Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

Headed to the library today before lunch and I'm glad I did because they're closed on Sunday and Monday this week for the 4th of July holiday.

I overheard a couple of high school-aged students talking with one of their teachers about books.  They were sharing good summer reads.  It was great to hear them talking about books with enthusiasm.  The older woman who was obviously their teacher said, "In summer I only read mysteries" and I thought to myself, "That's what I want!  Pure escapism!"  Right now I just don't feel like reading anything that might be construed as good for me.  My library loot is reflective of this desire!  Here's what I got:

Haunt Me Still by Jennifer Lee Carrell.  Kate Stanley, Jennifer Lee Carrell’s dauntless Shakespearean scholarturned- director, made a memorable—and New York Times bestselling— debut in Interred with Their Bones. Having chased down her mentor’s killer (and recovering one of Shakespeare’s lost plays in the process), Kate’s fame as a director with an expertise in “occult Shakespeare” catapults her—and Ben Pearl, her partner in crime-solving—into a new production of Macbeth, showcasing a fabled collection of objects relating both to the play and the historical Scottish king for whom it is named.

The Color of Blood by Declan Hughes.  Still adjusting to being back on Irish soil, PI Ed Loy finds himself caught up in a deadly web of lies, betrayals and shrouded histories. Shane Howard, a respected dentist from the venerable Howard medical family of Dublin, asks Loy to search for his missing daughter. The only information available is a set of pictures portraying nineteen-year-old Emily in a series of very compromising positions.  Seems like a pretty easy case to Loy . . . until people start dying. The very same day that Loy meets Howard, Emily's mother and ex-boyfriend are brutally stabbed to death. But that's only the beginning.

The Wrong Kind of Blood by Declan Hughes.  After more than two decades away, private detective Ed Loy returns from L.A. to his hometown of Dublin for his mother's funeral. But his grieving soon takes an unexpected turn when his old classmate Linda Dawson pleads with him to find her missing husband, Peter. As if a worried wife with a seductive persona weren't enough to keep Loy occupied, his childhood pal turned small-time criminal, Tommy Owens, shows up on Loy's doorstep with a hard-luck story and a recently fired gun.

Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner.   The brand-new, shiny Eiffel Tower is the pride and glory of the 1889 World Exposition. But one sunny afternoon, as visitors are crowding the viewing platforms, a woman collapses and dies on this great Paris landmark. Can a bee sting really be the cause of death? Or is there a more sinister explanation? Enter young bookseller Victor Legris. Present on the tower at the time of the incident, and appalled by the media coverage of the occurence, he is determined to ?nd out what actually happened. In this dazzling evocation of late nineteenth-century Paris, we follow Victor as his investigation takes him all over the city and he suspects an ever-changing list of possible perpetrators. Could mysterious Kenji Mori, his surrogate father and business partner at the bookstore Legris operates, be involved in the crime? Why are beautiful Russian illustrator Tasha and her colleagues at the newly launched sensationalist newspaper Passepartout always up-to-date in their reporting? And what will Legris do when the deaths begin to multiply and he is caught in a race against time?

Lost Souls by Lisa Jackson.  Twenty-seven-year-old Kristi Bentz is lucky to be alive. Not many people her age have nearly died twice at the hands of a serial killer, and lived to tell about it. Her dad, New Orleans detective, Rick Bentz, wants Kristi to stay in New Orleans and out of danger. But if anything, Kristi's experiences have made her even more fascinated by the mind of the serial killer. She hasn't given up her dream of being a true-crime writer--of exploring the darkest recesses of evil--and now she just may get her chance.

The Genius by Jesse Kellerman.  Greed gets Ethan Muller, a 33-year-old Manhattan art dealer, into hot water in Kellerman’s superb third stand-alone thriller (after Trouble). When reclusive artist Victor Cracke disappears, Muller winds up taking possession of the boxes and boxes of intense, disturbing drawings that Cracke left behind in his shabby Queens apartment. A favorable New York Times article helps fuel lucrative sales at an exhibit of Cracke’s drawings at Muller’s Chelsea gallery. Soon, though, Muller starts to receive cryptic, vaguely threatening letters. He also hears from a retired NYPD detective, Lee McGrath, who recognizes the face of one of the boys in a Cracke drawing as belonging to the victim of a 40-year-old unsolved murder. That revelation turns Muller into an amateur detective as he attempts to discover how the dead boy’s image—along with those of several other victims—made its way into the pictures.

Faces of the Gone by Brad Parks.   A shooting can rattle a city, even if it’s gun-choked Newark. Investigative reporter Carter Ross finds himself with gruesome front page news: four bodies in a vacant lot, each with a single bullet hole in the back of the head. In a haste to calm residents, local police leak a story to Carter’s col leagues at the Newark Eagle- Examiner, calling the murders revenge for a bar stick-up. But while Carter may not come from the streets, he knows a few things about Newark’s ghettos. And he knows the story the police are pushing just doesn’t make sense.

House Rules by Jodi Picoult.  House Rules is about Jacob Hunt, a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. He’s hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, and like many kids with AS, Jacob has a special focus on one subject – in his case, forensic analysis. He’s always showing up at crime scenes, thanks to the police scanner he keeps in his room, and telling the cops what they need to do…and he’s usually right. But then one day his tutor is found dead, and the police come to question him. All of the hallmark behaviors of Asperger’s – not looking someone in the eye, stimulatory tics and twitches, inappropriate affect – can look a heck of a lot like guilt to law enforcement personnel -- and suddenly, Jacob finds himself accused of murder.

Think Twice by Lisa Scottoline.   Unbeknownst to her identical twin Bennie Rosato, Alice Connelly is on the run from her drug-dealing confederates who are trying to kill her. Alice sees only one way out - to become Bennie. She slips a drug into her drink, and usurps her life. Not only does she sleep with her boyfriend, impersonate her at work - and steal her money, but she also warns the police that her evil twin is out to get her. Her plan works perfectly, because when Bennie emerges to fight back, everyone thinks she's Alice - including the police. Meanwhile, Mary DiNunzio, distracted by personal problems is also duped by Alice. The happy DiNunzio home is disrupted by the arrival of a sexy and mysterious cousin who claims to be a witch - and manages to put Mary's father under her spell! Bennie, with everything at stake, is fighting for her life - on all levels. She's reached breaking point. But when the chips are finally down, what will she do? Is blood thicker than water, and can an ordinary, law-abiding woman be driven to evil?

Finch by Jeff Vandermeer.  In Finch, mysterious underground inhabitants known as the gray caps have reconquered the failed fantasy state Ambergris and put it under martial law. They have disbanded House Hoegbotton and are controlling the human inhabitants with strange addictive drugs, internment in camps, and random acts of terror. The rebel resistance is scattered, and the gray caps are using human labor to build two strange towers. Against this backdrop, John Finch, who lives alone with a cat and a lizard, must solve an impossible double murder for his gray cap masters while trying to make contact with the rebels. Nothing is as it seems as Finch and his disintegrating partner Wyte negotiate their way through a landscape of spies, rebels, and deception. Trapped by his job and the city, Finch is about to come face to face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever.

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