I've been doing lots of reading lately. Good mysteries.

I just read Denise Hamilton's Sugar Skull (2003). I read Hamilton's The Jasmine Trade a year or so ago. Hamilton's main character, Eve Diamond, is a journalist who investigates interesting aspects of life in Los Angeles. The Jasmine Trade was about children of rich Asians who are sent to the U.S. for high school. The parents never actually live in L.A., they just pretend they live there so their kids are eligible for school. The kids are set up with maid and housekeepers, but are basically left to fend for themselves. This leads to chaos, of course, and Hamilton does a good job of describing a world unlike any I'd known.

"Sugar Skull" is about Latino music culture in Los Angeles and also about rich kids who get off on hanging out with homeless kids in urban hell holes. Again, Eve Diamond gets involved in a world unlike any I've known. What I like best about these novels, of course, is that everything has to do with class. In the U.S. we pretend there are no classes, and yet when we scratch below the surface, we run up against the consequences of class.

Hamilton has two other books, Last Lullaby and Savage Garden that I'll add to my list of what to get next.

Next up, I read three books by Charlaine Harris. I'd already read several Lily Bard books based in Shakespeare, Alabama. Bard is a fascinating woman whose life was transformed by a brutal kidnapping and gang rape. She survives, but in the process she murders her abductor and becomes a media celebrity. The pretty obvious subtext in these books is about how a survivor's live is affected and how one goes about re-establishing trust and healthy relationships after such a brutal event. Bard is a cleaning lady, which allows her to become intimately acquainted with her neighbors and also helps her to solve the rather-too-common murders that occur in her neighborhood. Shakespeare is like Sunnydale, CA, from Buffy, the Vampire Slayer -- you have to accept that nobody seems to notice that horrible things seem to happen in this small town and people still choose to live there.

This past week, I read Shakespeare's Trollop and Shakespeare's Counselor. The writing is sure and involving. I don't want to stop reading and I always am left with the "and then what?" feeling when I'm forced to put the book down. Bard is a woman worthy of respect, but also deeply flawed in a way that's easy to relate to. I look forward to reading more.

What was surprising, however, is that Harris has branched into the vampire world with her Sookie Stackhouse series. I read the first book, Dead Until Dark. We meet Sookie, a working-class waitress in a small-town bar. Vampires have just come "out of the coffin" with the explanation that their condition is actually the result of a virus and therefore a medical problem (ala alcoholism), rather than being actually undead. So learning about real-life vampires has a sort of voyeuristic appeal and fascination. Sookie, of course, ends up with her very own vampire lover who is the archtypical broody man of mystery. I'll definitely read some more of these books. Harris's vampire books are pitched as Anita Blake-light. I tried to hang onto Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake vampire series but got really tired of reading the same book over and over again. In that light, Stackhouse is a fun and enjoyable alternative.

At the moment I am reading The Librarian by Larry Beinhart. It's about a presidential campaign against a strikingly familiar spoiled rich boy who grows up to be president. So far, it's hilarious and interesting. I'll write more once I've finished reading.