Three annual additions to favorite series made this week’s NYTimes “Paperback Mass Market Bestseller List” (7-6-08). They seem like holiday catch-up conversations with members of the family — even when I gripe about too little adventure, too many words, so-so location, or some gross misbehavior, as I have done elsewhere in these posts about other series‘ latest. But doesn’t that just affirm their family membership?
Last Sunday’s finest include Daniel Silva (the Israeli art restorer/spy), Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum), Clive Cussler (Dirk Pitt), and Catherine Coulter (the FBI couple with the son and the computer software).
Fig. #36. Old (well, long-time) friends — people, books, and coffee — need a porch overlooking the harbor to have it all together.
I don’t usually include Jude Deveraux as a favorite, but this time there is a Maine connection, and Douglas Child and Lee Preston have a new one which may — as theirs have in the past — have a connection to Maine either because the action took place off the coast or the forensic work was done at the Museum of Natural History, of which Albert Bickmore, who lived two doors down from Roseledge Books, was once director. Kathy Reichs’ latest is set in Acadian Canada, which I translate as Nova Scotia, the home of grandparents, greats, and sometimes great-greats, of several Tenants Harbor friends, so yet another Maine connection. I’ll get them all for the bookstore and if they don’t sell, I’ll enjoy nights with old friends.
More specifically, the current series’ titles are:
Silva, Daniel. The Secret Servant
Evanovich, Janet. Lean Mean Thirteen
Cussler, Clive. The Navigator
Coulter, Catherine. Double Take
Deveraux, Jude. Return to Summerhouse
Preston, Douglas and Lincoln Child. The Wheel of Darkness
Reichs, Kathy. Bones to Ashes
Some, e.g. Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Elizabeth Lowell, were earlier on the bestseller list, but that was then. The webcam is now, though.