105. The Time Collector by Gwendolyn Womack

read on my iPhone/ have on Kindle
2019, Picador
352 pgs.
Adult Time Traveling Mystery
Finished 10/27/2019
Goodreads rating: 3.97 - 553 ratings
My rating:  2
Setting:  New Orleans and all over the world

First line/s:  "Roan took off his gloves like a man about to duel."

My comments:  Nope.  Didn't do it for me at all.  Too forced and stilted?  Thought the story sticks with me....

Goodreads synopsis:  Travel through time with the touch of a hand.
          Roan West was born with an extraordinary gift: he can perceive the past of any object he touches. A highly skilled pyschometrist, he uses his talents to find and sell valuable antiques, but his quiet life in New Orleans is about to change. Stuart, a fellow pyschometrist and Roan’s close friend, has used his own abilities to unearth several out-of-place-artifacts or “ooparts”—like a ring that once belonged to the seventeenth-century mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, but was found buried in prehistoric bedrock.
          The relics challenge recorded history, but soon after the discovery, Stuart disappears, making him one of several psychometrists who have recently died or vanished without a trace. When Roan comes across a viral video of a young woman who has discovered a priceless pocket watch just by “sensing” it, he knows he has to warn her—but will Melicent Tilpin listen? And can Roan find Stuart before it’s too late?
           The quest for answers will lead Roan and Melicent around the world—before it brings them closer to each other and a startling truth—in the latest romantic thriller from Gwendolyn Womack, the bestselling, PRISM Award-winning author of The Memory Painter and The Fortune Teller. 

33. The Plantation by Chris Kuzneski

Payne & Jones #1
listened on Audible
2002, Paradox Publishing
432 pgs.
Adult Contemporary Mystery
Finished Sunday, June 18, 2017
Goodreads rating:  3.73
My rating: 2
Setting: Mostly New Orleans area, contemporary

My comments:  Didn't do it for me.  Took me forever to get through.  I'm thinking that I'm so used to this particular reader (I listened on audio), who has been the narrator for so many other mysteries  I've read that his inflections have become associated with other protagonists.  The"good" guys in The Plantation approach killing with the same kind of glee that the horrid slave owners did.  Very off-putting.  Also,  good vs. evil with no in between?  Payne's ardor for Ariana was also a little off-putting, it was so constantly notated.  And his "best friend's" subservient manner towards him bugged me too.  Waaaaay too long

Goodreads synopsis:  One by one, in cities across America, people of all ages are taken from their homes, their cars, their lives. But these aren’t random kidnappings. They’re crimes of passion,
planned and researched several months in advance, then executed with a singular objective in mind. Revenge.
          Ariane Walker is one of the victims, dragged from her apartment with few clues to follow. The police said there’s little they can do for her, but that isn’t good enough for her boyfriend, Jonathon Payne.

          With the help of his best friend (David Jones), Payne gives chase, hoping that a lead in New Orleans somehow pays off. Together, they uncover the mystery of Ariane’s abduction and the truth behind the South’s most violent secret.

54. Darkness Becomes Her - Kelly Keaton

Simon Pulse, 2011
HC $16.99
274 pgs.
for:  Young Adults
Rating:  4.5

First Line/s: Under the cafeteria table, my right knee bounced like a jackhammer possessed.  Adrenaline snaked through my limbs, urging me to bolt, to hightail it out of Rocquemor House and never look back.

Setting:  Over a decade after the 2009 hurricanes ruined New Orleans, now called New 2.  It's no longer part of the USA, and it's home to people that are.....different.

One sentence summary:  Ari, a 17 year-old searching for her mother and her roots, discovers the horrifying legacy that has been passed down to her through centuries of tormented women.

Yes, this one held my attention completely.  I guess I enjoy these dystopian adventures.  This one, of course, includes the smolderingly handsome love interest. Sebastian is the interestingly different part vampire whose family is one of the Novem, the ruling elite of the new New Orleans.  However, Ari holds a power that she doesn't understand at all - many people that she encounters, the ones that know of her mother, show that they are ... afraid ... of her.

I slowly figured out the mystery before it was revealed, but it was fun doing so.  Someone with more of an interest/background in Greek mythology would probably figure it out long before I did.  But I'll read the sequel when it comes out, A Beautiful Evil, coming in February, 2012.  It will continue the adventure, I'm sure.

If I knew New Orleans, the layout and the history, it would be even more enjoyable, because the description is excellent.

9. Shiver - Lisa Jackson

Audio read by Joyce Bean, complete with major southern accents
Brilliand Audio, 2006
13 unabridged cd's
$38.95 (free from PBS)
16 hrs.
512 pgs.
Rating: 3

Set in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, a serial killer is brutally murdering people in pairs, male and female, and staging a scenario for each. They all seem to revolve around Abby Chastain and her mother Faith, who supposedly committed suicide in a mental institution when she was 35. The story, told from many points-of-view including the killer and some of the victims, unfolds slowly...a little too slowly, actually. You can pretty much figure out what's going on and what's going to happen, and Jackson throws in plenty of lustful thinking and not just a little sex, especially when police detective Reuben Montoya enters the scene and meets Abby Chastain.

A little too much coincidence, a little too much dragging here and there, but good plotline and interesting characters kept me listening. Would I listen to another by Lisa Jackson? Probably...if it weren't quite so long.