They Found Him Dead; Where There's Smoke; Greater Journey; Dead Over Heels; The Lying Game; Never Have I Ever

So I'm on a bit of a Georgette Heyer kick. There are worst things to read, that's for sure :) "They Found Him Dead" is one of her mysteries. First, Silas Kane turns up dead, and it looks like a simple accident. But after his heir is murdered and threats against the next heir are coming fast and furious, the police must conclude that someone is after the money. I actually had this one figured out before the ending, so yay me!!
"Where There's Smoke" by William B. Davis was a bit of a disappointment. Davis played the Cigarette Smoking Man on my all time favorite show "The X-Files". I liked the CSM character, too (of course, I really watched just for David Duchovney, yummy! But I digress). First off, he spent the first 2/3 of the book discussing Canadian and British theater in the 50s and 60s, which he was an important part of. He kept dropping all these names, talking about how awesome they are, and I have no clue who any of them are. So, that was boring. Then, once he *finally* gets to the "X-Files", all he does is trash everyone! He didn't like David or Gillian, thought they were unprofessional, and thought Chris Carter was a twit. He was embarrassed to be on a show that seemingly promoted paranormal beliefs over cold, hard science. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! Oh well, it did put me in the mood to rewatch some of my favorite episodes!
"The Greater Journey" by David McCullough was an interesting look at how many Americans traveled to Paris in the 1800s to study art, medicine, music, and more, and how living and working abroad changed their ways of thinking. I was hoping he would get up to the point where Faulkner was living there, but alas he didn't. It was still interesting.
"Dead Over Heels" by Charlaine Harris is the fourth book in her Aurora Teagarden series. It wasn't quite as bad as the third one. Aurora is married now, and has a bodyguard because her husband is a bit shady. Her old nemesis, detective Jack Burns, is killed and his dead body is dropped out of a plane onto her backyard, setting off a chain of events that were highly improbable but didn't make me vomit in disgust.
And finally, a new series by Sara Shepard, author of the fabulous "Pretty Little Liars" series. I really do enjoy her books, they're much better than you'd think. I like the Lying Game series better than PLL already, because the girls, while still well off and spoiled, don't seem quite as obsessed as the girls in PLL. They don't brand name drop quite as much. In the first book we meet Emma Paxton through the eyes of a ghost, Sutton. Poor Sutton has no idea who she is or why she's suddenly attached to Emma, but we're all about to find out (Emma cannot see her, by the way). Emma is a foster care kid, about to turn 18, living in Nevada. Her foster brother, a real sleazeball, gets her in trouble with his mom, who asks her to leave after her birthday. Emma discovers a girl online in a weird snuff video that looks exactly like her, and wonders if they're related. She emails, and the girl responds that she was adopted, so she and Emma are probably sisters. She invites Emma to come out to Arizona, so, with nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to, Emma goes out to Arizona where she quickly discovers that the girl in the film is her twin sister, Sutton, who was murdered the day before Emma contacted her. Whoever responded must have had something to do with Sutton's murder and is using Emma to keep the crime covered up. With no other choice, Emma assumes Sutton's identity, and tries to fit in with her over the top friends, Charlotte and Madeline, and her sister, Laurel, who are all part of an exclusive club known as the Lying Game. They play pranks on each other that sometimes go way too far. Emma wonders if one of them might be responsible for Sutton's murder. With misdirection and suspicion coming right and left, it's impossible to know who might be guilty and who might be innocent, but it definitely looks like Emma is in danger.
In the second book "Never Have I Ever", Emma determines that none of the girls in the Lying Game were responsible for Sutton's murder, much to her (and ghost Sutton's) relief. However, two hangers on to the Lying Game, the Twitter Twins, Lili and Gaby, seem to be likely suspects after Emma finds out about the horrible pranks Sutton had pulled on them. By the end of the book, however, it looks like the twins are cleared and it might be someone else. Perhaps the return of the mysterious Thayer? All I know is, I can't wait until February for the third installment!!

Envious Casca; Three Bedrooms, One Corpse; Double Dexter

Another Georgette Heyer book, this one a locked room mystery "Envious Casca". It was very entertaining, and I actually had the murderer figured out but then decided no, it couldn't be and changed my mind. Uncle Joe has invited all the family out to his older brother Nathaniel's estate, Lexham Manor, for the Christmas holiday. Nathaniel is a crochetedy old fellow who doesn't really care for any of his family, including his brother Joe. When he turns up dead, stabbed in the back, in his room that was locked on the inside, the question isn't really so much who did it, since everyone had a motive, but rather how they accomplished the feat. The only other locked room mystery I remember reading is a Sherlock Holmes story, "The Speckled Band". I'm sure there have been others, I just don't remember. It was very neatly done, I enjoyed it.
The third book in Charlaine Harris' Aurora Teagarden mysteries "Three Bedrooms, One Corpse" was sadly disappointing to me. I thought Harris had a great heroine going with Aurora: she was a spunky single librarian who loved to read about true crime. In the last book, Harris had Aurora inherit a large fortune, so Aurora quit her job and decided to see if she liked working in real estate, like her mother. Lame. Everyone knows librarians are much more fun than Realtors :) Anyway, while showing a house to a wealthy man, they find a corpse in one of the bedrooms and the hunt is on. And, much to my chagrin, Aurora falls for the older wealthy gentleman and they begin a passionate affair that ends with him proposing at the end of the book with an enormous diamond. Well, that's realistic.
Jeff Lindsay's latest Dexter story "Double Dexter", was great fun. It's just hard sometimes to separate the books from the show, and they're very different, so it was a bit jarring to read about Rita still being alive. But I'm glad she is, I like the Rita in the books better than the Rita on the show. So Dexter is out taking care of business one night when someone spies him at work. Dexter is determined to find out who saw him and take care of him before problems arise, but unfortunately his nemesis always seems to be one step ahead of him and is threatening to expose him, and he has the proof to do so. Dexter enlists his brother Brian's help, but Brian FUBARs the whole thing up and in the end Dexter takes care of it himself with some help from Astor.