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Shadow Country (Modern Library)

Peter Matthiessen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

2008 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER

Peter Matthiessen’s great American epic–Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone–was conceived as one vast mysterious novel, but because of its length it was originally broken up into three books. In this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has cut nearly a third of the overall text and collapsed the time frame while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. In Shadow Country, he has marvelously distilled a monumental work, realizing his original vision.

Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son.

Shadow Country traverses strange landscapes and frontier hinterlands inhabited by Americans of every provenance and color, including the black and Indian inheritors of the archaic racism that, as Watson’s wife observed, "still casts its shadow over the nation."

Peter Matthiessen’s lyrical and illuminating work in the Watson narrative has been praised highly by such contemporaries as Saul Bellow, William Styron, and W. S. Merwin. Joseph Heller said "I read it in great gulps, up each night later than I wanted to be, in my hungry impatience to find out more and more."

Praise for Shadow Country
“Shadow Country is altogether gripping, shocking, and brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature. This magnificent, sad masterpiece about race, history, and defeated dreams can easily stand comparison with Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. Little wonder, too, that parts of the story of E.J. Watson call up comparisons with Dostoevsky, Conrad, and, inevitably, Faulkner. In every way, Shadow Country is a bravura performance, at once history, fiction, and myth–as well as the capstone to the career of one of the most admired and admirable writers of our time.” — The New York Review of Books

“Magnificent and capacious…. I'll just say right here that the book took my sleeve and like the ancient mariner would not let go. Matthiessen has made his three-part saga into a new thing…. Finally now we have these books welded like a bell, and with Watson's song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate….a breathtaking saga.” — The Los Angeles Times

“Gorgeously written and unfailingly compelling, Shadow Country is the exhilarating masterwork of [Matthiessen’s] career, every bit as ambitious as Moby Dick.” — National Geographic Adventure magazine

“Peter Mattiessen consolidates his epic masterpiece of Florida -- and crafts something even better…[He] deserves credit for decades of meticulous research and obsessive details and soaring prose that converted the Watson legend into critically acclaimed literature….Anyone wanting an explanation for what happened to Florida can now find it in a single novel, a great American novel.” — Miami Herald

“Matthiessen is writing about one man's life in Shadow Country, but he is also writing about the life of the nation over the course of half a century. Watson's story is essentially the story of the American frontier, of the conquering of wild lands and people, and of what such empires cost….Even among a body of work as magnificent as Matthiessen's, this is his great book.” — St. Petersburg Times

“Shadow Country is a magnum opus. Matthiessen is meticulous in creating characters, lyrical in describing landscapes, and resolute in dissecting the values and costs that accompanied the development of this nation.” --Seattle Times

“Shadow Country” is an ambitious, lasting, and meaningful work of literature that will not soon fade away. It is a testament to Mr. Matthiessen’s integrity as an artist that he felt compelled to return to the Watson material to produce this work and satisfy his original vision….a multifaceted work that can be read variously or simultaneously as a psychological novel, a historical novel, a morality tale, a political allegory, or a mystery. -- East Hampton Star

“Matthiessen’s Watson trilogy is a touchstone of modern American literature…this reworking…is remarkable….Where Watson was a magnificent character before, he comes across as nothing short of iconic here; it’s difficult to find another figure in American literature so thoroughly and confincingly portrayed.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review, Pick of the Week
“Matthiessen has reinvigorated and rejoined the trilogy’s novels…a mosaic about the life and lynch-mob death of a turn-of-the century Florida Everglades sugar planter and serial killer named E. J. Watson — into the 900-plus-page Shadow Country. This is no mere repackaging: Four hundred pages were cut from the novels, previous background characters now tromp to the foreground, and the books’ rangy, Faulknerian essence is rendered more digestible. Deliciously digestible, that is; this is a thick porterhouse of a novel.” — Men’s Journal
"The fiction of Peter Matthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it. SHADOW COUNTRY lives up to anyone's highest expectations for great writing." -- Richard Ford
"Peter Matthiessen is a brilliantly gifted and ambitious writer, an inspired anatomist of the American mythos. His storytelling skills are prodigious and his rapport with his subject is remarkable." -- Joyce Carol Oates
"Peter Matthiessen's work, both in fiction and non-fiction, has become a unique achievement in his own generation and in American literature as a whole. Everything that he has written has been conveyed in his own clear, deeply informed, elegant and powerful prose. The Watson saga-in-the-round, to which he has devoted nearly thirty years, is his crowning achievement. SHADOW COUNTRY, his distillation of the earlier trilogy, is his transmutation of it to represent his original vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns, and a great legacy." -- W.S. Merwin

The Appeal

John Grisham

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 511 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

I want my money back, plus damages. 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I cannot believe I wasted time reading this book. I didn't bother reading the reviews, its John Grisham so it has to be good! No, it turns out, it doesn't have to be good. One of the worst (and supid) endings ever. It was like he just got bored and didn't feel like writing a creative ending.

cliches and cartoons 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Grisham has managed an overt attempt at promoting a political agenda that is laden with cliches and cartoonish characters. In fact, the entire plot and outcome is implausible. Don't get me wrong; I do believe that politcal seats can be purchased (was that a spoiler?), but not in the manner that Grisham sets forth. The metanarrative is laden with yet another attempt at big-business-is-always-evil, and in doing so way too many desciptions are burdened with hyperbole and cliche. For example, Grisham would have us believe that conservative, Southern Christians are blind sheep who only vote according to cultural programming. The whole plot is in fact shackled with implausible occurances, some blatant, other not so. Those who oppose homosexuality are shown to be narrow minded Bible thumpers. Why was there never been a mass exodus of people leaving the county? Instead, they just seem to accept their cancerous fates. What happened when the hospital realized that Josh's scan results were mixed up (this would have happened relatively soon because one patient would have been misdiagnosed with a hemotoma, and this misdiagnosis would have soon been detected)? The aluminum bat that was featured could not have a deflective property which pushed the ball away with more energy than it hit with (Newtoniannly impossible). On and on.... At the end of the day, we are made to think about Tort reform and elected judicial offices, but we are also keenly aware of where Grisham stands, for this was the whole intent of his book as he readily admits in the Afterword. Alas.

Arctic Drift (A Dirk Pitt Novel, #20) (Dirk Pitt Novels)

Clive Cussler, Dirk Cussler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

As with all Clive Cussler’s dazzling Dirk Pitt novels, critics said Treasure of Khan “amazes, informs and entertains” (Publishers Weekly), “the action zipping along until a final powerhouse showdown” (Entertainment Weekly). “What’s not to like?” proclaimed the Los Angeles Times—and hundreds of thousands of readers agreed.

In his new novel, however—the twentieth Dirk Pitt adventure— Cussler may have topped even himself.

A potential breakthrough discovery to reverse global warming . . . a series of unexplained sudden deaths in British Columbia . . . a rash of international incidents between the United States and one of its closest allies that threatens to erupt into an actual shooting war . . . NUMA director Dirk Pitt and his children, Dirk. Jr. and Summer, have reason to believe there’s a connection here somewhere, but they also know they have very little time to find it before events escalate out of control. Their only real clue might just be a mysterious silvery mineral traced to a long-ago expedition in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. But no one survived from that doomed mission, captain and crew perished to a man—and if Pitt and his colleague Al Giordino aren’t careful, the very same fate may await them.

Filled with the breathtaking suspense and audacious imagination that have become his hallmarks, this is a tour de force— further proof that when it comes to adventure writing, nobody beats Clive Cussler.

The Pillars of the Earth (Deluxe Edition) (Oprah's Book Club)

Ken Follett

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1324 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Worth Reading 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I enjoyed reading this book because I had no idea how gruesome it was to live during the middle ages. I also had no idea the hardships people endured merely to survive! I appreciated the graphic detail of how people lived in those days because it really puts you in their shoes. If you like to learn about history through fantastic novels, this is a perfect book to read about medieval times.

I also thought it was clever how he gave each character more than one personality trait. For example, there was no bad guy that was 100% evil 100% of the time, even the worst characters had very weak spots. Although, I do have to say that the worst bad guy is so horrible, it's infuriating. I enjoyed the depth he gave each character and I enjoyed learning about how they thought and communicated in order to get what they needed. I liked watching the characters grow and mature- some of them got worse, but still it was a nice evolution.

It did get a little soap-opera-ish half way through, but, luckily, I kept reading and found it to be a brilliant piece of literature in the end.

Editorial Review:

A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett's historical masterpiece.

Abridged edition read by John Lee

Revolutionary Road

Richard Yates

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 116 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Lying and Loathing in the Suburbs... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

It is a period in the middle of the twentieth century - the hopeful 1950s - and a young couple, Frank and April Wheeler, begin their marriage in New York. Soon after, they are suburbanites, living in a development in Connecticut, on Revolutionary Road.

Their marriage had begun after an unexpected pregnancy. After the birth of the first child, a second followed. They seemed to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented...Maybe Frank's job is dull and perhaps April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they always believed, deep down, that greatness is just around the corner. And then, as the reality of their own limitations hits them with an almost blunt force, their illusions begin to crumble.

First come the dull, routine days, followed by the drunken fights. Then follows the almost manic plan to pull up stakes and move to Europe, where they can be glamorous expatriates, with April working at the embassy and Frank "finding himself", discovering his hidden talents.

When another unexpected pregnancy blasts them off course, the soul searching begins.

In one enlightened moment, following a terrible fight when each of them flung unforgivable words at each other, April comes to the following conclusions: "...In a sentimentally lonely time long ago, she had found it easy and agreeable to believe whatever this one particular boy felt like saying, and to repay him for that pleasure by telling easy, agreeable lies of her own, until each was saying what the other most wanted to hear - until he was saying `I love you' and she was saying `Really, I mean it; you're the most interesting person I've ever met.'...Soon you were saying `I'm sorry, of course you're right,' and `Whatever you think is
best,' ...and the next thing you knew all honesty, all truth, was as far away and glimmering, as hopelessly unattainable as the world of the golden people..."

Thus sums up the marriage for April on that day at the end...And then she does something so horrifying, so completely unexpected, yet expected at the same time and life for this couple is forever altered.

Revolutionary Road (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage Contemporaries) is a disturbingly authentic portrayal of what might seem to be a typical suburban young couple at a time when life was golden. Soon to be released as a movie, starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, the characters are memorable and chillingly haunting.

Laurel-Rain Snow
Author of:
Miles to Go, etc.

Editorial Review:

From the moment of its publication in 1961, "Revolutionary Road" was hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs. It's the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

J.K. Rowling

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3253 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Harry Potter 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book as a gift. However, I will read it too. The book came in excellent condition and was worth the money, alot cheaper than any of the dept stores or books stores in my area. Thank YOU.

did not get item 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

never received the item. they sent the wrong one and then never sent the correct one. They refunded the money.

Resolution 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Yay, good fun, the seventh and final Harry Potter book. After a not-so-great fifth and sixth book, I didn't have my hopes up too too high, although there was a lingering suspicion that Rowling had a master plan of using those earlier books as vehicles to set up a really awesome ending.

The general consensus has been that the series ends quite magnificently, so I knew that there was hope. It didn't start off very well, with a lot of bloody attacks and hopelessness, and our three heroes setting out on an aimless quest in the wilderness. One of the worst things about Harry Potter is that, despite the fact that we're all rooting for him and sympathize with his terrible plight, we still have to settle for the fact that he's really not the brightest bulb. This is displayed amply in the first part of the book where he just sort of stumbles along, and has to get rescued, repeatedly, by others. Poor kid. Another irritating thing is how so many things in the overall history begin to remind of other stories. There's the aged mentor struck down by an enemy, there's the point where the sidekicks fight and split up only for the disillusioned sidekick to come back in the nick of time to save the day, as well as the whole thing about the evil magical relic that they must destroy so that it doesn't flood the world with evil.

But it is nice to finally be reading a Harry Potter book that doesn'tfollow the pattern of other books - finish-a-Dursley-summer-then-go-to-Hogwarts-and-meet-the-professors-and-then-encounter-a-mystery-and-play-a-quiddich-tournament-and-have-an-adventure-involving-Hagrid-and-magical-creatures. There's also no more of this tiring "nobody believes me when I tell them that Voldemort's come back, oh what terrible danger we're all in" stuff because he's revealed himself at last.

The book picks up remarkably about two thirds of the way through when the mysteries that Rowling has set up throughout the first half of the book - and throughout the series, for that matter - start being explained. The ending is more or less satisfactory, although in the end Voldemort is somehow made to seem like the one who's not a very bright bulb, which is also somewhat disingenious. I also found the last chapter with the fortysomething Harry a bit corny in a Lion Witch Wardrobe way. But in the end it doesn't really matter, because IT'S OVER!! IT'S OVER!! IT'S OVER!! IT'S OVER!!.

Now I just have to start reading the series from the beginning with my seven-year-old when he's ready to start reading these books...

Editorial Review:

Note: This is the BRAILLE edition of the seventh Harry Potter novel!

Bringing Harry to all readers!

National Braille Press, through a special exclusive agreement with Scholastic Press, is pleased to announce that the braille edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be ready on the same day as the print edition.

The Gate House

Nelson DeMille

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 182 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

#1 New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille delivers the long-awaited follow-up to his classic novel The Gold Coast.

When John Sutter's aristocratic wife killed her mafia don lover, John left America and set out in his sailboat on a three-year journey around the world, eventually settling in London. Now, ten years later, he has come home to the Gold Coast, that stretch of land on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America, to attend the imminent funeral of an old family servant. Taking up temporary residence in the gatehouse of Stanhope Hall, John finds himself living only a quarter of a mile from Susan who has also returned to Long Island. But Susan isn't the only person from John's past who has reemerged: Though Frank Bellarosa, infamous Mafia don and Susan's ex-lover, is long dead, his son, Anthony, is alive and well, and intent on two missions: Drawing John back into the violent world of the Bellarosa family, and exacting revenge on his father's murderer--Susan Sutter. At the same time, John and Susan's mutual attraction resurfaces and old passions begin to reignite, and John finds himself pulled deeper into a familiar web of seduction and betrayal. In THE GATE HOUSE, acclaimed author Nelson Demille brings us back to that fabled spot on the North Shore -- a place where past, present, and future collides with often unexpected results. (2008)

The Road (Movie Tie-in Edition)

Cormac Mccarthy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1675 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist

A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year
The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post

The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Loving Frank: A Novel

Nancy Horan

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Total reviews: 207 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.

So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.

In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America’s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney’s profound influence on Wright.

Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan’s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah’s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel’s stunning conclusion.

Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story.

Advance praise for Loving Frank:

“Loving Frank is one of those novels that takes over your life. It’s mesmerizing and fascinating–filled with complex characters, deep passions, tactile descriptions of astonishing architecture, and the colorful immediacy of daily life a hundred years ago–all gathered into a story that unfolds with riveting urgency.”
–Lauren Belfer, author of City of Light

“This graceful, assured first novel tells the remarkable story of the long-lived affair between Frank Lloyd Wright, a passionate and impossible figure, and Mamah Cheney, a married woman whom Wright beguiled and led beyond the restraint of convention. It is engrossing, provocative reading.”
——Scott Turow

“It takes great courage to write a novel about historical people, and in particular to give voice to someone as mythic as Frank Lloyd Wright. This beautifully written novel about Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright’s love affair is vivid and intelligent, unsentimental and compassionate.”
——Jane Hamilton

“I admire this novel, adore this novel, for so many reasons: The intelligence and lyricism of the prose. The attention to period detail. The epic proportions of this most fascinating love story. Mamah Cheney has been in my head and heart and soul since reading this book; I doubt she’ll ever leave.”
–Elizabeth Berg


From the Hardcover edition.

The Northern Clemency

Philip Hensher

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The award-winning author of The Mulberry Empire brings us a sweeping chronicle of ordinary lives profoundly shaped by both the subtleties of everyday experience and the larger forces of history.

In 1974, the Sellers family is transplanted from London to Sheffield in northern England. On the day they move in, the Glover household across the street is in upheaval: convinced that his wife is having an affair, Malcolm Glover has suddenly disappeared. The reverberations of this rupture will echo through the years to come as the connection between the families deepens. But it will be the particular crises of ten-year-old Tim Glover—set off by two seemingly inconsequential but ultimately indelible acts of cruelty—that will erupt, full-blown, two decades later.

These lives unfold against the vividly rendered backdrop of twentieth-century England at the dawn of the Thatcher era: prosperity for some and disenfranchisement for others, which will have a drastic impact on both families.

Expansive and deeply felt, The Northern Clemency shows Philip Hensher to be one of our most masterly chroniclers of modern English life, and a storyteller of virtuosic gifts.