Just Finished
"I've read a few books by Daphne du Maurier the past few years, short story collections, Rebecca and I'm growing to enjoy her stories more and more. My Cousin Rachel was another excellent story, even if it was kind of depressing.
Ambrose Ashley who has raised his cousin Philip since a child, has to start spending winters on the continent (Italy) due to health issues. Philip stays at the estate in Cornwall and runs it in Ambrose's absence. The two are confirmed bachelors who live a staid, comfortable existence, managing the estate, spending time with relatives and local friends and both are very satisfied.
A surprise is in store for Philip. He gets a letter from Ambrose stating the Ambrose has married a distant cousin that he has met in Italy. Rachel is a widow, previously married to Count Sangalletti. Philip's life is turned upside down, especially when follow-on letters from his cousin seem to indicate that Ambrose's health is deteriorating and that he suspects that Rachel might have poisoned him. Philip goes to Italy to see to Ambrose, only to discover that Ambrose is dead and that Rachel has disappeared.
Returning to Cornwall, Philip soon receives a visitor, that being Rachel. Thus begins a strange, winding suspenseful story. Philip's anger at Rachel changes the longer she stays in Cornwall. It's a story with twists and turns, suspicions of Rachel's motives and actions, suspicions from Philip's godfather and his daughter about what Rachel wants. Philip wanders from love to confusion. Clues pop up, discovered Ambrose letters, a visit from Rachel's friend from Italy, Rainaldi. Philip must reconcile his strong feelings for Rachel with disturbing concerns that she might have murdered his cousin.
I don't think the story is as great as Rebecca but it's still an excellent, suspenseful dramatic work of fiction (4 stars)"
Currently Reading
"Most suicides don't realize the headaches they cause....Two a.m. in the bitter cold of winter: the young Hispanic man's body was found in a tenement basement. The rope around his neck suggested a clear case of suicide -- until the autopsy revealed he'd overdosed on heroin. He was a pusher, and now a thousand questions pressed down on the detectives of the 87th Precinct: Who set up the phony hanging? Whose fingerprints were on the syringe found at the scene? Who was making threatening phone calls, attempting to implicate Lieutenant Byrnes' teenage son? Somebody was pushing the 87th Precinct hard, and Detective Steve Carella and Lieutenant Pete Byrnes have to push back harder -- before a frightening and deadly chain tightens its grip."
Rotary Club Book Sale - New Purchases
"In Hide My Eyes, private detective Albert Campion finds himself hunting down a serial killer in London's theatre land.
A spate of murders leaves him with only two baffling clues: a left-hand glove and a lizard-skin letter-case. These minimal clues and a series of peculiar events sets Campion on a race against time that takes him from an odd museum of curiosities hidden in a quiet corner of London to a scrapyard in the East End"
"''Oh, little one, ' he whispered, as he gently stroked her cheek, the first time he had touched her in fifteen years. 'What have they done to you? What have they done to us all?' ""In his latest dark and chilling Charlie Parker thriller, New York Times bestselling author John Connolly takes us to the border between Maine and Canada. It is there, in the vast and porous Great North Woods, that a dangerous smuggling operation is taking place, run by a group of disenchanted former soldiers, newly returned from Iraq. Illicit goods--drugs, cash, weapons, even people--are changing hands. And something else has changed hands. Something ancient and powerful and evil.
The authorities suspect something is amiss, but what they can't know is that it is infinitely stranger and more terrifying than anyone can imagine. Anyone, that is, except private detective Charlie Parker, who has his own intimate knowledge of the darkness in men's hearts. As the smugglers begin to die one after another in apparent suicides, Parker is called in to stop the bloodletting. The soldiers' actions and the objects they have smuggled have attracted the attention of the reclusive Herod, a man with a taste for the strange. And where Herod goes, so too does the shadowy figure that he calls the Captain. To defeat them, Parker must form an uneasy alliance with a man he fears more than any other, the killer known as the Collector. . . ."
"In a small Lao village, a very strange thing has happened. A woman was shot and killed in her bed during a burglary; she was given a funeral and everyone in the village saw her body burned. Then, three days later, she was back in her house as if she'd never been dead at all. But now she's clairvoyant, and can speak to the dead. That's why the long-dead brother of a Lao general has enlisted her to help his brother uncover his remains, which have been lost at the bottom of a river for many years.
Lao national coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun and his wife, Madame Daeng, are sent along to supervise the excavation. It could be a kind of relaxing vacation for them, maybe, except Siri is obsessed with the pretty undead medium's special abilities, and Madame Daeng might be a little jealous. She doesn't trust the woman for some reason─is her hunch right? What is the group really digging for at the bottom of this remote river on the Thai border? What war secrets are being covered up?"
"A maniac, obsessed by little girls with golden hair, roams the crowded beaches of an East Coast town."
"The village of South Mardian always observes the winter solstice with an ancient, mystical sword dance--complete with costumed performers. This year, however, the celebration turns into an execution when one of the dancers is murdered. Now Inspector Alleyn has to perform some nimble steps of his own to solve the case."
"She came forward, the outlines of her figure blurred in the half-light. She came forward like a film star, or rather like the ideal woman in an adolescent's dream. 'I gather you wish to talk to me, Inspector . . . but first of all please sit down . . .' Her accent was more pronounced than Carl's. Her voice sang, dropping on the last syllable of the longer words.
Maigret has been interrogating Carl Andersen for seventeen hours without a confession. He's either innocent or a very good liar. So why was the body of a diamond merchant found at his isolated mansion? Why is his sister always shut away in her room? And why does everyone at Three Widows Crossroads have something to hide?"
"In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men - and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive. The Stars My Destination is a classic of technological prophecy and timeless narrative enchantment by an acknowledged master of science fiction."
"A quarter of a million pounds worth of diamonds have been stolen from an Amsterdam bank - a prize big enough to attract treasure hunters. Furse, the Englishman, has knowledge of the stones' whereabouts. Detective Inspector Molenaar, acting for the bank; Constanta the Dutch girl, and Sluiter, who mysteriously dies, are also in the race. Then there are Rohner and Elsa, top-flight crooks, Charlie, Furse's shady friend and Farmer Beukleman."
"A collection of 11 stories:
- A Prince of Abyssinia (Mar 1962)
- On Slay Down (Apr 1962)
- The Cat Cracker (May 1962)
- The Headmaster (Jun 1962)
- Trembling’s Tours (Jul 1962)
- Prometheus Unbound (Aug 1962)
- Cross-Over (Oct 1963)
- The Spoilers (Oct 1965)
- Heilige Nacht (Jan 1966)
- The Road to Damascus (Jun 1966)
- “Upon the King...” (Mar 1967)"
"On October 11 the television star Jason Taverner is so famous that 30 million viewers eagerly watch his prime-time show. On October 12 Jason Taverner is not a has-been but a never-was -- a man who has lost not only his audience but all proof of his existence. And in the claustrophobic betrayal state of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, loss of proof is synonyms with loss of life.
Taverner races to solve the riddle of his disappearance", immerses us in a horribly plausible Philip K. Dick United States in which everyone -- from a waif-like forger of identity cards to a surgically altered pleasure -- informs on everyone else, a world in which omniscient police have something to hide. His bleakly beautiful novel bores into the deepest bedrock self and plants a stick of dynamite at its center."
Well, there you go. Almost time to call the missus. Tomorrow I'm heading up to see my Dad and maybe while I'm there I'll visit Allison the Bookman.. :0)
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