Rebecca Reisert

It’s The Scottish Play from the point of view of the youngest of the weird sisters, a young woman who shocks her elders by bathing twice a week, and doesn’t care for robbing the dead on the battlefield. Has all the requisite romance and heroism, as well as a fairy-tale ending. Cute, but unsubstantial.

Mary Sheepshanks

Mary Sheepshanks usually writes manor house stories laced with humor. In Off Balance, however, the humor is sadly lacking, and it ends up being an unexceptional story of relationships (mainly dysfunctional) in a country house in Scotland. Lovely scenery, depressing story.

David Sosnowski

I always enjoy a good vampire story, so when I saw Vamped staring at me from the library shelf, I had to take it home.

In this alternate future, the only humans left are farm-raised for uber-rich vampires (all the others have been vamped already), and a single box of Count Chocula goes for several hundred dollars on ebay. Then Marty, an eighty year old vampire, and the person who was responsible for the vamping of the world, finds a five year old mortal child on the run from one of the farms, and instead of killing her, or vamping her into a Screamer (as other child-vamps are called), he decides to raise her as his daughter.

Plot twists and romance are woven through the story, but the parts that I enjoyed most were the descriptions of societal changes – grocery stores selling mainly bleach and laundry detergent, and apartments built without toilets, for example.

by Ahdaf Soueif

Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love is a multi-generational story that takes place in both New York and Cairo.

A woman named Isabel meets a famous Egyptian conductor at a party in Manhattan, and he offers to give her names of friends in Cairo, knowing she’s headed there to research a project. She’s found some old letters from her grandmother, and wants to trace them, and learn her family’s story.

The conductor sends her to his sister, and together the woman piece together the story of Lady Winterbourne, and her romance with Sharif Pasha al Barudi in turn-of-the-century (19th to 20th) Egypt.

It’s a great love story, as well as an interesting portrait of modern Egypt.

Author: John R. Stilgoe

In the opening paragraph of Outside Lies Magic, author John Stilgoe urges the reader to go outside, take a walk, and pay attention to everything.

And he means everything – everything from the architectural style of barns to the pattern of coffee-shop locations, to the pick-up times on blue mailboxes.

This book challenges us to go outside, explore our neighborhoods, and find the magic in everyday things.

Nora Roberts
I picked up this novel, The Reef, by Nora Roberts, at the Half Price Books in Lewisville, TX when we were still in the apartment, began it there, got distracted, and didn’t finish it until the first weekend we were here in the house, when I literally had nothing else to read.

As romance novels go, it’s fairly predictable, though the fact that it’s a Nora Roberts novel means that at least it’s well-written predictability.

It’s also relatively early Roberts – it feels a bit dated to me.

Still, as bathroom reading, it was quiet enjoyable.

Nora Roberts

I’ve always considered Nora Roberts to be my guilty pleasure author, partly because her books are as much mystery/suspense as they are romance, and educated readers don’t read romance novels…do they?

But the truth is, when you want to curl up in bed with something that is total entertainment, Roberts is one of the best authors to choose. I picked up Sanctuary, not realizing I’d read it years ago, because I was stuck in the apartment, and wanted to soak in the tub and escape. And even though it was an unintentional retro-read, I enjoyed the story.

It’s pretty simple. A young photographer who doesn’t get along with her family is being stalked, but the stalker keeps removing the proof of his existence, and she finally retreats to the family inn, SANCTUARY, to rest and regroup. Since this is a Nora Roberts novel, the rest of the tale is equal parts relationship (with her father, brother, sister, friends), romance (with a man she’d met years before, when both were children), and suspense (the stalker has followed her home).

It’s not the most intellectual fare, but it’s fun, and the detail Ms. Roberts gives to settings and people makes even the most predictable tale come alive.

Teri Peppe

It’s always a little scary reading a book by someone you know – what if you don’t like it? In the case of The Marysburg Chronicles: Critical Mass, that worry was gone by the second page.

The thriller part of the story had me going almost to the end, the romance had me rooting for the leads to finally get together, and the science involved was plausible. The details of the Mankato and Madison areas were vivid. I could feel the humidity of summer, hear the endless prairie wind.

The title implies there may be further Chronicles – I really hope that’s the case.

James Patterson
Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls – family, health, friends, integrity – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life.
–from Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas, by James Patterson
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