Waking the Witch - Armstrong, Kelley

Waking the Witch is book eleven in the Women of the Otherworld series.  Readers have watched Savannah grow up and come into her powers in this series.  This is the first novel where 21 year old Savannah is the main character and mostly working on her own.  She's dealing with a killer who's hard to pin down and keeps on killing while she tries.  The pace is fast and there's plenty of action.  Very highly recommended.

Witch & Wizard: The Gift - Patterson, James, Rust, Ned

Witch & Wizard: The Gift is the second book in the Witch & Wizard series.  I should have listened to myself.  I wasn't that happy with the first book in the series because it wasn't just young adult but juvenile.  This book was even worse.  I might consider this series for my grandkids in grade school, if it wasn't for the violence, but I'm done with it for myself.  Not recommended.

Dead or Alive - Clancy, Tom

Dead or Alive is classic Clancy. You've got Jack Ryan, John Clark, and all the other regulars. The story parallels real life in many ways. Lets hope not in the terrorists' successes. I had to read it through today because I needed to know how it ended. Clancy books always seem to have that ability to pull you in. Very highly recommended.

Small Favor - Butcher, Jim

Small Favor is the 10th novel in the Dresden Files series.  Harry has the Fae and the Denarians to deal with this time around, and lots of snow.  The Archive is back and just as cute and deadly as ever.  And you'll never believe who Harry is finally trading smooches with.  Butcher never lets me shut out the light and go to sleep on time, but it's worth it.  Very highly recommended.

What the Night Knows - Koontz, Dean

What the Night Knows is like old times. This is vintage Koontz.  I enjoyed every minute and every word.  There's even a golden retriever.  The bogeyman is alive and well and coming for John Calvino's family...again.  It's not enough to have killed him once.  It will require something stronger and more permanent this time.  And hopefully before his entire family is wiped out...again.  The question is, is John up to it or not.  Very highly recommended.

White Night - Butcher, Jim

White Night is the ninth book in The Dresden Files series.  After saving her life in Proven Guilty, Molly is now Dresden's apprentice.  That adds a new wrinkle to the series.  Harry is still fighting vampires, but now the white court is the problem.  Practitioners are dying or disappearing and it appears Harry's half-brother Thomas might be involved.  The action is furious as always and most satisfying.  Very highly recommended.

Darkness Under the Sun - Koontz, Dean

Darkness Under the Sun is sort of an extended prologue to the new book What the Night Knows. This novella sets the scene for the full blown novel.  Why they're separate I'm not sure.  This is a good introduction to the evil that appears to have a life of it's own and continues in the longer book.  There's enough suspense and terror in this story for most full length novels.  Highly recommended.

Cross Fire - James Patterson

Cross Fire is another Alex Cross novel.  This time Kyle Craig is back and hiding in plain sight.  The action is tense and keeps you glued to the book right to the end.  You have to wonder though, if Alex had just shot Kyle Craig one of the many times he could have done so in previous books and this one, how many lives would he have saved?  And once again there were threads that were orthogonal to the plot, served to complicate the story, and were never tied off.  In spite of that, highly recommended.

Pathfinder - Orson Scott Card

Pathfinder is a novel that makes you think hard at times. If you like time travel and time manipulation this book will pop your skull. The main character is Rigg, the son of a trapper from way up river. His special ability is to see the paths that animals have taken. This makes him very handy for trapping, but that's just the beginning of what his ability lets him do. This is obviously the first in what I hope is a long series of books about the planet Garden and it's amazing inhabitants. Very highly recommended.

The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

I first read The Hobbit 45 years ago. It became my favorite book then and has maintained that standing ever since. Bilbo, Gandalf, and the 13 dwarfs took my imagination for an adventure that has stayed with me my whole life. I've read this book half a dozen time. I've got multiple paperback and hardback versions gathering dust somewhere on a shelf. Now I have it on my kindle to read and reread some more. Very very highly recommended.

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

The Road is a depressing take on post-apocalypse America.  I suppose a book on post-apocalypse anything has to fight not to be depressing, but McCarthy didn't even struggle.  A father and son pair are traveling in a land where nothing appears to be alive but humans, and most of them are bent on killing and eating any other humans they find.  The book never says what caused the apocalypse.  It involved fire, since there is ash everywhere, and it appears there was a catastrophic climate change as a result.  That isn't relevant to the story since the focus is the present and the hazards the main characters have to avoid on their trip to the ocean and what they hope is a warmer climate.  There are some flashbacks involving the mother, but they're depressing too.  I should have know better than to read something that won a Pulitzer prize.  Not recommended.

The Realm Shift - James Somers

The Realm Shift was a good idea with poor follow through.  I like the plot of the book and the characters were somewhat interesting but the writing was spotty at best.  When the writing is so bad that you notice that aspect of the book instead of what the author is trying to say then it's time to move on.  I finished this book because I wanted to see how it came out.  I knew it was a trilogy but hoped there would be some kind of partial conclusion to the first book.  No such luck.  I won't be reading the other two.  Too bad because the concept was interesting.  Not recommended.

Lessons from Armed America - Kathy Jackson, Mark Walters

Lessons from Armed America has useful information for anyone who plans to, or is already, carrying a pistol for self defense. I enjoyed the true stories and the analysis. If I had it to do over again I'd by the paper version instead of the kindle version though. The kindle version was formatted so poorly that I almost gave up at one point. It was atrocious. This is a good book with very useful information, but it was very difficult to read on my kindle. Not the kindle's fault. It's the person who did a half-assed attempt to convert what they had to kindle format. Highly recommend in dead tree format.

Frankenstein: Lost Souls - Dean Koontz

Frankenstein: Lost Souls is the fourth novel in Koontz Frankenstein series. I really thought the last novel killed off Victor and that would be that. But this is fiction so a new Victor is back. Now the new race is starting over again in a little town in Montana. They still hate humans but now they have a whole new way of getting rid of us.  And it seems to be working.  Be aware this is not the last novel.  Once again a book just seemed to stop before it was done.  At least with Koontz I can expect a new installment to keep the story going.  Very highly recommended.

The 7th Victim - Alan Jacobson

The 7th Victim follows Karen Vail, an FBI profiler, on her search to find the Dead Eyes serial killer. I really enjoyed this book.  It's hard to catch your breath things go so fast.  I'm not going to stick any spoilers in here, but you'll never believe who the killer is.  Karen has to deal with an ongoing divorce and her mother's alzheimer's at the same time she's relentlessly hunting a killer.  A killer who stabs each victim in the eyes as part of the killing ritual.  Highly recommended.

The Twelfth Imam - Joel C. Rosenberg

The Twelfth Imam is a book that puts the reader right in the center of the nuclear crisis in the middle east. The novel starts with the takeover of the Iranian embassy back in 1979 and ends in the present day Iran with the nuclear crisis almost at the critical point.  I really enjoyed the book, but it ended abruptly and in my opinion the story is not done.  Since I read this on my kindle, I thought there was a problem with the download, but the abrupt stop was followed by authors notes, acknowledgments, and an author bio.  Strange.  Highly recommended but the ending is disappointing.

Salem's Lot - Stephen King

Salem's Lot is one King novel I missed the first time around.  This is an excellent book.  It's kind of refreshing these days to read a vampire novel where the vampires are the bad guys - Evil, nasty, and scary.  Highly recommended.

Worth Dying For - Lee Child

Worth Dying For is a new Reacher Novel.  Last time around it wasn't clear if Reacher had survived or not.  Now we know he made it out alive, but he's suffering.  Unfortunately for him he passed through a little spot in Nebraska where evil things were happening.  And as usual, Reacher can't leave without cleaning up the mess.  And what a complicated mess.  Very highly recommended.

Curse the Dawn - Karen Chance

Curse the Dawn is book four in the Cassie Palmer series. Now it's really getting interesting. Learning to travel ley lines comes in real handy until one splits open and destroys MAGIC headquarters.  Making a deal with a minor god causes Cassie to swap bodies with Pritkin.  Waking up in a man's body, with something she's never dreamed having, is an experience she won't forget :)  Highly recommended.

Embrace the Night - Karen Chance

Embrace the Night is book number three in the Cassie Palmer series.  It just keeps getting more complicated and more dangerous.  Now that she's the Pythia for real she's dealing with the responsibilities of her new office in addition to the powers.  And that pesky geis is still there.  And the war mages and vampires and demons and fairies and ghosts.  She needs the Codex to find the spell to break the geis but that's proving more challenging than she thought.  Especially when she finds out who her favorite war mage really is.  Highly recommended.