Sookie needs to find a "normal" guy

I know that everyone in a relationship comes with extra baggage but Sookie's guy, Eric, comes with several trunk loads - or ship loads. As Sookie is helping other people to have happy lives, she needs one of her own. She's inherited money from her vampire cousin and now from her fairy godmother but the men in her life all seem to bring her into major danger - OK, it's often beyond their control, but still! Eric has a nasty new over-boss, Victor, who's like him and his people gone. There's trouble in the 'were community and a nasty fairy in Sookie's woods. Bill, her first love, is still in a very bad way after the fae attack with silver. However, her brother, Jason, has found a good woman; her best friend, Tara, is pregnant with twins and most of the people at the bar seem to be in a better place. Then, Eric's maker shows up with the former crown prince of Russia as his new boy toy!

Back in the reading mood

I started Laurie R. King's "The God of the Hive" and just couldn't get into it. Luckily, I left it for a few days and then I really started to enjoy the mystery. I guess I just had to be in the right mood. This book follows up "The Language of Bees" that left me so frustrated by not totally ending. I loved Sherlock's little granddaughter, Estelle, and Mary Russell's lack of knowledge about children. The introduction of Robert Goodman was marvelous. This "Puck" was a wonderful creation. I admit to being a little uncertain about Mary's anger with Mycroft over the whole funding thing - I'm probably too much of a product of my age.

Fantasy and Mystery

I really enjoyed "Darkship Thieves" by Sarah A. Hoyt. This author's range is amazing.I like her books about the paranormal shapeshifters set in Goldport, Colorado and the titles by her as Elise Hyatt also set in Goldport. This one is about a wealthy young woman who comes to in her father's space cruiser as one of his guards is apparently about to tranc her. She manages to escape in her nightgown into the powertrees only to end up the captive of one of the darkship thieves. She will soon find her entire universe is turned upside down as she comes to know those who have been declared the enemy of the human race is revealed to be more humane than those who she has grown up with. Action and fun dialog makes this a great read.
Earlene Fowler's newest title, "State Fair" made me realize that California fairs are different from Montana county fairs in numerous ways and the very same in many others. This mystery involves racial tension with the new manager of the fair - an African American man and those who don't want "his kind" in charge. Plus the Ebony Sisters Quilt Guild's showing of traditional African American quilts that is cosponsored by the folk art museum where Benni Harper is the curator. The added tension and humor comes from her great aunt Garnet who has come for a visit and is really into cop shows. She decides that she and Benni will be the ones to solve the murder that they discover at the fair.
Laura Anne Gilman has started a new series on Paranormal Scene Investigations - P.U.P.I - Private, Unaffiliated, Paranormal Investigations. These have been alluded to in her Retriever series and this series starts with the beginning of the group. Five twentysomethings, all magic users, who are hired to a career in forensic magic. The action is great and the smart-alack dialogue pretty typical of that age group. I'll be anxiously awaiting the next in the series.

Finally back to typing!

I broke my little finger on my left hand on Easter Sunday morning and spent six weeks with various splints on that hand. One handed typing is not the way I want to keep up with blogging. Finally able to take a shower without a plastic bag over that hand and now I'm getting back on track with my cleaning. Hope to get back to my beading in the next week or so. I've got at least five ornament patterns waiting for me - beads and all. Rebecca Hubbard gave me two ornament trees for my birthday/retirement and I need to get something on them - like that's the only excuse!
I got the latest Monkeewrench novel and couldn't stop reading until I had finished it. The FBI has recruited the computer geeks to help them find the persons responsible for a series of murder videos posted on the Web. Soon the Minneapolis police detective Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth have a bride in the river whose death is being shown on YouTube. There are some character changes that I'm not sure about. Guess I'll have to wait for the next book.
We were lucky enough to attend an author event that the library sponsored for their book clubs with Craig Johnson. What a fabulous afternoon that was! He's so easy to talk to and tells such a great story. Harry found the newest book at a half-price bookstore - three weeks ahead of the release date!!! We've all gobbled it up. Love Dog, Vic, Henry, Ruby, Lucian and all the others. Wish we didn't have to wait a year for the next book

Another week of books

I waited for "Apple Turnover Murder" by Joanne Fluke with happy anticipation only to want to wring her neck at the end. The mystery was lame and she left a new mystery to be solved in the next book and Hannah being confronted by Norman appearing with a new woman - AT THE VERY END OF THE BOOK. Some fun recipes but no mystery.
Sad to say that "Pretty in Ink" by Karen E. Olson was really good - especially after the Fluke book. I enjoy Brett Kavanaugh, the tattoo artist with the smart mouth who owns her own shop in Las Vegas - The Painted Lady. This mystery involved drag queens and a champagne cork that brought one queen down. A nasty cop with a grudge against Brett's brother, also a cop and another tattoo artist who just might be the answer to Brett's prayers, or drive her crazy.
"Ghouls Gone Wild" by Victoria Laurie features M.J. Holliday with her ability to communicate with the dead. She and her new partner, Heath, have gone to Scotland to film their new television show and may be up against more than the two of them can handle - not. I enjoy this series but like her psychic series better.
I truly wish that Peter May would have a new Chinese mystery out at least every other month. "The Runner" proceeds "Chinese Whispers" but just got published in the U.S. It's centered around the athletes preparing for the Olympics. Unfortunately, several of them have died in what seems to be accidents or natural causes - until the number of deaths becomes apparent. Li Yan is preparing for his marriage to Margaret Campbell, the American pathologist who is pregnant with his baby. With his angry, estranged father and her pretentious, estranged father meeting for the first time during this touchy investigation the future doesn't look particularly bright. Now I have to re-read "Chinese Whispers".
Add to this the beading and needlepoint I'm doing, cleaning up my craft area and my plate is full and retirement is indeed, good!

What a good week this has been!

I've had three books that I've been excited about this week. The first was "Blackout" by Connie Willis. I've read her other titles about time travel and this one was fantastic. I'm almost sorry to tell people that it involves time travel because they tend to get glassy eyed and impatient but this was such a wonderful book I want to smack them alongside the head and say "Get over yourself and give this book a chance." This one is set during World War II Great Britain and is really about how the ordinary people got along in the midst of daily turmoil and nightly bombings - all before the United States got involved. The whole Dunkirk rescue by just about anyone with a boat, the people who made due in London with the underground stations serving as bomb shelters and the country people who took in the children evacuated from London - including two of the most annoying, bratty children who still managed to tug at my heart strings.The only thing that was dismaying was to get to the end of this huge book and discover that we have to wait until the next book to find out how everyone's problems turn out!!

I've loved Liz Williams' books involving Detective Inspector Chen that are set in Shanghai Three where everyone is now getting used to demons and gods and magic. Chen's partner, the demon, Zhu Irzh, and the badger familiar of Chen's wife, Inari, who is also a demon, have been taken hostage in a strange jungle hell. Meanwhile, Chen is dealing with a Bollywood actress who is a tiger demon and on a killing spree. Mhara, the new Lord of Heaven, is being stalked by an assassin hired by his mother - oh, things get really exciting in these books. Beings die - sort of and there is lots of action and quite a bit of humor. Terrific book.

Lastly, I savored the newest book from Lorna Freeman. I thought for a while that we were never going to have another book about Lord Rabbit and the Borderlands but finally the publisher, ROC, came through. Rabbit is still trying to learn about his various gifts of magic and still reeling from the rebellion that he helped put down when one of the lords of the land demand that he marry his daughter since Rabbit's mother had jilted him to run away with Rabbit's dad. King Jusson takes his royal entourage off to Mearden for a diplomatic mission and to assess the situation with the demands for Rabbit's marriage. Wow, does the shit hit the fan. The entire House of Mearden seems to be full of intrigue and cranky people. There is the daughter of Captain Suiden who has arrived with a war wizard, the wolf, Kveta, who Rabbit knew from his home in the Borderlands and a strange "Watcher" of the local forest. Oh, I want to read this book again and savor all of the bits I missed because I wanted to see what would happen next. Please, please, let there be more.

What a good week this has been!

More reading, beading and now - needlepoint!

I've read Shirley Damsgaard's series on Ophelia Jensen since the beginning. I think I missed one but I tend to fall out of "like" with certain genre every now and then. I enjoy the fact that Ophelia is a small town Iowa librarian and a witch. The new title "The Seventh Witch" is set in a Southern town where her grandmother, Abby, grew up. Some of the people here aren't very nice - like the woman claiming to be a dark witch - just plain nasty. Then there's the issue of Great-Aunt Mary who's about to turn 100. She may be family but she's no sweet old dear. She makes no bones about the fact that she doesn't care for Ophelia. Poor Abby isn't dealing real well with being home amongst her nearest and dearest so in the end, Ophelia must come to the rescue.
Lastly, I read "A Catered Birthday Party" by Isis Crawford about the baking, catering sisters, Libby and Bernie. They've been asked to cater a birthday party for the dog of one of the richest women in town. It becomes clear at the party that the dog's owner is using this party as an excuse to be nasty to all of her "best friends" and her husband. Funny - she's poisoned and no one is too upset about it - except Bernie and Libby who have been forced by the woman in her dying moments to agree to find out who killed her. Some funny lines in this one. Loved the crazy young woman with the hair that went from blue to green to purple to...
Finished my beaded needlecase and started right in on another one. I like this type of work right now and I'm also getting geared up to start on some ornaments. Found several patterns that I haven't done yet, plus some others I want to do and these are just the stringing ones - not the peyote panels by Deb Moffat-Hall.
Then, Kathy had seen some needlepoint patterns at a local quilt store that she thought I might like so, we went out and I bought two patterns and the material to do one of them. I'm enjoying this a lot.

Spring is on the way!

The weather has finally started to turn to the warmer side and I think we are all pretty darned happy about that. I had plenty to read and bead and there were even new episodes of my favorite TV shows - life is good.
I like Betty Hechtman's books about the Tarzana Hookers - a crocheting group. This one was set at a resort along the California coast - not a posh place with spa and many eating establishments - more of a rustic lodge type place where they must have expected their guests to be out and about during the day and too tired at night to worry about the lack of amenities. Molly Pink has been put in charge of the bookstore's yearly crafting retreat and consequently there goes the long weekend with her boyfriend. She will be where the buck stops for any and all problems. The first is the fog that is so thick it keeps attendees unable to get to the resort. Then there is the death of the crochet teacher - this is like a locked room mystery! It had to be someone at the resort.
I also was reading another noir mystery at the time - Death by the Book by a young Australian writer, Lenny Bartulin. I read it because of the title and the fact that it dealt with a used bookstore but I didn't realize that it was a noir and I'm not sure, even after finishing it, that I liked it. The owner of the bookstore gets involved with the daughter of a client who is buying all of the books by an obscure poet, who turns out to be his brother - convoluted and confusing.
I wasn't certain at the end if one person hadn't really died or what was going on. Not sure I care, either

City of Dragons

I loved Kelli Stanley's "Nox Dormienda" that was set in Roman Britain but frankly, I picked this title because I thought that the subject sounded interesting - I never even connected the author's name. I will now keep track of her books.I read this one in two days - with time out for beading. "Nox Dormienda" had a male protagonist and this one has a female - thirty-three-year-old Miranda Corbie, a private investigator, Spanish Civil War nurse and former escort - and yes that mostly means prostitute. Miranda is attempting to get home but didn't plan on getting stuck in the crowd celebrating the Chinese New Year with a Rice Bowl Party. Nor did she plan on having a young man fall dying at her feet - Eddie Takahashi is Japanese American in a Chinatown that hates the Japanese for what has been done in China - hence the Rice Bowl Party. Even with no one paying for her to investigate his death, Miranda can't help herself and attempts to discover what happened to cause his killing. This is a noir look at San Francisco in 1940 as the world is fighting tyrants and America hasn't yet entered the war. Some of this was new to me but I had my mother to ask about that time. I liked Miranda even with all of her smoking and drinking. Her mental pain became clear as the book went forward. I'll look forward to the next in this series.

"Except the Queen" by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder is a wonderful fantasy about being exiled in a strange land. Sisters Serana and Meteora are member of the Seelie Court of the Fairy Queen when they discover that Her Highness has mated with a mortal man and born him a child. The fact that the Queen has had sex with a mortal and they inadvertantly tell this secret; gets them banished from the Greenwood and into the mortal realm. Once there, they find that they have lost all of their magic and their eternal youth and are now old, fat women. They are seperated from each other in this confusing land and each ends up taking care of a tormented young person who is not what they seem. This fantasy read quickly and excitedly. I'm ready to read more fantasy again; but then Jane Yolen has always been one of my favorites!

I'm finishing my first needlecase and enjoying doing the tubular peyote. Now I have to do circular peyote for the top and bottom. The weather is slightly warmer and life is good right now.

Reading while waiting for warmer weather

Will spring ever come? Will the snow ever melt? We're up to 80 days with over an inch on the ground.Good thing I have more books waiting for me to pick up this afternoon.
I started reading "Death Without Tenure" by Joanne Dobson and then discovered how topical it was when a college professor killed three of her fellow professors over tenure. Karen Pelletier is hoping to become tenured until the head of her department's senior faculty decides that the Native American professor, Joe Lone Wolf, should get that tenure instead of Karen - regardless of the fact that Karen has published tons and Lone Wolf has nothing. When Lone Wolf is found murdered, Karen comes under suspicion. Her boyfriend, Lieutenant Charlie Piotrowski, is serving with the reserves in Iraq and her daughter is in Nepal and her sister has dumped her Altzheimer afflicted mother on her during this time of stress.I loved the fact that Joe Lone Wolf turned out to be Frankie Vitagliano from Brooklyn and Karen ended up having a great-great-grandmother who was full blooded Native American!
"Rescuing Olivia" by Julie Compton started out pretty good and really was keeping my interest but then we seemed to get a little too much into the Robert Ludlum school of international thugs. Anders and his girlfriend, Olivia, have just spent the day at the beach in Florida and are on their way home when a car forces them off the road. Their helmets have been stolen and Olivia hits her head and ends up in the hospital. Her wealthy father accuses Anders of "killing" his daughter; there's a massive cover-up. The story ends up in Africa and I'm not buying any of it.
"Bellfield Hall" by Anna Dean reads like a Jane Austen book only it's a mystery. Dido Kent has been asked to join her niece, Catherine, at Bellfield Hall after her fiance leaves his home on the night of their engagement ball.When a young woman is found murdered in the shrubbery the next afternoon things don't look good for this wedding to take place. Book was OK but not really great.

Domino Pattern

This latest Timothy Zahn book in his Quadrail series is sort of like a locked room mystery or the Agatha Christie "Murder on the Orient Express". People/beings are being murdered aboard an alien space "train" that doesn't make any stops for about eight weeks. The Spiders who control the Quadrail have very strict security in place and use all sorts of devices to make sure that no weapons or poisons or biotoxins can be brought aboard and yet someone has discovered a way around these restrictions.
Frank Compton and his companion, Bayta, are on board and because of their association with the Spiders, must figure out who is causing the damage to the Spiders security and to lives. I enjoyed this book and it set the series up for a big sequel.
I've also been reading a book by Linnea Sinclair that I'd set aside a couple of years ago when I was reading nothing but her books. This one is "Down Home Zombie Blues". This time around I'm enjoying it.
I've been beading quite a bit and just got some wooden needlecases to do some tubular peyote stitch on them - maybe some Christmas presents. I'm enjoying learning this stitch and I'm also mastering the odd count peyote! Whoo Hoo!

Reading and beading the winter away

I seem to be reading a lot of supernatural/paranormal authors these days. I've really enjoyed Devon Monk's books dealing with Allie Beckstrom. Allie is a very powerful witch who's use of power makes her lose her memory - pity, because she's got a very hot male witch she's fallen in love with several times. Ms. Monk has created a very detailed world involving witches, ghosts and evil.
Maria Lima's books involving Keira Kelly have brought me another strong female character who I've been enjoying. Keira's family is a big clan of magical beings who have moved from Texas - where Keira stayed to Canada. Her boy friend is a vampire. I know this all sounds too strange but Ms. Lima has made it work. Her world reminds me a little of the one Tanya Huff created for "Enchantment Emporium"
I just finished Faith Hunter's new Jane Yellowrock novel "Blood Cross" and really enjoyed it. Jane is a skinwalker who can become a mountain lion and has been hired by the vampires of New Orleans to hunt a rogue vampire.
I read the book Ann Aquirre wrote as Ava Gray-"Skin Game" and was sort of put off by the rough sex angle but I liked the characters and after reading the chapter provided of the next book, I admit I'm intrigued.
Tried the new Jasper Fforde book and only made through 100 pages before giving up. The same with the new Peter May - not one of the Chinese series, but a new one set in the online Second Life game. Just not my cup of tea.

I'm still here

I've retired and after two weeks I think I might be starting to get the hang of it. I take my sister to work a few days a week and pick her up. This gets me up and moving in the mornings - I was at the grocery store before 9:30 yesterday morning. Today I slept until 10:30! It was great. I haven't taken any naps but I know that I will. Snow and cold weather are starting to get old and my mother announced at dinner tonight that it would be 10 more days until the sun shone.AARGGGhh.
I have been reading and will post about that tomorrow. I'm even going to be cooking!