Welcome to my new monthly meme, HOT READS. This is especially for those hot, steamy books (come on! you know you’ve got a couple) that you really enjoyed and want to share with others. Here’s how we play:

This month, my HOT READ is While The Wife’s Away and Other Stories by Kris Anderson. It’s a little hot, guy on guy action, full of handsome men sneaking around. We all like naughty boys and these guys are downright wicked. I knew as soon as I saw the cover that this would be a good read — and a hot one.  And it reminded me of one of the big benefits of reading a HOT READ on your Kindle — you don’t have to worry about hiding the cover!

Welcome to my new monthly meme, HOT READS. This is especially for those hot, steamy books (come on! you know you’ve got a couple) that you really enjoyed and want to share with others. Here’s how we play:

This month, my HOT READ is While The Wife’s Away and Other Stories by Kris Anderson. It’s a little hot, guy on guy action, full of handsome men sneaking around. We all like naughty boys and these guys are downright wicked. I knew as soon as I saw the cover that this would be a good read — and a hot one.  And it reminded me of one of the big benefits of reading a HOT READ on your Kindle — you don’t have to worry about hiding the cover!

When I heard the news of Robert B. Parker’s passing, I was heartbroken. I have been reading his Spenser novels for ages and the thought there would be no more of them — too much to contemplate. Sixkill is the 39th Spenser novel and, according to the book jacket, “the last Spenser novel Parker completed.” Now, that doesn’t sound very…final. It sounds like there might be some unfinished stuff out there. I am not completely opposed to another author carrying the mantle, as long as we don’t lose any of the snappy dialogue and hooligan philosophy of the original.

In Sixkill, Spenser is older and wiser and without his usual back-up, Hawk, who is off in Central Asia. We start off with a visit from our old friend, Martin Quirk, who wants Spenser to look into a murder. A particularly nasty piece of work named Jumbo Nelson is shooting a movie in Boston and has apparently murdered a young woman he hooked up with. At least, she died in his bed, the coroner isn’t quite sure of what, and he claims to have been barely sober enough to notice she was dead when he came back from taking a leak. Like I said, nasty fella. As much as everyone wants to put him away, Quirk isn’t sure, and Spenser trusts Quirk’s instincts.

The novel introduces a new character that I think would have had some staying power. Zebulon Sixkill (and what an awesome name that is!) is a Native American college drop-out, former college football star, now a bodyguard for Jumbo Nelson. He’s got a drinking problem (not the sort of thing that is helped by hanging out with celebrities) and he ends up working with Spenser. Actually, what Spenser does is more like mentoring — he helps the kid get sober, gets him back in shape, gets him a job at the gym. Gets him back to a place where he might be able to make something of his life. He’s an interesting young man and, like a lot of other tough guys from previous Spenser novels, could definitely become a recurring character. Sadly, we won’t get to read what Parker might have had in mind.

Sixkill is one of the better Spenser novels I’ve read recently. There were a couple of books where I thought it might be time for Spenser and Susan to retire to a little cabin in the Catskills or something, but there is plenty of snappy dialogue, cool new characters, and an engaging mystery to solve. It was a real pleasure to read, which makes the fact that it is the one that was completely Parker’s all the more melancholy. This is an author and a series that I will truly miss, but I am glad that he goes out on such a high note.

My copy of Sixkill came from my personal library.

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, my teaser is from A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France, a terrific read about a truly terrible period in history. It’s interesting to read the nitty-gritty details of what it was like to be living in Paris under the Nazis, and I hope I would have shown the courage that these young women did. This comes from some of the anecdotes about surviving the coldest winter on record in Paris, under occupation by the Germans:

“Though the integration of France into the Nazi war economy had dramatically cut unemployment, the French were beginning to understand that the shortages were the direct result of the enormous booty of clothing, food and raw materials leaving every day for the Reich. The Parisians were now obsessed with food and warmth, lining their clothing with newspapers, putting mustard in their socks and making muffs out of rabbit and cat skins.”

Mustard? In your socks? I assume they mean dry mustard, but still! Doesn’t sound warm to me.

I got a great stash of books while I was in Detroit on business! It is so nice to come home, knowing there will be a little pile of packages, holding their little treasures, waiting for me to open them and set them on the shelves!

First, The Face Thief by Eli Gottlieb:

Gottlieb introduces the mystery of the charismatic Margot, a promising journalist who morphs—with stunning panache—from a high-achieving affluent twentysomething into a grifter making her living preying on the weaknesses of men. Having studied the ancient Chinese art of face reading, she becomes an expert at reading people and is also able to rearrange her look and persona with uncanny skill to fit any social situation. She is an avenging angel, shattering marriages and draining bank accounts.

That definitely sounds promising! Next up, Raylan by Elmore Leonard:

With the closing of the Harlan County, Kentucky, coal mines, marijuana has become the biggest cash crop in the state. A hundred pounds of it can gross $300,000, but that’s chump change compared to the quarter million a human body can get you—especially when it’s sold off piece by piece.

I love Elmore Leonard. That should be a good one.

Third book in the stack, Bleed for Me  by Michael Robotham:

A teenage girl–Sienna, a troubled friend of his daughter–comes to Joe O’Loughlin’s door one night. She is terrorized, incoherent-and covered in blood.

The police find Sienna’s father, a celebrated former cop, murdered in the home he shared with Sienna. Tests confirm that it’s his blood on Sienna. She says she remembers nothing.

Joe O’Loughlin is a psychologist with troubles of his own. His marriage is coming to an end and his daughter will barely speak to him. He tries to help Sienna, hoping that if he succeeds it will win back his daughter’s affection. But Sienna is unreachable, unable to mourn her father’s death or to explain it.

Another winner, I think. I can’t wait for it to get to the top of the TBReviewed list!

Carry the One also came in while I was out of town. This new novel by Carol Anshaw starts with an accidental death after a wedding. For the next 25 years, those involved connect, disconnect and reconnect. As one character says, “When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.”

Last on the list is No Mark upon Her by best-selling author Deborah Crombie. So many good mysteries! Now all I need is some time to read them.

Okay, time for a little taste of what you’ll get this week on Alive on the Shelves!

Monday: Some great new books came in while I was out of town, so you’ll get a chance to peek in my mailbox.

Tuesday: I’ve got a teaser from my current book, A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France for Teaser Tuesday.

Wednesday: I hope to have some new words for you for Wondrous Words Wednesday and a review of the last (sniffle!) Robert B. Parker mystery, Sixkill.

Thursday: Another review — The Informationist. Really interesting mystery/spy novel with a fascinating female protagonist.

Friday: I will be talking about this month’s Hot Reads. And in this case, I mean hot as in steamy!

Saturday: More Saturday Snapshots and I know just the picture I want to take.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home with Books. 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.

The only new photo I have this week is a picture of one of my colleagues who fell asleep on the drive to the airport Wednesday; it’s funny, but it seems unfair to post it here. Instead, this gives me an excuse to look through my old photos and find something fun.

These pics are from a trip I took a few years ago for a friend’s wedding. I bet I don’t even have to tell you the location!

Come on - you know where this is!

Lucky me -- I got sunshine in Seattle!

I have a GREAT interview for you today. Asking a stranger random questions about their work can be a gamble — sometimes you get great answers, sometimes not. This time? Great answers.

First, a little about the book, Heidegger’s Glasses:

Heidegger’s Glasses opens during the end of World War II in a failing Germany coming apart at the seams. The Third Reich’s strong reliance on the occult and its obsession with the astral plane has led to the formation of an underground compound of scribes—translators responsible for answering letters written to those eventually killed in the concentration camps. Into this covert compound comes a letter written by eminent philosopher Martin Heidegger to his optometrist, who is now lost in the dying thralls of Auschwitz. How will the scribes answer this letter? The presence of Heidegger’s words—one simple letter in a place filled with letters—sparks a series of events that will ultimately threaten the safety and well-being of the entire compound.

This one is definitely on my TBR list, but until then, I got a chance to ask author Thaisa Frank some questions about here work…

AotS: I am always fascinated by a writer’s process – how and when and where they write. Do you have any rituals around your writing? Particular places or times of the day that your write, music that you listen to or a schedule that you keep?

TF: About process:    I tend to be a sprinter–that is, I mull over the story for a long time and collect fragments that have resonance until they’ve arranged themselves into a pattern and suggest the sequence and shape of the story. There are blank days in this process, during which I assure myself that the story is gestating and that I’m not just wasting time. (I’m never sure until the story manifests!)

Flaubert said: It’s not the pearls, it’s the way they’re strung together and I guess you might say that I collect the pearls very slowly and then work intensively until they’re strung into a viable necklace.

Rules and rituals: I generally have one writing rule that I stick to:  I don’t take a break until 4:30 on weekdays. This means that I don’t meet people for lunch or schedule writing consultations with clients and I stay at my desk, or in a café with my computer, even if all I’m doing is staring. It’s kind of like being a shopkeeper. I may not have any customers that day but if I don’t show up, I won’t sell anything.

Places: In the mulling-over phase I can work in cafes. I like the ambient noise, the music in the background and the friends who stop to talk. But in the printing phase, I work in my studio–a quiet place with a lot of papers.  I’m compulsive about the music and rhythm in my work, so I sometimes will print a page many times, just to see whether one comma should be taken out.  I turn into a crazed type A maniac when I print and I wouldn’t want anyone to see me!

AotS: Do you generally plot the story in your head and know what you want to write when you sit down? Or do you just pick up a pen (or boot up the laptop) and let fly? Do you know when you begin how the story will end?

TF: I don’t know the plot when I begin a story.  I start with a phrase, an image, a situation, and often a title.  Sometimes I know the last phrases of a story without knowing what the story is about. I often start my stories in longhand and at some point work switch to my laptop.  There’s always an exciting point in this process—the point at which the story seems to be an independent entity, outside my imagination. And then it begins to tell me what to do with it—what to take out, what to emphasize. It’s like catching on to a math problem or a puzzle.  For me, this is on one of the most exciting parts of writing fiction.

AotS: You’ve published two previous books of short stories. How is it different, writing a full length novel? Do you think about the story differently?

TF: I start a novel the same way I start a story.  That is, with an  an image, a title, a sense of place, or  a slightly surreal situation. For example: One element in Heidegger’s Glasses was a vision of a cobblestone street with gas lamps in an abandoned mine. There was a large room in this mine where people were writing letters to the dead. This image was on my mind when I started the novel. The room and the mine became populated with people. As did the title Heidegger’s Glasses.  But a third of the way through, I had to begin to see how these strands related to a larger narrative arc that would carry the story through to the end. So this leds me to thinking about the plot. Short stories seem to resolve themselves on an intuitive level.  In a short story, the pearls turn into something light, something that can be thrown in the air and land in a pattern.   In a novel, two-thirds of the way through, I really have to think about “what comes next.” Read the remainder of this entry »

This was a fun read. When it comes to the backside of Hollywood, you have to admit that Cheryl Crane, daughter of screen legend Lana Turner, really knows her stuff. The Bad Always Die Twice is a Hollywood murder mystery with all of the fun details that only an insider would know.

Nikki Harper is a Hollywood real estate agent, selling those megamillion dollar mansions in the hills with her partner, Jessica Martin. They are young, pretty, celebrity-savvy girls:

“One of Jessica’s most endearing qualities was that she wasn’t any more impressed by celebrities than Nikki was. Their only difference was that Nikki had grown up with them and Jessica slept with them. The combination of their personalities made them a great team at work.”

Sort of sets the tone for their interaction. Jessica is the pretty, flashy girl who flirts with the gentlemen clients and reels them in. Nikki is less flashy, with a more understated style, and the Hollywood chops to make the deals. And when Jessica is accused of murder, Nikki puts those Tinseltown connections to work.

The real star of the story is Victoria Bordeaux. She is stunningly beautiful, incredibly poised, an old-school screen goddess in the style of, well, Lana Turner. She is also Nikki’s mother. Nikki’s relationship with her mother and her mother’s particular flair for dealing with people are the best parts of the book. Nikki is a great character, with a complicated love life, interesting friends and the sort of foibles that will make her a fun read. Still, Victoria is what will keep me coming back — you can just tell that she’s going to be very involved in whatever Nikki does…and that’s not a bad thing at all.

I was a little wary taking this on — sometimes you suspect that a writer got their contract based more on a celebrity pedigree than their writing talent — but it was a real pleasure. I wouldn’t put Nikki up there with my new detective lady-love, Keye Street, but I would certainly enjoy picking up the next Nikki Harper mystery.

My copy of The Bad Always Die Twice was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

This week, my words are from The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian. There are a number of herbalists in the story, so a number of my words are associated with plants and herbs.

1. Scapes - A long, leafless flower stalk coming directly from a root.

“Reseda Hill stood in her greenhouse a few steps in front of Anise, inspecting the scapes on the coral root she had transplanted earlier that winter.”

2. Amalki – Indian Gooseberry, Amlaki is known as a rasayana herb that enhances and restores the process of conservation, transformation and resurgence of the life force.

“Basil and parsley had no business mixing with hypnobium, belladonna, or amalaki.”

3. Epazote - A Mexican herb that has a very strong taste and sometimes has a gasoline or perfumey type odor. It has been used in Mexican cuisine for thousands of years dating back to the Aztecs.

“Reseda misted the hypnobium, epazote, and derangia in her greenhouse.”

And in case you were wondering about hypnobium and derangia, I think they are the author’s invention. I can’t find any reference to them elsewhere.

4. Amphisbaena - a serpent with a head at each end of its body

“Consequently, she stepped over the shin-high stone statue of amphisbaena, careful not to trip over either of the serpent’s heads (in myth, amphisbaena meat was an aphrodisiac; its skin could cure colds)”

5. Calandrinia - a large genus of low-growing herbs; widespread throughout tropical and warm temperate regions having usually basal leaves and panicles of purplish ephemeral flowers.

“The rosemary and the calandrinia?”

6. Niveous - Snowy or resembling snow

“…how you never grew less enamoured of the niveous white magnificence of clouds as you gazed down at them from thirty or thirty-five thousand feet.”

7. Inter-cycle - ice which forms between cyclic activation of a mechanical or thermal de-ice system.

8. Runback – ice that is the result of water freezing on unprotected surfaces. Often forming behind deicing boots or heated leading edges

9. Rime – ice that is rough and opaque, formed by supercooled drops rapidly freezing on impact

“…just as you know the federal aviation definitions for ice: Glaze. Inter-cycle. Known or observed. Mixed. Residual. Runback. Rime.”

What new words did YOU learn this week?