On, Off by Colleen McCullough

It's 1965 and at a university research centre human body parts are discovered in a refrigerator. Then police lieutenant Carmine Delmonico finds that a string of similar horrifying events have occurred around the state.  There's a serial killer abroad.

OH WOW!!!   Good book until the last couple of pages when it became a really, really good book.

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

The story of the Alice that Alice in Wonderland was based on.


A fascinating read that draws you in and won't let go.

The Naked Face by Sidney Sheldon

Dr Judd Stevens is being framed for murder.  Will he survive to find out who is framing him?

Lots of twists and turns.  I didn't like the racist comments and attitudes.

The Catherine Wheel by Patricia Wentworth

The Catherine Wheel is an old smugglers inn and the site of a reunion of the Taverner family.  Scotland Yard suspects the owners of the inn are involved in drug smuggling and sends Miss Silver, an elderly spinster, to investigate.

A pleasant 'cosy' read.

My Lord Eternity by Debbie Raleigh

Regency vampire story ..... quick, light and without the usual erotic element of vampires.

Herotica 4 Ed. by Marcy Sheiner

A collection of short, erotic stories.  Some better than others, most were good.

A Vile Justice by Lauren Haney

4 odd murders in ancient Egypt have vizier Lieutenant Bak of the Medjay Police puzzled and asking whether it's the wrath of the gods or the work of human hands.

An interesting read.  A few twists and turns and a gradually unfolding mystery kept me reading. 

I liked the setting, ancient Egypt is an unusual setting for a mystery.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.  Or he would be if he didn't live in a graveyard and was raised and educated by ghosts.

A fun read full of imagination and adventure.

The Secrets of Jin-Shei by Alma Alexander

At first I thought this was set in China, but it ended up being a fantasy setting very much like China.

An entertaining read.

Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs

Tempe is sent to Guatemala to recover the bodies of the dead (known as "the Disappeareds") massacred during that country's vile civil war. It is in the village of Chupan Ya that she uncovers 28 dead bodies, and on the way to the site, two other forensic scientists are attacked on the road, shot, and left for dead. It is the beginning of an investigation which will haunt Tempe in the coming weeks.

Shortly after, her help is sought by the local police. Four teenage girls have gone missing in Guatemala City, and one of them is the daughter of the Canadian Ambassador. Is there a serial killer at work? Soon after, a decomposing body is found in a septic tank of a local hotel, and the investigating begins in earnest.

All the twists and turns keep you turning the pages. There were a couple of minor clues that didn't seem to lead anywhere. Overall a typical Kathy Reichs offering.

To Live and Die in Dixie by Kathy Hogan Trochek

When Callahan and her eccentric band of employees clean the Atlanta mansion of social climbing antiques dealer Elliot Littlefield, they find more than cobwebs and dust bunnies: a bust of Hitler in the study, flintlocks in the foyer, and a dead teenage girl in the master bedroom. What they don't find (because it's been stolen) is the diary of Lula Belle Bird, a prostitute who kept many a Confederate bigwig happy during the Civil War's darkest days. The diary, conservatively valued at $150,000, has been hotly pursued by everyone from university libraries to a lunatic Civil War buff. Littlefield is convinced that the diary's theft had something to do with the murder of the girl and he hires Callahan to find the book and, perhaps, the truth. As her search progresses, Callahan takes us on a rollicking tour of the New South, from the woolly world of Civil War reenactments to Rebel Yell Press (whose offices look like a cross between Tara and a Chevy dealership), from a carpetbagger's castle to an inner-city shotgun shack. Along the way, Callahan gets chilling glimpses of her landscape's underside: shady sexual doings at the slain girl's prim Catholic high school, a suave neighbor whose feud with Littlefield borders on psychosis, and the fact that Littlefield killed another girl two decades ago. At the center of all this is Callahan herself, bickering with her irascible mother, Edna, trying to keep a lid on the splendidly evoked eccentrics in her employ, taking a highly experimental anti-cancer drug, weighing the pros and cons of moving in with her beau, and narrowly dodging threats on her life.

A quick, cosy read.

Heart of the Outback by Lynne Wilding

Fiery and ambitious, brilliant architect Francey Spinetti is a young woman on her way to the top. When wealthy magnate CJ Ambrose introduces her to his vast North Queensland business empire and a careerscared local cop, Steve Parish - everything seems to be falling into place, including her love life.

I loved the setting on a station outside Mt Isa. The mystery wasn't hard to work out.

An easy read.

Rosalba by Sheila Bishop

This story examines something Regencies rarely do, the story of a woman who lives as a man's mistress rather than in respectable marriage. Through a combination of a runaway husband, lack of money, and falling in love, Rosalba becomes the hero's mistress.

This one just didn't do it for me.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

US Marshall Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He and his partner set out to find an escaped patient. How has a barefoot woman escaped an island from a locked room?"

An isolated island, a raging hurricane, a locked room, secret codes, a mental hospital, rumors of mysterious medical experiments frame the story.

It is a scary, deceptive, disorienting, complex story with one the best final pages I've come across in some time.

Hunting the Hunter by Shiloh Walker

Bounty hunter Kane Winter has spent two years looking for the mysterious woman who was there when his partner was killed. But when the hunted turns out to be a seductive vampire, Kane is consumed by a desire greater than vengeance-a hunger to possess this woman for himself.

Definitely steamy!

A good start to a new series.

Flesh Tones by M.J. Rose

On its face it's a mystery/ thriller about a woman who is charged with murdering her artist lover. But it turns out to be much more than that - it's a really satisfying look into human relationships - of friendships, romances and families - and also gets you thinking about abortion and euthanasia.

Fantastic book. An easy to read, engrossing book about sometimes difficult subjects.

I loved it and will have to go looking for more by this author.