Books in a Series
Braun, Lilian Jackson. The Cat Who series. Loyal readers find the series' inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies charming. It consists of Jim Qwilleran and his Siamese Yum Yum and the clairvoyant Koko solving murders in Pickax and surrounding area of Moose County "400 miles north of anywhere else".
The Cat Who Talked Turkey. Putnam, 2004. For fans of this series featuring Siamese cats Yum Yum and the, there are no surprises in the twenty-sixth installment. The felines' owner, James "Qwill" Qwilleran, is just as rich and listener friendly as ever, his place of residence, Pickax, in Moose County, is still 400 miles north of anywhere else, and people are still murdered with astounding regularity, though Koko, who can sense a homicide a mile a way, is never surprised. Those who love the series appreciate Braun's attention to detail as she describes Pickax and the surrounding area, which while magnificently rural also boasts many fine dining establishments, places to buy the New York Times, and an abundance of cabs, as well as a limousine service. The citizenry, laconic, timidly happy, or in the case of Qwill's librarian lady friend, stupefyingly boring, would feel right at home in Lake Woebegone. The several murders committed here are really beside the point--in fact, except for the cat screeching you might miss them entirely. More attention is paid to Qwill's radio reenactment of the Great Blizzard of 1913 (the audience, of course, must pretend radio existed in 1913), which takes up a number of the book's pages.
Evanovich, Janet. Stephanie Plum Novels. If you like your mysteries on the humorous side, the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich are sure to please. There are nine SP novels thus far: One for the Money (1994), Two for the Dough (1996), Three to Get Deadly (1997), Four to Score (1998), High Five (1999), Hot Six (2000), Seven Up (2001), Hard Eight (2002), and To the Nines (2003). In June of 2004, Ten Big Ones is due to hit bookstore and library shelves. Stephanie Plum is a Fugitive Apprehension Agent (bounty hunter, bond enforcement officer) working for her cousin Vincent Plum. She is relatively successful but usually finds herself at some point in the chase rolling around on the ground a lot. The variety of fugitives is surpassed only by the even wider variety of supporting characters such as Stephanie's Grandma Mazuri. Then there's Joe Morelli, Stephanie's on-again, off-again boyfriend. Blend in Cuban-born "Ranger" who doesn't always seem to be on the right side of the law and Lula, former prostitute and Stephanie's right-hand woman for many of her chases, and you're off on another wild adventure. These need not be read in order, but it adds to the fun to watch characters develop as new ones are introduced. Each of the novels is a quick, fun read.
Gabaldon, Diana. Outlander Series. A hefty series of five historical romance / time travel stories set in Scotland and the early colonies of the United States of America.
1. Outlander : A novel. Delacorte Press, 1991. In Scotland with her husband Frank, on a second honeymoon after World War II, Claire Randall enters a circle of stones and is transported back 200 years, where she must marry a Scot (Jamie Fraser) to save her husband before returning to her own time. Absorbing and heartwarming, this first novel lavishly evokes the land and lore of Scotland, quickening both with realistic characters and a feisty, likable heroine. English nurse Claire Beauchamp Randall and husband Frank take a second honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands in 1945. When Claire walks through a cleft stone in an ancient henge, she's somehow transported to 1743. Eventually Claire finds a chance to return to 1945, where she must choose between distant memories of Frank and her happy, uncomplicated existence with Jamie.
2. Dragonfly in Amber. Delacorte Press, 1992. After the death of her present day husband, Dr. Claire Randall again travels back in time, searches for her 18th-century Scot husband and relates her involvement with Bonnie Prince Charlie and the battle at Culloden.
3. Voyager. Delacorte Press, 1994. Claire Randall returns to Scotland 22 years after Dragonfly in Amber to meet Jamie, a survivor of Culloden, and stays with him in the mid-18th century rather than returning to the 20th. The third of Gabaldon's novels covers her reunion with her twentieth-century husband Frank, the birth of her daughter by Jamie, and her training as a doctor. In due course, she feels driven to essay time traveling again, but reunion with Jamie takes place on the eve of Culloden. The pair's subsequent flight for life takes them to the West Indies and, finally, to a hair-raising shipwreck in the American colonies.
4. Drums of Autumn. Delacorte Press, 1997. From 1767 to 1770, Claire and Jamie struggle to set up their home in South Carolina. They are later joined by their time traveling daughter Brianna and son -in-law Roger in the past. Although parts of the book take place in the present, the tale begins in Charleston, South Carolina, before the American Revolution.
5. The Fiery Cross. Delacorte Press, 2001. In 1771 Jamie and Claire Randall have emigrated to the Royal County of North Carolina where they now live along with Brianna and Roger. Dissidents are stirring throughout the colonies. Claire forewarns James of the impending war and the dangers it may bring them. Will her knowledge of America's tumultuous revolution be enough to guide them through a dangerously uncertain future? Stay tuned for more of this series in the future.
LaHaye, Tim and Jerry B. Jenkins. Left Behind Series. Remnant: On the Brink of Armageddon. Tyndale House Publisher’s. 2002. The 10th book in the Left Behind series, the Remnant is a thrill ride that involves political and religious intrigue as well as images of love, hate, romance and murder. As the Anitchrist tightens his grip on the world, and displaces all pretenses that he is a man of peace, Jews in Jerusalem realize that he is that evil one spoken of in prophecy of old. A "remnant" of Jews and new believers have fled to hide from the approaching armies of the Antichrist. The ancient red stoned city of Petra, located in south Judea, is the chosen place of refuge. There, the Jews and new coverts to Christianity will be supernaturally protected by God from the Antichrist’s advances for the last 3 ½ years of the Tribulation period.
Books in the series include: Left Behind, Tribulation Force, Nicolae, Soul Harvest, Apollyon, Assassins, The Indwelling, The Mark, Desecration, The Remnant, Armageddon, & Glorious Appearing.
MacDonald, John D. Travis McGee Series. Lippencott. Travis McGee is a Korean War veteran and former football player, a 200 pound drop out from conventional society. McGee has sandy hair and ice-blue eyes, usually he wins his fistfights but he don’t like brutality. He drives a 1936 Rolls Royce, and live in Fort Lauderdale on a houseboat named "The Busted Flush", after the poker hand that won it for him. His best friend and neighbor is the brilliant, chess-playing retired economist Meyer. Typically McGee is drawn into a situation through some obligation from his past or he is helping his friend or a relative. McGee is the most "colorful" of all unlicensed private detectives. Each novel in the series contains a color in the title. Books do not have to be read in order even though some characters appear more than once. Below is a list of the series in chronological order.
THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BY, THE QUICK RED FOX, NIGHTMARE IN PINK, A PURPLE PLACE FOR DYING, A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD, BRIGHT ORANGE FOR THE SHROUD, DARKER THAN AMBER, ONE FEARFUL YELLOW EYE, PALE GRAY FOR GUILT, THE GIRL IN THE PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER, DRESS HER IN INDIGO, THE LONG LAVENDER LOOK, A TAN AND SANDY SILENCE, THE SCARLET RUSE, THE TURQUOISE LAMENT, THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY, THE EMPTY COPPER SEA, THE GREEN RIPPER, FREE FALL IN CRIMSON, CINNAMON SKIN, THE LONELY SILVER RAIN.
Maron, Margaret. The Deborah Knott series. After Margaret Maron's first Deborah Knott novel, Bootlegger's Daughter, ran away with the top mystery awards in 1993, this highly acclaimed series has continued to whet our appetite for superb fiction in which the setting is, as the Houston Chronicle noted, "so rich in detail and description of the New South that you can almost hear the North Carolina twang and taste the barbecue." Delightful reading! Books in the series, in order, are: The Bootlegger’s Daughter, Southern Discomfort, Shooting at Loons, Up Jumps the Devil, Killer Market, Home Fires, Storm Track, Uncommon Clay, and the soon to be released High Country Fall.
The Bootlegger’s Daughter. Warner Books, 1992. (Winner of the Edgar, Agatha, Macavity, and Anthony Awards for Best Novel. The *only* book to have swept all four awards to date!) Unconventional, still unwed (at the ripe old age of 34) North Carolina attorney Deborah Knott has done the unthinkable: tossed her hat into the heated race for district judge of old boy-ruled Colleton County. The only female candidate, she's busy defending indigent clients and reeling in voters. Then suddenly, the young daughter of Janie Whitehead begs her to help solve Janie's senseless, never-solved, eighteen-year-old murder. Deborah takes on the case; following twisted, typically Southern bloodlines, turning up dangerous, decades-old secrets, and inspiring someone to go on an all-out campaign to derail her future—political and otherwise. But it will take more than sleazy smear tactics to scare this determined steel magnolia off the scent of down-home deceit...even in a town where a cool slug of moonshine made by Deborah's father can go down just as smoothly as a cold case of triple murder.
Patterson, James. The Alex Cross series. Alex Cross, Alex Cross, born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is six-three, weighs 200 pounds, athletic, and good-looking. He is a widower, with three children: Damon; Janelle (Jannie); and Alex Jr. (Alex's son with Christine) . His wife, Maria, a social worker, killed in a drive-by shooting when the children were toddlers. Murder never solved. Cross calls himself the Dragonslayer. He and his children live with Regina Hope Cross (Nana Mama), 81. Ph.D. in psychology from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Special concentration in the field of abnormal psychology and forensic psychology. Cross joined the Washington D.C. police force as a psychologist and homicide detective. He’s been on the force eight years. He works in an unofficial capacity with VICAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) as the liason between the FBI and the D.C police. Cross ids a profiler. The series titles, in order, are: Along Came a Spider, Kiss the Girls, Jack & Jill, Cat & Mouse, Pop Goes the Weasel, Roses Are Red, Violets are Blue, Four Blind Mice, The Big Bad Wolf.
Kiss the Girls. Little, Brown, 1995. Feds and local authorities on both coasts are baffled by a pair of serial killers targeting beautiful young women: The Gentleman Caller works the scene in sunny L.A., where he brutally murders and dismembers his prey; his counterpart back East, who calls himself Casanova, trolls the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area for sexy coeds to victimize. Their MOs provide plenty of fodder for an author trying to cook up a work of psychological terror: Both are powerful, handsome, brilliant , commit perfect crimes, and, despite their busy schedules, manage to keep in touch with each other. To catch them, you obviously need a perfect crime fighter. Enter Alex Cross, the Washington, D.C., detective/psychologist, who gets dragged into all this after his niece Naomi, a student at Duke University, vanishes. Working with the authorities and a medical student named Kate McTiernan, who was lucky enough to escape Casanova's clutches, Cross begins to understand how the two dueling psychos operate. Just in the nick of time, too, because the Gentleman Caller, on the run from the law out West, decides that nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina with his old buddy Casanova. Does Cross save Naomi? Are the two killers brought to justice? Read it and find out. Great suspense thriller!
Snelling, Lauraine. Red River of the North. 6 books. This series begins in Norway with the Bjorklund family and follows them as they come to America. They arrive in New York but then travel to the Dakota Territory to claim farmland and homestead. This series is about the daily lives, tragedies and happy times of that family and their growing community of friends. As the Bjorklund family and the town of Blessing changes, so does the Dakota Territory.
1. An Untamed Land The Bjorklund family sail from Norway to New York via ship on an Atlantic crossing.
2. A New Day Rising Following a tragic winter in Dakota Territory, Ingeborg does the work needed to improve the land they settled. More family come from Norway and Minnesota to help the farmers in their struggle to develop a land and community.
3. A Land to Call Home These are daily struggles, joys and tragedies on the prairie. The Bjorklund and Knutson families grow, including a deaf child and new friends that come to stay.
4. The Reaper’s Song Harvest time and the advent of the railroad bring changes to the area.
5. Tender Mercies The community, church and school are growing. Romance is in the air for the pastor as well as others.
6. Blessing in Disguise The town of Blessing grows in number and in relationships of residents. More family arrives from Norway to share in this special place.
Snelling, Lauraine. Return to Red River. 3 books The saga of the Bjorklund family continues as Thorliff goes to college and his horizons expand. Through all of his new experiences he remains tied to his home in North Dakota and the strong faith and family ties there. As Thorliff follows God, Elizabeth also follows His leading in her life. These stories of daily lives include issues of faith, family, hard work, pain, kidnapping, love and romance. The family relationships told in the Red River of the North series continue in Return to Red River.
1. A Dream to Follow This is the first book in the Return to Red River series. It continues the story of the families in the Red River of the North series. Most of them were folk who came to America from Norway and settled in territory that became North Dakota. Thorliff is the oldest son of the Bjorklund family. Yet his dream is not to be a farmer, as his father wants but to be a writer. His family, his heart and roots are in the land of North Dakota. A young woman in Minnesota is determined she will one day be a doctor. Her mother wants her to marry and raise children but not further her education. What will the young people decide and do? They continue to seek God’s leading in their lives.
2. Believing the Dream Thorliff has dreamed of being a writer from the time he was a boy. Now he attends St. Olaf College and he works at the local newspaper. Elizabeth Rogers has been focusing on becoming a doctor from the time she was young. Now she attends St. Olaf and works with Dr. Gaskin gaining valuable medical experience. Thorliff and Elizabeth become friends as her father owns the newspaper and is Thorliff’s boss and Elizabeth also works part time at the paper.
3. More Than a Dream Elizabeth spends summers in Chicago at the hospital for women. Thorliff continues his college studies and works at the newspaper for Elizabeth’s father. Elizabeth has applied to several medical schools and awaits replies from each. For some reason she feels ill at ease as if someone is watching her. Could someone be following her? In Chicago and in Northfield, Minnesota? Thorliff proves to be a good friend to the Rogers family through thick and thin.
These two series are best read in order. Story line and characters are developed throughout.
Wick, Lori. Yellow Rose Trilogy. These three books take place mainly in Texas. The Rawlings family is in each story as are evidence of strong faith in God and romance.
1. Every Little Thing About You. Harvest House Publisher’s, 1999. Liberty Drake (Libby) assumes part time deputy duties in Shotgun, Texas to help her brother, the Sheriff. Slater Rawlings, former Texas Ranger, meets Liberty when he happens to be passing through Shotgun and the adventure begins.
2. A Texas Sky. Harvest House, 2000. Dakota Rawlings, Texas Ranger, is seriously injured on the job. While he is recuperating he becomes involved in the life of a lovely young woman. Jared Silk has been investigated for criminal activity and a newspaper journalist has written unfavorable articles about him. He told his men to abduct her so he could meet with her. They snatched the wrong person, Darvi Wingate. Dakota enters as rescuer.
3. City Girl. Harvest House, 2001. Reagan Sullivan travels from New York City to Kinkade, Texas to start a job as a nanny. When she arrived she discovered that the job had been filled. She quickly found another fob and place to live. People became good friends as they came to know her. Though she tries to avoid it, love awaits Reagan in her new life.
It is not strictly necessary to read these in order but it helps in getting to know the characters and following the stories.
February 12, 2004
