At CMLE Headquarters, we love books!

This is likely the most popular and most unifying statement you can possibly make when chatting with library people – but it’s true! On our weekly podcast, Linking Our Libraries, we always have a book segment so we can share some of the books we read. This is always popular with our listeners, so we are expanding that into other formats including a second podcast, Books and Beverages, coming out this fall. And we are building this series of Book Suggestions. You can submit books that you like! Just write it up a few reasons you liked a book and send it in to us; we will edit and add links – and we can all enjoy it!

(Books below have links to Amazon; if you follow them and buy stuff from Amazon, Jeff Bezos and his crew will donate a small percentage of your sale to CMLE! It can really help us out, so thank you! And if you want to use our Amazon link anytime you shop, it helps us out. Check it out here for all the info!)

I always like to read books in a series – after I’ve invested a book’s worth of energy to learn people’s names and stories, I want to see what happens next!  This week I’m finishing a series that is way too short, from my perspective: only two books. But I’m enjoying them both, and if urban fantasy sounds interesting to you (books set in our world today, but with magic, and supernatural creatures), you might also like them. The series is called the Cheshire Red Reports, by Cherie Priest.

I listened to both in audio-book format, and if you have a choice I’d recommend that because the reader is really good. She helps to bring out different aspects of the characters and the story-line – a great feature of audio books!

(I have no patience with the idea that format is the defining characteristic of a book, and that only one format is “really” reading. Content is what matters!! We are fortunate enough to have paper books, e-books, and audio books available to all of us – either to buy or to check out of a library. Living in this age of accessible information is wonderful!)

The first book was called Bloodshot. You are rarely going to come across a series with a main character who is a thief (and vampire), kids living in an abandoned warehouse, and a ex-SEAL drag queen – but this book pulls it all off! “Raylene Pendle (AKA Cheshire Red), a vampire and world-renowned thief, doesn’t usually hang with her own kind. She’s too busy stealing priceless art and rare jewels. But when the infuriatingly charming Ian Stott asks for help, Raylene finds him impossible to resist—even though Ian doesn’t want precious artifacts. He wants her to retrieve missing government files—documents that deal with the secret biological experiments that left Ian blind. What Raylene doesn’t bargain for is a case that takes her from the wilds of Minneapolis to the mean streets of Atlanta. And with a psychotic, power-hungry scientist on her trail, a kick-ass drag queen on her side, and Men in Black popping up at the most inconvenient moments, the case proves to be one hell of a ride.”

That one was so good, I had to head right back to Audible.com to buy the next one: Hellbent. “Vampire thief Raylene Pendle doesn’t need more complications in her life. Her Seattle home is already overrun by a band of misfits, including Ian Stott, a blind vampire, and Adrian deJesus, an ex-Navy SEAL/drag queen. But Raylene still can’t resist an old pal’s request: seek out and steal a bizarre set of artifacts. Also on the hunt is a brilliant but certifiably crazy sorceress determined to stomp anyone who gets in her way. But Raylene’s biggest problem is that the death of Ian’s vaunted patriarch appears to have made him the next target of some blood-sucking sociopaths.  Now Raylene must snatch up the potent relics, solve a murder, and keep Ian safe—all while fending off a psychotic sorceress. But at least she won’t be alone. A girl could do a lot worse for a partner than an ass-kicking drag queen—right?”