The monster of Florence, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi

Preston recounts the actions he and Spezi took to investigate the murders and mutilations perpetrated by "Il Mostro", who was used in part to build the character of Hannibal Lecter. Neither the authors nor the police discover who committed the crimes, but enough of the mystery was recounted to make it interesting. It is also offered some quirky details of life and culture in Tuscany and Italy, including an surprise peek into the voyeur subculture of Florence.
audio: 9.75 hours
print: 322 pages

Instruments of darkness, by Imogen Robertson

This interesting mystery is set in England shortly after the American Revolution, with flashbacks to events in America during the Revolution. There are plenty of plucky, quirky characters and the story rolls along at a pretty good pace. You don't want to trust any of the characters, but you'll probably figure out who the grand master of the crimes is before the confession is made.
audio: 12 hours
print: 373

"Just Like Heaven" by Julia Quinn

The Smythe-Smith annual musicales are notorious for butchering the works of Mozart.  Julia Quinn wrote about them in her Bridgerton novels, and now the Smythe-Smith ladies get their own stories.  Honoria is featured in this one.  She's a dutiful daughter who continues to play her violin in the musicales even though she knows how bad they sound.  She does it because she loves her family and this yearly tradition. 

Marcus Holroyd has been friends with Honoria's brother since they met at Eton as boys.  Having only a cold and distant father for family, the Smythe-Smiths take Marcus into theirs and show him what it is to belong.  Now that Honoria and Marcus are adults, will an unexpected medical crisis threaten their budding romance?  That may make the novel sound like a downer, but it's full of snappy dialog and unusual characters.  In my opinion, I found the medical crisis to be the most interesting part.  374 pages.

Fatal grace, by Louise Penny

Cici de Poitiers is electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake during a curling match. Multiple individuals are covering for the true killer, and Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec must figure out the truth. Assisted by his collection of damaged but dedicated colleagues, he tracks down the murderer who will never pay the penalty for the crime.
Set in the idyllic village of Three Pines in wintertime, this would be a cozy little escape from reality, if it weren't for the murder.
audio: 10.5 hours
print: 314 page

In for the kill, by John Lutz

Someone is killing brunettes, draining their bodies of blood, cleansing and bleaching their body parts, then stacking those body parts into a macabre pyramid for unsuspecting friends and family to find.
Retired detective Quinn and his previous partners are called back into service to investigate and apprehend the killer, but there's little to go on and the killer is smart. After this novel, I'll be more wary of the nondescript individuals out there.
audio: 14 hours
print: 477 pages

Short Stories

Since life is rather busy at the moment, I figured it would be good to check into some short stories. Something that I could get through in one sitting, wouldn't require a lot of thought and fairly lighthearted. Here is what I found:

The Clever Detective and Clever Is As Clever Does by Linsey Lanier
These two short stories feature Stacey, a private eye, and Chad, a prince. You will recognize several fairy tales and nursery rhymes in both stories as Lanier gives a fresh twist, totally tongue-in-cheek retelling of some old favorites. To the best of my knowledge, these titles are only available as e-books. 42 and 57 pages respectively.

Dandy Detects by M. Louisa Locke
This is a Victorian San Francisco Mystery featuring Barbara Hewitt and her dog, Dandy. Dandy seems to sense when there is danger afoot, so when a neighbor goes missing, Barbara must figure out a way to get the officials to investigate. 46 pages.

The Amersham Rubies by Rhys Bowen
Bowen actually has a series that features Molly Murphy, the heroine in this story. Set in Ireland in the late 19th century, Molly must use her keen mind and excellent observation skills to figure out how someone could steal the Amersham rubies while in a ballroom filled with people. 13 pages.

Medicus, by Ruth Downie

Gaius Petrius Russo is a down-on-his-luck army medico stationed in the backwoods outpost of the empire: Britannia. He tries to stay detached and let events roll on without him, but he just can't. He is simply too curious, and though he can't admit it, he's also too decent to let injustice go unchecked. Though he is a doctor, he investigates and solves the murders of several slaves.
audio: 12.5 hours
print: 400 pages

The curse of the pharaohs, by Elizabeth Peters

The second book of the Emelia Peabody mysteries picks up with Emelia and her husband a few years after the birth of their son. A chance to return to their archaeological activities tempts them away from their son and domestic life in England. This time, they have to deal with the death of Sir Henry Baskerville, the threat of a Pharaoh's curse, the superstitions of the local workers, and the mysterious appearance of a woman in white, appearing silently and selectively. Emelia and her husband work together in nearly disastrous harmony to bring matters to a successful and mostly satisfactory conclusion.
audio: 11.75 hours
print: 357 pages

Crocodile on the sandbank, by Elizabeth Peters

I've read this before, but was in the mood for a return visit. This is the first book in the Emelia Peabody mysteries. We meet Emelia and follow her to Egypt, where she catches archaeological fever. She is enchanted with Egypt and keenly interested in the quest to learn from the burial sites there. She shows her resourcefulness and intelligence as she saves her future husband from a burning fever, runs his excavation (until he's better), and unravels the mystery behind the mummy that is walking the paths in the dark. She also undergoes a bit of a wardrobe change. At first, she is attired as any "normal, respectable" English lady would be, but she soon transitions to "rationals", then trousers in order to find clothing better suited to the climate and the work she's doing in the tombs. Can you imagine having to wear a bustle and trailing skirts while climbing over rocks and walking through sand?
audio: 9 hours
print: 304 pages

The Execution Protocol: Inside America's Capital Punishment Industry

By Stephen Trombley 

In this book Trombley first travels to MA to visit the man who invented the first automatic lethal injection machine.During his visit there he learns how the machine works and learns of the man who invented it.  He helped Missouri Lawmakers decide on Lethal Injection as opposed to breaking out the old Gas Chamber.  It would have cost too much to refurbish the gas chamber so Lethal Injection was used.

Next Trombley comes to Missouri to interview the guards and administrators that help execute people in Missouri.  Some of the names are people from Jefferson City: Mark Schriber for example was the assistant warden at MSP when the book was written in the early 90's and played a big role in executions in Missouri from '89 on.

The book also talks about the men on death row in Missouri.  Missouri has no real death row because all inmates sentenced to death are housed in General Population in Potsi.  The inmates talk about their experiences waiting for their time to come and what it was like at the old MSP when there was a death row and it was in the basement of Cell Block C.

Overall this book is good if you have any interest in Capital Punishment in American or Missouri.

342 pages

I Shall Not Want by Debbie Viguie

This book showed up as a free digital download on the Barnes and Nobles website. It sounded interesting, so figured I would give it a whirl.

Dogs are disappearing as fast as bodies are appearing. Can the two be connected? Can a church secretary and rabbi help to get to the heart of the matter? Check out book 2 of the Psalm 23 Mysteries series to answer those questions. The book also comes with a discussion guide and author interview. I liked it enough to want to read the other books in the series as well. 279 pages.

"The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie" by Jennifer Ashley

I checked out this book from the local library after reading a good review of the just-released third book in this Highland Pleasures Series.  This is the first and focuses on the youngest of four Mackenzie brothers, Ian.  He was placed in a lunatic asylum at age nine to quiet the fact that he witnessed a horrible crime.  Released as a teenager, he's now a damaged man who has trouble focusing his considerable intellect on anything not factual.  Wealthy widow Beth Ackerley is drawn to Ian after he exposes her fiance as a money hungry lecher although he and his brothers are currently being investigated for the cover up of a murder.

I found this story unusual because Ian is such a departure from the hero in most historical romances.  He can't read others well, can't look them in the eye for too long, but is able to memorize facts and figures extraordinarily easily.  Are those reactions to being tortured in an asylum as a child?  Or does he have some mild form of autism?  Whatever the reason, his story made for an interesting and unusual read.  320 pages.

Discord's Apple by Carrie Vaughn

A fairly silly romp, a bit of a spoof of the fantasy genre. Evie Walker, comic book writer, is called home to care for her father, who is dying of cancer. The story is set in a post-terrorist U.S., where every town has its own civil militia and large cities have multiple checkpoints impeding movement. Walker's family serve as the caretakers for a magic storeroom, holding the power objects of past mythology - Pandora's box; Arthur's sword, the golden apple that started the Trojan War. With her father dying, the role of caretaker will pass to Evie, who is quite skeptical of the storeroom's magic. Worldwide political upheavals spur the owners of these treasures to make their way to the Walker's home in a small town in a remote area of Colorado to reclaim them, to use to affect the course of events for good or ill. A quick fun read; I would rate it higher if it were posed as a YA novel, but for me the characters never quite jelled into a fully satisfying story. 299 pages

Inn at Hemlock Falls Mysteries by Claudia Bishop

I decided to rest from labors for part of the Labor Day weekend and managed to catch up on Claudia Bishop's Inn at Hemlock Falls Mysteries after having whetted my appetite with Carol for a Corpse earlier. I polished off Ground to a Halt (242 pages) and Toast Mortem (211 pages). Both books feature inn-owners and amateur sleuths Quill and Meg, and the regular band of inn staff and Hemlock Falls inhabitants. While the village life is predictable, tracking down the murderers is not. There are also plenty of recipes provided to tempt your taste buds. I recommend the series to anyone who enjoys light mysteries.

"The Sweetest Thing" by Jill Shalvis

This is the second in the Lucky Harbor contemporary romance series and focuses on eldest sister Tara.  She's an uptight southerner who's moved to Lucky Harbor, WA, to help her two half-sisters run an inn that they've inherited from their mother.  Tara spent a summer in this small town as a teenager and left forever changed thanks to Ford Walker, her first love.  Seventeen years later, they're both back in town and must face their shared past in order to move forward.  I didn't like this novel as much as I did "Simply Irresistible," the first in the series, maybe because I found Tara more annoying than likable, but it was still a quick and easy read.  348 pages.

Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter who has more luck than skill in bringing in her skip. As usual, the story has a bunch of quirky characters, love-life dilemmas and a string of murders. While this isn't my favorite book in the series, it was still a fun read. 308 pages.

"The Hour I First Believed" by Wally Lamb

Susan M. lent me this book because I had read "Columbine" earlier this year.  At the beginning, the fictional narrator and his wife are working at Columbine High School when two of its students go on a killing rampage in 1999.  The book deals not only with its aftermath and how they each cope but how their lives unfold once they leave Colorado and move back to the narrator's boyhood home, a former dairy farm down the road from a women's prison founded by and named for his great-grandmother.

Part family saga, part historical fiction, this novel is Forrest Gump-ian in the way some of the characters meet and interact with well known figures, such as Mark Twain and Dorothea Dix, and have their lives influenced by real historical events, like Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq.  Throw in a bit of chaos-complexity theory, family secrets, and unpredictable plot twists, and I was hooked.  I don't usually read fiction written by men, but I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed this story.  It took the author about 10 years to write it, and he did a great job.  725 pages (including notes from the author).

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.

Roadside Crosses / Jeffrey Deaver

I've been a fan of Deaver for a while (love the Lincoln Rhyme novels) and this one does not disappoint. The protagonist is a cross-over character from the Rhyme storyline, Kathryn Dance. Her character is fairly well developed (which is a rare enough occurance with male mystery authors, IMHO), and the action in the book is mostly believable. Best yet, there are enough plot twists that it's nearly impossible to guess the bad guy. There is a sub-plot involving Dance's mother that seems a little gratuitous, but not enough to dilute reading enjoyment.
397 p.

Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flagg

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

Elner Shimfissle falls from a tree. Then her adventure tells her that heaven is here with people and neighbors you love and friends.  375 pages.

The Shack by William P. Young

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

The story of a man overcoming the loss of a daughter through the intervention of GOD who met him at the vacation place where it happened. 304 pages.

The Night Train by Clyde Edgerton

(Posted for Ann Roberts)

Having read many southern writers in my lifetime, Clyde Edgerton of North Carolina being one of them, I was pleased to see he has a new book out.  The Night Train is set in 1963, in a small North Carolina town where race relations leave much to be desired.  Two good friends of different races are both pursuing their dreams of making it big in the music world. Dwayne Hallston has discovered what his white family and friends refer to as “race music” and wants to sing and dance like James Brown, while his good friend Larry Lime Beacon of Time Reckoning Breathe on Me Nolan aspires to play jazz piano and finds a hemophiliac jazz musician, AKA The Bleeder, to instruct him.  Each of the boys progress musically during the telling of this tale, and in a way, end up achieving their dreams. Dwayne and his group the Amazing Rumblers are finally featured on the Bobby Lee Reese Show (best known for its dog food snacking host) and Larry Lime takes the stage at the Frog, the local jazz dive, where he realizes that playing jazz is what he was meant to do.  With a crazy cast of characters that one might expect to find in a small southern town, The Night Train is a sweet story of coming of age in the south. The story is told without sentimentality or anger, yet manages to evoke, in turn, righteous indignation and reminders of the simple joys of friendship in a not-so-simple time in our history. If all of this isn’t enough, the book also features two chickens, one of which is a very talented dancer.

Hardback, 215 pages