ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT EERIE (THE MISADVENTURES OF EDGAR & ALLAN POE #2) - Gordon McAlpine

The sequel to McAlpine's The Tell-Tale Start finds the single-minded twins, Edgar and Allan Poe (the great-great-great-great grandnephews of the legendary writer) in New Orleans, where they find themselves with roles in a film about their famous ancestor.  With their evil nemesis, Professor Perry, in hiding from the law, the boys think all is well ... but don't count on the mad professor's daughter, posing as a crew member, with her own plans for the dynamic duo.  With the help of their clever cat Roderick, as well as a set of twin girls - Em and Milly Dickinson, descendants of the famous poet who are as quirky in their own right as the Poe boys - Edgar and Allan aid a pair of ghosts, hunt for buried treasure, and go undercover at a cheesy, low-budget Wizard of Oz theme park in order to escape the clutches of evil - in a smart, funny, nicely-done (and simply, beautifully illustrated by Sam Zuppardi) sequel very nearly as good as the original.  ****

SHAKESPEARE'S LANDLORD - Charlaine Harris

Though a "True Blood" fan, this was my first time reading Charlaine Harris, and (admittedly) I probably started here because the premise of this series seemed so intriguing.  Lily Bard is a "lone wolf" - a single woman of about thirty who lives by and keeps to herself in her newly-adopted town of Shakespeare, Arkansas.  She cleans houses for a living, is quiet and makes no friends ... and one late night on the way home, spots a furtive figure sneaking into a park across the street from her building, pushing the large trash can she keeps under her carport.  As she watches, the unidentifiable figure dumps something in a huge trash bag there, then returns the can empty - and when Lily checks out the bag, she finds the body of her former landlord from next door.  As Lily starts poking around, we not only learn about her neighbors and the tenants of the murdered man's building, but also the horrifying reason behind why Lily keeps to herself, trusts no one, and is obsessed with learning self-defense.  While by no means a typical one-dimenstional "cozy" mystery (in fact, most of the negative reviews you will read of this title tend to be from people who thought it was, and take exception with both author and Lily with what amounts to the reader's errror), Harris has instead crafted both a story and especially heroine/detective who, though rather solemn, comes off strong, complex and wholly three-dimensional on the page.  ****1/2

THE STRANGER - Harlan Coben

Over the years I'd heard so many great things about thriller writer Harlan Coben, yet The Stranger was my first try at reading him.  The novel opens in upper-middle class New Jersey, where attorney Adam Price leads an ideal life with his daughter Corinne and their two sons ... until a man - a stranger - approaches Adam in the local American Legion, revealing a dark secret Corinne has supposedly been keeping from her husband; a secret that hangs obsessively over Adam like a noose and will prove to change his life forever.  As Adam deals with his dilemma, we learn Adam isn't the stranger's only victim, and when Corinne disappears and Adam starts snooping around, the bodies begin to pile up and a more sinister meaning behind all that's going on slowly emerges.  An okay premise, potentially, but I was truly disappointed in The Stranger.  Adam Price, as the lead, isn't fleshed out very well as a character - to the point I found myself unable to emotionally connect with him on any more than a superficial level - and the plotting felt equally thin, as well as unrealistic (also beware of plot-holes!).  Even the ending, which I hoped would be a high-octane nail-biter, instead came off rushed and poorly written.  I'd like to try Coben again, for sure ... am just sadly disappointed this was the one I started with.   **

Note: I received a free ARC of this title via NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.