Vanish Is a Satisfying Addition to Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli & Isles Series

Photo Courtesy of Gerritsen's Site

Rizzoli & Isles seems to be around for good -- at least for another year, anyway. Star Angie Harmon, who plays hardened homicide detective Jane Rizzoli on the TNT show, announced the nominations for and winners of the Screen Actors Guild awards last night. Earlier last week, I saw co-star Lorraine Bracco on an episode of The View. She reported that the series had been picked up for  15-episode second season. The series is based on the mystery/crime series by Tess Gerritsen which includes Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles. Although the television show doesn't follow specific books in terms of cases, the back story and characters are definitely pulled directly from the book series.

Vanish is the fifth novel in the Rizzoli/Isles series by Gerritsen. In the novel, Jane Rizzoli is largely pregnant, and supposed to be off duty until after the baby is born. When she enters the hospital for delivery, the kind of thing that could only happen to her occurs: the hospital is put on lockdown after a patient kills a guard and takes hostages in a wing of the hospital. One of her hostages? You guessed it -- Jane. Outside the hospital, Maura Isles is being swamped with press after a morgue patient awakens. Once she realizes her friend Jane is trapped inside the hospital, Maura joins forces with Jane's husband (and FBI agent) Gabriel Dean.

The action surrounding regular-series characters is enough for the novel to be entertaining for followers of the series, but Gerritsen takes the plot a step further by including the background for the mystery concerning the hostage-taker. She opens up a Law & Order: SVU-esque story about girls brought from overseas to serve as slaves for the American prostitution trade. What unfolds is both a satisfying addition to the series, but also a novel that first-time Gerritsen readers can enjoy.

Gerritsen is also a writer of medical thriller novels, as well as romantic suspense books. Watch Rizzoli & Isles when it returns to TNT this summer.

If you are interested in purchasing Vanish or other Gerritsen titles, using the link below will provide a few pennies of profit for this blog:

• Vanish on Amazon.com

Book News: Karen Abbott Is Everywhere & Other Tidbits From the Book World

I first read about Karen Abbot's new book on Joshilyn Jackson's fabulous blog Faster Than Kudzu. Then the Book Lady was asking her about her favorite books. Now NPR has gotten into the mix, with two different interviews in the past few weeks. I'm constantly discovering new ways to use my Christmas-gift-iPod, and one of those has been to listen to stories using the NPR app and their "Playlist." Basically, all stories on NPR are saved on their website for future listening purposes. On the iPod NPR app, these can be saved to a Playlist and then listened to in an iTunes-like format. My Playlist regularly has 30 to 40 items, and in the last week I have listened to both the On Point interview with Karen Abbott and the Weekend Edition story and interview. 

Abbott's new book is American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare -- The Life and Times Gypsy Rose Lee. It relates the story of performer Gypsy, who was born Rose Louise and later changed her name for show business. Gypsy was no stranger to fame, both in her lifetime and after. She wrote her own biography, Gypsy, A Memoir, which was later developed into the long-running Broadway play and film Gypsy.

Abbot's book has also been reviewed by the NY Times, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the LA Times, and many more. Have I read American Rose yet, you might ask? No, but I plan to. I picked up Abbott's first book Sin in the Second City earlier this week, and it's my plan to read it over the weekend.

Also in the book headlines this week:

• Amy Chua's book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, excerpted in the WSJ and the cause for much controversy on the internet & on television, was released in China under a very different title and premise. TIME magazine broke the story this week that includes China's reaction and the book cover for the China release. Also interesting: what book critics are saying about the book itself (not the excerpt printed with the eye-grabbing headline "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior").
• Independent bookstores are struggling in this new economy and also with the constant rise of new technology. The NY Times explores the changes independent bookstores have been making in order to hold their own in this new decade. No one is aware of this issue more than Nashvillians and middle Tennesseans who were devastated by the closing of Davis-Kidd, Nashville's favorite bookstore, in December 2010.
• American Idol is back on television for a new season, complete with new, superstar judges Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez. What does that have to do with books, you might ask? A new book has been released about the long-running musical contest that gives the low-down on Idol gossip, but not much else. Find out from the review in the Wall Street Journal whether or not you want to read the book, or just continue to watch the show. Never a fan, I have been watching this season -- especially as they traveled to Nashville and held auditions in the Ryman Auditorium on last night's show!

Happy reading this weekend! I will probably be diving into several good reads. For starters, I'm finishing off those Pretty Little Liars novels like they're ice cream cones on the verge of melting. Fast, shallow reads that almost seem sinful -- but VERY entertaining! I'm currently on the third book, Perfect. Also, as I said above, I'll be taking a first look at Karen Abbott's writing talent in Sin in the Second City. I'll probably also continue the Laura Lippman novel I'm reading (Tess Monaghan series novel Another Thing to Fall).

Stephanie Plum and Friends Are Back in Sizzling Sixteen

Anyone who has been inside a bookstore within the past decade will remember seeing Janet Evanovich's name splashed all over books. The prolific writer began as a romance author, then began the "Number" series, about bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. Since that series began, she has produced at least three other series: the "Full" series with Charlotte Hughes, the "Metro" series, and this past fall a spin-off of the "Number" series with the first book, Wicked Appetite. Stephanie Plum has always been my favorite Evanovich character, although I have read many of her other novels. Sizzling Sixteen is the latest book in that series.

Sizzling Sixteen begins as Stephanie's cousin Vinnie -- the owner of the bail bondsman business where she works -- is kidnapped. Vinnie is a despicable sort of character who is unfaithful to his wife and gambles his money away recklessly. However, he's saved Stephanie's tail in the past, namely by giving her the job she has now. Besides that, the bondsman shop can't operate without his financial backing, and that would put Stephanie out of a job. So she, sidekick (and former prostitute) Lula, and office manager Connie set out to find Vinnie and bring him home. This time, however, Vinnie has gotten himself involved with some dangerous characters with their hands in the Trenton, New Jersey, mob scene. This mafia involvement ups the ante and makes the rescue efforts all the more difficult.

I thought the last few books in the Stephanie Plum series were very readable, but not as enjoyable as earlier books. She seems to have lost a bit of the spunk that drove the series when it began. Although I enjoyed Sizzling Sixteen much more than the previous book, Finger-Licking Fifteen, I can't list it as a favorite. When Evanovich began with One for the Money and Two For the Dough, she was writing edgy, fast-paced, action-packed novels. They also included a bit of romance (in the characters of longtime steady boyfriend Joe Morelli and the darkly-handsome, yet kind-of-scary Ranger). Evanovich is also a master at injecting humor into situations you wouldn't normally think of as funny (funeral homes, explosions, crime). Somewhere along the way, it seems she's become too focused on the fame and money, churning out one book after another of a lesser quality.

Still, Stephanie Plum is Stephanie Plum (and, more importantly, Grandma Mazur is Grandma Mazur!), so I will continue reading and hope the books are eventually restored to the series's former glory. And if Stephanie never makes a choice between Ranger and Morelli? Well, that's okay with me. According to Evanovich's website, this summer a movie version of One For the Money, starring Katherine Heigl as Stephanie, will be released. For more information, visit the Movie Insider site for the movie; Evanovich sold the rights in 1993 and hasn't been involved in the movie production.

The Cypress House Mixes a Creepy Ghost Story With 1930s Florida History

Michael Koryta is no stranger to fame, but his last standalone (not written as part of series) novel So Cold the River received rave reviews from all over the place -- it was an Amazon Best Book of the Month in June 2010, reviewed by NPR, written about in the NY Times, and excerpted in the Wall Street Journal. In addition to So Cold the River, Koryta is the author of the Lincoln Perry crime series. Koryta's recent successes are now followed by another standalone novel released this week, The Cypress House.

The Cypress House shares with So Cold the River its supernatural themes. Arlen Wagner, a World War I veteran, has a devastating gift: he sees death. Once Arlen has seen smoke in a person's eyes, it's only a matter of time before they meet their end. As he boards a train bound for Key West with a group of Civilian Conservation Corps men, he sees smoke in the eyes of his fellow passengers and is forced to reveal what this means -- their immiment demise. All but one of the men refuse to listen to his ghost-talk, and they travel on to the camp in the Keys. Days later Arlen hears news that a hurricane killed all the men by wiping out the railway line they were traveling on.

He and friend Paul Brickhill end up at the Cypress House, an old bed and breakfast that is still up and running, yet mysteriously devoid of customers. Despite the mystery that surrounds the inn, Arlen and Paul are both drawn to the madame of the house, Rebecca Cady. More deaths, run-ins with the local sheriff, dealings with the mafia, and the Cypress House's own grisly history keep Arlen and Paul on their toes as they try to determine their next move. Arlen's gift both helps and haunts him throughout the action-packed novel.

I am not always a fan of supernatural elements in literature, nor am I usually a reader of action novels. However, Michael Koryta manages to incorporate both of these into an excellent novel that kept me interested throughout its entirety. He writes the ghost story so well, I actually had goosebumps some of the time. I live with the belief that "there's no such thing as ghosts," but in Koryta's world everything is possible -- and he writes it so that it becomes possibility. In addition to his gift as a storyteller and character-builder, Koryta does an excellent job of incorporating the historical, 1930s Florida setting into the novel. The setting almost becomes a character in itself -- a skill I adore in an author.

I especially like that Koryta did his homework for The Cypress House. The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane really occurred, and it has been considered the strongest storm to ever touch land in the United States. It was responsible for destroying the Florida East Coast Railway between mainland Florida and the Keys. The CCC also existed as a plan by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to keep men working during the Great Depression. Many of these were World War I veterans that had been unable to find work after returning home from the war.  CCC camp workers in Florida helped create state park facilities that are still in use today. And a Cypress House inn also exists in the Florida Keys -- I'm not sure it has much in common with Koryta's version, but I love that it is there.

I'm glad Koryta has several previous novels for me to go back and read. I can't wait to dive into both the Lincoln Perry series and his previous standalone novels -- especially So Cold the River. Koryta is currently on book tour for The Cypress House. Check out the schedule to find out if he's coming to a city near you.

Trainer Momma Spotlights Me! And Working Out With Ali Sweeney's The Mommy Diet

I was a fan of the Biggest Loser for several years -- I don't watch it as much now, but I still think it's an awesome show. Very inspirational & moving. Watching that show made me a huge Ali Sweeney fan. I watched her several seasons ago, as she was pregnant and then the next season as she was losing/ had lost her baby weight. I thought she looked amazing, and I felt as though she was an inspiration herself -- separate from the show.

She has released a new book called The Mommy Diet about her journey before, through, and after pregnancy. I'm not a mother, and I've never been pregnant or had a child. However, her workout routine and healthful eating was something I was very interested in. I just flipped through many sections (the pregnancy details, for instance), but there were also many great tips I wanted to use. Those I read in detail -- and actually have been using.

Last night before I left for the gym, I jotted down the detailed, 45-minute treadmill workout she shares in the book. It is a kind of HIIT workout, where you pair intervals of pushing yourself to the limit with periods of "active rest." It kicked my tail, but I felt accomplished when I completed it. I made one adjustment, but for the most part finished it as she laid it out in The Mommy Diet. Eventually, I'll  master it and move on to the 60-minute workout.

Before I picked up Sweeney's The Mommy Diet, however, I had been a longtime fan of a fitness and healthy-living blog called Trainer Momma. The site offers a wide range of helpful hints and inspiration: video workouts, print-and-use training sheets for the gym, an Eat With Me post each week (probably my favorite part of the blog), questions from readers, inspirational stories, and much more. When I had been working out for a couple of months, I emailed Trainer Momma for help. I had been running, and I (thought) I had been eating better, but I wasn't seeing the results I wanted to see.

My email back was inspiring, but frank. I probably wasn't making the changes necessary in my eating habits to lose weight and maintain it. But my running? Really good. Trainer Momma made me see that I still had some changes to make, and it pushed me to do so. It also offered me the help & support I needed to actually do it.

Since March 2010, I've lost 32 pounds (and counting). I eat much better -- both food-wise and portion-wise. I workout 3-4 times a week. And as a result, I'm the Before & After feature for this week. Click on over to Trainer Momma's blog to discover all the amazing offerings she has, and also to read my interview.

Educating Esme Absolutely Knocks My Socks Off -- A Must Read for Teachers, Future Teachers, & Anyone Who's Ever Been Taught

I started listening to Frank McCourt's Teacher Man -- a memoir-like account of his years teaching in New York -- several weeks ago. The audiobook version was read by the author himself, usually a good sign it will be enjoyable. I couldn't finish it, though. Perhaps because he had retired from a career decades-old, perhaps because he had enjoyed an enormous amount of success in the literary world since his retirement, or perhaps it was plain old simple misreading on my part, but I felt he was a bit too cynical. I may return to his teaching memoir at another time; I just didn't need that cynicism in my life as I returned to teaching this year.

Educating Esme is a book I found at McKay's Used Books several months ago. I had thumbed through it, read a page or two, and put it to the side shortly after I purchased it. Over the weekend, I picked up the short read and finished it in its entirety. The full title is Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, and that pretty much sums it up: it's an account of the classroom from someone who has just entered education. Not a veteran, Esme Raji Codell -- known to her students as Madame Esme -- enters her classroom with all the ideals instilled in her by her education classes.

Over the course of her first year, she:

• creates a classroom time machine (refrigerator box covered with foil)
• fights with her principal over having her students call her "madame" (he tells her it is only a term used in houses of prostitution)
• creates a storytelling festival run by students (and funded by grant money she requests & receives)
• forces a difficult student to act as teacher for a day (taking on his jeering, disrespectful persona herself)
• teaches with the two-year-old brother of one of her students attached to her hip (no adult was at home when the older child needed to leave for school, so the student brought the baby with her)
• is asked by her vice principal to move furniture at the vice principal's home
• is called every name in the book by her students (and several by her unprofessional principal)
• raises her students' test scores by at least one grade level each -- many students' by more than that

Madame Esme experiences all the highs and lows that exist in the classroom for teachers, but she is unique in her ability to conquer the lows. As Jim Trelease (author of The Read Aloud Handbook, which I swear by) says in the afterword, "[Esme] confesses to moving within minutes from being a loving den mother to a child-devouring dragon. Yet even as a dragon, Esme devours uniquely. She consumes her pupils with wit, threats, music, poetry, pouts, compliments, and -- always, daily -- literature" (201). 

Esme has her detractors; even on Amazon, where her book published almost fifteen years ago is still in the top 10,000 books, she has her fair share of naysayers. Most reviewers seem to dislike what they refer to as her "self-serving" attitude. I agree that her high opinion of herself -- and her disdain for others -- is sometimes off-putting. However, I think that overall the book's positives far outweigh its negatives. She may have some false confidence, but then again -- maybe she earned it. After all, she fought "the system" and won, in more ways than one. Her students were challenged, yet rose to the goals she set for them. Her ideas were mostly good rather than mostly bad.

Although Esme left the bullet-hole-ridden, minority-in-majority, inner-city school after two years, she remained in the Chicago public school system as a librarian and reading specialist. She is now an author and a blogger.

Book News: Edgar Awards & Tournament of Books Nominees Announced

It's been a big week in the book world. The Edgar Allan Poe Award (called the Edgars for short) nominees were announced yesterday. I was excited to see that a few of my favorite reads from the past year were listed. In the Best Novel category, half of the titles were books I loved: Tana French's third novel Faithful Place, Tom Franklin's latest book Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, and Laura Lippman's I'd Know You Anywhere.

I'm going to have to add most of the other titles to my to-be-read list, which will push that number up to somewhere near 100. Oh, well. Such is life. That just means I have a plethora of amazing choices, right? One of the YA titles has already been on my radar, and I've read a short excerpt on Amazon, so it will be one of my next reads for certain -- A.S. King's novel Please Ignore Vera Dietz. Book bloggers and reviewers have raved about it, and now with an Edgar nomination, it's a sure thing.

The Edgars began more than half a century ago. They honor mystery writers in various categories -- everything from YA fiction to television episodes. See the rest of the list on the Edgar website for more excellent mystery book options.

 Also this week, I discovered something superbly interesting: the Tournament of Books.

It's been going on for several years now, but sometimes great things fly under the radar for long periods of time (if you're me, anyway). ToB is the reader's answer to March Madness. Sports fans have their Sweet Sixteen; book fans have the ToB. Which incidentally also has sixteen -- but books, rather than basketball teams.

After compiling a long list of most reviewed/ most talked about/ most controversial/ possibly "best" books from 2010, the staff at The Morning News have narrowed it to sixteen contenders. They go head to head in a battle for the tournament winner in March. Visit TMN website for details and, of course, the list. My call for the winner? The only book I've read from the list: Amy Greene's Bloodroot. Loved it, and hopefully, so will the tournament's readers.

Past ToB Winners:

• 2009: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall  (beating Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna)
• 2008: Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (over Tom McCarthy's Remainder)
• 2007: Cormac McCarthy's The Road (vs. Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan)
• 2006: Ali Smith's The Accidental (beating out Sam Lipsyte's Home Land)
• 2005: David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (against Philip Roth's The Plot Against America)

The award given for ToB winners, you might ask? A rooster. Like, a live one. Don't ask; I don't know.

Happy reading this weekend!

My Fair Lazy Examines Reality Television, Fine Art, & Opera (and Tells Us Why Survivor Isn't All That Bad)

Jen Lancaster is one of my favorite authors, and also one of my favorite bloggers. Her humorous memoirs are based on her life, from her growing up days (Pretty in Plaid) to her fall from CEO to the gutter (Bitter is the New Black) to her issues with neighbors (Bright Lights, Big A**) to her struggle with weight loss (Such a Pretty Fat).

Her latest is 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, with a focus on her quest to raise her intellect level by watching less reality television and attending more cultural events. She sets off across the country (and in her hometown of Chicago) to eat ethnic foods, watch Broadway plays, examine fine art, and listen to classical music. Along the way she learns that being high-class isn't as bad as she thought -- but neither is watching an episode of Survivor every now and then. Turns out both "cultured" events and reality TV have a thing or two to teach us (like, um... don't cheat on your significant other on national television -- Temptation Island, I'm looking at you).

I really liked the book, but I don't think its Lancaster's best effort. I think she really came into her own with Pretty in Plaid and Such a Pretty Fat. I would recommend those two to anyone; My Fair Lazy is a good addition to her canon, and fans should definitely indulge in it. New readers might want to go back to the good stuff and then wait for Lancaster's upcoming novel to be released in May.

Also, a word of caution. I read this book in eBook format, and I wouldn't recommend doing that with Lancaster's books. Some of what makes them so incredibly funny is her footnotes. Each page has footnotes, and they are truly witty and clever. However, in eBook format, the footnotes are clickable rather than on the page. Each time you come to a footnote numeral, you click. Then wait. Then finally (several seconds), it takes you to a footnotes-only page. I often forgot which number I had clicked, then had to click back and forth to make sure the footnote I was reading coincided with the paragraph I was reading. And sometimes another once or twice to make sure I made the connection and got the joke. Not pleasant. (Not to mention I'm reading eBooks on an iPod touch, which means sometimes I clicked on the wrong number on the footnotes page and was sent somewhere else in the book when I tried to return to my reading.) I can't say I recommend reading her books in eBook format for this reason only. Julie at Book Hooked posted about this while I was reading My Fair Lazy and listed this exact annoyance in her review, also.

Overall, Lancaster is hilarious and I highly recommend her writing -- both in books and on her blog Jennsylvania. I can't wait to read her fiction debut in May; If You Were Here promises to be just as good as her previous nonfiction titles.