Well, as expected, with the change of seasons my reading momentum has declined a bit. I'm going to bed a little earlier, I'm watching lots of scary movies, and my hands have been busy with knitting an awful lot of the time! However, I do have a few titles to share with you this month.
The City of Mirrors, by Justin Cronin. This final installment of Cronin's The Passage trilogy (following The Passage and The Twelve) is absolutely action-packed and nerve-wrackingly suspenseful. The human population is beginning to recover and expand its territory once more, more than a century after The Twelve and their Many swept across the North American Continent. The threat finally seems to be fading into mere memory. Until Fanning, the Zero, makes his final play against Peter Jackson and his fellow humans. It is up to Amy, the Girl from Nowhere, to be the ultimate good that stands up against Fanning's ultimate evil. I listened to this as an audiobook, read by Scott Brick, and he gave an amazing performance. I highly recommend the series.
The Kept Woman, by Karin Slaughter. A couple of years ago, I happened across a Karin Slaughter novel and was instantly hooked--I read everything she'd written within a few months' time. Now I wait (very impatiently) for each new novel to be published and I must say, this was worth the wait. GBI Agent Will Trent has had a tough life, but after growing up in the foster system and learning to work around a learning disability, he's become a responsible adult. He's an excellent investigator, he has a girlfriend, he even has a dog. There's just one weak spot in his life: his estranged wife, Angie. When she gets in over her head in her line of private security, Will is compelled to help her, if only to unentangle himself from her once and for all. When cases get personal, things always get messy. Fast-paced and well-plotted, this was a great installment to the series.
Blue Labyrinth, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. Speaking of series I'm getting caught up on, here I am, only 2 more books away from being caught up with Preson & Childs Special Agent Pendergast series. As the book opens, Pendergast opens his front door to a disturbing, macabre delivery, which prompts him to travel halfway around the world to unearth the truth about who might have been behind the delivery. What he uncovers, as he delves deep into his family's history, is that he is being stalked by a subtle killer, bent on retribution for an ancient transgression. I felt like this installment meandered a bit early on, but it all came together beautifully in the end.
The Free-Range Knitter, by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. I read this using the Trumbull Library's access to OverDrive. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is a Canadian knitter and writer who has a long-running popular knitting blog over at Yarn Harlot. This collection of essays and stories recounts knitting horrors and triumphs, the good, the bad and the just plain ugly of a craft practiced by an estimated 60 million Americans. She talks about creativity, the things that make knitters different, and the things (like love of yarn, color, and creation) that bring knitters and crafters of all stripes together. If you're a knitter and you feel misunderstood? Stephanie Pearl-McPhee gets you, I promise.
Knitting Rules!, also by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. Subtitled "The Yarn Harlot's Bag of Knitting Tricks", this fun read is full of tips, suggestions, and some simple, basic patterns for knitters. Here she also reviews things like different knitting methods (really, there are many different ways to knit as there are knitters, who knew?) and their pros and cons, as well as preferences for the tools of the trade (different kinds of needles, yarns, etc.). If you're a knitter? Fascinating. If you're not? Probably not so much. I also read this via Overdrive.
The Life She Wants, by Robyn Carr. When Emma Shay's perfect life falls apart in the wake of personal tragedy, she moves cross-country to where she was once happy, and where she once had friends. There is, however, the small issue of the decades-long grudge she has been holding against said friends, and that they have held right back. This is the story of one woman's struggle to get her life back on course after a long and painful detour, about the ties of shared history, and about forgiveness and hope. Carr excels at feel-good reads, and this is testament to her talent.
And if you're counting along at home, that's 75 books for the year. I don't really think I can manage 25 books in the next two months... But stranger things have happened!
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