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Review Date: 2/10/2008
From the puzzle tale in Alexandre Dumas's âThe Man of the Knifeâ to Gerald Tollesfrud's police procedural âSwitch,â this richly varied collection spans more than 200 years and encompasses virtually every kind of crime story. Ernest Leong's âIncense Sticksâ offers a taste of the noir thriller. Allen Beack's âAlways Togetherâ features dark, bloody fratricide. Ferenc Molnar's âThe Best Policyâ tells a fascinating tale of embezzlement, while Gary Lovisi's âNew Bloodâ stars a compelling serial killer. There's kidnapping in Edgar Wallace's âThe Slavemaker,â bigamy in Joyce Kilmer's âWhitemail,â drive-by shootings in Dane Gregory's âJackie Won't Be Home,â and a crime so bizarre in Geoggrey Vace's âThe Hard-Luck Kidâ that it simply defies classification. Each one will get the blood racing and the mind working in overdrive.
Review Date: 2/10/2008
Match wits with great detectives, devious criminals, and some of the finest minds in the all-time annals of detective literature. From crime-suspense (Tom Curry's "The Sign") to hard-boiled fiction ("A Hand of Pinochle") to modern noir ("Soul's Burning" by Bill Pronzini), the scope of these 100 detective stories is as wide as the tales are short. They're the brainchildren of such top names as James M. Barrie ("The Adventure of the Two Collaborators"), O. Henry ("The Mystery of the Rue de Peychaud"), Charles Dickens ("An Artful Touch"), Bret Harte ("The Stolen Cigar-Case"), Jack London ("The Leopard Man's Story"), R.L. Stevens ("The Carnival Caper"), Stephen Deninger ("Damsel with a Derringer"), Nick Spain ("Duck Behind that Eight-Ball!"), and countless others. There's even one by Abraham Lincoln, "The Trailor Murder Mystery," which appeared in 1843. Prison breakouts, grand larceny, homicide: trying to solve these tricky cases will be a treat for all mystery fans.
Review Date: 2/16/2008
A ward-winning writer and editor Al Sarrantonio gathers together twenty-nine original stories from masters of the macabre. From dark fantasy and pure suspense to classic horror tales of vampires and zombies, 999 showcases the extraordinary scope of fantastical fright fiction. The stories in this anthology are a relentless tour de force of fear, which will haunt you, terrify you, and keep the adrenaline rushing all through the night.
About the Author
AL SARRANTONIO's twenty-five books includes the horror novels Moonbane, House Haunted, Skeletons,and Totentanz, as well as the critically acclaimed science fiction trilogy Five Worlds. He has been an editor, reviewer and columnist, and has been nominated for the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award and the Private Eye Writers of America's Shamus Award. His short stories have appeared in magazines such as Heavy Metal, Twilight Zone, and Realms of Fantasy, as well as in anthologies including The Year's Best Horror Stories, Great Ghost Stories, and The Best of Shadows. A collection of his best horror tales, Head Stories, has just been published.
About the Author
AL SARRANTONIO's twenty-five books includes the horror novels Moonbane, House Haunted, Skeletons,and Totentanz, as well as the critically acclaimed science fiction trilogy Five Worlds. He has been an editor, reviewer and columnist, and has been nominated for the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award and the Private Eye Writers of America's Shamus Award. His short stories have appeared in magazines such as Heavy Metal, Twilight Zone, and Realms of Fantasy, as well as in anthologies including The Year's Best Horror Stories, Great Ghost Stories, and The Best of Shadows. A collection of his best horror tales, Head Stories, has just been published.
Review Date: 2/10/2008
Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. "We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples." While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy.
Review Date: 2/16/2008
Public relations guru Sasha Solomon, introduced in The Clovis Incident (2004), has her hands full in Agatha-nominee Taichert's suspenseful sequel. Sasha has been hired to help the small town of Belen, N.Mex., rethink its approach to tourism. The town's main attraction is a controversial artist, Phillipa "Philly" Petty, who happens to be Sasha's mother's best friend. Sasha swings by Philly's house only to find the woman dead. It turns out she was poisonedâ"just after she wrote a new will, naming Sasha's mom, Hannah, her heir. Hannah begs her daughter to track down the killer. Suspects include Philly's erstwhile lover, her maid and the chamber of commerce director (who appreciated the attention Phillipa drew to Belen but was personally offended by her paintings). When she's not sleuthing, Sasha dabbles in romance. The cop in charge of Philly's murder is predictably hunky and single, and Sasha's equally attractive physician plies his patient with plenty of attention, too. Taichert provides all the ingredients for a bang-up regional cozy. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
A dynamic and original protagonist lends spice to this southwestern story set in Belen, New Mexico (south of Albuquerque). PR consultant Sasha Solomon finds herself caught in the middle of an ugly civic battle. Two factions are arguing over how best to transform a former Harvey House into a tourist attraction. A group of train enthusiasts wants to combine a bed-and-breakfast with an authentic Fred Harvey restaurant. The other faction, a group of local artists, want the building turned into a gallery that would display the works of highly controversial local artist Phillipa Petty, a close friend of Sasha's mother. When Sasha goes to interview the artist at her home, she finds Phillipa dead. It seems accidental at first, but when Sasha's raw throat is examined by a doctor, they find she has inhaled poisonous gas. As she attempts to solve Phillipa's murder, Sasha gets to know many of Belen's colorful characters and deals with her own relationship issues. Routine mystery nicely spiced with local color.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
A dynamic and original protagonist lends spice to this southwestern story set in Belen, New Mexico (south of Albuquerque). PR consultant Sasha Solomon finds herself caught in the middle of an ugly civic battle. Two factions are arguing over how best to transform a former Harvey House into a tourist attraction. A group of train enthusiasts wants to combine a bed-and-breakfast with an authentic Fred Harvey restaurant. The other faction, a group of local artists, want the building turned into a gallery that would display the works of highly controversial local artist Phillipa Petty, a close friend of Sasha's mother. When Sasha goes to interview the artist at her home, she finds Phillipa dead. It seems accidental at first, but when Sasha's raw throat is examined by a doctor, they find she has inhaled poisonous gas. As she attempts to solve Phillipa's murder, Sasha gets to know many of Belen's colorful characters and deals with her own relationship issues. Routine mystery nicely spiced with local color.
Review Date: 3/2/2008
Helpful Score: 5
In seven bestselling novels (from Relic to The Ice Limit), Preston and Child have delivered a body of science-based thrillers that for high excitement and robust scientific imaginings rival those of Michael Crichton. Their eighth outing is another richly entertaining tale, about the hunt for a seemingly immortal serial killer at work in New York City. Preston and Child revive characters and settings from earlier novels, often a red flag that authorial imagination is tiring; but in this case, all comes together with zing. There's FBI Special Agent Pendergast (from Relic), pale, refined and possessed of a Holmes-like brain; dogged New York Times reporter William Smithback Jr. and his fiery erstwhile girlfriend, Nora Kelly of the New York (read American, where Preston used to work) Museum of Natural History (both characters from Thunderhead with the museum the setting for Relic). The action begins when groundbreaking for an apartment tower in downtown Manhattan reveals a charnel house of murder victims from the late 19th century. Enter Pendergast, who for unexplained reasons taps Kelly to study the remains before the site is stripped by the building's developer, a Donald Trump-type who, with the mayor's backing, will accept no construction delays. As Kelly calls on Smithback for investigative help, the city is struck by killings that duplicate the earlier murders, with the victims' spinal cords ripped away and clues pointing to a 19th-century scientist who sought the secret of immortality. Featuring fabulous locales, colorful characters, pointed riffs on city and museum politics, cool forensic and paleontological speculation and several gripping set pieces including an extended white-knuckle climax, this a great beach novel, at times gruesome, always fun: Preston-Child at the top of their game.
Adult/High School-FBI Special Agent Pendergast needs the talents of Nora Kelly, an archaeologist, and William Smithback, Jr., a researcher and reporter, to track down a serial killer whom he is sure has been stalking his prey since the late-19th century. When a real-estate developer demolishes a building and finds victims of a murderer who killed by tearing out their spinal columns, the three team up to pursue the evil behind the acts. Along the way, they nearly lose their lives as they relentlessly track the killer who, indeed, is still alive at the beginning of the 21st century. Pendergast stands out as a unique character, mysterious in his own right, with almost superhuman strength and endurance, and encyclopedic knowledge, and the human emotions and abilities of his two assistants intensifies interest in them. The authors again weave facts from New York City history with a thriller plot to produce an adventure filled with fast-moving events, gruesome scenes, and enough scary moments to keep the pages turning quickly. Fans of Preston and Child's Relic (Tor, 1996) or Reliquary (Forge, 1997) will enjoy this title as well.
Adult/High School-FBI Special Agent Pendergast needs the talents of Nora Kelly, an archaeologist, and William Smithback, Jr., a researcher and reporter, to track down a serial killer whom he is sure has been stalking his prey since the late-19th century. When a real-estate developer demolishes a building and finds victims of a murderer who killed by tearing out their spinal columns, the three team up to pursue the evil behind the acts. Along the way, they nearly lose their lives as they relentlessly track the killer who, indeed, is still alive at the beginning of the 21st century. Pendergast stands out as a unique character, mysterious in his own right, with almost superhuman strength and endurance, and encyclopedic knowledge, and the human emotions and abilities of his two assistants intensifies interest in them. The authors again weave facts from New York City history with a thriller plot to produce an adventure filled with fast-moving events, gruesome scenes, and enough scary moments to keep the pages turning quickly. Fans of Preston and Child's Relic (Tor, 1996) or Reliquary (Forge, 1997) will enjoy this title as well.
Review Date: 2/16/2008
Helpful Score: 1
The always reliable team of Preston and Child revisit Special FBI Agent Aloysius Pendergast, last seen in 2004's Brimstone, and others from past bestsellers (Relic; The Cabinet of Curiosities) in this intriguing thriller set in and around New York City and the halls of the Museum of Natural History. Born a misanthropic loner but driven insane by seeing his parents burned alive when he was a teen, Aloysius's madman brother, Diogenes, has begun murdering Aloysius's friends. Aloysius begs old friend Lt. Vincent D'Agosta to help him defeat his brother, and Vincent does his best while the brothers spar and others die. There are a number of subplots, one involving an ATM robber and flasher known as the Dangler and another focusing on the museum's exhibition of sacred masks, but these fade away as the deadly duel between the brothers takes center stage. Think Sherlock Holmes locked in a death struggle with his smarter brother, Mycroft. Like Brimstone, this novel doesn't end so much as simply pause while the authors work on the next installment. While it's not as good as some of their earlier efforts, it's still pretty darn good.
Review Date: 3/2/2008
Helpful Score: 1
Best known as the coauthor (with Douglas Preston) of such bestselling thrillers as Dance of Death, Child delivers a well-crafted and literate science fiction thriller, his third solo effort (after 2004's Death Match). Peter Crane, a former naval doctor, faces the challenge of his career when he investigates a mysterious illness that has broken out on a North Atlantic oil rig. Sworn to secrecy, Crane is transported from the rig to an amazing undersea habitat run by the military that's apparently pursuing evidence that Atlantis exists. Psychotic episodes among the scientific staff as well as the activities of a saboteur that threatens the project's safety keep Crane busy, even as some of the staff members confront him with concerns that exploring the Earth's core could be fatal to all life on earth. Crisp writing energizes a familiar plot, which builds to an unsettling climax with echoes of Child and Preston's The Ice Limit.
Menace is everywhere as naval doctor Peter Crane investigates mysterious illnesses at an even more mysterious underwater research facility in the North Atlantic. The scientists say they're excavating long-lost Atlantis, but Crane suspects that something weirder and more dangerous is under way. Thank goodness for narrator Scott Brick, who offers both equanimity and tension in his reading, which intensifies the drama while keeping the complex plot clear (if not believable). He also adds color through subtle characterizations of everyone from straight-ahead military types to obsessed researchers and truly creepy secret agents. I wished that the scary types didn't always speak so deliberately, but that's a very minor quibble in this well-performed entertainment.
Menace is everywhere as naval doctor Peter Crane investigates mysterious illnesses at an even more mysterious underwater research facility in the North Atlantic. The scientists say they're excavating long-lost Atlantis, but Crane suspects that something weirder and more dangerous is under way. Thank goodness for narrator Scott Brick, who offers both equanimity and tension in his reading, which intensifies the drama while keeping the complex plot clear (if not believable). He also adds color through subtle characterizations of everyone from straight-ahead military types to obsessed researchers and truly creepy secret agents. I wished that the scary types didn't always speak so deliberately, but that's a very minor quibble in this well-performed entertainment.
Review Date: 2/9/2008
William Saroyan's from "Inhale and Exhale. Thirty-one Selected Stories". Using his perceptive ability, he produces great stories which are alive and entertaining, and seem to come from his pen as naturally and spontaneously as breath comes from humanity.
Review Date: 2/9/2008
A wonderful collection of over fifty ghost stories not to be read by the faint of heart. Great by the fireside or with a group of young couples. The stories will spur the imagination and chill the air.
Review Date: 2/9/2008
A postmodern, feminist variation on the Marquis de Sade's book of the same name, this American debut from Scots writer Thompson is a compelling, though abstract, meditation on identity and desire. The nameless male narrator, a handsome, wealthy aesthete whose physique is marred by a deformed foot, owns a portrait of a beautiful young woman named Justine. At his mother's funeral, he spies the portrait made flesh, but the real Justine leaves before he can speak to her. Later, he thinks he sees her again at an art museum, but this slightly less beautiful woman turns out to be Justine's twin sister, Juliette, whom the narrator seduces in hopes of finding her sister. When he does finally meet his reclusive beloved, she tells him that she is being stalked by an obsessive fan of her just-published novel, whom she fears is trying to kidnap her. Then Justine is apparently kidnapped, and Juliette also abruptly disappears, leaving the increasingly delusional narrator to search for the truth. More intellectual entertainment than explicit or transgressive fiction, Thompson's novel recalls John Fowles's The Magus or Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy more than it does the perverse and menacing work of de Sade which will doubtlessly come as good news to some readers.
Lean Thinking : Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
Author:
Book Type: Hardcover
2
Author:
Book Type: Hardcover
2
Review Date: 2/9/2008
In the revised and updated edition of Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, authors James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones provide a thoughtful expansion upon their value-based business system based on the Toyota model. Along the way they update their action plan in light of new research and the increasing globalization of manufacturing, and they revisit some of their key case studies (most of which still derive, however, from the automotive, aerospace, and other manufacturing industries).
The core of the lean model remains the same in the new edition. All businesses must define the "value" that they produce as the product that best suits customer needs. The leaders must then identify and clarify the "value stream," the nexus of actions to bring the product through problems solving, information management, and physical transformation tasks. Next, "lean enterprise" lines up suppliers with this value stream. "Flow" traces the product across departments. "Pull" then activates the flow as the business re-orients towards the pull of the customer's needs. Finally, with the company reengineered towards its core value in a flow process, the business re-orients towards "perfection," rooting out all the remaining muda (Japanese for "waste") in the system.
Despite the authors' claims to "actionable principles for creating lasting value in any business during any business conditions," the lean model is not demonstrated with broad applications in the service or retail industries. But those manager's whose needs resonate with those described in the Lean Thinking case studies will find a host of practical guidelines for streamlining their processes and achieving manufacturing efficiencies. --Patrick O'Kelley
From Publishers Weekly
There's a missionary zeal to this book for corporate managers: it wants to convert companies the world over to the streamlined production process pioneered by Toyota after WWII. Womack and Jones chronicled Toyota's concept of lean production in The Machine That Changed the World, and embarked in 1990 on a tour of North America, Europe and Japan to persuade organizations, managers, employers and investors that mass production was out of date and should be chucked for something better. They formed a network of companies and individuals dedicated to lean production. Network members, whose stories form the basis of the book, gather annually to update procedures and refine theory. Showa Manufacturing, a Japanese maker of radiators and boilers, for instance, pulled itself out of an earnings slump by changing from mass-producing batches of standardized equipment to producing customized small lots. Heavily laden with details, this is for specialists who want to streamline. It makes few references to the larger, global economy. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The core of the lean model remains the same in the new edition. All businesses must define the "value" that they produce as the product that best suits customer needs. The leaders must then identify and clarify the "value stream," the nexus of actions to bring the product through problems solving, information management, and physical transformation tasks. Next, "lean enterprise" lines up suppliers with this value stream. "Flow" traces the product across departments. "Pull" then activates the flow as the business re-orients towards the pull of the customer's needs. Finally, with the company reengineered towards its core value in a flow process, the business re-orients towards "perfection," rooting out all the remaining muda (Japanese for "waste") in the system.
Despite the authors' claims to "actionable principles for creating lasting value in any business during any business conditions," the lean model is not demonstrated with broad applications in the service or retail industries. But those manager's whose needs resonate with those described in the Lean Thinking case studies will find a host of practical guidelines for streamlining their processes and achieving manufacturing efficiencies. --Patrick O'Kelley
From Publishers Weekly
There's a missionary zeal to this book for corporate managers: it wants to convert companies the world over to the streamlined production process pioneered by Toyota after WWII. Womack and Jones chronicled Toyota's concept of lean production in The Machine That Changed the World, and embarked in 1990 on a tour of North America, Europe and Japan to persuade organizations, managers, employers and investors that mass production was out of date and should be chucked for something better. They formed a network of companies and individuals dedicated to lean production. Network members, whose stories form the basis of the book, gather annually to update procedures and refine theory. Showa Manufacturing, a Japanese maker of radiators and boilers, for instance, pulled itself out of an earnings slump by changing from mass-producing batches of standardized equipment to producing customized small lots. Heavily laden with details, this is for specialists who want to streamline. It makes few references to the larger, global economy. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review Date: 2/9/2008
Since he was a youngster, W. C. Jameson has hiked, explored, and been captivated by the Guadalupe Mountains of west Texas and southeast New Mexico, just southwest of Carlsbad. He has searched the caves in the mountains (even finding a few gold nuggets tucked away years earlier by an unknown prospector) and visited with longtime residents in the local cafés and taverns, and on their ranches. He spent hours listening to them share historical events of the Guadalupes as well as the legends.
Sometimes the people of the mountains talked about buried treasures and other times they spoke of ghosts and spirits that many believed resided in the dark interior of the range. They shared personal experiences and exchanged stories of strange things encountered high in the mountains and tales of unexplainable happenings.
There are countless stories associated with the Guadalupe Mountains. Many are factual, having been historically documented. Others are part of the legend and lore. A few are bizarre. W. C. Jameson includes numerous tales and stories here for the armchair traveler or the travel planner.
These tales of the mountains, mines, and characters of the Guadalupe range were collected over many years by the author who has explored the area since he was a boy.
About the Author
W. C. Jameson is an award-winning author of fifty books, including a series on lost mines and buried treasures. When not on the road playing music and conducting writing workshops, Jameson splits his time between Colorado and Texas.
Sometimes the people of the mountains talked about buried treasures and other times they spoke of ghosts and spirits that many believed resided in the dark interior of the range. They shared personal experiences and exchanged stories of strange things encountered high in the mountains and tales of unexplainable happenings.
There are countless stories associated with the Guadalupe Mountains. Many are factual, having been historically documented. Others are part of the legend and lore. A few are bizarre. W. C. Jameson includes numerous tales and stories here for the armchair traveler or the travel planner.
These tales of the mountains, mines, and characters of the Guadalupe range were collected over many years by the author who has explored the area since he was a boy.
About the Author
W. C. Jameson is an award-winning author of fifty books, including a series on lost mines and buried treasures. When not on the road playing music and conducting writing workshops, Jameson splits his time between Colorado and Texas.
Review Date: 2/16/2008
No doubt horror fans look forward to each yearly installment of this particular Mammoth series, and volume 12 should please them immensely. As usual, the collection begins with editor Jones' comprehensive precis of the year in horror, which covers new novels, movies, and television shows, keeping buffs updated on all the latest work in the genre. Then comes the meat of the book: noteworthy new stories from such hardworking and often acclaimed horror hands as Kim Newman, who boasts several entries, including "Castle in the Desert," the story of a man who goes to rescue his former stepdaughter from a gang of vampires, with help from an expected source. In Mick Garris' "Forever Gramma," a young boy is disturbed to see that his town's general store owner is still fixated on the boy's grandmother after her death. In "Bone Orchards," Paul J. McAuley tells the story of a man drawn into a young girl's murder after encountering her ghost. And those are just for starters. Ghoulish fun.
Book Description
The acclaimed collection of contemporary horror fiction, this year's Best New Horror again showcases the talents of the finest writers working the field of terror. Sifting through the year in horror, award-winning editor Stephen Jones has chosen the year's best stories by the old masters and new voices alike. The latest volume of the Best New Horror series features stories by Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Tim Lebbon, Kim Newman, and horror movie director Mick Garrick (adapter of the upcoming film of Stephen King's Desperation), among many writers. As a bonus, there is Jones's always-informative overview of the year in horror, making this a truly state-of-the-dark-art annual.
Book Description
The acclaimed collection of contemporary horror fiction, this year's Best New Horror again showcases the talents of the finest writers working the field of terror. Sifting through the year in horror, award-winning editor Stephen Jones has chosen the year's best stories by the old masters and new voices alike. The latest volume of the Best New Horror series features stories by Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Tim Lebbon, Kim Newman, and horror movie director Mick Garrick (adapter of the upcoming film of Stephen King's Desperation), among many writers. As a bonus, there is Jones's always-informative overview of the year in horror, making this a truly state-of-the-dark-art annual.
Review Date: 7/7/2008
Helpful Score: 2
Under cover of darkness, something evil is at work in Hyde River, an old mining town deep in the mountains. Its latest victim, nature photographer Cliff Benson, was brutally killed while camping -- and his wife Evelyn has been driven nearly mad by what she saw, but she can't remember what it was. The sheriff thinks a rogue bear killed Cliff. But townspeople whisper -- and Cliff's death is just the latest in a long string of bizarre "accidents." Cliff's brother Steve is determined to find out the truth about what's concealed in the old caverns near Hyde River, a mystery that the local folk legends only hint at.
A wildlife biologist named Steve Benson has come to the remote mountain town of Hyde River to investigate the gruesome death of his brother. Benson tracks down and kills a grizzly, but then more people are killed and the bears are exonerated. Benson begins to listen with seriousness to the ravings of an old hermit who says that there's a dragon who lives in Saddlehorse Mountain and who lives on sin. It seems that in the 1880s, when Hyde River was a booming mining town, a fire-and-brimstone preacher was hanged, and the perpetrators then signed an oath embracing Reason as their god. In more than 100 years, their sins have grown into a monster. Steve tracks the chimerical dragon, which toys with him and lets him go. Steve is the embodiment of reason but feels the weight of sin when he begins an affair with a married woman, a local deputy named Tracy. A red mark appears over his heart, and gradually it begins to ooze black slime. Judgment Day arrives, and the dragon comes to claim its own. Steve, at last a believer, stands alone to do battle, rather like Bilbo Baggins of The Hobbit, except that Peretti writes with a grim fervor rather than playfulness. Largely because of the success of This Present Darkness (1987), Peretti's name inspires awe in the religious publishing world; The Oath is so heavily anticipated that its prepublication sales placed it fifth on the Evangelical Christian best-seller list.
A wildlife biologist named Steve Benson has come to the remote mountain town of Hyde River to investigate the gruesome death of his brother. Benson tracks down and kills a grizzly, but then more people are killed and the bears are exonerated. Benson begins to listen with seriousness to the ravings of an old hermit who says that there's a dragon who lives in Saddlehorse Mountain and who lives on sin. It seems that in the 1880s, when Hyde River was a booming mining town, a fire-and-brimstone preacher was hanged, and the perpetrators then signed an oath embracing Reason as their god. In more than 100 years, their sins have grown into a monster. Steve tracks the chimerical dragon, which toys with him and lets him go. Steve is the embodiment of reason but feels the weight of sin when he begins an affair with a married woman, a local deputy named Tracy. A red mark appears over his heart, and gradually it begins to ooze black slime. Judgment Day arrives, and the dragon comes to claim its own. Steve, at last a believer, stands alone to do battle, rather like Bilbo Baggins of The Hobbit, except that Peretti writes with a grim fervor rather than playfulness. Largely because of the success of This Present Darkness (1987), Peretti's name inspires awe in the religious publishing world; The Oath is so heavily anticipated that its prepublication sales placed it fifth on the Evangelical Christian best-seller list.
Review Date: 3/2/2008
The netherworld of New York City? its subways, aqueducts, sewers and the homeless who inhabit them? proves as shuddery a setting for the authors' latest scientific monster mash as the American Museum of Natural History did for their bestselling Relic, to which this is the sequel. In the earlier novel, Mbwun, a ferocious creature that seemed part reptile, part human, rampaged through the museum killing people. The sequel, set 18 months after Mbwun was destroyed, opens with a police diver finding the headless bodies of two people apparently killed by underground cannibals. The corpses are sent to the museum's lab for analysis, which brings a number of returnees from Relic?burly homicide cop Vincent D'Agosta, anthropologist Margo Green, New York Post crime reporter Bill Smithback?to the case. They're soon joined by the novels' Sherlock Holmes figure, the irresistibly cool Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI. Forays by these principals into the kingdom of the Mole People (underground homeless), plus some forensic breakthroughs, point to a race of mini-Mbwun at work in an escalating series of savage killings that incite the city's upper crust to civil disobedience. The city's answer, to flood its nether vaults, turns out to threaten a global catastrophe that only Pendergast and company, aided by Navy SEALS, can avert. The story's "surprise" ending makes as much sense as ketchup on popcorn, and the entire novel has a desperate air about it as the authors stuff it with complications and, by pitting the homeless against the swells, try to create a kind of Decapitation of the Vanities. It's high on suspense and tremendous fun in parts, though, especially when exploring the city's nightmare underbelly.
The curator of the Natural History Museum rejoins police and the FBI as they attempt to solve horrific murders. A frightening sequel to The Relic, it's a terrific read on its own.
The curator of the Natural History Museum rejoins police and the FBI as they attempt to solve horrific murders. A frightening sequel to The Relic, it's a terrific read on its own.
Review Date: 2/9/2008
Novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. It is considered a masterpiece of American literature and a classic moral study. The novel is set in a village in Puritan New England. The main character is Hester Prynne, a young woman who has borne an illegitimate child. Hester believes herself a widow, but her husband, Roger Chillingworth, returns to New England very much alive and conceals his identity. He finds his wife forced to wear the scarlet letter A on her dress as punishment for her adultery. Chillingworth becomes obsessed with finding the identity of his wife's former lover. When he learns that the father of Hester's child is Arthur Dimmesdale, a saintly young minister who is the leader of those exhorting her to name the child's father, Chillingworth proceeds to torment the guilt-stricken young man. In the end Chillingworth is morally degraded by his monomaniacal pursuit of revenge; Dimmesdale is broken by his own sense of guilt, and he publicly confesses his adultery before dying in Hester's arms. Only Hester can face the future bravely, as she plans to take her daughter Pearl to Europe to begin a new life.
Review Date: 12/23/2011
Excellent content. Will be a good book for our book club discussion in February.
Review Date: 2/9/2008
To read a story by Henry James is to enter a world--a rich, perfectly crafted domain of vivid language and splendid, complex characters. Devious children, sparring lovers, capricious American girls, obtuse bachelors, sibylline spinsters and charming Europeans populate these five fascinating Nouvelles --works which represent the author in both his early and late phases. From the apparitions of evil that haunt the governess in The Turn Of The Screw to the startling self-scrutiny of an egotistical man in The Beast In The Jungle, the mysterious tumings of human behavior are skillfully and coolly observed--proving Henry James to be a master of psychological insight as well as one of the finest stylists of modern English literature.
Review Date: 3/2/2008
In the exciting eighth supernatural thriller from bestsellers Preston and Child (after 2006's The Book of the Dead), FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast and his ward, Constance Greene, seek peace of mind at a remote Tibetan monastery, only to fall into yet another perilous, potentially earthshaking assignment. The monastery's abbot asks them to recover a stolen relic, the cryptic Agozyen, which could, in the wrong hands, wipe out humanity. The pair follow the trail to a luxury cruise ship, where a series of brutal murders suggests the relic's evil spirit might already have been invoked. Fans of earlier books focused on a thinly disguised American Museum of Natural History may find less at stake among the new cast of secondary characters, but the fate of Constance, who claims to have aborted the child of Pendergast's villainous younger brother, remains a potent subplot. While not as frightening as others in the series, this entry still shows why the authors stand head and shoulders above their rivals in this subgenre.
FBI Special Agent Pendergast is taking a break from work to take Constance on a whirlwind Grand Tour, hoping to give her closure and a sense of the world that she's missed.They head to Tibet, where Pendergast intensively trained in martial arts and spiritual studies. At a remote monastery, they learn that a rare and dangerous artifact the monks have been guarding for generations has been mysteriously stolen.As a favor, Pendergast agrees to track and recover the relic.A twisting trail of bloodshed leads Pendergast and Constance to the maiden voyage of the Britannia, the world's largest and most luxurious ocean liner---and to an Atlantic crossing fraught with terror.
FBI Special Agent Pendergast is taking a break from work to take Constance on a whirlwind Grand Tour, hoping to give her closure and a sense of the world that she's missed.They head to Tibet, where Pendergast intensively trained in martial arts and spiritual studies. At a remote monastery, they learn that a rare and dangerous artifact the monks have been guarding for generations has been mysteriously stolen.As a favor, Pendergast agrees to track and recover the relic.A twisting trail of bloodshed leads Pendergast and Constance to the maiden voyage of the Britannia, the world's largest and most luxurious ocean liner---and to an Atlantic crossing fraught with terror.
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