The Girls With The Dragons Tattoo 0 comments

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoois a mystery and detective novel. In 1966 sixteen-year-old Harriet Vanger, daughter of the CEO of the large family-run Vanger Corporation, goes missing from her family's island community and is never seen again. Not even a body is found, and her great uncle, Henrik Vanger, has explored every possible lead to discover what happened to his one and only favourite family member.

Over the last forty years her disappearance has become Henrik's obsession, and he's positive someone in the family murdered her - but they never found a motive, and without one he doesn't know who to suspect. Now, in 2005, Henrik has little time left as he grows old and plenty of money to indulge in his obsession one last time.

Mikael Blomkvist is a forty-something financial journalist and editor of Millennium magazine, a magazine he co-founded which prides itself on investigative journalism. But Blomkvist and the magazine have just suffered their first big blow: he's been convicted of libel against one of the biggest business entrepreneurs in Sweden, Hans-Erik Wennerström.

Wanting to keep a low profile and pretend he's been fired from the magazine in order to try and save it from further attack by Wennerström, Henrik Vanger's proposition comes at an ideal time. Mikael's father once worked for the Vanger Corporation, and Harriet herself had babysat little Mikael a few times. Henrik offers Blomkvist a year-long contract with the pretext of writing a history of the family - an autobiography of Henrik - while his real mission is to discover what happened to Harriet.

After some convincing, Blomkvist takes the job - but when he discovers the first new evidence since the tragedy occurred, he realises he needs help - and who better to go to than the private investigator who did such a good job on Blomkvist when Henrik hired her?

Lisbeth Salander is a quiet, secretive young woman who excels at what she does because she's also a genius hacker. With a troubled past and a dicey present, her trust in Blomkvist takes her by surprise. The two team up to discover the truth about Harriet, and to take Wennerström down.

BUY The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Help 0 comments

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Helpis a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

BUY The Help

The Shack 0 comments

Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend.

Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever.

In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant The Shackwrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!

BUY The Shack

Finger Lickin' Fifteen 0 comments

Stephanie tries to keep out of trouble in this book, Finger Lickin' Fifteen. She has financial problems and relationship issues that she would rather avoid. She’s tracking felons who slip out of her clutches, and working for the delicious security expert, Ranger. The delectable cop, Joe Morelli, is also there.

When celebrity chef, Stanley Chipotle, arrives in Trenton for a barbecue sauce cook-off, he is decapitated. Stephanie’s best friend, ex-prostitute, Lula witnesses the event. Making the best of the situation, Lula decides to team up with Grandma Mazur, and enter the barbecue sauce competition.

Stephanie takes it all in her stride by hanging out at Ranger’s offices and sleeping in his bed. With guns blazing, cars burning and hormones raging, the heat is on.

Will she ever catch her ‘skips’? Will she find the reason for Ranger’s security company being compromised? Can she help Lula and her grandmother win the contest? And will she ever decide to marry Morelli?

BUY Finger Lickin' Fifteen

Dead and Gone 0 comments

Dead and Goneis the 9th book in Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire mystery series, featuring Sookie Stackhouse, a Southerner in Bon Temps with the ability to read minds. It's a series filled with supernatural beings, a bit of magic, romance and mystery.

In this latest installment of the series, the were-people and shape shifters have decided it is time to announce their existence to the world. The vampires have been more of less integrated into society for quite a while, and the two-natured folk feel the time has come to step outside of the proverbial closet. Their coming out is met with a mixture of fascination, excitement, fear and anger. When the body of a woman, partially shifted into her animal form, is found hanging from a cross in the back of Merlotte's, the bar and grill where Sookie works, it's a sure sign of a hate crime. The real question though is whether the murder took place as a warning to other shape shifters or was it more personal?

As if that wasn't enough, a civil war is brewing between the fairies, and Sookie is right in thick of it. Add to that the inquisitive FBI agents who are breathing down her neck and a rather disturbing turn in her relationship with one of her vampire friends.

Trouble always seems to find Sookie and it does not waste time finding her again in Dead and Gone. She is joined by some of her usual crowd: her brother Jason, whose neck I wasn't quick to want to ring this time around; the ever sexy and confident vampire Eric; Sam, Sookie's charming boss; Amelia, Sookie's witch roommate; ex-boyfriend and vampire Bill Compton; and, of course, a special appearance by none other than the King Bubba himself. And that's just for starters.

BUY Dead and Gone

Breaking Dawn 0 comments

After the happy ending of Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer continues the Saga with the fourth novel, Breaking Dawn
. In Eclipse, the story ends with the Cullens finally defeating Victoria, the ruthless, wild-haired vampire, set out to kill Bella Swan as revenge for the Cullens killing her mate, James.

In Breaking Dawn, marriage is the next big step in the protagonist, Bella Swan’s life. But she’s not just getting married to the guy next door, she’s marrying her gorgeous, intelligent, compassionate vampire fiancé, Edward Cullen. The vampire that was out to kill her is dead and now she gets to marry Edward Cullen.

This teen romance novel is compelling and fast-paced, with so many things happening at once. There’s the wedding, there’s the honeymoon, there’s the pregnancy and of course Bella’s best friend-who-wants-to-be-more-than-just-friends, Jacob Black, who plays a big part in this novel.

Breaking Dawnis first written from Bella’s point of view, then Jacobs, then back to Bella’s again. Although Meyer’s style of writing keeps you captivated by the story—by a gravitational pull—I couldn’t help but to be disappointed by not being able to read things from Edward’s point of view.

BUY Breaking Dawn

Eclipse 0 comments

Bella Swan is torn between a wolf, Jacob Black, and a vampire, Edward Cullen. In the midst of this sharp triangle of love, an unexpected visitor appears and leaves an unfamiliar scent behind in Bella's bedroom. She later find out that this is the scent of Victoria, James' lover from Twilight , seeking revenge on Edward for killing James. She believes that it costs and eye for an eye, or a lover for a lover.

As we read, Victoria is building up a new born vampire army, for the Cullens to fight. In the meantime, Bella wants to become a vampire, but Edward wants them to get married first.

Will it be Edward or Jacob? Find out in Meyer's Eclipse

BUY Eclipse

New Moon 0 comments

New Moon is sequel to Twilight. The story begins when Bella's 18th birthday and a simple paper cut as she opens her presents leads Edward's brother Jasper to almost kill her - to keep her safe, Edward decides to sever ties with her, convincing her that the Cullen family must move on - must leave Forks - and so must she.

She does not take it well. After a week of being catatoinc and several months of going through the motions like a depressed zombie she discovers that if she does something reckless and her adrenaline gets going, she hears Edward's voice talking to her in her head. And so, in order to hear it again, she enlists the help of her friend from the reservation, Jacob Black, into restoring an old motorbike and teaching her how to ride it.

Jacob is the only one able to block out the pain of Edward's absence, so Bella starts spending a lot of time with him. When he suddenly breaks contact with her, she's determined to see him again. Which is when she discovers that the old tribal legends are not just superstitions: he's become a werewolf, a protector of the people - from the vampiric Cullen family, against which they have deep enmity. Only the treaty between them keeps them from attacking Edward and his family.

The pack of 5 werewolfs - all young men from the reservation - are on the track of a pair of vampires who are hunting for Bella and manage to kill one, Laurent. Victoria is still on the loose. Meanwhile, despite the danger, Bella is still doing what she can to hear Edward's voice again. So she decides to cliff-dive, which works, but she nearly drowns.

Edward's sister Alice, who sees the future, thinks she sees Bella die - and so rushes back to Forks. Unfortunately, his other sister Rosalie, who has never liked Bella, tells Edward what Alice saw - and when Edward calls the house asking for Bella's dad, Jacob tells him he's at the funeral, neglecting to say whose funeral. And so Alice sees Edward rushing to Italy to do whatever it takes for the ancient, royal vampire family in residence there, to kill him. Alice and Bella must race against time to prevent it.

BUY New Moon

Twilight 0 comments

Isabella Swan's move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. But once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Bella's life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. Up until now, Edward has managed to keep his vampire identity a secret in the small community he lives in, but now nobody is safe, especially Bella, the person Edward holds most dear. The lovers find themselves balanced precariously on the point of a knife—between desire and danger. Deeply romantic and extraordinarily suspenseful, The Twilightcaptures the struggle between defying our instincts and satisfying our desires. This is a love story with bite.

BUY The Twilight

Deception Point 0 comments

Deception Point, a story that combines mystery, fiction, and science. Struggling to rebound from a series of embarrassing blunders that have jeopardized its political life at the start of this lively thriller, NASA makes an astounding discovery: there is a meteor embedded deep within the arctic ice. And it isn't just any meteor. Inside the huge rock, which crashed to earth in 1716, are fossils of giant insects proof of extraterrestrial life. Yet, given NASA's slipping reputation, the question arises: Is the meteor real or a fake? That uncertainty dogs NASA and its supporters in Brown's latest page-flipper, a finely polished amalgam of action and intrigue. Trying to determine the truth are intelligence agent Rachel Sexton and popular oceanographer Michael Tolland, both among the first to suspect something is amiss when the meteor is pulled from the ice. Their doubts quickly make them the targets of a mysterious death squad controlled by someone or something that doesn't want the public to hear the meteor may be a fraud. Together, Sexton and Tolland scramble across arctic glaciers, take refuge on ice floes, are rescued by a nuclear submarine, then find themselves trapped aboard a small research vessel off the coast of New Jersey. All the while, the nation's capital is buzzing as to whether NASA has engaged in deception. Or is NASA just a dupe for aerospace companies that have long wanted a bigger share of space contracts?

A rip-roaring action thriller by the author of The Da Vinci Code. This is a stand-alone focused on a Presidential election, NASA and a remarkable discovery. Another non-stop ride.

BUY Deception Point