Beauty by Robin McKinley

Beauty is the youngest of three daughters of a wealthy merchant, Roderick Huston. Her given name is Honour, but at five years old, she said that she'd rather be called "Beauty". The nickname stuck. As she grew older, she felt increasingly ill-named as her sisters, Grace and Hope, became lovelier and more socially adept and she stayed plain and bookish. Her two sisters were quickly engaged—Grace to one of her father's ship captains, Robert Tucker, and Hope to blacksmith Gervain Woodhouse. Robert was lost at sea only a few months after their engagement along with all the merchant's ships and with them, his fortune.

Destitute, the family relocated to Gervain's home town in the north to begin afresh. A few months later, one of Huston's ships limped back into port, and Huston returned to town to deal with the crew and selling the ship's cargo. He asked the three daughters if he could bring them any gifts; Grace and Hope, tongue in cheek, requested ropes of pearls and jewels and luxurious ball gowns, while Beauty asked only for rose seeds. The ship was not Robert's, and the proceeds from the sale of the cargo went largely to repay the merchant's debts. On the merchant's return from town, he was caught in a blizzard a few miles from home and lost his way in the forest, stumbling across a mysterious castle as he and his mount came to the end of their strength. As he left the next day he plucked one rose from the garden to bring home to Beauty, who hoped to grow roses. The Beast appeared before him, ready to kill him, but he begged for his life, pleading that he had daughters to return to. The Beast decided to let him go if he returned in one month with one of his daughters. Although he demurred, Beauty insisted that she be the one to go in her father's place.

The Beast seemed kind, but Beauty was utterly terrified of him and could barely be around him for the first few days. The castle provided her with invisible servants and all the books and food she could want. She came to understand the enchantment on the castle and the Beast. One day, she overheard her servants saying that she was their last hope and that they hoped she could figure it out before it was too late. As the months passed, Beauty came to enjoy living in the castle. There were only two problems: she missed her family and every night the Beast asked Beauty to marry him. Every night she said no.

One night, she had a magically real dream of her family; the Beast revealed that he could send her 'dreams' of her family's life, and showed her his "mirror" through which he watched them—the contents of a special vial poured over a table which served as a distance viewer. Through this mirror, Beauty saw that Grace was planning to marry a local minister and that Robert was alive and had returned from sea. She begged the Beast to let her go to her family and tell them the news. He reluctantly agreed, but warned her that she could only stay a week, because he would die without her. Beauty was so excited to see her family that she ended up over-staying the week. During her stay, she realized what she had tried to ignore: she was in love with the Beast and he with her. On the eighth morning, Beauty dreamed that the Beast had died and hurried back to the castle. She found the Beast as he lay dying, and she confessed her love to him and said she would marry him. This broke the enchantment, and returned the Beast to his human form, that of a now middle-aged man. Beauty insisted that she could not marry him. "You should marry a queen or something, a duchess at least, not a dull drab little nothing like myself," she said. The ex-Beast showed Beauty her own reflection in a mirror; in the past year, she had transformed into beauty. She and the Beast had a triple wedding with Grace and Robert and her father and Melinda who he became close when Beauty was away

" This is one of my all time favorite books, I am in love with the story of "Beauty and the Beast" which ever form that it is told. I am a believe that beauty is not skin deep, that true beauty lies deep with a person and shines for all the world to see through their countance and the way that they choose to present them selves to the world.

This is a charming story of a girl who is plain and in love with books, and her sacrifice to her father and how she found her life's one true love in the most unlikely of places and people. This version of the Beauty and the Beast has been made into a movie and is very beautiful. I remember upon picking up this book to read it I could not put it down until I was finished with the last page. I am a hopeless romantic who believes that love can blossom in the least likely place.

If you have never read the book "Beauty" by Robin McKinely I suggest that you add it too your list of books too read."

Happy Reading!

One For The Money By Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum is out of a job and there isn’t much work for an ex-lingerie buyer. After caving under pressure from her mother, Stephanie goes to her cousin, Vinnie, who is a bail bondman for some filing work. When arriving Vinnie’s assistant, Connie, tells her that the filing position has been filled. Connie tells her about apprehending people who skip out on their bonds, pulls a file out of her top drawer, and shows her Joseph Morelli’s file. Morelli is a vice cop who is wanted for murder one and has a history with Stephanie which includes two sexual encounters in high school and a hit-and-run when he didn’t call afterward. Connie suggests Morelli because Stephanie will get percentage of the bond that sings to the tune of $10,000. Stephanie has had to pawn off the majority of her possessions and her car gets repossessed, she thinks bringing in Morelli will fix all of her financial problems.

Stephanie decides she wants to join up and blackmails Vinnie about an incident with a duck in order to let her try to get Morelli. With the help of some friends and the best bounty hunter in the business, Ranger, she slowly learns what it takes to be a badass bounty hunter. Along the way of trying to find Morelli Stephanie gains the unwanted attention of a heavy weight boxer that has a history of making women disappear, gains some hookers as friends, steals Morelli’s car, and enters into an agreement with Morelli himself. Then on top of all that she still has to deal with a pushy mother, a crazy grandmother, and a father who would rather not watch.

It's one hell of a way to spend the first two weeks on the job.

"I love the Stephenie Plum novels, they are hillarious. If something bad can happen somebody it WILL happen to Stephanie. She is out of a job and will do any thing to keep her apartment. If you want a good laugh you should read these books, it will leave you in stitches!"

The Poet by Michael Connelly

The book starts with Jack McEvoy, a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News ("Death is my beat"), relating how the news of his brother Sean's suicide was broken to him. Sean was a homicide detective with the Denver Police, who was found dead in his car in a remote parking lot. A one-sentence suicide note was found in the car with him, and it seemed impossible that someone else could have killed him. McEvoy, though, is reluctant to accept that his brother had succumbed to depression resulting from his investigations, even though the last one was particularly brutal: Theresa Lofton, a young college student, who was found in a park in two pieces.

After much investigation on his own, including retracing his brother's investigation into the Lofton case, Jack concludes that his brother's death was simply made to look like a suicide by a serial killer. By focusing on homicide detectives who committed suicide in a similar fashion and left a one-sentence note quoting the works of Edgar Allan Poe (as Sean's did), Jack finds three clear matches to his brother's death. When the FBI finally realizes that he is on to something and attempts to block him from further access, he is able to trade his knowledge of the other deaths (one of which the FBI had not uncovered) for a role with the FBI investigative team headed by Robert Backus, the son of a famous agent within the bureau who has been overshadowed by his father's legend. Assigned the duty of handling him is agent Rachel Walling, one of Backus' main proteges, and the two of them become personally involved. The FBI nicknames the serial killer "The Poet" due to his use of Poe's lines with the victims.

As the case focuses on an Internet network of pedophiles and one in particular (William Gladden), McEvoy is taken along on the operation to arrest Gladden, who is suspicious of the set-up and kills the FBI agent trying to arrest him, Gordon Thorson (Walling's ex-husband). McEvoy ends up killing Gladden himself while being held hostage. However, Gladden's comments about his brother's death lead McEvoy to believe that Gladden was not the killer, even though the case has been officially closed. He then finds evidence that the killings had a connection to the FBI and identifies a phone call to the FBI from Thorson's room that he links to a "boasting" fax sent to the bureau by The Poet. Since McEvoy knew that Walling had sent Thorson on a fake errand to buy condoms during the time the fax was sent, he suspects Walling of being The Poet and of posting to the pedophile network under the name "Eidolon", another Poe reference. He then learns that Walling's father, a cop, had committed suicide when she was a teenager ... and had been suspected by the investigating officers of molesting Rachel over a period of time. Since pedophiles tend to have been abused as children, McEvoy becomes worried enough to tell Backus of his suspicions. Backus tells McEvoy that they'll set a trap for Walling and then takes him to a remote location -- where Backus drugs McEvoy into nonresistance. He admits that he himself is both Eidolon and The Poet, because the room mistakenly billed to Thorson was actually the one in which he stayed. He admits to all of the deaths and to his setup of Gladden as the "fall guy" for the murders.

As Backus prepares to sodomize and then kill McEvoy, Walling (who was suspicious because of messages that she had received from both men) shows up and eventually saves McEvoy's life by knocking Backus out the window and down a long hill. Later the police find a body, however it is left open if this is Backus. Meanwhile, as the facts of the case become known, Walling's judgment is called into question due to her personal relationship with McEvoy and her professional relationship with Backus. A tabloid publishes a photo of McEvoy and Walling together. However, because McEvoy suspected her, Walling ends their relationship and takes a leave to Italy. McEvoy then takes a leave from his paper to write a book about the events, although Walling explains to him that the book will forever taint the FBI because of Backus.

"This is an incredible book, very good. It is the first of the Jack McEvoy novel's. This books content may offend some, so be causious reading this book. Stephen King said that it was the most disturbing book he has ever read. Having said that, it is a good book Jack McEvoys bother was murder but it was made to look like a suicide. He goes with the FBI to find the man who killed his brother, and nearly gets killed him self. There are so many twist and turns in this books that you'll find that you can't put it down."

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

The story begins with Jack McEvoy's termination by the Los Angeles Times due to the newspaper's financial crisis. He is given two weeks to train his replacement, Angela Cook, on the "cop beat" and decides that he wants to write one more major story before his last day. Jack focuses on the case of 16-year-old drug dealer Alonzo Winslow, who confessed that he brutally raped one of his clients, then stuffed her body in the trunk with a plastic bag over her head, tied shut with a length of rope around her neck. Angela, a beautiful and ambitious young reporter, maneuvers to get herself a part of the story. However, after Jack is given access to the defense files, he learns that Alonzo only confessed to stealing the car containing the body, not to the rape-murder. In researching trunk murders on the Internet, Angela unwittingly finds evidence of a similar crime in Las Vegas. However, Angela's research also took her to a "trap" site set up by the real murderer: Wesley Carver, an MIT graduate who is the chief security officer of a "server farm" (colocation and backup services) in Phoenix, referred to by everyone as the "scarecrow" of the farm. Carver cracks her e-mail password at the Times and learns that Jack is headed to Vegas. He promptly creates a fake data emergency so that his company will send him to L.A.

The next day, Jack finds that none of his credit cards nor his cell phone work, so he buys a throwaway phone. He shows the evidence of the identical L.A. murder to the attorney for the convicted Vegas murderer, who gives Jack a letter permitting him to meet his client, imprisoned in a remote location in Nevada. During the lengthy drive on the "loneliest road in America", Jack calls FBI agent Rachel Walling, his former girlfriend to whom he hasn't spoken in years, to report the "under the radar" serial killer and also tells her about his bad luck that day. When he arrives at the prison, he is told that he cannot see the prisoner until the next day and books a room in a local hotel. A cowboy with long sideburns plays slots next to him. When Jack heads to his room, he sees "Sideburns" coming directly toward him in the hallway as his door opens ... to find Rachel inside his room. "Sideburns" passes by. Rachel had taken a private FBI plane to the prison after she concluded that Jack's discoveries and his electronic problems were linked but that she had no way to warn him. Rachel and Jack learn that "Sideburns" was not staying at the hotel and surmise that he must be the killer. When calling the Times, Jack learns that Angela has disappeared. Rachel and Jack promptly take the FBI jet back to L.A., during which Rachel examines the evidence and notes that the murdered women were both exotic dancers with similar body types ("giraffes"), and that both were put in leg braces ("iron maidens") while being sexually abused before death, a perversion known as abasiophilia. On arrival, Rachel admits that her recent relationship with a police detective ended in part because she still had feelings for Jack, but they then find Angela's dead body under Jack's bed, killed in the same style as the other victims.

Because of Rachel's testimony, Jack is cleared of Angela's murder, and the evidence causes both Alonzo and the Vegas convict to be freed. The FBI links the trap site to Bill Denslow, a fake name used by an online client of Carver's server farm. Jack is a featured guest on CNN to discuss the case, but Rachel is summoned to a disciplinary hearing and forced to resign from the FBI under threat of a theft prosecution for "stealing" the gasoline in the FBI plane during the round trip to Nevada. Carver has his assistant, whom he gave the pseudonym "Freddie Stone", help him murder and bury the server farm's CEO and then quit. Jack deduces that the serial killer knew non-public legal information about his victims and finds that all of them were represented by law firms whose sites were handled through Carver's server farm, just like the trap site. He persuades Rachel to join him there, where they pose as potential clients and talk to Carver, who doesn't reveal that he knows their real identities. Following a trail laid by Carver, they find Stone's house, identify him as "Sideburns", and uncover evidence concerning the killings. They call in the FBI, and Rachel is able to use her role in finding the killer to regain her job. Jack agrees to return to L.A. and goes to Rachel's hotel room to say goodbye -- but finds that she has just been kidnapped by Stone. He intercepts Stone, rescues an unconscious Rachel from a laundry bin, and then chases and kills Stone in a battle on the top floor. Rachel tells Jack that the FBI believes there were two killers: Stone and Angela's murderer. With Carver's help, Rachel and the FBI team find evidence that Stone and the missing CEO committed all of the murders.

Jack's high profile causes the Times to rescind his termination, even though Jack's role as a participant means that he cannot write the story of the Arizona events. Jack turns it down and accepts a two-book deal to write about this case. However, Jack then sees a picture from The Wizard of Oz and realizes that the method used to suffocate the victims looks like the classic head of a scarecrow, except using a plastic bag instead of a burlap sack. He immediately heads to Arizona to warn a disbelieving Rachel, including the links to the real Fred Stone and Bill Denslow, but unfortunately meets her in a coffee shop near the server farm with a full-time Webcam in it. Carver watches their discussion, then ambushes the other FBI agents. Carver's plan to kill the agents and fake his own death is foiled when Jack figures it out, and Rachel shoots Carver in the head when he tries to ambush them. In a brief epilogue, Jack's research has revealed that Carver's mother was an exotic dancer similar in appearance to the victims who needed to wear leg braces when not performing, and he and Rachel have continued as a couple.

"This was a really good book, I love Michael Connelly. the only book that I have read by him that I was disappointed in was "The Narrows" THe completion to "The Poet" The Poet was one of the best books that I have ever read. The Subject may be a little disturbing to many who read it, so if you decide you want to read it keep in my it touchs on Child pornography. It doesn't go into descriptions, but it is there in the book.

This book was fast passed and intense, and doesn't slow down at all. The book is left open for a sequal, there are so many questions left unanswered. If you love a good mystery pick this one up and read you wont be disappointed."

Drum of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon

The heroine of the bestselling Outlander, Claire, returns in Drums of Autumn, reunited with her husband Jamie Fraser and facing a new life in the American colonies. As the preceding novel, Voyager, concluded with Jamie Fraser and his wife Claire shipwrecked on the Georgia coastline—and happy to be out of Scotland—Drums of Autumn picks up right where Voyager left off. Except for a new set of lovers introduced subtly in Drums of Autumn and Voyager, Brianna Ellen Randall and her suitor historian Roger Wakefield, safely ensconced in the 20th century. Now orphaned by her mother's departure to the past, Brianna struggles to accept her loss and satisfy her curiosity about a father she has never met, only to discover a tragic piece of "history" that threatens her parents' happiness in the past. This discovery sends Brianna back through time on a mission to save her parents and sends Roger after her.

Drums of Autumn is an intricate tale of the now famous lovers, Jamie and Claire, and their daughter who risked her life and future to save them. As the fourth in what is now a seven-book series (with a promised 8th book[1]) of Claire Randall Fraser and her Highlander husband Jamie, the story is an integral step in a bestselling and surprisingly rich tale spanning the time from the Scottish Rising of 1745, to the American Revolution.

"The books don't slow down or get boaring, but i have to tell you that a lot happens in this book and there is a lot of DRAMA and there are times I want to scream and Brianna and Clair and tell them to stop being stupid! The book is good none the less and ends happy."

Voyager By Diana Gabaldon

Voyager, book three in the best-selling Outlander series, was written by Diana Gabaldon.

The storyline centers on a time-travelling 20th-century nurse (Claire Randall Fraser) and her 18th-century Scottish husband (Jamie Fraser), and are located in Scotland, France, and America.

The heroine of the bestselling Outlander, Claire, returns in Voyager as a mother to Brianna Ellen Randall and living in Boston in the year 1965. The preceding novel, Dragonfly in Amber, ended with Claire and Brianna coming to grips with the truth of Brianna's real father Jamie Fraser and Claire's travel through time. In Voyager Claire and Brianna trace Jamie's life since the battle of Culloden during the Scottish Rising. Discovering Jamie survived the massacre that heralded the destruction of many clans in Scotland sends Claire back to the stone circle that first hurtled her through time - twenty years before.

Voyager is a poignant tale of two lovers finding each other again, embarking on a whirlwind journey filled with danger on the high seas and the constant peril of Jamie's past catching up with them. As the third in what is now a seven-book series (according to the author there will be a Book 8, possibly a Book 9) of Claire Randall Fraser and her Highlander husband Jamie, the story is an integral step in a bestselling and surprisingly rich tale spanning the time from the Scottish Rising of 1745, to the American Revolution.

"I can't tell you which of these books are my favorite because I love all of them. You can't help but to fall in love with all of the characters in the books, ok their are some that you can't help but hate. I think that a good book needs to have a little bit of everything and if that is what you are looking for these are the books.

After searching for her one true love Claire Randall returns to the 1700's Scottland to find her Jamie. They fall right back into what they had before Jamie sent her away. After many trials and a long journey the two of them settle down in the colonies to start their lives over again."