Hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Second Glance by Jodi Picoult – I think of Jodi Picoult novels as super-realistic portrayals of life so I was surprised to find this early supernatural story of hers. An elderly man sells his land to a developer but a local Indian tribe protests, saying it is a sacred site. The controversy comes down to what really happened to the man’s wife who died in 1932. It is a murder mystery wrapped up in a ghost story. I wasn’t crazy about it but I stuck with it because I’ve liked her other books.

Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog by Susannah Charleson – This book is the story of raising a search and rescue dog named Puzzle. It explains the training of the handler and the dog and the types of searches that they do. I liked this because Puzzle is a Golden Retriever, which I used to have, and the author also fosters a herd of Pomeranians. The Poms are depicted wonderfully in the book. I could imagine Snowball acting the same way in some of the situations.

A River In The Sky by Elizabeth Peters – This is novel number 19 in the Amelia Peabody mystery series. I’m not a mystery fan but I like this series. They are set in the early 1900s. Emerson and Amelia Peabody are English archeologists working in Egypt. They have a son nicknamed Ramses who is always finding trouble in the Egyptian underworld. The stories are told from two points of view – Amelia’s private journals (which have been left to someone who is now publishing them) and the mysterious Manuscript H (which explains in third person what Ramses is up to but never mentions the author). The books follow their lives from the time Ramses is small until he is an adult with a child himself. What I find interesting is now Elizabeth Peters is going back and writing books that fit into their world out of chronological order. So, although this book is the 19th in the series it is 12th in chronological order. I think she sort of wrote herself into a corner by giving Ramses a family and responsibilities that made him less likely to take wild adventures. She made her main character less interesting. Now she’s writing back in time when he could do more.

Although this is primarily an Egyptian series, this book takes place during a side trip in Palestine in 1910. You don’t absolutely have to have read any of the other books to understand this one but it enhances the book if you have the backgrounds on the characters. If you are new to the series I would start with a few with Ramses as a child and go from there.

My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares- I’ve seen this book all over the book blogs. I have mixed feelings about it. The idea is engaging. Daniel remembers all his past lives. He reincarnates always looking for a girl, Sophia, that he murdered in his first life and has subsequently loved in others. She does not remember him. Daniel’s brother in his first life was married to Sophia in another life and abused her until Daniel helped her escape. The brother has been searching for revenge ever since. Interactions between Daniel and his love across the centuries are well done but the brother plotline isn’t well explained. The ending is very anti-climactic. The only way I think it might work is if there is a sequel in the works since nothing is resolved.

In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker – This is the first book of Kage Baker’s Company series. A while ago I read the most recent book of the series and decided to go back to the beginning to see what it was all about. I liked this book a lot better. It is a YA book. Scientists in an unspecified future ave learned to make immortal cyborgs and to time travel. They go to the past and make the cyborgs. They leave them in place with orders to collect things like art that would have been destroyed or plants and animals that would go extinct. Mendoza is a child rescued from the Inquisition and made into a botanist for the Company. On her first assignment, to save the plants in an English garden at the time of Queen Mary, she falls in love with a mortal. This doesn’t go as planned for her. I think I will continue with this series for a while to see what happens.


Promise Me: How a Sister’s Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer by Nancy G. Brinker and Joni Rodgers – This is the story of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation that works to end breast cancer. I found the sidenotes with the history of breast cancer care to be the most enlightening portion of the book.

Sister Mine by Tawni O’Dell – Audio – I think I need to quit trying to listen to fiction on audio. It takes too long to hold my attention. Non-fictions holds my interest more.

This book takes place in the same world as the author’s other novels but you don’t need to read them to understand this one. Shaelyn is an ex-cop who now runs a cab company in rural PA. She believes that her sister was murdered by her father 18 years ago until her sister shows up nine months pregnant. A lawyer, a gangster, and a New York housewife are also in town looking for her. The book also has many sideplots that make it hard to sum up without telling the whole story. I liked this story even though it took forever to get through on audio.