Book Review: Personal by Lee Child

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“Personal” by Lee Child is a fantastic book. I love the voice and the feel of the narrative. He uses a bit of an unconventional writing style, but it is uniquely his own. If you, like me, have never read anything he’s written before, I highly recommend buying one of his books and giving it a shot. I mean, come on… He’s a best-selling author for a damn good reason. He writes gripping thrillers that are really driven and action-packed. I’m already looking forward to picking up some more of his books and devouring them.

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Book Review: Deadly Kiss by Bob Bickford

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“Deadly Kiss” grabbed me right from the synopsis. Decades of deaths can all be blamed on a stolen kiss that happened out back of a country store in Georgia in 1946. Mike has to follow the trail of secrets if he’s ever going to solve the mystery of what was silently haunting his father ever since he was a young boy.

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Book Review: The Rising by Heather Graham and Jon Land

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I decided to read this book because it was co-written by two wonderful, friendly people whom I had the pleasure of meeting last year at ThrillerFest. What do you get when two amazing bestselling authors put their heads together? A freaking fantastic book that grabs you and holds on right up until the very end.

"The Rising" by Heather Graham and Jon Land is a gripping thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat. It took me around a week to read it, but every time I put it down, I couldn’t wait until I had time to pick it up again and read some more. It’s full of questions and the mystery keeps driving the story forward. I just had to keep reading. I had to know what the hell this was all about.

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Book Review: Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris

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In "Dead Ever After," the thirteenth and final Sookie Stackhouse book, we see a lot of changes and get to revisit a lot of old friends, as well as a few old enemies. First, is the style change. To the best of my recollection, all of the other books were written exclusively from Sookie’s perspective. Entirely first person, and in a very casual form. It’s very colloquial, charming, and endearing. But in this book, we get a number of perspective shifts where we are witnessing an event from third person, well outside of Sookie’s knowledge, even after the end of the book. She had no way of knowing any of it. I actually liked this change. It gave us what we needed to know, without Sookie knowing, too.

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Book Review: A Front Page Affair by Radha Vatsal

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The novel starts out at a lavish Independence Day Garden Party on Monday, July fifth, 1915. JP Morgan, Jr. was shot two days ago and people are buzzing with the gossip while Kitty Weeks mingles with the guests. Kitty is an aspiring reporter, who thus far has been relegated to writing fluff for the Ladies Pages. She watches a spectacular display of Japanese fireworks, which showers the guests with little paper cutouts of various shapes. After the hour-long show is over, a man is found shot dead in the stables. Kitty goes with some of the others to check it out, which sucks her into a sinister series of events where nothing is quite as it seems and no one should really be trusted.

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I'm off to NYC!

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Today I’m leaving Kansas City, Missouri, to head for New York. I’ll be attending the annual conference for the International Thriller Writers—ThrillerFest. This year is their 12th, but it will only be my second. I hope to make this my yearly conference that I always go to, and to start peppering in others as the years pass. I’ll also be on my first panel this year.

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