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Hi and welcome to all new members. Jump right in and tell us what books you like and don't like, we are a friendly group and our reading is veried.

Allen

The Help is about a young white woman in the early 1960s in Mississippi who becomes interested in the plight of the black ladies' maids that every family has working for them. She writes their stories about mistreatment, abuse and heartbreaks of working in white families' homes, all just before the Civil Rights revolution.
I am a fan of historical fiction and found this book very much to my liking.

From Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. At the start of Potts's debut, a red-hot suspense novel, a midnight intruder murders D.C. Stroeb, an economics professor at Miami Intercontinental University, and his CPA wife, Rachel, in their exclusive Lotus Island, Fla., estate. Oddly, the killer takes only the couple's laptops. Their 16-year-old daughter, Elise, who was home at the time, suffers emotional trauma in the aftermath. Their 22-year-old son, Jeremy, who can't believe anyone could kill his parents, returns from backpacking abroad to assume the guardianship of Elise, against the wishes of his lawyer uncle, Dwight Stroeb. Jeremy connects with a sympathetic Miami detective, gets a job at his mother's CPA firm and enrolls at his father's university, where he becomes involved with his father's female graduate assistant, a Peruvian-French sexpot. The clue hunt sizzles in a plot driven largely by shifty accounting. By the end, the dangers of creative number crunching are all too apparent."

Good debut.

Well Irving fans are happy. From the Amazon.com review:

Amazon Best of the Month, October 2009: A long, delicious trip to the land of Irving is hands-down the best way to begin the month of October. A trio of tragic events (though the prize for most hell-shocking goes to the third) exiles widower and camp cook Dominic Baciagalupo and his son Danny from a mid-century logging outpost called Twisted River. They leave behind the Bunyan-esque lumberjack Ketchum--a gruff, eccentric, dyed-in-the-wool Yankee--who remains their sole connection to the past. What's next neither father nor son knows: their rootless existence moves swiftly in and out of New England, tied ostensibly to jobs for Dominic and schools for Danny, but it seems one foot is always back in those New Hampshire woods. Theirs is a restless, richly observed journey, crowned by a reckoning no one could predict. Few writers can match John Irving's knack for denouement, and in Last Night in Twisted River, his extraordinary ending is made all the more powerful by a story that feasts on language, life, and love.

This lady surely is able to crank these out....and does it well.
This is about a trial...A child with major disabilities is born and the trial and the story is how this impacts on the 2 families.
Picoult does her homework and asks such a lot questions that leaves the readers always wondering what would I have done..

This is #2 in a Series by Christine Feehan. The characters have been experimented upon by a scientist trying to enhance their psychic abilities. First with little girls, then with two groups of military. In this book, Lily, one of the little girls is grown and the scientist, whom she thought was her father, has died. She inherits everything including his lab and all the records and finds video tapes of her and the other girls when they were children. She is working on tracking one of them down and finds one who can manipulate energy. She sends in her team - being one of the military groups who call themselves and her Ghost Walkers. The leader goes in advance and arrives just as her home is being attacked and foils an attempt at assasinating her. Her "handler" is kidnapped and her "nurses" are killed. Thus begins the rescue attempt and the search for who is trying to kill her so they can get her back to Lily and safety. In the process, love blooms.

From Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Set in South Africa in 1952, Australian filmmaker Nunn's stellar debut explores a divided society through the frame of a classic murder mystery. When Det. Sgt. Emmanuel Cooper, Nunns tortured sleuth, investigates white suspects in the fatal shooting of Afrikaner police captain Willem Pretorius, he immediately encounters resistance from the victims family. Before long, brutal investigators from the Security Branch offer a politically expedient solution. Cooper must fend off their threats as he pursues a link between the murder and an open Peeping Tom case that Pretorius had been probing. The detective finds no shortage of people who might have had a motive for killing the captain. Fans of Charles Todds Inspector Rutledge series (A Matter of Justice, etc.) will note some parallels, in particular Coopers being haunted by the spirit of his old sergeant-major. Smooth prose and a deft plot make this novel a welcome addition to crime fiction set in South Africa."

Good debut.

This is the first in a series by Laurell K. Hamilton. The main character is Meredith Gentry, a princess of the high court of Faerie. She is posing as a human, working in a detective agency that specializes in supernatural crime. Suddenly she finds herself back in the land of Faerie and the politics of her aunt's court. It is full of intrigue, dangers and lustful desires. I see many parallels to her Anita Blake series. Strong female lead, courageous and able to take care of herself, and with little morals in her personal life. The only difference is, here, there are faeries instead of vampires.

Amazon Best of the Month, October 2009: An investigation into a cold-blooded murder introduces Detective Harry Bosch to a Chinese underworld lurking in the dark recesses of the City of Angels. Its tentacles are far reaching, yet it remains shrouded in secrecy due to time-honored cultural traditions that keep the exploited from speaking out. To the victim's family, Bosch promises revenge, but when his own daughter suddenly becomes a target, he promises blood. However, working a case with leads on both sides of the Pacific provides little room (or time) for error. 9 Dragons is a gritty, coffee-and-cigarettes crime thriller full of smart twists and generous helpings of suspense. Fans of Michael Connelly can expect another exceptional thrill ride, while newcomers will be immediately engaged by the tortured and unrelenting Bosch. "He knew one day it would come to this, that the darkness would find [his daughter] and that she would be used to get him," writes Connelly. "That day was now."

It is good as usual.