Kindle Reads: Bookmarks Magazine's Best Books of 2010 (Part 5)

In its November/December 2010 issue, Bookmarks looks back at 50 staff favorites from among the hundreds of books reviewed in the magazine in 2010.

Kindle readers will be pleased to learn that 48 of the 50 titles in Bookmarks best books list are available in Kindle editions. Here's a rundown of all forty-eight. Given the length of the list, I've divided this post into multiple consecutive parts.

Crime Fiction

13 1/2, by Nevada Barr. Vanguard Press, 2009. Print Length: 320 p. Kindle edition $5.09. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In 1971, the state of Minnesota was rocked by the “Butcher Boy” incident, as coverage of a family brutally murdered by one of their own swept across newspapers and television screens nationwide. Now, in present-day New Orleans, Polly Deschamps finds herself at yet another lonely crossroads in her life. No stranger to tragedy, Polly was a runaway at the age of fifteen, escaping a nightmarish Mississippi childhood. Lonely, that is, until she encounters architect Marshall Marchand. Polly is immediately smitten. She finds him attractive, charming, and intelligent. Marshall, a lifelong bachelor, spends most of his time with his brother Danny. When Polly’s two young daughters from her previous marriage are likewise taken with Marshall, she marries him. However, as Polly begins to settle into her new life, she becomes uneasy about her husband’s increasing dark moods...could Marshall and his eccentric brother be keeping a dark secret from Polly, one that will shatter the happiness she has forever prayed for?" - Amazon.

The Executor, by Jesse Kellerman. Putnam, 2010. Print Length: 352 p. Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Joseph Geist sees himself as a man of grand ideas. He clothes are tattered. He owns only a few books and a half bust of Nietzsche. But after eight years of study and professing, he’s bounced from Harvard’s Ph.D. program in philosophy, and a disagreement with his lover gets him bounced from her apartment. Broke and virtually homeless, he answers an ad in the Crimson for a 'Conversationalist.' Six weeks after beginning his duties, Joseph is invited to move into the grand Victorian home of Alma, his brilliant, witty, and cultured employer-interlocutor. Joseph develops a deep respect and affection for the septuagenarian and, after much philosophical rumination, concludes that he’s never been happier. But his idyll soon becomes a nightmare..." - Thomas Gaughan for Booklist.

The Information Officer, by Mark Mills. Random House, 2010. Print Length: 304 p. Kindle edition $13.75. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Summer 1942: Malta, a small windswept island in the Mediterranean, has become the most bombed patch of earth on the planet, worse even than London during the Blitz. The Maltese, a fiercely independent people, withstand the relentless Axis air raids. Max Chadwick is the British officer charged with manipulating the news on Malta to bolster the population's fragile esprit de corps. This is all, besides a few broken-down fighter planes, that stands in the face of Nazi occupation and perhaps even victory - for Malta is the stepping-stone the Germans need between Europe and North Africa. When Max learns of the brutal murder of a young island woman - along with evidence that the crime was committed by a British officer - he knows that the Maltese loyalty to the war effort could be instantly shattered. As the clock ticks down toward all-out invasion, Max must investigate the murder—beyond the gaze of his superiors, friends, and even the woman he loves." - Amazon.

Blacklands, by Belinda Bauer. Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print Length: 240 p. Kindle edition $10.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"Eighteen years ago, Billy Peters disappeared. Everyone in town believes Billy was murdered - after all, serial killer Arnold Avery later admitted killing six other children and burying them on the same desolate moor that surrounds their small English village. Only Billy’s mother is convinced he is alive. She still stands lonely guard at the front window of her home, waiting for her son to return, while her remaining family fragments around her. But her twelve-year-old grandson Steven is determined to heal the cracks that gape between his nan, his mother, his brother, and himself. Steven desperately wants to bring his family closure, and if that means personally finding his uncle’s corpse, he’ll do it. Spending his spare time digging holes all over the moor in the hope of turning up a body is a long shot, but at least it gives his life purpose. Then at school, when the lesson turns to letter writing, Steven has a flash of inspiration. Careful to hide his identity, he secretly pens a letter to Avery in jail asking for help in finding the body of 'W.P.' - William 'Billy' Peters. So begins a dangerous cat-and-mouse game." - Amazon.

Science Fiction

Finch, by Jeff VanderMeer. Underland Press, 2009. Print Length: 320 p. Kindle edition $9.66. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...mysterious underground inhabitants known as the gray caps have reconquered the failed fantasy state Ambergris and put it under martial law. They have disbanded House Hoegbotton and are controlling the human inhabitants with strange addictive drugs, internment in camps, and random acts of terror. The rebel resistance is scattered, and the gray caps are using human labor to build two strange towers. Against this backdrop, John Finch, who lives alone with a cat and a lizard, must solve an impossible double murder for his gray cap masters while trying to make contact with the rebels. Nothing is as it seems as Finch and his disintegrating partner Wyte negotiate their way through a landscape of spies, rebels, and deception." - Amazon.

Sleepless, by Charlie Huston. Ballantine Books, 2010. Print Length: 368 p. Kindle edition $14.49. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...in a postapocalyptic Los Angeles, a devastating illness renders the afflicted unable to sleep. In about a year, those with SLP (as the sleepless illness is known) deteriorate and die. Amid the city's rampant violence and lawlessness, LAPD cop Parker Park Haas tries to persuade himself that a future exists for his newborn daughter. As the outside world becomes increasingly dangerous, Park pursues an undercover investigation that takes him deep into the milieu of an online game called Chasm Tide, into which many people have retreated. As in the author's Joe Pitt vampire series (My Dead Body, etc.), this book has at its heart a love story: Park's wife is dying from SLP, and Park begins to fear he may be getting it, too. Can the mysterious mercenary known only as Jasper help?" - Publishers Weekly.