Under the Skin
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21 New and Used from GBP 2.75

Amazon description: In the opening pages of Under the Skin, a lone female is scouting the Scottish Highlands in search of well-proportioned men: “Isserley always drove straight past a hitch-hiker when she first saw him, to give herself time to size him up. She was looking for big muscles: a hunk on legs. Puny, scrawny specimens were no use to her.” At this point, the reader might be forgiven for anticipating some run-of-the-mill psychosexual drama. But commonplace expectation is no help when it comes to Michel Faber’s strange and unsettling first novel; small details, then major clues, suggest that something deeply bizarre is afoot. What are the reasons for Isserley’s extensive surgical scarring, her thick glasses, her excruciating backache? Who are the solitary few who work on the farm where her cottage is located? And why are they all nervous about the arrival of someone called Amlis Vess?The ensuing narrative is of such cumulative, compelling strangeness that it almost defies description. The one thing that can be said with certainty is that Under the Skin is unlike anything else you have ever read. Faber’s control of his medium is nearly flawless. Applying the rules of psychological realism to a fictional world that is both terrifying and unearthly, he nonetheless compels the reader’s absolute identification with Isserley .

**My review: It gets under the skin.

This is a strange story in that it doesn’t fit any particular genre, but rather many genres. Issley spends her days in her vehicle trolling the roadways for hitchhikers. Some are kept and some are thrown back. But for what purpose are they kept? Slowly the story unfolds and we find out just why some are kept.

This story makes you think about animals that are kept as food in a whole other light. I will ever look at a hamburger or a piece of chicken quite the same way again. In fact, I may just forgo meat altogether.

At times a bit unnerving, this story keeps you riveted because of the questions it raises. 

The Fourth Queen
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10 New and Used from GBP 5.50

Inspired by true stories of 18th-century kidnappings, debut novelist Taylor produces an imaginative and bawdy romp through the harem of the emperor of Morocco. Young Helen Gloag, bound from Scotland to the colonies in 1769, is captured by pirates and brought to the slave markets of Tangiers. There, she is purchased for the emperor’s harem by the dwarf Microphilus, who procures and manages the hundreds of women selected as royal chattel. Instantly smitten with Helen’s pale skin and red hair, Microphilus conceals his passion for her as she learns to make her way in the languorous-and competitive-world of the harem. Initially at a loss in terms of language and culture, she is dismissed by the emperor; under the tutelage of Queen Batoom (the first of the emperor’s four wives), she eventually charms him and is soon his favorite. But with favoritism comes danger: one of the other queens has succumbed to a mysterious wasting illness, and when Helen is chosen as the emperor’s fourth wife, it appears that she is also doomed. Instrumental in unraveling the mystery is Microphilus, who-having long been Queen Batoom’s secret lover-eventually becomes close to Helen as well, as the two take comfort in remembering their shared homeland. Alternating between third-person sections from Helen’s perspective and entries in Microphilus’s diary, Taylor conjures up the shimmering exoticism of the emperor’s court. Most notable is the concentration on fleshy exuberance (the emperor’s women must be fat, and nearly all of them, including Helen, become giddy with sex in their forced idleness). Amid all the rolling rumps and alliterative saucy sex talk, Taylor manages to tell a highly unusual and satisfying love story.  

My review: A beautifully written novel that pulls you in and transports you to another time and place. One of my new favorites.  The writing is like velvet, enclosing you in a cocoon of softness and wonderful story telling.

Claimed by Shadow
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28 New and Used from GBP 2.21

 **My review:  A very good follow up to the first book.  

Touch the Dark
Price: GBP 6.64

49 New and Used from GBP 1.57

 Cassandra Palmer has been in hiding for three years since she escaped Antonio, the master vampire who raised her after he had her parents killed when she was only four. A gifted clairvoyant, Cassandra was Antonio’s useful tool until she discovered his complicity in her parents’ deaths and fled his estate. Tony has finally caught up with her, but he isn’t the only one. The vampire senate is after her, too, and they’ve sent sexy vampire Tomas, who insinuated himself into her life by pretending to be an abused runaway, to watch over her. After Cassie and Tomas are attacked, he brings her to the senate. There she learns that the mages are gunning for her, too, as is the powerful vampire Rasputin, who is gearing up to challenge the senate. Cassie is in a race against time to save her own life and find out why so many want her dead. Exciting and inventive, with definite series potential.

**My review: I ignored this book for a very long time.  Every time I’d check in with Amazon, there it was, top of the list, saying buy me, buy me.  I ignored it for a very long time.  On one of my other book sites, we were discussing a group read and someone said it was very good as she had read it, the second one and was going to be starting the third one soon.  So, I purchased all three.  And am I glad I did!  Different and a definite good read.  I like the main character Cassie because she could be anyone of us.  She’s normal but can See into the future, has been raised by vampires and talks with ghosts.  Other than that, a completely everyday kind of girl.  Pick this one up and enjoy!

The Unquiet
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39 New and Used from GBP 0.33

Daniel Clay, a psychiatrist alleged to have worked with a child-abuse ring, is missing and presumed dead. His grown daughter, Rebecca, is being stalked by an ex-con whose own daughter is missing. Rebecca hires Portland, Maine, investigator Charlie Parker to protect her and dissuade her stalker, a former contract killer named Merrick who is intent on either finding his daughter or avenging her death. The case leads to a very dark chapter in Maine’s rural history and to the still-operational remnants of a syndicate of highly organized child abusers. Connolly weaves elements of the supernatural into a disturbing, very dark tale. Parker is haunted by the specters of his late wife and daughter as well as an ephemeral embodiment of death who offers both advice and warnings as the detective ventures ever deeper into the darkness of the real world and his own soul. The disquieting subject, coupled with Connolly’s dark, lyrical prose, will leave unshakable images lurking on the edge of the reader’s consciousness. 

Aptly named, this book left me very unquietly unsettled.    A few things have changed in Charlie’s life and not for the better.  And some things remain the same.  5 stars

The Black Angel: A Thriller (Charlie Parker Mysteries)
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49 New and Used from GBP 0.29

In the fifth Charlie Parker novel, the private investigator, recently remarried (after the murders of his wife and child), has been trying to pull his life back together. But when his partner’s cousin goes missing, Parker can’t avoid getting back in the game. And when he realizes the young woman’s disappearance is connected to an older, darker mystery, he once again is forced to risk life and sanity in a desperate good-versus-evil battle. Connolly, who resides in Ireland but writes about the U.S. like he’s lived there all his life, once again blends the -private-eye novel and the supernatural thriller in a way that’s altogether unique. Parker himself, one of the genre’s more disturbed heroes, is a complex creation whose depths have still, even through five novels, been barely explored. The Charlie Parker novels are not for everyone (especially those who like their private-eye yarns unencumbered by philosophical or theological overtones).

In this book, we get to know a bit about one of the hit men as the search is on for a lost relative.  Great writing as always.  5 stars  

White Road: A Charlie Parker Thriller
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36 New and Used from GBP 0.10

“I have learned to embrace the dead and they, in their turn, have found a way to reach out to me.” It’s becoming increasingly clear from pronouncements such as this that PI Charlie Parker is hardly your garden-variety mystery protagonist. In Connolly’s latest spine-tingling opus (after The Killing Kind), readers gain further insights into the soul of this tormented man-a hero of uncommon depth and compulsions. We also learn more about Angel and Louis, Parker’s longtime cronies (and gay Odd Couple) who function as Greek chorus, avenging angels and their buddy’s conscience. Angel resembles “the runway model for a decorators’ convention, assuming that the decorators’ tastes veered toward five-six, semiretired gay burglars,” while Louis possesses “six feet six inches of attitude, razor-sharp dress sense, and gay Republican pride.” (Note to Connolly: how about a spin-off novel for these two idiosyncratic supporting players?) Parker’s description of his newest case-”dead people, a mystery, more dead people”-exemplifies his bluntness; true to form, he’s never far from a cutting remark or casual wisecrack (hearing that an especially odious character has “found Jesus,” Parker observes, “I figure Jesus should be more careful about who finds Him”). When a former colleague who’s practicing law in Charleston, S.C., asks for Parker’s help on a racially charged murder case, Parker reluctantly leaves his Maine habitat. The South that he encounters is found in no guidebook: it’s a pernicious locale where the good old boys are far from good, where country music speaks “of war and vengeance” and where one soulless individual “smelled of slow burning… like the odor left after an oil fire had just been extinguished.” Adding eerie overtones to Connolly’s intricately plotted tale are more of Parker’s musings on the concept of death and the nature of evil-soliloquies often accompanied by spectral visions. The malevolence here is almost palpable (even more so than in Parker’s earlier outings).   

 At this time I am so hooked on this series, I’m getting them as they come out in Hardcover.  Finally, we get to learn more about Luis and Angel.  And I concur with the reviewer -we need a book just about them.  Two funnier nor deadlier characters have I come across.  The witticisms are razor sharp.   5 stars

The Killing Kind
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32 New and Used from GBP 0.10

Arachnophobes, proceed at your own peril. Elias Pudd, the archfiend in Connolly’s masterful third suspense novel (following Every Dead Thing and Dark Hollow) finds such grizzly uses for spiders of all, er, stripes that he makes that dastardly villain Hannibal Lecter seem like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Pudd, however, is just one in a splendidly drawn cast that propels this gripping, intricately plotted tale. When a road crew in northern Maine accidentally unearths a grave site, the bodies turn out to be members of the Aroostook Baptists, a cultlike religious group whose members disappeared in the 1960s. Meanwhile, private investigator Charlie Parker (from the earlier novels) is hired to investigate the suspicious suicide of Grace Peltier, who was working on a graduate thesis concerning-guess what?-the Aroostook Baptists. Further muddying the waters is the Fellowship, a group led by the supremely unctuous Carter Paragon (nee Chester Quincy Deedes, “the name on his birth certificate and his criminal record”), which turns out to be far more sinister than anyone realized. From Connolly’s opening words-”This is a honeycomb world. It hides a hollow heart”-it’s clear that this is no ordinary thriller; indeed, his random musings on the manifestations of evil, coupled with Parker’s visions and flashbacks, lend the book a dark, intriguing overlay. Lest things become too intense, however, the author’s wry sense of humor easily lightens the situation, often harking back to earlier noir writers: “she had the kind of body that caused highway pileups after Sunday services.” 

 This book creeped me out with all the spiders.  But don’t let that deter you from reading it.  Connolly gets better and better with each book.  Additionally, he comes closer to a confrontation with his past.  5 stars

Dark Hollow
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16 New and Used from GBP 0.32

Irish writer Connolly’s follow-up to Every Dead Thing, which won the 2000 Shamus Award for Best PI First Novel, is just as grim, hard-edged and compulsively readable as his debut. Recently relocated to his home town of Scarborough, Maine, newly licensed PI Charlie Parker tries to get some overdue child support from wastrel Billy Purdue as a favor to Purdue’s ex-wife Rita, an act of charity that ends up pitting Parker and his friends Angel and Luis against mobster Tony Celli. Celli is looking for $2 million that Purdue might have heisted during a botched ransom exchange, and a pair of killers named Abel and Stritch are on the loose. There’s also a trail of dead bodies, all of them linked to Purdue’s search for his birth parents, a line that stretches from his family to an old woman who kills herself after running away from a nursing home. She claims to have seen Caleb Kyle, a vicious serial killer who hasn’t been heard from since Parker’s youth. It’s this element of the plot that lends a supernatural air to the already creepy proceedings (Parker has visions of his dead wife and daughter); the book opens like a Stephen King novel, with a violent prologue, visions of nameless evil darkening the stars, and the dead past coming alive. Since the novel is set in Maine, it feels like an homage to the master of Pine Tree State horror. Luckily, this very violent hunt for a revived serial killer can survive comparison with the best, especially when you consider that Connolly is creating pitch-perfect American dialogue and believable American characters from a desk in Dublin.  

 A great follow up book to the first.  Charlie Parker’s a great character that’s realistic.   4 stars

Every Dead Thing
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27 New and Used from GBP 0.33

One serial killer who tortures children and another who steals victims’ faces after mutilating their bodies give readers two grisly plots in one darkly ingenious debut novel. New York Homicide cop Charlie “Bird” Parker left the force when his wife and baby daughter were gruesomely murdered (while he was boozing down the block), but he agrees to trace a missing woman as a favor to his old partner. The trail leads from Brooklyn wise guys to a dying rural Virginia town where the shameful secret (children were tortured and killed by wealthy local eccentrics) is linked to the missing woman. Stepping on toes and muscling past stonewallers, Charlie eludes hired killers to flush several villains into the open with the help of two friendly hitmen, a competently lethal gay couple who provide a refreshing change from both stereotypes. Charlie receives a phone call from Tante Marie, a Creole woman near New Orleans whose detailed psychic visions of “The Traveling Man” match the profile of the killer. Scoping out the bayous, Charlie teams up with his old FBI buddy, Woolrich, for more convoluted probing involving a plethora of psychic tips, bodies in the bayou and Creole gangs. A romance with a beautiful Brooklyn profiler who joins the case helps make the New Orleans sequence of the novel sing. The tortuous plot seldom falters and each character is memorable. 

A fantastic book of mystery with occult overtones.  Charlie Parker is a man haunted by his past. I loved that he didn’t bow to stereotypes when writing about the gay couple, Angel and Luis, who are also hit men.  4 stars