Help me pick a new book

I'm having trouble picking a new book. Here are some of my recent faves:
Bossy Pants
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
Room
Plain Truth
A Discovery of Witches
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Hunger Games

I'm a little all over the place, I know. My trouble is, I need books like the above where I don't get upset reading them because I read at night right before bed. I started The Pact and had trouble falling asleep because the content made me sad and set my mind spinning. And I HATED Something Borrowed so I guess rom-com type books are out.

Please help me!! Any suggestions for a book I can sink my teeth into but isn't mindless or incredibly sad?

Re: Help me pick a new book

I just read The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney. I had trouble explaining it so I copied the summary from Amazon.

Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he'd been hired to find Rose Janko, the wife of a charismatic son of a traveling Gypsy family, who went missing seven years earlier. Half Romany himself, Ray is well aware that he's been chosen more for his blood than his investigative skills. Still, he's surprised by the intense hostility he encounters from the Jankos, who haven't had an easy past. Touched by tragedy, they're either cursed or hiding a terrible secret-whose discovery Ray can't help suspecting is connected to Rose's disappearance. . . .

It was REALLY good and suspenseful and there were some great characters. I liked it a lot.

The Temptress by Paul Spicer was also good- the writing was a bit bland (no dialogue) but the story was really riveting. It was a quick read.

A glamorous American multi-millionairess, Alice de Janzé scandalized 1920’s Paris when she left her aristocratic French husband for an English lover—whom she later tried to kill in a failed murder-suicide in the Gare du Nord. Abandoning Paris for the moneyed British colonial society known as Kenya’s Happy Valley, she became the lover of the handsome womanizer, Joss Hay, Lord Erroll. In 1941, Erroll was shot in his car on an isolated road. A cuckolded husband was brought to trial and acquitted, and the crime remained tantalizingly unsolved. Paul Spicer, whose mother was a confidante of Alice’s, used personal letters and his own extensive research to piece together what really happened that fateful evening. He brings to life an era of unimaginable wealth and indulgence, where people changed bed partners as easily as they would order a cocktail, and where jealousy and hidden passions brewed. At the heart of The Temptress is Alice, whose seductive charms no man could resist, and whose unfulfilled quest for love ended in her own suicide at age forty-two. Please note: this eBook edition does not include photos that originally appeared in the printed book

Re: Help me pick a new book

I always recommend Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. One of my faves of all time. And it's part of a big huge series so you will have books to read for a long time!

If you liked "A Discovery of Witches" you will probably like The Mayfair Witches series by Anne Rice.

Also, I would check out Kate Morton's books. She sets an eerie tone, but nothing overtly scary happens, but hey have a great mystery element to them, as well as a good story.

Re: Help me pick a new book

Something by Jen Lancaster or Chelsea Handler! Those two are hysterical!

ETA: I'd also say The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but there are some rough parts in it. I'm like you and I don't want to read a book that's going to depress me but I think the horrific scenes are what make you really root for the characters and really hate the villains. I loooooved this series.

Message edited 3/12/2012 9:38:20 AM.

Re: Help me pick a new book

Thanks for the suggestions everyone!