Vampires are all the rage these days. True Blood on HBO, the Twilight series and movies, Being Human on BBC America has a vampire, even the recently (and sadly) departed Blood Ties on Lifetime (and the books by Tanya Huff) – those bloodsuckers are everywhere. (I’ve even got a giveaway featuring vampires!) And for the modern woman who can’t resist… Read more
The Brutal Telling is a first-rate detective novel. The mystery is complex and well-plotted, while the beautiful Canadian scenery and charming characters breathe life into the story. It is a look into the very darkest corners of the human heart, a reminder that we never truly know what another person is capable of, or what secrets they may keep. The… Read more
I love a good adventure novel! Exploring the Arctic, searching for the source of the Nile, exploring the Amazon basin, all from the comfort of your local library. Most of us will never in our lives go anywhere that is truly unexplored, but I have great respect for the men (and occasionally women) who were unafraid of the unknown. In… Read more
In The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel, Maureen Lindley looks at the life of a notorious Chinese princess from a forgiving angle. Eastern Jewel, also known as Yoshiko Kawashima, was considered quite scandalous in her day: a Chinese princess raised in Japan, a promiscuous young woman who wore men’s clothes, she drank and smoked opium, she spied for the Japanese… Read more
It took a little convincing to get me to read this book. I got an email about the book and they almost lost me with “as only a dog could tell it.” A dog telling the story is almost always a recipe for disaster. In this case, instead of disaster, there’s a pretty terrific story and a narrator with an… Read more
Marina Marks is a fake psychic. She developed a keen ability to read people as a method of self-preservation – it helped her survive her drug-addicted mother and the string of shady boyfriends that hung around them. Her mother stuck a deck of tarot cards in Marina’s hand and she became a revenue stream, one more way to scrape the… Read more
I love after-the-apocalypse stories. I always have. As a kid, I was always planning for what I would do after the zombies attacked, after the nuclear warheads fell and it was just me and a rag-tag band of survivors. There is something appealing about the start of a whole new world order, a chance to find a different place for… Read more
Gary Gray wants nothing more than to be “normal.” He wants to fall in love, get married, have children, go to church, go to Disney Land and live the American dream. He’s got one little problem, though: he’s in love with his roommate, Russ, and lusting after other men is frowned upon at Southern Florida Christian College. God Says No… Read more
Lucy Burns works for Satan. Now, I have often told stories about a particularly miserable old job and told people that I, too, worked for Satan. But Lucy really does work for Satan. She’s a Facilitator – she helps damned souls make their way to their final “reward” in a timely fashion. She got into this mess by making a… Read more
This is the last, great beach read of the summer. Let’s Get It On is the rather fanciful tale of LaShaWanda P. Marshall and her friends, Lydia Beaucoup and Acey Allen. They are the owners of a successful “full-service spa” (in other words: a brothel) for women in Reno, and they are opening their first franchise, on a yacht off… Read more