Finished: Look For Me (Gardner) Another kind-of page-turner from one of my favorite mystery authors. The author brings back Detective D.D. Warren for a case where a mother, step-father, thirteen year old daughter and 9 year old son have all been killed in the home, while the sixteen year old daughter is missing, along with the family dogs. What ensues is a mystery of who killed the family and why. Could it have been the missing Roxanne Baez, who by all accounts is the smart, responsible one who was basically a mother to her brother and sister when her mother spent many alcoholic nights not being responsible? Roxy, though, adores her brother and sister and would never do anything to hurt them. Could it have been one of the other foster children from the home that Roxy and her sister, Lola, were put in for a year at the ages of eleven and eight when they were taken away from their mother; their mother who cleaned up her act, got sober, and got a steady job as a nurse...but not before both Roxy and Lola had been emotionally and sexually abused at the hands of an older foster boy, Roberto. Could it have been the female gang that young Lola is now a member of lashing out in retaliation for some gang related activity? Or, could it have been the girlfriend of the Roberto, seeking revenge for his apparent suicide, which she believes Roxy and Lola are responsible for years later? Also added into the mix is a character from another of the author's novels, Flora Dane. Flora was a kidnap and torture victim who had been found and rescued by D.D. Warren, but not before Flora herself had finally escaped her coffin cell and burned alive her over  year long tormentor. Flora now helps other victims of violence become whole again, not to mention self-sufficient in their own protection. She also runs a website chat room for victims which Roxy Baez has recently joined! So, between D. D. Warren's detective work and Flora Dane's street work, they finally figure out who had the motive to kill Roxy's family, and they also locate Roxy. A final show down with the major players reveals the killer in the end, and it is the one person who Roxy had ever been able to count on at the foster home and later in high school, her one friend, Mike. He was so worried that Lola's involvement in the gang would bring Roxy into a dangerous situation, or that her mother would fall off the wagon, or that her little brother would become so dependent on her that she'd give up everything for him, that he killed her entire family. hmmm. Anyway, so, the book itself was a pretty good page-turner, but not enough to keep me reading day and night until I finished. I don't know if I've just grown a little tired of these books or if this one just wasn't quite as up to snuff as Lisa Gardner's others. I'm still a huge fan of her books though. :-)

Finished: A Bell For Adano (Hersey) Pulitzer Prize winning novel about an American WWII major who is assigned the Italian town of Adano to oversee after the Allies take over the former fascist towns. Major Joppolo is a good and fair young officer. He starts with a town that is distrusting of town leadership, since their last mayor was a fascist who treated them all terribly. The town is starving, in need of water, and in very low morale. Former town leaders make their way to Joppolo within his first few days of being there and let him know that their biggest need is not food or water...but that Mussolini had taken their 700 year old bell from the city square bell tower and had it shipped to his military to be melted down and made into weapons. If they could only have their bell back, they would know freedom for certain and all be able to heal as a town. Major Joppolo promises to look into getting a new bell, but at the top of his list, he makes providing the town with food, water and the ability to start their businesses running again his top priorities. When the hard-core, blustering, unyielding General Marvin is trying to move through the town on Joppolo's first day there, he is held up by a man with a donkey cart in the middle of the road. The townsman has fallen asleep in his cart and the donkey will not move. Enraged, the general orders his men to dump the cart over into the ditch, with the man in it, and then to shoot the donkey in the head. Reluctantly, his men do so. He then stops in to see Joppolo and commands that it be put in writing that there shall be no more carts on the roads into or out of Adano. Period. Joppolo lets the townsfolk know about the edict, and he enforces it...for one day. When the people of the town come to him to let him know they are starving and without water unless the carts can come through, Joppolo tells the men under him to ignore the edict and directly go against the general's order. One man, who is afraid to do it, decides to write up a report and have it sent to the general. In several interspersed chapters that remind me much of the dark humor of Catch-22, various military men under the major purposely make mistakes and reroute the report or bury the report on various desks in order to keep Major Joppolo from getting into trouble with the general. This goes on until the end of the book, when finally the report accidentally ends up in the general's hands and he blows his lid. He calls for Joppolo to be on the very next transport out of Adano and to Algiers to be reassigned. (It is said that General Patton actually shot a mule that was blocking his way on a small Italian road, so maybe this general is representing him?) Anyway, before the reassignment ever comes at the end of the book Major Joppolo does wonders with the town. He sees to it that they are thriving with water and food, mostly by making sure that there is no one there to mess with free market prices like the old mayor did. He finally gets the town to trust him and realize that he will NOT be taking any cut of any money the people make. He gets permission from the Navy (since they are a port town) to let the fisherman go back into the water as long as they have maps and know where to stay away from possible mines. This truly makes the town thrive again with the fishing business underway. Joppolo also handles all the town disputes with fairness, hearing all sides. The people come to respect whatever punishment he doles out, which is usually nothing more than teaching a moral lesson. He also never keeps searching for how to get a bell back into the town. He approaches the Navy captain again, and tells him the tale of the bell, and then cleverly almost makes it seem like the captain's idea to look for a replacement for the bell. And, lo and behold, one of the Navy men just happens to know of an American destroyer that is captained by a fellow who he went to school with. When he reaches out to that captain, he gives up his ship's bell for the town of Adano. The town has come to love Major Joppolo so much, that they decide to have a portrait painted of him and throw him a party of thanks. When the bell arrives the morning of the party, Joppolo works feverishly to get the bell installed so he can surprise the town people that night. One piece is needed, though, that the Navy can't get until the next morning. At the party, Joppolo is touched by both his portrait and the people there who have come to love him. He also sees one of his officers drunk, and when he goes to help him out, he finds out the officer had intercepted the major's mail that morning and had in his pocket the order from the general reassigning Joppolo. Saddened, Joppolo keeps a happy face through the rest of the party, and then packs his belongings to leave the next morning. He doesn't want to leave the town, and mostly, he hopes that whoever replaces him will have the welfare of the townspeople in his heart. Too emotional to say goodbye to anyone, Joppolo hops in the jeep that has come to get him, and when they are a bit of the way out of town, he asks the driver to stop and listen. They hear a bell peeling at the 11:00 hour that the old city bell used to peel. Joppolo is at least happy to know that the bell has been installed and is ringing. This story is based on the true actions of a major in World War II who made sure that the small Italian town he'd been put in charge of got it's bell....and the bell did come from an American destroyer! This was such an uplifting story to me, and Major Joppolo was such a good man! Definitely glad I read this one! :-)

Finished: Shadow of Night (Harkness) The second book in the All Souls Trilogy (i.e., the sequel to A Discovery of Witches). A good continuation of the story of witch, Diana Bishop, and vampire, Matthew Clairmont, who fall in love in the first book and realize at the end of that book, they must travel far back in time to find the ancient manuscript (Ashmole 782) that supposedly holds the key to their origins. And, also while there, they must seek out a witch who can help unbind the spell Diana's mother put on her before she died to keep Diana from realizing her own witch powers, to keep her safe. So, in this second book, Diana and Matthew travel back in time to Elizabethan England. The book starts off a bit slow. (I must admit, these books are not a fast read for me at all...not page-turners, so it's taking me so long to read each one.) Anyway, they travel back in time where the Matthew de Clairmont of the 1500's hangs with the likes of true historical figures Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, Henry "Hotspur" Percy, and even Queen Elizabeth herself. We meet some new characters, like a vampire nephew of Matthew's, Gallowglass, who is loyal to both Matthew and Diana. Basically, the married couple continues to go through the trials of being married to another "kind". They also get pregnant, but lose the baby, but then get pregnant again by the end of the book. Diana does finally meet a powerful witch, Goody Alsop, who helps her discover that she's not only a witch who can time travel, but she's also a weaver, which is very rare, meaning she can weave spells that deal directly with life and death. Diana discovers her "familiar" is a firedrake. And, both Diana and Matthew see and interact with their fathers who are deceased in modern times. Matthew's father is a very powerful vampire, Philippe de Clairmont, and though he objects to her at first, he comes to respect and love Diana and adopts into his family officially (after throwing Diana and Matthew a legitimate wedding) so she will always have his protection. Diana's father, Stephen, had been killed when she was only seven, but he was also a time-traveler, so when they run into him in 1500's England, he realizes he's meeting his grown daughter, and they have some very poignant moments together. After Diana's binding spell is broken, and she learns how to come into her own power...and...after they finally get their hands on the Ashmole 872 to see what it's all about, Diana and Matthew realize they must go back to their modern time to be with the families they left behind and fight the battles that were begun there with the Congregation, who were dangerously opposed to the union of witch and vampire. At the end of the book, Diana and Matthew arrive back at Sept-Tours, the de Clairmont home in France, and are reunited with Matthew's mother Ysabeau, his son, Marcus, and Diana's aunt Sarah, along with the other friends and family who had gathered at the fortress in preparation for the coming war with the Congregation. Oh, and Diana is carrying twins. :-) I will definitely read the third book of the trilogy, but think I'll take a little break with some other books in between first!