Lisa reads Sixkill by Robert B. Parker
When I heard the news of Robert B. Parker’s passing, I was heartbroken. I have been reading his Spenser novels for ages and the thought there would be no more of them — too much to contemplate. Sixkill
In Sixkill, Spenser is older and wiser and without his usual back-up, Hawk, who is off in Central Asia. We start off with a visit from our old friend, Martin Quirk, who wants Spenser to look into a murder. A particularly nasty piece of work named Jumbo Nelson is shooting a movie in Boston and has apparently murdered a young woman he hooked up with. At least, she died in his bed, the coroner isn’t quite sure of what, and he claims to have been barely sober enough to notice she was dead when he came back from taking a leak. Like I said, nasty fella. As much as everyone wants to put him away, Quirk isn’t sure, and Spenser trusts Quirk’s instincts. [Read more →]
by Justin Cartwright, I wasn’t sure that I was going to love it. The book came to me through the 
was the 13th Ella Clah novel, I was a little cautious. The great thing about the book is that without ever reading any of the previous books, I was able to enjoy Ella’s adventures and not feel at all lost.
by Amanda Kyle Williams is a debut novel with great promise. The characters are terrific and the mystery is compelling — I put the book down half-way through to check Amazon and see if I could pre-order the next book. Sadly, I can’t, but I will be pestering her publisher for a review copy.
isn’t your typical book about vampires. These aren’t necessarily creatures that suck your blood and hate garlic, but they are creatures who steal something essential from you. They draw something — energy, will, love, vitality — from you and leave your diminished. They aren’t terribly happy stories, not surprisingly. Two of them were so cruel that I found them deeply disturbing. But all in all, this is a very good collection. 
did not disappoint.
, Lucian Glass is a member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team. He is caught up in the case of Malachi Samuels, a renowned reincarnationist who is searching for Memory Tools, artifacts which may finally prove that reincarnation exists and help us access our past lives. 
is a fairy tale. Not a cute Disney fairy tale, but one of those old Grimm Brothers’ tales, with heartbreak and revenge and bad folks meeting nasty ends. Even while parts of the story have a very modern feel, there are still ties to its more mythic underpinnings. I really enjoyed that part of the story.
is a quick little read (under 200 pages) about art appraisal — determining the value of all sorts of art objects for insurance, estate and sale purposes. She has visited the homes of the rich and famous, of hoarders and eccentrics, and looked at all of their stuff. This is high up on my list of very cool jobs. 
, Steven Sidor sets an extremely creepy stage. A small town in the middle of nowhere, a blizzard, and the eve of a holiday, when no one expects bad things to happen. These are nice people — Vera, Adam, Wyatt, Opal and Max — and they have no idea what’s coming for them. Vera had a fight with her boyfriend and ran. She meets Adam on the road, heading home to see his parents for Christmas. Wyatt and Opal’s life together has already been scarred by violence; they thought running the Rendezvous Motel would give them the peace and quiet they wanted.
