Archive for January, 2010

Kage Baker

We lost Kage Baker today.  She  fought uterine cancer very privately but then, earlier in January, her sister and caregiver, Kathleen, let the public know that she was ill and that the cancer had spread to her brain. Treatment was aggressive but the cancer was more so.  The world of speculative fiction has lost someone [...]

January 31, 2010   Posted in: Tales of a Bookseller  No Comments

Review: Grave Secret

Grave Secret
Charlaine Harris
Berkley, 2009
ISBN 0425230155
Hardcover
Harper Connelly and Tolliver Lang are going back home to Texas to salve a rich rancher’s curiosity. Harper is to read Rich Joyce’s remains to tell his granddaughter how he really died. What she discovers is nothing the family actually wanted to know.
Someone Rich knew greeted him on the road and [...]

January 30, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Full Reviews  No Comments

Review: Broken Places

Broken Places
Sandra Parshall
Poisoned Pen Press, February 2010
ISBN 1590586530
Hardcover (ARC)–Also Available in Trade Paperback
When I began this book, I thought that I had remembered that I had read both previous Dr. Rachel Goddard books. I was wrong and I believe it influenced my reading of this book. I will have to go back and read the [...]

January 29, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Full Reviews  3 Comments

#Snowpocalypse in #RVA

We’re supposed to get snow this weekend, most likely a really big one, maybe as much as 10 or 12 inches.  It’s time to panic.
OK, I hear sniggering from up there in Minnesota and North Dakota  and over there in Michigan.  Stop that—anybody who chooses to live where you get 4 feet at a time [...]

January 28, 2010   Posted in: Tales of a Bookseller  One Comment

The Fashionable Hamilton

A frequent—and always a favorite—visitor at the shop was Ellen Byerrum, author of the delightful Crime of Fashion Mysteries, and Hamilton obviously found her books to be great pillows.   Ellen is one of those rare authors who manage to hit all venues for her mystery world including books, plays,
TV movies and even a video game.
Check [...]

January 27, 2010  Tags:   Posted in: Tales of a Bookseller  One Comment

Film in the Literary Sense

Author of seven Margot O’Banion & Max Skull mysteries, Kit Sloane’s offbeat stories chronicle the intricacies of Hollywood filmmaking from the point of view of her protagonist, feature film editor Margot O’Banion and her significant other, director Max Skull. She was the first fiction editor of Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine from 1996-1998. A longtime member [...]

January 26, 2010   Posted in: Guest Blogs  2 Comments

Review: Terratorva

Terratorva
Laura Rotter
AuthorHouse, September 2009
ISBN 9781449030926
Trade Paperback
Three 12-year-old children, confined indoors because it’s a rainy day, discover that Dan’s cat, Wix, can talk.  Wix is a Rimor, sent from a world called Terratorva to explore other worlds in search of help.  Terratorva is suffering  from attacks of an evil race of creatures known as Extraxis.  These [...]

January 25, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: My Reviews  No Comments

Review: The Perfect Couple

The Perfect Couple
Brenda Novak
Mira Books
ISBN 0778326675
Mass Market
Tiffany’s got simple instructions from her husband, Colin.  Dump ‘Rover’s’ body.  When she hears sounds and screaming from the trunk, she realizes the boy is alive.  A frantic call to Colin and he tells her to kill the kid and dump him.  Unfortunately for her, the boy manages to [...]

January 24, 2010  Tags:   Posted in: Full Reviews  One Comment

Ailing Cons

Last Saturday, Annie & I went down to Williamsburg on a day trip to MarsCon.  We couldn’t get in the dealers room as a vendor this time but we wanted to support the con and do a little networking so we headed on down the road (an arduous journey, donchaknow, all of about an hour) [...]

January 22, 2010   Posted in: Tales of a Bookseller  No Comments

Review: Elegy Beach

Elegy Beach
Steven R. Boyett
Ace Books
ISBN 0441017959
Hardcover
Thirty years ago, at 4:30 PM all over the world everything changed. Technology stopped working and magic began. Creatures like unicorns, centaurs, and werewolves walked the world.
And the old cities fell apart as looters ‘libbed’ what they needed to survive from business establishments and homes.
Fred is an apprentice ‘caster’, the [...]

January 21, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Full Reviews  No Comments