Book 2 of the Anita Blake saga, The Laughing Corpse, won't leave you in tears laughing your pants off. It will make you shiver and shake in fear if the main killer creature in this book were real.

Anita's schedule is filled with a killer zombie, a queen of voodoo, attempting to keep the master of the city arm's length away and attempting to keep doing her job as well without being killed for it.

If you can't stand gore, I suggest you not bother with this series. If you can handle gory movies like Saw and its like, then you can handle this book. People get torn apart, children get eaten, it's that horrific. If this book were reality I'd never live in St. Louis or anywhere else crazy supernatural things like this happened, but with my luck they'd come to me.

The Laughing Corpse is a comedy club owned by the new Master of the City, Jean-Claude. Anita doesn't know until she chooses it as a place to meet him regarding his so-called claim on her as his human servant.

Alas, if this were the main story of this book, it would have been a pleasurable read, not that it wasn't mind you, because it was. Anita kicked ass and took names. She saved a womans life and probably a few families' lives as well. This book gives you the reason as to why she wishes to be cremated at her death and I sympathize with her.

Anita also gets to meet up with the Queen of Voodoo, Dominga Salvador, the woman no one would ever piss off and looks so sweet and grandmotherly you'd never think she was filled to the hilt with evil. She creates zombies and puts their souls back into their rotting bodies, of course, the body stops rotting when she does that, but still, who would want to be replaced in their dead body? Not I.

Dominga isn't thrilled that Anita refuses to help her in her enterprising business and sends along a few things to entice her, or perhaps just kill her, she was pretty pissed off about it. There's a lot of violence in this book due to the main creature that is killing people, ripping them to shreds and eating them. I advise you again to not let the kiddies read these books. They'll end up with nightmares.

The book is still quite the pageturner it was when I first read it, I finished it in a day and started book three, the Circus of the Damned, again. I have read over half of it already and will be posting a review as soon as I have reread it. Yes, I love these books. Honey keeps harassing me to read something new. I will, but for now I want to finish off these books quickly and post the reviews of them. I hope those of you who ran out to by Guilty Pleasures also bought the Laughing Corpse as I recommended, if not, run out and get it today or click on the Amazon box to the right to get your copy through them. There are new versions of these books out with new covers, they are wider, thinner and I really liked the new designs. I hope that if you do take the time to read these books that you enjoy them as much as I have.

I had to buy this book for school and I didn't think it would be of much help because it is mostly straight html based. The great thing about this book is that it's been updated to the latest standards and compliances and it's easy to find what I need right away.

Today I finally fixed this layout. Looked fine most of the time to you, right? If not, let me know and send a screenshot so that I can take a look at it. Anyway, I was having problems positioning and for some reason every time I submitted a new entry it would move the right-hand menu below the entries. Confusing, no? It was to me, as I had to add a new /div tag underneath the entries section of the template in order to put it back where it belonged. I knew I needed to find a new way to fix this template.

So I yanked out the book that I hardly looked at during class and looked up positioning. I am not very well versed with positioning and I normally use margins to do all of the positioning for layouts. Obviously this wasn't working and I needed to do something more proper. I added position: absolute to each section and then told it how many pixels from the top and left I wanted the middle and right columns.

Even this was confusing because I had to adjust them to each other or something. In Photoshop, according to the ruler, the right-hand column is 655 pixels from the beginning of the image. Yet I only had to set it for 300 and some odd pixels in order to position it properly.

Same with the width from the top. Middle and Right are both set at 50 or 60 pixels respectively from the top instead of the amount it would be according to Photoshop's ruler. I don't understand this one bit, but tha'ts fine with me.

This book helped me in my time of need and for any web designer that's always a plus. So I am definitely going to recommend this book for every designer out there who needs to know the little things about web design that change or aren't always remembered.

I know there is always a way to do what I need to get done and there's always a right way to do it, this book showed me not only the right away to do it, but how to do it as well.

Ahh so I finished Circus of the Damned and I am still secure in my love for Laurell's writing. You feel everything that the characters do, when they laugh you may get the giggles, when they cry tears fill your eyes. When they are hurt, you feel their pain and root for them to win over the bad guys.

Edward, known as Death, is after Anita again for the daytime location of where the Master of the City, Jean-Claude, sleeps during the day. What he doesn't know is that Jean-Claude is the Master of the City, so she lies to him and tells him it's someone else, someone who has been leading a pack of vampires and killing innocent humans.

Ok, so the humans they are killing aren't so innocent. They are members of a hate group called Humans Against Vampires and the pack is using them to help turn things back the way it was in the olden days where vampires weren't known about. Even if they could, I think it's a little too late since everyone knows about them, don't you?

Anita meets a vampire who's so old it makes her bones ache, he could possibly be 1 million years old, but no one will truly ever know. He controls snakes and Anita gets to meet a Lamia (half woman/half serpent) creature that tries to turn her against Jean-Claude.

You'll be disappointed in Anita at first with this book, but she comes around and gives a hell of a fight and just about dies trying to help others survive. And oh yeah, Edward uses his trusty flamethrower, you don't want to miss that!

So enjoy Circus of the Damned. Meet the hate groups against vampires and other non-human creatures (they even try to go after Anita). Meet Anita's new partner in animating, Larry, who's so green you'd want to kick him back to the college classes he should be retaking.

As were the first two, the third book of the Anita Blake saga are page turners, again I finished it in a little over a day. I am off to the fourth book for your pleasure, the Lunatic Cafe. Yes, it's a cafe.

I love the new covers that came out with the current prints. Can't decide which ones are my favorite though. Go enjoy Circus of the Damned, already!

Nice name for a cafe, don't you think? The Lunatic Cafe is a haven for shapeshifters to hang out and act like normal humans, but there is nothing normal about them. Anita gets in thick with the local werewolf pack and meets a few other interesting shifters as well, including a swan, who turns out not to be a shifter, but a human cursed by a witch centuries ago.

Shapeshifters are being kidnapped and some are being skinned, others are being hunted, one was killed by their spouse. I never did find out why. Perhaps he couldn't deal with being married to one of the monsters? Lycanthropy is considered a disease, there is no cure, but there is a vaccine. You can get it from a bad batch, just like you could get the flu from a flu shot but at least with the flu shot you wouldn't turn furry once a month.

Jean-Claude is back at it again with Anita as well, sexual harrassment simply doesn't cover the description and I'm shocked she hasn't killed him yet, but then again it is hard to kill someone you love, even if it is only in a dark twisted corner of your heart. He convinces her to allow him to start dating her since she is dating his possible rival, Richard the beta werewolf of the local pack.

There is so much for Anita to deal with, you'd think two men wanting to date her would be enough, but no, she almost gets eaten by one of the weaker members of the pack, she gets to kick some major ass of those who are hunting shapeshifters and she ends up with a certain someone's "pelt" encased in glass on the wall of her living room.

These are the details I can give you without ruining the story. She runs into another immortal creature, witches, and figures out who is making snuff films for Edward to go after. He seems to enjoy being around her being as she provides people, or rather supernatural creatures for him to kill.

Enjoy the violence all you want, be thrilled it isn't real.

Rawhide and Bloody Bones is going to get you if you're a wicked child. And he got them, too.

Anita Blake goes up against more than just your average vampires in this novel, she also goes up against a faerie and a nursery boggle named Rawhide and Bloody Bones. Everything that can go wrong, does. Anita gets captured by the Master of Branson in this story. Jean-Claude isn't strong enough to save her or protect her.

I don't know how to explain this story, it certainly kept me turning the pages. I read it in under 24 hours if you take out the time to eat, shower and sleep. It all starts out as an innocent zombie raising to settle a legal dispute between someone who bought property from a family that didn't own it, yet the court decreed that they did. So if it turned out that the bones dug up during construction were found out to be of a family plot of the people who did own it, the person doing the construction was going to have to buy it all over again, and that isn't going to happen because the family refuses to sell.

The family turns out to have fae blood running through their veins. Anita finds out what it's like to be around a faerie who's attempting to place a glamour on you. Larry's with her in this epic adventure and finds out what it means to work with Anita, not only as an animator, but also as a vampire hunter. It's sad to see him lose his innocence so quickly.

Anita also finds out there's a new quirk to her necomancy that is completely unexpected, although it was rumored possible from ages of old. The power over the dead doesn't just mean human, it means vampire. Anita raises a vampire, completely on accident, but it saved her life all the same. She doesn't get any time at all to even think about how it happened or why after breaking free.

Jean-Claude loses his coffin somehow when he makes the trip to help Anita make overtures to the Master. They steal his coffin because he didn't follow protocol. When he goes to retrieve it they dump it out in front of him from a back, broken and shattered to pieces. Anita sees what it really means to be a vampire during the day. She watches Jean-Claude slowly die as the sun rises and starts to reconsider her theory that vampires truly are dead.

Follow Anita as she tries to catch a killer and pedophile vampire, finds out what death really is, and almost falls into the seduction of Seraphina, Master of the City of Branson and her ghosts. Watch her find the link between a losing battle and defeating Bloody Bones.

I'm almost done reading the next book, the Killing Dance. Review will be up after I finish it.

Anita is on the run in this book, when Edward calls her up and tells her that he just received a contract on her head. After your heart starts beating and you can breathe again he tells her he has turned the contract down. He's decided that since he tends to kill more people around Anita he'd rather keep her alive than kill her and that means he needs to get himself to St. Louis in order to protect her from whatever the man with the money finds to replace him.

Anita almost gets taken out twice. Once in her apartment before the call from Edward, a second time at the new dance club owned by Jean-Claude, Dance Macabre, and again later on in the story by someone she put her trust into and genuinely liked.

Anita survives, so read the book. She sees Richard with his pack, becomes officially his Lupa without becoming a shapeshifter after proving herself to two of the wolves that she is dominant to them. Anita promises to protect them and they return the favor by trying to watch her back during the time of the contract.

Jean-Claude gives his protection to Anita and makes her a guest at the Circus so she will be underground and protected, surrounded by both wolvs and vampires. No hitman would want to go through that many bodies to get to anyone, especially when they all have supernatural strength.

The bond between Richard, Jean-Claude and Anita becomes magical, and not just metaphorically either. They create a triumvirate for the first time in this book between them. Anita becomes closer to Richard and has convinced him to kill Marcus instead of letting him live. She knows Marcus won't back down and will try to play dirty in order to kill him this time around.

There's another triumvirate in town, but I can't give you too many details, as that would give a lot of the story away. Gabriel, the scary were-leopard and Raina, Marcus' Lupa, both make a very horrifying appearance as well. The pages keep turning, the action is non-stop whether Anita is running for her life or falling in love.

If you've ever read any of the authors that I am currently featuring here, then you already know what the term Saga means. Sagas start out as a single novel, usually with no indication that there is going to be a next novel. This also depends on the history of the author. Have they written trilogies before? Have they created an outline that can be continued into several more books? These are important things when writing stories that are going to be drawn out over a period of several novels, some of which are almost 1000 pages long.

It's not easy writing a novel, let alone several that link to each other intricately. I do however quite enjoy them. When you are reading a Saga you learn about the characters, you end up loving or hating them, but you always need to know more of the story, about what is going to happen to them next and are they going to save the world or will it all fall down and crumble around them?

There are a few Sagas I have read that started out as Trilogies. If you have read Raymond E. Feist, who a friend got me interested in many years ago, he started out with a simple orphan boy who ended up becoming a savior to a princess, then he became a slave, and after all of his trials became one of the most powerful magicians in the known worlds. This entire saga started with one book, called Magician Apprentice. I've read the book several times, I have all but a couple of books for the entire Saga, including the Kelewan based trilogy.

I love reading Sagas because you keep in touch with those characters you first meet. The world grows around them, they confront enemies who are trying to turn everything into chaos, they find allies in one of their enemies, loved ones die and new ones continue to defend the world they know and cherish.

The best thing about Sagas is that everything is based in the same world, or worlds in the case of Feists' Magician books, and there is always something going on that catches you, pulls you in and keeps you hungry for more.

You don't have to read fantasy in order to get a good Saga. You can get an excellent saga out of the Anita Blake and Merry Genty books by Laurell K. Hamilton as well. Nora Roberts wrote a trilogy, but I haven't finished reading it yet and I don't know if there are more books to it at this time. I also enjoy Catherine Coulter's FBI thriller books. Best to be read in order but they can stand on their own as well. These are the types of stories I love to read. Sagas keep you enthralled for years, watching characters grow, live, and die, then to watch their children to do the same.

Honey kept telling me that I had to read this book, that I would like it. In a way I did and in other ways I didn't. The story kept you going because you wanted to find out the details of what was really going on and you wanted to find out who the killer was. When there are many suspects and nothing specifically pointing to a particular one, you may end up getting yourself killed.

This book was like that. It wasn't a fast read for me until I was halfway through and I wanted to get through it so I could know who killed her and why and who was she really. Martin is a good writer from what I read in this book, he provided sketches of two of the ships in the book as well, which helps when going through the motions with the inspector.

Americans and Russians working together is something that happens, the joint venture was good for both sides and just because of that you knew someone had to screw it all up. Someone wanted to play spy, another was a killer, some were drug smugglers. You didn't know who was reporting to the KGB, you didn't know who was going to support the inspector.

All in all, it may have taken me a bit of time to get into the book, but it was definitely worth the sit down.