Seeing Red/Sandra Brown/421 pgs.

Major Franklin Trapper became an instant hero when, 25 years ago, he rescued several innocent bystanders in a bombing in Dallas. Kerra Bailey, an up and coming TV journalist, has landed the interview of the century--with Major Trapper, who had become somewhat of a recluse in the last decade. She wins the interview by contacting John Trapper--the Major's estranged son. Sparks fly between Kerra and John--but can she trust him, especially when it becomes apparent that her life is in danger. This is one of Sandra Brown's better novels. Highly recommended!

Righteous: an IQ novel/Joe Ide/330 pgs.

Isaiah Quintabe, a.k.a. IQ, is still on the hunt for whoever murdered his older brother, Marcus, ten years ago. Up until that point, Marcus was Isaiah's mentor, best friend, and care giver--it was the two of them against the world. Isaiah eventually dropped out of school, and used his high intelligence for solving crimes in his downtrodden neighborhood. In this second book in the series, Isaiah is not only trying to discover (and bring to justice) the person responsible for Marcus's death, but also to find Marcus's girlfriend's sister, Janine, who has gone missing. There are so many threads in the story line--but it works. Isaiah isn't your typical "hero"--he's awkward, lacks social skills--but he is someone you want on your side. I can't speak highly enough of this new series. Highly recommended!

I'm Thinking of Ending Things / Iain Reid / 224 pgs

This book was ridiculous. It was crazy. It was completely off-the-wall nuts! I can't even. I JUST CAN'T EVEN!! I blame Stacey Lynch at SP for telling me that I ought to read this book and keeping the twist ending to herself.

This book is just over 200 pages long, pretty short when you get down to it. The last couple lines of the book pretty much tell you in a sly sort of way that now that you've got a bit of an idea of what the heck just happened, you ought to read it again. Just to see the not-so-obvious big twisty reveal unfold before you. Just to get a handle on what was going on the entire time that was staring you in the face, but you just didn't allow your head to go there while reading it.

Man, this book is chilling! It's spooky to the Nth degree. DO NOT read this if you get nightmares. Or, at least, don't read it late at night if you get nightmares. It's not gory. It's not gross. It's just plain spooky. The story is of a young woman, just past college age, who has been dating a PhD student named Jake for the last 6 weeks and is on a 2 hour long road trip to meet his parents. Despite that, she is thinking about breaking up with Jake. She goes back and forth between telling us all about how she met Jake and how much she likes him to telling us about things he does that's weird, and other nit-picky things that don't seem so bad at first. The couple meets his odd parents who constantly bicker when they think no one is listening. Then Jack and the young woman head back, but what happens once they head home is pretty mind blowing.

Only one other warning: there's a lot of internal monologues and dialogues with very little action happening until the last third of the book.