A girl is dead…and not just any girl.

Christina Haynes is the teenage daughter of a popular US Senator, and when she drowns moments after a conversation at sea with her best friend’s mother, Boston Lawyer David Cavanaugh faces his toughest case to date.

What appears to be a straightforward, tragic accident in the waters off Cape Ann Massachusetts, turns into something else entirely as Rayna Martin, a respected African-American attorney, is charged with her murder.

With the victim’s father one of the most powerful politicians in the country and the Assistant District Attorney prepared to put his personal ambition ahead of legal justice, David soon discovers that his most dangerous battle is taking place outside the court room.

Lies, deception, blackmail, threats…and finally the precision of an assassin’s bullet combine to create a shocking finale in this exciting debut from Australian author Sydney Bauer.

I was pleasantly surprised by this, since I had never heard of the author before. Bauer has given us a story of hatred and bigotry gone seriously awry, but with a twist. It’s not often you hear a story of a black person being accused of a hate crime, especially a well-respected female lawyer who’s also a single mom. Overall, the story moves well and is mostly believable, but the climax of the trial was way way over the top. The theatrics employed would never be allowed in a real courtroom, and the judge grew very liberal about what was and wasn’t relevant, seemingly to satisfy his own curiosity. On the plus side, I didn’t expect the final twist, yet it fit perfectly into the story. I was able to pick up that the author is not American (she’s Australian); a few phrases that aren’t used here, like "in hospital", snuck through.

I do have one teensy complaint about the audio production.  It is absolutely rife with stereotypically bad Boston accents. Only select characters had the accent, regardless of if they’ve lived in Boston their whole life or not.  Could’ve been toned down a bit.

Audiobook length: 15 hrs 54 min | Approximate word count: 112,000

2009: Doomed Queens (Kris Waldherr)
2008: The Plot Against America (Philip Roth)
2007: The Harlequin (Laurell K. Hamilton)
2006: M is for Malice (Sue Grafton)
2005: Blood Test (Jonathan Kellerman)

Used in these Challenges: 2010 100+ Reading Challenge; Audiobook Challenge; New Author Challenge; Thriller & Suspense Reading Challenge;

Nan Powell is a free-spirited, sixty-five-year-old widow who’s not above skinny-dipping in her neighbors’ pools when they’re away and who dearly loves her Nantucket home. But when she discovers that the money she thought would last forever is dwindling, she realizes she must make drastic changes to save her beloved house. So Nan takes out an ad: Rooms to rent for the summer in a beautiful old Nantucket home with water views and direct access to the beach.

Slowly people start moving in to the house, filling it with noise, laughter, and with tears. As the house comes alive again, Nan finds her family and friends expanding. Her son comes home for the summer, and then an unexpected visitor turns all their lives upside down. As she did so masterfully in her New York Times bestseller Second Chance, Jane Green once again proves herself one of the preeminent writers of contemporary women’s fiction.

When we first meet Nan Powell, she is wandering naked around her neighbor’s back yard and sampling their kitchen garden after a quick skinny dip in their pool.  They’re not home, of course.  So, needless to say, Nan is a little eccentric, and she is also well-practiced in the art of denial. She’s been ignoring the fact that she’s running out of money for as long as she can, and now she has to do something about it.  So she decides to rent out rooms in her much-desired house on Nantucket. What follows is a story of people who are looking for some healing in their lives, and finding it in a peaceful summer on a peaceful island. Unfortunately, I felt that the story fell a little short on emotional punch.  There are some conflicts that could have led to some really interesting places, but the author chose not to take the story in that direction. The "unexpected visitor" story arc fell completely flat. It felt a little like things had to be wrapped up quickly, so there wasn’t time to make anything messy.  I still liked the story and enjoyed listening to it, but I think it could have been taken further. 

Other reviews:

S. Krishna’s Books: The Beach House – Jane Green
Book Review: The Beach House by Jane Green
Michele – only one ‘L’: Review: The Beach House by Jane Green
Booking Mama: Review: The Beach House
The Beach House Review << Belle of the Books

Audiobook length: 11 hrs 14 min | Approximate word count: 93,775

2009: Dead Girls Are Easy (Terri Garey)
2008: The Whole Truth (David Baldacci)
2007: Holiday in Death (J.D. Robb)
2006: All That Remains (Patricia Cornwell)
2005: I’ll Be Seeing You (Mary Higgins Clark)

Used in these Challenges: Countdown Challenge 2010; 2010 100+ Reading Challenge; 2010 Chick Lit Challenge; Audiobook Challenge; New Author Challenge 2010;

He placed a notice in a Chicago paper, an advertisement for "a reliable wife." She responded, saying that she was "a simple, honest woman." She was, of course, anything but honest, and the only simple thing about her was her single-minded determination to marry this man and then kill him, slowly and carefully, leaving her a wealthy widow, able to take care of the one she truly loved.

What Catherine Land did not realize was that the enigmatic and lonely Ralph Truitt had a plan of his own. And what neither anticipated was that they would fall so completely in love.

Filled with unforgettable characters, and shimmering with color and atmosphere, A Reliable Wife is an enthralling tale of love and madness, of longing and murder.

     "It was a story of a son who felt his one true birthright was to kill his father. It was the story of a father who could not undo a single gesture of his life, no matter the sympathies of his heart. It was a story of poison, poison that causes you to weep in your sleep, that comes to you first as a taste of ecstasy. It was a story of people who don’t choose life over death until it’s too late to know the difference, people whose goodness is forgotten, left behind like a child’s toy in a dusty playroom, people who see many things and remember only a handful of them and learn from even fewer, people who hurt themselves, who wreck their own lives and then go on to wreck the lives of those around them, who cannot be helped or assuaged by love or kindness or luck or charm, who forget kindness, the feeling and practice of it, and how it can save even the worst, most misshapen life from despair.

     It was just a story about despair."

Right from the start, Goolrick shows us the people we are dealing with.  Ralph Truitt is a quiet, steadfast, private, and powerful man who expects things to be as he wants them to be, even thinking he can control what time the train arrives.  As Catherine Land dons a modest dress with her jewels sewn into the hem and throws her traveling clothes out the window of the train, we see she is not who we think she is, or who Ralph Truitt thinks she is.  In many ways, she’s not even who she thinks she is.  This is a story full of surprises, without being full of suspense. It certainly wasn’t the story I was expecting when I started, and it was even erotic at times. And a lot of strange things happen in this Wisconsin town in the long winter season. A tragedy is inevitable, but there is some redemption in the end.  Along the way, we are treated to some beautiful prose and complex characters.

Other reviews:

#234 ~ A Reliable Wife : literatehousewife.com
Booking Mama: Review: A Reliable Wife
Book Review: A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick « The Book Lady’s Blog
S. Krishna’s Books: A Reliable Wife – Robert Goolrick
A Reliable Wife – Book Review « Devourer of Books

Audiobook length: 8 hrs 54 min | Approximate word count: 96,000

2009: Darling Jim (Christian Moerk)
2008: A Treasure Worth Seeking (Sandra Brown)
2007: Manhunt (Janet Evanovich)
2006: Myths, Lies & Downright Stupidity (John Stossel)
2005: In the Cherry Tree (Dan Pope)

Used in these Challenges: ARC Reading Challenge 2010; 2010 100+ Reading Challenge; Audiobook Challenge; Historical Fiction Reading Challenge; New Author Challenge 2010;

The town psychiatrist has decided to switch everybody in Pine Cove, California, from their normal antidepressants to placebos, so naturally—well, to be accurate, artificially—business is booming at the local blues bar. Trouble is, those lonely slide-guitar notes have also attracted a colossal sea beast named Steve with, shall we say, a thing for explosive oil tanker trucks. Suddenly, morose Pine Cove turns libidinous and is hit by a mysterious crime wave, and a beleaguered constable has to fight off his own gonzo appetites to find out what’s wrong and what, if anything, to do about it.

This was my favorite of the three Pine Cove books.  Here we get what Moore does best — a colorful cast of characters mired in an extremely unusual situation.  In this case, there’s a mysterious sea beast in town, making the newly un-drugged residents of Pine Cove somewhat… amorous. Constable Theo Crowe knows *something* is going on, but he’s not too sure what.  All he knows is that he doesn’t believe housewife Bess Leander killed herself, and it’s up to him to find out who really killed her. The only one who really has an idea of what is going on is mostly-out-of-her-mind ex-B-movie-queen Molly Michon, and who’s going to believe her? This is the Moore I first enjoyed with A Dirty Job.

Audiobook length: 8 hrs 45 min | Word count: 80,680

2009: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson)
2008: One Mississippi (Mark Childress)
2007: Deal Breaker (Harlan Coben)
2006: Witness in Death (J.D. Robb)
2005: Ceremony in Death (J.D. Robb)

Used in these Challenges: The Four Month Challenge; 2010 100+ Reading Challenge; Audiobook Challenge; TwentyTen Challenge;

Take a wonderfully crazed excursion into the demented heart of a tropical paradise—a world of cargo cults, cannibals, mad scientists, ninjas, and talking fruit bats. Our bumbling hero is Tucker Case, a hopeless geek trapped in a cool guy’s body, who makes a living as a pilot for the Mary Jean Cosmetics Corporation. But when he demolishes his boss’s pink plane during a drunken airborne liaison, Tuck must run for his life from Mary Jean’s goons. Now there’s only one employment opportunity left for him: piloting shady secret missions for an unscrupulous medical missionary and a sexy blond high priestess on the remotest of Micronesian hells. Here is a brazen, ingenious, irreverent, and wickedly funny novel from a modern master of the outrageous.

This was better than the last few Christopher Moore books we’ve listened to.  In this book, we meet Tucker Case, who also appears in Moore’s later book, The Stupidest Angel.  Tucker gets himself in a bit of trouble when he takes a drunken joyride in one of his employers jets with a beautiful lady.  About $2 million in damages later, Tucker’s lost his pilot’s license.  When he’s approached by some supposed missionaries wanting to hire him to pilot their jet back and forth from their Micronesian island and Japan, it’s an offer he can’t refuse (at least, not if he wants to fly again).  Unfortunately, when Tuck gets to the island, it doesn’t take long for him to realize that everything isn’t as it seems.  People are getting hurt in the name of cash, and Tuck can’t be a part of it.  He really has to step outside of himself and take on some major challenges to save these innocent island people.  Tuck isn’t a particularly likable character at first (really, he’s a screw-up), but by the end of the book he’s grown into someone who can be proud of himself.  Even if he did steal a 747.

Other reviews:

Christopher Moore – Island of the Sequined Love Nun
Ace and Hoser Blook: Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Audiobook length: 11hrs 39min | Word count: 106,804

2007: Geek Love (Katherine Dunn)

Used in these Challenges: none

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life–sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition–its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.

I loved this.  Being from Maine, I felt like it was very authentically "Maine", from the speech patterns and atmosphere to phrases like "Jeezum Crow", which I haven’t heard myself in at least 13 years. Add to that Olive’s occasional resemblance to my great-grandmother, and in a lot of ways reading this book was like visiting home.  It’s not a particularly happy book, though there is a little bit of light at the end.  Sometimes Olive is the center of the story, sometimes she’s a bit player, and sometimes she’s just walking by, but she always makes a mark.  Olive’s life is hard, and there’s so much you really don’t know about her, which you realize during her heart-wrenching visit to her son’s home in New York. I think the thing that sticks with me the most is the tangible love between Olive and Henry, which is most apparent when she calls to talk to him at the nursing home and maintains her one-sided conversation.  Overall, it’s just a beautifully constructed collection of stories.

Other reviews:

Booking Mama: Review: Olive Kitteridge
Review: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout « I’m Booking It
my cozy book nook: Olive Kitteridge
Olive Kitteridge – Book Review – caribousmom
Book Club Girl: Olive Kitteridge

Audiobook length: 10hrs 35min | Approximate word count: 91,200

2007: The Wyndham Legacy (Catherine Coulter)

Used in these Challenges: Countdown Challenge 2010

1954. Vixen 03 is down. The  plane, bound for the Pacific carrying thirty-six  Doomsday bombs — canisters armed with quick-death  germs of unbelievable potency — vanishes. Vixen has  in fact crashed into an ice-covered lake in  Colorado. 1988. Dirk Pitt, who heroically raised  the Titanic, discovers the wreckage of  Vixen 03. But two deadly canisters  are missing. They’re in the hands of a terrorist  group. Their lethal mission: to sail a battleship  seventy-five miles up the Potomac and blast  Washington, D.C., to kingdom come. Only Dirk can stop them.

I think this is the point where Cussler starts to hit his prime with the Dirk Pitt series.  Dirk has grown out of most of his early ultra-misogynistic tendencies, and is even showing some serious feelings for Congresswoman Loren Smith. In fact, he is spending some "alone time" with her at her father’s cabin in Colorado when he makes a series of discoveries that lead him to the wreck of Vixen 03, an Air Force plane that had been presumed lost in the Pacific over 30 years previously.  What you really don’t expect is for this aircraft to eventually tie in to the fight against Apartheid in South Africa and an aggrieved retired Royal Navy captain.  There’s not a lot of NUMA in this, though there are a couple of appearances by Al Giordino and Admiral Sandecker. You do get one of Cussler’s usual big finishes, complete with all of the unbelievability and close calls that make this series so much fun to read.

Audio length: 10 hrs 50 min | Approximate word count: 96,000

2007: Nothing Lost (John Gregory Dunne)
2006: The Falls (Ian Rankin)

From master of subversive humor Christopher Moore comes a quirky, irreverent novel of love, myth, metaphysics, outlaw biking, angst, and outrageous redemption.

As a boy, he was Samson Hunts Alone — until a deadly misunderstanding with the law forced him to flee the Crow reservation at age fifteen. Today he is Samuel Hunter, a successful Santa Barbara insurance salesman with a Mercedes, a condo, and a hollow, invented life. Then one day, destiny offers him the dangerous gift of love — in the exquisite form of Calliope Kincaid — and a curse in the unheralded appearance of an ancient god by the name of Coyote. Coyote, the trickster, has arrived to reawaken the mystical storyteller within Sam…and to seriously screw up his existence in the process.

I have to admit that despite my love for A Dirty Job, I’m not a big fan of Moore’s earlier works. Not only are some characters reused (which I don’t really have a problem with — nothing wrong with recurring characters!), he uses some of the same stereotypes in every book, it seems.  There’s always a mostly-high surfer dude. There’s always a cantankerous (and probably homely) old lady. And of course, the earnest (if sometimes misguided) main character.  I think what really rubbed me wrong in this book was Coyote himself.  I know he is supposed to be a "trickster" spirit, but I found him more mean-spirited than anything.  Especially when he steals Sam’s car, sells it, and gambles away his bank account.  I think you’re supposed to find his naiveté endearing, but I didn’t.  I’ll keep reading (or rather, listening) to Moore’s books, but mostly because they’re what my husband wants to hear.

Other reviews:

What Cheesy Reads: Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore
Books & other thoughts: Coyote Blue
Puss Reboots: Did I Think of That?

Audio length: 10 hrs 20 min | Approximate word count: 80,000

2007: Birds of a Feather (Jacqueline Winspear)
2006: The Body Farm (Patricia Cornwell)

Used in these Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge 2009;

In Christopher Moore’s ingenious debut novel, we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. The good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old ex-seminarian and "roads" scholar Travis O’Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor façade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose.

I thought this was just okay.  I found it somewhat meandering and really slow to get to the point.  Much like in The Stupidest Angel, the best part of the book is when the final action begins. I’m not feeling real great about these early books of Moore’s, and I’m glad he improved as he went along.

Other reviews:

Musings of a Bookish Kitty: Review of Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore
Ace and Hoser Blook: Practical Demonkeeping

Audiobook length: 7hrs 30min | Word count: 70,764

2008: The Dirty Secrets Club (Meg Gardiner)
2007: Fantasy Lover (Sherrilyn Kenyon)
2006: Final Target (Iris Johansen)

Used in these Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge 2009;

Nora Roberts presents the second novel in a dramatic trilogy of three men who return home to honor their father’s last wish. Of the three brothers, it was Ethan who shared his father’s passion for the Maryland shore. And now with his father gone, Ethan is determined to make the family boatbuilding business a success. But amidst his achievements lie the most important challenges of his life.

I really enjoyed this second book in the Quinn Brothers series.  This book focuses on the love story between Ethan and Grace, the single mother who cleans their house and who the brothers have known since they were kids.  The thread that ties the books together has to do with Seth, the youngest foster brother.  The way he ended up as part of the family wasn’t entirely through the proper legal channels, so there is concern about his mother showing up in his life again.  That storyline doesn’t really go far in this book, but the stage was set for some dramatic happenings in the next.  And, in true Nora Roberts sibling saga fashion, there’s a ghost lurking in the background.  I could actually do without that part, but I understand what she’s trying to do.  Also, she does a wonderful job of bringing the Chesapeake Bay setting to life.  I’ll definitely be finishing this series.

Audiobook length: 10hrs 11min | Word count: 95,077

2008: Sweetheart (Chelsea Cain)
2007: The Spellman Files (Lisa Lutz)
2006: The Lost Boy (Dave Pelzer)

Used in these Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge 2009;