What's on my bookshelf

So, while I’m downloading “Nancy Drew: Legend of the Crystal Skull” (disappeared with all other installed games when my main-board croaked in April), I’ll start with my first update. What have I been reading?

A lot. Okay, I can see that’s not what you’d call helpful.

Let’s start with the books currently still under work or planned for:

• Preston and Child: Cemetery Dance (a new case for my favourite FBI special agent Pendergast)
• Dan Simmons: Drood
• Dan Brown: The Lost Symbol (in German, my father’s already finished with it)
• Cleo Coyle: the last three of her Coffeehouse Mysteries (“Decaffeinated Corpse,” “French Pressed” and “Espresso Shot”).

Now on to the books I’ve read between the end of September (when I wrote about Dexter) and today.

• Cleo Coyle: the first four Coffeehouse Mysteries (“On What Grounds,” “Through The Grinder,” “Latte Trouble” and “Murder Most Frothy”)
• Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt: “Dracula The Un-Dead” (sequel to Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”)

I’ve also read a couple of German books that were non-fictional, but I won’t list them here, because they’re probably not out anywhere outside Germany. I might mention one or two of them in other posts, though.

I read Cleo Coyle’s first novel and got really hooked (even though I’m not a coffee drinker and there’s loads of information about coffee in there, in addition to the murders). When I’ve finished the last three novels still on my ‘to do’ list, I’ll be through with the series this far (although there’s going to be another one published this month, from what I’ve read).

“Dracula The Un-Dead” came as a surprise for me. I saw the German hardcover edition at my local bookstore and decided to order the English paperback over amazon. I didn’t really think it would be any better than the sequel Freda Warrington wrote years ago, but I was wrong. The story features almost all of the original characters (except, of course, for Quincey Morris, who dies at the end of Stoker’s novel), but tells what became of them. It’s centred around the son of Mina and Jonathan Harker, young Quincey who is mentioned at the end of the original novel. And it features one of the most interesting vampires I’ve ever come across (and, this time, I don’t mean Dracula himself, but his worst enemy).

Well, I think that covers most of my reading material since September. But as the game still is downloading, I might as well continue, so expect more soon.