When I was working, I would walk for 30 min and I had a 30 min rt commute, so I got 60 min of listening to audio books in every day, so I burned through a lot of audio tapes. I started lisa gardner and they were good, but they got to be so much more of the same, that I'd read the blurb and have no idea if I'd read that one or not. I read some of the prey series...eyes of prey was just too chilling...but given past life events, I can no longer do the super graphic serial killer type things any more...they are just too upsetting. The Grafton alphabets are much more my speed. Now I get books on tape out of the library when we do a driving trip...the two of us have laughed our trips along listening to the Evanovich mysteries...makes driving much more pleasant.

Oh the JD Robb books are terrific!! The perfect romance in that the male character is rich and handsome and they really love each other. Humour thrown in as well, when she hates being treated like a female and abhors having to wear anything dressy. I love the futuristic things the author comes up with. Glad you gave it a try Susan. Have you read any of the "numbered series" Stephanie Plum stories by Janet Evanovich? Very funny!

My county library has a "new arrivals" shelf, usually holds 20-30 books, always an extremely mixed bag! I just pick up whatever book appeals based on title, picture, subject, book-size, whatever ... fact, fiction, adult, young-adult, how-to, political, travel, mystery; oh and some in Large Print too which is increasingly nice :-) Because it's a public library and costs me nothing to take a few home, I "test drive" a lot of books. I have a certain place in my house where the stack of library books go, so they don't get lost and it's easy to remember to take them back when I'm done. Don't be afraid to walk through the Non-Fiction section of your library, there will be lots of interesting things there too. Costs nothing to see if you really like Shakespeare or want to read about a science topic, etc. Plus it'll have cookbooks, gardening books, poetry etc in addition to all the "intellectual" stuff, lol. I love autobiographies, especially of common people (non-celebrities, that is) who write just to share what their world was like growing up. The second way I find/choose books is I keep a Word document titled "Books to look for" on my computer ... and anytime I'm on-line, I cut & paste interesting recommendations into my document. Then every so often, I review the list, jot down a few titles/authors to look for. Mysteries - my library is big on mysteries, or is it the entire publishing world now-a-days? Some are light-hearted (talking animals, etc), others are more serious, and I guess there are grim/gorey/scary selections too although that doesn't appeal to me! Whatever hobby or passtime you're into, there will be mystery series using that as a theme. Common themed mysteries are cooking, dogs, cats, gardening, antiques, junk-collecting, various periods of history, etc. I think you could google "mystery" plus any subject you wanted, and come up with a list. I hope you find something you like :-)

Budster, I guess I can understand your apprehension about eBay (although I sell books myself on eBay), but why Amazon? Amazon has an excellent reputation. I sell books there, too. On the rare occasions when I buy a new book (usually nonfiction), it comes from Amazon. I buy a lot of used books there as well. Also eBay occasionally and Half.com occasionally. About once a year I got on a Bookcloseouts.com spree. The rest of the time I haunt our animal shelter's thrift shop and the public library, which always offers books for sale. Like Stephanie mentioned, I love the hunt.