Reviewed by Gannon Carr
Publisher: Penguin
4 stars (or 4 red stilettos)

Edmund Fitz Clare is an upyr-a shapeshifting vampire—who must keep his true identity a secret from those he loves: the three orphans he adopted when they were young children and the young woman he has desired for years.  But secrets have a way of catching up to you, and Edmund’s world is about to change.

Estelle Berenger has been close to the Fitz Clare family since she was fifteen years old, when she befriended young Sally Fitz Clare at school.  And she was curiously attracted to Sally’s father, Edmund, which at her age she knew was verboten.  Wrong or not, Estelle found him to be sexy, kind and mysterious – just the sort of qualities to fascinate a young girl on…

Reviewed by Gannon Carr
Publisher: Penguin
3.25 stars

Take twelve women, add food, alcohol, laughter and rolling dice and you can’t help but have a good time.  Kitty Burke is one of the Bunco Babes of Whispering Bay who get together every Thursday night for a night of fun with the girls.  The Bunco group was started by Kitty and her two closest friends, Shea and Pilar.  Kitty is the only Babe who is still single and now that she’s thirty-five, the situation depresses her more than usual.  Not only is she alone, but her finances are dwindling and to add insult to injury, her toilet has decided to overflow just before her friends arrive for Bunco.  Well the Bunco Babes want Kitty to have fun on her birthday, so they hire a…

Reviewed by Gannon Carr
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
4 stars

Who can’t remember those angst filled teen years when the least little thing seemed a matter of life and death.  Jennifer Echols has written an outstanding young adult novel that captures that time and all those emotions.  Meg is a troubled teenager in a small town in Alabama.  She wants nothing more than to leave home after graduation and never look back.  Until then, she seems destined to stir up trouble.  One night, she and her boyfriend and two of their friends decide to hang out on the railroad bridge outside of town, drinking and making out.  What they don’t count on is the police showing up and putting the kibosh on their teenage shenanigans.

Officer John After cannot believe that these four foolish…

Reviewed by Gannon Carr
Publisher Penguin
4.5 stars

Marcus Helios, known as Lord Alexander to London society, was a member of the elite Shadow Guard until a rash decision took it all away.  Now he is fighting an insidious madness that will be his downfall.  His only hope is hidden in two ancient scrolls, which Mark believes to be in the hands of Mina Limpett.  Mina’s father is a scholar who has been searching for the proof of immortals—such as Mark and the other Shadow Guards—but his academic colleagues have lost respect for him.  Mina and her father end up in the remote mountains of Bengal continuing his quest, but he panics because he thinks that someone has found them and is after the scrolls.  Professor Limpett sends Mina back to London, and…

Reviewed by Gannon Carr
Publisher:  Leisure Books
5 stars

Every so often, a book comes along that really shines and stands out among all others.  One that is hard to put down when you’re reading and when you reach the last sentence is impossible to forget.  The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie is just such a book!

Lord Ian Mackenzie has been viewed as “mad” since the day his father had him placed in an asylum when Ian was just eleven years old.  After years of enduring heinous “treatments” such as ice baths, electric shock treatments and regular beatings, Ian is finally removed from the asylum by his oldest brother, Hart, who is now the Duke of Kilmorgan.  Ian believes himself incapable of understanding or feeling emotions and is, much of the time, socially…

Reviewed by Gannon Carr
Publisher: Penguin
4.5 stars

In the fifth book of her Broken Heart vampire series, Michele Bardsley ups the ante by adding a much darker element to this book.  While humor is still a major aspect, there is more menace in this tale.  Over My Dead Body begins with a bang and keeps the action going until the last page.  And keeps the reader guessing–like me– when I read the first paragraph:

“Killing Braddock Hayes changed my life—such as it was—forever.  Committing murder should change a person, at least a person who still has a conscience, and I sure as hell had mine.”

Whoa!  Even if I weren’t already a fan of this series, I would be sucked into this story with that line.  The vampire heroine killing her love interest in the…