In the mood for a mystery?

IN THE WOODS

by TANA FRENCH

Series- Dublin Murder Squad

Published January 2007

Genre-Mystery

Pages-496

Publisher- Viking

Summery-In the Woods is a 2007 mystery novel by Tana French about a pair of Irish detectives and their investigation of the murder of a twelve-year-old girl.

Plot-Twenty two years prior to the novel's events, twelve year-old Adam and his two best friends failed to come home after playing in the familiar woods bordering their Irish housing estate. A search is organised and the Gardaí find Adam shivering, clawing the bark of a nearby tree, with blood on his shoes and slash marks on his back. He is unable to tell them what happened or where his friends are. They are never found and his amnesia holds to the present day. He now goes by his middle name, Rob, to avoid media attention and is a detective with the Garda Síochána's Murder Squad.

The novel circles around the murder of a twelve-year-old girl, Katy Devlin, whose case Rob and his partner Cassie Maddox are assigned to investigate. The body is found in the same woods where Rob's friends disappeared, at an archaeological dig site, and the coincidence is enough to make Rob nervous.

My thoughts- I have fallen in love with Tana French and the tales she tells. When I was working in the library a patron highly recommended her and I'm so glad I listened. The descriptions and language make it easy for the reader to submerge themselves into the story that takes place in Ireland. The characters are honest, interesting and flawed with fascinating backstories that flow easily into the mystery. I like that it's not horribly graphic, she can describe a good crime scene without gory details. 

If you are looking for a good mystery to get lost in check this one out. And if you fall in love with her storytelling you'll want to jump into the next one called The Likeness which takes the character Cassie Maddox in a whole new crazy direction.

Book Review: MAID OF SECRETS

MAID of  SECRETS
416 Pages
May 2013
Simon and Schuster Publishing

Summary Taken from Goodreads:
Seventeen-year-old Meg Fellowes is a wry, resourceful thief forced to join an elite group of female spies in Queen Elizabeth’s Court. There she must solve a murder, save the Crown, and resist the one thing that will become her greatest freedom–and her deadliest peril.
For Meg and her fellow spies are not alone in their pursuit of the murderer who stalks Windsor Castle.
A young, mysterious Spanish courtier, Count Rafe de Martine, appears at every turn in the dark and scandal-filled corridors of the Queen’s summer palace. And though secrets and danger are Meg’s stock-in-trade, she’s never bargained on falling in love…
My Thoughts:
I've been reading alot of debut novels lately and I have to say that these new writers are blowing me away!
Maid of Secrets is Jennifer McGowen's first novel and it's the first book in the series-Maids of Honor.
It's a combination of historical fiction and mystery, set in London, England 1559.
Meg, a seventeen year old orphan is the main character of this tale. She is a feisty thief with a talent for pick pocketing. She makes her living being part of The Golden Rose acting Troupe. As spectators are watching the show on stage Meg makes her way around the crowd lifting wallets and jewelry.
One fateful day she is caught and arrested. But here's the spin. Instead of being thrown in a dungeon to rot she has actually been kidnapped and forced to work for the crown as a spy-Meg is put in the service of Queen Elizabeth to watch, memorize, and report for the queen and her master spies.
Against her will Meg is forced to train and learn the ways of the court as well as how to serve and protect the queen at all costs. Meg is not the only spy working for the queen. There are actually five ladies in waiting-watching the queen as well as the court. Sophia- who is a seer, with a gift for seeing the future. Jane-the blade, she has the ability to blend and the courage to kill. Beatrice is the beauty and the charmer of men, and lastly there is Anna, she is the puzzle solver and master linguist. I look forward to finding out more about Meg's fellow spies as the series continues.
With Queen Elizabeth's  royal court filled with opportunists all looking for the Queen's favor, and enemies who want to see her dead these spies very kept busy.
Meg is ordered to spy on a handsome Spanish courtier who may possibly be connected to the murder of a fellow spy. With traitors and conspirators at every turn Meg struggles to know who she should trust and who will betray her.
There are plenty of twists and turns that kept this reader guessing and the pages turning.
I LOVED Maid of Secrets and I can't wait to see what what this author has in store next.
Rumor has it that the sequel is in the works and is called Maid of Deception. YEAH!
To learn more about the Maids of Honor go to Jennifer McGowan web page for all kinds of fun extras and information. Seriously, go there.
A big thank you to Simon and Schuster for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book. I will be donating this book to my local middle school library.

Book Trailer: Maid of Secrets

I'll be reviewing Maid of Secrets tomorrow.

Book Review- The House of the Scorpion

The House of the Scorpion
By Nancy Farmer
2002
380 Pages
From Inside Cover:
At his coming-of-age party, Matteo Alacran asks El Patron's bodyguard, "How old am I?...I know I don't have a birthday like humans, but I was born."
"You were harvested," Tam Lin reminds him. "You were grown in that poor cow for nine months and then you were cut out of her."
To most people around him, Matt is not a boy, but a beast. A room full of chicken litter with roaches for friends and old chicken bones for toys is considered good enough for him. But for El Patron, lord of a country called Opium-a strip of poppy fields lying between the U.S. and what was once called Mexico-Matt is a guarantee of eternal life. El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself for Matt is himself. They share identical DNA.
As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister, grasping cast of characters, including El Patron's power-hungry family. He is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards and by the mindless slaves of Opium, brain-deadened eejits who toil in the poppy fields.
And escape from the Alacran Estate is no guarantee of freedom because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect. 
My thoughts:
Main character Matt is the clone of a powerful drug lord, El Patron. Matt is born into a time when rich and wealthy men harvest organs of clones to prolong their lives. El Patron has lived to be 140 years old with the help of transplants. It's perfectly legal and clones are considered no better than cattle. Usually clones have their intelligence destroyed at birth but El Patron decides to give Matt a normal upbringing and entrusts his care to a loyal servant named Celia. Matt submerges himself in music, excels in math and learns everything about the business he believes that he will eventually run. As Matt grows up he faces the hatred and prejudices people have of clones and eejits.Truths of why he exists are slowly revealed and the horror of his situation comes to light. Escape becomes his only option.
Matt is a character full of hope and courage as he tries to figure out who he is in spite of why he was created. A fast paced story that takes the reader on a journey with Matt from the moment of his conception and up into his teen years.
Because so much has happened with stem cell research, immigration and cloning in the last few years I think that this book would be an excellent one for a class discussion or a great book club choice. There are many moral choices the characters in the story face.
I chose this book as the kick off to the R.I.P. Challenge. It came highly recommended to me by teens when I worked at the public library. After finishing the book I struggled to categorize this novel- Is it science fiction or dystopian? Maybe it's a mystery? It also had the elements of suspense and horror throughout. I'm not really sure which category The House of the Scorpion falls into is my point. Maybe it's just one of those books that can't be put into one genre and should be enjoyed for what it is-a really good read.
I borrowed this book from the Salmon Public Library. I would recommend this to readers 12 and up.

Shift

"Some friends fade away.....Other's disappear"
That quote appears on the cover and immediately pulled me in. Who doesn't love a good mystery?
Shift by Jennifer Bradbury is a page turner that's hard to put down.
Win and Chris have been best friends since elementary school. As graduation nears they decide to embark on one last great adventure before heading off to seperate colleges. A cross country bike trek from West Virginia to Seattle, Washington.
The story is told from Chris's point of view one month after the bike trip. He is now at college and the FBI is questioning him about the disappearance of Win.
The bike trip is told in flashbacks as Chris trys to figure out what exactly happened to his best friend and their friendship along the way.
I love the way to story unfolded. Chris and Win have a complex relationship. At times I wasn't even sure I would call it an actual friendship. Sometimes your best friends really are your worst enemies.
Great book! I would reccomended it for readers 13 and up.

Our library does not carry this book but I would be happy to get it for you through InterLibrary Loan.