Valentino, an assistant at the U.C.L.A. film preservation project, discovers what may be a print of a long-lost movie. But the skeleton found there leads the investigating detective to demand the old print, and the only way Valentino can keep the priceless reels is to solve the mystery.
Not the most riveting mystery I’ve ever read, although a hero who wasn’t a lawyer or PI or something similar was a refreshing change. The whole plot had a pat feeling, but I kept reading.
An old collection of Darkover fan stories about the Free Amazons, culled from two fan collections.
The stories are mostly very amateur, not at all up to the standard Bradley maintains in her later professional anthologies. I even skipped finishing some because they were painfully badly written. Some were okay, but this book is only recommended for hard-core Darkover fans.
Another collection of Darkover-themed stories by various authors.
Not one of the best. The stories are mostly okay, but many appear in other Darkover anthologies and one isn’t a Darkover story at all, Bradley said it felt like it could have taken place on Darkover. Plus there is a particularly grisly feel to the stories, not necessarily un-authentic but certainly unpleasant. There weren’t any stories that made me sit up and breathe “wow!”
Arthur, old and wounded, narrates how he came to be King.
I couldn’t get into this. I don’t mind Arthur being presented as different from other stories, but there wasn’t enough plot in this story to hold the portrayals of the different characters together. I gave up a quarter of the way through.
Alaska State Trooper Liam Campbell arrives at his new posting to find a dead body and an ex-girlfriend.
I got halfway through this one before giving up. Liam is an adulturer more interested in getting into his girlfriend’s pants than doing his job. There were no sympathetic characters and I finally realized I didn’t care whodunit.
The son of the San Antonio D.A. is framed for rape.
Legal thriller. ‘Nuff said.
Nick and Billie are attracted to each other but leery; wealthy Nick doesn’t want to settle down while divorced mom Billie doesn’t want to fall for someone still sowing wild oats. Nick is also responsible for his cousin Max, a brilliant but irresponsible 16-year-old, who keeps blowing up bombs around Nick’s mansion. Nick’s cousin Deedee, who is about to marry a professional wrestler, is living with Billie.
Confused? So was I. Halfway through the book I couldn’t figure out if there was a story. Even skipping to the end didn’t enlighten me much. There is an author’s note that she started this series in response to fan requests for more Plum-like stories, and since I didn’t like the Plum series either, I wasn’t surprised that these characters left me cold.
Narrative of a young Australian woman who in the 1960’s earned both a nursing license and a commercial pilot’s license. She brought polio vaccination to thousands of people in remote areas of northwest Australia and flew ill or injured patients to medical care.
Not technically well-written, with her stories neither organized chronologically nor by topic. It was particularly aggravating that she alluded several times to the death of her younger sister and never gave any specifics. But as a nurse myself, I was so interested in her adventures that I stuck with the book.
Waitress/clerk Wanda Nell is angry when her ex-husband comes back to town rolling in money and trying to win over their children, and she becomes the good ol’ boy sheriff’s prime suspect when he is found murdered.
I don’t mind stories about poor people, but the characters here are just trash and don’t evoke my sympathy at all. Lazy single mother, snide man-crazy waitress, sheriff who blames Wanda Nell for abandoning his buddy – stereotypes and not even interesting ones.
Lynley and Havers investigate the brutal murder of a young coed when town vs. gown attitudes hinder the local police. Havers also desperately searches for a way to care for her demented mother at home, while Lynley continues to obsess about Lady Helen. When autopsy shows Elena was pregnant, Havers and Lynley figure when they find the father, they will have Elena’s killer. But one man after another in her life denies responsibility for the baby.
George’s mysteries tend to be dark, but this one goes several shades darker than usual and includes a vicious attack on the nature of men (which some, no doubt, deserve). And while misleading the reader is fair and appropriate, outright deceit is not, and George actively and specifically deceives the reader in recounting the murderer’s actions. While a slow read and a bit too heavily laden with musings, it’s still an involving story.
College student Kristin Bjornsen was among the thousands swept from Denver into Catteni slave ships, but she eventually finds herself dumped with other slaves onto a new world.
The idea and characters come from an earlier McCaffrey short story, which she fortunately re-wrote because the original indicated that rape was okay if the raper paid attention to his victim’s pleasure. Yes, that was a long time ago! Unfortunately, their story turned into just another breaking-in-a-new-world saga, and neither the people nor the story was interesting enough to hold my attention.
Particularly illogical was the presence of a disgraced Catteni among the slaves.
Faia’s grief at losing her family to plague destroys her town and alerts every mage in the country. Reluctantly agreeing to attend mage-school to learn to control her power, the country girl doesn’t fit it and makes an enemy of an influential teacher. An evil magic is looking for a body to occupy and wants Faia’s for its abilities.
I didn’t find anything about this book to be particularly interesting. Tragedy triggering massive power – yawn. Country girl snubbed by sophisticated city dwellers – yawn again. I got about halfway through and then realized I didn’t even care about the characters enough to skip to the end.
Kendra is back working as a lawyer but still doing some pet-sitting on the side. When an obnoxious partner is murdered, Kendra thinks his beautiful blue-and-gold macaw may hold the key to identifying the murderer. In the meantime, the hostile police detective from her two previous cases convinces the investigating officer that her boyfriend Jeff is the prime suspect.
It’s surprising Kendra finds time for investigating OR lawyering, since most of her interest seems to be focused on sex with Jeff. Since neither a lawyer nor a bird was a particularly sympathetic main character, the story didn’t hold my interest. I struggled about halfway through and then just skipped to the end.
Bill becomes the prime suspect when the race for sheriff ends in Sheriff Grant’s murder. Hannah and Andrea find other suspects, including the wife about to divorce him, the spurned mother of his granddaughter, and the police officers that saw him take the credit for their investigations.
Fast read, engaging characters, and LOTS of subtle red herrings and clues for the alert reader to pick up on. I like this series because the stories are basically cheery even though they feature a murder, and most of the continuing characters are people you wouldn’t mind having a cookie with in your kitchen.
More about facing the discouragements of job-hunting for older people, and I’m not sure how relevant it would be to someone who had spent her whole career trying desperately to simply get by, but includes tips on finding a job that will make you happy that are appropriate to any age. The sections on interviewing and reworking your resume were also helpful.
Peggy watches, horrified, as her friend Park dies in an auto accident. Initially, the police rule the death a suicide. But when Park’s mother is killed after she accuses Beth of murdering him, Peggy must solve both deaths to prove her friend innocent.
Not as interesting as the first book; I got halfway through and then skipped to the end. And the secondary storyline of a misbehaving dog was too over the top. Since the book just dragged on, I’ve given up on the series.
Pirate-themed stories by different authors, from traditional 18th century settings to futuristic space pirates.
As always in a collection, the quality varies. I found the ones with the strongest storylines at the beginning. Later in the book, many stories lapse into nontraditional formats that seem to have little or no story line. I'm not a pirate fan, and I tired of stories about pirates by the time I was halfway through the book.
Subtitled “Wisdom, warnings, and what I wish I’d known my first 100 days on the job,” this is a collection of advice from working nurses.
But it is of limited usefulness for just that reason. Advice from a nurse working on an adequately-staffed unit is not going to be real helpful to a nurse expected to care for 8-10 patients per shift, for example. And some of the advice boggled my working-nurse mind, such as the nurse who carried around a 3-ring binder to track information on her patients! If it didn’t fit in my uniform pockets, it didn’t travel around with me. This wouldn’t be a bad book for new nurses to read before starting their first job, but just remember that it isn’t gospel.
Young woman is led into prostitution and murder, but redeemed by becoming a nun. Interesting story but told in such a disjointed manner it was hard to follow.
In-the-middle-of-a-divorce Josie travels to NYC for a cousin’s wedding and meets Matt. Soon-to-be-ex Damien decides he has to win Josie back and follows her. The comedy of errors as the people just miss each other and do really stupid things would be more interesting if the characters were likeable. Josie is okay, but Matt bears no similarity to his supposed reputation as Mr. Reliable and Damien is just every man who has ever pursued the greener grass next door. No real reason to spend time finishing it, although I did.
Phryne is asked to investigate a murder AND a kidnapping, and solves them with her usual dispatch in between seducing various men.
This would be an interesting series, with really inventive crimes, except (a) Phryne’s focus on sex is utterly gratuitous and (b) Greenwood doesn’t give the reader the info Phryne uses to solve the case. I’ll probably read the next book in the series, but if the problems don’t improve, it may be the last for me.
Measured, rather uninvolving story of a girl’s growing up and marriages. I got 1/3 of the way through before giving up. Nothing terrible but nothing compelling, either.
Typical Gothic about a young Scottish woman with the Sight who travels to the West Indies to be a governess, finding a brutal but ill father, a beautiful and overpowering mother, a charming student, and a mysterious handsome but wounded man with whom she immediately falls in love, winding up with the inevitable slave revolt. It didn’t even interest me enough to skip to the end.
Collection of rather depressing short stories. I got about halfway through but didn’t bother to finish.
Involving historical novel of the lives of Gates and Anna Spafford, as they survived the Chicago Fire, their subsequent involvement in different ministries strained their marriage, and a tragic trip to Europe. It humbled me to think of how much they suffered and yet trusted in God, as Horatio Gates Spafford wrote the wonderful hymn “It Is Well With My Soul.” Have a box of kleenex handy, no tearjerker is as effective as a true story.
Rambling non-story featuring a woman who grew up in a poor part of town. I couldn’t force myself to read past the first 50 pages, there was just nothing interesting going on.
public library. I found this memoir of a public librarian mildly interesting and occasionally slightly amusing; my husband laughed out loud through most of it.
I officially give up on this author. She has repeated all the problems with the previous book -- poor writing, unbelievable characters, and frequently dragging in plot lines from a previous books without actually resolving any -- and added enough agony to rival Job. This isn't Christian fiction, it's a soap opera. I only got halfway through the book and wasn't even interested enough to peek at the ending.
Another Christian chick-lit novel, this one the start of one series ("Firstborn") but apparently continuing the characters and stories from an earlier series. The characters in this one are just too good to be real, and the denoument didn't ring true. I also found the very frequent references to the earlier series (which I haven't read) distracting, and have a emotional distaste for making the major characters of a Christian novel rich and famous as well as gorgeous. Having said that, I did read through to the end and may still try the next book in the series.