Search this site    The Plains of Passage Author: Auel, Jean M. ISBN: 0-517-58049-7 Pages: 760 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Crown Published: September 24, 1990 Condition: Price: USD $3.29 From Publishers Weekly: The long-awaited fourth installment of the Earth's Children series is as warm and inviting as its campfire milieu. sure fire bestseller. Auel again describes her characters' travails, a passionate interest of millions of readers, in impeccably researched detail. The continuous recitation of flora and fauna, coupled with flashbacks to events in the previous books, becomes somewhat tiresome, however. (Would that our "memory" were as instinctual as that of the Clan.) The saga continues the cross-continental journey of Ayla, her mate Jondalar and their menagerie to his homeland. En route, they encounter a variety of problems, yet manage to find panaceas for each. Their enlightened compilation of skills, inventions, therapies and recipes transforms the voyagers into spirit-like personas providing The Others with constant awe. A brief encounter with the Neanderthal Clan rekindles the unique charm of the first (and strongest) book. Such locutions as "out of the cooking skin into the coals" or "Mother's path of milk" for the Milky Way are coyly anachronistic. Nonetheless, this volume is as welcome as letters from a long-lost friend. A novel 1.25 million first printing; major ad/promo; first serial to Ladies' Home Journal; BOMC main selection; author tour. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal: Auel follows the successful formula of the other books in this series--man's emergence from primitivism to civilization. Ayla and Jondalar continue their journey, accompanied by Whinny, Racer, and Wolf, closely observing the terrain and prudently, even inventively, developing "modern" techniques to deal with danger and evil. Perhaps most interesting is Ayla's triumph over the matriarchal despot Attaroa; the reverberating echoes of the women's movement's attendant strengths and weaknesses lend a nice touch of irony. The love scenes are not quite as steamy as in the other books. The conclusion is too abrupt, coming just as the characters reach their destination, but The Plains of Passage is still satisfying. - Joan L. Reynolds, West Potomac High School, Fairfax County, VA Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. The Incal 3 Authors: Jodorowsky, Alexandro / Giraud, Jean 'Moebius' ISBN: 0-87135-438-1 Pages: 96 Format: Paperback Publisher: Marvel Enterprises Published: September 1988 Condition: good Price: USD $14.99 Ghost Hunter Authors: Castle, Jayne / Krentz, Jayne Ann ISBN: 0-515-14140-2 Pages: 352 Format: Paperback Publisher: Jove Published: May 30, 2006 Condition: Price: USD $1.69 From Booklist: *Starred Review* Writing as Castle, the best-selling Jayne Ann Krentz creates another bewitching story set in the world of Harmony, a future planet of psychics and ghost hunters. If Elly St. Clair knew she was going to need Cooper Boone's help, she might have been nicer when she broke up with him. Instead, furious that Cooper had not only been involved in a duel over her but for all the wrong reasons, Elly gave Cooper back his ring, told him in no uncertain terms they were through, and left Aurora Springs for Cadence City. Then, when her good friend and neighbor Bertha Newell mysteriously disappears in the catacombs, Elly reluctantly admits that she needs the services of a hunter like Cooper. Fortunately, Cooper just happens to be in town, and he offers to help find Bertha. What Elly doesn't know is that Cooper never considered their engagement to be officially terminated. Castle's new futuristic romance brilliantly blends exceptionally entertaining characters, witty prose, and a thrilling paranormal-tinged plot in a sublime novel of romantic suspense. John Charles Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved   Hong Kong Author: Coonts, Stephen ISBN: 0-312-25339-7 Pages: 350 Format: Hardcover Publisher: St. Martins Press Published: September 12, 2000 Condition: Price: USD $3.29 From Publishers Weekly: Last year, Coonts had Cuba teetering on the political edge in his megaseller of the same name. Now it's Hong Kong, in another steadfast speculative thriller. The great city/state is falling out of Communist hands, just a few short years after the Chinese takeover. The revolution is being fomented by the cyberintelligentsia, who have managed to rig computer systems throughout Hong Kong and China so that all vital functionsAthe power grid, airports, oil refineries, telephone systems, etc.Awill collapse at the same time. At the helm of the insurrection is Virgil Cole, the American consul general who used his enormous wealth as a former Silicon Valley exec to finagle the overseas appointment; he views the revolution as a kind of extreme sport. He doesn't, however, anticipate the arrival of Jack Grafton, navy admiral and Washington's go-to guy, who starts prowling around a few days before the revolution begins. Just as Grafton is beginning to figure things out, a criminal gang leader working with the rebels kidnaps his wife. Anyone who's seen Grafton in action before knows that he isn't one to take such personal slights lightly. The final third of the book shows Hong Kong under spectacular siege as the rebels rely on sabotage, cunning and half a dozen fighting robots, called Sergeant Yorks, to subdue the Chinese soldiers. Coonts does a remarkable job of capturing the mood of clashing cultures in Hong Kong, creating some noteworthy secondary characters. These include Lin Pe, the aging owner of a fortune cookie factory who finds solace in writing simple fortunes while the world around her crumbles, and Sun Siu Ki, the Beijing-installed governor of Hong Kong, whose peasant mind simply cannot grasp rebellion. For all its stylish accents, however, the story goes from point A to point B with few detours or surprises. Most readers will likewise rush headlong through this seventh Grafton adventure. Major ad/promo. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal: Hong Kong in the immediate future is the scene for Coonts!s (Cuba) latest thriller. China is ripe for an anti-Communist revolution, and it explodes while Admiral Jake Grafton is in Hong Kong on a fact-finding assignment. While most previous Grafton novels have revolved around military actions, Hong Kong deals with spies, murder, kidnapping, and treachery. When the revolution erupts, the rebels use cyberwarfare to paralyze the Chinese government!s computers and gain access to traditional weapons. A real distraction is the use of Terminator-type combat robots to turn the tide for the rebels. Since these automata don!t exist (yet), they should not play a role in a novel that purports to be based on fact, and they spoil what could have been a compelling novel about a people!s struggle for freedom. Despite its flaws, this book will be enjoyed by Coonts!s many fans. For general collections. - Robert Conroy, Warren, WI Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. The Lovely Bones Author: Sebold, Alice ISBN: 0-316-66634-3 Pages: 328 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Little, Brown and Company Published: June 2002 Condition: Price: USD $2.29 On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers.... We never had to go inside except for art class.... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue." The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years like an episode of My So-Called Afterlife. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow." Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons From Publishers Weekly:  Sebold's first novel after her memoir, Lucky is a small but far from minor miracle. Sebold has taken a grim, media-exploited subject and fashioned from it a story that is both tragic and full of light and grace. The novel begins swiftly. In the second sentence, Sebold's narrator, Susie Salmon, announces, "I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." Susie is taking a shortcut through a cornfield when a neighbor lures her to his hideaway. The description of the crime is chilling, but never vulgar, and Sebold maintains this delicate balance between homely and horrid as she depicts the progress of grief for Susie's family and friends. She captures the odd alliances forged and the relationships ruined: the shattered father who buries his sadness trying to gather evidence, the mother who escapes "her ruined heart, in merciful adultery." At the same time, Sebold brings to life an entire suburban community, from the mortician's son to the handsome biker dropout who quietly helps investigate Susie's murder. Much as this novel is about "the lovely bones" growing around Susie's absence, it is also full of suspense and written in lithe, resilient prose that by itself delights. Sebold's most dazzling stroke, among many bold ones, is to narrate the story from Susie's heaven (a place where wishing is having), providing the warmth of a first-person narration and the freedom of an omniscient one. It might be this that gives Sebold's novel its special flavor, for in Susie's every observation and memory of the smell of skunk or the touch of spider webs is the reminder that life is sweet and funny and surprising. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. The Running Target Author: Seymour, Gerald ISBN: 0-688-05201-0 Pages: 336 Format: Hardcover Publisher: William Morrow & Co Published: January 1990 Condition: Price: USD $2.29 From Publishers Weekly:  Ordered to "shape up" his field agents, Mattie Furniss takes a perilous trip to the Middle East as this outstanding thriller begins. Mattie heads up the Iran Desk of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and only Charlie Eshraq has been providing him with first-rate information. Charlie, a young Iranian living in London, is driven by the need to avenge the execution of his family. His espionage allows him to find out who was responsible--and also to smuggle back heroin to pay for weapons. The high-quality smack kills the daughter of England's defense secretary, and Customs agent David Park is ordered to ferret out the smuggler. Charlie falls into further jeopardy when Iranian agents in Turkey kidnap Mattie, who, after enduring torture by a suitably brutal "investigator," reveals his agent's plans. Mattie escapes and flees to Turkey, but before he is deemed a hero, he must be debriefed. Seymour ( An Eye for an Eye ) writes with unforgettable irony, brilliantly illuminating the stupidity of SIS, the brutal obsession of Park and the agony of Mattie's wife Harriet. Quick cuts and code names make for slightly bumpy reading at first, but the end result is a gem. Memories of Midnight Author: Sheldon, Sidney ISBN: 0-688-08488-5 Pages: 399 Format: Hardcover Publisher: William Morrow & Company Published: August 1990 Condition: Price: USD $2.69 From Publishers Weekly:  Subtlety is not Sheldon's strong suit, but rarely has it been so utterly absent from his character development and plotting as in this crudely carved sequel to The Other Side of Midnight , which reprises Catherine Douglas's earlier role as a pretty patsy. Greek tycoon Constantin Demiris likes his plate of revenge ice-cold. Many months after he maneuvered to have Catherine, his mistress, and the lover she betrayed him with executed, he decides to tie up a few loose ends by ordering the death of anyone who can prove he engineered that heinous--and not entirely successful--crime. But like a cat with a juicy mouse, he keeps toying with Catherine, who, though suffering from amnesia, is the only person who could actually sink the billionaire ship owner. Fluttering in her orbit are the world's most thickheaded lawyer and an inexplicable office-mate named Wim, a misanthrope who reels off dates and numbers like an automaton. The final chapters are totally farfetched: one character commits suicide in an especially difficult way and another turns out to be a cold-blooded killer. Yet despite clunky dialogue and gargantuan lapses of logic, the bloody action and sweet turnaround in the final payback are likely to net Sheldon his usual spot on the bestseller list. First serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild main selection. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. The Doomsday Conspiracy Author: Sheldon, Sidney ISBN: 0-688-08489-3 Pages: 412 Format: Hardcover Publisher: William Morrow & Company Published: September 1991 Condition: Price: USD $2.49 From Publishers Weekly:  Sheldon spices his latest thriller, a 17-week PW bestseller in cloth, with science fiction, including aliens who arrive from another planet on an enviromentalist mission. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews:  A science-fiction--yes, science-fiction--novel from the master of soap. And one with a MESSAGE, too, just like the sf of yore--the clich‚s of which Sheldon shamelessly recycles as he ham-handedly depicts an earth under threat of invasion by aliens ticked off at- -what else?--our destruction of the environment. US Navy Commander Robert Bellamy--Sheldon's first male lead in many years--is assigned by NSA to locate the 11 people on a Swiss bus who saw the crash of a ``weather balloon.'' It takes only a chat with the bus driver for Bellamy to learn that the ``weather balloon'' was really a downed UFO containing two alien bodies. It takes talks with all the witnesses, however--Yank, Soviet, Hungarian, etc., each tracked down in the novel's repetitive first two-thirds with minimal sleuthing but maximal scenery-stuffing--for him to learn that each is killed right after talking to him: ``It was an international conspiracy, and he was in the middle of it.'' And so are: the aliens (``a form of vegetable life'' whose eyes ``resembled Ping-Pong balls'') circling earth in their mother ship, waiting to see whether world leaders will respond to their secret plea to halt pollution; the missing third occupant of the UFO, dying for lack of pristine water; and the international cabal, led by ``Janus,'' that's killed the witnesses with the intent of fighting the aliens and continuing earth's exploitation. In the livelier last third, Bellamy, resorting to clever spy-tricks and help from a winsome whore, runs from Janus--whose identity you'll spot chapters away--while plotting his downfall. The fitful action climaxes in an Alpine showdown, with the celestial calvary soaring in for the rescue. Inane as sf (and seemingly cribbed in part from sources ranging from John Campbell's ``Who's Out There?'' to Whitley Strieber's Communion); mediocre as a thriller, even Sheldon-style; but fascinating as one top author's earnest if inept effort (backed by a polemical postscript) to voice the kind of warning that H.G. Wells did with so much more style. (Literary Guild Dual Selection for Fall) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. The Sky Is Falling Author: Sheldon, Sidney ISBN: 0-06-019834-6 Pages: 336 Format: Hardcover Publisher: William Morrow & Company Published: September 12, 2000 Condition: Price: USD $2.29 Amazon.com:  Dana Evans, who made her first appearance in Sidney Sheldon's The Best Laid Plans, is a spunky, good-looking, young Washington TV journalist who's recently returned to the nation's capital from the Balkans, where she adopted a handicapped war orphan who's having trouble adjusting to life in America. But that doesn't keep Dana from following a story all over the world, from Washington to Aspen, Nice, Juneau, Dusseldorf, Rome, Brussels, Moscow, and Siberia. Each of these brief visits is like a postcard--a local landmark or two, an interesting local restaurant (at least in the European venues), and another piece of the puzzle, which has to do with why every member of a venerable, old Washington dynasty has died a violent death in the last year. It seems strange that in a media-savvy city like Washington, no one but Dana has noticed there's a pattern in the rapid extinction of the Winthrops or even whispered the words family vendetta. But that's why pretty, young girl TV reporters were invented, at least by Sheldon. As Dana sets out to investigate the distinguished career of the Winthrop family patriarch, her lover Jeff, a sports anchor at her station, is called away to administer aid and succor to his former wife, a beautiful model who's realized, too little and too late, that she never should have dumped him. And Kemal, the 12-year-old orphan, is being drugged by his baby sitter, who's in cahoots with at least one set of bad guys. Dana hasn't noticed how tractable the temperamental boy has become recently because she's been dressing up like a two-bit Russian tramp to infiltrate a secret weapons base in Siberia... Do you hear the words movie locations? But all's well that ends well, as it usually does for Sheldon's heroines, and in the meantime you've learned where the five-star hotels are and what to order in a famous restaurant in Rome. A slick, commercial, slightly thin tale told by a craftsman of the genre. --Jane Adams From Publishers Weekly:  Efficiently brisk and reliably suspenseful, Sheldon's (Tell Me Your Dreams, etc.) 17th novel demonstrates that this veteran master of commercial fiction has not lost his touch. Freshly returned to Washington, D.C., from a stint reporting in Sarajevo, TV newscaster Dana Evans (introduced in Sheldon's The Best Laid Plans) struggles to cope with her new adopted son, troubled 12-year-old Kemal, whose parents and sister were killed in the fighting. Back on the job, Dana interviews youngish millionaire Gary Winthrop, the scion of a Kennedyesque clan, only to learn the next day that the prospective Senate candidate and philanthropist has been murdered in his Washington townhouse. Unbelievably, Dana is the only person who finds it odd that five members of the Winthrop family have died violent deaths in the last year. Despite this weakness in the plot, Sheldon crafts a page-turner that takes Dana on a worldwide quest from France, Germany and Italy to Alaska and Moscow as she pursues her hunch that all the Winthrop deaths are related. Deceased family patriarch Taylor Winthrop, she discovers, was a manipulative, unscrupulous businessman, politico and womanizer with many enemies. And the senior Winthrop's connection to the real-life Siberian underground city of Krasnoyarsk-26 and its production of plutonium proves the source of the family's wealth and their ill fortune. A love triangle involving Dana, sports anchor Jeff Connors and his ex-wife, internationally known model Rachel Stevens, seems gratuitous, tossed in merely to add plot texture, but it does provide some viable moments of romance and schmaltz. When the villains behind the killings turn against Dana as she comes closer to the truth, the tension builds and holds right through to a seven-alarm finale. Agent, Mort Janklow. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Dynasty of Spies Author: Sherman, Dan ISBN: 0-87795-255-8 Pages: 360 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Arbor House Pub Co Published: October 1980 Condition: Price: USD $2.29 Sex Crimes Author: Shute, Jenefer ISBN: 0-385-48504-2 Pages: 210 Format: Hardcover Publisher: DoubleDay Published: October 1, 1996 Condition: Price: USD $1.99 From Library Journal:  Boston attorney Christine Chandler, 38, stands accused of blinding her 26-year-old boyfriend. Shute's (Life-Size, LJ 3/15/95) second novel is Christine's deposition of the events leading up to the crime, interlaced with the statements of other potential defense witnesses and excerpts from newspaper accounts. There are some good little jokes here, making Sex Crimes something more than the ordinary psychologial portrait of a woman driven to violence. For example, Christine's sexually insatiable young boyfriend is named Scott DeSalvo?after the sexually insatiable serial killer Albert DeSalvo, a.k.a., the Boston Strangler. He even unconsciouly chokes Christine in her sleep. It also turns out that Christine shares her alma-mater, double-major, and graduating class with another fictitious femme fatale?Catherine Tramell of the film Basic Instinct. Shute's writing is tight, clever, and compelling pornographic in a world-weary way. This slim novel will appeal to fans of those psychological thrillers that try to do a bit more than the movie-of-the-week. Recommended. Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal" Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews:  After making waves with her 1992 debut, Life-Size, the chronicle of an anorexic, Shute returns with a different, no less discomfiting tale of obsession, this time involving a woman so hopelessly in love that she blinds her erstwhile boyfriend. The deed is done before the story opens, with Christine Chandler, tagged in the tabloids as the Boston Fury, telling her own version of events for her lawyer's benefit as her trial looms. A driven 38-year-old attorney (Harvard Law, magna cum laude) specializing in immigration cases, Chris has never had much luck with relationships; when the much younger Scott, an unsuccessful ex-musician turned fledgling photographer, comes on to her at a New Year's Eve party, at first she doubts he'll be any different. She takes him to bed anyway, then calls him up to arrange future encounters in which body language does most of the talking. It isn't long, then, before they're seriously involved. But there's a problem, of course: Scott's live-in, who just happens to be on a yearlong assignment in Seoul. He still calls her regularly, making Chris insanely jealous, and after a few flare-ups followed by desperate reconciliations, the sex gets rougher, the rules get bent, and she discovers that both her self-esteem and her control are gone. Numb but still functioning, she moves to protect herself after a particularly brutal night, but one last confrontation in her apartment is still to occur--and the jury will be out a long time determining who was to blame for what eventually happened. While the effort to get inside the head of one so disturbed at times seems heavily stylized and clinical, there's no denying that this sexy fable of modernity exposes emotions that many might rather ignore. (Literary Guild and Doubleday book club selections) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Nora, Nora Author: Siddons, Anne Rivers ISBN: 0-06-017613-X Pages: 263 Format: Hardcover Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Published: July 18, 2000 Condition: Price: USD $1.99 Amazon.com:  The young heroine of Nora, Nora comes from a long line of angst-ridden adolescents, stretching back through Holden Caulfield and Frankie Addams to Huckleberry Finn. Yet Peyton McKenzie certainly has good reason to be unhappy. Her household, in the small Georgia town of Lytton, is shadowed by the deaths of her mother and older brother. Her father, meanwhile, has withdrawn into mournful distraction: "When Buddy died in an accident in his air-force trainer, when Peyton was five, Frazier McKenzie closed up shop on his laughter, anger, small foolishnesses, and large passions. Now, at twelve, Peyton could remember no other father than the cooled and static one she had." To withstand this mortuary atmosphere--not to mention a touch of small-town claustrophobia--Peyton has founded the Losers Club, where she and two other misfits share their daily doses of unhappiness. But everything changes when her cousin Nora shows up for a visit. This jaunty outsider is unlike anybody else in Kennedy-era Lytton, circa 1961: The first thing you noticed about Nora Findlay, Peyton thought, was that she gave off heat, a kind of sheen, like a wild animal, except that hers was not a dangerous ferality, but an aura of sleekness and high spirits. There was a padding, hip-shot prowl to her walk, and she moved her body as if she were totally unconscious of it, as if its suppleness and sinew were something she had lived with all her life. At first Nora's high spirits have a tonic effect, jogging both Peyton and her father out of their torpor. But her involvement in racial politics eventually rubs some of Lytton's citizens the wrong way--and puts her young cousin's loyalty to the test. Anne Rivers Siddons handles the narrative with a deft touch for local color (right down to the perpetual "three Coca-Colas in an old red metal ice chest"). But her feeling for her cast of characters is even better, mixing just the right proportions of delicacy and Southern discomfort. --Anita Urquhart From Publishers Weekly:  Siddons pulls off another smoothly written novel with ingratiating ease, despite an unpromising beginning. Readers may fear they're in the realm of the hackneyed reflections of To Kill a Mockingbird and A Member of the Wedding when they're introduced to 12-year-old, "thin, frail, queer and nervous" Peyton McKenzie. In the seventh grade in Lytton, Ga., Peyton has "no friends of her own age and gender," and spends her free time in the parsonage tool shed with 34-year-old Ernie Longworth, eccentric, erudite sexton and grave keeper of the Methodist church. The third member of their Losers Club is eight-year-old Boot, the handicapped grandson of Chloe, the McKenzies' black housekeeper. Peyton considers herself the consummate "loser" because her mother died the day after she was born, and her cool, distant father seems to hold Peyton responsible. When a beautiful red-haired stranger blows into town in a Thunderbird coup?, this too seems tritely familiar. Outspoken Nora Findlay, a distant cousin who smokes, drinks and doesn't wear a bra, is clearly out to shock the morally conservative community. Though Siddons doesn't deliver any thematic surprises in this well-worn genre, she does offer a neatly competent and engrossing story that captures the reader's sympathies despite its quality of d?j? vu, as she conjures up the social and racial attitudes of a small Southern town in the 1960s. Nora enthralls an initially reluctant Peyton, working magic on the girl's appearance, self-confidence, intellectual curiosity and moral vision, even as she scandalizes everyone else in town. But daredevil Nora is secretly vulnerable, as Peyton learns when her cousin confesses the heavy emotional burden she carries. Eventually, both Nora and Peyton experience the anguish of betrayal. In addition to her impeccable re-creation of Southern speech and atmosphere, Siddons captures the angst of adolescence with practiced skill, and she handles the rising drama of her plot so smoothly that the book has all the marks of bestsellerdom. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh at the Havana Bay Author: Smith, Martin Cruz ISBN: 0-679-42662-0 Pages: 329 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Random House Published: May 11, 1999 Condition: Price: USD $2.29 Amazon.com:  In this fourth book in Martin Cruz Smith's splendid series, an amiable Irish American gangster explains to Arkady Renko what he and the other 84 wanted Americans hiding out in Cuba do with themselves. "We try to stay alive. Useful. Tell me, Arkady, what are you doing here?" "The same," says Renko--and it's true. His life as a Russian cop has become so bleak and lonely that he takes any opportunity to shake things up, even spending his own savings to fly to Havana when an old colleague is found dead--floating inside an inner tube after night-fishing in Havana Bay. Renko sets out to make himself useful in this shabby, fascinating, haunted country whose inhabitants look on Russians with the cold disdain of survivors of a nasty divorce. As he did so well in Gorky Park, Smith again makes Renko very much a classic Russian hero in temperament and tradition, but also the eternal outsider. He is at times close to the edge of despair--but his trip to Havana restores his natural curiosity and life force. In this hot Havana, ripe with the fruity smell of sex, Renko keeps his Moscow overcoat on--until an equally idealistic and out-of-place young female cop gets him to loosen up. There's an unusually complex plot, even for the sly strand-spinner Smith. He raises baffling questions: Why would a group of military plotters order illegal lobsters in a fancy restaurant and then not eat them? And his descriptions of Cuban life are dead-on, reminding us on every page what a superb stylist he is. --Dick Adler From Library Journal:  Arkady Renko, perhaps Russia's last honest policeman, has arrived in Cuba to look into the death of a colleague. Opening on a corpse scene so gruesome that Virginia's Kay Scarpetta might get the willies, the plot quickly submerges into a surreal cauldron of dark beliefs, Cuban patriotism, and American wheeling and dealing. Where in Polar Star (Random, 1989) Smith explored the coldest regions, here he glories in the Caribbean riot of sensual heat and light. There are cameo characters who capture Fidel's Cuba while Arkady struggles with the elemental challenges of survival and discovery. This novel illuminates the dark corners of a sunny Havana and deftly portrays a society trapped in a Soviet legacy of deprivation and control. Smith writes incomparably well while willing the reader to reach for understanding of the human passions he describes. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Red Square Author: Smith, Martin Cruz ISBN: 0-679-41688-9 Pages: 418 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Random House Published: October 13, 1992 Condition: Price: USD $2.69 From Publishers Weekly:  The Soviet upheavals have fueled the glowing talent of Smith (Gorky Park), America's preeminent writer of Russia-based thrillers. Investigator Arkady Renko returns from exile on the Polar Star fleet to find the new Moscow a dramatic battlefield of warlords and entrepreneurs; behind it, as still as a painted backdrop, eight million people standing in line. An ingenious bomb kills Renko's informer the banker for freewheeling black marketeers-leading Arkady's team through the quicksand of mafia-dominated official graft. His workaholic forensics expert, Polina (who must wait in line for morgue time as well as for beets), identifies the bomb method, leading Arkady too close for aparatchik comfort. He is bumped from the case, but only after a clue from the dead man's fax (Where is Red Square?) points him toward a Munich connection. Meanwhile, he is stunned to hear his lost love, Irina, on Munichbased Radio Liberty and with his last bit of clout wrangles a barely official trip to Germany. His mastery of the Russian system stymies the Munich embassy and reunites him with Irina in the midst of nasty fellow citizens bent on national theft. With vital aid from a Munich cop, Arkady links the fax clue to Russian bureaucrats, the ethnic Checken mafia, and German bankers. The novel paints the new post-Soviet aura through the stoic hero's wry humor and leaves Arkady and Irina perfectly poised, like Russia itself, for whatever comes next. The Notebook Author: Sparks, Nicholas ISBN: 0-446-60523-9 Pages: 239 Format: Paperback Publisher: Warner Books Published: February 1, 2004 Condition: Price: USD $1.69 "Somewhere," muses Noah Calhoun, while sitting on his porch in the moonight, "there were people making love." The Notebook, a Southern-fried story of love-lost-and-found-again, revolves around a single time-honored romantic dilemma: will beautiful Allison Nelson stay with Mr. Respectability (to whom she happens to be engaged), or will she choose Noah, the romantic rascal she left so many years ago? From Publishers Weekly:  In 1932, two North Carolina teenagers from opposite sides of the tracks fall in love. Spending one idyllic summer together in the small town of New Bern, Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson do not meet again for 14 years. Noah has returned from WWII to restore the house of his dreams, having inherited a large sum of money. Allie, programmed by family and the "caste system of the South" to marry an ambitious, prosperous man, has become engaged to powerful attorney Lon Hammond. When she reads a newspaper story about Noah's restoration project, she shows up on his porch step, re-entering his life for two days. Will Allie leave Lon for Noah? The book's slim dimensions and cliche-ridden prose will make comparisons to The Bridges of Madison County inevitable. What renders Sparks's (Wokini: A Lakota Journey of Happiness and Self-Understanding) sentimental story somewhat distinctive are two chapters, which take place in a nursing home in the '90s, that frame the central story. The first sets the stage for the reading of the eponymous notebook, while the later one takes the characters into the land beyond happily ever after, a future rarely examined in books of this nature. Early on, Noah claims that theirs may be either a tragedy or a love story, depending on the perspective. Ultimately, the judgment is up to readers?be they cynics or romantics. For the latter, this will be a weeper. Major ad/promo; first serial to Good Housekeeping; movie rights to New Line Cinema; Warner Audio; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selections. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Accident Author: Steel, Danielle ISBN: 0-385-30602-4 Pages: 305 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Delacorte Press Published: February 1, 1994 Condition: Price: USD $2.29 From Publishers Weekly:  Packed with Steel's trademark dense plotting and incidents featuring everything from sexual abuse and infidelity to car crashes and impossible relatives, her 32nd novel (after Vanished ) is set in California's plush Marin County. Page Clarke, devoted wife of Brad and mother of Allyson and Andy, finds her golden life shattered when 15-year-old Allyson sneaks off with friend Chloe to meet two boys. In a subsequent head-on collision, one boy is killed, Chloe is seriously injured and Allyson lapses into a coma. Page can't reach Brad, who confesses when he comes home that he is having an affair. Stunned and hurt, Page keeps a vigil at Allyson's bedside while also coping with needy seven-year-old Andy and an ambivalent husband who can't decide whether to stay or leave. Her only support comes from Chloe's father, Trygve Thorensen, who has been the primary caretaker for his kids since their mother divorced him. Other plot twists include a visit from Page's self-indulgent, neurotic mother and her sister, and a secret concerning the driver of the other car in the accident. While not drawn in much depth, the characters are believable; Trygve in particular is likable and nurturing. The ending is predictable but pleasant, bound to delight Steel's fans. One million first printing; national ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club dual main selection. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal:  In Steel's 32nd work, Page Clarke waits alone at a hospital to discover whether her daughter will survive a car crash involving several teenagers. As usual, her husband is out of town, but at least Page can lean on handsome Trygve, father of her daughter's best friend. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Granny Dan Author: Steel, Danielle ISBN: 0-385-31709-3 Pages: 223 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Delacorte Press Published: June 29, 1999 Condition: Price: USD $2.29 For over a decade, young Danina Petroskova has known no life but that of the ballet and her mentor Madame Markova. When a deathly illness steals her from the stage, the young dancer is inconsolable, and, desperate to speed her recovery, Madame Markova agrees to hand Danina over to the talented Dr. Nikolai Obrajensky for treatment. Convalescing with the Romanovs at the Tsarskoe Selo palace, Danina learns to live in and love the world beyond the ballet. And while grateful for Nikolai's companionship, she is startled by the intense emotions growing inside her for the married doctor. Drawn to Danina, Nikolai cannot ignore the passion between them either, and the strength of their love quickly overpowers their resistance. Soon Madame Markova and Nikolai's wife remind them of their previous obligations, and as the Revolution hovers on the horizon, the two must make a decision that will change their lives forever. As if a romance set in the twilight years of czarist Russia doesn't have enough intrinsic pathos, Danielle Steel takes great care to give her hero and heroine the bittersweet combination of incomparable virtue and external duties. When the young prima ballerina and the married doctor meet, they are drawn to the corresponding sense of integrity and duty in each other. However, when love and duty conflict, the struggle is never easy. Maestro Steel knows where the heartstrings are, and she plays them with her reliable talents. While students of history may cringe at the simplified approach to the historical period, readers just looking for a good time have found it. With the tough-but-loving mother figure, the ill-but-lovable Prince Alexander, the borrowed ball gowns, and the emotional grand jeté, this book has everything a TV movie needs except a small, cuddly pet. Put your feet up, set aside your spoilsport logic, and enjoy this novel for what it is: a classic romance. --Nancy R.E. O'Brien --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly: In a fable compact enough to be swallowed in a single gulp, the prolific Steel (Bittersweet) offers a granddaughter's tribute to Danina Petroskova, "Granny Dan," a Russian immigrant who left the glamorous world of the St. Petersburg Ballet and lived thereafter as a Vermont housewife. The unnamed narrator always loved her grandmother, with her elegant braided hair, roller skates and soft Russian accent. Granny Dan rarely speaks of her life in Russia before the revolution, but when she dies, at almost 90, the narrator inherits a pair of ballet shoes and a packet of love letters that tell the dramatic story of her former existence. Committed at age seven to the ballet, in her teens Danina becomes a prima ballerina who enchants the czar and czarina, becoming the royal children's boon companion. Stricken by influenza at 19, Danina's life is saved by Czarevitch Alexei's physician, Nikolai Obrajensky, with whom she falls passionately in love. This fairy tale is fully outfitted with dreamy details such as ermine-trimmed gowns, covered sleighs and royal balls in glittering palaces. The historical technicalities are glossed over: in this book the Russian czar is a nice man who let the revolution go too far because he wanted his people to express their feelings. The love story is pure melodrama, with Nikolai a princely man married to a "dreadful Englishwoman," and the couple tormented by their unquenchable passions, lofty joys and ultimate tragedy. Steel doesn't unfold the plot so much as restate the same point: that Granny Dan led an extraordinary life of romance and heartbreak; this slim confection holds few surprises in telling the Cinderella story in reverse. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.   The Children of First Man Author: Thom, James Alexander ISBN: 0-449-14970-6 Pages: 595 Format: Paperback Publisher: Fawcett Published: August 1, 1995 Condition: Price: USD $1.99 From Library Journal: Eight centuries ago, Madoc, an illegitimate son of a mediocre Welsh king, may have led ten boatloads of his countrymen across the Atlantic and settled them in the Tennessee and Ohio River valleys. Thom's multigenerational historical novel skillfully enlarges the scant evidence for this legend. Madoc's Welsh build a benevolent colony (complete with castles), die by hubris, and repeat their history, always as nastier people with shoddier castles, until their decline (as Thom sees it) into an illiterate but not unspiritual people. Though generally sensitive to Native American culture, he hits some patronizing notes in rendering the interior monologs of some Indian characters. Also, reader interest may wane with the endless succession of protagonists that such a time span inevitably produces-Thom's most fleshed-out character dies with 700 years and more than half the book still to go. However, the passages on medieval sea-faring and smallpox epidemics are quite riveting. Recommended for public libraries. Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., Pa. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist: A highly imaginative novel that combines an old legend with historical fact to create an epic tale of America starting some 300 years before Columbus arrived. Thom uses a long-discussed legend of Welshmen who traveled to the far-off land of Iarghal (the North American continent) during the twelfth century A.D. Here, despite overwhelming odds, Welsh chieftain Madoc builds a society by interbreeding his people with the local native tribes. The book then skips ahead in 70- to 80-year increments, describing the eventual assimilation and northern migration of the tribal descendants, recognizable as Welsh by their facial features and blond hair. All this is bookended by researcher George Catlin, a portrait artist who befriends the tribe, now called the Mandans, in the mid-nineteenth century. There are epic battles among the Welsh and the Native Americans and between the tribes themselves, as well as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and diseases; the sex is bawdy and the violence is unrelentingly bloody, but the individual human spirit shines through. Thom's use of the language is masterful, with early chapters featuring Madoc by using flowery, age-of-chivalry prose; later, the tales of the evolving Native American tribes are told in simple, almost childlike sentences that reflect their primitive but proud nature. Finally, the appearance of later explorers like DeSoto and Lewis and Clark is done in traditional style. A terrifically entertaining novel, particularly in dealing with the advance of white society from the Native American viewpoint. Joe Collins --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.   Army Blue Author: Truscott, Lucian K. ISBN: 0-517-57384-9 Pages: 436 Format: Hardcover Publisher: Crown Published: August 19, 1989 Condition: Price: USD $2.69 From Publishers Weekly: In the eagerly anticipated follow-up to his first novel, Dress Gray , Truscott turns his attention to the Vietnam War and delivers a suspenseful, sprawling court-martial drama, set in Saigon in 1969. At 23, platoon leader Lt. Matthew Nelson Blue is the youngest member of an Army family: his father is a colonel and his grandfather a profane, cantankerous retired general. Shortly after one of his men is killed by friendly fire while on routine patrol, Blue is arrested and charged with desertion in the face of the enemy. Arriving in Vietnam, his father and grandfather end their long estrangement and join forces to clear the young soldier's name. Truscott's plot offers less than initially meets the eye; the nature of the conspiracy and cover-up that nearly destroy Blue is fairly easy to predict, as is the disillusionment about Vietnam that eventually befalls his seniors. ("Nobody is going to win this war," says one, just pages before the end.) But the author's intimate portrayal of the texture of Army life gives his narrative a more deeply felt sense of anger and regret than others in its genre, and makes its final revelations more powerful than they might otherwise have been. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal: Three generations of Blues have served in the army. The General, now retired, was in World War II. His son, the Colonel, was in Korea and Vietnam. Now the Grandson is in Vietnam and in trouble: accused of cowardice, disobeying an order, and fleeing from combat. Victim of an elaborate scheme to cover up the CIA's covert drug operations, Lieutenant Matthew Nelson Blue IV awaits court martial in prison, while his platoon is swallowed up in transfers. Grandfather and father fly to Vietnam, a beautiful TV reporter becomes involved, a member of the old platoon turns up, and all hell breaks loose before the slambang trial (over one fifth of the book) takes place. This long, panoramic novel maintains suspense beautifully and focuses on the stupidity and corruption in Vietnam. While the battle scenes in Donald Tate's Bravo Burning ( LJ 3/15/86) and other novels are stronger, and Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato (LJ 12/15/77) ranks high on any Vietnam novel list, Truscott's ( Dress Gray, LJ 1/1/79) fast-moving book should have wide appeal. It has "miniseries" written all over it. Literary Guild selection. - Robert H. Donahugh, Youngstown and Mahoning Cty. P.L., Ohio Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories Authors: Twain, Mark / Applebaum, Stanley ISBN: 0-486-27069-6 Pages: 121 Format: Paperback Publisher: Dover Publications