I discovered Linda Barnes through NoveList, the Readers Advisory service that helps people find books they would like based on books that they've liked in the past. In my case, I was looking for a readalike for Sara Paretsky, and that led me to Linda Barnes' Carlotta Carlyle PI mystery series. Carlotta is a former police officer who is involved with a cast of characters whom you grow to know and care about over the life of the series. She is smart, independent and conflicted.

In Lie Down With The Devil, the twelfth and presumably final book in the series, Carlotta takes on a client who isn't exactly what she seems to be, and as the mystery unfolds it involves Carlotta's absent mob-connected fiance, her former boss who has always carried a torch for her, and a mystery that involves casino gambling.

As with the other books in this series, I became attached to Carlotta and the people in her life. As with Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski series, I enjoyed spending time with these characters and was somewhat sad to come to the end of the tale. Ms. Barnes is a gifted writer with a talent for crafting compelling stories. I thank NoveList for matching me up with this series.

My good friend, knowing that I was in need of a good laugh, loaned me her copy of Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster. This is, indeed, an entertaining read. It's the memoir of a woman who lost her high paying job in Chicago after 9/11, and it's written with humor, intellect, and a three-way mirror (the kind that don't always flatter, like you find in department store fitting rooms).

For an idea of Jen Lancaster's writing style, you can check out her jennsylvania.com website.

The Innocent Man is John Grisham's first foray into nonfiction writing. It's the true life story of grisly murders in Oklahoma and law enforcement officials who conspired to railroad confessions for these crimes in order to "solve" them, as well as the efforts to free these men from jail and death row.

Grisham has always been a compelling writer, but he has always suffered from the problem of being able to set up great scenarios and then not know what to do with them. With The Innocent Man, however, the endings have already been written. Thus, Grisham is able to do what he does best without worrying about how to end the story.

I enjoyed this book, and recommend it to fans of crime stories and legal dramas.

Girl V. Boy, by Yvonne Collins and Sandy Rideout, is a YA book about high school sophomore Luisa Perez. Luisa is the younger daughter of a single mom and the younger sister of Grace, who dropped out of high school and is a teenage mother. Luisa is chosen by her teacher to write an anonymous column promoting a literacy challenge contest at her school; there is a second anonymous author, who is a boy at the school. The story is about Luisa as she goes to school, works part-time, and writes her column, all while looking for love and trying to unmask her anonymous male counterpart.

I found this to be a good read - it's intelligent, well-written, and it features a young protagonist who faces the kinds of challenges that many students face today.

Watchmen, written by Alan Moore and Illustrated by Dave Gibbons, is one of Time Magazine's 100 best novels. However, this is not a novel in the traditional sense. Watchmen is a graphic novel, comprised of twelve previously published DC Comics comic books. But these are not the comic books my generation grew up with - Watchmen is a dark, psychologically deep and perverse portrait of outlawed superheroes in an alternate history version on the '80s. The characters are imperfect and complex, and the view of the world is a frightening one.

My daughter is a huge DC Comics fan, and she loves this book. I am more of a fan of traditional writing, so it's not my personal cup of tea. Nonetheless, I appreciate Watchmen as having amazing writing and a seminal style that has since been emulated by others. It is worth perusing Watchmen for no other reason than to reconsider your view of superheroes and their place in the universe.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, is a book designed for businesses that are not yet part of the Internet age but should be considering entering it. As described on its website,

It's a book by two Forrester analysts with practical, data-based strategies for companies that want to harness the power of social technologies like blogs, social networks, and YouTube.

The reason I have this book in the first place is that Forrester Publishing offered free copies of it to bloggers who promised to post about it. Hey, I like free things, so I figured what the heck. Since I am not a business person, I'm not exactly the book's target audience. On the other hand, this book is more about online social interaction than it is about literature, so it makes perfect sense for the authors and publishers to want to use the blogosphere in order to promote the book and their services.

This book describes how Internet marketing is about developing relationships with one's customer base, and the importance of listening to one's customers. While in many respects it is a marketing tool for Forrester's services, it is nonetheless a good introduction to social technologies for corporate executives who want to develop an Internet presence but who aren't sure where to start.

The Writing on the Wall by Wendy Lichtman is a YA book with a plot that involves, graffiti, bullying and mathematics. Tess is a math whiz who is being mistreated by a boy who feels she snitched on him, and who is also using her math abilities to solve a graffiti mystery at her school.

This book is recommended for age 10 and up. From a language arts perspective I feel this is appropriate, although some of the math may be beyond a good number of the book's potential readers; then again, the book may serve these students well by giving them an interesting introduction to these advanced concepts.

This book will appeal to youngsters who enjoy math, and especially to girls who are looking for intelligent female role models in literature.

The Loser's Guide to Life and Love by A. E. Cannon is a reworking of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream re-crafted for a YA audience in modern day Salt Lake City, Utah. It's a love rectangle (as opposed to a love triangle) about four teenagers who are all smitten by others. It's a delightfully written story. Furthermore, this is particularly nice introduction to Shakespeare for middle school students - when they read the original later in life, this book gives them some familiarity with the story.

Even though this is a YA book and I am far from the intended audience, I enjoyed it immensely.

My son is in a special program in his high school, and that program assigned Liberated Parents/Liberated Children by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish as summer reading for the parents. It was written in 1974, so some of it is somewhat dated (the prices listed for school supplies are humorously low), but in general it provides decent advice on productive ways for parents to deal with and to talk to their kids. Talk descriptively, don't be judgmental, support their feelings (although not necessarily their actions), be genuine in your responses, don't insult your kids, etc. It's not necessarily groundbreaking, but it's good, practical advice.

To some extent, this isn't very new ground for me - it's consistent with some of the New Age philosophy that I've found to be productive food for thought over the past few years. But if you're looking for ways to improve how you communicate with your kids, this is a good book to read (or even to skim over).