Carol's Notebook

Join in at Booking through Thursday. What’s the biggest book you’ve read recently? (Feel free to think “big” as size, or as popularity, or in any other way you care to interpret.) I don't know. I don't actually keep track of page counts, unless they are long enough to qualify for the Chunkster challenge, but the last one I read that fit that category was all the way back in May, Turning Angel by Greg Iles. Last year, I read The Count of Monte Cristo, which was just huge, but recently I haven't really read anything long. As far as popular books go, I'd have to say it was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It just seemed like everywhere I went, whether on-line or in real life, people were talking about it. What about you? Any big books recently?...

Vicki of Reading At The Beach hosts A-Z Wednesday. Today's letter is D. I hosted a guest post by David Liss back in July. I've had this book sitting on my shelf since then, but I want to get caught up on the series first.   The Devil's Company by David Liss From the acclaimed author of The Whiskey Rebels and A Conspiracy of Paper comes a superb new historical thriller set in the splendor and squalor of eighteenth-century London.This is the third thriller to feature the estimable Benjamin Weaver, one of fiction’s most enthralling characters.   The year is 1722. Thief-taker, ex-boxer, “ruffian for hire,” and master of disguise, Weaver finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, pitted against Jerome Cobb, a wealthy and mysterious schemer who needs Weaver’s strength and guile for his own dark purposes. Weaver is blackmailed into stealing documents from England’s most heavily guarded estate, the headquarters of the ruthless British East India Company, but the theft of corporate...

Congratulations to the winners of Dark Hunger by Rita Herron! elaing Jake Lsewhere Aaron Freda Mans Lisa Richardson I'll be e-mailing you all tomorrow. I just need your addresses to pass on to Hachette books....

Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two (2) "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. You also need to share the title of the book that you're getting your "teaser" from...that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given. Please avoid spoilers! My teaser: I didn't mean to scream, but when you turn around and see your boyfriend's ex-wife floating toward you in a giant transparent bubble, screaming seems like a pretty reasonable option. "Don't panic!" I ordered her even though I was doing a pretty good job of panicking myself. -pg. 140, Laced with Magic by Barbara Bretton Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Play along....

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson About the book: In this electrifying follow-up to the phenomenal best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it is Lisbeth Salander, the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker, who is the focus and fierce heart of the story. Mikael Blomkvist—crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium—has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government. On the eve of publication, the two reporters responsible for the story are brutally murdered. But perhaps more shocking for Blomkvist: the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to Lisbeth Salander. Now, as Blomkvist—alone in his belief in her innocence—plunges into his own investigation of the slayings, Salander is drawn into a murderous hunt in which she is the prey, and which compels her to revisit her dark past in an effort to settle with it once and for all. The giveaway: This is a...

Casting Spells by Barbara Bretton Do you believe in the magic of true love? Chloe Hobbs lives in Sugar Maple, Vermont, a picture perfect village, and owns Sticks & Strings, a mecca for knitting tourists. Sugar Maple has a secret, though, that is hidden from the outside by a protective spell put in place hundreds of years ago. All the inhabitants are magical beings - vampire, witches, sprites, selkie, etc, but they all get along for the most part. The spell protects the town, allowing outsiders to see it only as a beautiful town filled with normal, although slightly quirky people. Well, not all of them are magical. Chloe may be the daughter of a sorceress, but her father was a human, and up to now, she has no magical abilities whatsoever. The problem is the town's future is in her hands.  Only she can keep the protective spell intact. Enter Luke MacKenzie. When he and Chloe touch, sparks literally fly. They are meant for...