Starting one of my booklover friends’ suggestions The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry.

About the book: Look into the lace… When the eyes begin to fill with tears and hte patience is long exhausted, there will appear a glimpse of something not quite seen. In this moment, an image will begin to form… in the space between what is real and what is only imagined.

Can you read your future in a piece of lace? All of the Whitney women can. But the last time Towner read, it killed her sister and nearly robbed Towner of her own sanity. Vowing never to read the lace again, her resolve is tested when faced with the disappearance of her Great Aunt Eva, Salem’s original Lace Reader….

My thoughts: This was a book that came highly recommended but  I had a hard time following it at first. It helped when I had a good chunk of time to sit and read at once but it’s definitely not the kind of book to read a little bit at at time. I found myself having to go back and re-read parts of it to keep the characters and events straight. It started off a bit slow then picked up as time went on. Still, it was the kind of book that I found myself thinking about even after I finished it so that’s usually the sign that it was pretty good and affected me. I liked it and probably could identify with it more than some folks because I live in New England.

Rating 3.5/5

I was very happy to see that many of the downloadable audio books from my library are now iPod compatible so I was able to finally use them with my Nano instead of a cheesy mp3 player.  This series caught my eye. I haven’t read Kate Wilhelm before but I always like recurring character novels so I expect it will be a good one. Book 1 of the Barbara Holloway series  is Death Qualified.

Publishers Weekly: Nell Kendricks is charged with murdering her estranged husband, Lucas, who disappeared years ago while working on a top-secret experiment attempting to use chaos theory to change the observer’s perception of the universe. Now it appears that Lucas had spent the intervening years drugged and amnesiac, a handyman at the university where the studies had taken place. Attorney Barbara Holloway, who is “death qualified” (i.e., legally permitted to act in capital cases), agrees to defend Nell, despite having left the profession, disillusioned by its practices….

My “running around” audio book is They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie. I’m running out of titles at my library to rip so I may have to start requesting some and hit up my TBR list. Normally, the audio books are just fillers for me and I grab what I see when I go.

About the book: Amazon info: Flighty but good-hearted Victoria Jones craves love, intrigue, and adventure. She strikes gold in Edward, a handsome and mysterious traveler whom she’s vowed to follow to the ends of the earth. Yet no whirlwind affair can prepare Victoria for what unfolds once she lands in Baghdad. Not a day in Edward’s shadow, and she hears whispered warnings of danger and witnesses the murder of a secret agent in her hotel room. And when she discovers that a romantic rival for Edward’s affection has arranged for her kidnapping, Victoria fears that her impetuous nature could be the death of her.