Alas, this is a short list as I tend to stick to authors who I have been with for years. But I man­aged to come up with a list of books that I am buy­ing and read­ing and a list of books that I am get­ting from the library (I heart my library). I hope my library gets these titles in as I sent in the requests for them?? Prob­lem is I never remem­ber to reserve my copy early and then I’m stuck with a long wait.

The Books I’m Buying

Grave Goods (Art of Death Series) is the third book in the Adelia Aguilar series set in 12th Cen­tury Eng­land. It is thus far a con­sis­tently strong series from a writer who also writes his­tor­i­cal fic­tion under her real name of Diana Nor­man. The first two books in the series are Mis­tress in the Art of Death (2007) and The Serpent’s Tale (2008). Ms. Franklin also wrote a stand-alone novel, City of Shad­ows that was pretty good and I reviewed that one as well.

Dia­mond Star by Cather­ine Asaro is the nth Sko­lia novel that revolves around the Ruby Dynasty. This is a series that I would describe as an inter­stel­lar soap opera romance adven­ture with hard sci-fi action and sus­pense. It is accu­rate to say that there is a lot of sci­en­tific the­ory involv­ing mainly physics but I have not let my dis­dain of physics hin­der my enjoy­ment of this series.

Bone Crossed by Patri­cia Briggs, book four in the Mercy Thomp­son series. This has been a con­sis­tently strong series for me so this new book is more or less the _one_ that will deter­mine if I will con­tinue forth or not. Will there be more of the same or some­thing dif­fer­ent? Will Mercy be con­fronted with sur­pris­ing chal­lenges or will she con­tinue on in the same vein? No mat­ter how good the writ­ing, some­thing has to keep me com­ing back oth­er­wise, I move on. Hence the In Death series.

That is essen­tially it. Most of the books that I read like Frac­tured (Karin Slaugh­ter), Sweet­heart (Chelsea Cain) and Angel’s Tip (Alafair Burke) came out in the Fall so noth­ing was listed in the Ama­zon direc­tory yet but I will be read­ing the sequels to those books as well. I must give a shout out to Jodi Comp­ton: where are you? I miss you! Mov­ing on.

I am not touch­ing Gen­e­sis by Karin Slaugh­ter that is due out July 2009. How­ever, I do plan to stick with her Will Trent series as yet again, she has cap­tured my atten­tion with her writ­ing and it is not as depres­sive as the Grant County books. Mean­while, most of my tried and true authors have dis­ap­peared and Judith Ivory and Laura Kin­sale I miss you all dearly. San­dra Brown is still writ­ing and many liked her lat­est offer­ing, Smoke Screen (which is still TBR in my stacks here).

Romance wise, heh, I haven’t really read many of the “new” voices that are being lauded over blog land because I am too busy read­ing either older romance books or mys­ter­ies but I plan to give these new writ­ers a try. It’s time that I let go of the idea of what romance used to be and embrace what it is now.

Notable Men­tions (Library choices, maybe)

Suzanne Brockmann’s nth Trou­bleshoot­ers series is still amaz­ingly, shock­ingly, going strong (I guess). Her lat­est, Dark of Night, another hard­cover release for her, has already caused quite an online furor over a sen­si­tive plot point that has already been exposed roy­ally. I haven’t really been a reader who fol­lowed that closely to her books (sick of Navy SEALs) so I am mildly curi­ous about this new book and to see if the furor is much ado about nothing.

Mary Balogh has a new series (I think it’s new) com­ing out in Feb­ru­ary fea­tur­ing the sen­sual Huxta­bles. The first book, First Comes Mar­riage, has a gor­geous cover on it but I haven’t enjoyed Balogh’s writ­ing in quite some­time. Her new stuff seems to be recy­cled. Must say that the Huxta­bles will always bring to mind The Cosby Show. Just sayin’.

What I Did For Love by Susan Eliz­a­beth Phillips. This is another author I haven’t read in a long, long, long time. The last good book from her for me would be Kiss An Angel and the hero wasn’t all that uh nice. I have sev­eral of her books in my TBR stacks, how­ever, so who knows, maybe there’s another win­ner in there some­where left undis­cov­ered but this new one of hers is a library read.

Yet Unnamed Book by Jen­nifer Crusie — I’ll read it when­ever she writes it. I used to buy her books hard­cover with­out a dis­count. Not any­more as it seems she is in col­lab­o­ra­tive mode. I do have her cat­e­gories to give me com­fort and hope that one day she will want to write another con­tem­po­rary novel on her own.

Eliz­a­beth Elliott’s Baaac­c­ckkk (Almost)

Search­ing AAR, I dis­cov­ered a news update on his­tor­i­cal author, Eliz­a­beth Elliott, who wrote one of my favorite titles, War­lord. She is cur­rently work­ing on a new medieval called ASSASIN and it’s still in the early stages. Oh, hell yeah. This is me keep­ing my fin­gers crossed that every­thing goes well for her and her new book! Ms. Elliott had been out of the spot­light due to that dreaded writer’s block.