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!

Chinese Whispers by Peter May

At one point in my reading of this book I told my mother and my sister that I had to quit reading for awhile because I was getting too nervous about the characters. It's not the murders that get to me, it's the people I've come to know and love finding their world crumbling around them. Li Yan being fired from his position, Margaret being faced with doportation and not being able to take their son with her, funds being cut off - this was getting all too real for me. Bad enought that someone in Beijing is reproducing the killings done by Jack the Ripper but that friends are being killed and that can't stop him. I just wish Mr. May had written just a little more so that I know what happened after the last page - there's a baby with no parents! What about jobs, visas? Quickly, Please!

Books and Food

I've been on a roll with books about cooks that include recipes. Not a very good idea but the books were very good.
First up, "Trick or Treat" by Kerry Greenwood, about the bread baker, Corinna Chapman and the wonderful apartment building she lives in, Insula. The apartments sould lovely, quiet, big and the residents are pretty much OK. They have a lovely roof garden to enjoy, complete with a gardener. Into this loveliness comes a terrible ugliness. Someone has come up with a new drug that is causing people to have some incredibly awful reactions. There's a new cut-rate bread shop opened up just at the end of the street from Corinna's shop, her lovely Daniel has an old friend visiting who seems to think she has prior claims on him and at first he's too nice to notice how she's hurting Corinna. Add to this mix a Wicca gathering that seems out of control and we have an exciting mystery. With chocolate recipes at the end.
"The Christmas Cookie Club" by Ann Pearlman has lovely cookie recipes throughout the stories of each of the women who gather every year to share cookies, food and wine. I want more about these women. I was stunned when the author indicated at the end that her own cookie group of twelve has seven cancer survivors! The stories were good and I'm anxious to try at least one of the recipes.
Finally, "Plum Pudding Murder" by Joanne Fluke was fun and I'm already making a couple of the recipes. I wish she'd put out a cook book that's a compilation of the recipes in all of her books - with pictures, of course. This time someone has killed the "Christmas Elf" - not so nice Christmas tree salesman, who turned his lot into a carnival.

Then, I delved into my stash of paperbacks and found some goodies - and several that I quickly took back to the library. They look so good when I decide to bring them home but after a few pages I can't stand them!

"Matters of the Blood" by Maria Lima was very good. This is the first of a new series about a family of paranormals. Keira Kelly has decided to stay in the Texas Hill Country after the rest of her family moves "lock, stock, and grimoire" to Canada. Because she stays, she must do duty for the family by keeping an eye on her cousin Marty - the throw-back who's 100% human. Her new nightmares or visions show Marty dead - and then he is. While trying to figure out who did Marty in, Keira must put off her former lover and new sheriff, Carlton Larson. She also has to figure out what Adam Walker is doing in Texas, instead of England and why he's opened a dude ranch that's very private.

What have I been reading?

Seems like I've been reading a lot but right now I can only think of a few books that I've actually finished. "Murder at Longbourn" by Tracy Kiely - was just O.K., not great. I found the heroine whiny and a brat.This is another in the long list of books that have been fixated on Jane Austen's novels. Elizabeth Parker has dumped or been dumped by a two-timing boyfriend and one-upped by her sister and her best friend is getting engaged over the New Year's Eve vacation with her boyfriend, so she accepts her aunt's invitation to her new Bed and Breakfast inn on Cape Cod for a "How to host a murder party". Except that there is a real murder and Elizabeth decides she'll solve it.
"Ghost ala Mode" by Sue Ann Jaffarian is the start of a new series about a woman and the ghost of her ancestress, Granny Apples.Emma has just met Granny at a seance and doesn't really believe in her but she will, and she'll go to great lengths to prove that Granny wasn't guilty of murdering her husband and didn't deserve to hang. I liked this one better than the Jane Austen one.
Tried "Rosemary and Rue" - too grim and the end wasn't good - I read the ending if I'm not sure about books. Tried another one that went the same way - too grim and not a good ending. I'm finishing "Nine Gates" by Jane Lindskold. Like the one before it, it's a little too wordy and long on explanation of mythology.

It helps to be psychic

Doom with a View by Victoria Laurie was a nice quick read for a lazy Sunday. Abigail Cooper has been asked to work with a very skeptical FBI agent in the latest Psychic Eye book. I kept thinking that I'd read this before but it must have been the part of it that was printed in the last book in the series I'd read. College students are missing and since they are all politically connected the FBI is doing their thing to get to the bottom of it. Abby realizes that at least one student is dead and another will be abducted. Can she save them?

Not quite Maisie Dobbs

The new book by Charles Todd, "A Duty to the Dead", is good but doesn't quite strike the same chord as the Maisie Dobbs series. We meet Bess Crawford, an English army nurse as the ship she's on, headed towards Greece, hits a mine and everyone must abandon ship. Her arm is badly broken and she is eventually sent home to recuperate.
A former patient had asked her to deliver a message to his brother and Bess reluctantly does so. His message indicates that he had lied to save his mother pain but it (whatever "it" is) must be made right. This is a very disfunctional family that she's gotten involved with, including a son who was sent to an insane asylum at fourteen for murdering a servent girl. Bess will keep poking around until she finds the truth, does her duty to the dead and brings justice to the innocent.