Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco

My Catholic butt seeing all these deadly sins personified.
I mean I didn't like her, so I'm not really upset.
So my brain is just thinking about the differences between jealousy
and envy...because envy is rooted in resentment (Fr. Mike)
"I even wrote it down in my diary"
See this is where I wish I knew Latin...
My Fullmetal Alchemist butt thinking of all the deadly sins personified...except we missing a few...
448 Pages

Playing for Pizza by John Grisham

 Playing for Pizza
by John Grisham
Pages: 262
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

In honor of football season, I decided to start my John Grisham marathon read with his two novels about football. This one has more about the game and how football is played. The reader follows Rick, an NFL quarterback whose career is on the skids. Rick's agent talks him into going to play for the professional teams in Italy for a year to let publicity about his mistakes calm down.

Once there, Rick meets a few other Americans including the coach, Sam. In Italy, the season is 8 games long plus playoffs and only the American players are paid. The Italians all play for the love of the game and in the case of Rick's team, the Parma Panthers, all the pizza and beer they want on game nights. The different culture and values gives Rick time to examine himself and why he plays football.

The Botticelli Secret by Marina Fiorato

Is it 'National Treasure' meets 'The DaVinci Code' in 15th c. Italy?  Fiorato has created a mystery/romantic comedy romp involving political intrigue among the rival city states of Italy, as slowly unraveled by Luciana Vetra, a young, beautiful prostitute/part-time artist model and her unlikely sidekick, a young novice at the local monastery who also happens to be a member of the royal family of Florence.  The mystery revolves around decoding clues in a new painting by Botticelli, La Primavera, in which a political plot that could start a war is shown in the symbolism of the human figures and other elements in the painting.  Who's involved, and who's on the side of the young couple?  This is a fun read, with lots of period detail and a well-described romp through Italy to discover clues.  There are numerous plot twists and unlikely escapes of our intrepid pair to keep the story moving along.  514 p.

The Man Called Brown Condor by Thomas E. Simmons

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

The seven year old boy saw the airplane in 1911 and knew he wanted to fly, he left the south to Chicago, learned to fly, started a flying school. Later to prove black men could fly he served in Ethiopia as a pilot as the fought Fascist Italy in 1936.

288 pages.

"Venice Vampyr (Venice Vampyr Novella #1)" by Tina Folsom

Isabella Tenderini is a wealthy widow living in Venice in the early 1800s.  As she and her gondolier are weaving their way through the canals one night, she recognizes the sound of a body hitting the water close by.  They are able to save the man before he drowns, a fate her husband did not escape.  But Raphael di Santori is no ordinary man; he's a vampire who falls for her upon waking.  She is also drawn to him but cannot risk her reputation by being caught with a man not her relative.  Raphael is determined to discover who gave him the near fatal push into the canal, as vampires cannot swim.  Could it be a member of the Guardians, a secret society sworn to rid the world of his kind?

This was a quick, well-written, and enjoyable read that I downloaded for free.  I hope to read more in the series.  116 pages  (Kindle edition).

The Confessor by Daniel Silva

If you like spy novels and stories about secret Catholic power groups, then this novel's elaborate conspiracies will appeal to you. Silva matches up a top Israeli secret agent against the Catholic Crux Vera and its hired thugs. Silva convincingly sets the scene and builds plot complexity gradually, as a murder investigation uncovers Catholic ties to Hitler's Germany and their lack of protest against the Holocaust. This is clearly fiction, but there's just enough plausibility in the skillfully built setting and characters to make this a satisfying read. 397 p.