The Running Bibliophile

The Train by Diane Hoh opens with Hannah, Kerry, Mack, and Lewis, along with other students from Parker High School, boarding a train in Chicago for a cross country school trip to San Francisco. Once on the train, they find out a deceased student from their school was being transported back to his parents, and the friends start admitting to how horribly they had treated Frog before he died. Then, horrible things started happening to them on the train, and it seems like Frog is out for revenge. Rereading this book as an adult and having read most of Agatha Christie's books, The Train loosely reminded me of Murder on the Orient Express but in reverse. This book also has a very Stephen King vibe to it but is kid friendly. With that being said, I still am a bit jumpy from reading it as an adult. This is a book that I originally read when I was either a tween or a teen. Usually when I reread books from my childhood, I generally remember what happens as I work my way through the book....

Recently, I decided to reread The Spellmans Strike Again (The Spellmans, #4) by Lisa Lutz, and it was just as good as I remembered it to be.  Part mystery, part humor, it sucked me in from the get go.  This particular book series is so unlike any other books I've read that I've often wondered how Lisa Lutz came up with the idea for the series.  One day I'll eventually see if I can find out the answer to my musings.   The character development and imagery is so well done that as I read The Spellmans Strike Again , it was like watching a movie in my mind.  I would love for the series to be developed into a movie or television show, but as far as I know, there is no plan for that happening.  I've come to love every character in the series . . . okay, maybe not Harkey, but you get the picture.  They are so endearing, even the ones that have annoying personalities. There isn't one bad thing I can say about this book or any of the others in the series....

Much to my surprise, I won a copy of Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz on a First Reads Giveaway on Goodreads.com in return for an honest review. It was one of the first books I ever won on the site. Super excited that I'd won this book, I picked up the first book in the series The Spellman Files off of my bookshelf so that I could read it before I got the book I won in the mail from the publisher. (Typically, I won't read a book in a series unless I have read all the ones that came before it.) It was kismet that I had found the first book in the series at Barnes & Noble in the bargin bin! Curse of the Spellmans takes place in San Francisco, California and is about a family of private investigators. In this installment, Izzy Spellman has been arrested four times in three months and has to be bailed out of jail by Morty, her aging lawyer because her parents (and managers) refuse to do so. While Izzy is busy surveying her next door neighbor, her sister Rae is bus...