Living Witness.  By Jane Haddam.

Series mystery.  Detective: Gregor Demarkian.

A near-fatal assault in a Pennsylvania small town appears to have been triggered by a lawsuit over intelligent design and evolution.  Gregor Demarkian is called in because the town police chief is a possible… Read full post »

"Of all sad words" and "Murder among the OWLS."  Both by  Bill Crider. 

Series mysteries.  Detective: Sheriff Dan Rhodes.

My friends and I often joked that our gravestones would read "It seemed like a good idea at the time."  Texas Sheriff Dan Rhodes considers that the… Read full post »

Bodies.  By Susie Orbach.

Orbach begins this book with the story of a man who wanted his two healthy legs amputated.  He squeezed them into a single support stocking and packed them in dry ice, damaging them so that surgeons would have to remove them.  His legs had caused him no… Read full post »

Seeking Peace:   Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World. By Mary Pipher.

Mary Pipher hit the best seller lists in 1994 with "Reviving Ophelia".  It was a mixed blessing; she describes it as being "avalanched by roses."  The pressure of  her success caused a… Read full post »

Bone Song.  By John Meaney.

I’ve already read the second book in this series, “Dark Blood”.  The first book is as good and original as the second. 

In “Bone Song” we meet Donal Riordan, Lieutenant of the Tristopolis police.  He’s b/… Read full post »

Darling Jim. By Christian Moerk.
 
Two sisters and their aunt are found dead.  Investigators realize that the older woman had imprisoned and poisoned her nieces, and they had killed her in a doomed attempt to escape. 
 
A few weeks later, a package ends up the local post office&rsquo… Read full post »

Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star. By Kitty Kelley. 

I picked up this book because I’d been to see Carrie Fisher’s autobiographical show “Wishful Drinking”.  Ms. Taylor figured in the show because she seduced Eddie Fisher, Carrie’s father, away from her mo/… Read full post »

Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival.  By Bernd Heinrich.

The smaller you are, the faster you lose heat. So how do Kinglets – birds about the size of a quarter – survive a Maine winter?  Cold season survival is the subject of “Winter World”/… Read full post »

Life on the Edge.  By Michael Gross.

An "extremophile" is a microbe (or fish, tubeworm, or penguin) that is adapted to live in extreme conditions.  (Page 15.)  Those conditions include boiling water, total eternal darkness, no oxygen, or enough pressure to squash you or me to the … Read full post »

Black Blood.  By John Meaney.
 
Cross “Dragnet” with Cthulhu – that’s author John Meaney’s world. 
 
Detective Donal Riordan is dead.  To be more accurate, he’s a zombie.  And he’s lucky enough to have the heart of the woman he love… Read full post »

Murder in Four Parts.  By Bill Crider.
 
A series mystery. 
 
If you enjoyed Jamie Harrison’s Sheriff Jules Clement mysteries, you will love Sheriff Dan Rhodes.  This is an unhurried, low-key mystery, involving gamblers, alligators, dumpster divers and divas.  It… Read full post »

The Wikipedia Revolution.  By Andrew Lih. 

I’m interested in Wikipedia.  It’s both a boon and a problem. It’s a good source because you can get an introduction to millions of subjects easily,   and it’s free.   It’s less useful t/… Read full post »

The Risk of Darkness.  By Susan Hill.
 
Series Mystery.  Simon Serrailler.
 
A jacket blurb says “For the first time in years, P.D. James has serious competition. (Literary Review.)”  I don’t know if I’d go that far, but Susan Hill has made it onto m… Read full post »

Graceling.  By Kristin Cashore
 
Young Adult fantasy.
 
Katsa  has the Grace of killing.  She doesn’t particularly like it – it has made her, she says,  a “royal thug,” the enforcer of her uncle, King Randa.
 
She begins to rebel against that role.… Read full post »

 Man’s Search for Meaning. By Viktor E. Frankl.  

Viktor E. Frankl survived Auschwitz. 

While he was in the Nazi death camp, he was driven by two goals.  He wanted to see his wife again, and he wanted to rewrite the manuscript that was taken from him by the… Read full post »

Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer – And the Century Long Search to Discover It’s Secrets.  By Jo Marchant. 

 Who would have guessed the ancient Greeks created the first computer?   

In 1903, divers searching a 2000 year-old shipwreck found the A… Read full post »

"Manhunting" by Jennifer Crusie.

Jennifer Crusie is a treasure.  She writes funny romance novels about women who are smart and competent, and she writes them well.  
 
That’s rarer than you would think.   Most romances involve heroines and heroes who are so u/… Read full post »

"Cheating at Solitaire"  By Jane Haddam.

  Read full post »

Season of the Witch, by Natasha Mostert.

A rich man's son disappears, and his father hires Gabriel Blackstone, an information thief with "remote viewing" ability, to find him.  "Remote viewing" is the power to see/hear/experience something at a far distance from you.   P… Read full post »

Istambul Noir - Edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler

A collection of short mystery/suspense/horror stories set in Istambul.  Like any short story collection, some hit the mark and some miss.  My favorite was "Around Here, Somewhere", by Algan Sezginturedi.   You know what'… Read full post »

Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution.  By Auden Schendler.

Auden Schendler is the executive director of sustainability at the Aspen Skiing Company.  His job is to reduce the environmental impact of a large skiing/hospitality company on t… Read full post »

Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore. By Wendy Moore.

Mary Eleanor Bowes inherited the largest fortune in Georgian-era Britain, perhaps in Georgian Europe.  She did what was expected of a rich young woman of that… Read full post »

Promised Land: 13 Books That Changed America. By Jay Parini.

Parini choses:

Of Plymouth Plantation, The Federalist Papers, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Walden, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Souls of Black Folk, The Promise… Read full post »

Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. By David Plotz.

I’ve never read the Bible – early exposure in Sunday School scared me off -  and now I won’t  have to.  David Plotz has… Read full post »