Misery Bay by Steve Hamilton

It's a pleasure to have another Alex McKnight book after last year's hit The Lock Artist. Alex is asked to look into a retired state patrolman's son's suicide. It is cold on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the winter. The young man was found after several days hanging from a tree facing Lake Superior's Misery Bay. The distraut father just wanted some information about why the boy committed suicide. So Alex drives to Houghton to talk to the boy's housemates. When he returns to the Soo, the boy's father, Raz, has been murdered. Teaming up with Sault Ste Marie police chief Roy Maven, they start unraveling the mystery, which goes back years to a trio of State Police Troopers who were unwitting participants in a young man's return to his abusive father.

McKnight, although he is trying to deal with his personal traumas by laying low, finds himself at the mercy of another deranged killer and falling into the arms of another lady law enforcement officer. There are plot twists a plenty and marathon drives from the Soo to Houghton to Saint Ignace to Bad Axe to Lansing chasing the good the bad and the misunderstood. Difficult to put down.

Good Reading !~

Burnt Mountain by Anne Rivers Siddons

Thayer Wentworth is devastated when her father and grandfather drive off the side of Burnt Mountain on their way home from a visit to a summer camp. She is so unhappy that her grandmother finally sends her to summer camp in the North Carolina mountains. Thayer thrives there. In her last year, when she is seventeen, she meets the love of her life and they plan to marry. However, tragedy ensues at the hand of Thayer's mother. Off to college, Thayer meets and marries an Irish college professor. Aengus teaches Irish folklore and has a magical gift of storytelling. He eventually begins visiting a boys camp on Burnt Mountain to tell stories, and is ensnared in a magical web that leads to his downfall.

Siddons injects a bit of magical realism into her usual story of Southern pretentions and the harm they cause. The mother's betrayal of her daughter represents the harm that can be done when parents insist that children conform to a certain norm. Thayer manages to overcome her tragic disappointment in the end, but goes almost to hell and back in doing so.

Happy Reading !~

What I'm Reading Now

Here are a few books I have in my to be read (TBR) stack.
Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons. Reading for possible book club selection. Humorous domestic fiction - considered a classic in its field.

Silver Sparrow (2011) by Tayari Jones. New book reading for possible book club selection found on several recommended lists. Set in Atlanta by a native Atlantian (I think), young Dana knows that she & her mother are her father's "secret family". He also has a legal wife and daughter. A talented young African-American author. She has also written novels The Untelling (2005) and Leaving Atlanta (2002). Leaving Atlanta is set during the Atlanta child murders of 1979 - an event that made a lasting impression on the community.

Drawn in Blood (2009) by Andrea Kane. Recommended by a someone with similar reading interests. Romantic suspense. Not in a series, so picked this one based on availability and description. She does have some books in a series with FBI Special Agent Sloane Burbank (what a name!). -Correction - This is the 2nd Sloane Burbank book.  I'll probably wait and read the first one or one of her other books.- Looking forward to reading.

Burnt Mountain (2011) by Anne Rivers Siddons. Just released. I enjoy her books, but don't read every one. This one is set mostly in a camp in the North Georgia mountains, where Thayer Wentworth must face events involving her parents and her husband. Siddons' writing is very enjoyable.

Happy Reading!~

Books Not Chosen

Lest you think that I love every book I put on hold from lists or reviews, I do not. Here is an example that I decided to put back for now.

Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens
After enjoying Stevens first novel, Still Missing, I was looking forward to this second one. However, when I turned to the first page, it starts with a young woman talking to her therapist. The framework of the novel is the same as Still Missing -- young woman discussing traumatic event with her therapist interspersed with the story of the trauma. In this case, the trauma has to do with adoption & searching for birth parents. I probably will read it at some time, it's just too soon after reading the first one for something so similar.
I usually have a selection of books coming in from holds at the library and other older books I want to read for some reason. I usually must decide which ones I have time or reason to read now, and which ones will have to wait. If I start a book, and it doesn't interest me in the first few pages, then I don't keep it. There are too many really good books to read and more coming every day.

I am currently reading Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932). It is a humorous send-up of British novels of manners such as Jane Austen. Looks to be great fun now that I have a new copy - the one I had interlibrary loaned was very musty, and the type was hard to read. I can't stand that mustiness - it makes me sneeze and makes my eyes water. It was a Penguin Classic & had only been in the lending library since 1997 - but if books aren't opened and read, they get musty fairly quickly.

Happy Reading!~

Tigerlily's Orchids by Ruth Rendell (2011)

Dark dsychological suspense by the queen of the genre, Ruth Rendell.  Although a mystery, the murder doesn't take place until the middle of the book. The book is more about how we see ourselves vs how others see us.  And how we react to others can lead to unexpected consequences.  We peek into the life of each person, seeing them as who they really are; while also seeing how others perceive them.

Lichfield House has 6 flats plus a porter & his wife.  In one of the houses opposite, Duncan Yeardon, an elderly widower, watches the comings and goings of the inhabitants and invents his own version of their lives.  Stuart Font of flat 1 invitesw all of the neighbors to a housewarming party, bringing them together in ways that will change all of their lives.

Rendell is also the author of the Inspector Wexford series.

The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen

 A Rizzoli & Isles Novel
2011

Gerritsen’s Rizzoli and Isles series benefits from having two main characters.  Some books focus more on Jane Rizzoli and some, more on Maura Isles.  This one is almost all Jane.  Jane and her partner Frost are called to the homicide of an Asian woman found on a rooftop with her neck sliced through and her hand sliced off.  The victim’s gps points to two addresses connected with a 19-year-old massacre in a Chinese restaurant.  Jane and Frost are being assisted by a new detective, Tam, who has more experience with the Chinese culture.  Jane repeatedly puts herself in danger, drawing the ire of her husband, eventually winding up in the clutches of the true criminals.

The complex plot is based in Chinese folklore--specifically, the Monkey King.  The Monkey King fights for justice, but he will cause mischief and mayhem along the way.  In this mystery, involving immigrant Chinese, the restaurant massacre, and missing girls, someone is using the Monkey King to obscure themselves as they act outside of the law.

I’m looking forward to the return of the TNT TV series.  The series is based on the first two books with added plotlines more suitable to a TV series.

As Husbands Go by Susan Isaacs

A witty mystery involving an upscale wife, her murdered husband, and who in the world would murder a plastic surgeon. Susie Gersten is the mother of active triplet boys, and the wife of Jonah, a craniofacial plastic surgeon. One morning she wakes up to find that her husband had never come home the preceding night. She couldn't be more surprised when his body is discovered in a call girl's apartment. As the investigation begins, her husband's relatives start showing up to help her. When the police seem to be suspecting Susan, her in-laws send their high-priced attorney. Eventually Susan's Grandmother Ethel arrives from Florida and takes things in hand.
The charm of this book is that Isaacs represents Susie's inner turmoil so believably. The situations are just barely over-the-top, making for a very funny tale of family, love, and life.

Betrayal of Trust by J. A. Jance

A J.P. Beaumont Novel
Jance's latest in her J.P. Beaumont series. Beaumont is still working for the State of Washington Attorney General as part of S.H.I.T. - Special Homicide Investigation Team. He is also now living with his partner, Mel Soames, in Seattle.
Beau and Mel are called when the state governor finds what appears to be a snuff film on her step-grandson's phone. The governor wants them to find out who is being killed, and who is doing it. Complex relationships and complex, long distance investigations keep this one moving along.

Shanghai Girls and On Gold Mountain by Lisa See

Read Shanghai Girls by Lisa See and then seriously consider reading On Gold Mountain, also by See.  On Gold Mountain is See's biography of her great-great-grandfather and his descendants in the United States.  Fong See arrived in the U.S. - the Gold Mountain - from  a remote Cantonese town about 1871.  He went to Sacramento and became a merchant.  He also had two wives in the U.S. and perhaps another two in China.  From his two U.S. wives, he sired 12 children.  His first family went by the surname of See.  His second used the surname Fong.  The family later moved to Los Angeles and founded a business empire that supported three generations of Sees and Fongs.  It is the story of Chinese immigrants to the west coast and their contributions to the American melting pot.

Shanghai Girls tells the story of two sisters, Pearl and Mai, who are betrothed by their father to the sons of two merchant sons in the U.S.  Instead of boarding the steamship with their future husbands, they run away. Sneaking back home, they rejoin their mother and must immediately flee to escape invading Japanese forces.  The sisters eventually make their way to the U.S., where they enter the country by claiming to be the wives of the two merchants.  Joining the husbands they have only met once, they make a life in L.A.'s Chinatown.

Pearl and Mai demonstrate a stronger than usual sisterly bond, remaining together, and living in the same household, for most of their lives.  Their adventures are full of danger, fear, and occasional violence, but they way they bamboozle the Angel Island inspectors is precious - if not for the serious reasons they must extend their stay.  See's prose is spare and to the point, contrasting with the unwillingness of the Chinese to discuss personal matters even with close family members. Recommended reading.

Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi

"A Story of Loss and Gain".  De Rossi is an Australian actress who has appeared on TV shows Ally McBeal and Arrested Development, and various movies.  She began modeling when she was 12 years old.  After making a movie in Australia, she came to the U.S. to break into movies & tv here.  She began struggling with her weight and feelings of insecurity as a teenager. 

In the book, written after her marriage to Ellen Degeneres, de Rossi recounts her constant struggle to lose weight and become "thin".  She equates thinness with beauty and self-worth.  Gaining weight, or even failure to lose weight is a personal failure.  She believes that there should be a space between her thighs when lying on her side.  She eventually begins to measure this gap.  After losing down to 89 pounds, she passes out at a movie shoot, and is contractually required to seek medical help. 

De Rossi's story is hard to put down.  Everything she is doing makes sense in her mind - and she takes you right along with her.  Not until the end do you see how thin she was.