1) Tan Lines by J.J. Salem
During one unforgettable season at a Hamptons summer share, three women's
journeys unfold thrill by thrill and shock by shock, in this addictive story
about the illusions of glamour, the dark side of success and the elusiveness of
love.
Liza Pike--She's the It Girl for topical feminist spin--beautiful,
successful, and ferociously fearless. But as the media props her up to be the
millennium's new Gloria Steinem, she's falling into all the old traps she
cautions other women to avoid...
Kellyanne Downey--She's been holding out for her big break as an actress
while enduring a series of dead end jobs and playing mistress to a rich
developer. But now she's wondering why the phenomenal looks that were supposed
to take her all the way are leading her to the edge of nowhere...
Billie Shelton--She's the indie-rock bitch goddess with an appetite for
self-destruction. Men are candy, drugs are fuel, girlfriends are disposable
commodities, and in her world, looking out for number one is the only way to
live...
Tan Lines portrays the passions, triumphs, and heartbreaks of modern
women with a sly intelligence and wickedly sharp prose that will hook you to the
last page.
2) Creation in Death by Nora Roberts (writing as J.D. Robb)
About the book:
NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas keeps the streets of a near-future New York City safe in this extraordinary series. But even she makes mistakes, and is haunted by those she couldn't save-and the killers she couldn't capture. When the body of a young brunette is found in East River Park, artfully positioned and marked by signs of prolonged and painful torture, Eve is catapulted back to a case nine years earlier. The city was on edge from a killing spree that took the lives of four women in fifteen days, courtesy of a man the media tagged "The Groom"-because he put silver rings on the fingers of his victims.
When it turns out that the young brunette was employed by Eve's billionaire husband, Roarke, she brings him in on the case-a move that proves fitting when it becomes chillingly clear that the killer has made his attack personal. The victim was washed in products from a store Roarke owns, and laid out on a sheet his company manufactures.
3) Bubbles Ablaze by Sarah Strohmeyer
About the book:
Agatha winner Strohmeyer provides lots of madcap fun in her third book (after 2002's Bubbles in Trouble) to feature budding reporter/detective/hairdresser Bubbles Yablonsky. Lured into an unused Pennsylvania coal mine, Bubbles and her "Mel Gibson dead ringer" photographer boyfriend, Steve Stiletto, narrowly escape harm in a cave-in right after they stumble on car-sales magnate Bud Price with "a six-inch bloody hole blown into the middle of his chest." They also find the abandoned car of Bubbles's cousin-in-law, Carl "Stinky" Koolball, the cartographer for McMullen Coal, the company that owns the mine. And now Stinky's missing. The plot thickens like a vat of kapusta as more and more ingredients are added-perhaps too many. On top of her crime-solving, Bubbles must deal with her rebellious teenage daughter, her biker-chick mother's vendetta over some stolen Polish recipes, and a clean-cut stud named Zeke who keeps following her.
4) Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
About the book:
The hero of Charles Frazier's beautifully written and deeply-imagined first novel is Inman, a disillusioned Confederate soldier who has failed to die as expected after being seriously wounded in battle during the last days of the Civil War. Rather than waiting to be redeployed to the front, the soul-sick Inman deserts, and embarks on a dangerous and lonely odyssey through the devastated South, heading home to North Carolina, and seeking only to be reunited with his beloved, Ada, who has herself been struggling to maintain the family farm she inherited. Cold Mountain is an unforgettable addition to the literature of one of the most important and transformational periods in American history.
