Ice Child (Elizabeth McGreggor) + The Blue Nowhere (Jeffrey Deaver)

Okay, so I forgot to bring my book to work for two different days last week. Not a problem at any other job, I'm sure, but when you have a solid two hours of nap time, you need the intellectual stimulation in order to stop the mental metamorphosis into a Teletubbie. I think I would turn into LaLa. My choices, without my trusty book, were some girly or celeb magazines or a Reader's Digest volume of four novels, sandwiched into one book. That, obviously is what I chose and I wound up reading two of the four. Guess I needed a little fluff with all that I have been reading lately--been bulking up on the classics that you often see on grad school reading lists. And fluff fluff fluffy they were.


The Ice Child plot synopsis:
Freelance journalist meets Antarctic explorer by covering the story of his disappearance during a historical expedition searching for the lost ships of an 18th century British mission that was looking for the Northwest passage. They fall in love and, dumping his wife who he has not lived with in years and over the objections of his son, plan to be married. On the day of the wedding, the son argues with the father due to pent up feelings of neglect and of loving the Artic and a lost, dead Brit more than his son. The son pushes the father, who loses balance, gets hit by a car and dies. The journalist is, of course, pregnant. The son, feeling responsible, runs away to the Artic to finish his father's quest and is declared missing. The journalist has the child who turns out to have a rare immune disease that can only be cured with a bone marrow transplant from his missing half-brother... I think you get the point. Oh, and don't forget the interspersed sections told from the point of view of the British explorers and a momma polar bear. Woo hee.

Plot synopsis of The Blue Nowhere:
A serial killer is loose, finding victims through the internet. He "socially engineers" them--finds out little details that can be used to turn himself into someone that can get close. The computer crimes unit enlists the help of an imprisoned hacker to track him down. Full of mostly correct computer jargon and some overly godlike viruses that "seize root" at every opportunity, prepare yourself to be whacked over the head with clues that will (obviously) become important to the twists of the story.

Okay. I'm back to Lady Chatterley's Lover now and am much much happier though also more well-informed should I ever choose to write a soap opera.