Finished: The Innocent (Baldacci) I've enjoyed a few Baldacci books now, and they're always suspenseful page-turners and great for airplane reading! This one introduces Will Robie, an assassin for a secret department of the United States government who kills extremely bad people who are planning harm to our country. He always follows orders, no questions asked.....until one night he is ordered to assassinate an American mother of two who also works for the government. When he hesitates and decides not to kill her, especially since her two year old son is in her arms, the "back up team" shoots straight through the little boy's head and into the mother's and kills them both. Will Robie goes immediately on the run, knowing that he will now be marked for elimination. He implements his self-survival escape plan and hops on a bus under an assumed name just in time to see what appears to be another assassin sit down behind a fourteen year old girl and move to murder her! Of course, Will intervenes and saves the girl, taking her with him off the bus just seconds before it explodes! The girl, Julie, has just witnessed the murder of her parents and gone on the run herself. A very unlikely friendship evolves between Julie and the forty year old Will as they work frantically together to figure out how their situations, and the victims of their situations, are not coincidental at all, but very intertwined. With the help of FBI agent, Nicole Vance, Will and Julie get to the bottom of who is killing the people around them and why. I may just read the other Will Robie books from Baldacci! We'll see. :-)

Finished: Ghosted (Walsh) This was a pretty good page-turning book! Unlike I usually do, I'm not going to give away the huge plot twist, just in case someone reads this. I don't want to ruin the surprise. :-) This is the story of a 38 year old British woman named Sarah who has lived in the states for the last 19 years since a tragic accident ripped apart her family, which at the time included her parents and her 12 year old sister, when she was only 19. Back in town to see her parents, Sarah makes it a point to visit the sight of the life-altering accident on its anniversary and happens to meet a local man named Eddie. The have an instant connection, with equal interests and easy conversation and spend the next seven days together in his converted barn home falling in love. They both have painful situations, Sarah, her past and Eddie, dealing with his mentally ill mother. They think it's crazy that it happened so fast, but they both can't deny their feelings. Eddie has already got a holiday planned with a buddy to Spain, but he promises to call Sarah, even from the airport. Sarah promises to extend her stay in the UK and meet him at the airport when he lands back in town, where they will then figure out the next step of their future together. Only....Eddie never calls, and he never shows up at the airport. Despite messages from Sarah that get more and more frantic, Sarah doesn't hear a word from Eddie. She tries to convince her friends that something must be wrong, but they just think she's been "ghosted" and that she'll never hear from this guy again. Sarah knows the feelings were real, and she is heartbroken, and determined to get to the bottom of things. What follows are a few revelations that show neither of them had been completely truthful with the other in those 7 days. I'm not going to give any more of a recap than this, because I really don't want to spoil it. :-) A nice, suspenseful, summer read.

Finished: Beowulf (translated by Hieatt) I decided to go ahead and read Beowulf, the narrative story, not the poem. I glanced at the poem in both Old English and translated to modern English and I'm not ready to tackle that yet, lol. Anyway, it was interesting to read the narrative first to get a handle on the characters and the action. In the book I just read, The Mere Wife, that is based on Beowulf, the boy, Gren, is no monster at all, and far more sympathetic than Beowulf's evil monster, the Grendel, who was supposedly an ancestor of Cain's, who had been banished to hell along with all his descendants for killing his brother. And, in The Mere Wife, it never even dawned on me that Ben Wolfe was supposed to be Beowulf, duh. I guess because I assumed Beowulf was a hero with a true heart. Ben Wolfe was a hero after his own purposes. He'd actually been cowardly and shied away from the battle when he fought in the military, hiding in alleyways, and now he was basically just going after the "monsters" to elevate himself in the eyes of Willa and the town. Beowulf in Beowulf is much more courageous and pure of heart. He apparently fights with God on his side. Beowulf does go to the rescue of the Danes who are being mercilessly attacked by Grendel. He takes Grendel down with his bare hands, and then has to deal with Grendel's monster mother who rises from the murky, fiery mere to avenge her son. Beowful also disposes of the mother. It's not until fifty years later, after he has fought many valiant battles and patiently waited to be king of the Geats rather than taking a thrown from his kinsmen, that he is felled by the fiery dragon that plagues the countryside. Once again, though, he goes in valiantly to brave the dragon, and with the help of only one of his men who doesn't run away, he manages to slay the dragon before perishing of his burns. So, now that I know the story and characters, I may tackle the translated poem at some point. :-)

Finished: The Mere Wife (Headley) A very good book about two very different mothers, with two very different sons, who just want to be the best of friends. Apparently a modern take on Beowulf, which I now need to read, the story is about Gren, who is the son of Dana Mills, an American vet who was fighting in a war, was captured, and beheaded on television...or so it was assumed. In reality, she is not actually sure what happened to her, but she woke up six months later in the desert, hugely pregnant. She doesn't know who the father of her child is, but now in an Army hospital in the U.S., she has all sorts of visions of her dead comrades. She flees the hospital and goes to the one safe place she can think of, the underground mountain tunnels where her family lived after being run from their own land. She gives birth to her child, but he's got a full set of teeth and head of hair. He's not like a "normal" baby, so she decides to stay in their underground cocoon, an actual ancient, closed-down railway station, and keep him from the "monsters" out there that would harm him. Their haven is bordered by a mere, an icy lake with a warm hot spring in the middle of it, which seems to have the spirits of past souls making it come alive as well. Gren is smart and devoted to his mother, but by the time he's seven years old, he's lonely and curious about the town that is just within his reach at the bottom of the mountain...the town that forced his family off their land and was even built on some of their burial grounds. Nearest him is a huge mansion called Herot Hall. Herot Hall is occupied by Willa,  her husband Roger, and their little son, Dylan. They are a picture perfect family on the outside, and socially the cream of the small town crop. Dylan is a sensitive boy who takes piano lessons, but whose father also wants him to play sports. Willa spends her time throwing parties and wondering how much of a maternal connection she really has with this little being that came out of her. When Gren's curiousity gets the best of him after he watches Dylan from afar, he actually steals into the house and befriends Dylan. Dylan is captivated by Gren, and together they play on the piano. By the time Willa hears the unusual music and makes it to the room, Gren is gone in a flash, but has left behind what look like claw marks deeply embedded in the piano keys! Dylan cries for his new friend Gren, and Willa thinks a wild animal has made it's way into their house somehow. The police are called, which introduces us to police chief, Ben Wolfe, who will become the nemesis for Dana and Gren. Neither the chief or her husband believe that any wild animal was really in the house, but Willa knows something was there. As Christmas comes and goes and the Herot's prepare for their huge annual New Year's Eve party, Gren watches with  longing from the mountain, through the huge windows of Herot Hall...and Dylan watches every day for Gren from his own bedroom window. At the party, when Dylan begins to choke on a lego and no one at the party knows what to do, Gren is there in an instant, and swoops Dylan up and runs off with him up the mountain. Of course, Dana, who by now has figured out that Gren has come too dangerously close to all the town people, follows him there to protect him. The party is filled with commotion and the sight of the bedraggled Dana and her son puts fear in everyone. They figure out that Dana is the soldier who was supposedly beheaded years ago on television, and the story becomes all about Dana swooping in and kidnapping Dylan! Ben Wolfe leads the charge to go and get Dylan back, but in the hunt, Roger Herot is killed. After a couple of weeks, and the funeral of Roger, Willa and the town assume that little Dylan is most likely dead. In reality, he's in the tunnel with Gren and Dana and is truly happy for the first time in his young life. He has no desire to go back home. However, Ben Wolfe, who we find out is really more about getting the accolades he will achieve and being a hero if he finds Dylan, finally figures out where their underground home is. In a tragic confrontation where Ben severely injures Dana, Gren must make the choice to grab his mother and take her deeper into the tunnel for her own safety, thus leaving Dylan there to be found by Ben before Gren can return and take him with them as well. So, Dylan is returned home, Ben is the hero, Ben tells Dylan and everyone else that he killed both Dana and Gren, the "monster",  Ben marries Willa and they have twin boys, and both Dylan and Gren are miserable. Years pass until both the boys are fifteen and realize that the other is still alive. They come together for a brief, joyous reunion before Ben Wolfe decides to finish the job he knows he never completed. :-( We end with the death of Dylan first, by the hands of his own mother who hallucinated that she was actually killing Gren, and then the death of Gren as he fights to the death with Ben to avenge Dylan, and then finally with the death of Ben, who is killed by Dana who drives a newly refurbished tunnel train right into him, and then off the bridge it was driving on, thus killing Dana in the process as well. In the end, the only one left standing is Willa, who is last seen being carted off in handcuffs for killing her own son. It's a tragic story, which apparently Beowulf is as well. The writing is beautiful, though, with so much description and lyrical prose. And, the story is really so simple...why can't the boys who are so different be friends? Why can't Gren be out in the real world and accepted for his differences? Sigh. A really good book that I'm glad I read!