Review: The Secret Life of Anna Blanc by Jennifer Kincheloe

Young socialite Anna Blanc is one walking scandal after the other. She is expected to be a good girl and do exactly what her father wants, however she is impulsive and longing for excietment in her life…..bad combo.

When she runs off to elope with a handsome, but rather rake-ish gentleman, her father intervenes and gets the marriage annulled and takes Anna back to his mansion in LA and basically puts her under house arrest.

Feeling more confined than ever, her eludes her chaperon on a rare afternoon out so she can attend a suffragette rally, but ends up getting arrested instead. While she is at the police station, she discovers that she could actually work in the police office….where excitement happens!

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Special Feature and Excerpt: THE ORACLE (The Sarah Weston Chronicles #3) by D.J. Niko

02_The Oracle_CoverThe Oracle (The Sarah Weston Chronicles, Book Three)
by D.J Niko

Publication Date: November 10, 2015
Medallion Press
Paperback; 456p
ISBN-13: 978-1605426273

Genre: Historical/Archaeological Adventure

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In Delphi, the mountain city deemed by the Greek gods to be the center of the Earth, a cult of neo-pagans re-create with painstaking authenticity ancient rituals to glorify the god Apollo and deliver oracles to seekers from around the world.

When antiquities are stolen from a museum in nearby Thebes, British archaeologist Sarah Weston and her American partner, Daniel Madigan, are drawn into a plot that goes beyond harmless role-playing: someone’s using the Delphian oracle as a smoke screen for an information exchange, with devastating consequences for the Western world.

Pitted against each other by the cult’s mastermind, Sarah and Daniel race against time and their own personal demons to uncover clues left behind by the ancients. Their mission: to find the original navel stone marked with a lost Pythagorean formula detailing the natural events that led to the collapse of the Minoan Empire.

But will they find it in time to stop the ultimate terrorist act?

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | BOOK DEPOSITORY | INDIE BOUND

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Review: Home by Nightfall (Charles Lenox Mysteries #9) by Charles Finch

The once arm chair detective, Charles Lenox, has now successfully made the big shift to being in ‘trade’ with his detective agency and partners. Things seem to be going well for Lenox, Dallington, and Polly….they have after all hired a ‘staff’ of detectives to help with their work load, but their rival LeMire also threatens to take away some of their business.

All of London is buzzing with the disappearance of a famous German pianist….everyone is speculating  that the Yard will call in a consulting detective firm….Lenox hopes it’s his. While he waits to hear if he will be brought in, his brother Edmund is grieving the loss of his wife and asks Lenox to come to Sussex to help him get re-adjusted to his house and being alone on the estate.

Lenox gladly accepts, he hasn’t been home for an extended visit in ages and when the news comes that LeMire has been called in as the consulting firm….Lenox gladly goes to Sussex.

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Review: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

I am not really into horror literature or super scary stories….I haven’t read any Stephen King or V.C. Andrews because I would like to be able to sleep at night.

However this Halloween season, I got inspired to pickup a ghost story. Maybe it’s because I went to watch Crimson Peak and was eager to read something similar…..but I decided to pick up The Woman in Black as I am a sucker for Gothic novels so this sounded right up my alley.

Arthur Kipps is a young London solicitor who has been dispatched to the small windswept town of Crythin Gifford with its salt marshes and fog that rolls in and leaves the town feeling rather ghostly. Kipps is there to attend a funeral and settle the affairs of his client, Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House.

Mrs. Drablow’s crumbling old house stands at the end of Nine Lives Causeway, a small strip of land that leaves the house cut off from the rest of the town at high tide. It’s a house cloaked in fog and mystery, but Kipps is unaware of the tragic secrets that lie hidden behind its sheltered windows.

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Special Feature: The Spine Tingling Literary Canon List for Halloween

Halloween is just around the corner and this week on The Lit Bitch we are talking about the books that make you want to curl up and hide under the covers of your bed. You know those books that scare you so bad that every little noise in your house makes you jump and wonder….is there a monster under my bed???

The folks at Casper Mattresses have a great blog called Pillow Talk and they are doing a super fun ‘haunted’ feature on their blog for Halloween where they talk about spooky hotels (including the Heathman Hotel in Portland, a personal fav of mine being from Oregon and all). Casper is a great company full of fellow bibliophiles like myself and they asked me to share what books I have read that have kept me up at night to celebrate Halloween!

I haven’t read a lot of ‘horror stories’ but I have read a few classic novels that certainly belong in the ‘spine tingling’ literary canon and I also added a few other books that were so suspenseful that I found myself jumping at any little noise. I am sure there are a lot of other creepy-tastic books out there that I am forgetting…..Stephen King comes to mind and I’ll be honest….I want to read Stephen King but I’m a little too scared! If you have a favorite scary book that makes you want to hide under your covers please share it in the comments below!

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