Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

This biography of Steve Jobs was an interesting read.
As much as I've liked several of the products generated from the imagination and drive of Steve Jobs, I believe I should be grateful that I had never met him (or at least never come within the sphere of his single-minded intensity and manipulation). If this biography is an accurate portrayal of the man, Jobs' creativity and acumen came at the price of insensitivity to the people around him.
This biography also includes much of the history of Apple, as well as the computer and electronics industry at the time, which is worth the read in its own right.
Check out Andy's take on it in his post from last November.
audio: 26 hours
text: 656 pages

Susanna and the Spy by Anna Elliott

 Susanna Ward's profligate father dies and leaves her destitute. Supporting herself by becoming a governess, she heads to London to find a new post. Stopping at an inn close to her father’s ancestral home for the night, she is startled by a wounded man who bursts into her room, looking for a place to hide. He is quickly followed by an army regiment looking for a murderer. Although she isn’t sure why she trusts the mysterious stranger, she helps him escape. She has an encounter with a gardener she met as a child, who tells her her grandfather was murdered.  She ends up staying at the family estate as she continues to try to find out if he really was murdered, and by whom, as well as who the stranger really is, and what he is up to.

If you like historical fiction and cozy mysteries, you will find both successfully combined in this e-book. Susanna is an engaging protagonist, and the story is quite lively. The characters are well-developed, and the plot, while a little thin, is entertaining. The setting is England during the Napoleonic Wars. I recommend it as a fun, light, quick read on a rainy day.

729 KB, 260 pages.

London Calling by Anna Elliott

In this sequel to ‘Susanna and the Spy’, Susanna has been reconciled with her father’s estranged family, and is engaged to Lord James Ravenwood.  But Britian is still at war with Napoleon, and Susanna soon learns that Lord Ravenwood is acting as a spy for the British War Office. She follows him to London, where she gets caught up in a dangerous operation to uncover a ring of French spies and a traitor to the crown.

Although it is a bit unbelievable that a young woman in 1809 would be involved in hunting down spies and traitors, I enjoyed the book as much as I did the first in the series, if not more.

180 pages.

The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks

After finding a picture in Iraq where Logan Thibault was deployed a friend of his convinces him that the picture is lucky and if he makes it through the war he has to go find the girl in the picture. When he gets home to Colorado he decides that is what he is going to do. He sets out to find the girl in the photograph. They finally meet and fall in love...but Logan doesn't tell her why they met. This is a fantastic read and now they have the movie coming out this friday actually so I am super excited to see it too.

Pages:336

Audio time: 10 hrs 49 mins

Little Boy Lost by Eric Hobbs

Wesley Bates and his classmates take a field trip to a special library. But, this is no ordinary place! Here stories come to life if you know where and how to look. There is also the opportunity to enter into a classic children's story - but the adventurers must be careful or the plot can take unexpected twists.

In book one of The Librarian series, Wesley and friends explore The Wizard of Oz where they learn some important life lessons along the way. The target audience is later elementary or middle school students, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, too. I can see lots of fodder for book discussion groups! Should appeal to boys, girls and the young at heart. 126 pages.

"Destined for an Early Grave" by Jeaniene Frost

This is the fourth book in the Night Huntress series and finds Cat and her Master vampire husband, Bones, trying to take a holiday in Paris when she begins having disturbing dreams about another vampire who claims that he is actually her husband.  He's also trying to kidnap her through these dreams so that he can give her back the memories of their life together 10 years ago.  If this other vampire truly is her husband, then Bones could be condemned to death under vampire law.

Unlike the last book, "At Grave's End", this one focuses almost exclusively on the relationship between Cat and Bones.  They've been together two years now and seem to be devoted to each other, but her need for control and doubts about becoming a full-blooded vampire (she's only half-vampire now) threaten to sabotage all they have.  Will this other vampire be able to lure her away from Bones?  Lots of action and several surprises make for another exciting and quick read from Frost.  355 pages.

Dearly Departed in Deadwood by Ann Charles

Violet Parker moves to Deadwood, South Dakota, to start over. She is a new realtor, but hasn't sold a house. She is seeing a couple of men, both personally and professionally, but things are not going as hoped. Add in the distraction that young girls are disappearing and she has a daughter who fits the kidnapper's profile and Violet is beginning to think maybe moving to Deadwood wasn't such a good idea after all. This book is a first place national winner of the Daphne du Maurier Excellence in Mystery/Suspense Award, so I had high hopes for it. However, the plot and characters didn't connect as well as I had hoped. Still I am willing to give book two in the Deadwood Mystery series a chance to see if the author can pull the chemistry together.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins - Book 3 (Hunger Games)

This book is way different than the other two. I did not enjoy it as much as the others. But the ending is very good. I am not going to write anything about this book because I think it would better to read it.

Pgs:400

Audio: 9 hr. 54mins.

"At Grave's End" by Jeaniene Frost

Third in the Night Huntress series, this book finds Cat and Bones facing his grandsire's wife, who happens to be an extremely old and powerful vampire out for revenge against them.  Oh, and she's also the daughter of Cleopatra!  This story was more violent than the previous books and didn't focus much on the relationship between the half-vampire/half-human Cat and her Master vampire husband, Bones.  Still, it was a quick and interesting read with several appearances by Vlad, the original Dracula.  342 pages.

A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

A young Matt Scudder, out of control joins AA. Some of the people  get killed, Matt sets himself up not to get killed. In this book some people are under the righteous influence of a benevolent herb and never left the 1960’s.

Audio:  8 hours 15 min.

Print:  319 pages. 

"American Vampire, Volume 3" by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque, & Sean Murphy

The first half of this book finds vampire Pearl Jones and her human husband, Henry Preston, in Hawaii during WWII.  Henry is too old to enlist but he's recruited to join a team out to kill a nest of evil vampires on the island of Taipan.  Pearl follows him there and ends up facing her maker and arch-enemy, Skinner Sweet.

The second half of the book focuses on Felicia Book and her quest to not only kill vampires but to find a cure for vampirism.  This takes her to a Romanian castle where the Nazis are keeping a botanist who may have developed that cure.  You see, she needs it because she is part vampire!

Exciting stories with great graphics equals a quick and fun adult read.  288 pages.

See my reviews of Volume 1 and Volume 2.

Charity Begins at Home by Alicia Rasley

All her life Charity does the right thing, managing the world around her very competently so all runs smoothly and people are happy. She thinks that is her role to play and is enough for life. Then, enter Tristan, and suddenly Charity isn't so sure of herself. Maybe making others happy isn't enough. Maybe she also wants to be loved for who she is and not just what she does. The characters are witty and the story is satisfying. Estimated 290 pages.

Catching Fire - Hunger Games Book 2 by Suzanne Collins

This book was great too...although not as good as the first one it is very good. I can see them making a movie out of this one also. It has a lot of twists and turns in it. The secrets and surprises in this book are great. And now I am on to book 3.

Pages: 391
Audio time: 9 hours 31 minutes

Irises

Author: Francisco X. Stork
pages: 288

This book is about two sisters that have lost everything, both parents and their home. They are trying to make the right decisions for them at this time in their lives while dealing with dreams for the future. This sounds like a good book on apper but it was slow moving and boring to me. I almost gave up but then it started to get interesting and then boring again. I didn't like the ending either. There were too many questions left, good thing there was a short epilogue to answer some of them.
  TWO SISTERS: Kate is bound for Stanford and an M.D. -- if her family will let her go. Mary wants only to stay home and paint. When their loving but repressive father dies, they must figure out how to support themselves and their mother, who is in a permanent vegetative state, and how to get along in all their uneasy sisterhood.

THREE YOUNG MEN: Then three men sway their lives: Kate's boyfriend Simon offers to marry her, providing much-needed stability. Mary is drawn to Marcos, though she fears his violent past. And Andy tempts Kate with more than romance, recognizing her ambition because it matches his own.

If Only

Author: Carole Geithner
Pages: 321
 This book follows her through one year after her mothers death. She has so many questions about and for her mother about life. Sometimes she talkes to her mother's urn and other times she asks her Aunt Jennifer. Corinna feels out of place at school because she thinks nobody understands her and what has happened.
I liked this book. It was written for a younger audience maybe pre-teen but was good nevertheless.

Here is the cover blurb: Corinna's world is crushed after her mother dies of cancer. How does she get through the funeral, trays of ziti, a father who can't communicate, the first day of school, Mother's Day, people who don't know what to say, and the entire eighth-grade year? Despite her alienation from many of her peers, including her best friend, she succeeds in finding support. She dares to bare her innermost fears, hurts, and wishes, and even allows herself to have a flowering crush on a boy in the school band. She also finds out deep secrets about her mother which she never knew. It's a year that will change Corinna's life forever.

 

"Lover Reborn" by J.R. Ward

Oh, how I looooooove the Black Dagger Brotherhood!  Their books only come out once a year, so I try to make myself go slowly and savor each one but I just can't.  They are that good.

"Lover Reborn" is the 10th novel in this series that features a band of vampire warriors out to save their race from those who would exterminate them as well to remain unknown to humans.  This is Tohr's story.  His pregnant shellan (wife) was murdered in one of the early novels, and he's been unable to move through his grief or give her a proper burial.  Lassiter, the fallen angel who rescued him from his self-imposed exile and returned him to the Brotherhood, tells him that Wellsie and the young are stuck in between The Fade (heaven) and Dhunhd (hell), and that only Tohr can save them  from an eternity there.  How?  By realizing that they are gone forever so that he is able to go on with his life.  He's not sure that he can or is even able to until he meets someone from his very distant past who may help him finally let go of Wellsie and live again.

I posted about this series last year with "Lover Unleashed" and found this book even better and more satisfying.  Ward makes Tohr's grief and suffering so real that the reader mourns along with him.  Of course, there's more to this book than just his story since there's an ongoing war with the Lessening Society and now a ragtag group of vampires from the Old Country has arrived to challenge the Brotherhood and their ways.  Most characters featured in previous books make an appearance, and newlyweds Xhex and John Matthew have a secondary storyline that focuses on her desire to fight with the Brothers and his inability to deal with it.  This was another great entry in the BDB series, but now I have to wait a whole year for the next one!  572 pages.

Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

This story is told a 93 year old resident of a nursing home, living as well as he can with others and the memory of the 23  year old boy who jumped on a circus trail and the years he spent his adult life. 

12 hrs. 50 min.

350 pages

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Ok so I guess the only thing I can say about this book is "AWESOME" I loved every minute of it. Now I can not wait to see the movie. I'm sure you have all heard what this book is about. It is truly a great read. I loved every minute and I just couldn't stop reading. Please read!!

Pgs:384 pgs.

Kill the Competition by Stephanie Bond

I selected this book because someone said it was written in the style of Janet Evanovich, who is always good for a zany mystery. Actually, I think Stephanie Bond can hold her own. Kill the Competition is a fun read that includes friendship, romantic tension, business intrigue and murder. I had trouble putting this one down! 358 pages.