The Burnt House by Faye Kellerman

I'm a fan of both Faye Kellerman and her husband, novelist Jonathon Kellerman. I found him first and then started reading Faye Kellerman's novels. I have to admit I also love the idea of a husband and wife team of writers.

The Burnt House was as wonderful as Faye Kellerman's earlier novels. I love the mix of a bit of family story combined with a top notch police story.

A commuter plan leaving Los Angeles crashes into an apartment building and kills everyone aboard. When the bodies are recovered, there is no sign of one airline employee who was listed as being on board. There is however, another unidentified body. That of a young woman killed many years before the crash.

From New Mexico to San Jose to Los Angeles, the detectives chase the story and try to tie things together. Highly recommended if you like whodunits.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

My sister and my mom loved this book so how could I help giving it a read? It was delightful! I'm not religious at all and still enjoyed it because most of what she "learned" to me could be shared by someone without a religious slant.

After a nasty divorce and a tumultous love affair, Gilbert decides to take a year off, spending 4 months in Italy (Eat), four months in an ashram in India (Pray), and four months on Bali connecting with a medicine man she'd met a few years earlier and she ends up falling in love (not with the medicine man) (Love).

She writes very easily, that is it is read very easily. I'm sure it took effort to write! And while it reads easy, I found myself thinking of stuff she'd written throughout the day. I love books like that.

Anyway, a very good book for women I think. I'd hope it might offer the same for men but who am I to say?

Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

I've been on a Jodi Picoult binge lately. I had really liked her novels up until I read The Tenth Circle. So I stopped reading them for a while. But a neighbor loaned me Nineteen Minutes and I went from there to Change of Heart: A Novel, and have Second Glance: A Novel sitting on my coffee table waiting for me.

Change of Heart is disturbingly good. By that, I mean it "disturbs" your thoughts, makes you question things, makes you think--all while keeping you quite entertained by the sheer story.

Shay Bourne was sentenced to death for the murder of a young girl and policeman stepfather. Now as his last appeal is denied, he wants to give his heart to the young victim's half sister, born after the murder and now 12. Claire was born with a defective heart and it is failing. Her time window to get a heart transplant is narrowing rapidly.

A Catholic priest who served on the initial jury acts as Shay's spiritual advisor (although who advises whom most is part of the story). An ACLU lawyer takes up Shay's cause, arguing that he should be allowed to be executed in a manner that lets his heart be useful. (Lethal injection stops the heart so hanging is the method of choice.)

Shay is a hard person to like on the surface and has a hard time communicating in a straightforward manner sometimes. He's often spouts seemingly meaningless random phrases...but are they really meaningless? And where do they come from?

And how did that water get turned to wine on death row when Shay first arrived?

Definitely a 5 star novel. Don't start it unless you have some time to devote, as you'll have a hard time putting it down.