I just sent a sample chapter to my Kindle. Thanks. 
I loved this book so, so much as a kid!
I just finished Night Work by Steve Hamilton and recommend it highly. If you have read any of his other books set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, this has a different protagonist, a probation officer, and is set in a small city in upstate New York. the plotting and characters are excellent.
Just finished The Finches’ Fabulous Furnace–say that three times fast! It was pretty good.
Now I’m reading Parenting is Easy! (You Must Be Doing It Wrong) by Sara Given. Funny.
I’ve finished several things since I last popped in. Here are some of them:
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King, Stephen. On Writing. King offers practical tips as well as some backstory on how he became a writer. Any aspiring writer will find some useful nuggets here, and King infuses it all with a down-to-earth tone and great humor.
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Wiebe, Kurtis J. Rat Queens, vol. 1: Sass and Sorcery. If you like graphic novels with strong woman characters set in a fantasy world, you’ll love this. The Rat Queens are an adventuring group of four ‘battle-maidens’ who kick butt, take names, and misbehave in epic style. I’m jealous I’m not a Rat Queen myself!
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I also read volumes 4 and 5 of Brian K. Vaughan’s **Saga**graphic novel series. It just keeps getting better and more fantastical all the time.
Read other things too, but most of it was meh. I’m 2/3 of the way through Lydia Davis’ translation of Madame Bovary right now. The plot feels both fresh and accurate in its portrayal of small-town France in the 1800s; Flaubert is an amazing writer. Lydia Davis renders an outstanding translation of the original, from what I can tell. I’m glad I saved this as a special treat since it certainly is. 
I’m also partway through Carl Zimmer’s At the Water’s Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to the Sea. Zimmer explains evolutionary concepts so that they’re both fascinating and understandable to the layperson. I’m not sure if it’s his anecdotes or language use (or even his expert eye at what to leave out or simplify), but he is one of our best living science writers, for my money. Another summer reading treat I gave to myself, and I’m thrilled I did!
I started and chucked Beyond the Ice Limit, which was flat, dull and …not good. Disappointing, too, since The Ice Limit was the first book I read and loved by Preston and Child.
I finished The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgarov. I’m going to say it was as boring and unfunny as a 51 year old adult as it was to the 22 year old kid. I really only liked the historical fiction parts…
Anyway should you choose to read it: Master and Margarita
Sorry I missed the edit time that’s Mikhail Bulgakov not Bulgarov
I am about to take an early lunch to RUN down to the local Barnes & Noble to purchase and devour the EXTREMELY long-awaited third book in Justin Cronin’s The Passage trilogy, The City of Mirrors. I’ve been waiting three years for this damned thing, and my boss doesn’t know it yet, BUT I’M FEELING KINDA REALLY SICK RIGHT ABOUT NOW! 
Will let y’all know how it comes out.
I just picked up the audiobook of that from the library. I’d be interested to know what you think of it.
I’m almost halfway through and enjoying it. Written in the same style as his Underworld USA Trilogy, with a few characters from those making brief appearances. Seems this is the first volume in a planned second LA Quartet. The two quartets and the USA Trilogy will “span 31 years and form one novelistic history,” as Ellroy puts it.
I’m not sure I’ll finish it before heading out to the Sin City of Pattaya for one last look next week. But that’s a good place to be reading noir of any sort, what with its over-the-top sleaze and questionable characters from all different countries.
OK, thanks! I’ll give it a try.
Just finished The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, a quick little morsel, and now I’m on to Le Morte d’Arthur. I’m not quite sure why it’s not Artur, being that the rest of the title is French.
I haven’t read the first LA Quartet but did see the film version of the third novel, LA Confidential. In it, James Cromwell plays Dudley Smith, who figures large in Perfidia. And Danny DeVito plays Sid Hudgens, who also appears in Perfidia.
Ah, good to know - thanks!
I’m still enjoying Randall Munroe’s What If?, a collection of XKCD columns and good farfetched-science fun. On the home stretch with Thurston Clarke’s JFK’s Last Hundred Days, which has some good insights into Kennedy’s growth as a person (after the death of his infant son Patrick, and his rekindling of his relationship with his wife Jackie) and as a leader (Vietnam, civil rights, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty) in the months before he died. I’m also just starting Catherine Drinker Bowen’s 1966 classic Miracle at Philadelphia, about the Constitutional Convention.
I finished Beggars, Cheats and Forgers by Dave Thomas. It’s a short fun, read and since he covered Mark Hoffman, had a bit of hometown interest for me. I remember the bombings 
Based on a rec here, I started A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horowitz. So far a very enjoyable read and I’m enjoying the personal appraoch Horowitz is taking.
June thread:
Just finished Randall Munroe’s What If? XKCD collection, which was fun, and have now begun The Battle for the Falklands by Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins. It’s a great study of the 1982 conflict, equally engrossing as to both the political and the military aspects. The authors have a dry wit and a knack for elegant turns of phrase.
Just started The Boy Who Lost Fairyland by Catherynne M. Valente.
Forgot to mention - it twice referred to the SDMB!