Library Haul

Bad blogger, I know. I was going to blog about the book that broke my recent (fiction)reading slump, but we'll leave that for when I have more energy.

So... I'll post the books I got from the library yesterday. The library is directly across from the supermarket & bank. How sweet this that? I've never gone grocery shopping down there without dropping into the library first.

C.J. Box's Blood Trail.



I first came across the author via a newsletter (publisher or writer's org) in either case there was a link to an excerpt and ever since I've had it in mind to check out their writing. This is my first try.

Synopsis found on Amazon:

When an elk hunter is shot and gruesomely gutted in Box's solid eighth Joe Pickett novel (after 2007's Free Fire), Wyoming governor Spencer Rulon assigns Joe to the investigative team headed by Joe's nemesis, game and fish director Randy Pope. The authorities suspect a group led by antihunting activist Klamath Moore, but Joe thinks an enigmatic clue near the body points to a serial killer. As usual, Joe stands alone against official protocol, placing his career and life in peril by following his hunches. He persuades Rulon to release his pal, iconoclast Nate Romanowski, who's awaiting trial on spurious charges, to help him on the case. Writing beautifully about the mountain West and its people, Box takes care to present both sides of the controversial issue of hunting. The narrative alternates between the searchers and the killer, whose identity will keep readers guessing up to the surprising climax.




Nadine Dajani's Cutting Loose.



It was the spine that caught my eye on this one--the publisher, color and photo/image. I haven't read one of these woman fiction following 2 or 3 protags in awhile, but particularly like that all the women are from varying ethnic backgrounds (Saudi Arabian, Palestinian and Honduran).


Synopsis found on Amazon:

Dajani's engrossing second novel (after Fashionably Late) chronicles the overlap in the lives of three dissimilar women working at a Miami magazine. Upon realizing that her husband is gay, pampered Ranya Hayek flees her situation and, after a chance meeting with smitten millionaire Georges Mallouk, finds herself working for the first time. Georges and his brother, Joe, own Suéltate, a successful magazine geared toward Latinas and helmed by the brash Rio, who works nonstop to make it a top publication. Rio has the occasional tryst with Joe and is wary of Ranya, who has both brothers mooning over her. Also disdainful of Ranya and Rio is Ranya's childhood schoolmate Zahra, who is intelligent but socially awkward. After having made a mistake that destroyed her beloved life in Boston, Zahra took a corporate position with her old friend Georges, whom she still holds a torch for. Dajani seamlessly flits from character to character, embodying each woman and pitting her observations against her misconceptions. Though the unfortunately pat happy ending seems lazy and unlikely, the novel works nicely.




Eden Bradley's A 21st Century Courtesan





I've one other Bradley book. I liked it, but it was BDSM --really BDSM, not just window dressing for the story. It was done really well. Great writing/characterization, but ultimately I'm not that into reading BDSM so haven't really read anything else by her because I had the impression that's mostly what she writes. I almost didn't bring this one home because I"m not in the mood for erotica, but... I love the whole intriguing sexy stranger at the opera set up.

Synopsis found on Amazon:

She lives in a world of silk sheets, imported champagne,
and endless erotic delight.…

She fulfills the deepest fantasies of the most powerful men in the world. Sensual, seductive, and discreet, Valentine Day is a high-class call girl, pampered and adored by her exclusive clientele. But Valentine has a secret. Always in control, she’s never experienced true pleasure outside of her work. But all that is about to change.… Now the woman who’s spent a decade pleasuring others is about to embark on an erotic journey of her own.

It happens one night at the opera. Seated next to her in the dark is a stranger. As the music swells so does the sexual tension. Gorgeous, sophisticated Joshua Spencer invites her for a drink, and soon she’s fantasizing about taking him home. When they finally come together in the most tender and intense lovemaking Valentine has ever known, she’s hooked. But suddenly Valentine is questioning everything. Joshua has no idea what she does for a living. Can she risk everything—including her hard-earned freedom and one final, shattering secret—for one man? And would he still want her if he knew the truth?

Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip.



I remember the buzz on this one when it was short listed for a bunch of awards/prizes. What really made me take this one home is an short excerpt from the book on the back:

"You cannot pretend to read a great book.
Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing.
A person entranced by a book simply forgets to
breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader
deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper
is in flames"

A bit of an exaggeration, but I don't know how many times I've ended up on the other end of town because I was so immersed in a book I was reading I missed my train stop. 'K, it hasn't happened all that often. *g* But when it has it's because it was a damn great book I was reading.


Synopsis found on Amazon:

A promising though ultimately overwrought portrayal of the small rebellions and crises of disillusionment that constitute a young narrator's coming-of-age unfolds against an ominous backdrop of war in Jones's latest. When the conflict between the natives and the invading redskin soldiers erupts on an unnamed tropical island in the early 1990s, 13-year-old Matilda Laimo and her mother, Dolores, are unified with the rest of their village in their efforts for survival. Amid the chaos, Mr. Watts, the only white local (he is married to a native), offers to fill in as the children's schoolteacher and teaches from Dickens's Great Expectations. The precocious Matilda, who forms a strong attachment to the novel's hero, Pip, uses the teachings as escapism, which rankles Dolores, who considers her daughter's fixation blasphemous. With a mixture of thrill and unease, Matilda discovers independent thought, and Jones captures the intricate, emotionally loaded evolution of the mother-daughter relationship. Jones (The Book of Fame; Biografi) presents a carefully laid groundwork in the tense interactions between Matilda, Dolores and Mr. Watts, but the extreme violence toward the end of the novel doesn't quite work. Jones's prose is faultless, however, and the story is innovative enough to overcome the misplayed tragedy.