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Eliza Benedict has built a safe and secure life for herself, a mostly tranquil one, where she has time to worry about her increasingly distanced teenage daughter and the quarrels between her children. Her husband’s work, which previously took them abroad, has brought them back to the environs of Baltimore – the area where she grew up, and the area where 25 years ago, she was kidnapped and held hostage for six weeks by a serial rapist and killer. When Eliza unexpectedly receives a missive from Walter Bowman, her kidnapper, bearing the fateful title words, she must revisit her memories of that traumatic time and determine what responsibility, if any, she bears for Walter’s final victim, taken and killed while Eliza was with him. Eliza must also deal with her husband, parents’ and siblings response to Walter’s reemergence in her life, as well as her decision to conceal the events of her past from her children, while asking herself why Walter let her live. Another thoughtful and suspenseful winner from Laura. --MeH

This is an extremely entertaining book about vampires roaming about the Mississippi river steam boating scene of the mid 1800’s.

Abner Marsh, a veteran steamboat captain finds himself in a situation that partners him with Joshsua York, an odd but quite wealthy gentleman. Together with Joshua’s wealth and Abner’s knowledge, they create the “Fevre Dream,” one of the finest steamboats on the river. The relationship is plagued by doubts and suspicions due to Joshua’s odd nature and culminates in Joshua’s confession of his true nature. This truth intensifies their partnership and together they fight Damon Julian for the powerful position of bloodmaster. The fate of the Vampire race depends on the outcome of the bloody struggle.

George R. R. Martin creates an intriguing struggle of good and evil in the world of Vampires that continues to the very last page. --bkh

This bestselling author has penned another winner. If you like “CSI,” you will love this novel. (Yes, there is now a new TNT TV series based on Tess Gerritsen’s characters called “rizzoli & isles,” but the books are much better.)

Maura Isles, Boston Medical Examiner, is at a ME conference in Wyoming when she decides to break from her boring predictability and join a last minute side ski trip. Feeling low from her troubled love relationship back home, she feels that this is what she needs to snap out of the doldrums. Unfortunately, a wrong road taken, a severe snow storm and a subsequent car accident, leave Maura and her companions stranded in the middle of nowhere. Stumbling onto a deserted group of houses, they gratefully take shelter when they start realizing that something is not right. Why does it look like the people just left in the middle of their meals and chores? Why are the doors and windows open?

Although I am an avid mystery reader and can usually figure out what the conclusion will be in a mystery thriller, this book completely surprised me at the end – which I love. --LDB

Ciera Griffin and the vampire DJs of WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock and Roll, return in this energetic third installment in the series. Ciera (KEER-ahh) has plenty on her plate already – training as a recruit for the Control, the organization that supervises and occasionally quells supernaturals, thanks to a devil’s bargain she made in the previous book; a marriage proposal from her eternally 90’s grunge-bend vampire boyfriend, Shane; and completing her bachelor’s degree, if she can get her advisor to accept her term paper topic. Then she is assigned to a special ops division of Control, zombies start arising near the campus, and there’s an outbreak of chickenpox – all of which makes preparing for her BFF’s wedding even more complicated. Jeri’s compulsive ossified vampires aren’t like anything else in the field, and Ciera’s issues of faith or unfaith add another dimension to this fascinating series. --MeH

The adventures and hilarity continue in the second entry of this charming series that really has it all: vampires, werewolves, travel by dirigible, hats, mayhem, intrigue, the latest Victorian fashions and transmitting technology (aethographor), and updates in the life of Alexia Tarabotti, a paranormal of the most rare sort ... a preternatural, or someone without a soul. Her soullessness gives her a rare combination of talents that come in particularly handy in this installment where she must figure out why all of the paranormals are losing their paranormal abilities (becoming changeless) and are once again human. She tracks down her husband, Lord Maccon, the Alpha of the Woolsey Castle pack and also BUR’s supernatural liaison with his original clan (pack) in Scotland. There she learns a little bit more about her centuries-old husband, and finds the source of the problem ... or is it problems? ... as in addition to the changeless issue, it also seems that someone is always trying to kill her!

Don’t miss any entry in The Parasol Protectorate series, a hilarious mixed genre bag combining the delicate sensibilities and social mores of Victorian London with the aforementioned vampires, werewolves, parasols and dirigibles. --tlg

The gifted young Cale has a destiny. The author doesn’t tell you much of what this 14-year-old is meant to become, nor does he quickly develop the world our Cale will soon be thrust into. Slowly we get hints of Cale’s abilities as a fighter, and as a military thinker. We watch as he learns loyalty, how to appreciate rich food and smoke, and as he becomes the lover to the daughter of the world’s most powerful king.

The book fits into the fine lineage of Ender’s Game, The Warded Man, The Dreaming Void, The Red Wolf Conspiracy, Lamentation, and probably a half dozen other trilogies as through a half dozen dramatic sweeps, we jump for joy and curse the delays as Cale reveals himself, as he trumps fate, and gets himself and the world as we discover it into one hell of a pickle. The traditional friends and mentors are there, and this first book is sprinkled with the banter you would expect to find in The Lies of Locke Lamora or The Way of the Shadows.

It’s no Anathem by Neal Stephenson, which holds my highest regards (as a standalone book instead of a trilogy), but one can only hope that Brent Weeks and not Patrick Rothfuss is consulting Paul Hoffman on when to publish the second book. I finished the book in a day, and now I’m hooked. --Guest Reviewer Douglas Penn

Their world was taken from them, their people massacred, but nine children of Lorien escaped, and with their protectors fled to a planet not far from their own, a planet called Earth. Here they hide, biding their time and growing in strength, waiting for the right time to strike back against the enemy. However, the enemy is on earth, and already hunting them.

“Three are dead, I am number four.”

Written as a wonderful YA adventure, Four creates an all too familiar feeling of teenage angst set against the backdrop of a science-fiction tale straight out of the pulps, to satisfying result. Pittacus Lore, A.K.A. James Frey and Jobie Hughes, have created the best young-adult science-fiction book of the year in I Am Number Four, and the start to a new series with a great deal of promise. The movie adaptation is slated for theaters February 2011. --MS

For most teens, coming of age doesn’t mean an arranged marriage within one’s supernatural species, and assuming one’s place, not just as a pack leader, but also within a larger supernatural community. The Nightshades are shapeshifting wolf warriors, who serve as Guardians for the Keepers in their trials against the Searchers in an ongoing Witches’ War. All of them live within the human world, but they don’t associate with humans … and they especially don’t fall in love with them. When Nightshade Calla, about to take part in her Samhain nuptials, discovers human teen Shay in dire straits on a mountaintop and violates her pack’s and master’s rules to rescue him, it opens the door to an unanticipated journey that will question everything she has ever learned about her nature and her legacy. Passionate, romantic and richly realized – a stellar beginning to a new series. --MeH