Let's Talk TBR Piles!

by Suzanne

Recently, I've been on a reading kick. I love when that happens. I just want to sink into my TBR pile and plow through a dozen or so books. (Okay, I've been busy, so it's only been five.)

Here's what I've read lately:

The Lies That Bind by our own Kate Carlisle! Fabulous read, and oh Derek Stone is just sooooo yummy! Brooklyn is a lucky girl, Kate!





























The Ranger by Monica McCarty. Have you started this series? OMG! Like Speical Forces guys for Robert The Bruce. Can't. Wait. For. The Viper. Book #4.















The Emperor's Tomb by Steve Berry. Steve is sort of like my sorbet. You know, the pallet cleanser between all the courses of romances? Love me some action/adventure/intrigue. This is book #6.















Money, Honey by our Susan Sey. Susan's debut novel is witty, charming, sexy and captivating. Oh wait, Susan is, too! Love this book. Can't wait for the next one, Money Shot!














And I just read Warrior Betrayed arc for my interview with Addison Fox for next month.OH MY GOD. Y'all are gonna LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this hero and the Taurus Warrior!














And I am making a trip to the bookstore this week just to get a copy of  Lover Unleashed! Yummo, love me some BDB books!

So, what have YOU been reading? What are you looking forward to? Any one I need to add to my list?

Quick 5 on Reading

by Anna Sugden

It's the weekend! I know from last Saturday's post and your comments that many of you enjoy reading at the weekend, so I thought I'd do a Quick 5 on reading and your TBR pile/mountain/room.

So, without further ado ...

1. What are you reading at the moment?

2. What's next on your TBR pile/mountain/room?

3. Is there an order to your TBR pile/mountain/room?

4. Where is your TBR pile/mountain/room?

5. Where is your favourite place to read?

To start you all off, here are my answers.

1. I'm reading Anne Gracie's The Stolen Princess.

2. Next up is a choice between the next Anne Gracie book (yes, I do like to read them all in order and in one go *g*), Molly Ringwald's Getting the Pretty Back and Allison Brennan's Love Me to Death. Also lurking are the latest JD Robb, the latest Lisa Gardner and Eloisa James' When Beauty Tamed the Beast. (and that's just on one pile!) Oh and after Anna's post earlier in the week - Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. Decisions, decisions!

3. Uh ... sort of. The contemporaries are separated out from the romantic suspense and the historicals. The category novels in separate piles by line. I also have piles of hockey books and movie star biographies. I kind of have a 'must read next' pile, but as you can see, I'm not too good about sticking to it.

4. My TBR mountain is in one corner of my office and spreads over a few shelves, a box and the floor. There's usually a cat sleeping in amongst the piles of books.

5. I love reading in bed, especially with my cats curled up next to me. I also love reading in my favourite chair in our conservatory.

Over to you!

Travels with my Books!

by Anna Campbell

As all our regulars know, I've been travelling for the last month. I went to Denver for RomCon (had a wonderful time) and to New York and Washington D.C. and then Orlando for RWA Nationals. Home again to a horrible dose of jetlag! Off next week for the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Sydney. Then, thank goodness, I get to stay home for a couple of weeks until the Brisbane Writers Festival at the start of September.

So I hear you saying - she's going to blog about her travels!

Not exactly!

I did a surprising amount of reading in that month of extreme busy-ness. Partly because I was stuck at airports/train stations and a book is a great companion at such times. Partly because I had a run of really great books to keep me entertained!


So I thought I'd share the highlights of a month of reading with you.

As you know, there have been a spate of Bandita releases lately. I picked up Kate's new book, THE MILLIONAIRE MEETS HIS MATCH, and Susan's debut MONEY, HONEY at the RWA literacy signing. Both corkers and worthy of the 'written by a Bandita' banner! LOL!

Susan's is a wonderful romp about a former jewel thief and the FBI agent who caught him. Very 1940s screwball comedy with some wonderful dialogue and hot sexual tension. Patrick is gorgeous!

Kate's is a luscious classic category romance where the heroine enters the hero's employment to seek revenge and of course finds herself helplessly caught in a web of unwilling attraction. YUM!


But of course, you all know how great both those books are!

I also had a couple of lovely discoveries in my reading.

The first is the first adult novel from Sarah Maclean. NINE RULES TO BREAK WHEN ROMANCING A RAKE is a delicious souffle of a book. I love stories about good girls who discover their inner vixen and this is a classic. Lady Calpurnia (Callie) is firmly on the shelf at 28 and even worse, everyone around her considers her a cardboard cutout of virtue, about as exciting as a mug of lukewarm milk.

She sets out to live a little, with the help of her dream man, the Marquess of Ralston. The Marquess is immediately intrigued by Callie's mixture of wildness and innocence. He isn't sure whether he mean to protect or seduce Callie - and whatever he does only seems to cause mayhem. Great fun!

This book sat on the New York Times list for five weeks when it came out and it got a lot of buzz on the net. Having read it, I'm not surprised. It's a wonderfully entertaining read, as sparkling as a diamond!


Another author who I have known personally for years but strangely had never read is Elizabeth Boyle. I was lucky enough to get an ARC of her next book MAD ABOUT THE DUKE which is out at the end of September.

This is another sparkling comedy about a widowed countess who mistakes the Duke of Parkerton for an impoverished solicitor and employs him to find her a duke to marry. She has pressing reasons for marrying a duke and James finds himself so enchanted to be seen as an ordinary man, he can't bring himself to tell Elinor the truth.

As you can imagine, with a setup like that, the plot soon spirals into the funniest of farces, brimming with mistaken identities and pranks and mischief and chaos. I found myself laughing out loud at this story. I brought back HOW I MET MY COUNTESS from RomCon - I'll be digging into that very soon.

Now for two books I knew would be good and which didn't disappoint.

Kristan Higgins was a very popular RITA winner this year for TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. THE NEXT BEST THING was one of the giveaways at RomCon and I snatched it up - like many of Kristan's books, it's a warm, family-based comedy with a deeply emotional core. In this case, Lucy Lang is a young widow who is crippled by grief years after her husband's sudden death in a car accident. Her husband's brother, Ethan, has been a constant source of comfort and strength, but their relationship profoundly alters when she decides it's time she starts dating again.

As in all Kristan's books, wildly funny, eccentric characters surroundthe hero and heroine, but it's the central love story that will have you sniffing into your pillow late at night when you finish this.


Last but not least, I read and thoroughly enjoyed Miranda Neville's second historical romance for Avon, THE WILD MARQUIS. Miranda has guested a few times on the Bandits and she's always a fascinating and entertaining visitor. As many of you would remember, she used to work for Sotheby's in their manuscripts and books section. THE WILD MARQUIS uses the Regency book trade as a fascinating background for the love story of family black sheep Chase and impecunious bookseller's widow Juliana Merton.

These characters were so alive, they leapt off the page, and this book kept me awake into the night at conference to finish it. As many of you know, conference leaves a person very short of sleep so that's an indication of how I devoured this story. I really look forward to the next book in the Burgundy Club series THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT, out at the end of September.

So what have you guys been reading in my absence? Any recommendations? I mean, it's not like I have a big TBR pile - it's not big, it's GARGANTUAN!!!

To Be Read

by Beth

My To-Be-Read pile has somehow grown into a To-Be-Read hill. It's gone from three separate piles (one romance, one nonfiction and one for non-romance fiction) to four piles (I went on a buying spree and had to make a pile for my paranormal YAs and urban fantasy books *g*) I know quite a few of you can relate to my multiplying books, or perhaps your own TBR piles are more like mountains. Either way, all I know is that at the beginning of 2009 I had a goal of reading more and keeping my TBR pile manageable.

Well, I did read more than I have in the past few years. I also bought more books. Many, MANY more books. Which is how I discovered a few new-to-me authors who are now on my Auto-Buy list including Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson & The Olympians YA series, and Kristan Higgins who writes fabulous romantic comedies.

One thing I've noticed about my current TBR piles is that there are many more books by authors I haven't read before. To be honest, I'm not sure why that is, all I know is that I'm anxious to get through every story in the hopes of transferring even more books from the TBR pile to my Keeper Shelves *g*

Here are the books by New-To-Me authors I plan on reading next month:

Evermore - Alyson Noel

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

Prime Time - Hank Phillippi Ryan

The Blue Zone - Andrew Gross

Highland Scandal - Julia London

She Thinks Her Ex Is Sexy - Joanne Rock

Start Me Up - Victoria Dahl

Outcast - Joan Johnston

Kiss of Midnight - Lara Adrian

Nightwalker - Jocelynn Drake

Soul Magic - Jennifer Lyon

My Favorite Witch - Lisa Plumley

Night's Cold Kiss - Tracey O'Hara

Servant: The Kindred - L.L. Foster

Have you read any of the books listed above? Are there any you'd recommend move to the top of my TBR pile? What does your TBR pile look like? Did you discover any new authors in 2009?

The TBR Pile Game!

by Anna Campbell

Apparently romance novels are proving recession-proof. Or at least so far.

Did you all see that great article in the New York Times, no less, about how romance sales are going through the roof? Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/books/08roma.html?_r=1&ref=books

Very heartening, isn't it?

Mind you, I was thinking about the Great Depression and what was popular with audiences then. Glamour and escapism immediately spring to mind.

Think of those wonderful Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films with their elegant and luxurious settings. There's two quotes I love about F.A. and G.R. One is something like "Everybody talks about what a great dancer Fred Astaire was. Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything he did, except backwards and in high heels." The other is Katharine Hepburn's "He gave her class and she gave him sex appeal."


Actually if you want to see just how magical these two were together, here's a clip from You Tube of Night and Day.

My book buying doesn't seem to have slowed at all, in spite of all the doom and gloom in the news. In fact, I'm just back from a visit to Sydney for a wedding and have added to my TBR pile until it's now tottering up towards the ceiling.

I know I'm not Robinson Crusoe here!

We're all addicted to books! We all have towering TBR piles.

I thought it might be fun to ask you all to pull the top five books off your TBR piles and report on them here. I bet we get some interesting selections! No cheating! Just whatever comes off first.


First off my pile is Miranda Neville's NEVER RESIST TEMPTATION. Miranda sent this to me as a thank you after she visited the Banditas recently and she received such a tumultuous welcome from the Banditas and Buddies. I'm actually putting off reading this one, even if it is on top of the pile. I'm trying to write a book of my own at the moment and I know once I start this, I won't be able to put it down. It's a book about a girl disguised as a boy who gets a job as a chef in the hero's kitchen. Sex and food? What else could an avid reader want?


Next off the pile is one of my Sydney purchases. PARIS: THE SECRET HISTORY by Andrew Hussey. I really hit the nonfiction shelves hard down there as I'd run out of interesting factual books. When I'm working on a book of my own, I love to read nonfiction. It's like a sorbet - cleanses the palate! This Paris book sounds like a hoot. The review from the Independent in the U.K. says it's full of "sinister trivia and captivating alternative histories." Sounds right up my (dark and sinister) alley.

Next is THE ARISTOCRAT AND THE SINGLE MUM by Michelle Douglas, a wonderful newish Aussie romance writer who my critique partner Annie West introduced me to. I've since had the great pleasure of meeting Michelle a couple of times and she's great, really straight down the line and smart. I'm looking forward to reading this story - as yet, I haven't picked up one of her books. They've been lurking in the TBR pile but haven't made it to the top. That situation is about to change!

I always have a lot of category romance on my TBR pile. I find they're great for when I want a quick fix of romance without losing myself for hours in a longer book. Not only that, but some of the best writers around publish with Harlequin. Think of our own Banditas who are published in shorter romantic fiction!

Jane Porter is one of my favorite writers. She writes sparkling single title books like FLIRTING WITH FORTY and ODD MOM OUT. But she cut her teeth writing for Harlequin Presents and she does an amazingly good sheikh, millionaire, prince - you know the drill, those wonderful alphas who have propelled the Harlequin Presents line to the top of the tree.


The last of my five books is a doorstopper of a murder mystery by Elizabeth George called IN PURSUIT OF THE PROPER SINNER. As I'm sure I've said before, I discovered the Inspector Lynley mysteries on my visit to Sydney in November, thanks to a recommendation from the fabulous Christine Wells. I was looking for a book to read in a not particularly well-stocked bookshop and the first Inspector Lynley book was there so I bought it. This is now my tenth in the series! Given a lot of them weigh in at over the 700-page mark, this has taken up a serious chunk of my reading time in the last few months.

Anyway, the last one, DECEPTION ON HIS MIND, ended on a huge cliffhanger with my favorite character, the delightfully rough-as-guts Barbara Havers, suspended for trying to shoot her superior officer. I'm itching to pick this one up - but as I said before, I've got a book to write so at the moment, I'm being strong.

That's my five books! What are yours?

And just to encourage you to play, I'm offering a choice of one of my books, CLAIMING THE COURTESAN, UNTOUCHED or TEMPT THE DEVIL, my most recent release, to one lucky poster whose list takes my fancy. I need to keep your TBR piles fed, after all!

Just mention in your comment WHICH book you'd like and you'll go into the draw! Good luck!

Piles

by Cassondra Murray

No, I'm not talking about the disease. I'm talking about the mountains of books which surround me.


I've been reading, you see. I had a job change, and finally, after four years of having almost no time to do what I wanted, I have more time to write and...ahhhhh...to read. The reading marathon is actually what I'm doing to fill the well as I start down and dirty to work on a neglected manuscript.

My keeper shelf is sagging from the weight of having more books crammed in than should fit. The list of just-read, reading-now, and to-be-read has sprawled off of my "by the bed" bedroom shelf and is now piled up against the wall and my nightstand.


You know, the books that you just read but want to keep close because they made you feel so darn good? And then they get all mixed in with the ones waiting to be read, then when you're looking through the stack you see an old favorite, so you have to re-read it? Yeah.

It's sad really. All those books and nary a shelf to be had. Something must go. You know--I have to vacuum before the dust bunnies animate and eat the cats. I have to be able to get to the bed. I have to make room for MORE! Oh....uh...ahem...

Before the entire pile goes the way of all things, divided among "Keeper Shelf", "Pass On To Friends," and "Library Donations," I thought I'd share a few of the titles in my progressive pile. I've never done a What I'm Reading Now blog, so bear with me, as the choosing is nearly impossible. I'm bound to list way too many. I may break the blog with cover pictures. If there's only text at midnight, you'll know what happened. These are most of the books from the last three weeks. I'm hoping at the end of it you'll tell me if you've read the ones I'm reading, the ones I'm avoiding (yes there IS a category for books I'm avoiding, though not for the reason you think), about-to-read, and what you thought of them.


In order--sort of--here's the first couple of stacks in my pile.


What I've just read:


Y'all already know Kate's book is wonderful. She's the first Bandita to hit the NYT list, and she absolutely deserves that honor.

Homicide In Hardcover was a fantastic read. I've already read it twice. I loved the heroine, and I WANT MORE of the hero. Ahem (raises voice) AHEM, KATE! WE ARE GONNA GET MORE OF THE HERO IN FUTURE BOOKS AREN'T WE? Ahem. Okay....now to recover my sense of decorum.


Kate is to blame, you see, for a disturbing trend in my TBR pile. A complete deviation from my purpose--trimming the darn thing down--and she's corrupted me with a whole forgotten genre. It's romantic mysteries. I liked Kate's book so much that I went back to the shelf the following day (yes, I stayed up all night to read it) looking for more to feed the new habit. I bought two more books. And that, my friends, was the beginning of the end.


Right there on the shelf near Kate's book, in front of God and everybody, I found Madelyn Alt, and her Bewitching Mysteries.


Y'all have to read these books in order, starting with The Trouble with Magic. (No, of COURSE it's not required, but it's better that way. Trust me.) I didn't. I started with A Charmed Death, then I went back to the store and bought the entire series, and started over from the beginning . Yes, they're that good. So far my favorite is Hex Marks the Spot, but I've just picked up book four, and book five is due out in July. Circling like a buzzard I am. I immediately began stalking Madelyn and, mostly to get rid of me I'm certain, she's agreed to be our guest here in the lair when the next book comes out. Yay!

She has one of the hottest heroes in these books that I've read, ever. Subtle. Sexy. Nice in that way that could lure you in big time and make you not notice the wicked under the charm. Okay, somebody fan me now. But there are actually two guys....okay I'll shut up and move on. Y'all will like this series. I promise.

Another great read from the romantic mystery shelf is A Veiled Deception by Annette Blair.

I haven't read this whole series yet, but I'm starting on them next. Seriously Kate, you are SO on my list to smack next time I see you. You did this to me. Okay maybe I won't smack you. Maybe I'll buy you a drink instead.

All three of these authors weave a really good mystery plot, along with enough romance to keep me circling like a buzzard forever, waiting for the next installment.

Last but not least on the I-Just-Read-It pile is The Magic Knot by Helen Scott Taylor. I found
this book because Trish interviewed Helen weeks ago here in the lair. Remember, Helen was the American Title IV winner this last time. She was in the running with Trish and they were the last two. I just got around to reading this book last month.
I am so impressed with this story! This is a really good read, and Helen did a great job of creating a world and mythology--plus a hero that you can't help but love and a heroine who comes into her own in such a fulfilling way. If you haven't read this one yet, I recommend it.


Okay, ignoring all the other good reads piled up over there, I'm moving on.

Now for the TO-BE-READ stack:

Alas,I can include only a few.

Y'all know I love Susan Crandall. If you don't know her work, check out this link to the blog from last summer: http://romancebandits.blogspot.com/search?q=Susan+Crandall

Her latest, Seeing Red, was released in February. I've read the first two pages
and I can tell you it looks like her best one yet. Nobody does small town suspense better than Susan. I got interrupted (only two pages in, thank goodness, or I'd have been homicidal) and this book is sitting next to my lamp, making faces at me, taunting me that I haven't read it yet. Grrrrrr.

If I died having written a set of books even half as good as Susan's backlist, I'd die happy and fulfilled. Anyhow, Seeing Red is at the top of the pile.



Next up is Christie's new book, Every Time We Kiss. I loved Every Night I'm Yours, so I'm excited to get to this one.

Sorry about the cover picture from Amazon. It's the only one I could find that was large enough to include.

Christie sets up such interesting, different plots. That's hard to do with the number of historical romances on the shelves. It hasn't been out long. Have y'all read it yet?

There are four in the pile that I know nothing about. Three of them came from the RWA National conference last year and are still in line to be read.

They are as follows:

Dark Needs at Night's Edge by Kresley Cole, This one won't leave me alone because the guy on the cover looks strikingly like Erith from Anna Campbell's Tempt The Devil. Okay, fan me again.

The other two are by Victoria Alexander. I have What A Lady Wants and A Little Bit Wicked. Have y'all read any of these?

Now for my two other categories.

Books I've been avoiding

Tempt The Devil by Anna Campbell. Yes. It's a dark truth. I'm avoiding Anna's latest. But there's a reason.

You just don't trifle with an Anna Campbell book.

It will live with me for weeks. I'll read it two or three times immediately. I won't be able to focus for a while afterward. I know this. So I've been saving it. This week, however, I'm out of class for Spring Break (I've been taking a Spanish class). I have four glorious days with no work and no class. Then I have a long weekend of long hours ahead of me next weekend, but I'm thinking this week might be the time.


What do y'all think? Should I do it? I'm serious. Do you think I can recover for the weekend? I won't be worth a darn while I'm reading, or for a good while afterward. I'll have to be certain there are groceries in the house. Such is the power of a Keeper-Shelf author, and Anna is one.



The other one is a book Anna recommended to me. It's The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss. (Picture me, ducking flying fruit.) Yes, yes, I KNOW. EVERYBODY who loves romance has read this book. It's on more keeper shelves than any classic out there. But somehow I managed to get through years of reading and writing without finding this book. Anna made me get it.


Now I have it. I read the first few pages--into the first two or three scenes on the boat, and I admit that I had to stop. I didn't have the mental stuff to keep reading right then. Even Anna's Kylemore in Claiming the Courtesan didn't have this kind of effect on me. He was dark and haunted and even mean, but the situation was a little different, ya know? And Anna gave us, always, that glimmer of guilt to make us believe Kylemore was not what he appeared. With this hero, I've seen no glimmer as yet.

I have to pick it up again, but the hero is such a jerk, and he's treating her so horribly, that I just can't do it yet. I know, I KNOW...the worse they are, the harder they fall when they're redeemed, and the better we like it when they get their comeupance. I have to do this. I know it. I'll just have to be in a good frame of mind. We're heading out of winter when it's not so gray and depressing. Perhaps.....


Last, but far from least are the re-reads.

The first is what someone in the lair recently called a comfort read. I have a keeper shelf full of them. But a couple of weeks ago I pulled out an old faithful. One I didn't have to work so hard for because I've read it before . But it's still powerful enough to give me a solid fix.


That comfort read, recently has been Ain't She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. This is a forever keeper book for me. I'm not crazy about most of Susan's sports heroes, but this book, I love. I love everything about it.



The other re-read in recent weeks has been Tawny Weber's Risque Business .

I love this heroine. I love her all-too-real human-ness. I love what she learns about herself, outside and mostly, inside. I LOVE that Tawny could do this in a short book like a Blaze. Oh, and I love the steamy parts too.

Tell me, Bandita Sisters and friends, what are you reading right now?

Have you read any of the ones I've been reading?

Are there others you think I should be reading right now? Somthing I should drop everything, go out, buy, and read?

Have you ever avoided a book because you knew it would be too powerful and you weren't ready?

How do you decide whether a book is a keeper or is just passing through. I mean, we can't keep all of them. Can we? If you do keep them all, where do you put them?

Inquiring minds want to know.