Bread Summer by Jessica Anya Blau, but it still sounds like a pretty good read. The Universe clearly knows my taste.

In The Wonder Bread Summer, loosely based on Alice in Wonderland, 20-year-old Allie Dodgson has adventures that rival those Alice had down the rabbit hole. Or those of Weeds’ Nancy Botwin.

Allison is working at a dress shop to help pay for college. The dress shop turns out to be a front for drug dealers. And Allison ends up on the run—with a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine. With a hit man after her, Allison wants the help of her parents. But there’s a problem: Her mom took off when Allison was eight; her dad moves so often Allison that doesn’t even have his phone number….

Set in 1980s California, The Wonder Bread Summer is a wickedly funny and fresh caper that’s sure to please fans of Christopher Moore, Carl Hiaasen, and Marcy Dermansky.

Here’s what’s coming up on the site this week:

Monday: My weekly preview, plus an update on some new books that I’ve added to the library.

Tuesday: Teaser Tuesday – a great teaser from one of my new books!

Wednesday: A review from Nanette, my new reviewing buddy. She’s going to help we wade through the piles of e-book requests that come in.

Thursday: Come back on Thursday for my review of NOS4AS, the terrific new novel from Joe Hill.

Friday: I am on the road this week, so I have no idea what Friday will bring! Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to catch up on some reviews that have been languishing.

Saturday: Saturday Snapshot — I took a couple of pictures on my trip to Indiana last week, and I think I have one to share.

Sunday: Another Quotable — interesting, funny, thought-provoking statements about books and reading.

This quote really appealed to me. Have you ever met one of those people who seem to be proud of the fact that they haven’t read a book since they made it out of high school (and I’m guessing they weren’t valedictorian)? It always shocks me that people could be so proud of their ignorance, but they cling to it, like their lack of understanding is an accomplishment.

“If you say ‘I don’t read’ like it’s something to be proud of, punch yourself in the face repeatedly.”

- Donald Bell

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy. To participate, post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

Last weekend, I hosted a party for my parents’ 50th anniversary. The party was exactly what they wanted — small, close family only, plenty of time to chat and visit and reminisce. Rather than go for a big cake, I thought we’d all like some variety for dessert. This went over really well:

There were red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, blueberry cupcakes with lemon frosting, vanilla-almond cupcakes with neon pink frosting, chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting topped with tiny Reese Cups. Best of all, there were spice cake cupcakes with no frosting at all, just powdered sugar. My mother’s favorite.

…because every guy is hotter when he’s reading a good book.

This week, I came across a number of attractive fellows online with books. It was really hard to choose! But since I saw Now You See Me last week (and loved it), this particular fellow has been on my mind lately…

Music history fans are gonna love this!

I admit that, small town girl that I am, I wasn’t  a big punk rock fan as a teenager. Many years later, I have more of an appreciation for it, although it will never be first on my playlist. But PUNK magazine was cool. It was something between a comic book and a music magazine, hand-lettered and full of great comic illustrations. It wasn’t a slick, commercial magazine, it was more like a fanzine – put together by people who loved and lived the music. Now, founder John Holmstrom has put together the story of the iconic magazine and the crazy scene that surrounded it in The Best of Punk Magazine.

“There are a lot of misconceptions about PUNK Magazine, but to me two stand out. One is that we invented the term punk rock. The other is that the magazine was started by three childhood friends from Connecticut who moved to the city to start a magazine together — so we could get free drinks, some people say.”

PUNK was started by three friends: our author, John Holmstrom; Ged Dunn, Jr.; and Eddie “Legs” McNeil. The story of how these guys managed to put together a
magazine makes for fun reading, and you pick up some interesting facts along the way. (The hand-lettering that I always thought was so cool? It wasn’t an artistic decision, but a financial one. They couldn’t afford typesetting. Remember, back in the olden days, there were no computers and desktop publishing programs to do all that.) Still, the best thing about the book is a chance to look over the illustrations, the pages from old PUNK issues. Holmstrom’s stories about each issue, the punk rock scene in New York City in the late ’70′s, and the people – both fans and stars – that populated the scene make for a really fun read.

I have to admit, the idea of a punk rock coffee table book seems…odd to me, but I really had fun scouring these pages, reading the trivia and laughing at the great photos.

My copy of The Best of Punk Magazine was a review copy, provided free of charge.

I think I have enough new books to post for miles, so I’ll share them with you a few at a time. I have a towering stack here next to the computer, and three more big, fat envelopes that came in while I was gone last week. Heavenly!

First, the book from yesterday’s teaser, Strange Bird by Anna Jansson:

As the bird flu pandemic reaches Gotland Island, panic spreads among the inhabitants who are frantic for an elusive cure. In the desperation that rises, the hunt for scapegoats begins, and extremist and anti-immigrant groups gain ground. Meanwhile, nurse Sandra Hägg makes a gruesome discovery at the health clinic where she works—a discovery that will cost her life. Soon Detective Inspector Maria Wern is assigned to solve the murder. Strange Bird, the first novel in the Maria Wern series in English, showcases Anna Jansson’s mastery of both hair-raising crimes and the inner lives of her beloved characters.

You know how I love a good apocalypse! I am looking forward to finishing this one.

Next, a new Charles Todd. I received my first Charles Todd novel as an Advance Reader Copy and have tried to snap up every one since. Next up is A Question of Honor:

Bess Crawford enjoyed a wondrous childhood in India, where her father, a colonel in the British army, was stationed on the Northwest Frontier. But an unforgettable incident darkened that happy time. In 1908, Colonel Crawford’s regiment discovered it had a murderer in its ranks, an officer who killed five people in India and England yet was never brought to trial. In the eyes of many of these soldiers, men defined by honor and duty, the crime was a stain on the regiment’s reputation, and on the good name of Bess’ father, the Colonel Sahib, who had trained the killer. A decade later, tending to the wounded on the battlefields of France during World War I, Bess learns from a dying Indian sergeant that the supposed murderer, Lieutenant Wade, is alive-and serving at the Front. Bess cannot believe the shocking news. According to reliable reports, Wade’s body had been seen deep in the Khyber Pass, where he died trying to reach Afghanistan. Soon, though, her mind is racing. How did he escape from India? What drove a good man to murder in cold blood? Curious to find answers, she uses her leave to investigate. In the village where the first three killings took place, she discovers that locals are certain that the British soldier was innocent. Yet the present owner of the house that was the scene of the crime believes otherwise, and is convinced that Bess’ father helped Wade flee. To settle the matter once and for all, Bess sets out to find Wade and let the courts decide. But when she stumbles on the horrific truth, something that even the famous writer Rudyard Kipling had kept secret all his life, she is shaken to her very core. The facts will damn Wade even as they reveal a brutal reality, a reality that could have been her own fate.

And last, at least in this batch, Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker. True crime isn’t always a big favorite of mine, but this looked too good to pass up:

One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert, after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life, went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the twenty-four-year-old: she was a Craigslist prostitute who had been fleeing a scene—of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County Police, too, seemed to have paid little attention—until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. But none of them Shannan’s.

There was Maureen Brainard-Barnes, last seen at Penn Station in Manhattan three years earlier, and Melissa Barthelemy, last seen in the Bronx in 2009. There was Megan Waterman, last seen leaving a hotel in Hauppage, Long Island, just a month after Shannan’s disappearance in 2010, and Amber Lynn Costello, last seen leaving a house in West Babylon a few months later that same year. Like Shannan, all four women were petite and in their twenties, they all came from out of town to work as escorts, and they all advertised on Craigslist and its competitor, Backpage.

In a triumph of reporting—and in a riveting narrative—Robert Kolker presents the first detailed look at the shadow world of escorts in the Internet age, where making a living is easier than ever and the dangers remain all too real. He has talked exhaustively with the friends and family of each woman to reveal the three-dimensional truths about their lives, the struggling towns they came from, and the dreams they chased. And he has gained unique access to the Oak Beach neighborhood that has found itself the focus of national media scrutiny—where the police have flailed, the body count has risen, and the neighbors have begun pointing fingers at one another. There, in a remote community, out of sight of the beaches and marinas scattered along the South Shore barrier islands, the women’s stories come together in death and dark mystery.

The best part is, this is the tip of the iceberg. So many more great books to share with you! Check back next week for more.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. You know the rules: grab your current read, open to a random page and share a two sentence teaser with us (no spoilers!). Be sure to tell us about the book, so we can add it to our TBR list!

Today, I’ve got a Teaser from a book I just received this week. Strange Bird by Anna Jansson. It’s the story of a bird flu pandemic and the panic it causes among the inhabitants of a small island:

“When Asa ended the call she felt relieved, relieved and almost euphoric that Malin Berg managed to die without seeing a single person. The thought would have been downright indecent if the circumstances were normal, she realized immediately, but in this situation it was better that one person was dead than that a hundred people had been infected.”