The Printed Page

• Number of books read: 16 (9 eBooks)
• Number of pages read: 6,112
• DNFs: 1

1. Ruthless (House of Rohan, #1) by Anne Stuart | Entertaining
2. Reckless (House of Rohan, #2) by Anne Stuart | Entertaining
3. Breathless (House of Rohan, #3) by Anne Stuart | Entertaining
4. The Bookseller’s Sonnets by Andi Rosenthal | Excellent
5. The Violet Hour by Daniel Judson | Excellent
6. Murder in Chinatown (Gaslight mystery, #9) by Victoria Thompson | Favorite series
7. The Panic Zone by Rick Mofina | Excellent
8. Sacrifice by S.J. Bolton | Excellent
9. The Tapestry Shop by Joyce Elson Moore | Excellent
10. Mania by Craig Larsen | Excellent
11. The Lady’s Slipper by Deborah Swift | Excellent
12. Shadow Man by Cody McFadyen | Excellent
13. The Dressmaker by Posie Graeme-Evans | Good
14. The Price of Life by Greg McCarthy | Good
15. Devoured (Hatton and Roumonde Mystery) by D.E. Meredith | DNF
16. When the Devil Whistles by Rick Acker | Good
17. Murder on Bank Street (Gaslight mystery, #10) by Victoria Thompson | Favorite series

I love, love, love the cover and immediately (almost on looks alone) added The Black King to my wish list. In all honestly I’m hoping Mr. da Masto or his publicist will spot my post and offer me a review copy because I’m not sure I can wait until next year to get my hands on his book.

It’s Venice, 1600. A dangerous place for free-thinkers and gamblers alike and Choradino da Mosto is both. Once the student of Giordano Bruno – newly tried and executed in Rome – Choradino is already being watched. When he is finally arrested he is offered a harsh choice: to remain in gaol or become a spy for the Republic. All eyes are on England, where an ageing Elizabeth has yet to name her successor. The Venetian authorities have intercepted coded messages from the Queen’s magician, John Dee. They know Dee is chasing a mysterious manuscript – rumoured to have been brought back from Macedonia centuries before by Marco Polo. Choradino is charged with finding – and destroying – the heretical text before it falls into the hands of the Protestants. Choradino has no choice but to follow his orders. But as he joins a ship bound for Korcula, he discovers another cipher running beneath Dee’s code. And the whisper of a secret which could strike at the very heart of the English court…

• My rating: Good. For the most part I enjoyed reading When the Devil Whistles. Toward the end I was reminded of the movie True Lies when Arnold Schwarzenegger climbs on to the tail of the fighter jet. It was a really decent movie right up to that point. So with When the Devil Whistles. I was really enjoying the story as Mr. Acker spins quite a yarn right up to point where Conner flies the White Knight over the docks to save Allie and the guys and to keep a lid on things until the alphabet agencies arrive. I was like ‘really, give me a break’. But all in all I found When the Devil Whistles highly entertaining. ** And I just love the cover art.
• New-to-me author: Yes
• Would I read more from this author: Yes

Title: When the Devil Whistles

Author/web site: Rick Acker

Publisher: Abingdon Press

Publication date & page count: October ’10 & 390 pages

Allie Whitman and Connor Norman loved making the devils of the corporate world pay. Now, it’s their turn. And the price could be their lives.

“I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t.” That’s what Allie Whitman tells herself every night as she lies awake. Sometimes she even believes it. But mostly she knows deep down that her inability to make a hard choice has put millions of lives at risk, including her own. Now the only one who can help her is her lawyer, Connor Norman. Unfortunately, Allie’s actions have destroyed Connor’s trust in her—and may destroy much, much more.

• My rating: DNF’d at pg. 76; Well I obviously won’t be giving Devoured the same glowing recommendation as the other two reviewers at Amazon have done. The three of us may have been reading the same story and while they came away with high praise for Devoured I didn’t finish it. Mostly I found myself wondering why I kept turning page after page when I genuinely had no interest in what little had happened in those first 76 pages. My hope for Devoured was that I would find a new historical mystery series to follow. That didn’t happen though all is not lost as my copy is destined for the shelves at my local library giving someone else the opportunity to read Devoured cover to cover.
• New-to-me author: Yes; debut novel I believe
• Would I read more from this author: No

Title: Devoured

Author/web site: D.E. Meredith

Publisher: Minotaur

Publication date & page count: October ’10 & 291 pages

London in 1856 is gripped by a frightening obsession. The specimen collecting craze is growing, and discoveries in far off jungles are reshaping the known world in terrible and unimaginable ways. The new theories of evolution threaten to disrupt the fragile balance of power that keeps the sprawling city in chaotic order – a disruption that many would do just about anything to prevent.

When the glamorous Lady Bessingham is found murdered in her bedroom, surrounded by her vast collection of fossils and tribal masks, Adolphus Hatton and his morgue assistant Albert Roumande are called in to examine the crime scene – and the body. In the new and suspicious world of forensics and autopsy examinations, Hatton and Roumande are the best. But the crime scene is not confined to one room. In their efforts to help the infamous Inspector Adams track down the Lady’s killer, Hatton and Roumonde uncover a trail of murders all connected to a packet of seditious letters that, if published, would change the face of society and religion irrevocably.

• My rating: Good; I read half the book in a single sitting finishing it the next day. While there weren’t a lot of surprises as I’d figured out where Mr. McCarthy was headed with his story it was engrossing and gave me lots to think about along the way. The price of life pays out in so many ways for his characters and each must ultimately decide what price they are willing to pay. Some will pay with their lives, others will pay with their sense of self-worth and integrity. I will be adding Mr. McCarthy to my authors to watch list.
• New-to-me author: Yes; debut novel
• Would I read more from this author: Yes

Title: The Price of Life

Author/web site: Greg McCarthy

Publisher: Otherworld Publications

Publication date & page count: July ’10 & 307 pages

Eight-year-old Jennifer Haller’s brain tumor is killing her. A timely CT scan would likely have saved her, and a new surgery offers hope for a cure, but Julie Haller is crushed when their insurance company refuses to pay for her daughter’s operation.

Shortly after Jennifer’s diagnosis, Marine Captain Ed Haller loses his leg to a roadside bomb in Iraq. He comes home to rehabilitate while Jennifer wages her own losing battle with cancer and its treatment. Jennifer’s death leads the family to Fort Worth lawyer Grant Mercer, whom they hire to sue Jennifer’s neurologist.

As Mercer works the case, Julie Haller learns the results of recent tort reform efforts, including a $250,000 limit in medical malpractice cases. She and her husband realize that a quarter-million dollar price tag on a beloved eight-year-old girl is simply inconceivable. They have no interest in the money, focusing instead on their responsibility to honor their daughter by seeking justice for her death.

The murders of a lobbyist in Austin, a state senator on a remote country road, and an insurance executive in New York seem unrelated until Jennifer’s doctor is kidnapped. Mercer makes the disturbing connection between the victims and his case, and discovers how far some people will go when the usual avenues of justice are too sharply curtailed.

• My rating: Loved it. If I hadn’t gotten an ARC from Librarything I definitely would have spent $10 for the Kindle edition.
• New-to-me author: Yes; debut novel
• Would I read more from this author: Yes

Title: The Lady’s Slipper

Author/web site: Deborah Swift

Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin

Publication date & page count: November ’10 & 436 pages

It is 1660. The King is back, but memories of the Civil War still rankle. In rural Westmorland, artist Alice Ibbetson has become captivated by the rare Lady’s Slipper orchid. She is determined to capture its unique beauty for posterity, even if it means stealing the flower from the land of recently converted Quaker, Richard Wheeler. Fired by his newfound faith, the former soldier Wheeler feels bound to track down the missing orchid. Meanwhile, others are eager to lay hands on the flower, and have their own powerful motives. Margaret Poulter, a local medicine woman, is seduced by the orchid’s mysterious herbal powers, while Sir Geoffrey Fisk, Alice’s patron and a former comrade-in-arms of Wheeler, sees the valuable plant as a way to repair his ailing fortunes and cure his own agonizing illness. Fearing that Wheeler and his new friends are planning revolution, Fisk sends his son Stephen to spy on the Quakers, only for the young man to find his loyalties divided as he befriends the group he has been sent to investigate. Then, when Alice Ibbetson is implicated in a brutal murder, she is imprisoned along with the suspected anti-royalist Wheeler. As Fisk’s sanity grows ever more precarious, and Wheeler and Alice plot their escape, a storm begins to brew, from which no party will escape unscathed.

• My rating: Loved it. The Tapestry Shop is a wonderfully imagined, beautifully written fictionalized biography of Adam de la Halle wrapped in a touching love story.
• New-to-me author: Yes
• Would I read more from this author: Yes

Title: The Tapestry Shop

Author/web site: Joyce Elson Moore

Publisher: Five Star

Publication date & page count: November ’10 & 324 pages

Adam de la Halle, a thirteenth century musician, returns to the city of his birth to confront the reality of his failed marriage, but first, he must find the hangmen who stole his purse and his dignity.

As protégé of King Louis’ nephew, Adam attends the university in Paris. When he meets Catherine, a shopkeeper’s daughter, his life takes an unexpected turn.

Catherine is bound to another by a secret she cannot reveal. Her deep religious convictions and guilt for her past bring danger to her and to those she loves. When she decides to join the king’s latest crusade, Adam must confront his disdain for what he considers an intolerant Church, based on his knowledge of its treatment of Cathars and Jews.

Torn by conflicting ideals, they move toward their destiny, each determined to prevail, but the choices they make bring them both to heights and depths neither could ever imagine.

• My rating: I’m a thriller junkie and Mr. Mofina’s books satisfy my craving. The Panic Zone is a great thriller that reaches out and locks the reader into heart pumping action from the first page. There is no let up when reading The Panic Zone or any other Rick Mofina novel. You feel like you’re on a roller coaster ride from scaryville with no brakes. It’s a sure and steady climb to top. Then suddenly you’re rushing down the other side breathless and scared beyond reason.
• New-to-me author: No
• Would I read more from this author: Yes

Title: The Panic Zone

Author/web site: Rick Mofina

Publisher: MIRA

Publication date & page count: June ’10 & 406 pages

A car crashes in Wyoming: A young mother is thrown clear of the devastating car crash. Dazed, she sees a figure pull her infant son from the flames. Or does she? The police believe it’s a case of trauma playing cruel tricks on the mind, until the night the grief-stricken woman hears a voice through the phone: “Your baby is alive.”

A bomb explodes in a Rio de Janeiro café: The heinous act kills ten people, including two journalists with the World Press Alliance news agency. Jack Gannon’s first international assignment is to find out whether his colleagues were innocent victims or targets who got too close to a huge story.

A Caribbean cruise ends in horror: Doctors are desperate to identify the mysterious cause of a cruise ship passenger’s agonizing death. They turn to the world’s top scientists, who fear that someone has resurrected their long-buried secret research. Research that is now being used as a deadly weapon.

With millions of lives at stake, experts work frantically against time. And as an anguished mother searches for her child and Jack Gannon pursues the truth, an unstoppable force hurls them all into the panic zone.

• My rating: Oh my those friendly book loving folks at Minotaur have gone and done it again — introduced me to another outstanding suspense author. The Violet Hour starts out rather casually. No grizzly murders or heart stopping action greets you. Slowly building page by page by page is a tension you can’t shake. Then you find you’re sitting on the edge of your seat just waiting, waiting for the other shoe to drop.You know it’s coming you just don’t know when. And then the shoe spirals downward and all hell breaks loose. Before I was a third done with The Violet Hour I was scouring Amazon for Kindle editions of Mr. Judson’s other titles for my upcoming vacation.
• New-to-me author: Yes
• Would I read more from this author: Yes

Title: The Violet Hour

Author/web site: Daniel Judson

Publisher: Minotaur Books

Publication date & page count: October ’10 & 293 pages

Caleb Rakowski works under the table at his friend Eric Carver’s body shop in Bridgehampton and lives in an apartment above it. He’s good at his job, makes a living. Right now he’s sheltering a pregnant friend with an abusive husband; that’s the kind of guy Cal is, a true friend. But little does he know the trouble headed their way over the course of three days – Mischief Night, Halloween, and The Day of the Dead – when he learns the truth about Eric and what he’s been hiding all these years.

• My rating: The Bookseller’s Sonnets is one of those stories I love but have trouble conveying why to you, my readers. It’s hard to categorize The Bookseller’s Sonnets as it encompasses different story lines on many levels. Each reader will come away with a very different take on what story truly is. It’s not like sitting down and reading a traditional mystery. Nor can it solely be described as a family/relationship story. It’s so much more combined into one very hard to put down book. I found myself wanting to keep reading long past the time I should have been in bed. The Bookseller’s Sonnets grabbed me from the first few pages. I read The Bookseller’s Sonnets mainly as a mystery therefore I loved the mystery surrounding the package that turns out be Margaret Roper’s (nee More’s) diary. She the daughter of St. Thomas More. He in turn the beloved friend and confidant to one Henry VIII before his beheading. I’m not usually a fan of books bearing religious overtones but in the case of The Bookseller’s Sonnets I’ll make an exception. In this story Ms. Rosenthal uses religion as the theological and lawful basis for the dissolution of Henry VIII marriages which isn’t new. She brings into play not only canon law of the Catholic church but of the Jewish faith. Imagined or not it’s an interesting twist considering the state of Jews and their faith during this time period. She also uses the religious context to help readers understand issues faced by individuals who are religious traditionalists (Jill’s grandmother and Mother; her co-worker Aviva) and the struggles of religious/family tradition (Jill) . Without religion The Bookseller’s Sonnets would not have been nearly as interesting as I found it to be. Tying together the Tudor era, the Holocaust and today in one story takes a gifted writer. Simply said – one of my favorite books this year.
• New-to-me author: Yes; debut novel
• Would I read more from this author: Yes

Title: The Bookseller’s Sonnets

Author/web site The Bookseller’s Sonnets

Publisher: O Books

Publication date & page count: September ’10 & 322 pages

On a typical workday in January, a mysterious package from an anonymous artifact donor arrives on the desk of Jill Levin, a young curator at a Holocaust museum in New York City. Shortly thereafter, Jill discovers that the enclosed manuscript appears to be a secret diary, written by the eldest daughter of St. Thomas More, legal advisor to and close friend of Henry VIII. In the pages of her manuscript, Margaret More describes an unwilling marriage to her father’s apprentice, William Roper, and in a sequence of sonnets, relates the unfolding love story between her and a Spanish bookseller, newly arrived in England with a secret Jewish past. As Jill and her colleagues work to authenticate this rare find, more letters arrive from the anonymous donor. These letters convey the manuscript’s history, how it was hidden from the Nazis during World War II, and the donor’s unimaginable story of survival. At the same time, representatives from the Archdiocese of New York arrive at the museum to stake their claim to this controversial document, hoping to send it to a Vatican archive before its explosive content becomes public. As the process of authentication hovers between find and fraud, and as the battle for provenance plays out between religious institutions, Jill struggles with her own family history as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and her involvement in a relationship she fears will disrupt and disappoint her family. The stories told in the manuscript and letters, however, soon entwine to reveal the secrets that unlock the mysteries of the Tudor court, and the untold history of Jill’s own heritage.