'Brava, Valentine' Shares Both the Joyous and Heartbreaking Realizations of Life

They live in New York and New Jersey. They're part of a large Italian family. They run a family business. They have ties to the "old country." Sounds like The Sopranos, but it actually describes the family in Adriana Trigiani's newest novel Brava, Valentine. It follows the first book in the Valentine series, Very Valentine, and continues to chronicle the Angelini/Roncalli family as they cook, live, and love.

Valentine Roncalli is a thirty-something shoemaker who has never been married and who has lived for the past several years with her Gram in an apartment above the family's Angelini Shoe Company. In Very Valentine she became more active in the development of the company, and in this newest installment she continues that trend. However, Valentine meets a whole new host of difficulties in both her personal and her professional life in this novel.

She must carry the reins of the company as her Gram sets out on adventures of her own and leaves Valentine as head designer and chief executive officer. Complicating matters is the inclusion of other family members as employees. Valentine also becomes involved once again with the Italian gentleman Gianluca (pronounced John-lukka) who she met in her travels to Italy in Very Valentine. There are also family mysteries -- both old and new -- and business deals to be made. Valentine's best friend Gabriel moves in with her and redecorates the old family apartment, which both thrills and saddens Valentine. The more things change, the more she wishes they would just stay the same -- and yet, she longs for more.

With the Angelini-Roncallis, Trigiani has once again created a family readers can care about, as she did in her bestselling Big Stone Gap series. The Valentine series is both similar (Valentine is a thirty-something woman who has sacrificed her personal life in her devotion to family, like Ave Maria, and Italy serves as a secondary setting as it does in the Big Stone Gap books) and different (the main setting is big-city New York versus small-town Virginia; Valentine has many siblings, while Ave Maria is left alone after the deaths of her parents).

There are no murders or car chases in Trigiani's novels, primarily because she does something different: she writes about real life in all its small intricacies, and she makes it interesting enough that she doesn't have to pull any additional punches. Her characters are ones we sympathize and identify with, even through our differences. And setting is ultra-important and well-executed. Valentine's New York fairly jumps off the page, from the cobblestone streets outside the Angelini Shoe Company to the Hudson River as viewed from Valentine's rooftop garden.

A favorite line from the book: "Love builds in a series of small realizations," written in a letter from Gianluca to Valentine (or Valentina, as he calls her).

Brava, Valentine will be released in hardcover on February 9, 2010. O Magazine has already named the novel one of its 10 books to watch for this month. Trigiani will be on tour for the novel this spring; check out the dates to see if she's coming to a bookstore or library near you! Also, see her on the Today show on February 10 to discuss the novel with Hoda and Kathie Lee.

Additionally, Lifetime Television is partnering with Trigiani to bring Valentine to life in a television movie, and Trigiani is working hard on bringing the Big Stone Gap series to the big screen.

Trigiani gives a tour of Greenwich Village and discusses her inspiration for the Valentine series:

'Hardball' Makes Chicago History and the 1966 Race Riots Personal

The year was 1966. Martin Luther King was still alive, and race riots occurred on a regular basis as civil rights activists worked to erase the lines that divided black from white. Thousands joined King in Chicago's Marquette Park to challenge the idea of -- and actual laws supporting -- "white neighborhoods" by forcing their way into them and confronting the problem head-on. King and his marchers were met by protestors who threw objects at them; at one point King was hit by a flying brick.

Sara Paretsky worked in Chicago that summer as part of a community service program. Her own experiences and her memory of that time led her to write Hardball, the newest novel in the V.I. Warshawski mystery series.

Thirteen books and almost thirty years have brought V.I., or Vic as she is often called, to a new place in terms of maturity and spunk. She still mourns the early deaths of her mother and father; these feelings are present in almost every Warshawski book, but more so in this novel. Hardball is the novel in which Vic realizes that no daddy is as perfect as his little girl believes him to be, and it is one of the most difficult reckonings she has dealt with thus far. As an only daughter (not only child, but the only girl), I found myself brought to tears at Paretsky's descriptions of V.I.'s memories and her deeply-felt love for her father. More than just love, Warshawski has an admiration for her father that has carried her through hard times; when his character comes into question, it threatens the foundation on which she has built her life.

V.I. is hired by an elderly black woman to find a son she cares little about; rather, it is her sister -- the boy's aunt -- who wants to know if he is still alive. As V.I. begins her work on the case, she is joined in Chicago by her young cousin Petra. Petra has come to Chicago to work on a promising young candidate's Senate campaign. As V.I. and Petra's lives become more entangled, so do their missions. V.I. finds herself the target of a breaking-and-entering, a fire bomb, and threats from a Southside gang called the Anacondas as she tries to navigate the terrain of a forty-year-old missing person case. In the meantime, V.I. finds that Petra and her political work somehow tie into her case. Eventually, V.I. is forced to revisit the day in Marquette Park when King marched and a young civil rights worker was killed -- a day in which her policeman father and his buddies were patrolling the south Chicago streets and managing the riot that occurred.

As she blends factual history with V.I.'s fictional story, Paretsky creates a world of intrigue. Never has she forced readers to become so involved with a story she has written by making the history of the city of Chicago so personal to her lead detective.

Start at the beginning with the complete list of Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski novels. NPR named this novel one of the top five mysteries of the year, along with Sue Grafton's U is for Undertow. You can read the first chapter or listen to Paretsky read from the novel on the author's website.

And for a fun blast-from-the-past, V.I.'s only venture onto the big screen (from 1991's movie starring Kathleen Turner):

Introducing... The Series Lists

If you're like me, you sometimes read a book only to find out that it is the third or fifth or fourteenth in a series. And if you're also like me, you are slightly upset. Or really upset. I try to read the back or inner cover carefully to avoid exactly this. But it doesn't always work -- recently I listened to and wrote a post about Lisa Gardner's mystery novel Gone -- only to find out that it was part of a series -- which I also wrote a post about.

So in order to stop exactly that from happening to you (and for other reasons -- sharing my favorite series, keeping up with which books in a series I have and haven't read), I've created a page devoted to solely that -- series. You can browse in several different ways -- by author (because some have written multiple series), character (in case you can't remember who wrote a series you like), location (because that has always been fascinating to me -- the way you get to know a city through the character: L.A. through Harry Bosch; Trenton, New Jersey, through Stephanie Plum; Chicago through V.I. Warshawski), and by subject (for people who like food-related reading, or police procedurals, etc.). I will also put in a search box so that any lists with key words will pop up.

Of course, there is still much work to be done -- and many series that haven't been completed (I have more than 20 in my "drafts" list to work on). I will add to it gradually, but I tried to put several series on it before creating a link from this page to that one. The way the page appears, series are in alphabetical order by author last name. Browsing tabs on the left will allow you to conduct more thorough searches.

So, without further ado, the A Worn Path - Series link. Enjoy! (And feel free to share any additional series you'd like to see added -- they might already be on my "to do" list, or you might think of some important series I haven't yet.)

'Killer Calories' Offers Up Cozy Mystery in Southern California Setting

G. A. McKevett's Savannah Reid is a southern belle who has been displaced to Southern California. She was once a police officer, but after being kicked off the force, she has now opened her own business as a private investigator. With the help of her apprentice Tammy and her former police partner Dirk, Savannah solves crimes in this mystery series. Killer Calories is the third book that chronicles Savannah's mystery-solving skills.

The business world becomes personal when Tammy's other employer is found dead at the spa she owned. Kat Valentina was once a beautiful and famous actress. After her career fizzled, she opened a spa in southern California with her husband and manager. The spa is a health-oriented one that serves green sludge disguised as breakfast and almost kills its visitors with exercise morning, noon, and night. But it's also a troubled spa, complete with a stalker security guard, a quack of a doctor, and elderly, spying neighbors. When Savannah gets an anonymous letter in the mail stuffed full of cash, asking her to investigate, she and Tammy jump at the chance to find out if Tammy's former actress/boss met death by her own hand or someone else's. Or was her murder just an accident -- too many margaritas mixed with an overly-heated mud bath?

Savannah is fun -- lots of it. And she likes to eat; she has Dirk sneak her out of the spa several times to eat bad breakfast food and burgers. She also enjoys fine dining with her friends John and Ryan, an elegant gay couple. She offers one-liners with style, and fights crime with her black belt in karate. McKevett's mystery is what Danna from Cozy (& Not So Cozy) Mystery Books and DVDs would call a cozy mystery. What does that mean, you might ask? Well, Danna includes an essay on what makes a mystery a "cozy mystery." Here is how McKevett's book fits to that definition:

• Savannah "is an amateur sleuth. . . . Her education and life’s experiences have provided her with certain skills that she will utilize in order to solve all the crimes that are 'thrown her way.' [And] she is usually a very intuitive, bright woman." Yes, Savannah used to be a police officer. However, she was kicked off the squad. And she isn't doing very well as a private investigator -- she has bills piled up on every surface of her house. So that makes her an "amateur" in my opinion.
• San Carmelita is in southern California, but it is still "a small town or village... The small size of the setting makes it believable that all the suspects know each other [and the spa setting feeds into that even more. Savannah is] a very likeable person who is able to get the community members to talk freely (i.e. gossip) about each other. There [are multiple people who are] very knowledgeable and nosy (and of course, very reliable!) characters in the book who are able to fill in all of the blanks, thus enabling [Savannah] to solve the case."
• Savannah is "not a medical examiner, detective, or police officer [-- even though she used to be -- but] her best friend [and former partner Dirk] is. This makes a very convenient way for her to find out things that she would otherwise not have access to."
• "The local police force [except for her friend Dirk] doesn’t take [Savannah] very seriously. They dismiss her presence, almost as if she doesn’t exist. This of course, makes it convenient for her to 'casually overhear' things at the scene of a crime." And in Savannah's case, they even let her examine the body; of course, none of her meetings with the medical examiner yield any results -- the medical examiner is convinced that Savannah is crazy for investigating the case and that all initial test reports were complete.
• "In [this] series, [all of] the characters are likeable, so that the reader will want to visit them again. The supporting characters are equally important to the reader. It is for this reason that there are so many funny, eccentric, and entertaining secondary characters," such as Tammy, Dirk, John, & Ryan.

There are more ways Savannah & friends fit into the idea of a cozy mystery, but you should read Danna's definition of a cozy mystery for yourself for more information... and links to her other lists, of course.

I've already checked the fourth book in the series out at the library (for some reason, the first and second books aren't available) and I will be reading it soon. Also -- more on this later, but for now -- you can see the entire list for this series on my Series site, so that you read in order and don't miss anything!

'A Touch of Dead' Brings Readers Up to Speed on Sookie Stackhouse & Friends

Charlaine Harris's short story compilation A Touch of Dead is nothing new-- new stories, that is. All of these Sookie Stackhouse stories have been published elsewhere before, but never together in one volume. It is a short collection of only five stories -- it took me maybe an hour or two to complete it. But it offers some deeper meaning to both the character that is Sookie and to other characters introduced into the series in various Southern Vampire novels.

In "Lucky", we learn a bit more about both Sookie's wiccan friend Amelia and her insurance agent Gary, who appear in other books. In "Dracula Night", we get further looks at vampire sheriff Eric Northman, his second-in-command Pam, and werepanther leader Calvin. Harris adds to the fairy family in "Fairy Dust", as we learn about kinfolk of Sookie's "guardian angel" (or fairy, as the case may be) Claudine. In "Gift Wrap", Sookie receives a special Christmas gift that may or may not be related to Alcide and the werewolves or to her great-grandfather, a fairy himself. And in "One Word Answer" readers are given a new angle on Sookie's cousin Hadley who, although dead, factors importantly into several books towards the end of the series.

I would have liked to see Harris include all of the Sookie-universe stories, starring Sookie or not, in this volume; however, at this in-between-books stage, I'll take what I can get! I enjoyed every last word from Harris's Southern Vampire series; all I ask for is more. I can hardly wait for the next book in the series, Dead in the Family, to be published in May. Until then, you take what you can get, and what you can get is this collection of Sookie stories. Savor it to the last bloody drop.

If you dare to take a peek (for now, I'm trying to save it until I can read the whole thing!), here is the first chapter of the latest novel, available for your reading pleasure from the author's website.

'Twenties Girl' is Classic Kinsella With Ghostly Twist

I'm not sure why I continue to somehow end up reading books with a supernatural twist, but this is the second book this week. I'm not usually a fantasy/ghost story reader, but my favorite authors are writing ghosts as main characters in their latest novels, which means I'm reading them!

Sophie Kinsella is the queen of good chick lit. I've read all her books prior to Twenties Girl, so despite the ghost story (a negative for me), I wasn't about to miss her latest novel. And I'm so glad I didn't skip over it. Because the unrealistic ghost addition is difficult for me to accept as I'm reading, it took me 60 pages or so to really become interested in Kinsella's ghost Sadie and her great-niece Lara. Once I could accept the ghost (ridiculous when I think about how much I enjoy Charlaine Harris & her Sookie Stackhouse books which include vampires, telepaths, fairies, and shapeshifters!), the story really took me away and made me forget that I was reading a "ghost story".

Lara is a twenty-something headhunter living in London. She has a loving family and a (seemingly) good job, but her world has begun to crash all around her in the weeks before the novel begins. Her longterm boyfriend Josh breaks things off; her best friend and business partner Natalie leaves her high and dry at their newly formed agency; and her great-aunt Sadie has passed away. Lara's family was never close to Sadie; in fact, Lara has no memory of ever visiting her at the nursing home where she spent her last days. But at the funeral, Sadie appears to Lara as a ghost. This ghost isn't your typical ghost, though. She's not old, she's not scary, and she isn't covered in a white sheet. Rather, she is Sadie as Sadie was in the late 1920s, a flapper with a keen fashion sense and a love for dancing the Charleston.

Sadie and Lara embark on a crazy, classic Kinsella adventure to find Sadie's lost necklace -- a necklace Sadie believes is the only thing which will bring her peace in the afterlife. Along the way Lara meets an American businessman who helps her keep her mind off Josh, she breaks into her rich coffee mogul uncle's home (think Starbucks, but bigger), and she crashes her cousin's couture fashion show. She also goes from being highly annoyed with Sadie to relying on her to help her learn information only a ghost who can float through walls and hover unnoticed would be privy to.

In Lara and Sadie, Kinsella creates two characters who are every bit as loveable as her Shopaholic protagonist Becky Bloomwood Brandon and all the rest from her stand-alone novels such as Can You Keep a Secret? and Remember Me?. Kinsella creates female characters who are much like all of us -- pretty in their own way, smart in their own way, and bumbling through some parts of their lives. Kinsella is a master at the happy ending with a twist, and Twenties Girl is no exception. All this from a simple statement from her U.S. editor: "You should write a ghost story." Kinsella has, and she has done it well.

For fun, a clip of 1920s-style Charleston dancers that Random House hired as part of its promotion for the book:

'Her Fearful Symmetry' Haunts With Themes of Ghosts and the Demons Within

In the latest novel by Audrey Niffenegger, writer of The Time Traveler's Wife, the author remains a teller of supernatural stories. While her debut novel dealt with time travel, Niffenegger broaches the subject of ghosts in Her Fearful Symmetry.

Edie and Elspeth were twins who grew up in England, as close as twins can be. But something happened to change their relationship, something that severed it for the rest of their lives. Edie now lives in America with her husband Jack and twin daughters of her own, Valentina and Julia. Elspeth has continued living a life in England, one rich with her partner Robert and their friends and neighbors. Only neither of their lives has gone exactly as planned: Edie's twins are oddly attached to one another, to the point that at 20 years of age neither has managed to complete more than a year of college. And Elspeth... Well, Elspeth's life is over. Literally. Elspeth succumbs to cancer within the book's first few pages. And determined to leave something of importance in her wake, she leaves her flat to Edie's daughters.

With the inheritance come several caveats; the twins must live in the flat for one year before selling it, and their parents can't come into the flat at all. Elspeth's flat is in a building next to Highgate Cemetery, one of England's oldest sacred grounds. The cemetery acts almost as a character in the novel, full of life (albeit ghostly life) and the history of the city. When Elspeth is gone, not only are the twins' lives affected for the better; many lives take turns for the worse. Robert, for example, throws himself into his work at the cemetery and abandons "real" life. Neighbor Martin and his wife split up when Martin's OCD becomes more than she can bear. The twins enter this world -- Elspeth's former world -- and help make it a brighter place.

But the twins are dealing with their own demons, similar demons to those which caused a break between their mother and aunt so many years ago. Julia is the pushy one, while Valentina is the frail, asthmatic sister. Throughout the course of the novel, however, Valentina comes to realize that she cannot go on as Julia's twin; she has to become her own person. How she accomplishes that is the crux of the novel, one which forces hard decisions of everyone -- Robert, Elspeth, and even Martin.

Although the story and the characters are interesting -- arresting even -- some parts of the novel just didn't work for me. The ghost portion is obviously part of that. While some other-worldly ideas can be accepted in the case of novels or movies for the sake of the story (think Pan's Labyrinth or Harry Potter), Niffenegger asks a lot of her readers in both The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry. In this latest novel, readers must accept the existence of ghosts and their interacting with the living. However, perhaps the most difficult aspect of the novel is understanding some of the characters' decisions. Martin, while perfectly described in his mental illness, sometimes surpasses even lax rules
of what readers can be expected to accept with his scrubbing and agoraphobia. Likewise, Robert, Valentina, and Elspeth make decisions which stretch the reader's imagination. While it is definite that humans are far from perfect and make selfish decisions, it seems impossible that so many selfish people live together and know one another.

Nevertheless, Niffenegger has created a story which held my attention to the last page. I stayed up late and read longer than planned in order to find out what happens in the end. So perhaps with all its fantastical and far-fetched ideas, Her Fearful Symmetry works as a novel because it does what readers crave; it tells a darn good story as it explores human feelings, desires, and dreams.

'South of Broad' Shines In All Its Brutal Honesty, Glory, and Tragedy

I began Pat Conroy's latest novel, South of Broad, with high expectations. Conroy is one of my favorite southern writers, although he can't really be called just a novelist of the south. His writing is more about the human condition than it is about the south, although oftentimes it seems as though the largess that is "the south" is almost a main character in his books. Conroy cannot be separated from his roots, an ironic fact given that his family often moved during his childhood. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, when Conroy finally landed in one place -- that place being Beaufort, South Carolina -- he developed a strong bond with it. His writing reflects his devotion to South Carolina, and South of Broad is no exception.

Conroy has a tumultuous history with his family; he has written about his abusive father in many previous novels and works of nonfiction. According to the biography on his website, when his parents divorced after he was an adult and had written two novels, "his mother presented a copy of The Great Santini to the judge as 'evidence' in divorce proceedings against his father." That novel's father figure was shaped primarily by Conroy's own father, and it was a brutally honest account of the family's sufferings at the hands of that man. South of Broad is the first novel in which Conroy has been able to create a loving, supportive father figure. However, because he has long depended on friends as a kind of adopted family, the novel also is written as an ode to friendship.

Charleston's Leo Bloom King is at the cusp of his senior year in the summer of 1969. The novel begins on Bloomsday, a holiday celebrated by James Joyce fans the world over; the holiday takes place on June 16, the day which serves as the entire setting for Joyce's novel Ulysses. Leo's mother is a Joyce scholar, and his family celebrates the day for her sake; Leo was also named for the novel's protagonist, Leopold Bloom. Leo has already lived a life of tragedy before the novel begins. Losing his older brother has broken his entire family, and Leo in particular.

Charleston's Broad Street (photo courtesy of PointClickHome.com)

However, in that summer of 1969 Leo finds both himself and a new group of lifelong friends. South of Broad is not only Leo's story, told in movements forward and backward from that summer, but also the story of each friend that he meets that year: Ike, a black football player who is forced to play at Leo's high school because of integration; Sheba and Trevor, beautiful twins whose mother moves them to Charleston to escape from their father; Chad and Fraser, children of a powerful Charleston lawyer; the beautiful Molly, a southern belle; Niles and Starla, orphans with a history of running away; and Betty, also an orphan and --like Ike -- in attendance at Leo's high school as a result of integration.

The motley crew finds themselves in and out of trouble with Leo's mother, the principal who requires Leo to call her "Dr. King" at school. Conroy describes their adventures from that moment in 1969 to Hurricane Hugo in 1989. The group find themselves in San Francisco at one point, and Conroy writes San Francisco just as well as he writes Charleston. It's evident that while Charleston and South Carolina are loves of Conroy's, his ability to write is not contingent upon this love (or perhaps he loves San Francisco, in all its ruinous glory, as well). Conroy is a master storyteller and descriptive writer, no matter the subject matter.

Readers new to Conroy may find themselves reading harsher material than they expect; Conroy's world is not one of make-believe, where everything turns out alright in the end. Rather, it is a world very much like the real world, where money isn't everything and looks can't buy privilege. His characters fight real demons, not the ones in the closets of our youth, but the ones who live in the hearts of evil men and inside tortured souls. If you can stomach the painful side of humanity, South of Broad will pleasantly surprise you in its hopefulness, as well.

Pat Conroy speaks about his latest novel:

'The Echo Maker' Examines Intricacies of Brain and Questions Reality

One cold February night, Mark Schluter flips his truck on a straight stretch of road near Kearney, Nebraska, a wreck which places him in a coma. His sister Karin rushes from South Souix City to be by her brother's bedside, but when he awakens, he doesn't recognize her. Mark doesn't have amnesia, or not exactly amnesia. Rather, he has developed a peculiar psychological disorder known as Capgras syndrome. This is the story of Richard Powers' The Echo Maker: A Novel.

Capgras sufferers are unable to recognize their loved ones; some even believe that these loved ones have been replaced by doubles or are robots. Karin, faced with caring for Mark during his stay in the hospital, then in rehab at a local nursing home, and finally at home, enlists the help of famed author and psycho-neurologist Gerald Weber. Despite being examined by Weber in addition to his own team of doctors and nurses, Mark continues his strong belief that Karin is an imposter.

Mark spends his time with friends old and new who attempt to make his life what it once was. However, Mark doesn't remember what happened the night of his accident or who was with him; the police were never able to determine what occurred, either. The mystery and suspense persist throughout the novel, which Powers builds with skill. Each character is richly developed, although Powers examines the demons of Karin and Gerald Weber in particular. The reader learns the full history of the Schluter family, and additionally, learns about Weber's triumphs and falls.

Powers incorporates the Nebraska landscape into the novel so thoroughly that without Nebraska, the novel would only be a shell of itself. Of vast importance in the novel are the sandhill cranes that migrate to the Platte River each spring. Those birds come to embody the spirit of the land and the spirit of the people who live there. Powers also makes references to Nebraska plains author Willa Cather and her novel My Antonia.

Powers won the National Book Award in 2006 for The Echo Maker: A Novel, and the novel was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2007. Margaret Atwood wrote an article in The New York Review of Books comparing the novel to The Wizard of Oz. Don't pick up this book expecting a modern copy of the old fairy tale, though. It's not there. However, Atwood's comparisons between Oz and this new world that Mark Schluter finds himself in, a world in which nothing is as it seems, rings true. She even goes so far as to link the characters in the novel to their corresponding characters in The Wizard of Oz: Karin as Dorothy, Mark as the poor-brain-functioning scarecrow, Weber as the all-knowing Wizard, and nurse Barbara as Glinda the Good witch. A bit farfetched, perhaps, but interesting to ponder all the same.

'Comfort Food' Offers Perfect Way to Start the New Year

So you're laying in bed, cozy with a quilt (and perhaps a dog at your feet)... It's snowing outside, or at the very least it's so cold you don't want to budge from underneath the covers. That's what my New Year's weekend was like. I started off the New Year right by participating (somewhat) in a New Year's Read-a-thon sponsored by Kristen at Bookworming in the 21st Century. I didn't really get a chance to read much on New Year's Eve until later, then I dove straight into a comfy read -- Kate Jacobs's feel-good novel Comfort Food. I was immersed in Jacobs's book for most of the next two days (both New Year's Day and January 2nd), then I completed it late that second night. I spent the last day of the read-a-thon with a New Book shelf find from my local library, Richard Powers's The Echo Maker. It's a deeply interesting read -- kind of a cross between Carolyn Parkhurst's The Dogs of Babel: A Novel and Dean Koontz's The House of Thunder... And yes, I realize that on paper those two have absolutely nothing to do with one another. Just trust me (and wait for my final word on that novel after I finish it).

But back to Comfort Food. Such a lovely read. Not literary or pretentious, just a good plot and likeable characters. How often I find myself searching for only that -- a good storyline & characters I actually care about. Jacobs delivers just that in this book. Augusta "Gus" Simpson is a CookingChannel star who came from a tough background and fought her way to the top. She is successful because she's put in the time -- twelve years, to be exact.

Gus finds herself becoming less and less relevant as new technology (think video-chatting with viewers in mid-stir) & pretty faces move in and good old-fashioned cooking and entertaining are being pushed out. She finds herself in a position where she must compromise or walk away, and compromise she does. Rising network star Carmen Vega, a former beauty queen who isn't afraid to sleep her way to the top, walks into the CookingChannel studio and gives Gus a run for her money. Also included in the action are Gus's grown-but-not-grown-up daughters, a neighbor who has spent her life running from scandal, a Wall Street stockbroker-turned-chef, and various CookingChannel executives who are in it only so long as their bank accounts are growing.

Gus is the epitome of Food Network (ahem, CookingChannel, I mean) stardom -- down home, but a performer in truth. However, in Comfort Food she's forced to make a choice between keeping her personal life separate (and her on-air persona "clean") or giving the viewers what they want -- the real-life Gus Simpson, with all her flaws laid out for the television camera to capture.

Jacobs gives readers quite a few interesting subplots, and there is plenty romance spread around among the characters. All in all, it's a winning combination of pop culture references, well-rounded characters, and good storytelling.

Jacobs is also the author of The Friday Night Knitting Club series, which has been optioned by Universal Studios for an upcoming movie.

Mystery Series OCD

I listened to Lisa Gardner's thriller Gone on CD a couple of months ago, and that prompted me to do some research on Gardner. As I wrote in my post about Gone, I found out after listening to the audiobook that it was part of a larger series about former sheriff's deputy Rainie Conner and her love interest, ex-FBI agent Pierce Quincy.

By using LibraryThing.com's search engine for books in a series, I found a list of those books in order. Then I double-checked the list on Stop, You're Killing Me!, which is an amazing website for mystery-lovers. It has pages for authors, listing all of their books in order by series and non-series books. It also has pages for characters who are famous enough to prompt their own searches, like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone and Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum.

Here are the Rainie Conner/Pierce Quincy books in order:

• The Perfect Husband (1998) When a police officer turns evil, his wife seeks help from anyone she can reach, including FBI agent Pierce Quincy. This is Quincy's debut in a book, and Gardner's first novel.
  
• The Third Victim (2001) Sheriff's Deputy Rainie Conner investigates a school shooting with the help of Quincy, marking Rainie's first appearance in a book.
  
• The Next Accident (2001) Someone is killing Quincy's loved ones. In this book, he hires ex-cop turned private investigator Rainie to find out who and to stop them.
  
• The Killing Hour (2003) Quincy's daughter Kimberly is in training to become an FBI agent when bodies begin turning up. They are credited to a man called the eco-killer, and soon Rainie and Quincy join her to find this latest murderer.
  
• Gone (2006) Rainie disappears, and her estranged husband Quincy begins the hunt for her. Quincy is joined by his daughter Kimberly.
• Say Goodbye (2008) FBI agent Kimberly Quincy is five months pregnant, and on the trail of a serial killer who preys on young girls and kills them using an unusual weapon -- poisonous spiders.

I go a bit over the top when it comes to reading books in a series in order; after listening to Gone, I obviously know that Rainie and Quincy have become romantically involved at some point in the series. However, I think it'll be worth it to go back and find out how. Also, while she's no literary genius, Lisa Gardner writes interesting page-turners that keep me entertained. Thus, it won't be a hardship to go back and read the other books in this series.

Gardner talks about her writing and her native city of Boston:

To Kindle or Not to Kindle... That Is the Question

One of my favorite funny memoirists is Jen Lancaster. Her upcoming book My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being a Dumb A** Is the New Black; Or, A Culture-Up Manifesto will be in bookstores (and on Amazon.com & on their Kindle) on May 4, 2010. Until then, you can read her recent article written for NPR about the Kindle and why it is good. And also, why it won't replace the old bound-paper version -- at least not yet.

As someone who hasn't gotten her hands on a Kindle quite yet, I found Lancaster's reasoning fair; however, I still have to say that I'm not so sure I would ever like it. After all, I stare at a computer screen for only so long as I can stand whilst checking my email, Facebook, & browsing a bit. It doesn't take long for me to want to rest my eyes on something less straining -- like actual pages of a hard-copy book. Still, Lancaster's finished-my-book-while-on-the-beach-and-needed-a-new-one argument is compelling...