I needed a short one this week; I am recovering (hopefully) from bronchitis and spent most of the weekend sleeping. Capable of Murder by Brian Kavanagh was just the thing---just barely novel-length, and a fairly inoffensive cozy that made for a quick and easy read. The story involves a young woman who inherits an old cottage near Bath, England from her aunt and goes to live there. She meets several sinister characters who all seem to have an interest in the cottage and grounds, and as the body count climbs, she wonders what secrets her aunt---and the old cottage---contain... The story was...

If you recall, a few weeks ago I wrote The Problem Is: Publishers Don’t Read eBooks! in which I swore I would not again buy a TOR/Tom Doherty/Macmillan book in both hardcover and ebook formats. Well, I did, and I was shown, yet again, that TOR/Tom Doherty/Macmillan only cares about something other than quality. Maybe I learned my lesson this time. I am a big David Weber fan, ever since I was introduced to the Honor Harrington series. Because Weber is a favorite, I buy all of his new releases in hardcover so I can read them and add them to...

Space Junque is a novella-length space opera type of story set in a post-apocalyptic future where eco-terrorism is slowly eroding the planet. The protagonist escapes into space and finds herself stranded there with her missing twin sister's boyfriend, and a shuttle pilot she has a thing for. Things escalate from there... I don't usually read in this genre, aside from Star Trek novels, but I was intrigued by the sample and took a chance on this one, to mixed results. I enjoyed the human side of the story---Rigel nicely plays such details as the interpersonal vibe between Char and Mike (her...

I found this book via a recommendation on another blog; it was described as a contemporary, adult 'choose your own adventure' kind of book where at various points in the story, you are presented with choices and taken in different story directions depending on what you choose. You can read the book multiple times and it will be like a different story each time. I was intrigued; I read these types of books (the original Choose Your Own Adventure series) as a child, and the hyperlink functions of a well-designed ebook system are a natural fit for this type...

The Seventh Compass Point of Death is an engaging, quick-moving thriller from Richard Sanders. The main character is a journalist-cum-PI who gets involved in a group of wannabe terrorists at the behest of an old friend, who worries that her brother has become involved. I read through the book (it's a short one) in one sitting and overall enjoyed it. However, on reflection, I found myself of two minds concerning this book. On the one had, the writing itself was excellent---a sort of noir-ish, brisk-paced style, but with some deft descriptive touches and lovely characterization (especially of love interest Shala...

I don't usually read fantasy novels, so I was surprised to find myself drawn to the sample for Dragonverse by Doug Farren. In spite of its epic adventure aspirations, it's a fairly simple, sweet little story about a man who is left a house by his absentee uncle and learns that the man is not dead as he thought, but rather has moved permanently to a parallel world in which humans are psychically bound with dragons who spend their lives searching for their intended human half. The protagonist Terry of course follows his uncle over to this other world and...

Neil Crab has started a Smashwords book review site called, appropriately, Smashwords Books Reviewed. Neil is a Smashwords author himself, with a book of short stories, Believable Lies, and is about ready to publish a novel and has a second novel on the way. His first review is The Storm Killer, by Mike Jastrzebski....

Risen is one of a growing genre of 'self-published' books which had previous life as a print release from a traditional publisher. This re-release by the author is under his real name (Pinnacle Books published it under the byline of 'J. Knight') and includes some bonus short stories. 'Risen' a fun, fast horror tale. In a small town called Anderson, a long-suffering woman kills her scumbag husband---quite definitively---and is shocked when he comes back to life again, seemingly fitter and happier than before. But he's not the only one... A reporter and his local cub, a troubled lad named Tom who...

Prestwick by David Hough is decently-written adventure novel. Two planes collide in mid-air---a passenger 747 with 400 people, and a military plane. Neither can land at Prestwick, the nearest airport, because a top-secret experimental vessel is having an emergency too... Hough clearly knows his plane jargon, and he describes the technicalities well for the layperson reader. But the book---well-written though it is---was a tad long for me. I felt like we were witnessing the same conversations over and over again. If I saw one more chapter where the pilot radios his rescue plane, states that he must land at Prestwick and...

Happy weekend, everyone! Time for another Smashwords review. Tied in: The Business, History and Craft of Media Tie-in Writing edited by Lee Goldberg is a non-fiction title I found via a thread on Mobile Read. It's a collection of essays from authors who write media tie-in novels. As someone who has read such novels, mostly of the Star Trek and Buffy sort, some of the names of the contributors were already familiar to me, and I was curious to learn more about how these books get written. As with most anthologies, some of the chapters were better than others. There were...

This looks as if it could be very useful. Here is the blurb from iTunes. You can find their website here. Kids Book Review is the first iPhone app for Children's, Tweens and YA books. The Sacramento and San Francisco (and sometimes not so greatest) new books. Reviews have reviewed almost 800 kids books since September, 2008, and they are all available here on this app, along with new book release information, classic titles and more. Both book review publications review almost 80 new children's books each month, and the Kids Book Review app will be updated weekly with...

One of the biggest problems I have as an ebook reader and buyer is finding that proverbial needle in a haystack of needles, that is, the ebook worth buying and reading that is written by an independent author. The ease of publishing an ebook has created a flood of ebooks to choose among, and making that choice is increasingly difficult. For the “big” books – the newest James Patterson or Elizabeth Peters or David Weber — deciding whether to buy the book isn’t a problem. Either I am already familiar with the author or I have read a review in a...