Angieville

Oh my creepy...I can't wait.

Finding Silent in the Grave turned out to be one of those beautiful, stumbling across the perfect book to fit your mood moments. Here I am, staring down the barrel of this pregnancy, willing the last few days to pass faster, and this absolutely delightful Victorian mystery proves just the thing to take my mind off the all-too-slowly ticking clock. Even better, it's the first in a series with the second one already out and the third due to hit shelves in March. Silent in the Grave starts out with one of the best opening lines I've read in ages. To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor. Ha! Honestly, who wouldn't want to continue reading after that? Does she care? Does she not care? Is she as calm and composed as she sounds? And just who is this Nicholas Brisbane and why is he significant? You have to find out. Each question is answered, but slowly and caref...

With the release of Cry Wolf (the first in a new series), Patricia Briggs fans can now look forward to two Briggs books coming out per year. A Mercy Thompson in the winter and an Alpha and Omega in the summer. So. Very. Awesome. After inhaling the original "Alpha and Omega" short story in On the Prowl last year, I could hardly wait to follow Anna and Charles's story in full-length book form and now, having finished it, I can honestly say it was a treat. Picking up immediately after the events of "Alpha and Omega," Anna finds herself and her few belongings bundled up and on her way to Montana with a wounded Charles and his father, the enigmatic Bran, otherwise known as the Marrok, aka leader of the entire werewolf population of North America. Nervous and unsure of just what she's gotten herself into, Anna suddenly finds herself living at Charles's house, attending werewolf funerals, and embroiled in the same kind of wolf politics she was assiduously k...

This book actually creeped me out. In a genuinely nervous, peering into dark corners kind of way. I haven't run across a ghost story that did that in quite awhile, and last night after putting The Squirt to bed and curling up in my rocker to read, I found myself glancing repeatedly at my watch, wondering when DH would be home to keep me company. The cover doesn't help. Harper looks much more sinister (almost possessed) than she did on the cover of Greywalker . So kudos to Kat Richardson . Poltergeist is not only a solid follow-up, but different enough in tone from its predecessor that it held my interest throughout and I felt compelled to keep turning the pages. This time around Harper is hired by a local psychology professor to investigate the unexpected happenings in an experiment he's running on psychokinesis, involving a group of participants' ability to "create" their own poltergeist. Little does the skeptical Professor Gantner know how qualified this p...

Once again, the cover struck me first. She looked interesting to me. Like she knew things. And I liked the slanted city she leaned up against, looking like a character in its own right. I love it when a particularly city or a particular building is a main character in a story. The whole thing is that much richer for it. The good news is I wasn't wrong. Harper Blaine does, in fact, know things. Things she'd rather not know, as it turns out, but know things she does. And the Seattle of Greywalker is a dark, wet, teeming character, and you can tell Kat Richardson knows her way around the place and loves it for all its dark, wet, teemingness. Harper Blaine is a P.I. who finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and winds up dead. For two minutes. After she comes to in the hospital things are....different. Suddenly she sees shadows and outlines of figures who aren't there. At least not on this plane. And just like that, she's forced to accept a whole new worldview...

I've been holding on to this one because you have to be ready to sink into a Meg Rosoff book. None of this wishy-washy, "Oh, that might be nice to pick up tonight." You've got to be all in. Ready to let her work her magic. Interestingly, What I Was was first released in Britain as a YA title , then later in the U.S. by Viking Adult . Not sure why the switch but, as is the case with both her previous novels, I think What I Was will appeal equally to adults and young adults. I, naturally, couldn't put it down. The narrator of this brief, haunting tale remains nameless for the majority of the book. All we know is the year is 1962, the place is England, and the main character is a young man who, having been expelled from two previous boarding schools, is being rather unceremoniously dropped off on the doorstep of his third. Unremarkable in almost every way, the only striking thing about him appears to be his supreme disdain for, well, most everything, a sort of mon...