I’ve been doing a lot more reading than writing recently. I thought I’d share a few of my favorite recent reads:
Clive Eaton
http://cliveeaton.com/
I don’t know how I discovered Clive Eaton’s The Pyramid Legacy, but once I started reading the “click to look inside” I had to buy it. I was hooked. It’s really quite an extraordinary story. Although it has sci-fi elements, it’s not overly technical. I became engrossed in the characters and their relationships as much as I enjoyed the complex plot and fast-paced thriller. I’m really looking forward to his next novel, Operation Stonehenge, which he wrote when he says he “stumbled across two significant links between the Great Pyramid of Giza and Stonehenge. At first I put it down to an odd coincidence, but the more I researched, the more I realized that there was a lot more to it…”
Just my cup of tea.
Derek Haines
http://www.derekhaines.ch/
Derek continues to amaze me by how prolific he is. He writes excellent fiction, beautiful poetry, insightful non-fiction. He is a fierce indie-author advocate – and he’s worth getting to know! I recently finished his poignant novel, One Last Love, and I’m in the midst of his latest one, The Sons of Cleito. This last is about a man whose typical Sunday morning starts pretty badly, and when he admits to himself that his life can’t get worse, he is abducted by some unpleasant men and taken away to a strange place…
I love Derek Haines’s ironic, humorous, dark, and yet moving writing style. Here’s the first paragraph from The Sons of Cleito:
“The internal organs located in and around the belly, while serving most notably as an efficient set of composting and sewerage services, happen to possess another completely unrelated and totally mystical function. Often attributed in total to the stomach, which seems unfair on the liver, spleen and other soft tissue organs that do all the really hard work, it is the ability of these organs to foresee bad news, attribute self-guilt, doubt and generally tell the owner of the organs that they are probably going to be in for a very bad day.”
Robert MacLean
http://robertmaclean.blogspot.com/
Perhaps it was the Voltaire quote featured prominently on his site that initially made me realize Robert MacLean was a man I would like to read more of: “I have decided to be happy; it is excellent for one’s health!”
Well, I’m always happy when an author makes me laugh out loud, and so I’m thrilled to have discovered his novels, as well as his blog which he calls “The Devil’s Pleasure Garden.” Robert MacLean is a sort of modern day P.G. Wodehouse. I started with The President’s Palm Reader, which I adored, and then made my way through his entire “Toby” series. In The Cad, his dubious hero, lovable slacker Toby Tucker, an incompetent tour guide and guardian angel to a group of travelers in Greece, falls in love.
Who could resist?
Claude Bouchard
http://www.claudebouchardbooks.com/
If you haven’t yet read Claude Bouchard’s mystery-crime-thrillers, you need to check him out. His books are like a cross between a cozy mystery and a fast-paced thriller. “Thrillers so believable they could be non-fiction…” His titles are: Vigilante, The Consultant, Mind Games, The Homeless Killer, 6 Hours 42 Minutes, Asylum, Discreet Activities
I’ve read them all, except for Discreet Activities, which I just began this weekend. By the way, Claude is one of my favorite people in the stratospheric world of SM (not the marquis’s sort) and if you don’t know him, you’re missing out.
For a lover of romantic fiction, my reading list instead continues to veer toward humor and thrillers. Why is that, do you suppose?
What are you reading? Any recommendations?