I literally read each of these books in 4 days. Yes, I said 4 days. That is how good they were! There are drama, murder and mystery in one!
I found these books by looking the the New York Times Best Seller list and they sounded interesting, so I went out and bought them. I prefer to buy a book if I think that I will be really into it. And I am so glad that I did.
I read Dark Places first.
Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her.
The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details–proof they hope may free Ben–Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history. For a fee, she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club… and maybe she’ll admit her testimony wasn’t so solid after all.
As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the narrative flashes back to January 2, 1985. The events of that day are relayed through the eyes of Libby’s doomed family members–including Ben, a loner whose rage over his shiftless father and their failing farm have driven him into a disturbing friendship with the new girl in town. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started–on the run from a killer." From Gillian Flynn's Website
Sounds good, huh!? Oh, it is REALLY good Wanna see read Sharp Objects is about?
"WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart
Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.
NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg
Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.
HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle
As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.
With its taut, crafted writing, Sharp Objects is addictive, haunting, and unforgettable."
I know you are itching to go get these book now! After visiting her website, I found out that she lives in Chicago! And I am joined on her email list so I know when she does a book tour and I can go and get my books signed. Yep, I said get my books signed!
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I heard thispulitzer prize winning auhor talking about his newest book on NPR the other day. But then the interviewer brought up his first book. An memoir of his life growing up. I am actually in the exact middle of this book, but still like it enough to share it with you guys.
"A moving, vividly told memoir full of heart, drama, and exquisite comic timing,
about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a barJ .R. Moehringer
grew up listening for a voice: It was the sound of his missing father, a disc
jockey who disappeared before J.R. spoke his first words. As a boy, J.R. would
press his ear to a clock radio, straining to hear in that resonant voice the
secrets of masculinity, and the keys to his own identity. J.R.+s mother was his
world, his anchor, but he needed something else, something more, something he
couldn+t name. So he turned to the bar on the corner, a grand old New York
saloon that was a sanctuary for all types of men-cops and poets, actors and
lawyers, gamblers and stumblebums. The flamboyant characters along the
bar-including J.R.+s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi
Bear sound-alike; Joey D, a soft-hearted brawler; and Cager, a war hero who
raised handicapping horses to an art-taught J.R., tended him, and provided a
kind of fatherhood by committee. When the time came for J.R. to leave home, the
bar became a way station-from his entrance to Yale, where he floundered as a
scholarship student way out of his element; to his introduction to tragic
romance with a woman way out of his league; to his stint as a copy boy at the
New York Times, where he was a faulty cog in a vast machine way out of his
control. Through it all, the bar offered shelter from failure, from rejection,
and eventually from reality-until at last the bar turned J.R. away.Riveting,
moving, and achingly funny, The Tender Bar is at once an evocative portrait of
one boy+s struggle to become a man, and a touching depiction of how some men
remain lost boys."
If this sounds like a book for you I would definitely pick it up (I did get this one on loan from the library because I wasn't sure that I would like it, but I really do like it a lot!).
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What are you reading right now? If it is worth sharing, let me know!
