From AudioFileMax Allan Collins's novels merge history and fiction; THE PEARL HARBOR MURDERS continues this pattern, focusing on the bombing of Pearl Harbor. With Edgar Rice Burroughs as a key player, the book intertwines the events of December 7, 1941, with the murder of Asian singer Pearl Harada. Burroughs, an unlikely person to solve a murder, knew Pearl and finds her body. With his son Hully, he inquires into the death and finds a bevy of suspects, including many ex-boyfriends, racists, and others. Charlie O'Dowd gives an uneven performance. At times he is marvelous, giving "personality" to the many characters, but at other times, the book seems to bore him. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine Views: 31
Find the key! Open the doorway! Enter the other world! Newt and Rowan find a key . . .It opens a door . . .They are pulled through . . .Into a world ravaged by the darkness. Buildings are just piles of rubble and among the debris are zombie-like humans! Newt and Rowan are desperate to escape, until they stumble upon something much more sinister. There is evil in this world - and it's coming from the strangest of sources. Will Newt and Rowan be able to contain the darkness? Views: 31
Harmon Holt always gets what he wants—and since he's a millionaire, what he's got includes music, movie, and TV studios, news networks, and a football team. Yeah, he's got everything, but he hasn't forgotten where he came from. Every year he picks one student from his old high school—no interview, no application—to be a paid intern at one of his companies. The money's good and the perks are great, but the opportunity is once in a lifetime.Thea Roberts has loved making clothes ever since her grandmother taught her to sew. Now her designs have captured the attention of Harmon Holt. Before she knows it, Thea's landed an internship with a hot LA designer—and she's about to find out what lurks beneath all the glamour. Can she rise above and seize her opportunity? Views: 31
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year"Resolution can stand alone, battered and proud, as a class-conscious crime novel that dares to tell the ugly truth." -New York Times Book ReviewJust as Maureen O'Donnell is struggling to give up drinking, she faces her most formidable challenges yet: testifying against her boyfriend's murderer and the return of her abusive father. Irresistibly blending suspense, compassion, raw instinct, and grim wit, Resolution provides a wrenching conclusion to Denise Mina's universally acclaimed Garnethill trilogy."For anyone who thinks Western civilization too comfortable or crime novels no more than entertainment, Denise Mina's Garnethill trilogy will come as a salutary surprise. It will also make them laugh and keep them reading. It is a great achievement." -Times Literary Supplement"If you want a reason to try the crime genre, get yourself a novel by Denise Mina." -Rocky Mountain News"Mina depicts a Scotland so hard that merely living there can cut you like a shard of glass." -Baltimore SunFrom Publishers WeeklyIn this powerful, disturbing, wrenching conclusion to the Scottish author's Garnethill trilogy (Garnethill; Exile), the sense of everydayness renders the horrors Mina's Glaswegians confront even more terrible. Forced prostitution, child sexual abuse, alcoholism, dysfunctionality of every kindall are not so much spotlighted as they are integral parts of the fabric of the characters' lives. But for Maureen O'Donnell, whose continued existence is a triumph of will, there's also a strong sense of family and friendships forged in the crucible of survival. Maureen and her friends Leslie and Kilty are as unlikely a trio of dragon-slayers as one might find. With trepidation, Maureen awaits the trial of her lover's murderer, Angus Farrell, whose evil threatens her even while he's in jail. And Maureen's abusive father, Michael, has returned to Glasgow and she fears for her sister's soon-to-be-born baby. Maureen's efforts to help an illiterate old woman fill out a legal complaint against her son lead her into more danger and ugliness. The sordidness and the seemingly insuperable odds Maureen faces make her retreat into alcoholism seem appropriate. Thanks to Mina's considerable narrative skills, the Glasgow of Paddy's flea market, Albert Hospital and the area near the bus station where street prostitutes hang out emerges in gritty clarity. The novel culminates in a startling crescendo of violence, vengeance and resolution. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalOn the average day, Glaswegian Maureen O'Donnell is disheveled, mumbling to herself, and drunk by noon someone to ignore on the street. Mina's achievement here as in Garnethill and Exile, the first two volumes of this trilogy is to transform a trampled spirit into a person to whom attention must be paid. In this work, Maureen is coping with the aftermath of events in Exile. Not only must she testify at the trial of her boyfriend's murderer, psychologist Angus Farrell, but she must also protect her pregnant sister from their father, who has returned to town. As if that weren't enough, Maureen is approached by one of the other stall-holders at a flea market for help in suing her son. When that woman dies of an apparent heart attack, Maureen finds herself involved in trying to unravel a Poland-based prostitution ring. (Things were so much simpler in Miss Marple's day!) Once again, Mina delivers a Scottish blend of Thomas Harris, George Pelecanos, and Oprah-style reading that is uniquely her own and goes down very smoothly. For most public libraries. Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Views: 31
First published in 1995, this award-winning novel, written from the epicentre of the AIDS crisis, is a bold, achingly honest story set in the "rat bohemia" of New York City, whose huddled masses include gay men and lesbians who bond with one another in the wake of loss. Navigating the currents of the city is Rita Mae, a rat exterminator who holds the optimism of all true bohemians-those who stand outside of the prevailing social apparatus. She and her friends seek new ways to be truthful and honest about their lives as others around them avert their glances. Inspired by A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe, Rat Bohemia is an expansive novel about coping with loss and healing the wounds of the past by reinventing oneself in the city.Rat Bohemia won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction, and was named one of the "100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels of All Time" by the Publishing Triangle.Includes a new introduction by the author. Views: 31
Tessa Fontaine's astonishing memoir of pushing past fear, The Electric Woman, follows the author on an autobiographical, life-affirming journey through loss and self-discovery after running away to join the circus.Turns out, one lesson applies to living through illness, keeping the show on the road, letting go of the person you love most, and eating fire:The trick is there is no trick. You eat fire by eating fire. Two journeys—a daughter's and a mother's—bear witness to this lesson in The Electric Woman. For three years Tessa Fontaine lived in a constant state of emergency as her mother battled stroke after stroke. But hospitals, wheelchairs, and loss of language couldn't hold back such a woman; she and her husband would see Italy together, come what may. Thus Fontaine became free to follow her own piper, a literal giant inviting her to "come play" in the World of Wonders, America's last traveling... Views: 31
BIG CHERRY HOLLER, the extraordinary sequel to BIG STONE GAP, takes us back to the mountain life that enchanted us in Adriana Trigiani’s best selling debut novel. It’s been eight years since the town pharmacist and long time spinster Ave Maria Mulligan married coal miner Jack MacChesney. With her new found belief in love and its possibilities, Ave Maria makes a life for herself and her growing family, hoping that her fearless leap into commitment will make happiness stay. What she didn’t count on was that fate, life, and the ghosts of the past would come to haunt her and, eventually, test the love she has for her husband. The mountain walls that have protected her all of her life can not spare Ave Maria the life lessons she must learn.BIG CHERRY HOLLER is the story of a marriage, revealing the deep secrets, the power struggle, the betrayal and the unmet expectations that exist between husband and wife. It is the story of a community that must reinvent itself as it... Views: 31
Luke:I'm known in the NHL as The Stick Handler, but according to a conversation I accidently overheard between my fiancé and her friend, I'm The Money Maker, and marrying me will get her daddy—who just happens to own the hockey team I play for—off her back and secure her financial future, whether the marriage lasts or not. Now, call me a prick for canceling our Valentine' wedding at the eleventh hour, but when she threatens to ruin my career and reputation, it's the icing on the uncut wedding cake. She gives me a week to reconsider, and I take it—at the Italian resort booked for the honeymoon that will never be, and there's no one I'd rather take with me than Katee, the girl who has held a special place in my heart since forever. When the concierge mistakes her for the bride, we go with it. Only problem is, the place reeks of romance and keeping my hands to myself might prove to be the toughest game I've ever played.Katee:A... Views: 31
Barry Hannah has long been considered one of the country's best living writers, whose singular voice and wicked genius for storytelling have earned him legions of diehard fans. His first novel in ten years, Yonder Stands Your Orphan opens with the establishment of an orphans' camp and the discovery of an abandoned car with two skeletons in the trunk. Man Mortimer, a pimp and casino pretty boy who resembles dead country singer Conway Twitty, has just been betrayed, and his revenge becomes a madness that will ravage the Mississippi community of Eagle Lake and give vent to his lifelong fascination with knives. The pompous young sheriff is useless at solving the crimes, so Mortimer's only challengers are three eccentric Christians -- a disgraced doctor and two ex-bikers, all prey to their addictions -- and an African-American Vietnam veteran whose wife is ill with cancer. Mortimer has a hold on each one of them -- a long-standing debt, a forgotten crime, or responsibilities... Views: 31
