It’s been an eclectic reading week for me. I started out with Wendy Webb’s The Tale of Halcyon Crane, which reminded me, atmospherically, a lot of one of my old favorites, Barbara Michaels’ The Crying Child, both set on isolated islands, both involving family mysteries, paranormal goings-on, and the ghost of a child. From there,…

It’s been a week of re-reads for me, including some that go way back. In the less way back category, I went on a Susan Elizabeth Phillips kick. There’s something about her contemporary romances that spells “summer reading” for me. Maybe because so many of them take place during the summer? This time around, I…

Here’s what I’ve been reading this week: — Susanna Kearsley, The Firebird. I’ve been a fan of Susanna Kearsley ever since I stumbled upon Season of Storms in a B&N in Boston back in 2001. For those of you who follow Kearsley, The Firebird manages to link two of her previous books: my all time…

This week, I went on a Later Books by Jennifer Crusie kick, reading Wild Ride (which I would describe as a paranormal swashbuckler, for lack of a better genre tag) and re-reading Maybe This Time, Crusie’s take on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, haunted governess and all. The latter was absolutely perfect for…

I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of another book care package, which meant lots of new reads for me this week. Here’s what I’ve been reading: — Jonathan Aycliffe, Whispers in the Dark Very creepy classic Gothic, set in the north of England at the turn of the century, told in the requisite…

Do you ever start a book at the wrong time? There are a handful of books that I’ve begun while Not in the Mood, put aside, and then re-discovered and loved years later. That’s what happened to me this week with the first book in C.S. Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyr series, What Angels Fear, which…

This has been a week of all new books for me: — Donna Andrews, Stork Raving Mad. I’ve lost track of which one this is in Donna Andrews’s Meg Langslow mystery series– eleven or twelve, I think? It has the same strong first person voice and madcap sensibility as her others, as Meg Langslow, eight…

I had a bit of a Jennifer Crusie mini-marathon this week (which would have turned into a maxi-marathon if I could have remembered what I did with Welcome to Temptation and Bet Me). Here’s what I’ve been reading this week: — Laurie King, The Art of Detection. This is the fifth of King’s Kate Martinelli…

It’s been a Young Adult week for me, reading-wise. Here’s what I’ve been reading this week: — Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown. This is the prequel to one of my all time favorite books, The Blue Sword. (Although each can be read as a stand alone.) In the mythical kingdom of Damar, an…

This week was a combo of the old and the new for me: re-reads of old favorites and a new mystery novel from one of my auto-buy authors. Here’s what I’ve been reading this week: — Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love. Nancy Mitford’s classic novel of a young woman’s debut and romantic missteps in…