Nevada Barr

"13 1/2" by Nevada Barr
recounts the story of Dylan, an 11-year-old boy convicted in 1971 of murdering his family with a hatchet, sparing only his older brother Rich, who was severely injured. He is dubbed "Butcher Boy." Polly, fleeing an unimaginably abusive home at 15, makes her way to New Orleans. As an adult, she encounters Marshall Marchand and falls in love with him, as do her two daughters. However, she soon discovers that Danny, Marshall's brother, appears to be overly controlling. Appearances can be deceiving.… (altro)

Temporarily working as a presuppression firefighter on Cumberland Island, GA, for three weeks, Anna was ready to soak up the sun, breathe the fresh ocean air, and witness the hatching of the endangered baby loggerhead turtles while raking in some much-needed overtime pay. But, after a fatal plane crash on the island, she finds herself investigating a possible murder as an NPS law enforcement officer. Surrounding her is another cast of quirky, semi-strange co-workers who seem to flock to the National Park Ranger positions. The plot in this fifth book in the series—laced with magnificent descriptions of the local wildlife and landscape—is captivating and suspenseful as Anna gets beat up, attacked by ticks and chiggers, then nearly killed while trying to bring down a killer. Good to the last page.… (altro)

Still recovering from the nightmare at Isle Royale National Park, Anna is on leave and seeing a psychiatrist. She and her husband go on a float trip down the Rio Grande at Big Bend National Park with a guide and some college students. They find a pregnant woman caught in some vegetation, and while they are unable to save the woman, Anna performs an emergency C-section with her husband's pocket knife. They encounter a starving cow, and one of the college students insists they must rescue the cow. The guide is shot, and the person doing the shooting seems to be targeting their party when a second member is shot. With the river rising and the loss of their raft, they must try to climb (with a baby in arms), but it puts them in danger. They don't know who they can and cannot trust. The book was written sometime after 9/11 made it more difficult for Mexicans to enter the United States. Barbara Rosenblat does a good job narrating the story.… (altro)

Not one of her best, but since I was at Mesa Verde last month, I could envision the places she was describing.KIRKUS REVIEWAs historians and contractors slug it out over replacing the ancient waterlines in Mesa Verde National Park, noncombatant park ranger Anna Pigeon battles a demon of her own: her growing attraction to Stacy Meyers, a law-enforcement temp unhappily married (what did he and Rose Meyers ever see in each other, anyway?) and burdened with a special-needs stepchild. Soon enough, though, there are more immediate problems: contractor Ted Greeley's hiring of Tom Silva, estranged husband of park superintendent's secretary Patsy Silva, who immediately feels she's being harassed by her obsessive ex; a midnight sabotage attempt on Greeley's excavation equipment; a nip-and-tuck airlift of an asthmatic girl who collapses in the Cliff Palace; Stacy's strangely dissociated behavior during the rescue; and finally the eerie discovery of Stacy's corpse, neatly laid out on the fire-pit floor of the Cliff Palace without a mark to indicate how he died. Whodunit, and why, and how? Not as intense or as ingenious as A Superior Death (1994), and this time Anna's struggles with alcoholism and the continuing grief of widowhood eclipse the more routine intrigues of the plot. But the supporting characters have stubborn lives of their own -- you never get the sense that they've spent their whole lives waiting to be suspects in a murder case -- and Barr's sense of place is as wondrous as ever.… (altro)