Books in the House Monday - 5 Mar 2012

From B&N for my Nook (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/NOOK-Book-eBook-store):

PATIENT ZERO: A Joe Ledger Novel #1 - Jonathan Maberry, thriller

A DUTY TO THE DEAD: Bess Crawford Mystery #1 - Charles Todd, mystery

FOR I HAVE SINNED: A Charlie Davidson Story - Darynda Jones, UF

From High Crimes Mystery Bookshop (http://www.highcrimesbooks.com/):

HOW TO HOST A KILLER PARTY: A Party Planning Mystery #1 - Penny Warner

THE KING OF PLAGUES: A Joe Ledger Novel - Jonathan Maberry

From the back of the book: From New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry comes the next Joe Ledger novel---Joe and the DMS are up against a group set to unleash a weaponized version of the Ten Plagues of Egypt on the world....

Saturday 09:11 Hours: A blast rocks a London hospital and thousands are left dead or injured.....10:09 Hours: Joe Ledger arrives on scene to investigate. The horror is unlike anything he has ever seen. Compelled by grief and rage, Joe rejoins the DMS and within hours is attacked by a hit-team of assassins and sent on a suicide into a viral hot zone during an Ebola outbreak.

Soon, Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences begin tearing down the veils of deception to uncover a vast and powerful secret society using weaponized versions of the Ten Plagues of Egypt to destabilize world economies and profit from the resulting chaos. Millions will die unless Joe Ledger meets this powerful new enemy on their own terms as he fights terror with terror.
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Jonathan Maberry had me at GHOST ROAD BLUES (my review), the Pine Deep Trilogy, and I am now a fan of the Joe Ledger series. I was exhausted after each reading time, so this made for a good bedtime read for that, though it did make for some whack-a-doodle dreams.

The reader's eyes are flying across the page to keep up with quick scene changes and multiple characters, but the quick interludes within the chapters and the thriller storyline makes the pages turn faster and keeps you up way after your bedtime so you can read one more page.

I highly enjoy the way Maberry writes a fight scene. I could almost see the end result of bullets and the fists and definitely dreaded what would happen with the infectious diseases. The descriptions were raw and graphic.

The only time I felt like skipping ahead was while reading the scenes with the Seven Kings, the Goddess and the soldiers blindly following along. Not that the scenes were badly written, far from it. I just have a hard time dealing with zealots in any way, shape or form. And these are zealots who are the worst, the ones following the money.

THE KING OF PLAGUES is available on 29 Mar 2011. I received this ARC from the publisher.


Five stay up all night from the vivid whack-a-doodle dreams beans....

GHOST ROAD BLUES - Jonathan Maberry

aka, the book that wouldn't end....All I can say is I am glad Jonathan Maberry is such an amazing writer or I'd have given up a long time ago. The book is 472 pages, but felt longer and I'm not sure why. It felt like quicksand, just no progress as I read. I know I read my purse books a lot more slowly since I don't get the time I used to. So that may be part of it. I also really liked reading the fight scenes. Maberry can write a kick-ass fight scene.
I tried making it my bedside book, but I immediately began having whacked the hell out dreams afterward, so that was a quick exchange with whatever I was reading three bedside books ago....yep, that's how long this one took.
It is labeled horror and it is, but it is mostly a thriller of a small town gone bad in surprising little pockets, voices in the cranium, lynching, killers, the grotesque.
The horror is there, sneaking around the edges until well into the last fourth of the book.
The small town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania is suffering from the worst crop blight in recent history. Their claim to fame is the renowned Halloween celebration in the 'Spookiest Town in America'. Everyone is coming, including an ancient evil that everyone thought long gone. It was last seen 30 years ago and everyone thought it long dead. It's returned.
This is the first in a trilogy and I am on the lookout for the second, DEAD MAN'S SONG.

Four chilled to the bones beans....