• (3/30) Midnight is a Lonely Place by Barbara Erskine.
  
  I had really enjoyed Erskine's spooky novel "House of Echoes" (see below), so I decided to try another one of her books to see if it was as much fun. Happily, I'm here to report that while it got off to a pretty shaky start (well, the whole premise is a little on the goofy side), by about half-way through, I was so hooked I was staying up late trying to read just ONE more chapter before falling asleep. And then I started sneaking in paragraphs between tasks at work. I love a book like that.

  This is another ghost story, this time about a woman, Kate, who gets dumped by her boyfriend and decides to move into a small cabin in the woods to try to finish her second book and recover from her heartbreak. The person who previously lived in the cabin, a man about her age named Greg, is very bitter about her coming. His family needed the money her rent would provide and made Greg move back into the family farm close-by for the few months Kate would be there. He decides to try to scare her out of the cabin by making her think the place is haunted.

  The only problem with that plan is that the place actually IS haunted. His sister Allie, a teenager, had discovered an old Roman grave on the beach nearby and had begun to dig up artifacts for a school project. What she slowly begins to realize is that she has released more than just the artifacts from the dirt. Kate starts hearing noises and seeing ghosts in the cabin, and soon Allie and her brother both start feeling like someone is controlling their thoughts. In a panic, all three of them start trying to either bury or further uncover the gravesite. It's at this part of the book that the pace quickened so much I couldn't stop reading. Pretty engrossing, though not as scary as other ghost novels I've read. Recommended to fans of the genre!
  [FICTION]

  (3/26) The Missing World by Margot Livesey.
  

  Strange but absorbing novel about a woman who, after an accident, wakes up realizing she can no longer remember the last two years of her life. Her long-time boyfriend Jonathan is the only person she recognizes and she clings to him as the only connection to her past. Not long after returning to her life with him, however, she starts to realize he's keeping things from her -- things like the fact that before the accident, she had dumped him and moved out to her own place. In the meantime, a roofer doing work on their building has noticed how unhappy she looks and begins to fall in love with the idea of rescuing her. I kept reading this novel thinking, "This is weird, I think I'll quit reading it after this chapter," and then I just never put it down. It's actually pretty engrossing and watching Jonathan try to weasel his way out of his lies is pretty entertaining. Sort of half-heartedly recommended.
  [FICTION]

  (3/21) Riptide by Catherine Coulter.
  

  I have a rule I try to follow which states that if I don't finish reading a book because it's amazingly bad, I also don't write in here about it (because I don't consider it to have been read by me, ya follow?). However, I just have to say something about this one. I expected it to be a standard thriller, decently written and reasonably well-crafted. Why? Oh, because I'd heard of the author and knew she was a bestseller, and blahbady blahbady blah. But I should have immediately scolded myself for THAT crazy assumption -- we all remember what happened to Thomas Harris and "Hannibal," right? I won't say "Riptide" is as badly written as "Hannibal," so if you didn't mind the latter, you probably won't mind the former. But just about every page in Riptide had a sentence that made me gag. Some of them were just badly written (split infinitives for no good reason, e.g.), some were just excessively cheesy and woefully out of character, and others were stilted or out of place in the plot. I got to about page 100 and gave up. I don't know if all her books are like this (have I even read any others? I can't remember), but if they are, it's scary that they're all bestsellers. Even the characters were all two-dimensional and stereotypical. Where are our standards, people? This book stinks! Quick! Run! Get out while you still can!
  [CRAP]

  (3/19) Third Person Singular by K. J. Erickson.
  

  On a winter morning in Minneapolis, the body of a beautiful high school girl is found on the outskirts of town. Special Detective Mars Bahr (yes, you did read that correctly) is called in on the case. After thoroughly investigating the few leads he has, he eventually is forced to put the case aside due to lack of evidence. A few months later, however, a witness comes forward who saw the girl, just before she was killed, walking with a handsome older man. Meanwhile, the victim's brother also meets someone interesting -- a woman whose sister was killed in exactly the same way.

  This was a pretty engrossing novel with great characters and a terrific setting that got totally destroyed for me by the cliche ending. When I got to the part in the book, about 50 or so pages before the end, where I could see which direction the author was headed, I was horrified. I quickly flipped through the last pages in denial ("She isn't REALLY going to do that is she?"), saw I was right, and gave up on finishing. However, in Erickson's defense: this is her first novel and it shows a lot of promise. I'll definitely look for the next one, but if I were you, I'd wait to hear about it from me before spending any time on it yourself. Not recommended to anyone who is a mystery fan and hates it when, figuratively speaking, the butler did it.
  [MYSTERY]

  (3/15) Candyland by Evan Hunter/Ed McBain.
  

  Savvy readers will instantly recognize that this novel, which appears to have been written by two authors -- each taking on a half of the book apiece -- is actually written by one and the same man. Evan Hunter and Ed McBain are different sides of the same coin; they are the same person. But despite the fact both personalities live in the same man and write with the same hands, their styles couldn't be more different. Hunter is a "serious" author, writing dramatic fiction and screenplays (he wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock's "The Birds," for example), while McBain is famous world-over for his cop procedurals, commonly referred to as "the 87th precinct novels."

  Put 'em together and what have you got? You've got quite an interesting and extremely entertaining mystery. Hunter tackles the first half the book, which focuses mainly on one man, Benjamin Thorpe, who is in New York City on business and spends an entire night trying every connection he can think of in order to "get laid" (I'm sorry, there's just no couth way to say that). He first calls an old fling, but she brushes him off. So, he decides to go to a "massage" salon, but his hour ends too soon (if you know what I mean) and he ends up getting beaten half to death by the pimp in charge. Lying in the gutter, he is rescued by a prostitute who takes him home, cleans him up, and then offers to sleep with him for $100. He doesn't take her on and instead goes back to the hotel, resigned to his loneliness, and calls his wife.

  Part two starts and immediately, you know McBain is in charge. Now the main character is a police detective, Emma Boyle. She's investigating the murder of a prostitute, who worked at the XS Salon (the massage parlor Thorpe went to). There, she is put on the trail of a man the ladies say flipped out the night before. A man named Michael. Emma soon discovers that Michael's real name is Benjamin Thorpe, and she begins trying to track him down, as he's become their number one suspect. Nearly 48 hours pass before she gets a break -- Thorpe calls a woman he'd sort of met over the phone that night in the hotel (a friend of the fling that turned him down) and proceeds to seduce her into having phone sex with her. She reports this to the police and Emma thinks she's got him nailed. But is Benjamin really the killer? What about the guy seen with the vic each night for the past few weeks -- a guy her friends say she was afraid of? If Benjamin was only in town that one night, who is the stranger?

  I won't tell you the ending, of course, but I will say that I greatly enjoyed this novel, even though, in reality, the plot is about as standard as they get. The thing that's fun about it is knowing the two authors well and then getting a chance to see them working together side-by-side. It's a real kick, to be honest. And, in any case, I'm an 87th precinct junkie and I'll read ANYTHING Ed McBain puts out. Recommended for mystery fans and fans of either author.
  [MYSTERY]

  (3/11) House of Echoes by Barbara Erskine.
  

  When Joss Grant inherits a gigantic mansion (Belheddon Hall) in Essex from a mother she never knew, she and her suddenly-unemployed husband think it's a miracle. Just as they were losing their own home because of debt, they discover they are heir to a fantastic house in a beautiful small town! They quickly pack up their stuff and their young son Tom and move in. Joss, fascinated by the opportunity to learn about her roots, begins going through her mother's old things, many of which were left behind when her mother moved to France many years prior to her death. Joss soon discovers a series of chilling diary entries and letters, all of which refer to a dangerous "Him" that seems to be killing all the men and boys of Belheddon Hall. Joss, too, has sensed something sinister in the house, even hearing ghostly voices in the attic and outside. When her son starts having nightmares about "the tin man" and then starts falling out of his crib, Joss begins to panic. Soon her sister (a nanny for Tom and Joss' newborn Ned) starts to suspect Joss is hurting the children -- they are covered with bruises and Joss seems to be growing more and more unstable. Joss, however, has seen "the tin man" with her own eyes -- seen him attack Tom and seen him attack herself as well. Is she really just crazy? Unnerved by the house's history and suffering from post-partum depression? Or is the house really haunted by a horrible man jealous of any male that gets between him and his love? This book was well-constructed and the ending was exciting and shocking. But it could easily have been 100 pages shorter and not suffered. Parts of it were dragged out too long (or repeated too many times). Still, if you like ghost stories and a good scare, this is the book for you!
  [FICTION]

  (3/10) Affinity by Sarah Waters.
  

  Extremely engrossing ghost story about an upper-class woman, Margaret Prior, who begins visiting the women's ward of Victorian London's dingiest prison, Millbank. There, she meets an inmate who intrigues her, a spiritualist named Selina Dawes. Dawes tells Margaret about the horrible seance she was conducting that resulted in her imprisonment (one woman was killed and another driven mad). But the more Margaret gets to know Selina, the more she is sucked into her twilight world of spirits, many of them unruly. Believing Selina to be innocent, she begins to develop a plot to free her, hoping at the same time that the process will free herself from her own demons as well. Extremely well-written and exciting. Recommended!
  [FICTION]

  (3/9) Icebound by Dr. Jerri Nielsen.
  

  Most of the time, when I'm reading a novel, I spend a lot of my reading time doing something else in tandem. Like, watching tv and reading at the same time. Listening to my CD player while on the bus and reading at the same time. Etc. But every now and then a book comes along that I enjoy so much, I have to ration it to make it last longer, otherwise I know I will just devour it whole and miss out on not only the nuances inside, but the extreme pleasure of having it to come home to every evening. No more reading unless that's ALL I'm doing, I say. This book was one of those. In fact, I believe it was the first one I've hit in the year 2001.

  Icebound is the tremendous story of Dr. Nielsen's experience as the Pole doctor in Antarctica during the winter of 1999. As you probably remember from the news, three months into her year-long stay, Jerri found a lump in her breast that rapidly grew to a horrifying size. Because of the weather (at 100 degrees below zero, jet fuel turns to jell-o), no one could fly out to the Pole and pick her up to take her to a hospital. So, she summoned up all the guts she could muster, enlisted several of her best friends and co-workers, and began to treat herself for her cancer, right there in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, in a clinic full of outdated and half-frozen equipment.

  This is one amazing lady, folks.

  But even though her struggle with cancer was fascinating, it doesn't actually start until half-way through the book. The first part (and this continues throughout, as well), is all about what life at the Pole is like. Not just the descriptions of the incredibly beautiful terrain, but what the people are like. How they change by being there together. What the day-to-day life is like. What things they fear (mostly, the generator going out!), what things about their homes they miss, and what things they wish they never had to see again. The combination of her amazing medical story and the incredible details of what life as a "Polie" is like makes for one of the most engrossing books I've read all year. Truly wonderful. I recommend this to everybody, especially women, and most especially women who have wondered about the end of the world and who have secretly wished they could live there, but doubted themselves and their fortitude. Dr. J's struggles with her life, both the cancer and the changes and difficulties she's gone through (pole and non-pole), are truly inspiring. This book is wonderful.
  [NON-FICTION]

  (3/5) Ten Thousand Sorrows by Elizabeth Kim.
  

  I almost didn't read this book because the beginning of it is so sad I didn't think I could handle the whole story. But once I start a book, I have a pretty hard time quitting, so here we are. This is a memoir, about Kim's childhood as a Korean war orphan. Her mother, who fell in love with an American soldier and then bore his child (Kim), is murdered by her own father and brother in an "honor" killing after she brought such shame to her family. When Kim is discovered moments after the murder hiding in the corner, the family burns her between the legs to keep her from ever reproducing and then drops her at an orphanage for mixed-race outcasts. The orphanage is built like a zoo -- each crib is a cage for a child and that child rarely is allowed to leave it (or see other children). Kim is eventually "rescued" by an American minister and his wife and taken to the land of dreams (America), but just as she was an outcast in her own country for looking American, she discovers she is an outcast in America for looking Korean. God, such heartache, you wouldn't believe it. But it's amazing to read books like this written by the very children who suffer so in the stories. It tells you a lot about their spirit and how it refused to be crushed. Look at my life, Kim is saying, and see how strong I am. Pretty inspiring, when you think of it that way. But this is no book for anyone who is in the mood for something light and cheery. Recommended in some ways, and not recommended in others.
  [NON-FICTION]

  (3/2) Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz.
  

  Mesmerizing novel about a woman, Amanda, who flees her job nursing soldiers during WWI to seek comfort with her younger sister, Matilda, and her three-year-old niece, Ruth. One tragic night, however, Amanda nearly loses everything dearest to her when her sister disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice in the lake surrounding their home. Amanda takes charge of Ruth and the farm, as well as Matilda's husband when he returns from the war. But something about that night haunts Ruth and as she grows up, the truth about what happened to her mother is slowly revealed. Very well-written and intense novel about the forces that hold a family together and how those forces can sometimes turn and blow it apart instead. Recommended!
  [FICTION]

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