50. The Keeper of Lost Causes

This book is pretty much about one of your worst nightmares come true.

Here we go...this takes place in Sweden (or somewhere Scandanavian). This police department starts a new detective department "Q". And it has one detective and one assistant. They are in charge of cold cases. They choose one about the disappearance of Morada (more aid ah) Lundgren. You really don't want to be Morada!

Summary: When Morada is 14 and her brother Oofa is 12, they and their parents are taking a leisurely drive one day. They end up getting into an accident and both of their parents die and Oofa ends up somewhat  brain damaged. The family in the other car is on their way to the hospital because the mom is in labor with twins. Well their car ends up in a tree and catches on fire. The dad dies, the 11 year old sister dies, the mom starts to give birth to the twins as the fire is beginning. Her leg is of course caught and she can't get out of the car, so she gives birth. One of the twins dies and the other is burned but lives. The mom lives too. The only other survivor the the 14 year old brother.

I am only just getting started!

15 years or so later...Morada is successful as a political aide and she cares for her brother Oofa. One day they decide to go on a trip. While on the ferry, Morada is kidnapped and Oofa wanders around for days until someone finds him and puts him in a "home".

Let the nightmare begin.

Morada wakes up in the dark and finds herself in a  room about 10 x 10. Roughly 3 days pass and then a voice comes over a speaker system telling her that 2 buckets will be passed in to  her twice a day. One will have food and the other should be used as her toilet. She asks why she is here and the voice says she has 30 minutes to think of why she has been taken. Well, she doesn't know of course. She guesses because of something in politics because she works on government. Wrong answer. The voice tells her that she has one year to think of the right answer................what??

So she lives in complete darkness for one year with the buckets coming and going. One year later the lights come on full blast. Same question and she still doesn't have an answer. So her punishment is that she has to live with the lights on 24/7 for the next year. Oh yeah, she is in some sort of hyperbolic  chamber and they are increasing her "atmosphere" by 2 times. So it is like she is diving under the ocean permanently.

Repeat on years 3 & 4 & 5 with each year the "atmosphere" increasing until it is 6 times normal.

Meanwhile the detectives in dept. Q. are working on finding out what happened to her. They end up finding her and saving her through a series of good detective work.

Who kidnapped her? The surviving family of the twins. The 14 year old son, the mom, and the burned twin. They blame her for the accident because they say she was goofing off with her brother Oofa and distracted her dad, who then caused the accident.

We get a happy ending but who would ever be normal after being kept for over 5 years in a small room, never taking a shower, never changing clothes, brushing her hair or teeth, being TOTALLY ALONE etc...........

Who thinks of these things??????

49. A Brain Wider than the Sky

A migraine diary. In honor/sympathy for my daughter, Megan.

This book is a personal story of a migraine sufferer and also a history of the migraine back to ancient days and the treatments used. He writes of how it comes on suddenly, how light is the "enemy", how any little noise makes your head feel like it is exploding, how badly you feel that your family doesn't get the best of you, just the leftover energy you have from fighting the pain. And how you feel like just an observer of the world, not a participant.

Truly heartbreaking! I have seen Megan suffer and I don't know how she does it. I have a little empathy after suffering with my frozen shoulder pain. But I really have no idea how she deals with the pain on a daily basis. Her own blog gives a peek at her life.

Family & friends- keep praying for complete and total healing for our dear, gentle, creative, strong and beautiful Megan! Amen!!

48. Eat that Frog

Okay this is my nerdy organizational side coming out.

Eat that Frog - 21 great ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time.

I heard about this book on a blog I read "Money Saving Mom".

It has been said for many years that if the first thing you do each  morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

Your frog is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don't do something about it now. It is usually unpleasant or time consuming or just really hard. And if you eat your frog first, the rest of the day is a piece of cake!! pun intended!

If you have two frogs to eat, eat the biggest and ugliest one first.

I really enjoyed this book and underlined a great deal of it. I highly recommend it. Ask me if you want to borrow it!

47. 77 Shadow Street

This book took me awhile to get into (all 556 pages of it)! It is kind of about a haunted house that gets transported in time every 38 years. It is now an upscale apartment building with several residents. So it takes a while to get everyone straight in your head. But basically when it gets transported only a few people live to tell about it.

There is a creepy malevolent force that is controlling everything. I couldn't figure out what it was until near the end. It turned out to be an A.I. (artificial intelligence) experiment gone horribly wrong. Don't they always?

Not my favorite, it took way too long to get to the meat of the story. But overall it was an interesting theory put into words.

46. Red Prophet

This is the 2nd book in the Alvin Maker books by Orson Scott Card. And as expected it was very good. I can't wait to finish the series.

To refresh your memory:
Come home to the magical America that might have been and marvel as the tale of Alvin Maker unfolds. The 7th son of a 7th son is a boy of mysterious powers, and ...

You get the picture. It is really good!!!

45. Knock Out

This is an FBI thriller book. I have read this author before and just remembered how much I like her characters: Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock a.k.a. as Savich and Sherlock. They are FBI partners and have been for years and apparently are now married with a 3 year old.

Anyway, this book has some magic in it! More like psychic magic. A weird cult is after 7 year old Autum and her mom. Come to find out Autumn's dad, who recently died, was a family member of the cult founders. And he ran away as soon as he was old enough and never looked back. Some of the family members have some psychic abilities, like being able to communicate to people long distance with just their minds, or being able to control people when they look directly in their eyes, etc.

So this is why they want the girl. They find out that she has some abilities at the funeral for her dad. So it is a great suspenseful chase book. I really liked it!

44. Danger in the Shadows

Well, I  read this book before a few years ago. But Mark and I were on a road trip and so we listened to it on CD. I love this author, Dee Henderson. She is a great Christian fiction writer. And this book is the beginning of the O'Malley series.

Anyway, this is definitely a "girl" book. I had to endure some rolled eyes and comments in the car from Mark when things got too mushy or romantic etc... But the story is really good. The main character & her twin sister were kidnapped as a children. Sadly, the twin died and the kidnapper keeps stalking the surviving girl for the next 25 years. There is a lot of good suspense. So I recommend it for girls only!