I figure I may as well continue the tradition (?) of posting monthly reading lists. I believe that last time I had two books on my list that I read in June. I had a good month of reading. A lot of that is due to the fact that I found a new series and dove into it full force. Here's the rest of my June reads.

1. THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART, Lawrence Block. I've had this Hardcase title sitting on my shelf for a long time now. I believe that Stephen King did one in this series that I read before, and now I've finally read one of the Block entries. I also reviewed it on Amazon if anyone cares to look. In this one, some grifters set up a con where they're going to get a guy to buy a bunch of land that these guys don't really own, and make him beg to do it. But as usual, things go wrong, and it doesn't work out the way they hoped it would. A really well plotted story, written in Block's reader-friendly style. I give it an 8

2. THE RESORT, Bentley Little. I've never read anything by Little before, and this is another book I've had in the Pile for a long time. It sounded interesting: a family travels to a resort near the Tuscon area of Arizona, and the resort turns out to have a pretty sordid history. The visitors meet plenty of guests, and there appears to be a division between the staff. Many of them are really nice, and many of them seem to be pushy and obnoxious and maybe even downright evil. Of course, the resort is haunted, and this turned out to be a pretty good ghost story. 7.5

3. FOOL MOON, Jim Butcher

4. STORM FRONT, Jim Butcher

5. GRAVE PERIL, Jim Butcher. I had FOOL MOON (couldn't find STORM FRONT when I first bought one of these) and once I read these, I got hooked on this series about a wizard who advertises in the yellow pages. It is set in Chicago, and these first few stories deal with rogue wizards, werewolves, and assorted other supernatural scaries. Harry Dresden is an intriguing character, and the side characters are really well drawn and interesting. I'm through books 4 and 5 of the series now, but they're for next month's list. Lots of fun. 8.5 might be too low for the series. I would probably give STORM FRONT a 9.

6. RED RAIN, Michael Crow. The back of this book, which I got in hardcover off the bargain shelves, states that Michael Crow is the pseudonym of a well known literary author. I googled him and found the author's name, but for the life of me I can't remember it right now. (So...not well known by ME at least...not that I know the more literary types very well anyway.) This book featured an interesting lead character, Army special forces type who now works as a cop, and of course he's got plenty of problems. He gets caught up in a drug case, and it seems that the main crook is a guy he worked with in Eastern Europe, Kosovo and such, and who saved his life. So he's torn between his duty and his code of honor and sense of right and wrong, and his loyalty toward his soldier friend. It was a solid read, at times pretty bloody and maybe it tried too hard to make the main character (Lucas) human, while making him superhuman in a way. I give it an 8.

That's my June. I also read CEMETARY DANCE and THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS by Preston and Child, but included them on my last list.