Started: 2/16/09
Finished: 2/24/09
Year: 2009
Pages: 402
Genre: mystery
Grade: B-
Reason for reading: review for MyShelf.com
Blurb (from back cover): "The moment Thomas Knight saw the strange, vacant eyes pressed to his kitchen window, he knew she was dead. What he had yet to learn was the woman had recently claimed to be in possession of a long-lost-and now priceless-literary treasure: Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Won.
"The police aren't interested in old plays, especially one many scholars don't believe ever existed. But Thomas is convinced that the play is real, tht it is out there-somewhere-and that it somehow holds the key to the woman's death...and perhaps other, stranger secrets as well.
"His pursuit of the truth takes him to ancient sites a continent away, through the rarefied air of academia, and deeper into intrigue and danger. To uncover that lies at the heart of the mystery, Thomas will have to enter a story that drags loss and death after it like a Shakespearean tragedy-a story bound to time and all it devours."
Opinion: An interest look at academia and Shakespeare. For a more complete review, please check out Myshelf in the upcoming months.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Breakheart Hill by Thomas H. Cook
Started: 2/12/09
Finished: 2/16/09
Year: 1995
Pages: 264
Genre: Mystery
Grade: B+
Reason for reading: Library book
Blurb (from book jacket): "'This is the darkest story that I ever heard...'
"So begins Thomas H. Cook's haunting tale of love and its aftermath, of the price a whole town paid for a single moment of passionate betrayal.
"The town was Choctaw, Alabama. The place was Breakheart Hill. The girl was Kelli Troy. But the story of what really happened to her there on an August afternoon in 1962 is known by only one man, Ben Wade, the boy who loved her then and who must tell her story now.
"The violence that rocked Breakheart Hill on that summer afternoon did not end on its wooded slope. At least not for Ben Wade, now the town's doctor and one of its most revered citizens. Perhaps it never ended for anyone in Choctaw.
"A tale both of doom and of redeption, Breakheart Hill is the work of a gifted writer at the very peak of his power. Profoundly moving, beautifully written, elegiac in tone yet thrillingly suspenseful, it is a mystery of love remembered that touches on the mystery of life.
Opinion: Another fantastic book. I'm really wondering why I have not heard of this author before recently. Fantastic read.
Finished: 2/16/09
Year: 1995
Pages: 264
Genre: Mystery
Grade: B+
Reason for reading: Library book
Blurb (from book jacket): "'This is the darkest story that I ever heard...'
"So begins Thomas H. Cook's haunting tale of love and its aftermath, of the price a whole town paid for a single moment of passionate betrayal.
"The town was Choctaw, Alabama. The place was Breakheart Hill. The girl was Kelli Troy. But the story of what really happened to her there on an August afternoon in 1962 is known by only one man, Ben Wade, the boy who loved her then and who must tell her story now.
"The violence that rocked Breakheart Hill on that summer afternoon did not end on its wooded slope. At least not for Ben Wade, now the town's doctor and one of its most revered citizens. Perhaps it never ended for anyone in Choctaw.
"A tale both of doom and of redeption, Breakheart Hill is the work of a gifted writer at the very peak of his power. Profoundly moving, beautifully written, elegiac in tone yet thrillingly suspenseful, it is a mystery of love remembered that touches on the mystery of life.
Opinion: Another fantastic book. I'm really wondering why I have not heard of this author before recently. Fantastic read.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Menage by Emma Holly
Started: 2/9/09
Finished: 2/12/09
Year: 1998
Pages: 270
Genre: Erotica
Grade: C
Reason for reading: Booksfree.com
Blurb (from back cover): "When two handsome young grad students move into Kate Winthrop's Philadeplhia townhouse she's thrilled to think she'll be sharing her living space with a couple of potential admirers. Then she comes home from work one day to find them in bed...with each other.
"Joe-a sensitive composer-is motified. Sean-an irrepressible bad boy-asks her to join in. So begins a complex three-way adventure that is destined to be fraught with confusion."
Opinion: An okay book-different that what I've been reading lately. Plot was weak but scenes were good.
Finished: 2/12/09
Year: 1998
Pages: 270
Genre: Erotica
Grade: C
Reason for reading: Booksfree.com
Blurb (from back cover): "When two handsome young grad students move into Kate Winthrop's Philadeplhia townhouse she's thrilled to think she'll be sharing her living space with a couple of potential admirers. Then she comes home from work one day to find them in bed...with each other.
"Joe-a sensitive composer-is motified. Sean-an irrepressible bad boy-asks her to join in. So begins a complex three-way adventure that is destined to be fraught with confusion."
Opinion: An okay book-different that what I've been reading lately. Plot was weak but scenes were good.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Instruments of Night by Thomas H. Cook
Started: 2/6/09
Finished: 2/9/09
Year: 1998
Pages: 293
Genre: mystery
Grade: B
Reason for reading: library book
Blurb (from book jacket): "Paul Graves knows evil to the bone. He confronted it first as a boy, when he survived the torture-murder of his sister. As a man, he has made its exploration his life's work, tirelessly writing mysteries set in gaslight New York, a world of mists and shadows, of voices pleading in the fog, footsteps racing over rain-swept cobblestones...a world colored by the ache of Graves's own past, its still-rememberd screams.
"It is a far cry from Riverwood, the artists' community in upstate New York where Graves is invited to spend the summer. And yet, for all its splendor and grand isolation, Riverwood was once touched by crime-the murder of Faye Harrison, a teenage girl who'd lived on the estate fifty years before. Faye's mother is now dying, but uneasily still tormented by the unanswered questions about her daughter's death. Graves has been summoned by Allison Davies, Faye's girlhood friend and now Riverwood's owner, and asked to explore this long-past crime, apply the art of mystery fiction to a murder that was real, then write a story that will answer those very questions that keep Faye's mother from a peaceful death.
Opinion: Another decent book by Cook. Not as good as the first one that I had read. Cook has an amazing way of intertwining the past with the present. Highly recommend.
Finished: 2/9/09
Year: 1998
Pages: 293
Genre: mystery
Grade: B
Reason for reading: library book
Blurb (from book jacket): "Paul Graves knows evil to the bone. He confronted it first as a boy, when he survived the torture-murder of his sister. As a man, he has made its exploration his life's work, tirelessly writing mysteries set in gaslight New York, a world of mists and shadows, of voices pleading in the fog, footsteps racing over rain-swept cobblestones...a world colored by the ache of Graves's own past, its still-rememberd screams.
"It is a far cry from Riverwood, the artists' community in upstate New York where Graves is invited to spend the summer. And yet, for all its splendor and grand isolation, Riverwood was once touched by crime-the murder of Faye Harrison, a teenage girl who'd lived on the estate fifty years before. Faye's mother is now dying, but uneasily still tormented by the unanswered questions about her daughter's death. Graves has been summoned by Allison Davies, Faye's girlhood friend and now Riverwood's owner, and asked to explore this long-past crime, apply the art of mystery fiction to a murder that was real, then write a story that will answer those very questions that keep Faye's mother from a peaceful death.
Opinion: Another decent book by Cook. Not as good as the first one that I had read. Cook has an amazing way of intertwining the past with the present. Highly recommend.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
Started: 1/27/09
Finished: 2/5/09
Year: 2006
Pages: 387
Genre: Fiction
Grade: C
Reason for reading: possible bookclub read
Blurb (from book jacket): "Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy. A little hapless, somewhat neurotic sort of a hypochondriac. He's what's known as a Beta Male: the kind of fellow who makes his way through life by being careful and constant-you know, the one who's always there to pick up the pieces when the girl gets dumped by the bigger/taller/stronger Alpha Male.
"But Charlie's been lucky. He owns a building in the heart of San Francisco, and runs a secondhand store with the help of a couple of loyal, if marginally insane, employees. He's married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. And she, Rachel, is about to have their first child.
"Yes, Charlie's doing okay for a Beta. That is, until the day his daughter, Sophie, is born. Just as Charlie-exhausted from the birth-turns to go home, he sees a strange man in the mint-green golf wear at Rachel's hospital bedside, a man who claims that no one should be able to see him. But sees him Charlie does, and from here on out, things get really weird...
"People start dropping dead around him, giant ravens perch on his building, and it seems that everywhere he goes, a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Strange names start appearing on his nightstand notepad, and before he knows it, those people end up dead, too. Yup, it seems that Charlie Asher has been recruited for a new job , an unpleasant but utterly necessary one: Death. It's a dirty job. But hey, somebody's got to do it."
Opinion: This was my first Moore book and I will not be rushing to read another one. I probably will read one but just no time soon.
Finished: 2/5/09
Year: 2006
Pages: 387
Genre: Fiction
Grade: C
Reason for reading: possible bookclub read
Blurb (from book jacket): "Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy. A little hapless, somewhat neurotic sort of a hypochondriac. He's what's known as a Beta Male: the kind of fellow who makes his way through life by being careful and constant-you know, the one who's always there to pick up the pieces when the girl gets dumped by the bigger/taller/stronger Alpha Male.
"But Charlie's been lucky. He owns a building in the heart of San Francisco, and runs a secondhand store with the help of a couple of loyal, if marginally insane, employees. He's married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. And she, Rachel, is about to have their first child.
"Yes, Charlie's doing okay for a Beta. That is, until the day his daughter, Sophie, is born. Just as Charlie-exhausted from the birth-turns to go home, he sees a strange man in the mint-green golf wear at Rachel's hospital bedside, a man who claims that no one should be able to see him. But sees him Charlie does, and from here on out, things get really weird...
"People start dropping dead around him, giant ravens perch on his building, and it seems that everywhere he goes, a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Strange names start appearing on his nightstand notepad, and before he knows it, those people end up dead, too. Yup, it seems that Charlie Asher has been recruited for a new job , an unpleasant but utterly necessary one: Death. It's a dirty job. But hey, somebody's got to do it."
Opinion: This was my first Moore book and I will not be rushing to read another one. I probably will read one but just no time soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)