More books

Between having my hours at work cut and catching the flu this week, I've had a lot of reading time lately. I read a lot of romance, especially paranormal. Usually very "adult" paranormal, which is what most of this is. A few mysteries thrown in, a bit of fantasy.
The Mane Event (Shelly Laurenston)
The Beast in Him (Shelly Laurenston)
Pack Challenge (Shelly Laurenston)
Go Fetch (Shelly Laurenston)
Here Kitty, Kitty (Shelly Laurenston)
All of those were re-reads and well worth it. Incredibly funny paranormals, pretty high "steam" level.
Also re-read the entire Others series by Christine Warren, all 12 books. Again, paranormal romance. The first 6 books are pretty explicit, the last 6 are a tiny bit tamer. Not much though.
Several anthologies:
Belong to the Night
Night's Edge
Must Love Hellhounds (my copy is missing 30 pages so I haven't finished it yet)
Unbound

A Harvest of Bones (Yasmine Galenorn) - the latest in her mystery series, she's always a sure bet. Cosy mystery, a little romance and a paranormal twist.
Obsidian Prey (Jayne Ann Krentz) - the latest in her futuristic series set on Harmony. Again, a guaranteed good read, if you like a light blend of sci-fi and romance.
Pleasure (Jacqueline Frank) - Book 3 in her Shadowdwellers series. Pretty good but I liked the Nightwalkers series better. This one kinda seemed all over the place, I wasn't sure whose story it would be until several chapters in. ****SPOILER (a tiny one)****
It started off with one couple and then jumped to another. Then back to the first couple, whose issues had all been magically worked out. Apparently, their relationship was just a means of getting the woman worked into the lives of couple 2, so that a last minute life-saving could occur. Kinda disappointing, since couple 1 was interesting enough that I would have loved to read a book just dealing with them.
Sea Glass (Maria Snyder) - an exceptional example of what the right author can do with YA fantasy. This is book 2 in the Glass series, a spin off of her Study trilogy (Poison Study, Magic Study, Fire Study). I absolutely love this woman's writing. Vivid in every way. Not only can I see what she's describing, I can almost hear what the main character is hearing and damn near feel her emotions. Snyder is an incredible writer, able to tell a story from the character's teenage POV without diminishing the emotional weight of the conflict or making the girl seem too mature. Opal (the main character) comes across a fairly mature but still young and rather inexperienced. Despite going through some fairly serious problems in the first book (Storm Glass) and the first half of this book, she's still pretty naive at first. Watching her mature, not always in good ways, is fascinating.
To Crave a Blood Moon (Shari Kohler) - another paranormal romance. Not bad but not great either. This book is a good example of what I don't like about series. I love the continuity, I absolutely love getting more of the story and revisiting favorite characters from earlier books. I hate when it seems that a book was written mostly to set up the next book or two. And that's kinda what this one felt like. The main story was pretty fair but all the extra, dangling little story strings just irritated me.
What a Dragon Should Know (G. A. Aiken) - Aiken is the alter ego of Shelly Laurenston and she's a fine writer no matter which name she's using. This is the latest in her Dragon series and it's well up to the standards of her earlier stories. My favorite part of any Laurenston/Aiken book is the humor. She's just one of the funniest writers I've ever come across. I like the fantasy setting, dragons, magic, barbarian warriors, female assassins and so forth. Best of all, this is one writer who can make me laugh loud enough to scare the dog. Quirky characters (not just the female ones either), snarky remarks, pranks and troublemaking. Just too much fun to put down.
Sugar Daddy (Lisa Kleypas) - This one is not a new release, it's not a paranormal and it's not something I would have picked up normally. I'm glad I went with the impulse to give it a try. Sugar Daddy is a contemporary novel set in Texas. It's not really what I consider "romance" despite the boy-meets-girl parts of the story. The story starts when the female protagonist, Liberty Jones, is 14 and living in a trailer park in Welcome, Texas. She meets Hardy, who she loves with all the enthusiasm a teen aged girl can produce. That's where the book turns away from typical romance. Instead of getting married and living happily ever after, Hardy leaves and Liberty finds out just how hard life can get. Left to raise her younger sister after their mother's death, Liberty gets thrown into the adult world at 18 with no preparation and no safety net. The story becomes more about Liberty learning to take care of herself and her sister than anything else. Since the story is told in first-person, the reader gets a pretty detailed view of Liberty's mental processes. The writing style is fairly conversational, so reading was more like listening to this woman reminiscing over coffee. The story is more about Liberty, her relationship with her mother and sister and growing up than anything else. The title refers to other's assumption about Liberty's friendship with a much older, wealthy man. Most of the people around her think, since she's young, pretty, poor and half Mexican, this guy must be her sugar daddy. Liberty takes a lot of flack from some and never lets it bother her. She knows the truth and seems to feel that she has more important stuff to worry about. This was a thoroughly enjoyable book, one I'm glad to have read. I'll probably read it again and I'll definitely take a look at any other contemporaries Kleypas writes. Her characters and plots are realistic without being abrasive, likeable and everyday types.

So, what have you read lately?