What an amazing read!! It's been on Mt Git'r'Read for a while even after I eagerly ordered it from Our Lady of the Books, Pamala of Bartlett after hearing so many wonderful recommendations. I added it to the TBR Challenge and still it languished. I have a slight aversion to nonfiction, non-mystery genre books and this is definitely fitting of both. Yet something drew me finally..in the mood, color of the cover...something. And very glad I fell for the draw. Rita is in an uncomfortable lifestyle. She has money, a pretty decent husband, two wonderful kids....but she feels she is missing something in her life. She tells her husband that she needs a break. She suggests two weeks. HE suggests TWO MONTHS! This terrifies her, but she decides to go to Mexico. And not just the tourist Mexico. No, she finds a village, asks to live there as an anthropologist. She finds she likes this lifestyle, terrifying as it is. Not scary danger of loss of life and limb terror. Rather it's what she will discover about herself kind of terror. She decides that she is also on the search for spirituality. Her travels take her on this path. My favorite of her settlements has to be New Zealand. Rita seems finally so at ease with herself, she is able to completely immerse herself into the Kiwi life and enjoy it. Plus the fact that I've always wanted to travel there. This gets a very enthusiastic five beans!
This is the fourth book in the MONKEEWRENCH series and it's a good one. I liked reading it in the heat of the summer since it takes place in the dead of winter. Dead being a key word. There's a snowman making festival to get people out to celebrate the first really good snow in a dry winter in Minneapolis and it turns out that two of the snowmen are really men under the snow. Two dead men. The detectives Magozzi and Rolseth are called out since they are first on the scene by participating in the contest. The Monkeewrench team is peripheraly involved. There is another 'snowman' in a little town north of the cities and there is the thought that a serial killer is on the loose. It's a very good story. Four beans!
I am sure that THE GOLDEN COMPASS is billed as a juvenile fantasy, but adults who like a good story, fantasy or otherwise, will surely like this series starter. The action is pretty much non-stop, the characters are engaging, the story is stay-up-late compelling. Lyra, the main character, is a young girl running basically feral in the halls of Jordan College in Oxford. She stumbles into an intrigue that she is to play an important part of the unfolding. There are daemons, talking polar bears, good and bad witches, gyptians (gypsies) all involved in the tale of stolen children and what happens to them. Lyra heads to the North in search of her stolen friend and all of the others being taken for reasons only hinted at. It is a riproarin' adventure and I cannot wait to read the rest of the series. This gets 4 coffeebeans!
It's time for another break...from the very fiercely astounding written words of Karin Slaughter in TRIPTYCH. Slaughter writes with such intensity it draws the reader in and does not let go. I get so caught up in the thriller that it affects my dreams. Not many books do that...Karin Slaughter's books do. This is why I take long breaks, sometimes months long, between each of her books. This one was the most intense yet. It was like peeling an onion....a really gut-wrenchingly strong emotion yanking onion....as each piece of the thriller was released. It was tension at its best. This one gets five beans. 
Finished another super book on non-fiction style, DEATH'S ACRE, was a greatly informative read. I had heard of The Body Farm before while reading Patricia Cornwell (before she turned to shite). Her book of that name was superb and just made me want to visit this site of forensic discovery and study. Kind of gross, maybe, but I found it fascinating. I will never be a forensic scientist, but I love reading about it. Up to now, it's been fiction. I found Jefferson Bass while looking for medical mysteries for a summer challenge last year. Found and read and totally dug CARVED IN BONE. I found that Jefferson Bass was really Dr Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson and that they had written some non-fiction as well as some more of what was going to be a series. Found DEATH'S ACRE and FLESH AND BONE for my ever increasing TBR. I highly recommend DEATH'S ACRE if you like the background of some of the medical mysteries we read. I have a new appreciation of the science and the work and dedication and time it takes. I love CSI shows to pieces, but the bad guys don't get caught that quickly!
If you are looking for a rather fast paced well written thriller, well cats and kittens, THE DOLLMAKER is the one for you! It was recommended on BookBitch a while back, I bought the book and it sat on Mt Git'r'Read for a while. The cover just freaks me the hell out! It's the quarter face of a porcelain doll and I really can't stand those things. Too much Twilight Zone as a child maybe, but there it is. So, I put it on my TBR Challenge list and that would make me have to read it. It fit perfectly in this time frame, I tucked it in my purse this morning (Saturday) and I finished it this evening (still Saturday) while waiting for the system I work with to cooperate and work. It didn't, so I read. I started this morning while Lady K was in swim lessons, then on the bike for 46 minutes, then finished it in less than four hours at work. Sunday night I am bringing two books, just in case. Which will, of course, ensure that the system will work properly and I won't have as much time to read. THE DOLLMAKER has a lot going on, storyline wise. But it isn't convoluted, rather you just go, "OOOOOOO, that's intriguing! Must see what happens next!". Highly recommend and I do hope that Amanda Stevens has other books out there and/or up her sleeve.
Tape 9 of 9 BLIND DESCENT - Nevada Barr in the vehicle, not sure what will be next. Maybe the third Dexter. It's been waiting patiently since November. I am almost finished with purse book THE MONKEY'S RAINCOAT - Robert Crais and I started my preview of DEAD GIRLS' DANCE - Rachel Caine last night. I know it's going to be good, but I want to keep up with my previews. Don't want to get caught in line or at the gym with a bad purse book! I read myself awake this morning with DEATH'S ACRE - Dr Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson. Just did not want to get out of bed just yet, so read until I was reasonably more awake. Didn't want to go back to sleep or I'd have overslept and missed my workout (and time with Elvis Cole).
I finished Rachel Caine's ILL WIND in next to no time. My reading time has become rather limited lately, so this was no mean feat. It was a joy to read and I very much can't wait to read the rest of the series. I want Jo's two cars. Delilah a very sweet '76 Mustang Mach 1. O..M..G!...sadly that one gets destroyed and Jo has to move on to Mona, a '97 Dodge Viper GTS. Lordy, this woman knows how to pick 'em!! I'd read the series if only for the cars. Yay that the series is super even without the cars.
I am on tape 5 of 9, side 1 BLIND DESCENT - Nevada Barr in the vehicle, I finished JUDGEMENT OF THE GRAVE - Sarah Stewart Taylor last night while Lady K played her Noggin.com games on my laptop. I started the newest purse book, ILL WIND - Rachel Caine. This is the first book in her Weather Warden series and I am already diggin' it. I didn't read anything last night in bedside book, DEATH'S ACRE - Dr Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson, due to not feeling so whooptee-doo. I'm feeling bettah. I'll get some listening time in today with the back and forth driving of Boulder to work and back to Boulder back to work and back to Boulder. I am looking for the silver lining, glass is half full thing and being able to listen to the lovely Barbara Rosenblatt read me a story is that silver lining.
Judgement of the Grave - Sarah Stewart Taylor is a very good mystery. It could be called a cozy only in that the main character, Sweeney St George, is a Harvard professor and finds herself investigating murders or at least helping. I love this series. Sweeney has the coolest career choice of all of the 'cozies' I've read. She teaches funerary art at Harvard, studying and teaching all that that entails. In this book she is researching tombstones from the pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary period in Concord, Mass. And stumbles upon a murdered man. It's a good character study as much as it is a mystery story.
What an amazing read!! It's been on Mt Git'r'Read for a while even after I eagerly ordered it from Our Lady of the Books, Pamala of Bartlett after hearing so many wonderful recommendations. I added it to the TBR Challenge and still it languished. I have a slight aversion to nonfiction, non-mystery genre books and this is definitely fitting of both. 
