Finished: The Woman in Cabin 10 (Ware). This was a perfect page-turner for travel reading, but not as good as one of my Harlan Coben thrillers. It was nicely suspenseful, but a little slow in getting started. It's the story of Lo Blalock, a journalist who works for a magazine. She's sent in place of her female boss, who is on maternity leave, to cover an intimate, super-luxury cruise on a private yacht. The yacht is owned by a wealthy businessman who is providing this maiden voyage to potential investors and journalists to make sure the business is a success. The catch is...the wealthy businessman is only wealthy because of his wife's money. His young wife, who has just survived a four year battle with breast cancer is on board. One her first night on board, Lo hears a scream and a huge splash from the cabin next to hers, a cabin which is supposed to be empty. Lo goes out on her balcony and sees a woman's body sinking in the North Sea, and she sees blood smeared on the balcony glass next door. Of course, by the time the yacht's security arrives, there is no blood and no body, and no one believes her...especially because she was pretty inebriated that evening at dinner. There are about ten other guests on the voyage, so Lo runs through them all as possible suspects in this murder she's sure she witnessed. She is also warned to quit "digging" and threatened, so she knows she's not imagining things. The tail is rather twisty, but it does turn out that no on on board has ever met the rich wife, so as she appears at the yacht dinners, weakly and apparently bald and recovering from chemo, no one suspects that it's not really her at all. Lo finally figures it out. She figures out that the body that went overboard was actually the real wife, and that the person pretending to be the wife is in cahoots with the husband. The fake wife then locks Lo away in a cabin below and when all the other passengers disembark at the journey's end, fake wife tells them that Lo disembarked earlier. Lo is actually able to get through to the  young woman, who has been physically abused by the husband and feels like she has no chance but to go along now. Lo convinces her that once the husband is successful in getting his wife's money, that she, the fake wife, will be next on his list of victims. Together, they concoct a plan to have Lo escape and fake wife stay there to handle the husband, pretending that Lo knocked her out and fled. In another twist, it is reported that the husband is found on the yacht with a gunshot wound to the head....apparently suicide...or is it? Lo is extremely worried about what could have happened to fake wife. A few weeks later, Lo gets a deposit into her bank account for $40,000 Swiss francs, and she realizes that the young woman made it out alive and has access to all the money. So...a pretty good tale, but not the best I've ever read. :-)

Finished: Don't Let Go (Coben) Another great page-turner by Harlan Coben! Napoleon Dumas, Nap as he's known, is a 33 year old New Jersey detective, still living in the same town he grew up in. Fifteen years before, when Nap was a high school senior, his twin brother, Leo, was killed in a horrific train track accident, along with his girlfriend, Diana...the daughter of the town police chief. Though many theories were tossed around, from double suicide, to drug induced tragic accident, Nap has never been able to put the past behind him. He's always wanted to know exactly what happened that horrific night. It also happens to be the night that his girlfriend, Maura, ran away from town, never to contact him again. Both of those losses, plus the death of his father in the recent years, has left Nap flapping in the wind. He's very close to retired police chief, Augie, Diana's father. As a matter of fact, Augie brought Nap into the Police Academy and taught him everything he knew, which has created in Nap, an excellent detective, but one who will not give up. Never able to get over Maura leaving him, Nap is shocked when he's called into consult on a case where another of his old classmates, Rex, now a cop as well, has been executed by the side of the rode. The shocker, though, is that Maura's fingerprints have been found all over the car! As Nap does further digging, with the help of Diana's best friend in high school, Ellie, and now Nap's only and best friend as well....they scrutinize their old yearbook and realize that Leo, Maura, Rex and two other students, Hank and Beth, all wore little pins that indicated they were members of the secret "Conspiracy Club". They were very keen on speculating about the old missile base that was constructed in their town in the 1950's, and abandoned in the 1970's. The Conspiracy Club was convinced that there were still secret government doings going on. And, they were correct. The old missile base was being used to interrogate post-911 terrorist suspects. When the kids get too close one night, Maura's face is caught on camera, and she is chased mercilessly by scary men. She gets away and stays on the run for fifteen years. Leo and Diana aren't so lucky. They are also in the woods that night, seemingly also scoping out the base, but at the same time Maura is spotted by the men, gunshots ring out, and Diana and Leo are killed (or so we think). Their bodies are then placed on the railroad tracks to make their deaths look like a terrible, teenage accident. The bad guys never realized that Hank, Rex and Beth were also part of the club, and they were left alone. However, fifteen years later, Rex has now been executed by the side of the road, and a few days later, Hank is murdered! Beth, now lives in Michigan as a surgeon, and has changed her name and is basically off the grid. Nap, the dog with a bone, begins to put all the pieces together, and confronts the bad guy who was on Maura's tail for so long. The bad guy gets the best of Nap, and is water boarding him to find out what all he knows, when he is killed from behind. Maura has come to the rescue. She's been watching Nap from afar and risks her life to save his. Yes, they fall into bed and declare their love for each other...and Maura promises not to run from Nap again. She had done it only to protect him all those years ago. She will stay with him now and see this through. Nap finally finds Beth, and when he hears the real truth of that night, he's shocked. It's not at all what he expected, and sheds a bad light on his beloved brother Leo...who, by the way, Nap talks to throughout the book. It's so poignant and sad. :-( Anyway, in the end, it ends up that Diana had been planning to break up with Leo, so Leo had convinced the Conspiracy Club to take Diana out to the woods that night and get her high on drugs, which she never did. They agreed to help Leo...well, all but Maura. Maura refused, which was why she was by herself in another part of the woods that night, actually scoping out the base. When Maura got too close, and was captured on camera, and the spotlights flew on and she ran....Diana, who was completely out of it on the drugs, ran screaming towards the spotlights from their different spot in the woods. The men at the base opened fire, thinking maybe one of their prisoners had escaped. Their gunfire did kill Diana, but not Leo. When Police Chief Augie was called in to investigate the ruckus, he arrived to find Leo cradling his only daughter, babbling about how he was sorry and what a horrible plan they had to drug her just because she was going to break up with him. Augie, completely distraught, takes out his gun and shoots Leo in the head. :-( The government guy helps Augie place the two kids on the train tracks and then Augie went home to put on the best act of his life. The bad guys continue to hunt for Maura so they can see what all she saw...and the other kids are safe until the day fifteen years later that Hank, in a mentally unstable rant, talks about the whole thing in front of Augie! When Augie realizes that Hank, Rex and Beth were also involved in Diana's death, he begins taking his revenge. Thankfully Nap gets to Beth before Augie, but he's devastated to find out that Augie was responsible for Leo's death. The only good thing is that Nap and Maura are finally together and can close that high school chapter of their lives. Nap finally, sadly, says goodbye to Leo. Naturally there's so much more detail to the book, much more character development, which makes you feel close to each of the characters, but recapping all that would take way too long. Love my Harlan Coben books!! :-)

Finished: Column of Fire (Follett) Another great (and very long) Follett book...the third book in the Kingsbridge series which began with Pillars of the Earth, and continued with World Without End. Even though the book is hundreds of years apart from the other books, many of the characters are descendents of the characters from the first two books. The town, Kingsbridge, and it's incredible buildings, which were practically characters in the first two books, also remain in tact. Column of Fire centers around a few main characters who spring up out of Kingsbridge and become involved in various ways in world politics. Its is now the 1500's and the big battle of the times is between Catholics and Protestants, and the rulers who support each of those religions. The young Queen Elizabeth comes into power and believes in religious tolerance, to the point of keeping her sister, Mary Queen of Scots, a devout Catholic, who many consider the rightful heir to the throne, as a prisoner. Mary believes in killing Protestants who have broken from the Catholic faith. Elizabeth doesn't want people killing other people over religion. However, in trying to keep this ideal, she ends up being responsible for the death of nearly as many people as the Catholics had been. The main fictional characters end up being instrumental in the support of the various kings and queens. Ned Willard and his brother, Barney, are Protestants. Barney becomes a sailor and spends his life fighting in the open seas, even being part of the group led by Francis Drake who defeats the heavily favored Spanish Armada when it tries to invade England. Ned, after being spurned by the love of his life Margery, travels to London and becomes a right hand man to Queen Elizabeth, basically serving under the men who comprise her secret service, and becomes instrumental in foiling many plots to take her life. Margery Fitzgerald is a beautiful, feisty girl who is as in love with Ned Willard as he is with her. However, after they have declared their love and hope to marry, her father forces her to marry the local son of an Earl. Margery is also a devout Catholic, and so after she and Ned go their separate ways, Margery focuses on helping to smuggle Catholic priests into the country to be paired with wealthy Catholic-sympathizing families. Little does she know that her own brother, Rollo, who is particularly heartless and self-serving, and has ALWAYS been a bully and nemesis to Ned, has gone to work his own Catholic agenda...which actually involves murdering Queen Elizabeth and having Mary of Scots restored to the English throne. He's convinced then that his beloved Catholicism will come back into power, and that he will be made a Bishop at Kingsbridge. The fact that he's willing to kill anyone who foils his plan is beyond his moral comprehension. Ned spends years unmarried, his only devotion his work and Queen Elizabeth, when he meets Sylvie Palot...an equally feisty woman who is just as determined that Protestants be allowed to practice their own religion as Margery is about the Catholics. Ned and Sylvie meet and fall in love right before the horrific massacre of Protestants on what became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Surviving the bloody day by the skin of their teeth, they realize they are in love and marry. They are happy for many, many years, even traveling back to Kingsbridge at times and seeing Margery and her family. Another major character, who is truly evil and does everything he does to promote himself higher in society is Pierre Aumande. As a young man, he courts Sylvie, then a very young, vulnerable woman, and works his way into her family, gathering information about her father, who is an illegal printer and seller of Protestant bibles. He amasses a huge list of secret Protestants, and on the day he is to marry Sylvie, he arranges for the power-hungry Duke of Guise, who he is working for, and his men to come and raid the wedding party and arrest all the Protestants. It is truly heartless, and Sylvie is heartbroken. Her father is executed and she and her mother become destitute. That is...until she realizes that no one ever found out where her father's secret warehouse of illegal bibles and other literature was! Sylvie takes over the clandestine spreading of "the word" and that is what she's doing when she meets Ned. Pierre is responsible for many other evil plots, and attempts on the lives of important people. He is also a nemesis of Ned's, who in the end, gets his satisfying just rewards...his death at the hands of another woman he has tortured and humiliated for years. The book is so long and detailed, that a more in depth recap would take forever! I did enjoy this book, as I have the others, and hope that Follett keeps writing more about characters from Kingsbridge!! Ned was still alive, and an old man, at the end of the book, and his great-grandson, Jack, has just informed him he'd like to be a builder. If you read Pillars of the Earth, you know that Jack the Builder, step-son of Tom the Builder, was one of the major characters! Love that full circle moment. :-)