“Camouflage” by Bill Pronzini

“One truism in the detective business: people’s exteriors don’t always reflect their interiors. Some of the most attractive ones are like buildings full of dark rooms and the kinds of things that hide in them.”

In the latest installment of Pronzini’s Nameless Detective Series (which includes 35 novels and three collections of short cases), Nameless’ Private Investigation Agency gets a client named David Virden, a great, upstanding, sexist, greedy, egotistical man who wants them to track down his first ex-wife, Roxanne.  Since successfully getting annulments from wives #2 and 3, she’s the last one he needs an annulment from so he can properly marry (very rich) new lady #4 in the Catholic Church.

“Heart of a Samurai” by Margi Preus

I saw Heart of a Samurai on the Children’s Literature shelf of my library and thought, “Hey-every once in while you need a feel good children’s story, right?” A Newberry Honor Book, and based upon “a true adventure on the high seas”, this is the perfect story- though it involved much deeper subjects than what is normally considered just a “feel good” book- and didn’t even feel like a “children’s story” to be honest.

“Started Early, Took My Dog” by Kate Atkinson

“What he discovered was that the great novels of the world were about 3 things- death, money, and sex. Occasionally a whale.”

Well this novel has the death, money, and sex thing going for it.

What starts out as 3 seemingly separate narratives eventually combine to make one twisted, messed up, lie-ridden conspiracy cover-up that leaves you just shaking your head at the end.

“Mogworld” by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw

“To Blizzard Entertainment, for the 3 months of my life I will never get back.”

“Expecting to wake up fresh and ready to go after being dead for awhile would be a bit optimistic.”

“Well, yes, expecting to wake up at ALL would have been a bit optimistic.”

“Hey, don’t take it out on me, I was only trying to help”

Jim (last name unknown) dies when his school gets invaded by a loose alliance of student fighters from the warrior schools just over the border in Stroganoff. He finds himself floating away in heaven, surrounded by light and angels, having “passed on from life, from the world of struggles and hardship and big fat women with annoying laughs and entering into a glorious new existence of utter peace, joy, and love…”

“A Visit From the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan

I admit, I decided to read this book because of the cover: a giant gold circle that hails it as the “Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award” and then a giant “NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST BOOK” peeking out from the inside cover. When you fully turn to the inside cover, it’s also listed as one of the Best Books of the Year by Oprah Magazine, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, People, Publisher’s Weekly, Time, and the Washington Post (just to name a few).

In other words, the cover screamed: THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST F*ING BOOK YOU’VE EVER READ!

“Amaryllis in Blueberry” by Christina Meldrum

In the history of dysfunctional families: The Osbournes, Kardashians, Lohans, Evans (Teen Mom 2), Fockers, Tenenbaums, and Hoovers (Little Miss Sunshine): no one, NO ONE comes even CLOSE to the Slepy family.

Oh Slepy family. Where should we even begin? At the end, which is where Christina Meldrum begins: good wife Christian Slepy is on trial with a witch doctor and Queen Mother presiding in a tiny West African village for killing husband Richard Slepy.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Have you ever read a 600 page book and, once getting to the end, wish there was more?
Then you haven’t read “A Discovery of Witches” by Deborah Harkness.

I would have entitled this “Twilight: Done Right”, only there’s so much more to this book than the whole forbidden love with a vampire thing- so I didn’t want anybody to get the impression the two are anywhere near related. Sorry, Stephenie Meyer, you got nothing on this.

“The Book Of Tomorrow” by Cecelia Ahern

Tamara Goodwin is a spoiled little rich brat. A spoiled little rich brat whose father committed suicide over ruined finances, leaving her and her mother to move into nowhere’s-ville Ireland in a small gatehouse attached to the grounds of a ruined castle with her Mom’s brother and sister-in-law while the bank possesses the hundred acre mansion they used to live in and takes Tamara away from the familiarity of the life she had there.

The life she had there.  So much simpler than the life and future she has here.

“The Bone Yard” by Jefferson Bass

With the success of CSI, NCIS, and Bones- forensic anthropology (aka- “Bone People”) has become a writing meme.  An anthropologist just like Kathy Reichs, Jefferson Bass also writes about the gruesome tales told from a lost, forgotten, and horrifically maimed skeleton. Maybe I’m just jaded from too much of the same thing, but Bass’ book didn’t seem to offer anything different from any of the other hundreds of forensic anthropology stories out there right now.

His main character, Dr. Bill Brockton, isn’t a strong leading man. There’s really nothing about him that sticks with you other than he gets really bored by being behind a desk. So bored, in fact, that he’ll work for free. But there’s not really much of a personality to go with him. He’s just Dr. Brockton, a really good forensic anthropologist from the University of Tennessee who hates when Floridians start talking crap about his football team.

“All The Lives He Led” by Frederik Pohl

“If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all” should be Brad Sheridan’s motto in Frederik Pohl’s novel “All the Lives He Led”.  His home, and basically entire country, has been destroyed by a massive explosion coming from Yellowstone National Park (“someone should have known there was something more sinister to those geysers”)- putting his family into poverty and relocating them to a run-down, dirty slum in New York’s Staten Island.  He makes some money running different scams on the streets, but needs more if he’s going to make anything out of life. So he enlists himself as an indentured servant; and winds up in Italy at the 2000th Anniversary of the Destruction of Pompeii (ironic, isn’t it?)