I'm really enjoying Epic Tomatoes by Craig LeHoullier. A Christmas present from my son. Very well written and organized. Lots of tomato pictures to drool over.

I am reading #6 in Dean Kootnz Odd Thomas series. There are 7 novels so far. There are also short stories and graphic novels. I really liked the first one but the rest has been up and down in quality. I am having a hard time getting through this one. Once I start a series, I always feel a compulsion to read them all. Of course when I read the first one in 2003, there was only one.

Yes, but most grown ups don't like what I read.

I've been enjoying retold Fairy Tales. Some of my favorite authors. K.M. Shea aka A.M. Sohma she writes under both names. Melanie Cellier and have just moved on to Brittany Fitcher.

Some other authors I love. Juliet Marilier, Chris D'Lacey, Jenna Black and Christie Anderson.

Another series Iliked is by A.G. Howard. Splintered - it's Alice in Wonderland reimagined.

I can't even remember the last time I read a NY Times best seller type book.

I just finished I WILL FIND YOU by Joe Kenda. It is an autobiography about his life as a Homicide Detective Lt.

Really interesting, read it in 2 days. He has a TV show called Homicide Hunters on the ID network. I had never heard of him, but my DSIL runs a book store and he was coming in to sign books (not his first time and she really liked him). I watched a few episodes and she had him sign a book for me and sent it to me.

I am now in love with retired detective Joe Kenda!!! My, my, my!

PS-DH knows.

I’m reading Next Year in Havana by Chantal Cleeton, an author I do not know, but the book was on Reese Witherspoon’s recommended list. I love it. It is very descriptive of both old and new Havana and Cuba, both historically and figuratively.

Recently I finished Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine which I enjoyed but it felt a bit unfinished, and the latest Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum funny, Look Alive Twenty-five.

I just finished the latest Elizabeth George Inspector Lynley novel, The Punishment She Deserves. Have read all the previous in the series and liked them, some more than others, but this one was very good!! A long read, tho.....700+ pages!!

And since I am a big fan of British mysteries, I have just started in on the Ann Cleeves novels. Both the Brit series Vera and Shetland are based on her books.

kathyg, I have seen that show before and I was quite taken with it as well. But I think I would rather see him person onscreen than just reading. For a homicide detective, he has a rather charming demeanor :-)

He sure is charming! And the book just cemented my infatuation.

BTW, his wife's name is Kathy!

outside playing... We just returned from a cruise . One of the ports, was Havana, Cuba. I got the book..Next Year in Havana, after we got home. It was really very good description of the political climate in Cuba, then and now. interesting book.

Just an hour ago, I finished True Places by Sonja Yoerg. I enjoyed it. It gets 4 stars on Goodreads.

I believe I got it either from Amazon's monthly free pick, or Bookbub. Either way, it was a free Kindle edition.

I am enjoying Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. My son came to visit for the holidays with about 30 books for me, including "Killing Floor," the first Jack Reacher adventure crime drama. His firm owns several publishers and book printing companies, and so he gets lots of free books to take home every week. I am a happy camper.

Best book I read this year was “A Gentleman in Moscow”. I just received Louise Penny’s latest - “Kingdom of the Blind”.

Just completed a long cruise and did a lot of reading. Here is my list:

Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng (really like her writing)

The Orphan's Tale - Pam Jenoff (recommend this one)

The Hearts of Men - Nicholas Butler

When the Light Goes - Larry McMurtry

Landline - Rainbow Rowell (cannot recommend)

My Absolute Darling - Gabriel Tallent (absolutely horrible - but I got through it)

Deep Winter - Samuel W. Gailey

Free Air - Sinclair Lewis

The Life We Bury - Allen Eskens

The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto - Mitch Albom (really enjoyed this)

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist - Sunil Yapa

In case anyone is interested, we keep a running monthly list of books we're reading on Home Decor Conversations: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5552895/what-are-we-reading-in-december#n=69

And we also had a list of 5-star recommended books: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/and-now-the-5-star-books-you-recommend-dsvw-vd~5557269?n=28

I'm currently reading "Fire & Blood" by George R. R. Martin. I have it at work and sometimes I don't get a lot of sleep and it puts me to sleep, so I quit reading it for a while. The book is interesting but if I'm tired anything will put me to sleep these days.

I haven't read a John Grisham book in years. They were starting to bore me.

I also really enjoyed A Gentleman in Moscow. It took me a very long time to read!

We spent about 20 hours in the car and many hours sitting around a fire so I had some good reading the last 6 days. I read An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. They I started A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena.

I have a new to me favorite author.

William Kent Krueger and his Cork O Conner series.

My favorite so far is The Devil's Bed.

A couple of days ago, I finished reading "The Reckoning" by John Grisham". It is a complex story written in 3 parts and he uses a flash-back technique. Its different than his other stories. I describe it as very 'heavy', and I can't say much more about it without spoiling it. It not my most favorite type of material, but it is well written and researched. Its worth a read.

To follow Annie’s lead, this was another thread in Conversations that discussed favorite book series in the crime/spy/mystery/thriller genre.

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5523875/book-series-in-crime-thriller-spy-mystery-type-genre#n=41

Glad to hear that Grisham's newest is a good read because I thought Camino Island was horrible. I really like Karin Slaughter, the Penn Cage series (6 books) by Greg Iles, and the Jane Hawk series by Dean Koontz - not his usual supernatural, creepy stuff. Well, I guess it is, but in a more believable high tech way.

I like the PennPenn Cage series, too

Another author I like is Joel C Rosenberg.

Edited to correct name of author.

A lot more responses here than I expected! I'm going to have to look up some of the authors and books mentioned, they are new to me. And I was really surprised by the mention of Joe Kenda! I didn't know he had written a book. But I am not a fan of his. I watched one episode of his show, and that was it for me, I can't stand the guy! I don't know why, whether it is him or something in the program I tried to watch.

Does anyone here enjoy just plain ol' romances? The clean kind? Like Debbie Macomber or Luanne Rice?

Rusty

My husband used to give me Grisham's books to read after he finished them. I noticed that some seemed to be written by a different person. The use of language was different in them.

I've been avidly reading from my Kindle Unlimited free book selections.

I've been enjoying some paranormal romance series (Knights of Black Swan by Victoria Danann, Children of the Gods
by I. T. Lucas ) but they are definitely rated M for mature audiences :-) I kind of enjoy that about them although the sexual content got old and tired.

Other interesting crime drama series that I've enjoyed were The Violet Darger series by L.T Vargus and Robert Dugoni's Tracy Crosswhite books.

I also enjoyed the science fiction of A.G. Riddle's Atlantis series (3 books).

The most uplifting book that I recently read was I Wish You Happy by Kerry Anne King.

My reading habits and inability to intelligently discuss books made me a bad candidate for the book club.

One of the better books i read this year is Born a Crime by Trevor Noah.

We devour James Patterson and Kathy Reichs books!

such good reads.

Rusty, have you ever read anything by Dorothea Benton Frank? Her books aren’t exactly romance, no bodice ripping novels, but slightly on the side of what some would consider romance novel. I enjoy them. And for some fun and humor, try Mary Kay Andrews.

My bedside book (always a "real" one) right now is These is My Words, by Nancy E. Turner. It's written in diary form, covering 1881-1901 in the life of a young woman who traveled in a covered wagon with her family to settle Arizona. It's fiction, but based on the life of the author's great-grandmother. I love it.

I think it's worth noting that much of what we know about life in those covered wagons is due to the diaries kept by the women--who often made their own ink from local plants. Surely some of our more modern history has been written in longhand diaries. I hope future generations will be able to read cursive writing.

My current Kindle book is The Edge of Lost, by Kristina McMorris. I'm enjoy this one too. It's about a boy who emigrates to the U.S. from Ireland in the early 1900s, hoping to find the father he never knew. It follows his life, and a second story line takes place in Alcatraz.

I read my first Grisham book (The Pelican Brief) recently. It was prophetic! I read it during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, and the book opens up with riots on the DC streets in protest of of a despised Supreme Court Justice--who is soon murdered. The book (which was published in 1992) describes the state of the country as full of hate and division. The FBI Director, who considers the President to be an idiot, writes memos following meetings between the two because he doesn't trust the President to tell the truth.

The movie version of the novel The Pelican Brief, is an excellent movie as well and probably the best of the Grisham novels to be converted into movie form. Although, now that I think about it, The Firm was pretty darn good as well!!

OutsidePlaying, Dorothea Benton Frank is one of my very favorite authors! ! I don't care anything about the 'bodice ripping' novels, so perhaps I used the wrong word. I'm not sure exactly what the proper description (or genre) is for DBF's type of fiction, but I do enjoy her books. I've also only recently discovered that I can get pretty caught up in some historical novels.

"My reading habits and inability to intelligently discuss books made me a bad candidate for the book club."

PK, that sentence does a pretty good job of describing me, too. That's probably why I've never been interested in joining a book club. Guess I thought an online club would be different.

The only Grisham movie I've seen is "A Time to Kill", and much as I liked the book, I don't remember what I thought of the movie. I'm really not a big fan of movies, and avoid movies that have been made from books I've read like the plague. The imagination of the producers, directors, whatever, never comes even close to my own, and I'm always disappointed.

Rusty

Jewels, please comment on your opinion of A Stranger In The House if you wouldn't mind. I'd like another opinion (I read it last week).

I read a Jack Reacher story last week (Lee Child is the author) and am now reading Night School. He goes into a lot of detail, even describing a gun in detail. I liked the last one better than this one, but darned if I can think of the name, or find it based on a Google search.

I also read Harlan Coben "Fool me Once". I have 2 others to read as well. If the others are like this one, I'll be happy, they have more of a personal touch to them. This one is a female special-ops pilot whose husband is murdered.

I just finished A Piece of the World and would highly recommend it. It's a novel about the life of Christina Olson, the subject of Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World, and also her relationship with him. It was a really wonderful book.

I enjoyed it

The most favorite read in our house is a series of books by Clive Cussler. Note that as his book career advanced, other authors entered his fold. In some of the later books, he has lent his name to the title and cover, when it may have been written by another author. Many of his subjects are on a grand scale affecting large geographical areas, sometimes the entire world. His tales could be classed as science fiction, however, his ideas hold the potential of real possibility, rather than 'pipe dreams'. A reoccurring theme in some of his stories involves his son borrowing one of his collector cars for a date and then he gets chased by some baddies and the pristine car gets beat up.

Birthday Monsters. Boynton.

DS gave me several of Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko books for my birthday, the ones that I had not read. I've finished those (Renko is a great character) and am now working on my stash of whatever looked OK from a garage sale.

Right now, I'm reading book 5 in the Wm Stuart Long The Australians series. Realize that I've read one other book from the series. Liking it enough that I'm wanting to read more.

I like Harlan Coben, but sometimes they are pretty predictable. Just finished Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng and enjoyed it. Also just finished The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarity. Very good. I also loved A Gentleman in Moscow.

Just now finished “Past Tense” by Lee Child. They are starting to seem an awful lot alike.

I’m also reading I Will Find You by Joe Kenda. I have watched his show for years and really enjoy how he tells his stories. They also have Kenda Cruises, their last one will be this October leaving NYC and going to Halifax and St John. I would love to meet him in person.