Author Archive

Here’s a twofer for those of you craving a giant dose of summer romance:

Prolific Nora Roberts Bride Quartet was mentioned here once before when I reviewed the first book, Vision in White. The books revolve around the story of four childhood friends, Parker, Emma, Laurel and Mac, the founders of Vows, one of Connecticut’s most popular and successful wedding planning companies. In the first book, photographer Mac finds her true love.

Book 2 in the series continues the story of the ups and downs of running weddings, showers and rehearsal dinners for everyone from Bridezilla to The Perfect Couple in Bed of Roses. This time the focus is on Emma, the florist of the pack and the true romantic. She yearns for a lifelong love affair with her man, if such a thing is possible.

Book 3 in the series is Savor the Moment, another delectable piece of romantic candy. This time baker Lauren is up for the spotlight.

For those of you looking for a mega-dose of romance to cool your days, try one of these sparklers.  All are quick to read, maybe while you sit on the beach and let the sand sift through your toes.  Roberts Book 4 will premiere in November, when Parker gets her man. But trust me, if you read the others, you’ll already know who her Mr. Right will be.

Today’s guest blogger is Matthew Graff, JD, MLIS.  Matt lives in upstate New York with his lovely wife, Kimberly, and their two cats, Pumpkin and Hamilton.

As a proud Gen X’er I get a lot of my news and info from Internet news sources.  With the massive amount of information available to me, content organization tools make my online time more efficient and pleasant.  Two of those tools that help streamline my online experience are Readability and Instapaper.

Instapaper

While online, I frequently find and receive links to pages that I would love to look at, just not at that particular time.  A number of quick, dirty, and ultimately unsatisfying solutions are available for this problem, including: leaving the links open in separate tabs until an opportunity to read presents itself; emailing the links to yourself; or bookmarking the pages.  But each of these fixes presents problems of confusion, disorganization, and clutter.  Enter Instapaper (http://www.instapaper.com/).  Instapaper is a free application that provides subscribers with the means to save webpages in a neat and organized fashion for later viewing. A  quick, easy, and painless installation places a link, “Read Later”, in the bookmark toolbar.  Clicking on that “Read Later” link saves a page to your Instapaper account.   Accessing your Instapaper account page reveals a record (list) of your saved content as well as a link to read those pages at your convenience.  Instapaper offers a number of ways to manage your saved pages, but some highlights include: an option to load a text-only version of your saved page, the ability to archive your content or export it to a folder, as well as to edit and delete an entry. Oh yeah, Instapaper is also available for your iPhone as well.

Readability

Unfortunately reading all those saved pages is often a less-than-pleasant experience.  Filled with links that open pop-ups when moused-over, distracting side columns, and annoying adds and animation, the online article format can usually be described as, and  I’m being charitable here, the dogs breakfast.  But there is a fix available to deal with this issue.  Readability (http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/) is a free and powerful online tool that strips the extraneous info from your articles and renders them in a simple text format for easy reading.  Similar to Instapaper, installation is a breeze and place a “Readability” link in your bookmark toolbar.  Clicking on that “Readability” link reloads your page in a clear and easy-to-read format.  Readability offers a fair degree of customization as well, including the option to change font type and size, article format, and margin size, as well as the ability to print content in Readability’s new, neat format.

Used in tandem, Instapaper and Readability are a powerful combination of tools that may improve your online information retrieval and consumption experience.  If you spend time online and run into problems of the sort listed above, give these programs a shot.

Today’s guest blogger is Matthew Graff, JD, MLIS.  Matt lives in upstate New York with his lovely wife, Kimberly, and their two cats, Pumpkin and Hamilton.

As a proud Gen X’er I get a lot of my news and info from Internet news sources.  With the massive amount of information available to me, content organization tools make my online time more efficient and pleasant.  Two of those tools that help streamline my online experience are Readability and Instapaper.

Instapaper

While online, I frequently find and receive links to pages that I would love to look at, just not at that particular time.  A number of quick, dirty, and ultimately unsatisfying solutions are available for this problem, including: leaving the links open in separate tabs until an opportunity to read presents itself; emailing the links to yourself; or bookmarking the pages.  But each of these fixes presents problems of confusion, disorganization, and clutter.  Enter Instapaper (http://www.instapaper.com/).  Instapaper is a free application that provides subscribers with the means to save webpages in a neat and organized fashion for later viewing. A  quick, easy, and painless installation places a link, “Read Later”, in the bookmark toolbar.  Clicking on that “Read Later” link saves a page to your Instapaper account.   Accessing your Instapaper account page reveals a record (list) of your saved content as well as a link to read those pages at your convenience.  Instapaper offers a number of ways to manage your saved pages, but some highlights include: an option to load a text-only version of your saved page, the ability to archive your content or export it to a folder, as well as to edit and delete an entry. Oh yeah, Instapaper is also available for your iPhone as well.

Readability

Unfortunately reading all those saved pages is often a less-than-pleasant experience.  Filled with links that open pop-ups when moused-over, distracting side columns, and annoying adds and animation, the online article format can usually be described as, and  I’m being charitable here, the dogs breakfast.  But there is a fix available to deal with this issue.  Readability (http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/) is a free and powerful online tool that strips the extraneous info from your articles and renders them in a simple text format for easy reading.  Similar to Instapaper, installation is a breeze and place a “Readability” link in your bookmark toolbar.  Clicking on that “Readability” link reloads your page in a clear and easy-to-read format.  Readability offers a fair degree of customization as well, including the option to change font type and size, article format, and margin size, as well as the ability to print content in Readability’s new, neat format.

Used in tandem, Instapaper and Readability are a powerful combination of tools that may improve your online information retrieval and consumption experience.  If you spend time online and run into problems of the sort listed above, give these programs a shot.

Janet Evanovich always makes me laugh out loud several times during my read, and Sizzling Sixteen is no exception.  This one had me reading several paragraphs out loud to my husband, who always nods and smiles at my laughter.

Stephanie Plum’s major assignment this time around is trying to raise over $700,000 to secure the release of her kidnapped cousin Vinnie. Yes, the same Vinnie who is the owner of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds and her boss, although she personally loathes the man. His gambling debt to a mobster has set this whole caper in motion.

Helping Stephanie, as only she can, is file clerk Lula, she of the spandex outfits she squeezes her zaftig body into; and Connie, office manager, who decides to lend a hand getting Vinnie back. All three are more anxious to save their jobs than to save Vinnie, but since it boils down to the same thing, off they go.

Stephanie’s on-again, off-again romance with cop Joe Morelli is in an ‘off’ stage in this one, so sexy security expert Ranger ramps up the heat.  Of course, Stephanie still needs to find her usual collars to keep the business going, as the trio search for Vinnie.  There are encounters with a Jersey Turnpike toilet paper bandit and a drug dealer with a pet alligator named Mr. Jingles. Really.

And no Plum novel would be complete without a turn from Grandma Mazur, one of the funniest characters ever put on the page.

You can’t get better summer reading than putting on the sunblock and settling down with the fast read.  I’m waiting for Stephanie and company to be put on the big screen.  Perfect for a quick read of laugh-filled brain candy.

Mary Higgins Clark has her formula down pat.  There’s no question that the protagonist will survive to find happiness, it’s just a matter of with whom and what she has to go through to get there, and this book is no exception.

The Shadow of Your Smile is her29th suspense novel, excluding the five holiday novels she’s written with her daughter Carol. That doesn’t include her short story collections (three), a children’s book, an historical novel and a memoir.

In the interests of summer reading, the predictability turns out to be a good thing. This one goes down like an icy pina colada, quick and easy.   The plot revolves around a long-standing family secret that threatens the life of an heiress, who, in true MHC fashion,  doesn’t know she IS one.  Pediatrician Dr. Monica Farrell fills this bill nicely.

A greedy foundation, battling family members, and even the beatification of a saint all come into play. Really. Of course, there’s the little question of murder here and there, but it all gets sorted out at the end of the day.

I’ll have another pina colada, thank you.

With sunny skies and warm days, summer reads call out to me. Leave the wave-running and stomach-grazing boogie boards to the youngsters. I long for a huge bottle of sunscreen, an iced drink and a comfortable chair at the shore, good book in hand.

What makes a good summer read? For me, it’s a book that’s quickly paced with enough plot to keep me reading. These are ‘brain candy’ books, the ones we look forward to, dependable reads from long-standing authors. I know I will not be hit over the head figuring out long-winded philosophical treatises. I will be treated to a satisfying, if somewhat predictable, read. After all, most stories have already been told; it’s how they’re told that captures a reader. Give me a romance, which I don’t read most of the year, or a good thriller.  Over the next few weeks I’ll share some of my current reads with you.

Let’s start your summer reading with John Sandford’s long-running ‘Prey’ series, the largest of his three, which  continues to be a roller-coaster of a satisfying read. You get to be in everyone’s mind in his novels,  including the bad guys, as Sandford shows that their motivations combined with their general stupidity in some area will lead to their downfall.  Although there is some fancy detecting and policing going on, the actions of the criminals say it all. In Storm Prey, this thesis holds true.

Protagonist Lucas Davenport’s wife, plastic surgeon Weather Karkinnen, has the misfortune to see one of three robbers who storm her hospital’s pharmacy for the drugs. One of the pharmacy workers dies, starting a spiraling out of control of the robbery team, and the murders start to mount up.

Protecting Weather is not as simple as it seems: she’s part of a team mounting an intricate separation of conjoined twins. The surgery has to be performed in stages, over several days, due to the cardiac problems of the baby girls.  A second set of siblings, the Mack brothers, form the basis of the criminal side of things. Petty thieves and drug dealers, motorcycle gang members and bar owners, the brothers get themselves in way too deep before seeing a way out.

One of Sandford’s strengths is his realistic telling of the story, gritty and raw, the pace getting faster and faster. Members of his team talk to each other as though they’ve worked together for years. This is Sandford’s 20th Prey novel and each one is filled with his trademark suspense and multi-layered characters.

I couldn’t wait to crack the cover of Elizabeth George’s newest, This Body of Death.

The 16th of the Inspector Lynley series finds the Earl still grieving the murder of his wife and unborn child. He is coaxed back to work on the murder of a young woman found dead in a deserted graveyard by the strong woman now working in his shoes as Acting Superintendant. Isabelle Ardery has her own issues, not the least of which are the little bottles of vodka she ferrets in and out of her purse.

The story is parsed out between supposed-excerpts of a psychologist’s sociological treatise, describing the backgrounds of three young boys sent to prison for murdering a toddler.Based on the real horrific incident in Britain when three youths coaxed a toddler out of a fast-food restaurant, his torture and murder are chillingly and almost antiseptically described. The reader catches on soon enough that one of the three youths is part of the current story.

Lynley’s team is present, all with varying responses to Acting Super Ardery . Sgt. Barbara Havers, my favorite, is hounded into a makeover of sorts. An unlikely (and I felt forced), relationship springs up between Lynley and Isabelle.Various members of the team act out and destroy the cohesiveness a murder investigation requires.

The investigation takes the reader into New Forest, where wild ponies roam, and in and out of London, and has as many twists and turns as the usual George novel. There’s even an appearance by the St. James’. As much as I admired the actual mystery, the length of this novel (over 650 pages) felt too long, with the appearance of some of our old favorite secondary characters tacked on.

I’m grumbling because this is the second George novel where the sociological interests of the story have trumped the mystery (What Came Before He Shot Her was pure social issue rant). For me George is at her best when she focuses on the mystery and the lives of her characters she has spent years painstakingly building for her readers.

Am I being too severe to wish she would leave the heavy sociological stories to social workers? Any murder has sociological overtones to be explored, but these novels seem to hit us over the head with the implications, and I for one, am an unhappy reader. I read George’s novels for her complex mysteries and characterizations, not her social injustice.  The question is: do the readers have any right to question an author’s choices?

What say you??

A few blogs ago I waxed heartily about the wonderful novel by the late Stieg Larrson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

As promised, I’m back again after finishing the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire. All I can say is: “Wow!”

If you thought I loved the first one, I zipped through this one and it was even better! This man was a master plotter, above all. The permutations he puts his girl, Lisbeth Salander through, are unbelievable, and yet in this world he has created, totally believable.

This time Mikael Blomkvist, the intrepid investigative reporter, must clear Lisbeth of suspicion of three murders. We see the investigation from the police’s side of things, too.  The plot revolves around an international sex trafficking operation that Blomkvist’s magazine was readying to blow apart, with the double whammy of a dedicated magazine issue and a book, lies at the heart of the novel. But so does Salander’s dark past.  The two overlap in ways that define explanation without giving the plot away.

Suffice it to say that Salandar is the Swedish Bourne and Blomkvist is the Swedish Robin Hood. You won’t regret a minute of reading this novel. You won’t be able to put it down, either.

Truman Capote said:

“Writing has laws of perspective of light and shade just as painting does or music.”

Being a mystery writer, I have to agree with Truman on this one. Everyone has their favorite shading of genre. Adjust the variation of setting and pace and you may have a cozy. Add a trill of thrill and you have an action suspense novel.  Put your main character fighting against any number of governmental agencies or threats to it and you have a spy thriller.

Spy thrillers are not my personal favorite mystery genre, although I have read some good ones: le Carre’’s novels were stunning, as were the Bourne series. Some of the earliest spy novels were made into delightful movies, like Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.  I decided to let you in on the favorites of someone who should be an expert on the subject: Frederick Hitz, the former inspector general of the CIA. Here are his picks for the top four fictional agents.

Rudyard Kipling’s Kim: Hitz point out Kim’s excellent cover: an Anglo-Irishman who assume native dress and darken his face so he can pass as an India. Kim’s employer in provides institutional cover for British spies in India, using Kim at first to deliver news of troop movements along the Grand Truck Road.  Recruited to the service, Kim is sent to surveying school to perform surveys in the outback, where is keeps his eye on French and Russian intruders. Then Kim becomes a manservant to a wandering Tibetan Buddhist holy man, which gives him the freedom to travel anywhere in India. Hitz says Kim “has excellent spy instincts. He’s a watcher.”

James Bond: Think how many people would be disappointed if Hitz hadn’t hit on Ian Fleming’s Bond, James Bond. Hitz admits Bond “isn’t a very careful spy” but points to Dr. No and From Russia with Love as illustrating the great ops security which both show it does not pay to get too close to Mr. Bond. Booth manages to escape being swallowed up by a swamp-eating protective machine policing Dr. No’s Cayman Island. In Russia, Bond’s sidekick is “eliminated” by a KGB assassin trying to gun down 007, who of course, survives.

George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is John le Carre’s creation. Described as “small, podgy and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London’s meek who do not inherit the earth.” Interesting how appearances can be deceiving, isn’t it? And his gift of going relatively unnoticed made Smiley a master spy, one who knew that in his profession, to stay alive meant “there is no such thing as coincidence.” This was one case where casting got it absolutely correct in the BBC series when they hired Alec Guinness to play George.

Frederick Forsyth’s Jackal is meticulous in his trade and craft. In The Day of the Jackal Hitz notes “a maximum of preparation is required when you intend to assassinate a heavily guarded chief of state and want to survive the attack. Stealing multiple identities, adopting different guises, the Jackal is exhaustive in the minutia of his work. The famous ending revolves around an unanticipated simple human act of kindness.

Who would you add to Hitz’ hit list?

Marni had so many friends recommend this book but never got around to reading it earlier in the year. Finally her writer pal Dr. Warren, Communications expert at GW Unie, sent her a copy.

Finally, I decided to see what the fuss was all about.

I read the first two chapters and was distracted by the publishing of The Blue Virgin (really, anyone could understand THAT) so by the time I picked it up again, I had to start all over to set the story and the characters in my mind. This is not a brain candy novel, ala’ Higgins Clark, to be devoured in one sitting on a sunny porch.

What it IS: a novel of mysteries, old and new; a fascinating character study of two of the most unusual protagonists living in a place where the mores and culture are different from the US; and a novel that explores the reactions to situations with often surprising results.

I find it tough to talk about the plot without giving much away, but suffice it to say that the lives of these two main characters, plus those of the others they intersect, will keep you riveted until you finish the book . . . and leave you wanting to read the next one.

Mikael Blomkvist is the publisher of a financial magazine.  When a twist in his life leaves him with open time, he is seduced into taking on the job of solving a murder that is over thirty years old.  Lisbeth Salander is the genius hacker he hires to assist him with his investigation. A troubled soul, Lisbeth has her own way of dealing with problems as they arise. She is the most unique character I’ve come across in recent memory.

This is a series of three; unfortunately for readers around the world, the author Stieg Larsson died before he could see the success of the world and the people he has created.

I’ll start Book II this weekend, The Girl Who Played with Fire, if all goes well.  I can’t wait~

Reader: what book did you start and put down, and then pick up again and persevere and find it to be a total delight?