What should I read next?

The year is almost over and I have 2 challenges to complete, each only needing one book.  I have decided for the future, December will not be for my challenges, they need to be complete by then.  It is holiday season and my choice of genre is a little dark for Christmas :-)

Here are the 2 choices, what would you choose for me to read?

Good Grief by Lolly Winston



When Sophie Stanton is widowed at thirty-six, instead of cycling through the typical five stages of grief, she careens through fifteen: Denial, Oreos, Anger, Depression, Escrow, Ashes, Lust, Bargaining, Waitressing, Mentoring, Dating, Baking, Acceptance, Goodwill, and Thanksgiving.


In a high-achiever age when women are expected to be good at everything, Sophie wants desperately to be a good widow. A graceful, composed, Jackie Kennedy kind of widow. But Sophie is more the Jack Daniels type. Self medicating with cartons of ice cream for breakfast, and showing up at work in her bathrobe and bunny slippers, soon she's lost not only her husband, but also her job, her house, and her waistline. In Sophie's words: “The Funny thing about rock bottom is there's stuff underneath. You think, This is it: It's all uphill from here! Then you discover the escalator goes down one more floor to another level of bargain basement junk.” With a darkly comic edge Sophie manages to start over, and ultimately she discovers her own happily-ever-after.

Good Grief was a New York Times best seller, and a #1 Booksense pick for March/April, 2004. It was also the #1 Booksense pick for paperbacks in the summer of 2005. The film rights have been optioned by Marc Platt, at Universal Studios.



24 Hours by Greg Iles
 


24 Hours begins with the perfect family. On the perfect night. About to be trapped in the perfect crime.


Will and Karen Jennings are a successful young couple with every reason to celebrate. From modest beginnings they have built the life of their dreams. Will has a thriving medical practice, and stands at the threshold of a great fortune. Karen has designed a magnificent house to shelter them and the five-year-old daughter they love beyond measure. But they are about to be tested in a way they could never imagine.

They have been targeted by John Hickey, a genius who has found the key to one of the oldest crimes in the world - Kidnapping. Hickey has turned the crime inside out, creating an unbreakable knot of technology and terror that no man can unravel. In twenty-four hours of hellish precision, he squeezes a family's pressure points, extracts the ransom, and vanishes into thin air, leaving the hostage alive but the family too shattered even to call the police. Five times he has executed his plan, and not once has he been caught. He is unstoppable. Untouchable.

But this time Hickey wants more than money. This time he is driven by the pain of his own family tragedy, one he lays at the door of Will and Karen Jennings. He means to avenge it in his own terrible way and disappear forever. He has reckoned every factor but one: Will, Karen, and Abby Jennings share a love that only the closest families know, and from that love grows a formidable strength.

Though miles apart, the brilliant physician, the protective mother, and the resourceful child struggle against the clock to thwart the madman who threatens their family, and to reunite at last.

They have twenty-four hours to succeed where others have failed. Twenty-four hours to cut the unbreakable knot. Twenty-four hours to live or die.


Thanks for helping, you can vote on my side bar.  Have you read them?