Wednesday, June 20, 2007

New Noir and the Masterful Rossi

Fiction

Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks. Noir novel set in Miami, "Renata is young, beautiful, and has sex for money and kicks. Few are immune to her intoxicating allure - even her pet Burmese python, Pepe, seems captive to her charm. Richard is one of her clients, a poetry professor with a wife and two sons, whose erotic fascination with Rennie threatens his home and job. Meanwhile, Jules, a shy wannabe-novelist, spies on Rennie from her next door room in between bouts of frustrated writing. Both would do anything to save Rennie from her dangerous occupation and become her one true love."
Jeez...that makes it sound kind of like a romance novel. It isn't.

Biography

What if I had Never Tried It by Valentino Rossi. Italian superstar Rossi, multiple winner of motorcycle Grand Prix titles, tells about racing and winning with three different teams.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

A Really nice atlas and some bestselling authors

Fiction

Double Take by Catherine Coulter. The cover illustration has a picture of Alcatraz Island at night and the subtitle is: An FBI Thriller. Without looking at the book's summary I'm going to assume the FBI deal with some criminal who likes Alcatraz.

Navigator by Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos. I don't read Cussler's books but he has legions of fans. I hope he is not disappointing them by having a writing partner do all the work.

Stalin's Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith. Smith is an excellent writer and his Arkady Renko novels have all been fantastic. Renko is a Russian police detective in Moscow. In previous novels Arkady has worked in Moscow, Berlin, aboard a fishing vessel in the North Pacific, and Cuba. In this one, Renko investigation into ghostly sitings in the Moscow subway dovetail with his suspicions that a right-wing police colleague is a hired killer.

Harlequin by Laurell K. Hamilton. Another vampires and sex novel by Hamilton.

Devil Who Tamed Her by Johanna Lindsey. Another romance by Lindsey.

Large Print

Magic City by James W. Hall. Hey! I read this one! Florida Keys beach bum Thorn is going to watch his Miami girlfriend's senile father while she is out of town. Thorn gets into a fight with two Cuban thugs who try to rob the girlfriend's house and things go downhill. A good novel with great characters and a fantastic use of setting.

McKetrick's Luck by Linda Lael Miller. A romance set in modern day Arizona between a rancher dude and a real estate gal.

NonFiction

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. Novelist Kingsolver and family vow to live for one year only on the food they can buy locally or grow on their own. It wasn't always easy but it is certainly interesting.

Rumsfeld: his rise, fall, and catastrophic legacy by Alexander Cockburn. Rumsfelds incompetence, arrogance, and vanity are harshly exposed. I've been listening to Not a Good Day ot Die by Sean Naylor which is about 2002's Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld's arbitrary cap on U.S. forces in Afghanistan and pulling military leaders back to the U.S. to plan for the Iraq invasion was a major factor contributing to the failures of Anaconda and our continued trouble there with the Taliban and Al-Quaeda.

map:satellite by Philip Eales. A wicked good atlas by the genius crew at Dorling-Kindersley. The atlas using a great mix of satellite imagery and traditional cartography.