Just as publicist Sasha Solomon is getting ready to head to Socorro to advise the community on their tourism campaign she receives a call that her niece, Gabi who is a graduate student living in Socorro, has been injured in an accident. When she arrives she discovers that Gabi was actually injured by a pipe bomb in her mailbox and that Gabi’s house has been vandalized. Is it because she is Jewish, or because she is half Iranian, or is it a more personal reason like perhaps the fact that she has been having an affair with her graduate advisor? Sasha’s family and friends are interesting and include a sanctimonious Orthodox niece and a psychic. Her endearing traits include a penchant for whipped cream and chocolate and a fierce loyalty to family and friends. I must admit that I am a sucker for novels set in New Mexico, which truly is the “land of enchantment” and Taichert does a great job of portraying the state and its multiplicity of ethnicities. The mystery is a good one with several good suspects. 

This enjoyable, adventure filled, sensuous Regency era romance starts with a bang when a ship wreck tosses Marlena, Lady Courtland who is on her way to the gallows and the Marquess of Tannerton, called Tanner by his friends, into the icy waters of the Irish coast. As the accused murderess and the honorable rake flee from a bow Street Runner and Marlena’s murderous cousin love finds them as they interact with a cast of interesting commoners.

In elementary school Jennifer Harris was the fat-girl outcast who shoplifted treats and ate in secret. Her only friend was Cameron Quick who had his own load of problems. He moved away in 5th grade and then died. Fast forward to senior year of high school and Jennifer has morphed into self confident popular Jenna Vaughn complete with popular boyfriend and crowd. Suddenly, On her birthday a card arrives from Cameron. Tales of his death were greatly exaggerated but how could he have been gone eight years without ever contacting her? Now he is back and a horrible event from their childhood is haunting Jenna.

I wonder what 2008 holds in the way of teen lit with books this strong starting it off. Zarr's is a voice to be reckoned with. Her debut novel, Story of a Girl made both the Best Books and Quick Picks Lists for good reason. Sweethearts is an even a stronger more compelling work. What a great start to the year for readers.

This stand alone sequel set a quarter of a century after The New Policeman is an outstanding fantasy revolving around J.J. Liddy's family. It involves a changeling, a ghost, a pookah, Tir na n'Og, music, a monster, and yes, the last of the high kings of Ireland. Somehow Thompson gets better and better with every book.

Samuel Carver may be a hit man but the people he kills in what always looks like an accident are those who would do immeasurable harm to others and he is always hesitant to inflict any collateral damage. Forced into accepting a hit on a terrorist in Paris, he discovers that he has himself become a target. Teaming up with a brilliant young woman whom he has tried to kill and who would have killed him if she could, Samuel and Alix discover they have both participated in a hit that killed someone neither one of them would have ever harmed and they must find out why or be the next to die. This page turning thriller set in 1997 is a great escapist read from the winter blahs.

When Audrey breaks up with Evan because he really only cares about his band they vow they will remain friends. When she hears the song he wrote about their break up she is not happy but she figures it will blow over. Unfortunately for her it takes off, Evan gets a record contract, and pretty soon even her Dad who has no idea it is about her is humming it. The catchy tune has taken the world by storm rocketing up the charts and making Audrey famous -- or is it infamous -- as the girl who broke the heart of The Do-Gooders cute lead singer. Her fame leads to serious difficulties at work at the ice cream shop in the mall where she is finding romance.

Robbie, a teen reader loved this book and recommended it to me. Read his review

Today I was listening to classic rock on the radio and Maggie Mae by Rod Steward came on which made me really think about this book. Being the subject of a hit song would have major repercussions and Benway has done a stellar job of depicting what it may be like.

Delightful romance set in Brooklyn and featuring two chefs. Vivi and Natalie, half-sisters have moved to New York from France. Natalie, their father's legitimate daughter inherited a lot of money and is bankrolling Vivi, a talented chef who wants to open a small bistro and serve ordinary people good food. Across the street from where Vivi's is going in is Dante's a family owned restaurant and mainstay of the Italian-American neighborhood. It's chef is Anthony Dante, who was widowed a year earlier when his beloved wife, a cop was killed in the line of duty. Anthony's partner in the business is his brother, a retired pro hockey player who is now trying to cope as a househusband raising three kids while his talented wife runs a P.R. firm. The characters are endearing, the chefs' dialog seems dead on, based on my pal Becky who is a chef. I have heard the things Vivi and Ant say coming out of Becky's mouth. The romance between Vivi and Ant is touching and their relationships with family and friends feel real. I'm looking forward to reading more romances by Martin.

Wow! Grimspace is one of the best page-turning sf novels I’ve read in years. Sirantha Jax is one of the rare few in the known universe who has a gene that allows her as a jumper, to navigate grimspace the parallel place in space that allows faster than light travel. All navigators work for the Farwan Corporation but they usually burn out quickly. In order to fly the ships a navigator must team up with a pilot because to travel from one point to another the navigator must see and the pilot must do. It is the only way travel through grimspace can occur. Jax is in a Corp. facility following a horrendous crash that killed everyone on board including Kai, who was her pilot, her lover, and her entire world. Now that her physical injuries have been taken care of the Corp. keeps sending in a sadistic shrink because Jax can’t remember anything around the deadly accident. She is sprung from the facility by March, an independent pilot with a small crew who takes her to a hostile planet. She nearly causes the annihilation of her rescuers and two conflicting groups dirtside on the planet that seems like something out of the old west but with flying dinosaur-like predators to boot. This is only the beginning of a grand universe spanning adventure as Jax tries to find out what happened in her crash as she becomes part of a mission to create a new academy to find or create navigators apart from the Corp. Fast paced action, believable romance, terrific well developed characters, creative world building all in a package that will appeal greatly to fans of the TV series Firefly because of the camaraderie, ethics, and strength of the characters. I would expect this first novel to be nominated for a Campbell award and am thrilled that the sequel already has a publication date later this year.

Sugar Magnolia Dempsey, Maggie to her friends, is devastated when her Hippie parents decide to move to Austin, Texas. She’s been happy in Portland, has great friends, and is in love with Trevor who loves her back. In Austin she decides that in order to avoid being crushed when her family moves on again she will not make friends and that the best way to do that is to do everything that is the opposite of what one would do to be popular. She dresses herself in goofy clothes from the second hand shop her parents are running and unconsciously starts a trend at school for hokey lunch boxes, mechanic’s coveralls, and rubber galoshes. In the school cafeteria, outcast Penny sits with her and Jack, who looks like a young Republican, wants to date her. Using Penny as a role model for dorkdom, Maggie joins the Helping Hands club and starts going to a water aerobics class made up mostly of senior citizens. As her plans blow up in her face, Maggie finds out who she is and where she belongs.

At the fall of Troy, the women were taken as slaves, one of them who was raped gave birth in slavery to a daughter she called Gull. When Gull is crippled in an accident her mother takes her to Pythia, the oracle who live in a cave and takes care of the last rites for the dead. Gull becomes Pythia’s apprentice and successor and when Pythia-who-was dies, Gull becomes Pythia, painting her face white and outlining her eyes in black. When a ship arrives with refugees from her mother’s homeland, Pythia leaves with them to become the Sybil to the Trojan refugees lead by Aeneas who is searching for a new homeland for his people. A riviting tale, rich in history and emotion and well deserving of all the superlatives reviewers have used to describe it.

Persephone and Penelope Leland are twins, born the same day as Princess Victoria. Now, nearing their eighteenth birthdays they will be leaving the schoolroom and their study of magic with their governess Melusine Allardyce, called Ally. When they arrive in London for the season they discover that Ally, who had been sent ahead to put the business of creating their debut season’s wardrobes in process has disappeared. Ally’s father, a bookseller, has divined that she is being held somewhere in the dilapidated Kensington Palace. A Readers who enjoyed Sorcery & Cecelia by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer will be delighted to find another delightful adventurous historical with mystery, magic, and romance.

In mutant filled, pollution choked Empire City, Max Megaton, a sentient robot cab driver turns hard-boiled detective. Like many other hard-boiled sleuths in noir fiction, he has a soft heart, in this case it is for the neighbor children who have disappeared along with their parents. As he investigates and fights his own programming he uncovers a massive plot by infiltrating aliens and goes up against other robots built like him but that haven’t developed the sentience that makes him so unique. This knight who needs no armor since he really is sort of armor himself also has a love interest, the beautiful and wealthy roboticist Lucia Napier. Readers who want to read tales of other sf detectives may enjoy Gun with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem which took an alternate view of an unusual detective. Isaac Asimov explored the combination of detectives and robots in his series featuring R. Daneel Olivaw.

When seventeen-year-old Jenna Fox awakens from a coma with amnesia she is told that she had been in a terrible accident. She is living in California with her mother and grandmother while her father commutes to Boston. She watches video discs of her life. It seems her parents recorded almost her entire life but some of the things she sees there make her question what is going on. Her grandmother who loved her in the vids seems to hate her now. She had close friends in the vids, now nobody visits, calls, or writes. When she meets a neighbor she discovers that her family had only recently moved to California. Why would a family move a daughter who was in a coma away from the great hospitals in a city where her father still works? When she starts attending a small charter school she becomes friends with a girl who was crippled by a bio-medical disaster that has turned her into an activist. This near future story vividly portrays a multi-dimensional protagonist who feels something is desperately wrong in her life but doesn’t know what.