March 11th, 2010 by Rene
Pros: Good sense of pacing, reads very quickly
Cons: Hero could be aggravatingly stubborn; heroine loses her inhibitions a little too quickly
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
When Kiki Dion, art historian, gets the opportunity to meet rich artist Ethan Tierney, she jumps at the chance. Intrigued by his kinky subject matter, and by the feelings both it and he arouse in her, she agrees to model for him. The sparks of their first meeting quickly swirl into a storm of passion, marred only by a feeling Kiki has of being watched. As the two of them try to come to terms with their new relationship, and what they will and won’t do, they’re going to need to figure out if a collection of letters from the turn of the century are related to those feelings of eyes watching…
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Tags: bdsm, Cherie Feather, erotica, ghosts
Posted in Romance & Erotica | Permalink | No Comments »
March 10th, 2010 by heather
Pros: Versatile and delicious!
Cons: None
Rating: 5 out of 5
Review book (published 2009) courtesy of Chronicle Books.
I just looove breakfast foods. They’re so versatile and delicious, and they certainly don’t have to be restricted to breakfast-time! I was highly enthusiastic about checking out the Stonewall Kitchen Breakfast
cookbook, and it didn’t disappoint in the least.
I think my favorite aspect of this cookbook is that it doesn’t try to be an exhaustive catalog of a zillion omelets, pancakes, etc. There are already plenty of cookbooks that do that. Instead, it gives one or two of each main type of thing, with plenty of hints and tips for variations, customizing to your own tastes, etc. It’s more of a book of alterable patterns than it is a book of specific recipes, and for cooks who enjoy experimenting, that’s as good as gold.
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Tags: breakfast, cookbook reviews, Cookbooks, Jim Stott, Jonathan King, Kathy Gunst, recipes, Stonewall Kitchens
Posted in Food Type-Focused | Permalink | No Comments »
March 2nd, 2010 by heather
Pros: Powerful, and surprisingly original given the current wave of zombie interest
Cons: Very few (sometimes it took me a little time to catch up)
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Review copy courtesy of Penguin Group.
Sure, we’ve seen the zombie-causing virus before. We’ve witnessed countless movies and books about mindless once-human things bent on contaminating all of the human race. Yet Walter Greatshell’s Xombies: Apocalypticon
(sequel to his Xombies: Apocalypse Blues
) actually succeeds in bringing something new and fascinating to this milieu.
Agent X has taken out most of the human race in one fell swoop. People—starting with women—became blue-skinned, mindless, and crazed, relentlessly chasing down every last human possible in the effort to spread the contamination. But why? How did X escape? Why did it affect women first? How is it that a few Xombies seem to have some of their mental faculties left intact?
All of these are fine questions to be sure, but they pale next to the need to survive. A ragtag bunch of young men, a scientist who worked on Agent X, and a bunch of military men seem to be safe aboard a refitted nuclear sub; their only major problem—and it’s a doozy—is that they’re running out of food. They have the only “tame” Xombies known to exist, and plan to use them to seek out supplies, as well as knowledge of what happened with Agent X. There are just a couple of problems with this. Their tame Xombies might have other ideas, and there’s a new world order out there that doesn’t want the competition…
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Tags: bio-thriller, Horror & Paranormal, paranormal, Walter Greatshell, zombies
Posted in Horror & Paranormal, Science Fiction, Thriller, Adventure & Mystery | Permalink | No Comments »
March 1st, 2010 by Rene
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
For the first time in my reviewing career, I’ve run into something that almost never happens to me. I couldn’t finish a book. I tried my hardest to finish it; when I couldn’t finish it I put it down for a few months to see if time would make it better for me. Well, it didn’t.
Belavalari has absolutely no desire to be a wife. Cooking and cleaning hold no appeal for her. So when fate throws Merin in her path, a wounded soldier who she figures doesn’t have long to live, she drugs him and tricks him into marrying her. Not knowing what he’s done, he leaves her. She has what she’s always wanted: her freedom. But when Merin returns to take her to be one of the Emperor’s prospective brides, the truth comes out. The only way for the two of them to separate is to spend twenty-two days tied together at the waist. After that, they’ll be through with each other — if they manage not to kill each other… I kind of hate to say it, but that might actually have made the story less painful for me.
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Tags: 22 Nights, marriage, non-review, separation
Posted in Fantasy, Non-Reviews, Romance & Erotica | Permalink | No Comments »
February 26th, 2010 by heather
Pros: Incredibly imaginative and creative; silly & fun
Cons: Too slapstick & melodramatic for my taste; aforementioned material pairs oddly with more dramatic and adult moments
Rating: 3 out of 5
Review copy courtesy of Penguin Group.
Calliope Reaper-Jones seems like just another flaky, fashion-obsessed New York girl, stuck in a boring job and trying to make ends meet. But she’s far from ordinary. She’s Death’s daughter, immortal, magically-inclined, and bound and determined to stay as far away from the family business (Death, Inc.) as possible. Somehow, however, she keeps getting dragged back into it. This time, Cerberus is calling in the favor she owes him. And if she doesn’t pay up, little Hellhound-pup Runt will get taken away from her new happy family. Paying off that favor is going to be more than a little difficult, however, involving trips to Purgatory, Las Vegas, and Ancient Egypt… not to mention dealing with some very unsavory supernatural types.
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Tags: Amber Benson, Death's Daughter, paranormal, urban fantasy
Posted in Fantasy, Horror & Paranormal | Permalink | No Comments »
February 25th, 2010 by Rene
Pros: Extremely well-developed characters emotionally; very easy to relate to both the men and women.
Cons: Not all readers may enjoy reading about the sharper pleasures that the characters enjoy.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
The Order of Solace is an organization of women trained in the arts of pleasure and service. Those in need of solace can request a Handmaiden, and it will be her responsibility to serve her patron until he or she finds at least a moment of solace, at which time her service to them is over. Three men, the Crown Prince of Firth and his two friends, each request a Handmaiden one after the other. A dark moment in their past has affected them throughout the course of their lives, leaving them emotionally damaged. Can these three Handmaidens bring them the solace they so deeply crave?
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Tags: erotica, Handmaiden, Megan Hart, Order of Solace
Posted in Fantasy, Romance & Erotica | Permalink | No Comments »
February 23rd, 2010 by heather
Pros: Fantastic execution of a delicious premise
Cons: As always for an anthology: not every story will suit you equally
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Review copy courtesy of Penguin Group.
Women, monsters, and ass-kicking—what more could I ask for? A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters
, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes, is a collection of thirteen stories about strong women taking on monsters in a variety of settings and genres. The stories proceed in chronological order from the old West to space-faring SF, so you won’t even get mental whiplash along the way.
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Tags: anthology, Fantasy, Kerrie Hughes, Martin H. Greenberg, monsters, paranormal, Science Fiction, short story, urban fantasy
Posted in Fantasy, Science Fiction, Thriller, Adventure & Mystery | Permalink | 2 Comments »
February 4th, 2010 by heather
I’ve finished reading the anthology A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters, as well as Laurell K. Hamilton’s Flirt, so you can expect to see reviews of those soon. I’m in the middle of Amber Benson’s Cat’s Claw, so that will probably be next. I also have review copies of two Stonewall Kitchens cookbooks, concerning breakfasts and winter celebrations, so in a few weeks (once we’ve had a chance to test out some recipes!) you’ll hear about those!
In other words, barring any unforeseen circumstances, it looks like the insomnia’s on the mend and I’ll be back to expounding on what I loved & hated about the books I’ll finally be reading again. I hope your own years are starting off well! 
Update on 2/18: I’ve put together the initial scaffolding of four reviews: the above-mentioned three, plus Walter Greatshell’s “Xombies: Apocalypticon.” Now that I’m awake and have gotten myself moving again, I hope to work on those reviews over the next few days, plus start reading a couple of more thought-intensive books that I’ve had to delay: Daniel Rabuzzi’s The Choir Boats: Volume One of Longing for Yount and Carrie Host’s Between Me and the River. We’ve also made the first couple of recipes out of the breakfast cookbook and a bacon cookbook we picked up over Christmas, so reviews of those will probably show up in the next few weeks!
There’s something a bit terrifying about having to catch up on nearly three years’ worth of insomnia-induced lack of productive output, but I’ve finally managed to pick a spot and start digging, which ought to make things easier.
Posted in Notes & Upcoming | Permalink | No Comments »
February 1st, 2010 by Rene
Pros: Interesting look at the private lives of some of the more famous (or infamous) European royals.
Cons: The genealogy can get confusing because many names were passed down through generations.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
Many of us are curious about the private lives of royalty, both in the past and the present. What could be more tantalizing than the relationships (or lack thereof) that occur between the royal sheets? Leslie Carroll has created a fascinating read about not only some of the more famous unsuccessful royal marriages, but of successful ones as well. It’s a journey into the past showing that while some things change throughout the years, others stay the same.
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Tags: Diana, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry VIII, history, King, Marie Antoinette, marriage, Napoleon, Queen, royal, Victoria
Posted in Other Nonfiction | Permalink | No Comments »
February 1st, 2010 by heather
So, in case you haven’t heard yet, there was a blow-up between Amazon and Macmillan. It only deserves mention here because it had a potentially huge impact on readers and authors: Amazon and Macmillan had a dispute over e-book pricing, and Amazon’s solution to this was to pull every single Macmillan book from their catalog, physical AND electronic. I.e., they basically said, “if we can’t play by my rules then I’m taking my ball and going home.” Since Macmillan is one of the big publishers, and a lot of buyers use Amazon, this would have seriously hurt both authors and readers with respect to the accessibility of many of the books we all love.
I don’t want to get into who’s right or who’s wrong, particularly since there are plenty of different sides to it. Some folks are mad about the high price of e-books and blame Macmillan for not wanting to allow Amazon to sell e-books cheaply. Others point out that Amazon wanted the benefits of being both a wholesaler and a retailer in the pricing agreement, and instead of trying to find a compromise, they took the schoolyard bully approach of trying to strong-arm Macmillan into caving.
At any rate, I know there are a lot of people who are now refusing to do business with Amazon because they feel so strongly about the matter. We’re considering whether or not to look into switching to some other bookstore’s affiliate program, and if you have an opinion, please feel free to render it in the comments. We do want to continue using an affiliate program of some kind, as it helps to pay for things like server space, bandwidth usage, and domain name registration. The attraction of Amazon is that they have so far carried pretty much everything, so I know that no matter what our readers want, they can find it there. However, if Amazon’s going to start using tactics like this, then that might not be the case any longer anyway.
It would be a pain in the butt to go through and replace all the Amazon book links with some other, but if folks feel strongly about it, we’ll do it.
Opinions? Thoughts? Who do you want to buy your books from online?
While I’m here, I should mention that it seems like my insomnia is getting better, so hopefully soon I’ll be reading & posting regularly again. In the meantime, I have a review from Renee to post today or tomorrow!
Tags: Amazon, Macmillan
Posted in Book Blogging | Permalink | 1 Comment »
