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Posted by Grete, on February 28th, 2009
Posted by Grete, on February 27th, 2009  Everybody loves Uncle Mo, he’s the favourite seller of candy and ice-cream in Trenton and in everyone’s eyes can do no wrong. Unfortunately Stephanie is sent to find him after he jumps bail and Trenton isn’t pleased with her. Relying on help from Lula, Ranger and the interference of Joe Morelli, she starts to uncover facts that point to Uncle Mo not being the sweet, harmless man everyone loves. But will anyone believe her. Holding her hamster to ransom is the biggest mistake anyone can make because now Stephanie means business.
This is the third book in the Stephanie Plum series and the character of Stephanie continues to grow on me as she tries to get to grips with being a bounty hunter. She has a great knack for uncovering things that make life much more complicated and her humour and gutsy attitude combine to make for an entertaining book. The characters of Lula and Ranger are again taken further and I have to say I love their inclusion as major characters. I also like that things between Joe and Stephanie have been taking a long time to heat up. The chemistry was there from the first book but it’s not really until now that it really starts taking off.
Another great book from Janet Evanovich and unfortunately I have to wait until the fourth book is delivered before I can get stuck in. Curses!
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Posted by Grete, on February 27th, 2009
Posted by Grete, on February 27th, 2009  Stephanie Plum is in a fix. She lost her job, had her car repossessed and was running out of furniture to hock. When she hears her low-life cousin Vinnie is looking for someone to do filing at his bail bond company, she goes to see him but since the position already got filled, persuades Vinnie to let her try her hand at bounty hunting. Setting her sights on bringing in Joe Morelli – a cop accused of murder who went on the run, if she can catch him, she could earn herself enough to stave off the debt collecters. Morelli though, isn’t that eager to be found.
I’d not come across Janet Evanovich before and found a couple of the later books in the Stephanie Plum series in a charity shop. I bought them, putting them aside until I could get the previous ones. My friend Jody said they were very good so I kept an eye out and finally got started on this series.
I love the character of Stephanie Plum. She starts out bounty hunting with no skills other than being gutsy and in need of money. She isn’t a superhero or a kick ass martial arts expert, just an ordinary girl trying to make a living. She’s real, makes mistakes, has a knack for getting herself into trouble but manages to come through in the end. She has history with Joe Morelli and their interactions are very amusing and often very sweet. Her family are also hilarious, especially her grandma who is larger than life. I was entertained throughout and the pace of the book worked very well and by the time I was finished, I definately wanted more.
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Posted by Grete, on February 26th, 2009 I decided to do the rounds of charity shops this morning looking for books. Specifically I was looking for the 4th book in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich but it was not to be. I did however get a fair few I wasn’t actively looking for  Heeeeeeee!
Today’s haul :
Hard Eight – Janet Evanovich
To the Nines – Janet Evanovich
Motor Mouth – Janet Evanovich
Love Overboard – Janet Evanovich
Darkly Devoted Dexter – Jeff Lindsay
No Rest for the Wicked – Kresley Cole
Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night – Kresley Cole
Knight of Darkness – Sherrilyn Kenyon (writing as Kinley MacGregor)
Dark Fire – Christine Feehan
Dark Challenge – Christine Feehan
Immortals: The Crossing – Joy Nash
Immortals: The Haunting – Robin Popp
Immortals: The Redeeming – Jennifer Ashley
Heat (Buffy/Angel) – Nancy Holder
Definately time to cull my collection again, I am out of room on the shelves!
Posted by tony, on February 25th, 2009  Simon Green doesn’t, in my opinion, write sophisticated stories. He does however write engaging stories and interesting characters. Into the Nightside brings together two reasonably short novels, Something from the Nightside and Agents of Light and Darkness which are the first and second Nightside stories. I think putting them into a single paperback is pretty sensible because they’re really quite short on their own.
The stories revolve around a private detective (John Taylor) who has a knack for finding people and things, and the twist is the dark core of London – the Nightside. A fantasy world within the normal world in which just about anything is possible. Something from the Nightside gives a good introduction to John and the Nightside location, and Agents of Light and Darkness drive us a little further into the underlying threads Simon is trying to build.
Being both quite short, neither story really has a multi-threaded complex plot, rather we follow John on investigations which lead him through the mysterious, dangerous and fantastic world that is the Nightside. We’re introduced to lots of characters with weird skills and histories and presented with magical beings and supernatural situations. Most of the story is driven by either John’s internal monologue, or his conversations with the characters around him, interspersed with action and violence.
The book is certainly engaging, but at times I had to work hard to ignore the flaws. Although John’s gift is the ability to find anything, he has built a reputation in the Nightside of being dangerous, and that reputation gets him out of rather more situations than it ought to. Characters we meet are increasingly bizarre without any single thread tying them together, characters from science fiction, history, fantasy, the supernatural all mingling together. At times I felt like I was looking at a rainbow made up of 86 colours, it might look pretty but you can’t really get a sense of any detail or specifics. I ended up letting a lot of the background wash over me.
We are led to believe the Nightside is huge and heavily populated, but when it comes under massive sustained attack in Agents of Light and Darkness I didn’t get the sense of thousands of people trying to escape, just a small few making a desperate stand. The Nightside is full of flat, endless hoards of non-descript fantastical beings.
Despite those issues, I did finish the book and I enjoyed it enough to pick up the second (Haunting the Nightside) which is again comprised of two stories.
Into the Nightside is pulp urban fantasy, it’s easy reading and the main characters are just engaging enough to keep you turning the pages despite the flaws.
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Posted by tony, on February 25th, 2009 So we’ve dropped the Drupal site (the old bookthing stuff), and migrated the content across to Wordpress. I don’t have time to ‘learn’ more than one major CMS enough to keep it patched and well managed, and since I find Wordpress so trivial to implement, administer and keep up-to-date, it won out. This theme is lovely and in combination with the AZIndex plugin, the site can present all the information we want in nice indexes.
I have a tendency to try and get things ‘just right’ before moving to a new web layout, but then spend so much time playing with tiny details that it never transpires (I already tried to move to Wordpress once, but spent three weeks messing with the template). So this time, we’re bringing the site up, putting the content up, and then we’ll mess with the fine detail later (like at the moment, on the reviews, they don’t have anywhere specific to list the author and other details, we’ll work on that).
If you’re one of the friends we have who reads and you feel like you might ever want to write a book review and whack it up here – just let one of us know and we’ll sort you out with an account.
Otherwise, hope you enjoy the site – who ever you are – and we’re trying hard to get more content in the next few months.
Posted by Grete, on February 24th, 2009  Joanne Baldwin has the ability to control the weather. She is part of the Wardens Association, a large group of individuals who have talents to manipulate and control the elements, protecting mankind from the ravages of Mother Nature. Unfortunately she is also running from the accusation of murder and there are some storms she just can’t control. Can she get to the one man she believes can save her and will the infamous Djinn help or just get in her way?
Ill Wind is the first book in the Weather Warden series. I’ve actually had this book for quite a while, having picked it up on one of my charity shop rampages. I’ve only just gotten around to reading it and I wish I had done so sooner!
Rachel Caine has a very clear way of writing and it’s very easy to read. The major characters are compelling and you are into the action as soon as you start chapter one. I like the way it is laid out, you are in on the action as it happens then have brief flashback periods that fill you in on the history of the main character, Joanne.
I finished the book wanting to immediately read the rest of the series which is a good sign but unfortunately this was the only one I had. The rest will have to wait! Booooo.
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Posted by Grete, on February 24th, 2009  About Jill Mansell
Jill Mansell is a full time writer (when she’s not procrastinating) and lives in Bristol with her family. With 20 books all still in print, and over a decade of experience, she is one of Britain’s best loved writers of romantic comedy.
http://www.jillmansell.co.uk/index.html
My comments
Perfect Timing was the first book I read by Jill Mansell, and I loved it so much I had to read it again straight away. My only experience of humourous romance up til then had been Jilly Cooper and it was a revelation to find someone who also created larger than life characters who were funny, charming, witty, and above all, very human. I regularly re-read them and I am always entertained and get very excited when she has a new book published.
Bibliography
Posted by tony, on February 24th, 2009 David wrote a fair old number of novels over the years, and produced a couple of graphic novels (collaborating with Stan Nicholls and Fangorn), his publishers have released a number of compilations and finally, David has written one book under a pseduonym. This is a list of the main publications, it doesn’t attempt to include all the regional publications, or different editions of each publication.
The books are split into sections based on the world in which they are set, or on their shared theme. Within each section, the books are listed in publication order (when I know what that was!)
Drenai Tales
- Legend
- The King Beyond The Gate
- Quest For Lost Heroes
- Waylander
- Waylander II – In the Realm of the Wolf
- The First Chronicles Of Druss The Legend
- The Legend Of Deathwalker
- Winter Warriors
- Hero in the Shadows
- White Wolf
- Swords of Night and Day
Hawk Queen Tales
- Ironhand’s Daughter
- The Hawk Eternal
Sipstrassi Tales
- Wolf In Shadow
- Ghost King
- Last Sword Of Power
- The Last Guardian
- Bloodstone
Rigante Tales
- Sword In The Storm
- Midnight Falcon
- Ravenheart
- Stormrider
Greek Tales
- Lion of Macedon
- Dark Prince
Troy
- Lord of the Silver Bow
- Shield of Thunder
- Fall of Kings
Others
- Dark Moon
- Echoes of the Great Song
- Knights Of Dark Renown
- Morningstar
Omnibuses
- The Complete Chronicles of the Jerusalem Man
- The Drenai Tales
- Stones of Power: A Sipstrassi Omnibus
- The Drenai Tales – Volume 1
- The Drenai Tales – Volume 2
- The Drenai Tales – Volume 3
Graphic Novels
- Legend: The Graphic Novel
- Wolf in Shadow: The Graphic Novel
Non-Fantasy
- White Knight, Black Swan (as Ross Harding)
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Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.
Rosenbach, A. S. W.
About BookThing! BookThing! is a website where Grete can indulge her passion for books. There are reviews covering a range of genres (paranormal romance, crime, fantasy, romantic comedy), bibliographies for selected authors, features and sometimes the odd free book giveaway!
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At 16, Claire Danvers has graduated High School and gotten early admission at Morganville University. Being so young and so clever doesn’t go down too well with her dorm mates and the ‘in’ girls make their feelings very clear. After a bad incident, she finds refuge at an old house outside of campus where her new house mates are more than a little odd but welcoming. Then she starts finding out that Morganville is not your average college town and going out after dark can have very sinister consequences.
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