January ~ 2010

1. Carved in Bone...Jefferson Bass

Very cool mystery! It is a fiction book, but it is based on a real place - the Body Farm is a place at the University of Tennesse where people study the effects of human decomposition that can help law enforcement agencies ID bodies and solve murders. Really interesting stuff!

2. Divine Misdemeanors...Laurell K. Hamilton

The newest in her Merry Gentry series. I think these last few books have been so much better. Less sex, more story.

3. Hunting Season...Nevada Barr
4. Liberty Falling...Nevada Barr
5. High Country...Nevada Barr

Just some more books in the Anna Pigeon series. Anna is an NPS Ranger who solves crimes at various National Parks around the country. Really fun series!

6. American Gods...Neil Gaiman

Quote:
Shadow gets out of prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm that becomes all too real in its manifestations. For instance, Shadow's dead wife Laura keeps showing up, and not just as a ghost--the difficulty of their continuing relationship is by turns grim and darkly funny, just like the rest of the book. Armed only with some coin tricks and a sense of purpose, Shadow travels through, around, and underneath the visible surface of things, digging up all the powerful myths Americans brought with them in their journeys to this land as well as the ones that were already here.

I had been putting off reading this book, but I really wish I hadn't! It was great! It took a couple of chapters to fully understand what was going on, but after that I didn't want to put it down. Really neat twist at the end that I didn't see coming.

7. Winter Study...Nevada Barr
8. Borderline...Nevada Barr

More Anna Pigeon books! I was kind of sad to finally read the last book in this series. I really hope Barr writes some more. I loved the characters she comes up with!

9. Library Careers...Deborah Sommer

I plan on applying for my MLIS next year, so I thought I'd get some research in now.

10. Flesh and Bone...Jefferson Bass

Quote:
Anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton founded Tennessee's world-famous Body Farm—a small piece of land where corpses are left to decay in order to gain important forensic information. Now, in the wake of a shocking crime in nearby Chattanooga, he's called upon by Jess Carter—the rising star of the state's medical examiners—to help her unravel a murderous puzzle. But after re-creating the death scene at the Body Farm, Brockton discovers his career, reputation, and life are in dire jeopardy when a second, unexplained corpse appears in the grisly setting. Accused of a horrific crime—transformed overnight from a respected professor to a hated and feared pariah—Bill Brockton will need every ounce of his formidable forensic skills to escape the ingeniously woven net that's tightening around him . . . and to prove the seemingly impossible: his own innocence.


11. The Devil's Bones...Jefferson Bass

Quote:
Two cases occupy Dr. Bass's fictional alter ego, Dr. Bill Brockton—the death of Mary Latham, a 47-year-old Knoxville native, whose charred remains were found in a burned-out car, and a disreputable Georgia crematorium that simply dumped bodies on its grounds. These probes soon take a backseat to a cat-and-mouse game with the doctor's arch nemesis, Garland Hamilton, who tried to frame him for murder in Flesh and Bone. When Hamilton escapes from incarceration before going to trial, Brockton must keep looking over his shoulder.

Really interesting books. Even though they are fiction, they are co-written by Dr. Bill Bass who founded The Body Farm in Tennessee, so a lot of the details are real. Forensic anthropology is one of the dreams I gave up when I married a military man, so these were a little glimpse of what might have been.

12. Shutter Island...Dennis Lehane

Quote:
It's 1954, and U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule arrive at a small island in Massachusetts' Outer Harbor. It is home to Ashcliffe Hospital, a federal institution for the criminally insane, and one of the patients has escaped. Although the two men are new partners, they have already developed a wry, jocular relationship while also swapping personal, painful details. Daniels' lost his much-loved wife two years prior in a fire, while Aule requested a transfer out of Seattle after being harassed over his personal relationship with a Japanese American woman. After interviewing the hospital's medical personnel, both men have the feeling they are being stonewalled, especially by the director, who seems to alternate between a cold authoritarianism and a sudden and sweeping compassion. When the island is hit by gale-force winds and Aule disappears, Daniels must go it alone, beset by the fear that he has been fed psychotropic drugs and the belief that the hospital is performing radical brain surgery as part of a secret-ops program.

There is a new movie coming out based on this book that J (the hubby) wants to see, so I needed to read it first. So glad I did! This was a fascinating book. There are so many twists in it. I certainly didn't see the ending coming!

13. The Foretelling...Alice Hoffman

Quote:
"Some stories are born out of misery and ashes and blood and terror": Hoffman's fourth novel for young adults, told in spare, lyrical vignettes, is one of these. In an all-female tribe of warriors, who kill all male babies and reproduce through sex with prisoners of war, the daughter of the fierce queen yearns for her mother's approval. Burdened by stigma (Rain was "born in sorrow" after the queen's rape) and by dark prophecies, the girl finds comfort in honing her battle skills and in developing friendships with other outsiders. After her mother dies bearing her second child, it falls to Rain to determine the future of her community.


This was a nice, short YA novel. Good, strong female characters. I think I will look for more books by Alice Hoffman.