Blood Will Have Blood by Linda Barnes

Famed theater director Arthur Darien's production of "Dracula" is in trouble.
Strange and macabre jokes -- including a batch of literally mixed Bloody Marys -- are unnerving the cast and threatening to close the play before opening night.Michael Spraggue enters the cast, but in a dual role unknown to most of them -- Arthur Darien has asked him to solve the mystery of the jokes before the jokes turn deadly. But Spraggue finds that he is not the only actor playing a dual role. Nobody is sticking to the script -- and a killer is bent on giving the performance of a lifetime!

A nice cosy mystery, well...maybe a little bit more gore than most cosies but not over the top.Overall an enjoyable, light read.

The Book Boy by Joanna Trollope

Alice has a secret...she can't read. All her life she has felt invisable. Her husband is a bully and her teenage children ignore her. She decides to do something about it and pays one of her sons friends to teach her to read.

A very quick, read of a light feel good story.Very enjoyable.

Late for the Wedding by Amanda Quick

Private investigators Lavinia Lake and Tobias March are hot on the trail of a murderer for hire . This time a macabre murderer appears to be copycatting two killers who left behind memento mori rings at the scenes of their crimes. The original Memento Mori Man murdered for hire decades earlier, taking on assignments only if he thought the target thoroughly deserved death. Three years before the start of this novel, the same "ghastly signature" was employed by Zachary Elland in tribute to his predecessor. Elland, March's fellow spy (during the Napoleonic wars), committed suicide after March unmasked him, so when a memento mori ring turns up on the doorstep of Elland's rich lover, Aspasia Gray, March is not surprised when she seeks him out at Lord Beaumont's country-house party. Lake, however, is dismayed, since Gray wants more than just March's investigative skills. A murder is promptly committed at Beaumont's estate, and Lake and March launch their investigations, centering on a certain unstylish blonde wig and a trio of dangerous, dowagers.

A Time of Exile by Katherine Kerr

The world of Deverry: an intricate tapestry of fate, past lives, and unfathomable magic.

A world populated by Elves, Men, Dwarves, and Wildfolk or faeries/elementals, some of whom are dark, without compassion or understanding of the worlds they interact with.

The Elves are a fallen race, driven out of their magnificent and palatial cities centuries before by invaders, and who now roam the plains as primitives. They possess the potential to be superlative magicians, but the knowledge was lost in the fall of their civilization. Humans, though warlike and shorter lived, have preserved this knowledge, but guard it jealously. The Wildfolk, basically magic incarnate, are unhinged from the effects of "karma", but lack permanence of personality, and cannot grow or develop, cursed to stagnation. The Dwarves are a secretive mystery, entrenched within the earth. Each has something to offer the other, and the story that unfolds is the story of this "technology" exchange, of sorts, between them.

This is the first book I've read in this series and it stands alone well. I would like to read the rest of the series.

B is for Burglar by Sue Grafton

Hired by neurotic, sleek Beverly Danziger to find missing sister Elaine Boldt, Kinsey finds herself shuttling between Boldt's Santa Teresa condo and the Florida apartment that was her last known destination. An enigmatic Pat Usher is living there, claiming to be a sub-tenant and suggesting Elaine is visiting friends in Sara-sota. At the Santa Teresa end, Kinsey worries about a possible connection between Elaine's abrupt departure and the murder of Marty Grice, her next-door neighbor and sometime bridge partner, whose bludgeoned body was found in their burned-out house by husband Leonard. His young drug-dealing nephew Mike knows more about that than he's telling. There are mysterious break-ins, savage apartment trashings and another death before Kinsey gets her act together and survives a gripping confrontation with the killer

It was OK, but I found myself putting the book down and doing other things so it didn't grab me. It is the first I've read of this series and will give the series another try.

Bare Bones by Kathy Reichs

In Bare Bones Kathy Reichs leads her heroine, Temperance Brennan, into one of her scariest, most gruesome adventures yet. As fans of this popular series already know, Tempe is a forensic anthropologist: an expert in the human form (especially bones) who helps solve crimes.

A dead baby is only the first in a series of grisly remains, both human and animal, that Tempe must sort through and decode. Meanwhile, as several seemingly unrelated cases begin to intertwine, her sleuthing puts her in the crosshairs of a very nasty stalker who hides behind an e-mail alias.

Full of detail and action as Kathy Reichs books usually are. My only complaint would be that it was a bit unbelievable how the 3 main cases she was investigating, all very different, tied together.Overall tho an enjoyable read. I can't believe how long I've had this book without reading it.

Wish Upon A Star by Olivia Goldsmith

Claire takes the ferry into Manhattan everyday, dreamily wishing that life could be as magical as it is in the novels she reads, and hoping she'll catch a glimsp of sexy lawyer Michael at work.Until one day, out of blue, Michael offers her a trip to London, all expenses paid, and Claire's fortunes take an extraordinary about-turn.

Crossing the Atlantic, a whole new world opens up for Claire. Finally, she can go to the ball - or, rather, revel in all the delights London has to offer a girl with a fresh spring in her step. The streets may not be paved with gold, but they are rich with opportunity.

But happy-ever-after isnt easy, even in fairytales and Claire must reckon without the obstructive efforts of a very strait-laced Englishman if she is going to have the happy ending she's after.

I enjoyed this. Not as fluffy as I had thought it would be. Entertaining escapism.