Get Lost in Literature

“My darkness is squatting like a demon, right around the next corner, lurking in every shadow, just waiting for me to slip. And when I do it’s gonna grab me, Vince, and I don’t know if I can fight my way free the next time it does.” Maggie’s Shayne’s   The Gingerbread Man , opens with Vince O’Mally, a smart detective who has trouble separating himself from his victims. He’s haunted by Sara Prague, a mother who is determined not to let the cop forget her missing kids, and makes him promise her that he won’t rest until they’re found. Vince O’Mally does the unthinkable; he promises her that everything will be alright. When it turns out to be a promise he can’t keep, he gets forced into a 30 day leave and finds himself following leads on his own time. Holly Newman is a cleric at the Dilmun Police Department; Dilmun is a small town in New York where the community is tight and nothing bad ever happens. She suffers from OCD and panic attacks brought on by PTSD, brought on by the ...

Dust (Silo #3) by Hugh Howey “Our actions, you know? They last forever. Whatever we do, it’ll always be what we did. There’s no taking them back.” In Wool we’re introduced to the world of Silo 18; people have fled an inhospitable environment to live underground. They’ve forgotten the world they come from and anyone who dreams of returning to it, is forced out. Shift introduced us to the world of corrupt political heads who are willing to get what they want by any means necessary, as well as the survivors of failed Silo 17. Dust brings us back to present time in the Silo Saga universe, with Juliette as the newly elected Mayor of Silo 18. Juliette is determined to dig ; she wants to expand the Silo 18 and claim 17,  she wants to rescue her new friends and prove to everyone else that she isn’t crazy. Lukas is torn between his love for Juliette and his duties to the Silo as the new head of IT; he’s worried the Juliette is creating too much fear and that the Silo is headed...

My picks for the Tuesday Top Ten, as invented by  The Broke and Bookish . This week's theme is Top Ten Books I Read in 2014. I haven't done one of these in awhile, stuck in a dry, crusty, reading drought. I planned on a reading 30 books this year, via the GoodReads challenges, I've read 17 even though the GR-Challenge Widget appears to be stuck on 14. I'm probably not going to make 30, but I'm going to give it a go. In the meantime, these are my ten favorite so far!   1, 2,and 3 are going to Patrick Ness's YA, Sci-fi novels, the Chaos Walking trilogy.     4, 5, and 6 are going to Hugh Howey's Silo Saga. 7.   The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty 8.  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 9.  Parasite by Mira Grant. (I can't wait for the sequel!) 10.   Winter's Tal e by Mark Helprin. This magical novel pulled me out of my dry spell!

“Desire, love hate, fear, repulsion--you feel these things in your muscle and bones, not just in your mind. That is how this little heartbreak felt: like a physical injury, deep inside my body, an internal bleeding, a nick that would continue to seep.” One morning, a young boy is found murdered, stabbed to death in the park. It’s a horrifying crime in suburban Massachusetts, but it’s business as usual for Assistant District Attorney Andrew Barber. Andy sets out to investigate and prosecute the crime himself, but an ambitious young colleague, is about to blindside him. Neal Logiudice is climbing his way to the top; he knows the case is high profile and he sees his chance to make a name for himself. Neal wants to follow the evidence straight back to Andy’s own son, Jacob. Andrew, finding himself pushed out of a job, must figure out how to save his son and hold his family together… I couldn’t put this book down. I admit it’s a slow burner; it isn’t a fast paced, overwhelmingly even...

“Peter Lake had no illusions about mortality. He knew that it made everyone perfectly equal, and that the treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter, and love. The wealthy could not buy these things. On the contrary, they were for the taking.” Winter’s Tale starts with as a poetic an image any fairy-tale could manage: a white horse traveling through scenic New York City on perfectly snow covered dawn. This is a story of winter romance, magic and miracles, good vs. evil, spanning the industrial age to modern times, as the characters search for reason and justice in the world. My initial reaction to the book? If you liked Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus , or any of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work, you’ll probably love this story. The painstaking attention to surreal descriptions and the weaving of the fantastic into a canvas as bleak as a city filled with violence and sickness…Well, it dragged me right down to a time where a person could believe anything was pos...

I just finished reading Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin after breaking free of a reading drought. Beautiful story if you're looking for something that will add a little bit of magic to your life. While I type up a review, here's a long overdue couple of quotes. "The city was like war--battles raged all around, and desperate men were on the street in crawling legions. He had heard the Baymen tell of war, but they had never said it could be harnessed, its head held down, and made to run in place." And later: "Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas. When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather into great armies..." Check back soon for the full review! Quotable Thursday  originally brought to yo...