...  thanks to my mom, who gave me a bookstore gift card, my best friend, who raided my Amazon wish list (isn't it nice to know your loved ones know just what you'll be happiest about?) and a few odd things to which I treated myself:

* Die Briefe der Manns (The Mann Family Correspondence) -- newly released

* Anna Funder: All That I Am

* Ilija Trojanow (or Iliya Troyanov, as he's spelled in English): Der Weltensammler (The Collector of Worlds)

* George Simenon: Maigret & Co. (collection of audio dramatizations of Simenon's mysteries)

* Edwidge Danticat: Claire of the Sea Light

* Jim Butcher: The Aeronaut's Windlass

* J.R.R. Tokien: The Lord of the Rings -- the legendary BBC audio dramatization starring Ian Holm as Frodo, Michael Hordern as Gandalf, and Robert Stephens as Aragorn

* T.H. White: The Once and Future King (audio version read by Neville Jason)

* Christopher Paolini: Eragon (audio version read by Kerry Shale)

* Patrick O'Brian: Aubrey / Maturin -- audio versions of the first six novels, read by Robert Hardy

* Sherlock Holmes: A Baker Street Dozen -- audio adaptations of 12 stories, starring John Gielgud (Holmes), Ian Richardson (Watson), and Orson Welles (Moriarty)

* Val McDermid: Splinter the Silence

* Michael Connelly: The Crossing

* Ian Rankin: Even Dogs in the Wild

... and, also courtesy of my friend, Eric Clapton: I Still Do -- and a kitty coloring book!

Splinter the Silence is the ninth book in the Tony Hill & Carol Jordan series and after last books trials are Tony and Carol slowly mending their relationship and it looks like Carol is getting a second chance by getting an offer that is hard to refuse. All she has to do is not screw anything up. Tony meanwhile is troubled with a lot of women committing suicide. They have all been targeted by internet trolls. But Tony thinks that there is more to the suicides than that...

It seems that finally Tony and Carol is back as friends after everything that happened with her brothers murder. I quite enjoy having them back to speaking with each other again and it seems that Tony is finally getting to Carol that she has a drinking problem. Of course, it had to go so far for Carol that she has to be arrested for drunk driving before Tony frankly told her that she had to quit. But by then the arrest had already damaged her reputation, which was really bad because the powers that be in the police wants her back, but not with a driving drunk sentence. But everything can be fixed. Besides that is Tony discovering that there is something wrong with the suicides of a couple of women and soon he, Carol and Paula are investigating the suicides.

I found this book story especially good because it finally brought the old team together. I have missed reading about them working together under Carol. The case in itself took some time to get somewhere.  And it felt like most of the time the book concentrated on other things than finding a killer. Carol and her drunk driving and the consequences of that took up a lot of the book and I did enjoy reading about  Tony finally confronting Carol about her drinking problem and moving into the barn to help her the first couple of days and of course, getting rid of all the alcohol at her her place which didn't make her happy. I do wish that case had taken a bit more priorities it was first towards the very end that books story really started to get intensive. Not that the book was bad, I just got a bit impatient with all the personal stuff. I did enjoy that part when the new team was finally started to put all the pieces together and the manhunt started. 

The ending was fitting, I don't want to give it away, but there had to be some consequences to Carols drunk driving and what happened after that. It will be interesting to read the next book to see how it will be dealt with. 

Thanks to Witness Impulse and Edelweiss for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

These just get better and better. This was superb. A full review will follow on the 10th August as a blog post - but if you are a Tony Hill/Carol Jordan fan this one will NOT disappoint and if you are not why not? Go people! Go!