7/9/08: Deception Point by Dan Brown
REVIEW: This book was a rollercoaster of emotions from start to finish! Politics, oceanography, archaeology, meteorology all come together for an exciting thrill of a ride. A must read!
SYNOPSIS: When a new NASA satellite spots evidence of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory… a victory that has profound implications for U.S. space policy and the impending presidential election. With the Oval Office in the balance, the President dispatches White House Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton to the Milne Ice Shelf to verify the authenticity of the find. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic academic Michael Tolland, Rachel uncovers the unthinkable—evidence of scientific trickery—a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy. But before Rachel can contact the President, she and Michael are attacked by a deadly task force…a private team of assassins controlled by a mysterious powerbroker who will stop at nothing to hide the truth. Fleeing for their lives in an environment as desolate as it is lethal, they possess only one hope for survival: to find out who is behind this masterful ploy. The truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all…
7/12/08: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
REVIEW: This is my absolute favorite book. The formal, old-fashioned language compels me to read slowly, to savor the descriptions, the emotions and the conversations. Unlike most current books, the reference to God is not suppressed, and moral and ethics abound throughout the story. This is truly a romance, passionate, intimate and spiritual, yet not graphically physical. I read this book at least once a year.
SYNOPSIS: Orphaned at an early age, Jane Eyre leads a lonely life until she finds work as a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she meets the mysterious Mr. Rochester and sees a ghostly woman who roams the halls by night. This is a story of passionate love, travail and final triumph. The relationship between the heroine and Mr. Rochester is only one episode, albeit the most important, in a detailed fictional autobiography in which the author transmuted her own experience into high art. In this work the plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, but possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage. She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order which circumscribes her life and position.
7/12/08: The Love Season by Elin Hilderbrand
REVIEW: A sweet story of decades of life told in the span of one day. Relationships forged, bonds created and the strength of love enduring are in the heart of this story.
SYNOPSIS: Marguerite is a lonely chef on Nantucket Island who hasn't cooked for anyone since she sold her restaurant 14 years ago, following the death of her best friend Candace and her own brief stint in a psychiatric hospital. A quirky, endearingly insecure recluse, Marguerite is startled from her solitude by a late-night phone call from Renata Knox, whose question, "Aunt Daisy?" sends Marguerite scrambling to come to terms with her past. Nineteen-year-old Renata is Candace's daughter and Marguerite's estranged goddaughter, visiting the island with her wealthy fiancé. The novel takes place over the day Marguerite spends preparing a meal to welcome Renata, whose own problems include an overbearing mother-in-law-to-be and an incomplete sense of her own mother. Desperate for nurturing and guidance, Renata turns to Marguerite, the woman who knew her mother best—and whom Renata has been forbidden to see most of her life.
7/13/08: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
REVIEW: In the preface of this book is quoted: “Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life—Friedrich Schiller
This story is a fantastic voyage through a realm of imagination, where fairy tales do not always have happy endings (at least not Disney endings!). John Connolly writes an astounding story complete with life lessons and morals.
SYNOPSIS: Thriller writer Connolly (Every Dead Thing) turns from criminal fears to primal fears in this enchanting novel about a 12-year-old English boy, David, who is thrust into a realm where eternal stories and fairy tales assume an often gruesome reality. Books are the magic that speak to David, whose mother has died at the start of WWII after a long debilitating illness. His father remarries, and soon his stepmother is pregnant with yet another interloper who will threaten David's place in his father's life. When a portal to another world opens in time-honored fashion, David enters a land of beasts and monsters where he must undertake a quest if he is to earn his way back out. Connolly echoes many great fairy tales and legends (Little Red Riding Hood, Roland, Hansel and Gretel), but cleverly twists them to his own purposes. Despite horrific elements, this tale is never truly frightening, but is consistently entertaining as David learns lessons of bravery, loyalty and honor that all of us should learn.
7/14/08: Frozen by Jay Bonansinga
This thriller combines current technological research and forensics with shamanic skills and history. A touch of paranormal evil is eerily reminiscent of John Connolly’s Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker series. The first in the Special Agent Ulysses Grove series, this sets precedence for more exciting novels to come… it is a fast-paced story as events are connected, acted upon, and resolved.
SYNOPSIS: Deep in the Alaskan wilderness, a mummified body is discovered in the ice, the victim of a bizarre ritualistic killing that happened nearly six thousand years ago. For journalist Maura County, this story is her ticket to the big time -- if she can get the help of the FBI's top criminal profiler.
Special Agent Ulysses Grove is the best of the best -- a born manhunter. He's also a man on the edge, haunted by both personal tragedy and a recent spate of horrific, unsolved homicides. Now, in a remote lab, he's about to make a shocking discovery. Everything about the prehistoric murderer -- signature, M.O., the tiniest of details -- matches up to the serial killer who has eluded Grove for months.
As past and present collide, County and Grove are plunged into a nightmare journey that will take them into the darkest reaches of the human heart as they try to stop a cycle of evil as eternal and powerful as time itself...
7/14/08: Finn by Jon Clinch
This is not Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, but a dark and ugly history father. It remains true and interlocking with the original story in places, characters and events. There is the underlying evil of bigotry of the South in those times and yet decency appears to offset this evil. Although it is nasty, there are hints of decency and caring that compelled me to read the book to the end.
SYNOPSIS: …Finn, the namesake of the title, is not Twain's illustrious Huck, but Huck's father, "Pap." As the novel opens, an African-American woman's bloated corpse floats downriver from Lasseter, Ill., toward the slave territory of St. Petersburg, Mo. In the Lasseter woods, Finn—a dangerous, bigoted drunk—tells his blind bootlegger friend, Bliss, that he's finally "quit" his on-again, off-again African-American companion Mary, the mother of Finn's second son (also, confusingly, named Huck). Chronically short on money, Finn is shunned by his father and by his brother, Will. Finn does odd jobs, traps catfish and claims tutelary rights to Huckleberry's share of Injun Joe's gold. …the narrative then backs up to detail Finn and Mary's life together: his drinking, his stint in the penitentiary following an assault (sentenced by his own father), Mary's rising debts and Finn's attempts at restitution. As the nature of the woman's murder becomes clear, Clinch lyrically renders the Mississippi River's ceaseless flow, while revealing Finn's brutal contradictions, his violence, arrogance and self-reproach.
Currently reading High Noon by Norah Roberts
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