What I've been reading...

I thought I would just do a short update about what I've been reading and listening to in the last few days.  Some really good books in my opinion.

First of all, I've gone down the rabbit hole with Betty Webb's Lena Jones series.  I mentioned the first book, Desert Noir, a couple of weeks ago and said that I was thinking of reading all 10 books in the series soon.  I've definitely made a start in that direction.

Desert Wives is the second book in the series.  In this tale, Lena goes undercover at a community in northern Arizona that practices polygamy.  Lena had been hired to help a young teen escape from the community by the mother of the girl.  However, the leader has been murdered and the mother has been arrested.  Lena and Jimmy, her partner, step in to help.

The third book in the series, Desert Shadows, was quickly in my hand and I became absorbed in learning about the independent publishing industry and helping Lena solve the murder of a very unpleasant woman who headed up Patriot's Blood Press.  Jimmy's cousin, Owen Sisiwan, has been accused of murdering the woman, who was his employer.  The author said that her own publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, was helpful in letting her see behind the scenes of a small independent.
 

Did I go right on to #4?  Yes I did and enjoyed it thoroughly.  Desert Run concerns an independent movie being made about a German POW camp in the area and an escape of prisoners on Christmas Eve, 1944.  This is based on a true story, which Betty Webb relates in the author's notes.  One of the escapees, a German U-boat captain who settled in the US after the war, is the victim this time.  Not that anyone is mourning him.  He was assisting in the documentary production and is, of course, quite old.  His Ethiopian caretaker is the person accused of the crime.  Lena, always ready to help right what she perceives as a wrong, investigates.  She's in a tough place in her life because it seems that everyone is leaving her - her old boss in the police is moving back to Brooklyn and Jimmy, her partner, has taken a job with a tech firm (maybe).  We also continue to learn a bit about Lena's history.

Now to the books that I listened to on audio.  I've been very pleased to find that Mary Stewart's books (she's one of my favorite authors from the past) have recently been recorded with new narrators.  Some are already available now and some will be coming.  Not sure if they were previously recorded as books on tape long ago, but I know I never listened to any of them.  I picked up a couple of my favorites and began a delightful reread of Touch Not the Cat.  It was narrated by Zoe Mills and I loved everything about it.  It had been a long time since I visited this book, originally published in 1976.  That was probably the year that I originally read it - I would have been in early college days.  Gothic-type romantic suspense.  Lovely!

The last book I'll talk about is another that I loved (and have quickly moved on to the second in the series).  It's The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan.  Narrated by Aoife McMahon (pronounced 'eef-a'), I was thinking up reasons to keep listening.  This is the first book in a crime series set in Ireland featuring DS Cormac Reilly.  It concerns a crime that is connected to a case Cormac had very early in his career - his first week in fact.  Cormac has returned to Galway from being with a special squad in Dublin and has not found his welcome warm at all.  If you like the books that Tana French writes, the ones about the Dublin Murder Squad, you might like this one.  The second book has recently been published, The Scholar.  I'm listening to that one now.

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That's it for now.  Hope everyone has a nice weekend!