This installment of Scarpetta shows Kay offering her services pro bono the Medical Examiner's Office. In addition to helping solve the case there, she is working as a commentator on CNN, somewhere in the vein of Nancy Grace only much less irritating. (I cannot stand Nancy Grace.) Kay and Benton get a package that may contain a bomb delivered to their apartment. I am a little annoyed that someone wants to kill at least one of them in every single book. I highly doubt that everyone in this profession has this problem on a weekly basis like she does. She is starting to get a lot less likeable in my opinion, but not as unlikeable as Lucy. Lucy lets some secrets slip in this book, but it didn't help my view of her. The whole business with Marino in this book made me roll my eyes and sigh aloud several times. What was that?? Get serious. 

 We have made it all the way to book sixteen in this series. This book finds Kay leaving the practice she literally just set up in Charleston to take a posting in New York. I found that to be extremely irritating. Once in New York, the NYPD request her help with a patience who is being held in Belleview Psychiatric Hospital, who has specifically requested to speak to her. She, of course, trots right over and listens to his tale. There are several other violent deaths in this book that must be solved, and the forensic and technological advances are on par with the timeline, as per usual. Lucy is back again, being annoying as all get out, and performing a cyber chase of a suspect. I feel as though I will never grow to like her character, but there isn't a lot I can do about that. This book was certainly an improvement over Book of the Dead, and I was glad to see it. 

 I bought this book because I love Red Hot Chili Peppers. I found this book to be engaging and highly enjoyable. Anthony Kiedis delves into his life and his experiences, as well as the making of his music. I would recommend this book for any fan of the Chili Peppers, or anyone who is just interested in lives of celebs or musicians. 

I thought this was a pretty interesting book. It had an overview of several different women, which were detailed enough to be interesting. I like learning about women who did not conform to the standards set by society in their time periods and what kind of things they got up to. This was a good read!

 Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Maine in 1892. Her mother divorced her father due to domestic abuse, and she moved around with her and her siblings. She won several awards for her poetry throughout her childhood. She attended Vassar College, enrolling in 1913. She moved to New York, where she became a founding member of the Cherry Lane Theatre. She wrote articles for magazines (under a false name) to bring in some income. She became involved in social, political, and feminist activism. She began publishing her poetry and really making a name for herself as a serious and accomplished professional poet. She died in 1950, after having fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. A doctor decided a heart attack was the reason for her fall.

This book was really good. Nancy Milford was granted access to Millay's private papers by Millay's surviving sister. She felt that Milford had done a very respectable job on Zelda Fitzgerald and thought that she would do her sister justice. The facts about her life were communicated thoroughly and efficiently, but the book was not boring. I didn't know she wrote one about Zelda, so now I need to find that one and read it. Pick this up if you are a Millay fan. 

 Sasha Cohen was born in California in 1984. Her actual name is Alexandra Pauline Cohen, but Sasha is a Russian nickname that her parents called her. Her mother, Galina, was a Jewish immigrant from Odessa (Soviet Ukraine), and was a ballet dancer. Her father was a lawyer. She got involved in figure skating at a young age, but did not get really serious about it until 2000. She won several medals in the U.S. Championships, Cup of Russia, and Trophee Lalique. She went on to the 2002-2003 Grand Prix Final held in Saint Petersburg, where she won the gold medal. Her 2003-2004 season was her best season, where she won gold at Skate America, Skate Canada, and the Trophee Lalique. She won silver at the Grand Prix Final in Colorado Springs. She also placed second in the US Championships and World Championships. She did suffer from some injuries throughout her skating career, which she managed to come back from in glorious fashion.

In 2006, she went to the Olympic Games, held in Turin, Italy. She overcame injury and sickness to get that place, and I think that is extremely inspirational. If you want something, you have to get up and show up. You have to fight through fatigue, illness, and injury. If you are determined and work hard, you can accomplish a lot of things. She did fall during her routine, but managed to get the silver medal. She subsequently had more falls and injuries before retiring in 2010.

I found this book on Thriftbooks, and I really enjoyed watching Sasha skate. She was beautiful to watch on the ice. I didn't really know much about her as a person, so this was a very interesting book. I wish that it would have had an updated section, but this book only covered up to the 2006 season. At any rate, if you are a fan of figure skating or Sasha, check it out. 

 Samuel Pepys was born in 1633 in London, England. Pepys was number five out of eleven children, though several of his siblings died quite young. He was well educated, attending the University of Cambridge. He was a Member of Parliament as well as a Naval Administrator. He was a famous diarist, and wrote about a lot of interesting events and thoughts about things. I have read his diary and found it to be pretty intriguing. This book really gets into details about his life and his diary, and it was packed with information. I hate to say that I got a little bit bored in places, but that may be because I had read his diary previously.

A couple of interesting facts that I noted about him were that he attended the execution of King Charles I in 1649, and that he had several notable family members. (His father's cousin was Sir Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich. His great uncle Talbot Pepys was a Member of Parliament and Recorder.) He also suffered from bladder stones, which I cannot even imagine how painful that must have been. Painful enough that he had surgery back in a time when that wasn't done nearly as sterile and with pain management. I was horrified learning about that. 

 This book covers the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut. This event took place on December 14, 2012. Adam Lanza murdered his mother before driving to his former elementary school, where he subsequently murdered twenty children and six faculty members. Lanza suffered from anxiety, depression, anorexia, obsessive compulsive disorder, and Aspberger's Syndrome. It is also reported that he was very preoccupied with violent thoughts. While it is virtually impossible to say that one or all of those things was the catalyst for his eventual murder spree, it is hard to imagine that they did not play a strong role. After killing the children and faculty members, he shot himself, ending the violence. It is hard to think about how all of the children felt while this was going on, and even in the years after for those who survived or were in other parts of the school. The collective trauma of this town is unfathomable.

I have been waiting for this book to release on Audible, so I picked it up with my March credits. I read another book about this event, (Newtown- Matthew Lysiak), so I knew quite a bit of this information. I found the book to be well researched and well written. It delivered the facts of the event, with personal accounts from family members of the victims. It also gave some details about the shooter and his family. One thing I took away from this was a renewed sense that people condemn entire family trees down to the roots at the beginning of time for the actions of one family member. The brother of the shooter really had a lot of negativity directed at him, probably because people love to place the blame. Blame should lie on the shoulders of the shooter, and the parents, especially the mother, for failing to give him the intervention that was suggested by medical professionals. I think that this book is worth reading, and an important wake up call about the damage that rabid conspiracies and people's actions on the internet.

Another thing I took away from this book is that people just really suck. There was absolutely no reason to attack the families of the victims, the surviving children, the friends and coworkers of those killed. While I personally believe in the right to own weapons, I also believe in responsible ownership. I believe in background checks, certain limitations on what you can buy, registration, and courses before you are allowed to purchase and get permits. I believe that banning weapons will not keep people from getting a weapon, and I also believe that if someone is determined to get wild and kill a bunch of people, they will find a way to do it. Creating a conspiracy theory and rabidly running with it to suit whatever "agenda" people want to believe is being perpetrated against them is just this side of insanity, and most assuredly mob mentality. I listen to a podcast about conspiracy theories, simply to educate myself on some of the outlandish things that people buy into. These people lost their children, and to be subjected to a bunch of cretins online demanding that they prove their slaughtered child was an actual person and was actually dead is too far and sick. At one point, they were demanding the children be dug up so they could see if there were actually bodies in the caskets. It was truly repulsive. 

 I live in Tennessee, and am well aware of at least one snake handling church locally. They are of the Holiness branch of religious folks, and they are certainly a different group of people. I do not understand how people can believe that holding a wild animal that is full of potentially fatal venom is a way to prove that you are doing right in the eyes of God. That whole concept is just too far fetched for someone like me. The story of the attempted murder was unbelievable, but also not that shocking at the same time. It was a good book, not very long, but good. I suggested that my sister read this book, but I'm not sure if she ever did. 

 This book was a compliation of diaries from several young people during the Holocaust. It is always more tragic to read the accounts from Holocaust survivors and victims whose words survived, but it is even more moving to read them when they come from children and teens. I cannot imagine going through the things that so many people went through, especially as a child or teenager. This was a good book.