The Girl With the Dragon Tat­too (Vin­tage 2009) by Stieg Larrson (author) and Reg Kee­land (trans­la­tor) is the first book in the Mil­len­nium Tril­ogy, set in Sweden.

The Girl With the Dragon Tat­too was the biggest best­seller last year. The orig­i­nal, Swedish title was “Män som hatar kvin­nor” which trans­lates to “Men That Hate Women.” Apt and sad to say that it’s a pre­vail­ing theme in this story (or series).

The main pro­tag­o­nist in the story is a finan­cial reporter who gets fined and sen­tenced to jail for writ­ing libelous con­tent about a cor­rupt busi­ness­man. He steps down as editor-in-chief of the mag­a­zine that he co-founded,The Mil­len­nium and reluc­tantly takes up as an ama­teur inves­ti­ga­tor. [click to continue…]

Mis­sion Flats (Dell 2003) by William Lan­day is a crime fic­tion novel that I read and enjoyed sev­eral years ago. I rec­om­mended this book to Maili some time back and asked her if she read it, would she mind doing a review for me? So, here we are…enjoy.

Mis­sions Flats opens with the narrator’s vivid descrip­tion of a preg­nant woman smil­ing as she relaxes on an air ring in the water under the sun. The nar­ra­tor then switches to a dif­fer­ent time and place where a Boston police offi­cer enters a sup­pos­edly closed bar late at night, not real­is­ing he’s about to face a hor­ror, which will set off a domino effect last­ing some thirty years. [click to continue…]

Lead Me On (Har­le­quin 2010) by Vic­to­ria Dahl is a con­tem­po­rary romance at 352 pages with a list price of $7.99 for paper­back. Lead Me On is the third book in the Tum­ble Creek series. The other two titles are Talk Me Down and Start Me Up.

I’ve been finally intro­duced to a Vic­to­ria Dahl con­tem­po­rary romance. The title is apro­pos. Sorry to say that the expe­ri­ence doesn’t leave me with want­ing to read more right away (but I will). While Lead Me On was an enjoy­able read for the most part, my over­all reac­tion to the story was less than enthu­si­as­tic. When I reached the end, I felt relieved. [click to continue…]

ES Eter­nal Sab­bath (Del Rey 2006) writ­ten by Fuyumi Soryo (Mars), paper­back, 240 pgs, list price $10.95. Rated OT for older teens +16. Story com­pleted at 8 vol­umes and are cur­rently avail­able. This author also wrote Mars.

Wow, this is a fas­ci­nat­ing story about human exper­i­men­ta­tion gone awry. Ryousuke Akiba, the main pro­tag­o­nist, is a hacker. He’s a genet­i­cally engi­neered human who’s able to hack into the minds of other peo­ple. He manip­u­lates or shuf­fles the data that makes up people’s mem­o­ries and thoughts so that he can con­trol them. His code­name is ES00 but he goes by Shuro, after the palm leaf in the Bible.

The sci­en­tists who cre­ated Shuro were look­ing for a gene that would enable humans to live longer. This was a secre­tive exper­i­ment. The gene that they are look­ing for would resist pathogens thereby cre­at­ing a robust immune sys­tem. What they found was the ES gene which was used to cre­ate Shuro. It turns out that Shuro was a mir­a­cle birth because so many of the other eggs wouldn’t divide or would rot. Because of that, the sci­en­tists decided to clone Shuro, to fur­ther their stud­ies and to ascer­tain why he survived.

[click to continue…]

Wednesday’s Child (HQN 2005) by Gayle Wil­son (384 pgs) is a roman­tic sus­pense novel. This TBR Chal­lenge review was sub­mit­ted by fel­low reader Janet Webb aka @Janet­Nor­Cal.

This month’s TBR cat­e­gory is cat­e­gories and as it hap­pened, I spent most of the week­end orga­niz­ing my book shelves. My keeper and TBR books are shelved together: I put lit­tle green or orange dots on my TBR books. Fast for­ward to the W books — I spot­ted Wednesday’s Child by Gayle Wil­son and decided to read it for the chal­lenge. I really like Gayle Wilson’s his­tor­i­cals but I have never read one of her con­tem­po­raries. Read More