Audiobook "No One To trust" by Iris Johansen

Elena Kyler was born in Colombia and raised by her rebel fighter father, formerly an American mercenary. After her father dies and her rebel comrades sell out to druglord Rico Chavez, Elena, now in her mid-20s, concocts a desperate plan to save herself and her five-year-old son Barry from Chavez, who also happens to be Barry's father. She contacts the DEA, who call in the Bondian Sean Galen, a debonair maverick. The plan is to bring Elena and Barry to the U.S., then capture Chavez when he comes for his son. After a daring air-lift escape, Sean, Elena and Barry make it to California, but an ambush by Chavez's men leaves them running for their lives. Unaccustomed to relying on the kindness of strangers, Elena finds herself forced to lean on Sean as the two zigzag across the U.S., falling in love along the way. In the current climate, the threat of drug cartels feels dated and Chavez is such an over-the-top nasty that he's downright silly. Add to that a melodramatic anti-heroine, who's also a cliched assassin-with-a-heart-of-gold seeking spiritual redemption, and a Southeastern climax that's as '80s as Miami Vice, and the sum total becomes a derivative stew.

Audiobook "Hot Blooded" by Lisa Jackson

First One Dead Body...

A prostitute lies strangled in a seedy French Quarter hotel room. Miles away, in a rambling plantation house on the sultry shores of Lake Ponchartrain, popular late-night radio host Dr. Samantha Leeds receives a threatening crank call. All in a day's work for a celebrity. Who would think to link the two?

Then Another...

A second hooker's corpse turns up. Samantha's ominous caller persists, along with a mysterious female claiming to be a woman from her past -- a woman who's been dead for years. With Detective Rick Bentz convinced that the serial killer prowling the shadowy streets of New Orleans is somebody close to Samantha, she doesn't dare trust anyone. Especially not Ty Wheeler, her seductive new neighbor who seems to know more about her than a stranger should.

...And Another

Somebody has discovered Samantha's darkest secret. Somebody is convinced that lives must be sacrificed to pay for her sins. So far, the victims have been strangers. Prostitutes. But as a cunning, cold-blooded killer grows bolder, Samantha wonders in dread if she will be the next to die...

Audiobook "Mount Vernon Love Story" by Mary Higgins Clark

In Mount Vernon Love Story -- famed suspense writer Mary Higgins Clark's long-out-of-print first novel -- the bestselling author reveals the flesh-and-blood man who became the "father of our country" in a story that is charming, insightful, and immensely entertaining.

Always a lover of history, Mary Higgins Clark wrote this extensively researched biographical novel and titled it Aspire to the Heavens, after the motto of George Washington's mother. Published in 1969, the book was more recently discovered by a Washington family descendant and reissued as Mount Vernon Love Story. Dispelling the widespread belief that although George Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis, he reserved his true love for Sally Carey Fairfax, his best friend's wife, Mary Higgins Clark describes the Washington marriage as one full of tenderness and passion, as a bond between two people who shared their lives -- even the bitter hardship of a winter in Valley Forge -- in every way. In this author's skilled hands, the history, the love, and the man come fully and dramatically alive.

Challenge card April 2011

Birthday card

Audiobook "I Heard That Song Before" by Mary Higgins Clark

Mary Higgins Clark takes you deep into the mysteries of the human mind, where memories may be the most dangerous things of all.

Kay Lansing grew up in Englewood, New Jersey, daughter of the landscaper to the wealthy and powerful Carrington family. One day, accompanying her father to work, six-year-old Kay overhears a quarrel between a man and a woman that ends with the man's caustic response: "I heard that song before." That same evening, young Peter Carrington drives the nineteen-year-old daughter of neighbors home from a formal dinner dance at the Carrington estate, but she is not in her room the next morning and is never seen or heard from again.

Decades later, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Peter, not only for his neighbor's disappearance but also for the subsequent drowning death of his own pregnant wife in their swimming pool. But when Kay Lansing, now a librarian in Englewood, asks Peter's permission to hold a literary benefit cocktail party on his estate, she comes to see Peter as misunderstood and when he begins to court her, she falls in love -- and marries him. However, she soon makes a discovery that leads her to question her husband's innocence. She believes that the key to the truth lies in the identities of the man and woman whose quarrel she witnessed as a child. What she does not realize is that uncovering what lies behind these memories may cost Kay her life.

No Theme Layout

Earth Day card - Card exchange April 2011

Audiobook "Charade" by Sandra Brown

A medical miracle gave TV personality Cat Delaney more than a new heart. It gave her a second chance at life. After leaving Hollywood to host a San Antonio TV show spotlighting children with special needs, Cat fights to gain respect as a newscaster. She meets Alex Pierce, an ex-cop turned crime writer, who regards her as a woman, not as a heart patient. When fatal "accidents" begin killing the other heart recipients, Alex may -- or may not -- be her most important ally.

With her new world turning sinister and a mysterious stalker shadowing her every move, Cat is caught in a dark maze of betrayal and secrets...and perhaps sees too late the mask hiding a killer's face.

Currently Reading: "The Thomas Berryman Number" by James Patterson - His very first book ever! !

James Patterson's first novel...


The Thomas Berryman Number begins with three terrifying murders in the South. It ends with a relentless and unforgettable manhunt in the North. In between is the riveting story of a chilling assassin, the woman he loves, and the beloved leader he is hired to kill with extreme prejudice.

Audiobook "Daddy's Little Girl" by Mary Higgins Clark

From Mary Higgins Clark, America's Bestselling "Queen of Suspense," comes a chilling story of murder that reaches the heights of suspense while exploring the depths of the criminal mind.

Ellie Cavanaugh was seven years old when her older sister was murdered near their home in New York's Westchester County. It was young Ellie's tearful testimony that put Rob Westerfield, the nineteen-year-old scion of a prominent family, in jail despite the existence of two other viable suspects.
Twenty-two years later, Westerfield, who maintains his innocence, is paroled. Determined to thwart his attempts to pin the crime on another, Ellie, an investigative reporter for an Atlanta newspaper, returns home and starts writing a book that will conclusively prove Westerfield's guilt. As she delves deeper into her research, however, she uncovers horrifying facts that shed new light on her sister's murder. With each discovery she comes closer to a confrontation with a desperate killer.

Currently Reading; "French Toast: An American in Paris Celebrates the Maddening Mysteries of the French" by Harriet Welty Rochefort

FFrom Publishers Weekly

During the 1970s, Rochefort moved from Shenandoah, Iowa, to Paris, where she met and married her husband, Philippe. Here, she offers her reflections on what it's like to be the wife of a Frenchman and the mother of two French-American children. Although presented with a confidence that comes with long experience, the observations shared (Rochefort's but also those of French and fellow expatriate friends) are hardly illuminating. Rochefort relies on her experiences with French in-laws and friends to conclude that the French, unlike their American counterparts, would rather talk about sex than money, are quarrelsome and require their children to work hard in school. She finds that French wives are wonderful cooks who allow their husbands to dominate the conversation at parties and are always responsible for packing their husbands' suitcases. French husbands, according to Rochefort, really do shower less than American men but are infinitely more relaxed and adept at flirtation and seduction. (She comments that a single woman can live safely in France because French men aren't as oppressively aggressive as American men). In sum, her memoir, though competently written, trades in what appear to be old stereotypes, which, even if true, bring nothing new to our understanding of the French.

FFrom Library Journal

Did you know that in Paris it is quite normal to bang the cars in front and back of you as you maneuver in and out of a parking place? Or that you should fold and not cut the lettuce in your salad and that even fruit is eaten with a knife and fork? Fortunately, for those unacquainted with the finer points of French etiquette, Rochefort's book bridges the culture gap admirably. The Iowa-born author is a freelance journalist married to a Frenchman and has lived in France for over 20 years. Drawing on personal experience, she records her observations about Frenchwomen; French attitudes to food, sex, love, marriage, and money; the French educational system; and the dynamics of living in Paris. Some stereotypes are reinforced, but this chatty, informative book is great fun to read and over too soon.