Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen

You know when you read a book and the first thought in your head after you have read only the first ten pages is, "Oh I hope this guy has other books out there". That's what this book is. I dove in and just devored this book not being able to put it down for the last few days. To my joy Hiaasen has lots of other books out there and now I'm going to have to go find all of them.

I picked this book as the first one to read because my Aunt Andrea told me that it was the best one and that after she read it she immediatly went out and got all his books. Again props to the Aunt for suggesting a great read.

The story is about Charles ("Chaz") Perrone who isn't the sharpest pencil in the box. While he and his wife, Joey, are on a cruise celebrating their two year anniversary he takes her for a walk on the deck, proceeds to drop his keys and then throws her overboard. Lucky for Joey she was a championship collegiate swimmer and so survives the fall and the hours that followed in the sea. She makes it to a island that's occupied by Mick Stranahan, an ex-cop, and together the two start to wreak havoc on poor Chaz Perrone who thinks he has gotten away with the perfect murder.

Add into the mix Chaz's body guard Tool who is a giant hairy goon of a man, a detective who doesn't quite believe dear Chaz's story, Chaz's boss Red for which he does bad scientist things and you have the makings of a fantastically funny and entertaining read. Highly recommended from this reader.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsey

This book was given to me by my stepmom's sister Andrea who...is a book whore. That woman can read faster than anyone I had ever met and considering she has been around the bookstore (if you know what I mean...no I mean really she has read *a lot* of books) I was excited to read this book that she let me borrow.

The darkly dreaming man that the title refers to is Dexter Morgan. He's a handsome fellow who works for the Miami police department as a lab technician analyzing blood spatters. Every once in awhile Dear Dexter gets a hankering for some....well for some dismemberment.

So the story then is about a serial killer from the eyes of a serial killer? No, Dexter is the good guy. He was adopted and trained to only kill the bad guys because it was known that one day he would in fact become a serial killer either way. He spends his time in this book working with his sister, who is also on Miami police squad, trying to solve a very interesting and very.... familiar murder mystery that has taken south beach by storm.

What is Dexter darkly dreaming about....has his dark passenger come out to play without his knowing...well you'll just have to read to find out.

A good read and a thanks to Andrea for the recommendation.

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

I think I liked it. Weird right? Defiantly an interesting read to say the least.

The book alternate chapters between 'The City' and Laura Byrd who is alone and stuck in Antarctica. The idea behind The City chapters is that after you die, you end up there. You then stay there until everyone who had ever known you in your life dies, then you move on to whatever the next place was.

One morning, the newspaper man Luka Sims (a resident of The City) wakes up to find everyone there gone. He goes looking through the streets and ends up finding a group of people in the main area of the city, but all the residents that he had known (or most of them anyways) were gone.

Meanwhile, Laura is still on the planet, but she is alone in Antarctica. She went as an employee for Coca-Cola along with two other co-workers to do research on using the melting ice in their product (yes it's a little far fetched). When they can't reach anyone back home, and their compound starts to fall apart they leave to look for help leaving Laura alone. When they don't come back after several weeks, and the compound loses heating ability, Laura heads out alone to look for them.

We soon find out that the reason everyone left The City was a deadly virus had attacked everyone on the planet....everyone except Laura who is alone in the icy wilderness.

I don't know how to rate this book (I went to a 10 point rating system because I was too constricted by the 5 stars). I absolutely loved the idea of the book and the concept of the two worlds and while parts of it were very well written there were other parts that I thought could have been better developed. I'm giving it a 6/10....but I think it's worth the read....and has by far the coolest cover of any book I have read.