series I've enjoyed

The wife of a hated divorce lawyer becomes the main suspect in his murder and hires private detective, Kinsey Millhone, to find the real killer.

Paige is a witch. Not that you'd notice no warts, no green skin, no wiggle of the nose to cast a spell. No, most of the time she's just a normal 23-year-old girl; although she is being stalked by a telekinetic half-demon and a cabal of sorcerers. Which is fine until the neighbours find out.

Regulars at Nadia's nature lodge don' t ask what she does in the off-season. And that's a good thing. If she told them, she'd have to kill them. She's a hit woman for a Mafia family. Tough and self-sufficient, Nadia doesn't owe anyone any explanations. But that doesn 't mean she always works alone. One of her contacts has recruited her in the hunt for a ruthlessly efficient serial killer cutting a swath of terror across the country. The assassin is far too skilled to be an amateur - and the precision of the killings is bringing the Feds much too close to the hit man community for comfort. To put an end to the murders, Nadia will have to turn herself from predator to prey as she employs every trick she knows to find the killer. Before the killer finds her.

This book is one I can re-read over and over; it's actually the first in a subseries from Howatch's 'Church of England' series, and this subseries deals with very contemporary issues, though all the books do, possibly because (as I understand it) the series came out of the author's desire to truly understand spirituality (I think I've seen these books used as texts for study). Unfortunately the library doesn't hold as many copies of each of the books in the full series as they used to. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Howatch#The_Starbridge_Series ..... In 1968, 26-year-old Nick Darrow, younger son of the psychic priest Jon Darrow, begins to realize that his life is a mess. To all appearances he is a sober-living young man, but in fact he is indulging in the sexual experimentation of his age and is in revolt against Church teaching.

This series was recommended by a friend in England, apparently at the time lots and lots of people were reading it, although it is a Junior book series. I liked it, and I like his other series as well. The books in the series are: Northern lights. -- The subtle knife. -- The amber spyglass. Summary Northern lights: Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North. The subtle knife: As the boundaries between worlds begin to dissolve, Lyra and her daemon help Will Parry in his search for his father and for a powerful, magical knife. The amber spyglass: Lyra and Will, the ordinary children who were left in such extraordinary danger at the end of Book Two, find themselves facing even greater perils. Old friends come to their aid and they make new allies.

Through a stroke of luck, Yelena escapes execution in exchange for tasting the food of the Commander, ruler of Ixia. Though confined to a dank prison cell and doomed to a painful death, Yelena slowly blooms again, caught up in castle politics. But some people are too impatient to wait for poison to finish off Yelena. With the help of Valek, her steely-nerved, cool-eyed boss and the Commander's head of security, she soon discovers that she has a starring role to play in Ixia's future - a role that could lead to her being put to death as a budding magician even if she hits each cue perfectly.

Sixth in series of standalones "Killer Instinct", "Riot Act", "Hard Knocks", "First Drop", Roadkill... it makes a difference having the background stories though, I've been enjoying re-reading them after finally being able to get the first in the series from the library (and I thought Lee Child's foreword to it was amusing). Charlie Fox, ex-Special Forces soldier turned bodyguard, has a new client: a lottery millionairess mother who is looking for protection from a nuisance ex. When Simone decides to escape his unwanted attentions and the scrutiny of the press by going to America, it should make Charlie's job easier, what with the main character she is protecting her from out of the picture. But Charlie has some very bad memories from her last time in the US and from the moment they arrive Simone seems to undermine all of Charlie's measures for her security. As the action culminates in a shoot-out in the snow, Charlie struggles to get to the bottom of what is jeopardising her assignment. next in series is "Third Strike", and then the latest "Fourth Day", which leaves me waiting impatiently for the next (due March 2011).

When she was sixteen, Joanna Archer was brutally assaulted and left to die in the Nevada desert. By rights, she should be dead. Now a photographer by day, she prowls a different Las Vegas after sunset - a grim, secret Sin City where Light battles Shadow - seeking answers to whom or what she really is and revenge for the horrors she was forced to endure. But the nightmare is just beginning - for the demons are hunting Joanna, and the powerful shadows want her for their own.

After fifteen-year-old Chloe starts seeing ghosts and is sent to Lyle House, a mysterious group home for mentally disturbed teenagers, she soon discovers that neither Lyle House nor its inhabitants are exactly what they seem, and that she and her new friends are in danger.

I like this series for different reasons to the Sue Grafton books, to me they are homelier in a way - still both series have been an intriguing read... Brodie Farrell series book 2 - sequel to echoes of lies (being able to search with a series title makes things so much easier when using the library system!) Witnessing the death of a young man at Dimmock pier, Daniel Hood believes that the police are looking for the wrong suspect and is assisted by investigator Brodie Farrell, who wants to save Daniel from his own dangerous impulses.

In this sequel to Tinker, the elven noble whose destiny is intertwined with Tinker, finds himself besieged from all sides. Viceroy and head of the Wind Clan, he had been able to guarantee the safety of everyone in his realm, but faced with an oni invasion, he has had to call in royal troops and relinquish his monopoly of Pittsburgh, which is now entirely stranded on Elfhome. He now struggles to keep the peace between the humans, the newly arrived Stone Clan, the royal forces, a set of oni dragons, the half-oni children who see themselves as human, and the tengu trying to escape their oni enslavement. Meanwhile, Tinker strives to solve the mystery of a growing discontinuity in Turtle Creek. She's plagued with inexplicable nightmares that may hold the keys to Pittsburgh's future. The only clue from the Queen's oracle to help Tinker is a note with five English words on it: Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Oni, and dragons and tengu oh my!