Thoughts for Thursday

What book is at the top of your to-buy-next list?

Up next for me is I am Not a Serial Killer by Dan A. Wells.

John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it.

He’s spent his life doing his best not to live up to his potential.

He’s obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn’t want to become one. So for his own sake, and the safety of those around him, he lives by rigid rules he’s written for himself, practicing normal life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.

Dead bodies are normal to John. He likes them, actually. They don’t demand or expect the empathy he’s unable to offer. Perhaps that’s what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there’s something different about the body the police have just found behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat—-and to appreciate what that difference means.

Now, for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he can’t control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could.

Dan Wells’s debut novel is the first volume of a trilogy that will keep you awake and then haunt your dreams.


One of my favorite TV shows is Dexter. It has a similar theme so I'm pretty sure I will love this series...I will be getting this first volume soon (released last month).

Wednesday Wish List

Twisted Tree by Kent Meyers


Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the people of small-town Twisted Tree must come to terms with this terrible event—their loss, their place in it, and the secrets they all carry.

In this brilliantly written novel, one girl’s story unfolds through the stories of those who knew her. A supermarket clerk recalls an encounter with a disturbingly thin Hayley Jo. Sophie, Twisted Tree’s resident but secretly not-so-altruistic saint, is shaken by a single, passing moment during Hayley Jo’s adolescence. Dark memories paralyze Richard Mattingly as he as he struggles to help his son, Clay, cope with their new loss. An ex-priest remembers baptizing Hayley Jo and seeing her with her best friend, Laura, whose mother the priest once loved. And Laura berates herself for all the running they did, how it fed her friend’s withdrawal, and how there were so many secrets she didn’t see. And so, Hayley Jo’s absence recasts the lives of others and connects them, her death rooting itself into the community in astonishingly violent and tender ways.

Twisted Tree is a tribute to the powerful effect one person's life can have on everyone she knew.

Kent Meyers lives in South Dakota and is an English professor at Black Hills State University.

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays (started on Should Be Reading) asks you to:

Grab your current read (or a book on your shelf that you've read or been wanting to read). Let the book fall open to a random page. Share two (or a few) teaser sentences from that page. Don't forget to share the title and author of the book in case someone is teased into reading. Please avoid spoilers!

I've posted my teaser below. Post yours in the comment section if you'd like to share as well!

Leila left thinking it was a most confusing, un-Indian gathering. Back home it was easy to categorize people--rich, poor, modern, old-fashioned, upper or lower class--and then deal with them accordingly. America seemed to have done away with such useful demarcations.

from A Good Indian Wife by Anne Cherian

This book is one of my choices for the Spring Challenge.

Movie Mondays

Flowers in the Attic

Book, 1979 by V.C. Andrews

It was a case of tender, loving murder.

The four children had perfect lives. They lived in a golden family filled with happiness. But when their father dies suddenly, their mother throws themselves on the mercy of her parents - who had disowned her long ago.

Their mother promised they would stay only long enough to inherit the fortune. But gradually she forgot how much she adored her family. Kept hidden in the airless attic, the children now lived alone except for fleeting visits from their mother. Visits that became increasingly infrequent... and increasingly deadly...

It is the first book in the Dollanganger Series (5 total books in the series).

Movie, 1987 directed by Jeffrey Bloom

Features: Louise Fletcher, Victoria Tennant, Kristy Swanson

Tagline: They have come to a house where secrets are kept....where the future is haunted by the past.....where the innocent live in the shadow of sin.....where a dark legacy awaits to destroy all who defy it.

A sequel to the film based on the novel's sequel, Petals on the Wind, was originally planned but never produced.

Have you seen the movie or read the book (or any of its sequels)?

Sunday Survey

What do you think of The Condition?

5=I love it!
4=I really like it.
3=I like it.
2=It's just okay.
1=I don't like it.