Archive for the ‘Humour’ Category
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006
Trade, 342 pages, 2006
Rating: 9/10
Reason for Reading: I loved She’s Got Issues, and after having the opportunity to interview Stephanie Lessing last year it was a sure thing that I’d be reading her next book as soon as it came out.
Synopsis: Renegade Zoe Rose is hardly the target audience for most women’s magazines - she’s clueless about fashion, not interested in marriage (despite her wonderful boyfriend), she’s anti-establishment, she simply doesn’t fit in - and that’s exactly how she likes it. Despite all of that, she’s just taken a position as deputy editor at Issues magazine, and she’s determined to shake things up and have women look at how they treat each other rather than at the latest styles from Paris. Her feminist ideals dictate that she change the world, but she’s facing an industry that won’t change its MO as easily as it changes its preference of shoes. Can Zoe infiltrate and change the world of fashion and women’s magazines, or will they ultimately break her, once again leaving her behind as the girl that doesn’t fit in?
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Posted in Fiction, Contemporary, Chick-Lit, Humour | No Comments »
Sunday, November 5th, 2006
Hardcover, 310 pages, 2006
Rating: 9/10
Reason for Reading: Why stop now?
Synopsis: Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter, of the klutzy, mistake-prone sort. When the daughter of the oh-so-hot Ranger, one of her colleagues (if someone a thousand times more talented can still be referred to as a colleague), goes missing, Ranger can’t be contacted, and weirder and weirder (and more dangerous) things keep happening, the hunt is on.
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Saturday, October 7th, 2006
Hardcover (available in trade), 386 pages, 2005
Rating: 9/10
Reason for Reading: I’ve loved all of Fforde’s books.
Synopsis: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…or did he? Detective Inspector Jack Spratt is looking into the possibility that the hard-living, womanizing egg was actually murdered, with possible motives being jealousy, revenge, greed, pure evil. The (grossly underfunded) Nursery Crime Division, which also includes an alien and Sergeant Mary Mary, will have to battle to restore justice to their community.
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Posted in Fiction, Humour, Mystery, Literary Sci-Fi | No Comments »
Friday, September 8th, 2006
Hardcover (available in mass market June 2007), 279 pages, 2006
Rating: 8/10
Reason for Reading: How could I resist something this wacky? Even the cover made me giggle.
Synopsis: Oh, what’s a lonely serial killer to do? Find a social club, of course. But what if, like ‘Douglas Fairbanks Jr.’ - a moniker in a club full of Richard Burtons and Chers and Errol Flynns - you’ve stumbled onto the club quite by accident? After a defensive retalation against his own would-be-killer leaves a stranger dead, Douglas goes through his wallet and finds a mysterious ad that he can’t resist responding to…and since he’s already there, Douglas decides to use the opportunity for good, and, shadowed by a government agent, starts to kill off the serial killers themselves. There are a few problems, of course - the possibility of the real serial killers figuring out what’s going on, and the fact that maybe his own killing spree shouldn’t be so much fun…
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Posted in Fiction, Suspense, Humour | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
Hardcover (available in trade), 272 pages, 2006
Rating: 8/10
Reason for Reading: A portable, fictional blog? Sounded intriguing.
Synopsis: Anonymous Lawyer is a hiring partner at a huge law firm, and he didn’t get where he is playing nice. He decides to start up a blog, where he chronicles life as a lawyer - the pettiness, vindictiveness, and razor-tongued attitude with which he deals with his colleagues and the victims that are known as law school interns. He’s plotting and scheming his way to the top, confidently burning bridges as he goes, but it’s bad business when the popularity of his blog means he might not be anonymous for much longer…
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Wednesday, July 26th, 2006
Trade, 282 pages, 2006
Rating: 8/10
Reason for Reading: I read the first chapter online here after hearing the Carl Hiaasen comparisons, and I knew I had to keep reading.
Synopsis: Tara realizes it’s not normal to start robbing banks with your dad at the age of nine, but that’s everyone else’s problem - she quite enjoys the rush of success that the ‘47 rules’ have brought them. At least, it’s not a problem until she’s twenty-two and beginning to wonder if her dad is about to go completely off the deep end, a matter not helped by the fact that she’s taken a shine to the local sheriff’s son, Max. The heist of a lifetime is right in front of them, but there are cops, criminals, and love interests hot on their trail. Everyone is after someone and something, but not everyone can win, as they’ll find out the hard way…
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Posted in Fiction, Thriller, Humour, Action | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006
Trade (available in mass market), 408 pages, 2006
Rating: 9/10
Reason for Reading: It looked like the perfect backyard-read for enjoying the weather.
Synopsis: Izzie Stock figured that moving to the country would be great for her husband and herself - a relaxed pace of life to fit in with her boho style - but she didn’t count on the Stepford Wives of the neighbourhood. Salvation comes in a strange but perfect figure, that of Maddy Hoare, a woman with effortless grace and endless money, and yet a sense of humour. Shortly after their meeting, tragedy strikes, and Izzie despairs ever finding comfort in her new life, until the pair discovers that some old French beauty potions may contain the secrets to a life neither woman expected to be living…
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Posted in Fiction, Contemporary, Chick-Lit, Humour | No Comments »
Thursday, October 27th, 2005
Trade, 258 pages, 2005
Rating: 9/10
Reason for Reading: The ‘hearing voices’ premise almost scared me away, but I decided to go for it because I’ve heard Carr is a good writer.
Synopsis: Anne Johnson is settling down into a lazily cozy existence - she’s fifty, living alone in a plush apartment following her recent divorce, and she feels little need to do much beyond drinking martinis and wafting around her apartment in white nightgowns. But then she hears a voice in her head warning her that she needed to halt a murder that will occur in her apartment building in thirty days. She enlists the help of Mary, a no-nonsense cleaning woman, and together they decide to plan a party to use as an opportunity to learn more about possible suspects. They’re quickly learning that finding a suspect is hard to do before a crime has been committed, but there’s too much riding on them to quit now.
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Monday, October 3rd, 2005
Hardcover, 277 pages, 2005
Rating: 9/10
Reason for Reading: I’m a natural blonde that dyes her hair…blonde. So it just seemed appropriate, really.
Synopsis: Georgia Watkins never wanted anything more than to join her mother’s small but popular salon in Weekeepeemie, New Hampshire, until she finds out that ’small but popular’ doesn’t quite bring in enough cash to pay off the mortgage. With money threats looming over her family, she decides to go to school and then head to New York to become a colourist at Jean-Luc. For something that’s ‘just hair,’ there sure is a lot involved - pacifying rich clients, earning a place on the floor, temperamental salon owners, and the fear of slipping up and making a very important woman into a very angry woman. Georgia might be living in the city that never sleeps, but who has time for a personal life when your boss expects your job to be your life?
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Wednesday, September 7th, 2005
Hardcover (available in mass market), 310 pages, 2005
Rating: 8/10
Reason for Reading: Reading all of Evanovich’s books is sort of becoming a bad habit.
Synopsis: A girl can only be shot at so many times before she starts to reconsider her career path, and Stephanie Plum is sick of the bounty hunter business and all of the explosions that seem to come with it. But her reputation proceeds her to her new would-be-jobs; it’s obvious someone didn’t get the memo that she’d retired because they keep trying to blow her up; and her curiosity is peaked when her cop boyfriend is looking into the case of missing men in her area of New Jersey. Stephanie is determined to find a nice, safe job, but someone is trying equally hard to keep her working - or to kill her to keep their secrets safe.
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