Finished FINISHED SHADOW OF NIGHT and started two more.

Really loved this one...maybe even more than the first in the series, A Discovery of Witches.  In this they are back in the past of Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare (which may be why I loved it so much).  Now they have come back to the present, and problems are seriously shaping up for them.  And who knows how long I have to wait for the third book in the series to be written!!!  Let alone, in paperback!!



I then switched to this.  I read the first part of this book a long time ago, The Sword in the Stone, thinking I might want to read it with my students.  I got a classroom set and waited to get a class of good enough readers to handle it, but I never did---or at least I never did after I'd read it and prepared.  I had lots of individual students who could have handled it, but never a classroom set...  So, I have just finished the second book--the Queen of Air and Darkness.  I thought it would be Morgan Le Faye, but here, it was her sister, Morgaise,  daughter of Igraine and the mother of Gawaine, Agravaine, Geharis, and Gareth.  This book centers mostly around her family, with Arthur's battle against Lot (Morgaise' husband) running a counterpoint.  Well written and much more entertaining than Morte d' Artur was.  I will come back to it, but now....



I have started Fever.  I am only to page 7, but it seems like it will be about cancer-causing pollution.  It promises to be good.

Finished VULCAN'S GLORY

Lts. Spock and Montgomery Scott's first mission on the Enterprise with Captain Pike and Number One.  Spock falls in love amid murder and mayhem.  Loved it every step of the way.



Am now about to start Shadow of Night, by Deborah Harkness.  This is the second book of the ALL SOUL'S TRILOGY, the first of which was A Discovery of Witches.

Finished PEOPLE OF THE MIST

True to W. Michael and Kathleen O'Neal Gear's earlier books, this also is set in prehistoric America, this in what we now call the Chesapeake Bay area.  The people we learn about here will eventually produce Powhattan and Pocahontas, but now it is 1300 AD, and we have a murder mystery to be solved by a most unlikely old man.  I have enjoyed it as much as any I've read, especially because I also enjoy murder mysteries...  Hurrah!



I am now about to start Vulcan's Glory, a Star Trek novel by D. C. Fontana.

Finished Mary Jane Clarks, NOWHERE TO RUN

Again a fast-paced thriller/mystery with clues and red herrings.  Now add Anthrax and hostage taking and a little psychosis thrown in, and it was a quick read, at least partially because I couldn't stop reading.  In other words, I loved it.




I have now started People of the Mist by W. Michael and Kathleen O'Neal Gear.  Set in the Chesapeake Bay area in about 1300 A. D., we have a murder mystery (well, the reader has a good idea of who did it, but the people have no idea) that could well start a war which would spell the end of three matriarchal villages.  I am well into it (nearly 200 pages in) and am enjoying it.

Finished A PERFECT BLOOD

I have now finished A Perfect Blood, by Kim Harrison.  The books stay exciting and inventive, and Rachel Morgan remains charming and likable as do the other major characters.  Even enemies hated in the first books, have gradually become more likable and some friends, loved in the first books, have either left, died, or become hated and left.  So, the stories stay fresh, and the overall topic of race hatred (addressed in most urban fantasies I have read) stays relevant.




I am now about to start Nowhere to Run by Mary Jane Clark, a mystery who writes very much in the same style as Mary Higgins Clark...again, impossible to put down books.

Finished BLOOD AND CIRCUSES

My experience with a small Shrine circus in the southern Midwestern US was somewhat different from the circus described in1920's Australia.  I saw no such hierarchy among/ between performers as was going on in this book.  As a costumer (not hired by the circus, but rather by individual performers), I hung with my friend, who was a clown, and two of his friends who were high trapeze artists.  Other performers and workers (roustabouts) were friendly.  Nonetheless, I loved this book.  I'm drawn to circuses, carnivals, festivals, craft and art shows...well all kinds of outdoor entertainment that don't qualify as "sports" and this was a good story.  I enjoyed the new characters we met in this one and the solving of a crime on two different fronts.




I have just started A Perfect Blood, by Kim Harrison, book 10 of the Rachel Morgan series.  I find this series clever, inventive, fun, and satisfying.  I love both the characters (Rachel, Jinx, and Ivy) as well as the setting (post "change" Cincinnati--ie. a future world.)  I have only just started, but already I am into it as Rachel is having radical identity--not theft--loss issues and to relieve a couple of those issues, she takes on a very challenging case assigned by a very scary vampire....  I'm looking forward to it.

Finished SON OF A WITCH

Totally enjoyed this one.  It was much more upbeat than Wicked (first in the series), though that couldn't be helped.  How can you write an upbeat book about the witch in The Wizard of Oz?  Characters were every bit as great in this one as the last, setting equally as multivaried, types of people and animals equally intriguing, and villains equally as evil.  Can't wait to get the next one in the series.



Have now started Blood and Circuses by Kerry Greenwood.  This is one of many Phryne Fisher mysteries.  We first encountered Phryne on PBS and loved the series, so TR started to read the books.  He has now convinced me to start them.  The stories are set in 1920's Australia and are wonderfully quirky.  Phryne is a free spirit--wealthy lady of leisure who loves to dabble in solving crime.  She pushes the limits of what might be consider moral, but is irreproachably ethical.  This is the oldest of the books I could find around the house, though TR says we have more.  This is #6 in the series, I understand.  My experience spending a summer with a circus in my adventurous youth has me really looking forward to this one.