Books Read April 2018

Each month, I share my reading list with the hope you might discover new authors and encourage you to share your own current reads in the comments below.

Each evening, I settle into bed with a good book and read until I fall asleep. Books are far more entertaining to me than television and the sleeping dogs prefer the quiet. In April, I read 11 books bringing me to 39 year-to-date. That pace sets me well ahead of my goal of 100 books in the year and ahead of last year’s 102.

Books Read April 2018

Full disclosure – the links in this post are all Amazon affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of those links, I receive a small commission from Amazon.

Lee Child – Midnight Line presents a classic Jack Reacher scene when a police officer offers a chance to avoid a fight with a group of bikers. Reacher, of course, declines and the officer drives away. When the officer returns a few minutes later, the bikers all had little accidents and Reacher is standing unharmed. What he learns from that “conversation” leads to his current adventure. Unfortunately for me, I have now read every Lee Child book, so I will have to wait until November when Past Tense is due.

J.T. Ellison – Judas Kiss and The Cold Room follows Lt. Taylor Jackson, a hard-nosed Nashville Metro PD homicide detective, as she solves crimes. Unlike a lot detective series, Jackson is not a lone wolf, but surrounds herself with a quite capable and talented team – all well-developed characters. Ellison uses real Nashville locations in her novel, which is particularly fun for me since I spent childhood summers there at my grandfather’s house. While the city has grown tremendously since those days, many of the landmarks remain.

Michael Connelly – My favorite detective of all, Harry Bosch, and his half-brother Mickey Haller (aka, The Lincoln Lawyer) continue their Los Angeles stories The Crossing and The Wrong Side of Good-Bye. Like Ellison and Nashville, Connelly uses real Los Angeles places to add authenticity to his stories. I have only two books to go before I have read all of Connelly’s, so will eagerly be waiting his October release of his newest, Dark Sacred Night.

Chris Bohjalian – A new-to-me author that many of you will have read. I saw his latest, The Flight Attendant, on the New York Times bestseller list and decide to try him. Terrific job of taking a character with a lot of faults and yet making you root for her. Without giving away anything of the book (since this is all in the first two dozen pages), the flight attendant wakes up, hung over, in a hotel room that is not hers with a murdered corpse sharing the bed. I’ve had bad mornings, but never one quite that bad. I was hooked and loved following her trying to figure out how all of that happened.

Harlan Coben – Unraveling the past can be painful when it includes a murdered neighbor, especially when all evidence points to your older brother as the culprit. Since he disappeared to avoid arrest, why wouldn’t our protagonist assume his guilt? Many years later, his mother exclaims on her death bed that the brother was returning. Was the brother Gone for Good – or not?

Lisa Gardner – This author continues her ability to create creepy bad guys in Fear Nothing. The novel opens with an injured detective D.D. Warren who can’t remember exactly how she was injured or who she fired her gun at, so she is suspended from the Boston P.D. That doesn’t stop her from investigating a series of murders that point to a serial murderer who has been dead for decades or his daughter who has been incarcerated for decades. Both seem to have air tight alibis, so who is behind the crime wave? In Crash & Burn, what looks like a simple car accident becomes complicated when the driver’s previous head injuries mess with her memories. Is the little girl she is looking for real? Is her husband caring or a threat? Is her name even really her name?

Nevada Barr – In Borderline, my favorite fictional park ranger finds herself taking a quiet rafting trip down the Rio Grande. Too bad a river accident, a sniper from the cliffs, and a corpse in the weeds distracts from her relaxing vacation.

Ken Harmon – Full disclosure here that Ken and I go way back – all the way to first grade. When I saw his third book – The English Major Mafia – had been published, I bought it right away. Ken’s vivid imagination comes to play because the “mafia” hunts down authors who make a mockery of classic English literature, for example making Romeo and Juliet as dogs and cats – an actual scene from the book. The story boils over with references to literary classics and pop culture icons. One sentence would make me groan at a bad pun while the next would have me laughing out loud at a twisted line.

Website Activity

Thanks to everyone for your support of new material posted on the web this past month. Four new chapters of the Pestilence series were met with a growing readership, a thrill for me. New readers join every week, starting with Chapter 1 and catching up to our story. Welcome aboard and hope you are enjoying.

In addition, I added a short story, Brad and His Date, based upon watching a young man on a sidewalk in Folly Beach, SC. And a particularly wet camping trip led to a photography post, Birds of a Rainy Camping Weekend.

If you have not already, take a moment and subscribe so that you see new posts in May including a new short story next Monday and five – yes, five – new chapters of Pestilence.

With a Stephen King novel in my hands right now, May looks to be another great reading month and I will, of course, share what I read.

As always, what are you reading? I love getting ideas of books I should have on my list.