Looking for Your Next Book

I last remember reading Edgar Allan Poe's fiction back in middle school, and his poetry when I was in college so I thought it was well past time to dig into some of his work again. And what a treat to do so! Publisher Dover, who repeatedly does a very good job publishing no-frills 'thrift' editions of classic works, has done a fine job here, giving us a lot of Poe. And let's be honest here, a little Poe goes a long way, so a lot of Poe needs to be read over lengthy periods of time. What I found is that Poe's short stories still show why he's a master story-teller and why students still read his works in school. There's a lot of power and suspense in his short works. Stories like "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Pit and the Pendulum" (the first story I ever remember reading by Poe) still hold up well against modern fiction, though some of the formality of the language does seem archaic at times....

In addition to being a high school senior, with all that entails, Mary Elizabeth Heart is also an intern at the Monarch City Police Department. She delights in meeting all the detectives as they check in and rush off to help clean up the city. For years there has been a deep divide between the city's elite and a section known as The Scar (which the elite have been wanting to develop. The Scar has been the center of the city's magic. When Mary's friend Ursula is reported missing, the Chief of Police invites Mary to join the team of detectives searching for her. Her first real investigative case! But the deeper Mary gets into her search, the more unusual things she uncovers. There's a girl with a head of horns and a sea monster living in a poisoned lake. And all through her search she comes between those wanting to shut the Scar down and those who will do anything to get back the magic that was once so prevalent.  I have a number of reactions to this book.  The first bein...

We are in China in the 13th Century. The Song Empire has been invaded and half its capital city are in the hands of the enemy Jurchen. In Mongolia, a powerful warlord is uniting a nation of warriors and soon the warlords name will be known everywhere: Genghis Khan. But our focus here is on Guo Jing, the son of a Song patriot who grew up in Khan's army. Jing is a rather unassuming young man - he quietly does what he's asked to do and he's loyal to his commander. He would probably go unnoticed in life except for one important thing: he has been fated since birth to one day confront a man who is his exact opposite in every way. Jing is trained by masters ("shifus") with incredible skills and foresight.  They are collectively known as The Seven Heroes of the South, though most think they are only a myth. The shifus will guide Jing from the Mongolian steppes to The Garden of the Drunken Immortals to fulfill his destiny. I really liked this book. It's been decades ...

I haven't read too many action/adventure books, but mostly because I am not familiar enough with the genre to know what's out there and worth digging in to. With that in mind I thought I'd give this a shot. Blake Sanders is our hero in this, the second book in a 'Blake Sanders Thrillers' series, and this book digs into his past. Some 20+ years earlier, Sanders' best friend, Perry Langford was arrested and found guilty for the murder of a young woman who died in an explosion at a university lab explosion in Illinois. Perry always claimed his innocence, but this isn't unusual of course, and Blake, who was there at the time, doesn't know the whether his friend was guilty or not.   Now, 20 years later, Perry is out of prison and he's vowed vengeance against all those he believes are responsible for his time in jail, include Blake. And so begins a wild ride, with Blake in the center of the action. Except... It's really not that wild. The story, the ac...

Ivy Mae Bloom's goal is to find her 'forever home.' At thirteen (well, almost thirteen), Ivy wishes the magic of a place to settle on her and her mom so that they can stop the constant moving.  Ivy's mother is a fallen star who travels the globe to fix the magic that surrounds everything. Even magic needs repairing now and then. But Ivy steals her mother's supply of 'wish jars' and now the Blooms are stuck in Whistling Ridge, North Carolina.  It's not such a bad little town, Ivy decides, and hopes beyond everything that this can be her forever home. There's something going on in Whistling Ridge, though. Even Ivy can feel the magic draining away and her mother seems powerless to fix it. With some new friends and acquaintances, Ivy believes she might know what the problem is and how to solve it, but if the magic is restored, will her mother move them along again? This book is incredibly poetic. Author Cindy Baldwin's prose is lyrical and she makes ...

Sandis was finally free from the Master who was using her as a host to unleash the ancient beast Kolosos. Now she would be able to summon her own demon - a fire horse - and along with her friend Rone, perhaps they would be able to finally defeat the unbeatable Kolosos.  But in the meantime, Kolosos has found a new host body ... Anon. Anon is Sandis's brother whom she long thought dead.  Now, defeating Kolosos is even more crucial, but can she do it and save Anon? This series hasn't been my favorite of Holmberg's work, but this third book in the Numina series has finally drawn me in and held me rapt. I felt that there was more depth to the characters and more at stake with the plot than in the two previous books, but mostly, there seemed to be a lack of whining and pining that I recall from the other books. Sandis has really grown through the course of the series, and that's been enjoyable. Unfortunately, part of that growth comes at the expense of not having such a stro...

The sixth book in Genevieve Cogman's fantasy/adventure 'The Invisible Library' series already!  It seems like it that wasn't so long that the first book came out (I reviewed it in 2016). Librarian Irene is on a short break from her last adventure when she gets the call for her next task.  One of the worlds is devolving into chaos (the world where she grew up) and there is one book that can stop the madness.  But there is only one known copy of that book and it is in the collection of a very mysterious trader/dear, Mr. Nemo.  Nemo welcomes Irene and Kai, and a few others, to a dinner gathering, where he asks that the party of individuals steal a specific painting from a specific world. In return, he will let each member take one item from his collection.  It sounds easy, except having such a diverse, distrustful group try to work together might be too difficult to overcome. I feel as though these books have settled into a comfortable groove. For some, that might ...

I was not sure what to make of this book - going back and forth from liking the book, to not liking the book, and back to liking it again. The book is a coming-of-age story of Lucy, a middle school student. Like middle school students all over the world, she's going through a lot of turmoil. She's just coming to discover the things she likes and the things she's good at. Her friendships are on-again/off-again, with friends sometimes being the cruelest. Her family is splintering, with her grandmother - the steady influence in Lucy's life - showing frightening signs of aging. Lucy discovers two things that give her something to feel good about.  She discovers her love of music and with some friends starts a band. And she discovers her father's old Beatles' records, solidifying her love of music.  But what if music is what separates friends? Can music make things right, too? What grabbed me initially about the book, of course, is the obvious Beatles connection.  Th...

The Maze Runner. Since the days of the 'boy wizard'  books and films geared toward a young adult audience have flourished, but only a couple have had real success and one of those is James Dashner's "Maze Runner" series. I've only seen the first film and I've only read one of the books but when I saw there was a new story, a novella, in the series I was quite curious to check it out. This is Newt's story. He does not want his friends to have to watch him suffer from the virus as he falls into a madness, so he leaves a note and before they return from a mission in Colorado, and heads out to the streets. But the streets have unique dangers. He has to avoid the infected as well as those trying to track down the infected. Ultimately he will find his way to Crank Palace - the home to those without hope. Is this the end of Newt's story? This is a character-driven story (my favorite kind) and even though I'm not really familiar with Newt (not like the...

  Our government is at war. With fast food. We are in what might be best described as the future in an alternative timeline in what was once the United States of America.  The Northeast has seceded and the rest of the country is now run by "the electoral descendants of King Mike, a man who made it his mission to form a country based on good, clean living." And what happens when something becomes illegal? There becomes a black market for those things. Wes Montgomery is a journalist at the last actual paper newspaper in the union (now called the Federation). When he's not covering the news, he's making it, as a bacon and egg dealer on the side. He gets caught by the local constabulary but Detective Blunt has bigger fish to fry and wants to use Wes to get at the biggest illegal food dealers in the Federation. Wes will be watched closely by Detective Hillary Halstead, who falls for his charm (and his steaks) and the two get intimately close. Together they will face the da...

Roger Weathersby digs up corpses for medical schools. It is his hope to earn enough money by this means to buy his own text books and study to become a physician. Though he's never been a man of wealth or means (he was the son of a servant) he had been childhood friends with a princess - Princess Sibylla - though that was many years ago. For her part, Sibylla had been rather pleased when Roger left the estate. She had seen him kissing members of the staff and heard that he'd taken a bribe to leave the palace.  A man like that was not needed around royalty.  Now Sibylla is focused on continuing her magical bloodline, which means finding a suitable mate. (Can we guess where this might be going?) Roger is accused of murdering one of the corpses he digs up.  Since the police are sure it's him, and he (and we) know it's not, that means there is a killer on the loose and it's up to Roger to find him. Roger's only hope is his old friend Sibylla and time is running out!...

I've never before read a Xanth novel. As a regular reader of fantasy and science fiction I have been aware of this series.  How could I not ... this is the 38th book in the series.  Thirty-eight! That's a remarkable accomplishment.  So when this was available I decided now was as good a time as any to foray into the Land of Xanth. The young woman named Irrelevant Kandy is looking at her reflection in the water of a well.  She sees the classic beauty that men see, but she sighs with frustration because she has a brain and personality but men never see that.  Aloud she complains that she's "board stiff" and "wants Adventure, Excitement, and Romance."  The wise wishing well hears her use of "board" rather than "bored" and grants her wish, turning her into a stiff plank with knothole eyes.  She is picked up by a young knight who will take the stiff board on his adventures.  Kandy is still able to communicate (somewhat telepathically) with...

As a teenager I was completely and utterly enthralled with Harlan Ellison and his writing. I've read everything he wrote that i could get my hands on.  I met him at book signings and conventions and easily rated him as my favorite author.    Ellison's anger and angst and pomposity was fun, or at least identifiable for the teen me. And over the past few years I've purchased his entire catalog of available works in digital format so that I can read them again.  This is perhaps an unusual place to start, this collection of essays since it was his fiction that first attracted me, but in many ways it was my reading The Glass Teat that first got me interested in reviewing.  Long before I started this book review blog (which I've been doing for eight years now!) I've been a reviewer of art shows for a local paper, a reviewer of books for West Coast Review of Books magazine, and a reviewer of live theatre for a Los Angeles newspaper, and I can pretty much trace i...

I have an undergraduate degree in theatre and am familiar with the works of Eugene O'Neill, having read or seen (or both) most of his body of works. I was only passingly familiar with O'Neill the man, the writer, from brief bios in college text books. Author Robert M. Dowling has done an exhaustive amount of research to give us a deep understanding of the man, Eugene O'Neill, and understanding the man provides insight to the works. Dowling gives us O'Neill in a straight-forward presentation, and although I presume he has respect or deep appreciation for O'Neill, manages to keep his personal thoughts out of the writing. There are times, especially early in the book, when this comes across as dry academic writing and it takes some patience to keep going, but the further we get in the more I appreciated the style. O'Neill the playwright defined an era.  When his play Long Day's Journey Into Night had its world premiere in Sweden, the critics wrote that O'N...