Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novels by Laurell K Hamilton

I was given two of this series' books by a woman selling at the Sanford Flea Market.  The second in the series, The Laughing Corpse, and the twelfth in the series, Incubus Dreams.  Currently there are 26 novels in this series.  I read the Laughing corpse,  then tried to read Incubus Dreams.  It was a big mistake.  Sometimes you can read series novels independently and while Laurell Hamilton does enough background with each character during the novel for it to stand on its own, because I read already another book it was really hard to reconcile the two novels with all the differences in the main character's life between the second and twelfth book.  I decided to check them out of the library in order to read them in order and better understand the later books.
This series deals with Anita Blake, she is introduced in the first book, Guilty Pleasures, as an animator, which is someone who can raise the dead, basically Zombies.  The novel is set in St. Louis, but reads more like what you would expect New Orleans to feel like.  Constantly I think I am reading events happening in New Orleans simply because when you read about voodoo, I just automatically go to New Orleans.  In Anita Blake's world, Vampires, Zombies, and Were-anything, have rights.  They are allowed to live, if they don't break any laws.  Vampires even have their own subculture and district inside the city.
The name Guilty Pleasures is an actual night club where people can go to enjoy vampires in a 'safe' way.  Anita Blake offical job is with Animator's Inc. and gets paid to raise zombies for money.  The company is on retainer with the local police department and it is always Anita who helps them decipher supernatural cases.  The first book centers around a series of vampire killings.  As she works with the special task force inside the police department known officially as the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team or RPIT, and unofficially as "the spook squad", she also goes head to head with a master vampire of over a thousand years old in the form of a child who also wants to pay her to figure out the guilty party.  The book itself is constant action, The entire story takes place over just a few days in which too many things happen that the reader can hardly keep up and it leaves you so intrigued with not just the story but also the world and the background that you just want to pick up the next novel.
The second book, the Laughing Corpse, deals with a series of murders in which a family is eviscerated by some kind of supernatural creature and eaten.  The police ask Anita's help in figuring out who is doing it while she fends off a multimillionaire and the master vampire of the city, both wanting a different thing.  The master vampire wants her to become his human servant and the multimillionaire, Harold Gaynor wants her to raise a zombie who is over 300 years old.  Her problem with that is the older the zombie the bigger the death needs to be in order to raise the zombie.  Recent deaths can be raised by killing a chicken or other such animal.  But with a corpse over 300 years old, a human sacrifice is needed.  Anita refuses because her ethics wont allow her to kill innocents but Mr. Gaynor refuses to take 'no' for an answer and continues to raise the payout and when that doesn't work, resorts to other tactics that keeps Anita on her toes through the whole novel.
I am now reading Circus of the Damned which was the name of a club in the first novel that she had been taken to several times to meet the Master Vampire of then, which is not the same as the Master Vampire in the second book.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson`

I have to admit, when I first saw the previews for this movie, it did not strike me as a movie I wanted to see.  But when I saw the book in the local salvation army, I was looking for a new book to read and thought "what the hell".  After reading the series by Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun, nothing would be as hellish to get through.  
The girl with the dragon tattoo (the first book in the Millennium series) is a novel set in Sweden and follows the co owner of Millennium magazine, Mikael Blomkvist, through his after conviction trial against a super corporation known as Wennerström.  He is hired by Henrik Vanger of the Vanger Corporation to look into the disappearance of his grand niece Harriet Vanger under the guise of chronicling Henrik Vanger's biography.  He is later assissted by a twenty-five year old 'hacker' who has legal and mental issues of her own, named Lisbeth Salander.  Together they delve into the mystery to uncover whatever secrets there may be among this large, prominent family.  
At first, the book moved slow for me.  It did bounce back and forth between Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander with a frequency that prevented boredom and long about half way through I ended up staying up all night cause I could not put the book down.  I liked the book, and loved how Lisbeth Salander handled her problem with her new appointed guardian after his sexual mistreatment of her.  If only every woman had the strength to handle their same issues likewise.  
The only issue I had with the novel was that it dragged on the ending after the action was surely over.  The length of the novel after the climax might be due to the fact that it was meant to be one of a series and there needed to be some extra padding between novels.  I am intrigued to read the next in the series but since I don't pay full price for any book (with the exception of Harry Potter 7, the Deathly Hallows) it will have to wait until I find the second book in a book shop.  
The next book for me now is Stephen King's Under the Dome.  Its a large print edition I found at the salvation army also and it feels like a brick in my hands!  But I am starting on it next.  Let you know how it goes.  

Keep of Fire (The Last Rune, Book 2) Mark Anthony

Just finished the second book in the "Last Rune" series by Mark Anthony.  I accidentally came across this series looking at Piers Anthony novels.  Mark Anthony's first book of this series is called "Beyond the Pale".  

This is an interesting series about a world called Eldh and it follows its two main characters, Grace Beckett and Travis Wilder, both of Earth.  In the first book they both got sucked into Eldh mysteriously, separately, by a strange character called Brother Cy.  Travis took up with two individuals, Falken Blackhand and Melia, and traveled with them as they searched for evidence that the "Pale King" was once again coming to power.
Travis had got sucked in after running for his life from shinning beings who killed his friend "Jack Greystone".  Jack had giving Travis a box and told him to run and then Jack's antique shop exploded.  Running for his life he came across Brother Cy and his 'circus' band which reminds you more of a revival church.  Brother Cy gave Travis half a strange silver coin and Travis walked through a billboard into Eldh.  

Grace was a doctor and accidently found herself in the path of a murderous undead man with an iron heart.  She was rescued from the jail house by a mysterious stranger.  He gave Grace his car and she fled, and finding herself outside Travis' hometown and Brother Cy, who gave her her own half silver coin.  She walked through a door and found herself in Eldh in the middle of a snow field.  A knight, Durge, rescued her and took her to the city where the king took her for nobility and given her every comfort a noble deserves.  

Travis and his group traveled to the same city where Grace found herself and together they uncovered the secrets of the "iron hearts" and resealed the gate that held the Pale King in stasis for centuries.  

In the second book, "Keep of Fire", Travis was led back to Eldh from Earth, having went back home at the end of the first book.  Brother Cy making another appearance as a mysterious grave keeper at the cemetery.  Grace, having remained on Eldh, had a strange vision of Travis in trouble and sought out to rescue him.  Grace and a group of her friends traveled across the country and ran into several of the "burning ones" who it was later learned was in search of 'the stone of fire'.  The first book dealing with the 'stone of twilight' which was in the box Travis' friend Jack gave him.  They rescued Travis just as he was about to burn as a heretic and with Falken and Melia again, all traveled in search of the 'stone of fire'.  They learned a Necromancer was still alive and had the stone and summoned the 'burning ones' to seek out the key to the stone so this Necromancer might return to his former God glory but with more power.  

A few points of these books were a bit confusing, Mark Anthony is a good writer.  Very imaginative, and knows how to hold onto secrets.  His relationships between characters are weak and more often than not, linked in sorrow.  However, the story is a good one and worth reading just for the imagination.  It was very fast paced and I didn't skip over too many of the descriptive paragraphs as I am most inclined to do while reading.  Eldh is a beautiful world and his majickal creatures are very interesting.