Category: Books

Title: How the Light Gets In (Chief Inspector Gamache #9) Author: Louise Penny Reader: Ralph Cosham Category: Mystery Audio published: August 27, 2013 by Macmillan Audio Rating: 5 out of 5 stars Add: Goodreads Purchase: Amazon | Audible | Book Depository Christmas is approaching, and in Québec it’s a time of dazzling snowfalls, bright lights, and gatherings with friends in front of blazing hearths. But shadows are falling on the usually festive season for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Most of his best agents have left the Homicide Department, his old friend and lieutenant Jean-Guy Beauvoir hasn’t spoken to him in months, and hostile forces are lining up against him. When Gamache receives a message from Myrna Landers that a longtime friend has failed to arrive for Christmas in the village of Three Pines, he welcomes the chance to get away from the city. Mystified by Myrna's reluctance to reveal her friend's name, Gamache soon discovers the missing woman was once one of the most famous people not just in...

Title: Dilemma (Scobie Malone #16) Author: Jon Cleary Reader: Christian Rodska Category: Mystery Audio published: September 30, 2013 by AudioGo (First published 1999) Rating: 3½ out of 5 stars Add: Goodreads Purchase: Amazon | Audible Australian detective Scobie Malone is asked to investigate what seems like an easy case: Norma Glaze has been strangled in her bedroom and her husband Ron has disappeared. What appears cut-and-dry on the surface is complicated by the fact that the night before involved a one-night stand and a killer with a twisted right hand. Four years later, Malone finds and arrests Ron Glaze in a bush town, but the man insists he is innocent even as the evidence makes his conviction in court a cinch. The young prosecutor, Tim Pierpont, is a well-respected community member, too, which makes for an easy sentence of Glaze's guilt. Meanwhile, the capital city of Sydney is dealing with the kidnapping of a child model, Lucybelle Vanheusen, and her hysterical family. Malone doesn't take the case seriously until a body...

I saw an author complaining yesterday on Facebook about people who don't like her books, but continue to read each one in the series and complain about them on Goodreads and Amazon? "I mean, if I take one bite of food I don't like, I don't eat it again, right? I don't keep eating it and complain about it." Am I the only out here who does this occasionally, keep reading a series I don't love and do complain about? I have actually enjoyed the couple of books of this particular author that I've read, but I can think of at least one (or two or three) series where I've read 3, maybe 4 of the books and have been annoyed, but picked up the next one anyway. Here are some reasons: They are easy to get hold of. My library does not necessarily have the best selection and sometimes, especially when it comes to audios, I have to take what I can get. A mediocre book...

Title: The Case of the Displaced Detective: The Arrival (Displaced Detective #1) Author: Stephanie Osborn Category: Sci-fi Mystery Rating: 3½ out of 5 stars Add: Goodreads Purchase: Amazon The Case of the Displaced Detective: The Arrival is a SF mystery in which brilliant hyperspatial physicist, Dr. Skye Chadwick, discovers there are alternate realities, often populated by those we consider only literary characters. Her pet research, Project: Tesseract, hidden deep under Schriever AFB, finds Continuum 114, where Sherlock Holmes was to have died along with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. In a knee-jerk reaction, Skye rescues Holmes, who inadvertently flies through the wormhole to our universe, while his enemy plunges to his death. Unable to go back without causing devastating continuum collapse, Holmes must stay in our world and adapt. Meanwhile, the Schriever AFB Dept of Security discovers a spy ring working to dig out the details of - and possibly sabotage - Project: Tesseract. Can Chadwick help Holmes come up to speed in modern investigative techniques in time...

Title: Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise #2) Author: Pamela Fagan Hutchins Category: Suspense/Romance Audio published: July 1, 2013 by Skipjack Publishing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Add: Goodreads Purchase: Amazon One unexpected and hotly fought-over little boy, two dead bodies, and a series of home vandalisms throw Texas attorney turned island chanteuse Katie Connell into a tizzy. Juggling all of this, Bloody Mary cravings, baggage, and the bad guys too, she waffles between the jumbie house that brought her back from the brink and the man she believes is the love of her life. Leaving Annalise is the second in the series, and while it can stand-alone, I'd have to advise reading the first one before it to really understand Katie, why she's in St. Marcos and how she met the fantastically quirky characters who are her friends on the island and Annalise, Katie's jumbie house. I like Katie. She's go issues, but she's building herself a life in St. Marcos. She's funny, brave and scared. She's real. I love the...

Title: The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin (Good Thief's Guide #5) Author: Chris Ewan Reader: Simon Vance Category: Mystery Audio published: September 1, 2013 by AudioGo Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Add: Goodreads Purchase: Amazon | IndieBound Charlie Howard, part-time writer, part-time thief, has been engaged in a veritable spree of larceny and misappropriation since moving to Berlin. He's supposed to be working on his next novel. But high rent and a love for thrill-seeking has been hard on his word count. But Charlie's larcenous binge is interrupted by the call to duty on behalf of Her Majesty's Government. Four embassy employees are suspected of stealing a sensitive item. Charlie is to break into their homes, find the culprit, and recover the stolen property. But there's a catch. The item is so sensitive, Charlie isn't told what he's looking for. Not its size, not its weight, nothing. He's only told that he'll recognize it when he sees it. Charlie has been a successful thief because he follows his own...