Finished a couple of books recently. SLOW BURN 8: GRIND by Bobby Adair is still telling the story of Zed and Murphy as they kill zombies. I’m still reading, but I have to say I think this series is getting a little long in the tooth — there might be a lot more to tell, but I don’t think this book did a great job of conveying that…  The two heroes of this story just seem to be moving between an old place and a new place, and along the way they find new ways to mow down (literally, in one instance) the infected “whites,” who are the zombies of this series.   I’ll probably read SLOW BURN 9: SANCTUM sometime soon, but my brain isn’t clamoring for it at the moment.

Also finished THE LAST SURVIVORS by T.W. Piperbrook and Bobby Adair. This book is a free download, the first of a series. It’s a futuristic tale of a society that’s lost their technological ability, and when humans show signs of some sort of infection, they are put down immediately by sword or by fire. One woman finds signs of infection on her son, and she runs. It was a pretty interesting story, in the far future but with zombies of a sort, but ended on a complete and total cliffhanger without really resolving anything from this story.  That sort of bothered me.  Not sure I’ll read on in this series, but we’ll see.

I read SOFT TARGET by Iain Rob Wright. Wright’s a horror author, but this was a bit of an over-the-top thriller. Also a free download. I already bought the next book in the series, called HOT ZONE. Wright’s hero is a scarred female veteran of Afghanistan, and she is drawn into an organization that is fighting terrorism in the U.K. Seems ordinary Brits are acting as suicide bombers. Why? What’s the common thread between these folks, and why are they doing the bidding of Middle East terrorists? Wright presents a more balanced and nuanced picture of terrorists than we often see in thrillers in general, and SOFT TARGET is a fun story, if a bit fantastic at times.

Last, I read Chris Fox’s THE FIRST ARK, the novella that precedes his NO SUCH THING AS WEREWOLVES book. I’ve been meaning to read on in this series.  The series sort of combines a lot of genres:  shapeshifters, zombies, aliens, Egyptian gods, archeology, and in the third, vampires, I believe.

I also read a (free) PDF of Steven M. Moore’s novella, THE WHISTLEBLOWER. (He’s giving it away at his website.)  This one reads really well.  I felt like maybe the very end was rushed a bit.  I could have seen this going novel-length.  But it told a great story.

One more: JEDI SUMMER WITH THE MAGNETIC KID by John Boden. A fun read I found through Christian Larsen’s publisher’s site. It’s short, not quite a novella perhaps, but a little longer than a short story. Just a coming-of-age story about a couple of brothers back around the time that RETURN OF THE JEDI was a movie event that was worth waiting for. It kept me reading, though in the end I was sort of disappointed that more didn’t happen but I finished it and was interested all the way to the end.

I have another Steven M. Moore novella (PORTAL IN THE PINES) in my queue, and I have a stack of hardcover bargain books both at the office and at home that I need to get through.  I’ve been carrying around Denise Swanson’s DYING FOR A CUPCAKE for a couple of weeks now; maybe that will be next.  Or Kellerman’s Alex Delaware novel, MOTIVE.  So many books, so little time.

Maybe I should write instead of reading…

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