weekend in paris - robyn sisman

light read, fun chick lit.... molly perceives herself as a goody goody, boring thing.. but after being taken for a ride at her new job, which she is overqualified for, resigns impromptu, forgoing the working trip to paris she was booked for.... facing a boring weekend at home, she hops over to paris via d eurostar before her guts abandon her... only to end up in a sad little hotel all alone, in a single room, and gets settled in for the night.

surprise surprise.... a banging on the door leads her to a friendly aussie girl, who takes her out to town. molly parties, meets up a french guy, even gets to see her ex-employer humiliated... and at the end of it, develops some self confidence and a new outlook of herself, and life... at the end of the weekend. altogether a fun, entertaining book, where you know there are no sad endings.

cold flat junction - martha grimes

Was expecting something more after reading the lamorna wink, unfortunately, the first 40 pages or so almost made me want to put down the book. Luckily I didn’t, as it speeds up and draws you in slowly towards the middle onwards.

A philosophical twelve year old, left alone to tend to the family business one summer, finds herself embroiled in solving a current day murder, and unlike the local police, she solves a 40 yr old murder concerning the supposed accidental drowning of another twelve yr old girl, and manages to intertwine the two, and draw the necessary links.

The way the story is told goes into the details of emma’s life, her make do fantasies, her breakfast-lunch-dinner routine, friendships with the sheriff, waitress, poachers… all the local characters in the small town where she is. A small town, slow paced setting, with the family connections, murder mystery thrown in.

hope's highway - dorothy garlock

Road 66- highway to California, back in the 1920’s… attracted loads of attention. Everybody wanted to find gold, money, fame. Others just wanted another chance, a better life.
3 different families undertake on this journey, with trucks, caravans… camping along the way. Pretty, serious, neglected Margie, going to Hollywood to find fame, which offered her a way out of nowhere, meets brady, the tall dark handsome chap… who’s just witnessed his brother blowing his brains out after killing his wife and her lover. Sparks fly…despite both having sworn off each other for the sake of their own lives and goals.

There's rusty, the blind kid, who sings beautifully, the sister and brother, mona and jody, having to tolerate their father marrying a ‘loose’ charactered woman after their mom passes away, margies horrible father who does nothing to acknowledge her, only put her down.

Interesting story about how they mix and match up to each other on the trip, and of course, romance as well.

the rainmaker - john grisham

Grisham sticks to his lawyer good guy vs. bad guy, as usual, in this book which is about Rudy Baylor, a final year law student, who finds himself unwittingly jobless after graduation, his first job terminated at the very last moment by a big company that is downsizing.

At this point in time, there is an absolute glut of new lawyers on the street… and rudy is broke, after spending years of putting himself through law school, through waiting and bartending and loans.

Desperate, circumstances force him to work for his bartenders mafia like partner, as no other company will take him. He is resigned to literally, ‘ambulance chasing’, and going after clients, in the hope of a few dollars here and there. Yet, he sticks to two cases he has been attached to since the days of law school when they were assigned to do community projects for free.

One involves a desperately ill, terminal young man with leukaemia, denied the proper bone marrow transplant by his shoddy insurance company, on various grounds, who eventually succumbs to his disease. Rudy fights for his injustice, fighting a famous big lawyer firm in the case, that his clients life could have been saved, but was not, by the insurance company. This minute by minute account of the research, court proceedings and verdict, is totally gripping.

A side story is rudy’s love life. A typical john grisham book, enjoyable every single moment. My second time reading it actually.

the lamorna wink - martha grimes

Nice to come across this type of murder mystery spersed with a dose of good ole real life and humour… kind of like Agatha chrstie meets P.G. Wodehouse?

A great read, revolving mostly around the character of Melrose plant, a noble masquerading as a commoner, and the mystery surrounding the deaths in the family whose house he is currently renting by the seaside. The kids were found drowned 4 years ago, with no signs of a struggle. Melrose finds himself drawn to the local villagefolk, and in the process, into the current day mysteries surrounding a murder and a disappearance.

Of course, Melrose alone is not the hero. We follow his friends macalvie, and richard jury, of the police, as together they find out how the current murders are related to the drowning of the kids 4 years ago, horrifically. It draws you into the village folks daily lives and happenings while solving the murders.

the street lawyer - john grisham

32 year old successful lawyer, high up in the ranks, finds himself investigating the hostage situation he finds himself in at work one day, and in the process, uncovers an important file which proves his firm was engaging in fraudulent activity. As a result, he leaves the firm and joins a street lawyer group… a bunch of decent lawyers trying to help the poor, the homeless, the addicts… things every first year lawyer dreams about till the offer of money, money money, corrupts most of them and they work in a paperland of documents for big firms.
Following up on a particular family he met at a soup shelter, he finds they too, were a victim of fraud of his former firm… which engages his gears in action… and sees him the target of the police, his former colleagues.. till he gets to court and gets a decent judge to see things his way. Happy ending too.

a very gothic christmas - christina feehan & melanie george

I’m not one for short stories, but since I was bored, and hey, it was x’mas a month ago… what the hey. There are 2 stories in this book. The first was rather believable, about a young lady cum nanny, bringing her 2 charges, 13 year old twins, back to the island where they grew up as kids to meet their father, who has not seen them in years, after a horrific incident leaving him disfigured and the twins mother dead. Yes, romance is in the air… with some Christmas season cheer and magic in the air…. You guess who ends up with who. Predictable, but with interesting smaller complots thrown in.
The second, shorter story, is way too much of a cliché… beautiful girl finds herself in a haunted Scottish castle, and finds herself face to face with its handsome lord of 500 years ago… through some time travel. Facing battles and challenges… true love prevails. Yikes.

the inheritance of loss - kiran desai

I thought this would be an interesting, exciting book, all about life in Calcutta, India, and on and on, in the usual genre of entertaining Indian-english books. Boy was I in for a surprise! A totally serious, and at times, rather depressing ( check out the name! ) book, ehm, it Did win the booker prize! Well its about an orphaned girl, growing up with home tutoring, in a godforsaken part of India, close to the Nepalese border, with her retired judge grandfather, and his cook for company.
More than that, it touches on times of strife and war, as the Nepalese gurkhas, more of outlaws, take over and impose curfews and laws. Not just the tale of India – Nepal, or the 16 year old girls tale, it is also about the cooks sons story, as, uneducated, he steps off to America, only to become a menial worker, turning from job to job, as an illegal, his struggle for survival there, and his journey back to India.

one for my baby - tony parsons

Interesting enough synopsis on the cover of this book… which is why i picked it up. Well, good enough a read. Its about a white guy, alfie, just a normal English language teacher, who goes out to the east, to hong kong, just before its surrendered to the Chinese, as he is sick and fed up of life as it is back in London, teaching students who don’t appreciate it or him.
Life in hong kong is rather lonely, but different, till he meets the woman of his dreams, whom he marries, only to have her die on him a year later in a horrific diving accident. Her love for diving makes alfie learn how to swim properly and dive with her, and its on one of those diving trips they make, that is fated.
After being treated for decompression sickness, and then, leaving hong kong, as it has nothing to offer him anymore, alfie moves back in with his parents. He eventually starts teaching English as a second language at an international school. He ends up having a series of affairs with a range of students, much to the disapproval of the school. He only stops when he finds his last girlfriend pregnant, and going for an abortion.
Evil as he may seem now, he actually does try to be a better person, making friends with expats, immigrants, among them an older man from hongkong, who has a Chinese restaurant that he runs with his family. This older man, george, attempts to teach him a thing or two about life, through tai chi.
We see alfie learning many things in life, making mistakes as he goes along, as most of us do. His parents get divorced meanwhile, his grandmother dies…. The one student that he does not want to teach in the end becomes his next betrothed… and life goes back to normal, as he learns to accept change and live with it.
An engrossing book, as it is the story of life that could happen to any of us.

can you keep a secret? - sophie kinsella

Having read this before, it was a totally enjoyable 2nd read. About emma, nervous on a flight, spills all, and I mean ALL, her secrets, including how she lied to her boyfriend about her clothes size, that she loves jazz when she hates it, how she gets back at her colleagues, how she faked her CV, how she hates her perfect cousin who sucks up to her parents, about her g string and her g spot (!) to a complete stranger sitting next to her on the flight, only to go to work the next day, and find that the said stranger is actually the top most boss, just come in from America to the uk, to check on the local scene of things… imagine her mortification!
Well, they end up going out with each other, only emma gets humiliated on national tv, as jack harper, her boss, doing a tv interview about himself and perhaps the launch of a new womans product, accidentally ( seemingly ) divulges all of emma’s secrets, all while talking about the target aim of his new womans product. In truth, he is in love with her and just couldn’t help talking all about her!
Emma, feeling totally used, has to face life as usual after that… no small thing! Refusing to talk to jack, she is eventually forced to, and turns out the day is saved in the end, after all…. :) a happy ending after all.

the vulture fund - steohen frey

Sort of a john grisham wannabe, but as grisham can make most of us non lawyers understand whats going on despite the jargon, this book, more about finance and banking and cheating going on at the top level, left me reading slowly in a few places at the beginning, as I was trying to piece it together and understand it.
Well after that, it was exciting enough a read, as a young partner in a wall street firm finds himself initially part of a high risk investment fund, then finds himself part of a big deceipt and his life in danger.
With help from a few different sources, namely, the beautiful young girl just out of her mba, his best friend from his own growing up days in the orphanage who is now part of the secret service, and most of all, the businesswoman he works with whom he finds is part of the betrayal, the fraud is uncovered, and the day is saved. Enjoyable.

the namesake - jhumpa lahiri

About a boy called gogol. What a name, yeah. His dad, born and brought up in Calcutta, chooses it as a pet name, based on his favourite Russian author. Also, that he was once near death… and when he was saved he was with a copy of nikolai gogol’s book. Significant for him in many ways, and as such, when he and his new bride, fresh out of India, are all alone in America, with no elders to help in the naming, gogol comes up.
The kid will always hate the name, and even changes it, growing up in America. He only comes to appreciate it much later, after his father dies.
Its not just about a name, its about his life, growing up in America, the frequent trips back to visit nameless cousins and relatives in Calcutta… being an American of Indian descent. Not so much a typical Indian book, it is written from all aspects, from gogol’s dad’s viewpoint, ashoke, a brilliant professor, his wife, moushoomi, their daughter, sonali, and their relationships, and gogol’s coming to terms with life.