Ocean City Free Public Library Book Blog

***       As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust is the latest installment in the Flavia de Luce mystery series by Alan Bradley. And is the first book in the series that takes place in a location other than the large English estate of the de Luce family. Set in a girls boarding school in Canada, 12 year old Flavia de Luce once again finds herself in the middle of a mystery after discovering human skeletal remains in one of the chimneys of her new home. The story follows her attempts to once again solve a murder, while also unraveling more of the mystery that surrounds her deceased mother's enigmatic past, and the secret government agency of which she was a part.       I was turned on to the Flavia de Luce series by a friend who knows that I enjoy all things science, as well as strong well written female characters. It has quickly become one of my favourite mystery series. This newest one is almost a complete reinventing of the series, come at jus...

      The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (pseudonym of J.K. Rowling) is the second in a mystery/suspense thriller series featuring Cormoran Strike, an young English military veteran turned private eye after a significant wartime injury resulted in the loss of one of his legs, and Robin Ellacott, Strike's secretary, assistant, and detective-in-training.  The plot of the book picks up not very long after the conclusion of the first novel in the series (The Cuckoo's Calling ), with Strike's private investigative services seeing a rise in business following his minor celebrity status due to his successful resolution of the Lula Landry case (the main plot of The Cuckoo's Calling) . Strike is hired by the wife of a formerly prominent author with the job of finding said formerly prominent author who has gone missing. The novel follows Strike's investigation into the disappearance of Owen Quine, and as a result gets drawn into the cutthroat (sometimes li...

“Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things…” (taken from the Goodreads summary ) ***       American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett follows the story of former policewoman Mona Bright, as she tracks down information regarding her deceased mother and finds herself in the small town of Wink, New Mexico. Suddenly the benefactor of her mother’s old house, Mona decides to temporarily reside in the town of Wink while she decides what to do with the house. The town is strange, mysterious, and dangerous as a whole, and even stranger as individual residents are introduced. The undoubtedly human residents seem quite content to make arrangements and conditions for strange unseen forces while never ever venturing out of their houses after dark; staple community members are unquestio...

As a rule, I'm not a big fan of suspense and/or mysteries. However, once in awhile, it's nice to break out of a comfort zone and try something different. I had read Flynn's Sharp Objects awhile ago and enjoyed it, so it made sense to try her new book. Dark Places centers on the grim murders of the Day family back in 1985. Libby, our heroine and a young child at the time, managed to escape and her testimony was enough to convict her older brother Ben of the crime. The book shifts back and forth between the events that led up to that fateful day and the present day Libby. Everything is going along, until Libby gets involved with an underground crime group that wants to get to the truth of the murders. Did Ben really kill his entire family? Or was it someone else?? All in all, it was a very quick paced read and the tension held throughout the entire novel. As one could expect, adult Libby has some major psychological issues as a result of the murders. Despite being so flawed...

I waited until after I finished reading Under the Dome (almost 1,100 pages in less than a week!) to read anything about it. This review from Aol.com pretty much falls into line with my opinion: By now with Stephen King, it's easy to think this is all kind of ridiculous. An invisible dome descending upon a small town in Maine? People trapped inside, trying to figure out what on Earth is going on and — as always in a Stephen King story — dying in droves? Good Lord. Is the King of Really Heavy Books — the author who is a one-man argument for the hernia-preventing benefits of e-books — running out of viable plot devices? This is, after all, the guy who wrote entire volumes about cell phones turning fellow citizens into ravenous zombies, about possessed and murderous 1958 Plymouths and about evil, immortal clowns who live in the sewers and prey upon children. Really, now. How much gimmickry can one writer expect us to stomach? Those statements are all completely fair and true. Trouble ...

Off of Amazon's website: This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Ordinarily, I'm not a fan of thrillers or many mysteries, but I've got to be honest - this was a riveting read. Though the pacing is a little slow to start with, once Larsson gets the ball rolling, the momentum is nearly breakneck fast. All of the characters are clearly multi-dimensional and incredibly smar...

This is the first book I have read by Linda Castillo. When I was covering the book, and yes when processing books we do look at the flaps sometimes (or am I the only one who does it?). I saw that it had my favorite subject (to read about, not do) murder. The lead character is ex-Amish chief of police named Kate Burkholder. Years before she had survived a brutal attack and now hides a secret past. In this book young women are being murdered in horrible ways in the small town of Painters Mill, Ohio. It's up to Kate and Special Agent John Tomasetti to catch the killer. I liked the book, but I thought Castillo could have added more depth to Tomasetti and to the relationship between the two. I'm curious to see what the author does with the Kate Burkholder character in the next book.

April 20, 2009 will mark the 10 year anniversary of the awful massacre/shooting at Columbine High School. While a lot of the information related to the shooting has become public knowledge in the past decade, Cullen's extremely detailed work sheds much light on the many myths and wrong details that still pervade popular culture. For starters, Eric Harris was the ringleader of the duo (I had always thought Dylan Klebold was the main instigator) and a complete psychopath. The two were not really involved in the infamous Trench Coat Mafia, nor were they isolated loners subject to bullies. In reality, they were popular within their social circle, extremely intelligent and faked normalcy for over a year, deceiving friends, their families and other members of the community. Furthermore (and I found this to be the most shocking), Jefferson County Police had had knowledge that Harris was up to something bad. They had been alerted many times by the Brown family (Harris had threatened Brooks...

This book #6 in the Diane Fallen series. If you have never read Beverly Connors books before please do. Start with #1" One Grave Too Many". Shattered Graves follows the main character forensic anthropologist Diane Fallon as she and her team at the crime lab in RiverTrail Museum of Natural History try to find out who killed the mayor and police chief, who were harassing her and were hiding secrets of their own. I love the character of Fallon. And if you enjoy this series you will also love Ms. Connors other series that has the main character Lindsay Chamberlain an archeologist.

When I started this book it was with high hopes, I've always enjoyed Ms. O'Connell's books. But it has taken me over 2 weeks to read it, this is unheard of in my world. Now, I thought maybe it was because there was laundry to do, work, family...etc. No it's because this book was hard for me to get into. It sounded good on the book flap, brothers go into the woods only one comes out, years later bones start appearing on the family's porch.........................but what it doesn't say is the minutia of information on every person that lives in this town. It wasn't a bad book just a drawn out one. The odd thing was, the ending of this book was the best part of the story.

A short but very moving tale about a man who uncovers the awful truth about a former lover. Michael is 15 when he first meets Hanna, who is 36. Despite the creepy age difference, the two become lovers, though Michael is far more captivated by the mysterious and distant Hanna than she is to him. Their affair is all too brief and one day, Hanna just disappears. Years later, Michael unintentionally sees Hanna as the defendant when he is observing a court case for law school. As Michael slowly learns about Hanna's horrible past, he must struggle to accept the question - if he loves (or loved) a monster, what does that make him? There is redemption in the end, but it's very bittersweet. And of course, they made a movie out of this one. If the weather is decent, perhaps I'll go see it this weekend - Kate Winslet is supposed to be fabulous.

Ok, here it is,,I did not like this book. (cries) I wanted to because I love Patricia Cornwell. First off the book was 512 pages(oy my eyes). The story took half a book for me to get interested in it. Scarpetta is brought into a case where a woman is murdered and the cops are looking at her boyfriend as being the killer. She is brought in to examine the bf (um,,ok). I miss the days when Scarpetta worked in the lab and actually worked as a forensic medical examiner . I can't bring myself to write much about the story because there wasn't much of a story. And at the end of the book I still don't know who killed who. When the book is this big you have trouble keeping track of all the characters in it. Read and decide for yourself.

After reading some crappy books lately, written by bestselling authors, I went into reading this book not expecting much. I should have known better. Kay Hooper has not disappointed me lately. This book is the second installment in the Blood trilogy. This book picks up with Noah Bishop and his FBI Special Crimes Unit , which consists of psychics and mediums and its partner group Haven, a civilian investigative organization. They are in North Carolina trying to gather proof that the Rev. Adam Deacon Samuel is killing members of his flock. They find this hard to do since he is doing it by using psychic energy. I know this sounds a little funky, but trust me, it will make sense when your reading it. For me this book is perfect because I get murder and supernatural happenings all in one. Read all of Hooper's books, but especially the Bishop trilogies starting with Stealing Shadows. Finally, a GOOD book!!!!

I have to give Wally Lamb some credit - the man certainly has an almost athletic sense of endurance to constantly keep churning out 600+ page novels. It's hard to keep a reader's attention for that long. Lamb almost managed to keep mine for the entire novel - I started skimming on certain sections because I knew that they weren't *really* that relevant to the direct plot line. However, that being said, I really enjoyed this one, so much so that I managed to finish it in the course of a weekend, which is pretty good for me. Anyway, the novel centers on Caelum Quirk, an English teacher, and his wife Maureen, who unfortunately happens to work at Columbine High School on the day when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris commit the atrocious mass-shooting. Maureen survives, but becomes a shell of her old self. In an effort to help Maureen recover psychologically, the two move back to Caelum's old family farm in Connecticut. A lot of stuff happens at this point - Caelum redis...

I think if I were to re-title this book, I'd call it "Serena: the baddest bitch of the woods" (although that probably would offend a whole lot of people, but whatever). At any rate, this novel is about a young couple who run a timber business in North Carolina during the Great Depression. At first, no one really takes beautiful Serena or her ideas about business all that seriously. That swiftly changes as even her poor husband, George, becomes a pawn in her game. Before marrying Serena, George unintentionally impregnates a local girl, Rachel. After Serena cannot bear children, Rachel and her child are her next targets. Overall, a very dark and menacing book. If you liked MacBeth, you'd probably like Serena . I think this book had the highest body count out of any book I've read in a long time, although most of the deaths are widely attributed to tree accidents.

I'll admit that I'm not a big fan of mysteries (I'm not one for surprises). However, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I really enjoyed this "literary mystery." Amy is a washed up ex-writer who's stuck teaching about writing at adult continuing education workshops. When a classmate is murdered, Amy and the rest of the class must work together and figure out which one of them is the killer. I think the thing that I liked the most about this book is that there's a lot of time spent on what makes good fiction writing, which is something rarely seen in a murder mystery. One of the ways that Amy uncovers the killer is through the class writing samples, which is a refreshing break from all that CSI and forensics stuff that we're so used to seeing on TV and in books. All in all, a good whodunnit.

There's a reason why this book has been on the top of the New York Times bestsellers list for several weeks now - it's fabulous. The novel offers a unique"take" on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin and centers on Edgar Sawtelle and his family of dog-breeders. Edgar is mute, but this disability doesn't stop him from helping to train the famous "Sawtelle" dogs - dogs that can make their own cognitive decisions. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, his life is turned upside down as his uncle Claude tries to worm his way into the family. Despite the potential for being an obnoxious and/or arrogant rip off of Shakespeare, the story is compelling and absolutely heartbreaking.

Boy, this was a meaty read - full of violence, sex, mystery, love, murder, betrayal, war...the list goes on. Spanning 3 decades, Pillars explores life in the middle ages in England as the small town of Kingsbridge struggles to build a grand cathedral. For a book this size, there are a few main characters - Prior Philip, who must navigate corrupt waters to get his cathedral built, Tom Builder and his stepson Jack, who are master masons, and Aliena, a steely and independent woman. Does the cathedral get built? You'll have to read to find out... The book is close to 1,000 pages long, but it's worth the time. You can see why Oprah selected it for her book club.Follett, who usually writers thrillers, does a pretty good job with this one. My only complaint is the fact that his characters live to be like 60 or 70. I'm pretty sure in 1142 AD, you were lucky if you made it to 40.

I love all of Karen Rose's books, I think she's a wonderful writer. I liked this book very much. Who doesn't like a book that has murder, love and family secrets. The main characters Alex Fallon and Special Agent Daniel Vartanian come from backgrounds that would make ours look like tiptoeing through the tulips. When killings of women start in their old hometown and a connection is found to both, they are drawn back to there. Alex's step sister, Bailey, goes missing and Alex thinks she might be a victim also. With all the secrets and killings going on in Dutton, Georgia, I'd stay away from that town if I were you. Now I have to admit there alot of names and sub plots to keep track of , but hang in there it's still a good read. And I'd recommend you read all her books.

Another good book by Kellerman with Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis in good form. Murder mysteries are my favorite genre and Kellerman doesn't usually disappoint, particularly when it involves the aforementioned Delaware and Sturgis. This book begins with what is seemingly a couple of unrelated murders, but Kellerman connects the dots nicely at the end. A bit hard to keep straight in places but well worth the time. Get on the reserve list, people! --Reviewed by Pauline Brady