September reads

I thought I was on track to be reading a lot less than last month, but 16 isn’t too shabby! I’m just a few books away from beating last year’s total and still basically have 3 months of reading to go, including another staycation in November. Would it be too greedy to shoot for 150 books this year? Surely not. Anyway, here’s what I read last month!

Leaving Unknown by Kerry Reichs
Maeve Connelly is a chronic non-finisher. To her embarrassment, she’s just been fired from yet another job and her parents are expressing some heavy disapproval at having to take care of her yet again. In a fit of inspiration, Maeve decides to move cross country from the Carolinas to take up residence with an old friend in California. With her ancient car, a chatty bird, and a sparkling sense of adventure, Maeve feels like nothing can stop her now…except, perhaps, that ancient car. The town of Unkown, Arizona will never be the same again.

No Doors, No Windows by Joe Schreiber
Greeting card writer and frustrated novelist Scott Mast has returned to his tiny New Hampshire hometown for his father’s funeral. His alcoholic brother and vulnerable nephew make the stay particularly uncomfortable in their separate ways and Scott is ready to head out. Before he can make his escape, he stumbles upon an unfinished manuscript of a horror novel begun by his father before his death. Now The Black Wing consumes him and he begins to wonder just what legacy has been left to him after all.

Marked by Elizabeth Naughton
This is the first book in the author’s Eternal Guardians series featuring Greek gods and demi-gods, demons, and, of course, eternal love. Ummm, of the hot variety. I’m sure you understand.

Vampirates: Blood Captain by Justin Somper
This is the third volume in the young adult series about the twins, Conner and Grace, each of whom were rescued by pirates after they were shipwrecked. Conner’s rescuers were human, Grace’s were not. Now Grace’s nemesis, the vampirate Sidorio, is back and amassing power to threaten the human and vampire world alike.

Dracula, My Love: The Secret Journals of Mina Harker by Syrie James
A further fictionalized tale based on the original fictionalized tale. What *really* happened to Mina and Jonathan Harker and the rest from Stoker’s classic horror story of darkness and obsession. I wanted to like this, I really did, and it was great up until about the last ½ or 1/3 and then she lost me. Dark, sensual, and more than a little depraved. Still good Halloween-ish reading!

Shadow Bound by Erin Kellison
Death broke a cardinal rule when he stepped through the veil of Shadows because of the love he bore Kathleen. Now the dark creatures of Shadow can pass through as well and the wraith menace grows, sucking the souls from humanity. Twenty some odd years after that event, the child created from that union, Talia, is on the run for her life. The wraiths want something from her but she has no idea that she is a banshee. Adam, leader of the wraith research group Segue, knows she may be the key to destroying the menace if he can only keep her alive long enough AND keep from falling in love with her.

Vampirates: Black Heart by Justin Somper
The fourth book in the series. Sidorio just won’t die and now has joined forces with Lady Lola Blackwood, a very dangerous vampire in her own right. Grace and Conner are quickly running out of places to hide and avenues of escape.

Summer at Tiffany: A Memoir by Marjorie Hart
Marjorie and her best friend Marty became the first female floor sales pages when they were hired for the summer at Tiffany in 1945. This is her story of that exciting, life-changing summer when they donned the trademark blue of Tiffany and Co.

A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn
A retelling of Sleeping Beauty. No where near as good at the author’s Beastly, but entertaining nonetheless.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Full of the flash and fire of Kerouac’s On the Road, but in Spain. Fishing, bullfighting, absinthe by the bucket loads, and the hectic, mercurial affection of one Lady Brett Ashley.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
Grace has been obsessed by the wolves in the forest behind her house ever since she was almost killed by them when she was a small child. One wolf in particular, yellow-eyed AND the one who saved her life then, keeps her attention now. After one of her school mates is attacked, a group of men from town take their guns in to the woods, determined to rid the forest of wolves. Grace desperately tries to stop them, to no affect. When she returns home that night, she finds a naked, shivering, shot boy on her back porch. A boy with disturbingly familiar yellow eyes.

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater
The sequel to Shiver. The third novel in the trilogy, Forever, is due out next July. Linger finds Grace and Sam struggling to acclimate to their new lives, unable to escape the feeling that nothing good lasts forever.

Sabriel by Garth Nix
Sabriel’s father, Abhorsen, is missing. She knows something is terribly wrong because he sent a very weak shadow hand to bring her his magically-enhanced sword and the bandolier of seven bells he used to bind and defeat the dead. Sabriel refuses to believe he is truly dead so she must leave boarding school, cross the Wall back in to the Old Kindgom, and find her father immediately. Something dark is brewing, the dead are rising, the dead creatures that rise with them becoming even more vicious, and only Abhorsen can do anything about it. With the help of the magical creature Mogget, he only *looks* like a small white cat, Sabriel must journey to death and beyond to find her father before it’s too late.

How Did You Get This Number? By Sloane Crosley
Humerous essays by the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake. Not quite as ascerbic as David Sedaris, but definitely funny!

Vampirates: Empire of Night by Justin Somber
The fifth and most current volume of the continuing adventures of twins Grace and Conner. The twins have learned of their true history and nothing will ever be the same. Hard choices must be made, sides chosen, battles fought…I love this series!

Shadow Fall by Erin Kellison
Sequel to Shadow Bound. Adam and the banshee Talia show up in this book as well, but it focuses on Adam's friend Custo. He has made an unhealthy trade with an adversary he really shouldn't have pissed off but he has to help Adam at all costs. Something is free of the Shadowlands, hunting an innocent young woman, and it's his doing that the creature made the leap into life from the Shadows.

103, and counting!