Harlan Coben: "The Innocent" & James Grippando: "Lying with Strangers"

Both these books base themselves on do-gooders who prove that "no good dead goes unpunished".

In "The Innocent", you constantly are unsettled by the fact that an innocent person was unjustly accused and served time in jail, and how one mistake changed that "good" person's life forever. When after several years more bad things start to happen, he and his pregnant wife have to go beyond the law to try to figure out what is going on and both she and he discover some interesting facts about their lives prior. It has enough twists, turns and emotional upheavels to keep you unsettled the entire way through, and manages to lift you back up at the end so you feel everything has been set right.

In "Lying with Strangers" you also get that unsettled feeling of someone who you think is trying to do what is right but as with the "Shopaholic" books, a lot of what people see is not exactly what is happening so wrong assumptions are made that tend to tumble and escalate out of control. You just want to kick some of the characters in the pants, tell them to stop their running off with the wrong conclusions and wonder if it all will be set right in the end.

Iris Johansen - "Dead Aim" & "On The Run"

Is it obvious I am cleaning out the books that have accumulated and hidden on my bookshelf? "Dead Aim", published in 2003, this is a great page turner about a photo journalist who witnesses a crime beyond proportions while trying to photograph what appears to be a natural catastrophe. She and an unlikely person are paired together in a run for their lives as they discover more and more information that involves more people than just the average criminals.

"On the Run" puts a mother and daughter together in a run for their lives. It all ties back into the mother's interesting, yet dangerous past, and takes them from a small southern farm, to the wild west and across the world. Once again, the main character witnesses something but the real crime is hidden somewhere beneath what is seen, so for the entirety of the book she and her daughter don't exactly know what they are running from and towards. It keeps you guessing, as well as "Dead Aim".

Beach Road by James Patterson & Peter De Jonge

I finished this book in a few hours due to the short chapters. It is a good page turner set in the East Hamptons. It does not exactly have you guessing the entire book, until you get closer to the end and get a kick in the pants! It mixes up low income and wealthy in a community that could not survive without both and the interaction, trust and non-trusts, between the different classes of people. A good book club book.

James Patterson - "The 5th Horseman"

Part of the Womens Murder Club, "The 5th Horseman" is probably the 3rd or 4th one of this series I have read. But it doesn't matter if you read any of the previous novels to enjoy this one. It follows a crime committed and 4 somewhat unlikely friends whose lives in one way or another are touched by the crime, either personally or professionally. They manage to help solve the crime sometimes unbeknownest to each other and the puzzle pieces tend to fall together by the end of the novel. A fast-paced read and entertaining. The first book in the series is was made into a movie in 2003.

Sophia Kinsella:

This summer I read 3 more Sophia Kinsella books: "Can you keep a Secret?", "The Undomestic Goddess", and the 4th "Shopaholic" book, "Shopaholic and Sister". These books were just as enjoyable as the other 3 "Shopaholic" books, making me wish she had more. The writing style is exactly the same in all the books, the stories are similar but different, and seeing what type of predicaments the main characters get themselves into is hilarious.