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The Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1310 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Have to be interested in history 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

What keeps you going through this book are the historical details, the remarks about classic architecture. If that sound like you, then this is your book because all the rest--the characters etc.--are solid and professional. But, if you're not a history addict, this might run a bit long.

Give it a chance 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Read the first bit of this book outside the bed, somewhere where you can work at it a bit, because the base is there at the beginning. It's hard reading at first, but if you force yourself to get into it, the reward will be there further on.

Pillars of the Earth 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I never received the book. I e=mailed the sender but she never responded. I want my money back, and if this is the way Amazon operates, I won't be ordering any more books from them. Susie Johnson

Hoping for better 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Enough people had recommended, nay, shoved this book into my hands that I greatly anticipated a good read to take me through the holidays. But the first hundred pages found me thinking, right, this is the scene where she's going to have the baby. . .now she's going to die. . .and he's going to end up with the girl he was attracted to earlier. . .whoa, she shows up in the woods and has sex with him the day after his wife's death?
Please. I think Follett was concerned that people wouldn't like his historial fiction and so inserted sex and violence at formulaic spots. Don't get me wrong, I like sex and violence, but the stuff in this book would have enthralled me when I was a teenager. Maybe that's the right audience. I pulled the plug on this medieval soap opera at 100 pages.

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

Salvation in Death (In Death) (In Death)

J.D. Robb

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the year 2060, cutting-edge investigative tools can help catch a killer. But there are some questions even the most advanced technologies cannot answer. . . .
At the most solemn moment of a Catholic funeral Mass, the priest brings the chalice to his lips. Seconds later, he is dead on the altar.
For the mourners packed into the pews, Father Miguel Flores's sudden demise is an unimaginable shock. When Detective Lieutenant Eve Dallas confirms that the consecrated wine contained enough potassium cyanide to kill a rhino, she's prepared to plunge in and find out why, despite her discomfort with her surroundings. It's not the bodegas and pawnshops of East Harlem that bother her; it's all that holiness flying around St. Cristobal's that makes her uneasy.
The autopsy reveals scars from knife wounds, a removed tattoo, and evidence of plastic surgery, suggesting "Father Flores" may not have been the man his parishioners thought. Now, as Eve pieces together clues that suggest identity theft, gang connections, and a deeply personal act of revenge, she hopes to track down whoever committed this unholy act. Until a second murder - in front of an even larger crowd of worshippers - knocks the whole investigation sideways.
The way Eve sees it, vengeance may be the Lord's business, but if there's going to be any earthly justice in this case, it's up to her.

Ender in Exile (Ender)

Orson Scott Card

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Deeply alienated by Card's recent work. 1 out of 5 stars.
7 of 11 people found this review helpful.

A disappointing, socially unimaginative flattening of a character and a world I once loved very much. This novel was rife with ideologically and spiritually conservative addresses to the reader that seemed to diverge from the far ranging and broad discourses of the other books, at least the way I read them so many years ago. I felt alienated by the Wiggins of this novel, theirs and the narrator's presumptions about people's personalities and biological determinism, the absence in this world of any challenges to what seem like universally unquestioned ideas about family, gender, sexuality, social order, ethnicity and race--it's like ages of progressive thought on Earth were erased in order to create a universe where stereotypes turn out to be God's funny way of using DNA.

What the narrator of this novel would have you interpret as the human individual's inability to escape her or his own genetic make-up is truly, to my eyes, an author's inability to let his characters be anything but allegories for an outmoded, oppressive conservatism at a time when authors should be offering something much, much better than an intergalactic expansion of the middle-class Anglo-Christian exceptionalism that has done so much to hurt the world.

There's my elitist, queer-nerd, politically irked two cents. A dedicated reader of the Alvin, Homecoming and Ender series, as well as many stand-alone works, it pains me a little to say this will be my last Card novel for sure.

Editorial Review:

Orson Scott Card returns to his best-selling series with a new Ender novel.

At the close of Ender's Game, Andrew Wiggin – called Ender by everyone – is told that he can no longer live on Earth, and he realizes that this is the truth. He has become far more than just a boy who won a game: he is the Savior of Earth, a hero, a military genius whose allegiance is sought by every nation of the newly shattered Earth Hegemony. He is offered the choice of living in isolation on Eros, at one of the Hegemony’s training facilities, but instead the twelve-year-old chooses to leave his home world and begin the long relativistic journey out to the colonies. With him went his sister Valentine, and the core of the artificial intelligence that would become Jane.

The story of those years has never been told… until now. 

A Most Wanted Man

John le Carre

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 111 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good, but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love, or pity, and remain good "patriots" -- this is the fabric of John le Carré's fiercely compelling and current novel A Most Wanted Man.

A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa.

Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client's survival becomes more important to her than her own career -- or safety. In pursuit of Issa's mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Frères, a failing British bank based in Hamburg. Annabel, Issa and Brue form an unlikely alliance -- and a triangle of impossible love is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the "War on Terror," the rival spies of Germany, England and America converge upon the innocents.

Thrilling, compassionate, peopled with characters the listener never wants to let go, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Jeff Kinney

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 179 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Boys don’t keep diaries—or do they?

The launch of an exciting and innovatively illustrated new series narrated by an unforgettable kid every family can relate to

It’s a new school year, and Greg Heffley finds himself thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. The hazards of growing up before you’re ready are uniquely revealed through words and drawings as Greg records them in his diary.

In book one of this debut series, Greg is happy to have Rowley, his sidekick, along for the ride. But when Rowley’s star starts to rise, Greg tries to use his best friend’s newfound popularity to his own advantage, kicking off a chain of events that will test their friendship in hilarious fashion.

Author/illustrator Jeff Kinney recalls the growing pains of school life and introduces a new kind of hero who epitomizes the challenges of being a kid. As Greg says in his diary, “Just don’t expect me to be all ‘Dear Diary’ this and ‘Dear Diary’ that.” Luckily for us, what Greg Heffley says he won’t do and what he actually does are two very different things.

Since its launch in May 2004 on Funbrain.com, the Web version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid has been viewed by 20 million unique online readers. This year, it is averaging 70,000 readers a day.

The Road

Cormack Mccarthy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1626 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthys 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 dont 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 foodand 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 others 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.

Duma Key: A Novel

Stephen King

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 433 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

NO MORE THAN A DARK PENCIL LINE ON A BLANK PAGE. A HORIZON LINE, MAYBE.

BUT ALSO A SLOT FOR BLACKNESS TO POUR THROUGH...

A terrible accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. When his marriage suddenly ends, Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived his injuries. He wants out. His psychologist suggests a new life distant from the Twin Cities, along with something else:

"Edgar, does anything make you happy?"

"I used to sketch."

"Take it up again. You need hedges...hedges against the night."

Edgar leaves for Duma Key, an eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico calls out to him, and Edgar draws. Once he meets Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman with roots tangled deep in Duma Key, Edgar begins to paint, sometimes feverishly; many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.

The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural -- Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.

A Lion Among Men (The Wicked Years, Book 3)

Gregory Maguire

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Third Best 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I was absolutely astounded by Wicked, Maguire's first book in the series. The way he twisted a familiar story into something new and unique was thrilling. If the story hiccuped in places, the strength of plot and character more than made up for it. This third book in the series suffers from the fact that some of the newness has worn off the idea. We have already accustomed ourself to an Oz that is less than perfect and full of complex characters who are not all bad, not all good. So, here we have the Lion, the main character of the third book. I must say that Maguire has an uncanny ability to write female characters. His male characters lack some of the complexity. Of course, the Lion is male. The reader takes a winding journey through his life, sometimes moving back and forward in time, and ends up in a rather unresolved place. It was an interesting story, but there were some loose ends left loose and some parts that I think were added just to keep the mood strange. I was hoping once again to be wowed by Maguire, but I wasn't. It was a bit disappointing.

Editorial Review:

In the much-anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion.

While civil war looms in Oz, a tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before her final hour, a figure known as Brrr—the Cowardly Lion—arrives searching for information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. Abandoned as a cub, his path from infancy is no Yellow Brick Road. In the wake of laws that oppress talking Animals, he avoids a jail sentence by agreeing to serve as a lackey to the warmongering Emperor of Oz.

A Lion Among Men chronicles a battle of wits hastened by the Emerald City's approaching armies. Can those tarnished by infamy escape their sobriquets to claim their own histories, to live honorably within their own skins before they're skinned alive?

Gregory Maguire's new novel is written with the sympathy and power that have made his books contemporary classics.

Dashing Through the Snow

Mary Higgins Clark

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From beloved mother-daughter duo Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark comes a holiday treat you won't want to miss.

In the picturesque village of Branscombe, New Hampshire, the townsfolk are all pitching in to prepare for the first (and many hope annual) Festival of Joy. The night before the festival begins, a group of employees at the local market learn that they have won $160 million in the lottery. One of their co-workers, Duncan, decided at the last minute, on the advice of a pair of crooks masquerading as financial advisers, not to play. Then he goes missing. A second winning lottery ticket was purchased in the next town, but the winner hasn't come forward. Could Duncan have secretly bought it?

The Clarks' endearing heroes -- Alvirah Meehan, the amateur sleuth, and private investigator Regan Reilly -- have arrived in Branscombe for the festival. They are just the people to find out what is amiss. As they dig beneath the surface, they find that life in Branscombe is not as tranquil as it appears. So much for an old-fashioned weekend in the country.

Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, Book 7)

Laurell K. Hamilton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 91 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

I am Meredith, princess of faerie, wielder of the hands of Flesh and Blood, and at long last, I am with child–twins, fathered by my royal guard. Though my uncle, Taranis, King of Light and Illusion, claims that he is the true father since he abducted me from my home, betrayed, and defiled me. And now he has branded my guards as a threat to my unborn children.

Bearing an heir has placed me halfway to my aunt’s throne, that much closer to my reign over the Unseelie Court–and well ahead of her son, my cousin Cel, in this race. Now I must stay alive to see my children born and claim my place as queen.

But not all in faerie are pleased with the news, and conspirators from every court in the realm plot against me and mine. They seek to strip my guards, my lovers, from me by poisoned word or cold steel. But I still have supporters, and even friends, among the goblins and the sluagh, who will stand by me.

I am Meredith Nic Essus, and those who would defy and destroy me are destined to pay a terrible price–for I am truly my father’s daughter. To protect what is mine, I will sacrifice anything–even if it means waging a great battle against my darkest enemies and making the most momentous decision ever made as princess of faerie.





From the Hardcover edition.