Bimonthly Delivery from Patterson Amalgamated

Fiction

Private Paris by James Patterson Amalgamated Writing Services and Mark Sullivan. 

At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier. My typing is worse than usual this morning. The novel is about a frontier family in Ohio and California. Chevalier's author photo was taken with a white background.

The Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon. Another Commissario Brunetti mystery set in Venice. Maps are printed inside the front covers. Maps are cool.

Property of a Noblewoman by Danielle Steel. Romance. I always think Steel has an "E" on the end.

Two If By Sea by Jacqueline Mitchard. Mitchard used to live in Madison. If I remember correctly she moved to Massachusetts after an "investment manager" turned out to be a dirty thief. Mitchard is also a coffee fan. Novel's plot: U.S. vacationer in Brisbane loses his family in a tsunami but rescues as boy. Man takes Boy back to US.

Audiobook on CD

The Steel Kiss by Jefferey Deaver. 13 CDs at 14.5 hours.  Police detectives pursue killer.

NonFiction

Overdressed: the shockingly high cost of cheap fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline.  Page 203 says, After trying on everything at home, I decided to keep the shorts, and cast the rest back into the secondhand waste stream by donating them to a thrift store.

Double THRONES and Dounble SCHMIDT

DVD

Sisters starring Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Her John Leguizamo is in this, that guy is a good actor.


Game of Thrones: complete fifth season starring horses and swords. I ordered two copies.


The Big Short starring [famous actors]. Something about money and white collar dirtbags? I'm not sure, I didn't read the book.



Tangerine starring Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor. Prostitute gets out of County jail and hears her boyfriend cheated on her. She goes looking for him across Los Angeles.


Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: season one starring Ellie Kemper and Jane Krakowski. Woman is rescued from underground bunker and explores the world. Krakowski is a comic genius.

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More Lansdale, Yet Again.

Fiction

Steel Kiss by Jeffery Deaver. T. Jefferson Parker recently posted a photo of himself and Deaver at the Tucson Festival of Books.

Off The Grid by C.J. Box.  CJ Box was in the photo with Deaver and Parker.

Clawback by J.A. Jance. Jance was not in the photo with Deaver, Parker and Box. But, Jance still has a home in Tucson. I don't know if she attended the Festival. Maybe she decided to skip the crowds. Maybe she doesn't like the coffee there. Maybe she went in disguise so she wouldn't get hounded by fans.

Audiobooks on CD

Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale. 9 hours on 7CDs. Lansdale is booked to attend the Murder and Mayhem in Milwaukee conference this autumn.

Savage Season by Joe R. Lansdale. 5 hours on 5CDs. That conference always conflicts with the Cub Scout Pancake Breakfast and I've missed most or all of the conference the past five years or so.

The Revenant by Michael Punke. 9 hours on 8 CDs. I read this book a couple years ago. I don't know if Punke is writing anything new, last I looked he was lawyering in Switzerland.

Paradise Sky by Joe R. Lansdale. 14 hours on 12 CDs. I'm hoping to finish clean-up at the Pancake Breakfast and drive over to Milwaukee. I think Victor Gischler is also scheduled to attend.

Who else will be there?

• Well, Todd Robinson is supposed to be there, I read one of his novels.
• Lisa Lutz came a couple years ago when I was able to attend the Friday evening session. Lutz is a great speaker.
• Brad Parks. I read 2-3 of his New Jersey set novels featuring a newspaper reporter.
• Timothy Hallinan is scheduled. Hallinan is kind of a Big Deal. I listened to a couple of his Junior Bender novels.
• I assume Tasha Alexander and her husband will be there. I think they drive up from Chicago each year. I still have not read any the husband's books. I keep intending to read one.

The Krays, Boxing, and a Shoot'em Up

DVD

Legend starring Tom Hardy. hardy plays the Kray brother twins, London gang bosses of the 1960s. I watched the previous movie with the brothers from Spandeu Ballet.



Creed starring Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone. Rocky trains Apollo Creed's son.


The Fall: Series 2 starring Gillian Anderson. Detective Superintendent looks for a serial killer.



Strike Back: final season starring Philip Winchester and Sullivan Stapleton. Military and espionage shoot-em with tight costumes and sex scenes.

Bands of Bitter Grieving

DVD

Changed Forever: grieving the death of someone you love by Paraclete Press.



Audiobooks on CD

The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson. 12 CDs at 14.5 hours. Fantasy novel.

The Bitter Season by Tami Hoag. 11 CDs at 14 hours. Crime in Minneapolis.

NYPD Red 4 by James Patterson and Marshall Karp. 7 CDs at 8 hours. Crime in Manhattan.

Joe R. Lansdale? Again?

Lansdale

Hells Bounty by Joe R. Lansdale and John L. Lansdale. Huh, Lansdale and Lansdale signed this copy. A novel with a mix of horror and western, it'll be good with plenty of similes.

Fiction

The Gangster by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott. Your bi-monthly Cussler installment. Page 83 says, "Claypool rose to his feet."

The Invisible Hand by Benjamin Sobieck. Crime novel set in the North Dakota oil fields. "[Sobieck's] family runs a ranch in North Dakota." Anthony Neil Smith mentioned this one before because Smith wrote a ND oil fields crime novel as well. I've been to Fargo a couple times. I went to a wrestling tournament hosted by Concordia College for two years in a row. I may have written this before, but we stayed at a motel converted to a hotel. The hotel room doors used to face outside until hallways were built around the outside of the building. But, the hallways were not heated and layers of frozen condensation created ice sheets on the inside of the tall windows. The ice and frost on the inside of the building was dreary.

Gone Again by James Grippando. "A Jack Swytek Novel." Swyteck? Was that the name of a character on Miami Vice? Let me check... kinda, that character had a different spelling with Switek.


The Ancient Mistral by Jim Harrison. Literary guy publishes three novellas. Michael Talbott who played Switek is from Waverly, IA. Last week I was spoke to a guy from Waverly.

NonFiction

Evicted: poverty and profit in the American city by Matthew Desmond. It's hard to get ahead when you cannot keep a home. Focusing on eight Milwaukee families that can barely afford rent.

The Gratitude Diaries:how a year looking on the bright side can transform your life by Janice Kaplan. Ok, but the previously listed book makes me think that philosophy only gets you so far.

Change Your Brain Change Your Life by Daniel G. Amen, MD. "Conquering anxiety, depression, obsessiveness, lack of focus, anger and memory problems."

Our Christian Founding Fathers by William Beckman. Local author.

More Music, More Music, More Music

The Sounds of Singing Are Digitized And Encoded Upon a Silvery Slice of Sound Magic

The Essential Earth, Wind and Fire by Earth, Wind and Fire. Nine men sings songs of love and mustaches. Lots of mustaches. Were those stage outfits polyester? If so, those clothes must have been super hot during performances.


This is Acting by Sia. Australian singer sings songs of Sia.

Musics

Two Plastic Discs Contain Computer Language That is Converted Into Sound

The Book of Souls by Iron Maiden. LONG LASTING AND POPULAR METAL BAND RELEASES A DOUBLE ALBUM. ALBUM!  A NEW ALBUM! NO! ALBUM!

Girl's Guide to Wedding Cake Murder

Fiction

Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young.  Missing children and dreams. Hester is an uncommon name. According to SSA Hester's highest rank in popularity was 230th in 1901. My name was 177th in 1954, that is much higher than I expected.

A Girl's Guide to Moving On by Debbie Macomber. According to the cover the girls in question have a lot of money. Macomber has a new author photo.

Hide by Matthew Griffin. Two men fall in love after World War Two and one of them collapses when elderly. According to the dust jacket Griffin lives in Lafayette, Louisiana. I wonder if he has made the writer's pilgrimage to pay respect to Victor Gischler in Baton Rouge. Griffin is wearing a blue shirt in his author photo.

Death of a Nurse by M.C. Beaton. No author photo.

Wedding Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke. Fluke's author photo has her wearing a cooking apron and posing with some desserts. Not deserts.

She's Not There by Joy Fielding. You can see the edge Fielding's watch under her blouse cuff. Page 200 says, " Barcelona... Mexican... stared... eggs... Harbor Drive."

Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon. Cover illustration is a dirigible. Ia Ariel a man's or woman's name, let me check the author bio... woman.  Lawhon lives in Tennessee. Do we have other books by here? I don't know, I'll check... yes. We own 2014's The Wife, The Maid, and The Mistress. Our copy has circ'ed 9 times.

Bungalow Freaks in Little China

NonFiction

Freaks of Sideshow and Film by Mary Brett and Stevan Gould. Page 73 says, "Delina Ross is considered the most beautiful of all the bearded ladies." There is a piece about Sandy Allen.

Big Trouble in Little China: The Return of Lo Pan and How Jack Burton Became King of the Lords of Death. Comic book stories by John Carpenter.

Big Trouble in Little China: The Hell of the Midnight Road and The Ghosts of Storms.  More comic book stories by John Carpenter.

Bark House Style: sustainable designs from nature by Chris McCurry and Nan Chase. Lots of pretty pictures.

Bungalow Kitchens by Jane Powell and Linda Svendsen.  Even more pretty pictures.

Joe R. Lansdale? Again?

DVD

Spotlight starring [many actors]. Boston Globe reporters uncover and report on child abuse in the Catholic church.

Spotlight starring [the same actors]. Same thing but Blu-Ray version.

Audiobooks on CD

Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry. 15 hours on 12 CDs.

Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. 15.5 hours on 13 CDs. Lecturer traveling to London goes back in time to 1810. Read by Bronson Pinchot who "restores Greek Revival buildings."

Nomad by Matthew Mather. 9.5 hours on 8 CDs. Scientist has to figure out how to save the earth and get his family from Italy.

Joe R. Lansdale

Vanilla Ride by Joe R. Lansdale. Hap and Leonard bumble through with violence and guile. Lansdale did a interview on National Public Radio a few days ago. 

Made Up Stories. With unrelated New Zealand commentary.

Fiction

Sweet Girl by Travis Mulhauser. Girl looks for her strung out mom in Northern Michigan but finds a baby in a freezing cabin. Dirt bag criminals pursue the girl and her new found ward.

If I Run by Terri Blackstock. Today's speaker at Rotary is a retired CS professor from UW-Eau Claire, his name is Wagner. He now takes on temporary teaching positions at other universities.

The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel. The speaker has taught at Canterbury University outside Christchurch in New Zealand. I chatted with Wagner a bit during lunch and he has taught there on two occasions.

Georgia by Dawn Tripp. Wagner also said he taught in China and had an appointment at Macalaster in Minneapolis. His semesters in NZ followed our winter season. So, he had winter, here, winter, there, and then winter here again. His wife declined to go immediately back so that they could have a summer.

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad. Wagner had a slide show as well. Lots of photos of hiking and kayaking. His wife volunteered at a nature center and had some neat photos of a Kiwi bird.

Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson. Wagner and Wife also visited Stewart Island at the Southern tip of the South Island. Wagner said Stewart Island has a population of 400 people, the island is 674 square miles.

The Cellar by Minette Walters. I asked if many tourists visited Stewart and Wagner said tourism was a main draw for the place. He and his wife would often stay in family hostels when traveling but that Stewart also has resorts.

The Flood Girls by Richard Fifield. There was one penguin photo in his slide show. Beer was expensive but the local wine was not.

Coconut Cowboy by Tim Dorsey. I asked about his accommodations in Christchurch. Wagner told me the University is very big on visiting faculty. They have about 70 instructors a year (a semester, maybe?) and send out 30 of their own.  Canterbury has a big endowment to cover the costs and visiting instructors are given a house or apartment for lodging, travel costs are covered, and they get a per diem payment.

Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lipton. Wagner chanced upon the appointment after seeing an email asking for applicants. The previously hired CS instructor bowed out after the 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch. Wagner had a few photos of the City but his photos were mostly of the countryside.

Blackout by David Rosenfelt. There was no mention of Dunedin.

One Single DVD

DVD

A Walk in the Woods starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Kristen Schaal. Two older men hike the Appalachian Trail. Hilarity ensues.

Real Quick, It Is Late

Goin' Your Way by Neil Finn and Paul Kelly. Concert album and DVD.

Elements by The U.S. Marine Band.

Unforgivable Blackness: the rise and fall of Jack Johnson.

Star War: A New Hope: Empire Strikes Back: Return of the Jedi.

More Sexy Sex Novels from Lorelei James

Fiction

What You Need by Lorelei James. Well... maybe this is a straightforward romance, not one of the sexy sex ones.  Wealthy man dates his employee. I spoke to Lori Armstrong (James is her pen name) at a Bouchercon, she said her romance books way outsold her mystery/thriller novels.

Find Her by Lisa Gardner. Gardner writes a lot of books and is kind of a big deal. I'm surprised she does not have a bigger author photo.

Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase. I know nothing about this book but I the cover sure is nicely done. The cover makes me want to read this. page 172 says, "Lorna parts the paper like curtains, smiles."

Violent Crimes by Philip Margolin. I am fairly certain I have never read a Margolin book. Let me take a look at his bib. Nope, not a one. I did watch a film version.

Nonfiction

Hiking Michigan's Upper Peninsula by Eric Hansen, revised by Rebecca Pelky. I was told the Porpupine Mountains are a nice visit.  Good like finding them in the book though because there is no index. The "Porkies" are in Gogebic and Ontonagoin Counties and the Ironwood/Ontonagon area lists 13 hikes.

Holiday Delights!: recipes, crafts, and gifts by Hearst Books. This Christmas themed so I assume this was back-ordered.

DVD Drop

DVD

Full House: the complete sixth season starring [actors]. I have several snide comments about this program. I was in a trivia contest last week and one question asked "What is the dog's name in Full House." One of the trivia team members has three daughters, so he knew the answer.

Chi-Raq starring Angela Bassett. Spike Lee retells Lysistrata with a Chicago setting.


Straight Outta Compton starring [many people]. Biopic about rap N.W.A.



Straight Outta Compton starring [the same actors as before]. I bought a second copy by mistake. There are a ton of holds so I added it to the collection.



Straight Outta Compton starring [the same actors but in higher definition]. One of the orders was the DVD-Blu-Ray combo. This is the Blu-Ray.

Gischler and Esiler Make Sweet Fiction

Gischler

The Order of the Forge by Victor Gischler. Compilation of a series of comics with artwork by Tazio Bettin.  George Washington fights evil with Ben Franklin and Paul Revere at his side.

Eisler

The God's Eye View by Barry Eisler. More NSA shenanigans and violence by Eisler.  Eisler does a great job of taking the mostly unknown topics of real-life spying and espionage and makes them integral to his novels.

Fiction

Doctor Who: four Doctors by Paul Cornell.  Chaos rules when three Doctors meet! Yeah, sure it does.

The Wolves by Alex Berenson.  The billionaire who tried to trick the U.S. and Iran into a war has gone into hiding. A secret agent looks for the billionaire.

NonFiction

The Geeky Chef Cook Book by Cassandra Reeder.  Recipes based off SciFi, Fantasy and video games. Includes Romulan Ale, Plomeek Soup, Soylent Green (well, not really), and Cauldron Cakes.

The Spectre of Joe R. Lansdale

Hap and Leonard

Honky Tonk Samurai by Joe R. Lansdale. Erstwhile PIs Hap and Leonard bumble their way through another violent episode. The new TV series is coming out.


DVD

Spectre starring James Bond. I've not seen this flick nor read a review or seen previews. I want everything to be a surprise.

The Big Bang Theory: Seventh Season starring [actors]. People sure do love this show.

Fiction

Brotherhood in Death by J.D. Robb. Does Robb have a ghost writer helping her out? There are a lot books by Nora Roberts under her own name as well.

Carol by Patrica Highsmith. Reprint of the 1952 as a tie-in for the recent movie. Original title is The Price of Salt.

Breakdown by Jonathan Kellerman. Another thriller with Alex Delaware. I've never been to Delaware but my cousin lived there for a couple years.

Carpe Diem, Illinois by Kristin A. Oakley. Was this a Wisconsin author? I cannot recall. Let me check ... Yep, she lives in Madison and also teaches writing.  This book is a suspense novel. I think. I was in Madison yesterday for Library Legislative Day, it went OK.

Jane and the Waterloo Map by Stephanie Barron. Mystery featuring a fictionalized Jane Austen.

NonFiction

Take Care: The Sleep Guide by Sarah Moran. The Take Care series is one of seven books covering multiple aspects of wellness.  Moran used come to the library early to write.

Large Print

Someday The Kingdom of Downton Potter

DVD

Downton Abbey: season 6 starring [actors]. I have never seen this program. Was the building an actual abbey at one point?



Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull starring Han Solo.  Dr. Jones pursues truth and knowledge through treachery and violence.


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone starring [those three children]. A boy is sent away to boarding school.


Fiction

The Bridge by Karen Kingsbury. Something about separated lovers and a bookstore that gets flooded.

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