Ah, 18th century horror.  The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole is a slim little novel of horror.  There is a giant warrior in the castle, set on expelling the current man of the house.  You would expect that to be the focus.  Instead, the characters in the novel seem remarkably unconcerned by the giant's... Continue Reading →

The Perfect Murder by Brenda Novak was slightly less than perfect.  Overall, the characters felt a little flat.  My main issue was the main character, Jane.  Somehow in the moment we met her, my mental picture was off.  Novak presented Jane to us in a moment when Jane was pondering her faults.  Those faults made up my first... Continue Reading →

One With the Darkness by Susan Squires is about a time-traveling vampire who moves between the Italian Renaissance and the Roman Empire.  Seriously. Excess piled on extravagance piled on improbability.  I just don't even know what to say.  Except that in some odd way, it worked.  If you can let yourself go, and forget that the... Continue Reading →

I received another unexpected visit from old friends.  Have You Seen Her? by Karen Rose follows a character introduced in one of her earlier novels.  I really like that she goes back and tells the stories of characters that were accessories in other stories.  The books aren't truly sequels or part of a series, but there is... Continue Reading →

Okay, more fluffiness.  (Is that even a word?!)  I finished Texas! Chase by Sandra Brown over the weekend.  This is book two in the Texas trilogy, written early in Brown's "mainstream" career.This novel features a woman (Her name escapes me) that has been in love with a man (Chase) since high school.  He married someone else. ... Continue Reading →

I know, I know.  Most people are forced to read this book in school.  Somehow I never had to.  So I read it now.  Animal Farm by George Orwell was written (I assume) as political commentary.  And yes, I got that.  In the end, there was no distinguishable difference between pigs and humans.  What caught... Continue Reading →

The Memory Game by Nicci French took me a little while to settle into.  It's set in England, and has a very English feel, so it felt very foreign to me at first.  Once I was acclimated, however, the story took over.  The story centers around a middle-aged woman discovering the long buried body of her... Continue Reading →

I just finished The Oracle: The lost secrets and hidden message of ancient Delphi by William J Broad.  This is a nonfiction work that is less about what the oracle did and said and more about how modern times have viewed the oracle.  I don't have much interest in geology, slightly more in archaeology.  Yet... Continue Reading →

I read another Sandra Brown novel.  This time it was the first in a trilogy:  Texas! Lucky. This is one of the early novels that Brown published under her own name.  It's really a cross-over novel between her really early work (pure romance) and her newest work (suspense).  In this novel, the focus is still definitely on the... Continue Reading →

I read Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice over the weekend.  Much like Interview with the Vampire, this story is set up with the main character telling his story to another person who is recording/ writing it down.  I really don't like this set-up.  In theory, having an observer who hears the story and then relays it... Continue Reading →