romance 

2010: #38 – Inner Harbor (Nora Roberts)

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Philip Quinn is juggling his high-powered advertising job and his new-found family duty of helping to care for his young adopted brother, Seth, when Dr. Sybill Griffin shows up in the sleepy town of St. Christopher. Philip had done everything to make his life seem perfect. With his career on the fast track and a condo overlooking the Inner Harbour, his life on the streets was firmly in the past. But one look at Seth, and he’s reminded of the boy he once was. Seth’s future as a Quinn seems assured – until Dr. Griffin shows up. She claims to be researching St. Christopher’s for her new book, but the true objects of her study are the Quinn brothers. Her cool reserve intrigues Phillip. He is determined to uncover her motives, and while Sybill can’t deny her own growing feelings for the charismatic Quinn, the secret she hides has the power to threaten the life that the brothers have made for Seth, and destroy any chance that the two young lovers have at happiness…

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young adult 

2010: #37 – In Ecstasy (Kate McCaffrey)

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A best friend sinks into a quicksand of teenage addictions.

Sophie and Mia have been best friends for most of their 15 years. Sophie is popular, so when she suggests they try ecstasy Mia figures it can’t hurt her own chances with the in crowd. Mia is elated when the drug lives up to its name and amazed when Lewis, the hottest guy in school, kisses her goodnight.

Soon Lewis is Mia’s boyfriend, and she and Soph are running with his fast, rich friends, until Sophie is sexually assaulted by Lewis’s drug-dealing buddy. Reluctant to say what happened, Sophie grows distant, leaving Mia to conclude she’s jealous of her popular boyfriend. But to keep Lewis’s attention, Mia grows increasingly dependent on the confidence that only E seems to give her. When things worsen, it is the girls’ strained but solid friendship that finally helps bring Mia back from the brink.

Powerfully told from the alternating points of view of each girl, In Ecstasy is a brutally frank and utterly convincing portrait of the challenges facing contemporary teens.

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graphic novel 

2010: #36 – Dark Entries (Ian Rankin)

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HELLBLAZER’s John Constantine must become part of HAUNTED PALACE — a closed-set reality game-show (think BIG BROTHER or SCI-FI’s new reality show, ESTATE OF PANIC) in order to deal with a supernatural murder of one of the contestants. He enters as a ‘surprise’ contestant and meets the other participants, learning that they all have secrets and that one of them must be ‘channeling’ poltergeists and/or be the murderer.

However, John soon learns that he is in fact in a game-show which is being broadcast only to the denizens of Hell, who have chosen him to be the next contestant. Now he has to figure out who’s the killer but also how to escape with his own soul in one piece.

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amateur sleuth mystery 

2010: #35 – Murder at the Vicarage (Agatha Christie)

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Agatha Christie’s genius for detective fiction is unparalleled. Her worldwide popularity is phenomenal, her characters engaging, her plots spellbinding. No one knows the human heart–or the dark passions that can stop it–better than Agatha Christie. She is truly the one and only Queen of Crime.

Miss Marple–Agatha Christie’s immortal spinster sleuth with the razor-sharp mind and an intuitive understanding of criminal behavior–encounters a compelling murder mystery in the sleepy little village of St. Mary Mead, where under the seemingly peaceful exterior of an English country village lurks intrigue, guilt, deception and death.

Colonel Protheroe, local magistrate and overbearing land-owner is the most detested man in the village. Everyone–even in the vicar–wishes he were dead. And very soon he is–shot in the head in the vicar’s own study. Faced with a surfeit of suspects, only the inscrutable Miss Marple can unravel the tangled web of clues that will lead to the unmasking of the killer.

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