• I Think I’m in Love with an Alien, Ann Aguirre
• The Reluctant Reaper, MaryJanice Davidson
• The Rushworth Family Plot, Claudia Gray
• Money Shot, Christa Faust
• Nemesis, Gregg Hurwitz
• The Big Empty, Robert Crais
• Wonderland, Jennifer Hillier
• The Serpent and the Wings of Night, Carissa Broadbent
• Calamity, Constance Fay
• White Out, R.S. Burnett

Ann Aguirre has a startlingly wide range of books, which certainly piques my interest. I’ve enjoyed them all. I Think I’m in Love with an Alien is no exception. Jeannette Hammond, nerd, has formed an online community of other outsiders. They plan to meet at SpaceCon, ftf. The big surprise is that not all of her online friends are human.

MaryJanice Davidson and I have known each other for years, though we seldom get to meet face to face. Her work always makes me smile, and The Reluctant Reaper is no exception. Amara Morrigan’s father is Death, and she shies away from assuming his duties. Then she hears he’s failing, and she must go to the family home, taking her best friend Gray. The plot thickens in a satisfying way.

I have been disappointed in some Jane Austen homage novels, but not Claudia Gray’s. Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney, offspring of some of Austen’s happy pairings, suit each other to a T, but their parents don’t want them to wed. The couple are very handy at solving murders, though, and they connect over this pastime when they can. I’m rooting for them! The Rushworth Family Plot is their fourth outing as detectives.

Money Shot is NOT a cosy. Christa Faust’s protagonist, former porn star Angel Dare, is a tough woman in a tough industry. When she’s taken for a sucker and shut in a trunk, Angel is not going to accept that insult. Don’t get in her way.

Gregg Hurwitz is a best-selling thriller writer, perhaps best known for his Orphan X novels. Nemesis is the tenth in the series, and it’s just as fast paced and complex as the others. Evan Smoak (Orphan X) has a rigid code, so it’s a dilemma when one of his few friends appears to have broken that code. They’re on a collision course, and the outcome will be explosive.

The Big Empty is (yay!) an Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novel by the great Robert Crais. If you want to learn how to write a crime novel, read all his books, and then read them again. In this novel, Elvis is hired to find out what happened to the father of a woman who’s become a household name. Of course, this is anything but simple, and of course, trouble follows Elvis like night follows day. He calls on his enigmatic friend Joe Pike for help. Joe is the most efficient sidekick in an industry known for sidekicks.

Jennifer Hillier’s Wonderland would be classified as a thriller, I think, but it’s also a meditation on returning to your past, in the hopes of repeating it. Of course, that never works out as you’d hoped. Vanessa Castro returns to Seaside, Washington, as a deputy police chief. She worked at Wonderland Amusement Park as a teen, so she thinks her daughter will enjoy it, too. But dilapidated Wonderland is harboring a secret, and it’s about to come out.

The Serpent and the Wings of Night can be capsuled by saying it’s The Hunger Games with vampires. But that’s not doing it justice. Oraya, a human adopted daughter of a famous vampire, enrolls in the Kejari, a deadly tournament. To survive, she forms a dangerous alliance with vampire Raihn. Oraya finds out things about her past she never knew while she battles for her life and fights falling in love.

Constance Fay’s Calamity is the first book about Temperance Reed, who commands a spaceship that takes on transportation jobs. Temperance has just discovered her lover has been unfaithful, but she must take a job she has concerns about to keep the business running. One of the big families that runs her part of the world, the Escajedas, sends a third son to run a mission. Soon everyone is in danger, Arcadio Escajeda is not the jerk he seems, and Temperance has everything on the line.

White Out is a very exciting thriller by R.S. Burnett. Its lone female protagonist, Rachel Beckett, has accepted a position on an urgent research trip to the Antarctic. She loses communication with her base camp, hears that there’s been a nuclear disaster, and wonders if she is the last woman on earth. But she’s not alone . . ..

BLOG:

Finally, finally, I’ve turned in my next novel . . . on time! But my writing schedule was the most demanding it’s ever been. Due to some surgeries, I got very far behind, and with my due date looming, I had to do some math to figure out how to make the deadline. It was a great challenge to me, but I did it. My agent and my friends Dana Cameron and Toni Kelner (aka Leigh Perry) are reading the book right now. Then I’ll send it to my editor at Saga Press.

Doing this has been the writing equivalent of a running a marathon. Finally crossed the finish line. For the past two months, I’ve written and I’ve read, so I have a backlog of books I’ve enjoyed to share with you. I put a big dent in my stack today, so I’m pleased about that, too. I hope you find something in my recommendations that resonates with you. I love to share good novels!

I’m going to take it easy the rest of the week (which means I’ve got the usual assortment of lunch with friends, doctor appointments, and so on, that almost anyone my age has).

By now some of you will have read The Last Wizards’ Ball. I hope you enjoyed it. Yes, it’s the last Gunnie Rose book, by my publisher’s decision. I had a great time writing it and I think I did justice to my characters’ arcs.

In late August and early September, I’ll be going to DragonCon in Atlanta, then directly to Bouchercon in New Orleans. If you see Paula and me, we may look stressed and wrinkled, but we’ll enjoy so much of the trip. My assistant and best friend, Paula, has traveled with me for many years. She’s great about remembering things and people I’ve forgotten, and she knows where all the bodies are buried.

I look forward to greeting old friends and meeting new ones.

Charlaine Harris