Tour’s Books – Best of 2011 (and some of the Worst) – Part 1

Looking back on 2011, it was a year that had some great new writers, quality work for well established one, some real lemons, and a downgrade in overall quality of books.  So here are some personal opinions on books I read – and I’ve read a lot, but a far cry from all the new books in 2011, so feel free to chime in with your Best and Worst of 2011.

Best New Author

Kevin Hearne!  What a pleasant surprise.  In a sea of ‘me too’ UF/paranormal books, along comes an author with a lead character that’s a 2,000+ year old Druid that looks like a 20-something hippie and runs a bookstore herb shop in Tempe, AZ.  And even better, his very amusing sidekick is an Irish wolfhound that he’s taught to speak mentally with him.   Hounded, Hexed, and Hammered make it as the best first 3 books I’ve read in a long time.  Engaging, amusing, exciting well told tales.  YEAH!!!!!!!   The fourth book is on order!

Worst Mystery in a Series

Smokin’ Seventeen by Janet Evanovich.  Stick a fork in it, this series was toast awhile back, but this entry was a complete disgrace.  Whole paragraphs came from previous books and there wasn’t an original thought in 300 slight pages.  The whole Morelli/Steph/Ranger thing is took a twist that was insulting to the characters and fans alike.  Poor plot, worse concept, and a total waste of money and time.

Best Action/Thriller Series Division

Kage: The Shadow (A Connor Burke Novel) by – John Donohue is an unexpected choice in a year when Barry Eisler brought back his brilliant John Rain character.  Sentiment aside, Donohue just wrote a better book.

Runner Up: Buried Secrets (Nick Heller, Bk 2) by Joseph Finder – A relentless thriller that combined multiple plot twists and it’s fair share of not quite credible moments, but held up well overall.

Biggest Disappointment – tie:  Soft Target by Stephan Hunter – Wow, what a letdown!  This lame story had nowhere to go from the outset and generated no real tension or surprises.   It’s only positive was it was short.

Bad Blood (Virgil Flowers) by John Sanford – What a predictable bit of tripe this was.  Sanford relied on the shock value of incest to cover an otherwise nearly plotless book.  Waste of time and money.

Best Entry in Ongoing Series – Paranormal/UF

The Hour of Dust and Ashes (Charlie Madigan, Bk 3) by Kelly Gay  Some authors manage to keep things interesting and write complete stories yet keep an ongoing plot moving without looping endlessly.  Kudos to Ms Gay for her quality work

Runners-up:  One Salt Sea (An October Daye Novel) by Seanan McGuire - This is a series that seems to get better with each book.  McGuire is another author that has produced consistent, quality work.  Brava!

Kill the Dead (A Sandman Slim Novel) by Richard Kadrey – Sandman Slim might have been over hyped in 2010, but Kill the Dead, book 2 in the series, was excellent.

Biggest Disappointment:  The Fallen Blade by Jon Courtney Grimwood – This was one of those books that was just plain annoying.  Despicable people, dumb plot, badly paced and simply incoherent in places.  What a waste, yet hyped by it’s fans.

Best Cozy Mystery

Wow is this a crowded field these days with all kinds of cozies out there.  About the only genre that releases more books per month is romance.  I have to admit I’m not the world’s biggest fan of the bulk of this genre, but there are some exceptions.  I actually find myself with multiple winners in a range of sub-genres.

Traditional Cozy

Ink Flamingos (A Tattoo Shop Mystery) by Karen E Olsen – I love this series.  It’s off beat, well written, interesting and amusing.  Ms Olsen created a terrific character with tattoo artist Dee Carmichael.  Read them all and enjoyed every one of them!

Runner Up:  Death by the Dozen by Jenn McKinlay – Everything a cozy should be, and an amusing behind the scenes look a cooking contest with a group of thinly veiled Food Network characters.  An unexpected pleasure.

Best New Series – tie

Die Buying by Laura DiSilvero – An interesting heroine, ex military police woman with partial disability, and a good story.  An all around out of the ordinary read.

Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure by Diane Kelly  Another really good read with an ensemble cast and good lead character who works for IRS!!!!!!  Is there a less likely heroine?  It works on every level.

Runners Up: Quickstep to Murder by Ella Barrick – This unlikely candidate was a surprise for me.  Entertaining, with a good mystery and a look into the world of competitive dancing.  Don’t know if the series can hold up, but book one was a good start.

Death on Tour by Janice Hamrick – Set to a lightning tour of ancient Egypt, where nothing is quite what it seems, the book works.  the characters are not as fresh or original as the others, but it’s an Edgar nominee and was a good read.

Paranormal Mystery

Baited by Sue Ann Jaffarian – Vamps that are not warm and cuddly, a couple of humans, and a LOT of dead bodies.  It all added up to a good, if darker than usual, read.

Special Mention:  Ghost a la Mode by Sue Ann Jaffarian – this book was written in 2009, but I read it last year.  It blew away the usual paranormal claptrap that’s swamping the market.  A cozy and a paranormal that’s still an intelligent read.

Best Traditional Mystery

Rogue Island by Bruce de Silva – A first novel by a newsman, this story about corruption and death in Rhode Island was a really good read.

Runner up:  The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton – A brilliant piece of literature and an Edgar winner, but so stylized it’s a challenge at times.

Happy New Year – and a few new release book comments

Well Happy 2012 to everyone!  A new year, a fresh batch of books, new authors, undiscovered gems, and yes, disappointments, are all there waiting for us in life and in books.  I sincerely hope everyone has a healthy and prosperous 2012 and you each take the time to enjoy a few good books, whatever your choice of reading might be.

I had a good Christmas visiting family and eating too much.  Now it’s home, football, and books.  Come Tuesday, Amazon will be delivering a PILE! of new release books, mostly paranormal/UF and mystery, but a few brave publishers did release a few just before and after Christmas.  Of course, I did take time to read.

Oh, by the way, the Christmas books I gave – these are comments from those who got them and read them!

Desert Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography from the Xavier Guerrand-Hermes Collection by Kristine Loughran, Cynthia Becker – this is no coffee table book, but the photos are so worth it.  Terrific for anyone interested in unique silver work of the mid-East and nomadic tribes.  Keeper shelf material.

The Iona Sanction by Gary Corby – rated a very good read

The Diamond Frontier by John Wilcox – rated a very good read

Throw Them All Out by Peter Schweizer – makes your blood boil, so read a bit at a time

The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle,  Scott McKowan – totally worth the money for an excellent quality book and a great gift according to my Holmes fan!  It goes to the ‘keeper shelf’.

Now, what I read…………………

• Title:  Silver-Tongued Devil
  
• Author:  Jaye Wells
• Type:  Paranormal/UF
• Genre:  Sabrina Kane, vampire mage, continues flounder through her life
• Sub-genre:  Maisie redux
• My Grade: C+ (3.3*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 90,000+ $7.99 with discounts available
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores and online
• FTC Disclosure: purchased through an online bookstore

This is a series that’s starting read like a literary treadmill – moving quickly and going nowhere.  The lead character, Sabina Kane seems trapped in a loop of repeat adventures, repeat mistakes, and no character growth, the plot was predictable, and the story arc held only one big surprise.  As for Sabina, well, isn’t it time she gave up the emotional angst of a 23 year old?  She is in her 50′s.  Time to pull on the big girl panties and grow up.  Silver-Tongued Devil‘s biggest downsides:  Sabina still has these stupid knee-jerk, unthinking reactions, too much of what’s happening is merely a weak continuation of the plot of Green-Eyed Demon, the whole roller derby thing was kind of pointless, and the plot telegraphs everything like  some frantic semaphore flag waver.  The upsides: The pacing is good and the story moves quickly, there’s lots of action, the contrived angst is only moderately annoying, the plot has a nice twist near the end, and it seems we might finally make progress in the next installment.

Silver-Tongued Devil starts a few months after the end of Green-Eyed Demon with the rescued Maisie back in NYC and her twin, Sabina, still trying to reconcile with what happened and each other.  Sabina is doing her best to stop hunting humans for blood, and settle in living with Adam Lazarus, her mage lover, and come to terms with her guilt and fear for her twin, Maisie.  Giguhl, her mischief demon, is his usual conniving self and possibly the best character in the series.

Part of  Sabina’s efforts to adjust from the emotionally barren upbringing of her twisted grandmother, Lavinia, is to drink bagged blood rather than hunt humans for food.  But the overwhelming smell of blood draws her to crime scene where a man has been brutally murdered – but without enough blood present given the wounds.  Sabina knows a vampire kill when she sees one.  It soon becomes apparent there is some bigger thing going on and her old lover, vampire mob boss Slade, kind of blackmails her into helping him track the culprit down.

Against a backdrop of tentative peace negotiations between vamps, mages, and fea, and concerns about Maisie’s mental and physical health, Sabina chases a vicious killer and deals with having a secret she should never have kept causing a rift between her and Adam.  The sense of ‘deja vu’ that much of the book evokes and a less than thrilling ending, left a sense of ‘retread’.

Is Silver-Tongued Devil worth $7.99?  Meh.  If you love the series, yes.  You could very likely read Blue-Blooded Vamp, the next book due this summer, without needing this one to keep you current.  Try and get a deep discount or buy used in a few months.

***************************************************

• Title:  Wicked Circle
  
• Author:  Linda Robertson
• Type:  Paranormal/UF
• Genre:  Persephone Alcmedi series book 5
• Sub-genre:  Seph, Johnny and Menessos tangle with fate and furies
• My Grade: B- (3.7*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 100,000+ $7.99 with discounts available
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores and online
• FTC Disclosure: purchased through an online bookstore

The Persephone Alcmedi series has been one of the most consistent and complex series to come along in awhile.  Wicked Circle might be a weaker entry, but it’s still superior to most of the popular paranormal series.  The one problem with this series is the long time between books.  While this certainly makes for much better books, it can be hard to recall all the various plot elements from the previous installment.

Wicked Circle picks up the story just where Arcane Circle left off.  Eris Alcmedi has removed the spells that locked Johnny’s power as Domme Lupe, but doing seems to have changed him, more than

Merry Christmas! Let’s Get Cooking!

(I might wish this was my house, but it isn’t!)

Yup, same time every year, it’s Christmas!  For many, it’s all about the latest wiz ding electronic toy or hottest fashion item, but always high on the list in my family was books.  I remember when each Christmas would bring a whole host of coffee table type books, art, archeology, travel, you name it.  I have many books on ancient Egypt that I read more years ago than I care to count!  I have shelves still stuffed with gems on everything from Hopi art and culture to a reprint of Howard Carter’s book on finding Tutankhamen’s Tomb.  By the time I reached my teens and began taking over the kitchen (my mother’s vapor trail lead to the living room sofa and never budged), I was also collecting cookbooks.  Yup, I was a foodie back in the day when The Galloping Gourmet was the forefront of food prep.  We’ve come a long way from Graham Kerr and I’ve kind of surrendered the kitchen duties as much as possible,  but I have all my cookbooks.  Since I never talk about them, and they’ve always been a big part of my life, I figured I share some of my favorites.

DESSERTS

Yes, “Eat Dessert First ……. Life Is So Uncertain” is my motto.  Very often I plan my meal backwards and select the dessert and then decide what to build around the choice.  For Dad, apple pie or apple strudel were always the top of the list and must haves for Christmas.  For Mom, mince pie and pumpkin pie.  I learned to tolerate mince pie, but I’ll never be a fan.  As for pumpkin pie, well I tried a whole range of recipes for that and still like pumpkin spice cake better.  I recommend Ina Garten’s Pumpkin Spice Roulade.  Better than pie, but a bit tougher to make.

Of course, Christmas wasn’t Christmas without cookies.  I’d start after Thanksgiving and bake most every weekend till the holiday.  Cream cheese spritz cookies were always carefully decorated with colored sugar and or glaceed cherries – red and green never found in nature, just in chemicals.  The favorites in our house were – Oatmeal Crunchies, a Toll House kind of cookie made with rolled oats, chopped walnuts and lots and lots of chocolate chips, rugelach – the classic made with a pound of sweet butter, a pound of cream cheese, a pound of flour, and 3 oz of sugar then rolled out, brushed with melted sweet butter, sprinkled with sugar mixed with finely chopped nuts, or cut into squares, piped with apricot or raspberry jam then folded like tiny danish, and baked, and finally Thumbprint cookies.  Over the years I made many different desserts, some amazing that can only be made with fruits that are locally fresh, like the blueberry cream deep dish tart that was my aunt’s favorite, others could be made anytime.

If you buy only one dessert cookbook, buy Madia’s Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts.  And don’t be afraid of mixing things up or add things.  I always modify recipes.  Just know what you’re doing with cakes.  Cookies and other things are more forgiving.  And remember, the single most expensive ingredient is your time, so use sweet butter when called for, and quality chocolate.  Otherwise, you might as well buy some supermarket junk.  The Black Velvet Cake is just AMAZING and I brushed the sponge with Frambois and spread raspberry preserves on all the surfaces.  Loved it!  Served it with a raspberry coulis and lots of whipped cream.  Do use the chocolate she recommends.  The brownies are great (I double the recipe, beat it a bit longer,and a cross between and cake and fudge brownie and grease and sugar the pane and cover the top of the baked brownies with sugar as well for a crunchy outside) , love her pumpkin spice cake (I use half melted sweet butter and half oil) and her Raspberry Strawberry Bavarian is idiot proof for non-cooks (I use raspberry Jello and more frozen raspberries than strawberries).

The Main Course

This was always easy with my crew – they hate change.  Really, really hate change.  You can sneak in new stuff, but heaven help you if you take away what they expect!  For us it was prime rib and turkey – two complete sets of vegetables, only common element was mashed potatoes – for Christmas and a whole ham for New Year.   Some years I did try goose, didn’t like it, another year duck, same problem, but always had the prime rib at Christmas.  Since we’d usually just finished eating the damn Thanksgiving turkey, I was given a teeny bit of slack on that.  Mostly, it was the same main course with a lot more in the way of appetizers and stuff.   Since we had all the pies and cakes at Christmas, for New Year I’d make rice pudding and brown sugar shortbread cookies and usually a triple layer lemon cream pie.   And apple pie or strudel.  (You’re detecting a trend here, I’m sure.)

I was able to experiment more with other occasions and enjoyed several good cookbooks:  Vincent and Mary Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes (out of print but can be found at Alibris) – recipe’s from famous restaurants around the world as well as the Price’s own kitchen(Pineapple Macadamia Nut Bread from the Hotel Hana Maui and Chicken Sweet and Hot, one of their own), and The Romagnolis’ Table (try the stuffed breast of veal and use a good white wine!), and James Beard’s American Cookery.  I have a large selection of cookbooks for regional cuisines all over the world and collected them when I traveled.  I even have one written by a witch in Salem, MA!  Oddly enough, even as I picked up skills over the years, ones that Food Network still teach (not that there was a Food Network for me, dammit!), are in a very odd multi-volume set (12 books) sold way back in the 60′s, The Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery.  Amazing amount of general information on everything from apples that are best for pies, to some good quick and easy foods.  Educational about ingredients in a way most cookbooks of the time were not.  Yes, I still have them.  Lots of techniques and some good ideas and very well illustrated with color photos.

Food and Wine magazine has given me some of the family favorites.  I have never made a dish that’s been so widely liked as Steak Budapest, a little Gem I picked up there.  It’s best made with good, thick cut chuck roast and like most stewed meat, must sit several days before eating.  It smells like hell when it’s cooking – and you MUST buy REAL Hungarian paprika – both sweet and hot – and get good red wine (I use an Italian or a California burgundy) or you’ll wast your time.  Not expensive to make, but all ages just lap it up and fight over the sauce with my garlic bread.  I also tried a recipe for Blueberry tart, that ended up modifying heavily.  Amazing summer dessert and a July 4th ‘must make’ along with my tri-color macaroni and shrimp salad.

Appetizers

If desserts were kind of my specialty, and main courses were often limited by my family, appetizers were where I could experiment even on my relatives.  I mean really, there were so many choices, who cares if you didn’t like some?  I could play with puff pastry and phyllo to my heart’s content.  If the marinades and sauces turned out well, they were sometimes moved up to a starring role in the Main Course.  I never did find a book that taught me a lot about appetizers.  Unlike national or regional cuisines, appetizers kind of grew up as step-children of all countries.  They could fun, or spicy, or just plain in simple like fried zucchini with honey mustard (my aunt’s favorite), or a baked brie with sliced almonds and sweet butter (that got old), or classics like spanakopita (I think my whole family liked these, though they swore they wouldn’t).

Want to try a marinade?  A new sauce?  Use it in your appetizers.  If it doesn’t work, that’s no big loss.  It’s a great way to try things with chicken and seafood.  Want to try shrimp and fish Provencal?  This is the place.  It’s a fast dish and very tasty.  Going for a classic?  Coquille St Jacques is easy.  Easier still – how about shrimp or crab stuffed avocados?  Just buy the shrimp and or crab cooked and cleaned the whip it is up.  Keep in mind, like New England Lobster rolls, this is not about balancing a long list of complicated ingredients, it just a few things that need to be the freshest and highest quality available.  Simple food leaves a cook with nowhere to run.  In that way, it can be harder to make simple things than complex ones.

Sauces take awhile to learn, and unless you’re a master chef, you’ll never be perfect.  Guess what, unless you’ve got Mario Batali or Bobby Flay in the family, relax.  And if you don’t like cooking, that’s ok too.  I’m past the elaborate meal phase and back to simple and good.  A good set of knives, quality pots and pans are a lot more important than acres of granite counter-tops and a pot filler behind your giant 8 burner stove.  And nothing ever replaces quality ingredients.  So buy the best – and that’s not always the most expensive.  And childhood favorites can bring back memories.  My brother and I make a point of getting pitted dates, stuffing them with good quality peanut butter, then rolling them in sugar.  We learned to make these in kindergarten (that would be about the same time T-rex was running around).  What can I say, I still like them!

A table is where the family gets together, sometimes, not often enough.  It doesn’t have to be exotic or elaborate – Black Velvet cake took me two days, while Raspberry Strawberry Bavarian takes 15 minutes and many like the Bavarian better! – just good.  But most of all, whether it’s prime rib or meatloaf, take time and enjoy your family’s and make eating a celebration of being together.

So to all of you- Merry Christmas!!!!! Enjoy your holidays and may you not gain an ounce no matter how much chocolate you eat!

Books I’m giving this year:

Desert Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography from the Xavier Guerrand-Hermes Collection by Kristine Loughran, Cynthia Becker

The Iona Sanction by Gary Corby

The Diamond Frontier by John Wilcox

Throw Them All Out by Peter Schweizer

The Adventures and Memoirs od Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle,  Scott McKowan

and a selection of books for second graders that were needed at a school in the  the mid-west.

Happy Holidays and Short Reviews

Well, between work, reading, and football, life has been busy – yet somehow I seem to have little to show for it.  Except a pile of finished books.  Honestly, I am such a book hog.  It’s amazing how quickly time passes these days.  First days seem to fly by, then weeks, and before I know it, Christmas is almost here.  So dressed in my holiday best, here are some very short reviews on a few of the books I’ve plowed through.

• Title:  The Ideal Man
  
• Author:  Julie Garwood
• Type:  Romantic Suspense
• Genre:  Lightweight romance with some suspense and weird family
• Sub-genre:  Brilliant woman doctor with stalker meets hunky FBI agent and chasing a killer arms dealer
• My Grade: C- (2.8*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 90,000+ $7-17 (used to new)
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores, online, and used
• FTC Disclosure: rec’d through an online book swap site

Julie Garwood made her writing bones with Regency romance novels with unusual, plucky heroines.  The settings have changed with the clothes and technology, but the plots remain the same.  Competent, intelligent woman meets big, protective man who wants to save her ….. and basically just wants her.  Light on plot, Garwood, as always, uses characters rather than research to drive her stories.  The results are pretty predictable, basically, you read one Garwood book, you’ve read them all.

New Releases: A Mixed Bag of Genres

Well, I’m still busy reading away, but life does interfere with my plans.  I did enjoy a few good books.  Barry Eisler got close to being back on track with a new John Rain thriller.  Laura Resnick has another chapter in the Esther Diamond series with Vamparazzi – one of the BEST titles this year!  Vicki Lewis Thompson continues her amusing paranormal romance books and .  No, none are stunning blockbuster books, but all were above average and really good reads.

• Title:  The Detachment
  
• Author:  Barry Eisler
• Type:  Action thriller
• Genre:  John Rain and Dox get drawn into another adventure
• Sub-genre:  Manipulation, deception, and the impossible is all too plausible
• My Grade: B- (3.8*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 90,000+ $8.25 to$12
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores and online
• FTC Disclosure:  purchased from an online book seller

The best news, John Rain, one of the BEST characters developed by any author in the past decade, is finally back.  So too is his Dox, his sniper friend and sometimes partner.  Barry Eisler had lost much of the edge that appealed to me with his two Ben Treven books, both of which I found disappointing.  He seems to recapture much of his old magic in The Detachment, though the plot is more obvious than those in his far more twisty and better written early books, and Col ‘Hort’ Horton is not in any way an admirable, or fundamentally honorable person.

Rain has broken up with his girlfriend and Mossad operative, Dehlia.  She refused to leave intelligence agency and he found he could not live with her job – or maybe he was just bored.  As always, he returned to Tokyo, living quietly and going just one place he might be associated with – the Kodokon.  He notices two Americans watching from the stands.  When he catches the them quickly checking the next night, he knows he’s been found.  His response is classic Rain – he leads there where they want to go, lulls them and then kills them both.

But it was a setup and the men pawns that were deliberately sacrificed to catch Rain on camera and blackmail him into doing a job for Col ‘Hort’ Horton.  In LA Hort tells Rain there’s on oligarchy ready to create domestic terrorism in such a way that suspending the Constitution and granting extraordinary powers to the President and Executive Branch of Government seems the only logical course of action.  He uses the very real slow erosion of rights and privacy that the Patriot Act and various government entities – from ICE to TSA to the NSA have already created as a way to get citizens accustomed to a ‘new reality’.

Is Fall Finally Here? Short Reviews for Rainy Days

Wow, the past 7 weeks have been wet.  I feel like we should be building an Ark or  two – or three.   More rain is predicted for this weekend.  I swear, I walk outside and it smells like mold and mildew.  Leaves are falling, but not not much color is showing.   It looks like once again the spectacular fall color may go missing thanks to rain and unseasonable temperatures and humidity.  Well, it’s not like we can do anything about the weather, it is what it is.  But football has started (yes, I’m a fan) regardless of the temperatures, so I get entertainment while I read.

I did get an unexpected treat from a friend on Paperback Swap – a hard to find book by author Kris Neri.  Loved it and wish she’d written more in this series.  It’s hard, really, how many good writers never get a chance at a bigger audience.  One did – H.P.Mallory’s Josie Wilkins series got picked up by Bantam and will go mass market early next year with the third book in the series, Witchful Thinking.  I have it on pre-order  at Amazon.  I have a LOT of books on pre-order thanks to their 4-for-3 sale.  Mysteries, paranormal, romance, thrillers, you name it – and I’m anxiously awaiting a number of them, but a few good ones have arrived, so here we go, short and sweet.

• Title:  Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble
  
• Author:  H.P. Mallory
• Type:  Paranormal/fantasy
• Genre:  Josie Wilkins Series, Bk 1 – Every little thing you do is magic
• Sub-genre:  Unrest and contentions in the magical underground
• My Grade: B- (3.7*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 80,000+ $11-$12
• Where Available:  Available at select bookstores, online, and used
• FTC Disclosure:  purchased from an online book seller

One minute you’re a sort of successful psychic in LA running a psychic shop with your best friend Christa, and than tall dark and handsome walks into your life and turns it upside down.  Rand Balfour is a warlock of considerable years and he, like other magic users, is looking for a witch that had been prophesied.   Much to the everlasting shock of Jolie Wilkins, that’s her.  Initially, all he asks for is a reading, something she’s usually really good at.  And he pays well too.  Then he comes back for a second one.  He’s convinced Jolie is the one he’s looking for and offers her a job.  He needs to know what happened to his client.  They go go to the house and to Jolie’s eternal shock, she doesn’t just raise a ghost, she brings the dead back to life.

Word spreads in the underground community of magic users.  A ragged and unkempt man approaches her to bring back the groups leader.  Hesitantly Jolie agrees and brings back the alpha of a werewolf pack, she earns their loyalty – of course, she didn’t know they were werewolves when she did it.  She also earns the unwanted attentions dangerous head of the LA magical community and the attentions of a very handsome vampire.

Suddenly, Jolie has to choose who to serve the LA ‘queen’, who is one scary babe, or go to Rand.   Jolie and Christa head to England and the safety of Rand Balfour and his offer to take on Jolie as his apprentice of sorts.

The relationship between Rand and Jolie never stands a chance because Rand won’t let it, despite their mutual attraction.  He retains a cold distance that she doesn’t understand.  I did find that part a bit annoying along with Rand’s casual control of Christa.  It was as if his moral compass no longer fully functioned.  In general terms, Christa is the typical self-centered LA Babe to Jolie’s ‘quiet mouse’ and she has trouble with Jolie suddenly becoming far more important.   The queen is evil and Rand is the emotionally cool and remote man – so the character’s are not exactly original, but the plot works pretty well.  Not as well as the Southern Witch series by Kimberly Frost, but it the various plot lines made sense and kept the readers interest even when the characters got annoying and childish.  The story arc was well paced, if predictable in it’s general outcome.  Some of the secondary characters were more original than the main players.

Was Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble worth the nearly $12 price tag?  Well, no.  It was a good read and I did buy the next in the series, Toil and Trouble (which I found had an annoying plot device and have yet to finish), but I’d say enjoy a price break and buy the far less expensive e-book.  You can download to Kindle software to your computer if you don’t have the device.  (I don’t.)  The e-book is $4.  If you want a print copy, try waiting to see if Bantam publishes Book 1 and 2 in mass market.

Four Short Reviews: Paranormal and Paranormal Mystery

Well, when you get lots of heat and humidity – though nothing like they’ve had in the mid-west and south – it does encourage loafing around and reading.  I was the mood for mysteries and paranormals and we have some winners and losers and a couple of recommended reads.

• Title:  Dead in the Family
  
• Author:  Charlaine Harris
• Type:  Paranormal/fantasy
• Genre:  Sookie Stackhouse #10 – the never ending story
• Sub-genre:  Fae, vamps, shifter and their coming out of the closet
• My Grade:  C- (2.7*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 100,000+ $15-$17
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores
• FTC Disclosure:  acquired through and online book swap site

OK, I haven’t read a Sookie Stackhouse book in years and now I remember why.  I just got sick of Sookie.   What is it with her and men – or perhaps males would be better?  It’s like she allows herself to be emotionally abused – not to mention physical abuse and misuse.  I know lots of folks follow this ft the ‘love story’ aspect of the novels, but jeeze, if this is ‘love’ with vampires, spare me.

The ‘two natured’, namely were, have come out to the public.  Werewolves, being the largest group, have taken the brunt of the backlash.  Vamps are already out, but the weres seem to worry folks more because they work and live like ordinary humans.  Sookie, a telepath with some fae blood, is not quite unique, but she talents are very rare.  The plot, such as it is, revolves around Sookie and her efforts to to keep her romance with Eric going under difficult circumstances.  Mostly, he’s off the radar for one reason or another for much of the book.  First because of concerns about the new leader for Louisiana, Victor, who is looking for reasons to force Eric out, and second because Eric’s maker, an ancient Roman called Appius, shows up and demands his assistance with his ‘young’ vampire, the last living Romanov.

A ‘child’ of a vampire must do its makers bidding and Eric is drawn from Sookie into trying to control the vicious Alexander Romanov, so looks frail and childlike, but is actually an insane killer.  Sookie is also involved with the Long Tooth Pack of werewolves and the fact that Sam, the owner of the bar where she works and a long time friend, has come out as one of the ‘two natured’.  Despite his family’s long time history and his own military service, he gets a lot of backlash.

The ending is bloody and inevitable, but the plot is weak and lightweight.  The real question is ………….. Is Dead in the Family worth the $15-18 hardcover price or the $9.50 to $11 trade paperback price?  Nope.  Obviously, if you are a dedicated fan, you’ll disagree, but this is a family drama that has run its course and is, thankfully coming to an end soon.  Get it from the library or buy a cheap used used copy.  Nothing original here.

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Three Short Reviews: Recent Releases – Thriller, Paranormal UF, Paranormal Cozy

It seems good thrillers are few and far between, so when a decent read does come along, it scores really well with the genre fans.   I’m probably as guilty of that as anyone, but I did enjoy this book.

• Title:  Buried Secrets
  
• Author:  Joseph Finder
• Type:  Suspense thriller
• Genre:  Nick Heller Book 2 – finding a kidnapped teen for billionaire family friend
• Sub-genre:  Fae, vamps, shifter and their coming out of the closet
• My Grade:  B+ to A- (4.0*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13 to NC-17 due to intensity
• Length and price:  Novel – about 100,000+ $14-$17
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores
• FTC Disclosure:  bought from an online bookstore

Joseph Finder has a keeper with character Nick Heller.  Buried Secrets has the kind of action, tension, and surprising twists that a really good thriller needs.  It was a tough book to put down.  The pacing was steady and fast as the plot unfolds, with twist after twist.

Nick Heller has reason to be grateful to Marshall Markus, an old family fried who was one of the few who helped his mother when Nick’s father went to jail for financial crimes and their country club life disappeared.  When Markus calls, Nick immediately responds.  Alexa, the teenage daughter of the billionaire, has been kidnapped and buried alive.  (Heller really makes it realistically creepy and plays to one near universal fear of being buried alive, with a sadistic sociopath and a tough, badly frightened teen.)  Alexa had been kidnapped before, but this is different, this is beyond a simple kidnapping for ransom.  Markus is adamant in refusing FBI help – and it becomes obvious why, the FBI want his on securities fraud and the SAIC of the investigation will do ANYTHING to make his case, including risking a teenage girl’s life.

Nick quickly learns one thing, everyone is lying, including his client, and Boston’s movers and shakers will do anything to keep their own secrets buried.  From the drug dealing son of a South American diplomat, to Alexa’s step-mother, to her supposed ‘best friend’ – daughter of a lying US senators, to Russian mobsters, no one is willing to tell the truth.  But everyone threatens him.

In classic lone wolf with friends style, Nick Heller calls in favors and technical help, as hunts for the hiding place of Alexa’s grave.  Exciting, slightly improbable, but overall, a great suspense thriller read.  The one part that failed, was Alexa’s reaction after everything was over.  It was a real weak spot for me.  The other issue was a lack of character development with Nick Heller, but Nick was not the focus of the story, so it’s a minor complaint, and boilerplate secondary characters who were kind of predictable and trite.  I just wish Nick was more fleshed out and the other characters a bit fresher.

Is Buried Secrets worth $14-$18 at a discount?  I thought so, but books like these are not reread material, so hardcovers are not good investments.  You might want to borrow it from you library, or wait and buy the paperback.  Highly recommended for all suspense thriller fans.

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Three New Paranormals and a Paranormal Cozy

• Title: Grave Dance
  
• Author:  Kalayna Price
• Type:  Paranormal UF/alternate reality
• Genre:  A witch who is more than a witch and those who want her – or just want her dead
• Sub-genre:  Serial killers, witchcraft and Fay queens make for a heady mix
• My Grade: A(4.8*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 100,000+ $7.99
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores
• FTC Disclosure:  purchased from online bookstore

Book 2 of the Alex Craft series was even better than Grave Witch, a real surprise.  All too often, the second book is a bit weak, but here the complex plot and world building just got better.

It’s been a month since the events in Grave Witch where Alex Craft discovered her father was fae and her a faykin (part Fae).  Shehas pretty much recovered from her adventures, and reconciled with the fact that Falin, the ‘man’ she took for a lover, is, in fact, the lover of the winter queen – and Queen’s Knight sworn to her service.  Learning she was more than half Fey, was a shock.  Finding out she can rip holes in the fabric between the planes is a lot scarier.  Death, or the soul collector she thinks of as Death, saves her life yet again, and this strange relationship that started years ago draws her to this man.

The problem with 15 minutes of fame is, it brings out the nuts – including a human who wants Alex to open a portal to the aether so his witches can feed off the energy to make charms – and make him even richer than he already is.   And then there’s the feet.  A lot of them.  And the Fey who lives in the swaps who wants them to be left alone because of the evil associated with them.   And who the hell keeps sending these constructs to attack her – constructs that have the souls of the dead?

Four Super Short Reviews: Mixed Genre

Having a broken wrist caused a real bad attitude, and FINALLY, I’ve made it to therapy.  Now the ulnar nerve is having fits.  SIGH!  Back in the splint off and on, and I still have the problems with blood flow.  One stupid little fall.  A non-event.  What a pain in the rump.   Still, the enforced idleness came when a bunch of books I’d been waiting for got released.

• Title: Dead on the Delta
  
• Author:  Stacey Jay
• Type:  Paranormal UF/alternate reality
• Genre:  noir style paranormal mystery
• Sub-genre:  killer faries, drug runners, and family secrets on the bayou
• My Grade: B- (3.8*)
  
• Rating:  PG-13
• Length and price:  Novel – about 90,000+ $7.99
• Where Available:  Available at most bookstores
• FTC Disclosure:  purchased from online bookstore

This was a semi-original story by a new author.  If certain backstory elements and world building had gelled just a bit better, this could have been an A.  The writing style and quality lacked some polish, but the atmosphere was there.  The story is centered around the murder of a small girl, thought to be one of a string of such murders, and it hits close to home for Annebelle.  Annabelle Lee, is seeking forgetfulness and oblivion at the bottom of the bottle way too often, but her unique talents – she’s one of the rare immunes who won’t die from mutant fairy bites – her affair with the too-good-to-be-true boyfriend, police detective Caine Cooper, and the appearance of ex-fiance Hitch as an FBI technical expert with his female partner/agent – who is his current fiance, was kind of too much coincidence for one book.

Annie keeps reminding herself she’s just a special kind of crime scene technician,med school dropout, and someone who deserves to be punished.  Her determined efforts at self-destruction for an incident in her past, are at odds with her unwanted sense of obligation to the murdered child.  the story unwinds rather like a choppy homemade movie, without smooth segues and criss-crossing various plot elements in a distracting style.  The ending brings an interesting twist, not so much to the crime, but to what happens to Annabelle and what she will become.

Was Dead on the Delta worth $7.99?  Yes – for any fan of the noir style.  The writing is no match for authors like Lawrence Sanders or Dennis Lehanne, but a decent read.  I just hope the authors style smooths out a bit in future.