13 1/2 by Nevada Barr

by Carol9 Comments
13 1/2 by Nevada Barr Let me start off by saying that yes, I've read some of the Anna Pigeon books and enjoyed them, but this is a stand-alone. I was expecting something entirely different and that was what I got. This is a dark, psychological thriller, and as such was enjoyable but a tad predictable. In 1971 in Minnesota, an eleven-year-old boy, the "Butcher Boy," is convicted of killing his parents and baby sister. His older brother is injured but lives. Fast forward to post-Katrina New Orleans. Polly Deschamps, who ran away from an abusive home at 15, is an English professor and single mother to two daughters. She meets a charming, intelligent, attractive architect Marshall Marchand. She falls in love with him and they are married within months, but Marshall is hiding something and his dark moods begin to worry her. This was a quick read that touched on some tough topics, like the juvenile justice system, surviving abuse, and learning to...
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Q is for Quiet

by Carol10 Comments
Vicki of Reading At The Beach hosts A-Z Wednesday. Today's letter is Q. I'm going back to one I read in 2007. I didn't make any notes about it at the time, but did rate it 4 1/2 stars out of 5. The Quiet Game by Greg Iles Taking place in Natchez, Miss. The Quiet Game is flavored with the violence and seamy undertones of a Southern Gothic. After his wife's death, Penn Cage, a former Houston prosecutor and a bestselling suspense novelist, retreats to his parents' home in Natchez with his grieving young daughter. The healing process is interrupted when Cage learns that someone is blackmailing his father, a saintly family doctor who once made a lethal mistake. In tracing the source of his father's moral dilemma, Cage stumbles upon a trail of lies surrounding the unsolved murder of a black man in 1968. He determines to reopen the case, even though his antebellum hometown is smoldering with racial tension. With the...
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O is for On

by Carol11 Comments
Vicki of Reading At The Beach hosts A-Z Wednesday. Today's letter is O. I gave this one 4 out of 5 stars back in August of 2007. Apparently I haven't read and don't own many books that start with the letter O, which is kind of surprising. On the Street Where You Live by Mary Higgins Clark Emily Graham knows what it's like to have enemies. The pretty New York attorney--a millionaire due to a lucky stock market break--has been sued by her greedy ex-husband and stalked by a man who thinks she helped his mother's murderer escape punishment. But when she buys her great-great-grandmother's childhood home in the sleepy resort town of Spring Lake, Emily thinks her new life will be saner, even though five other young women, including Emily's ancestor Madeline Shapley, have disappeared from Spring Lake under creepy circumstances over the past century. No sooner has Emily moved in than she starts receiving frightening, anonymous messages. Worse, when she breaks ground...
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Turning Angel by Greg Iles

by Carol5 Comments
Turning Angel by Greg Iles Description: After winning the most dangerous case of his career, prosecutor Penn Cage decides to remain in his Southern hometown to raise his young daughter in a safe haven. But nowhere is truly safe -- not from long-buried secrets, or murder....When the nude body of prep school student Kate Townsend is found near the Mississippi River, Penn's best friend, Drew Elliott, is desperate for his counsel. An esteemed family physician, Drew makes a shocking confession that could put him on death row. Penn will do all he can to exonerate Drew, but in a town where the gaze of a landmark cemetery statue -- the Turning Angel -- never looks away, Penn finds himself caught on the jagged edge of blackmail, betrayal, and deadly violence. My thoughts: It turns out Penn's friend, Drew, was sleeping with the murder victim, which is the shocking confession. Unfortunately, that's not the only shocking revelation that occurs in the book. Drugs, racism, adultery,...
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