Authors, A-Z Books - Page 5

The Quickie

James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge

Amazon Price: $9.99 List Price: $27.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Little, Brown and Company Amazon Marketplace: 35 new & used starting at $3.19

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Authors, A-Z -> ( P ) -> Patterson, James -> General
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Authors, A-Z -> ( P ) -> Patterson, James -> Hardcover

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 292 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Never a dull moment! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This story is not at all predictable. I enjoyed every twist and turn like a really fast roller coaster ride with lots of loops,hills,and turns.

OH WHAT WICKED WEBS WE WEAVE WHEN WE PRACTICE TO DECEIVE! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

With her beautiful home, great job and good looks, Lauren Stillwell was one of those women who looked like she had it all. The woman other women wanted to be. Until the fateful day she got a brilliant idea and decided to pop in on her husband Paul for lunch. That's when it all started to fall apart.

After she spots him walking into a hotel with a beautiful woman, Lauren jump to conclusions, and although she doesn't want to believe it she's certain he's having an affair. So she decides what's good for the goose is good for the gander and gives into a suppressed desire to have an affair with a fellow who has been after her. Sex with no strings. Payback. But that's not what it turns out to be.

Instead, as the evening progresses, nothing is as she thought it would be and Lauren witnesses a murder. Because of the circumstances, she is thrust into a situation that gets more treacherous at every turn. Everything she has valued in life is at risk now and one wrong move can cost her everything. That's the problem. She's making lots of wrong moves and time is running out. As she tries to keep her life from exploding, she starts to doubt everything and everyone. What's real and what isn't. Well, you'll have to read it to find out, because I'm not going to be the one to give it away.

The book is chock full of surprises, twists and turns. A definite page turner. Don't miss it.

MORGAN ST. JAMES
www.silversistersmysteries.com
A CORPSE IN THE SOUP
Named Best Mystery Audio Book 2007 by USA Book News
COMING SOON: SEVEN DEADLY SAMOVARS

Editorial Review:

Lauren Stillwell is not your average damsel in distress. When the NYPD cop discovers her husband leaving a hotel with another woman, she decides to beat him at his own game. But her revenge goes dangerously awry, and she finds her world spiraling into a hell that becomes more terrifying by the hour.
In a further twist of fate, Lauren must take on a job that threatens everything she stands for. Now, she's paralyzed by a deadly secret that could tear her life apart. With her job and marriage on the line, Lauren's desire for retribution becomes a lethal inferno as she fights to save her livelihood--and her life.
Patterson takes us on a twisting roller-coaster ride of thrills in his most gripping novel yet. This story of love, lust and dangerous secrets will have readers' hearts pounding to the very last page.

The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (King, Stephen)

Stephen King

Amazon Price: $9.99 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Donald M. Grant/Scribner Amazon Marketplace: 47 new & used starting at $7.53

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> ( K ) -> King, Stephen -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> ( K ) -> King, Stephen -> Hardcover
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Genre Fiction -> Horror -> United States

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 694 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

That was one long Jazz solo! 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Damn. I've been pondering what to write about this for days. Ok, lets git to it! (Jazz reference will be explained :P )

Here's your first clue that the Dark Tower is not going to please everyone (actually the clue is at the very end). He cautions the reader to not read the Coda chapter beause they might dislike it. As if, after reading 1000+ pages of the book, the reader wouldn't read right through!

Second clue is in the Author's note at the end, when King says in advance not to email him to whine, and that he was a little bummed out himself with the end. To be cynical here, does King sound a tad defensive? Sure, ANY final book in a series can't please everyone. But could King's (just slightly) apologist afterword not be a bad sign that something here's gone a little `todash'?

DT is King's `sandbox', where the story can - and does - go anywhere it likes. It's his KILL BILL. It's everything AND the kitchen sink. He's grabbed everything in his mind (Doken) that's been kicking around for his entire life and put it onto paper. In this sense, the book is critic proof for the most part. If one is to point out something in the book that wasn't pulled off satisfactory, where is the context? To what other story can we compare it and say `this is the kind of book it should have been'?

What I'm saying, longwindedly, is that I could see any 2 given people feeling different about the series. To those who gave it 5 stars, cool. 1 star? I can dig. For me, I mostly accepted the conclusion, but what I would have wanted much more was to close it and say 'wow! I want to read it again. Now!' I did not get that feeling. And as fair as it is for people to completely enjoy it, it's not without it's flaws.

One of the things that annoyed me the most was how countless phrases spoken by people (or thought) are something someone else has said. Eddie is constantly thinking about what his brother would have thought of something. Susannah is always thinking about what her Dad would have said. Roland is frequently reminded of a phrase Cort would say, Etc. This was an overused technique. It was in meltdown mode here. He just would not stop.

Chapters constantly overlap, enabling the reader to see the lead up to the same event from a different participant. This is a useful tool, but it is so frequent that the result is that the reader is constantly being halted from finding out what happens next to backtrack, and in this, the final book, it the plot and pacing should be in overdrive. One imagines Roland gesturing his `get on with it' finger twirl. New characters who are introduced do not always need to have a large backstory. Sometimes it's just fine for a person to show up and help out, or get a bullet thrugh the eye. I thought this was one of the major contributors to the excessive length of the book. I don't flinch at doorstopper books, but please maximize your space and keep the gears shifting up in the plot, not down (see PILLARS OF THE EARTH for a massive but always focused story).

And now my last issue has to do with Stephen King being perhaps out of his depth in a 'fantasy' type of epic story. I have read over half of King's fiction, plus Danse Macabre and On Writing. He's a `Jazz' writer. He just goes with the flow, and thats been an asset of his for many of his other books. He's an intuitive freestyler. An improv rapper. The problem with this approach is the longer you try and 'freestyle it', the more chance you have of tripping over something as your mind races to keep track of what you're doing. He's been playing the worlds longest Jazz solo, and while he succeeded in many ways, he's hit plenty of off-notes on the way and it got a little sloppy there at the end.

King has become so entrenched in `antiplotting' that he willfully will NOT plot out anything (he says he did so with Insomnia and wasn't too hot on the result so hasn't tried it again much since). There's always an exception, but from my reading experience, you just cannot tackly a multi-volume epic in this fashion. You have to sit down and outline a little bit or else the whole thing comes off uneven.

Dark Tower readers have pretty much got the biggest imaginations out there. We've seen people walking though doors into alternate earths. We've seen Blood and Mind vampires feasting with Low Men in colorful suits wearing fake human masks. We've seen a politically-incorrect black woman with no legs who throws deadly plates. Robots who wear Dr. Doom capes, wield light sabers, and throw flying balls that are one part Harry Potter Sneetches and one part metal spheres from the movie Phantasm. We've even taken it in stride when a half Human spider gets diarrhea from eating a leprous horse. So having the story zig and zag to this ending, and have many people unsatisfied, is pause for thought. DT readers can handle anything King can throw their way in the Bizarre department, but just can't get behind this fizzled out resolution.

I think that's saying something.

Editorial Review:

Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is unlike anything you have ever read. The final book opens like a door to the uttermost reaches of Stephen King's imagination. You've come this far. Come a little farther. Come all the way. The sound you hear may be the slamming of the door behind you. Welcome to The Dark Tower.

Where Are You Now?: A Novel

Mary Higgins Clark

Amazon Price: $17.13 List Price: $25.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon & Schuster Amazon Marketplace: 219 new & used starting at $2.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Contemporary
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> General AAS
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Authors, A-Z -> ( C ) -> Clark, Mary Higgins -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 70 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From America's Queen of Suspense comes a gripping tale of a young woman trying to unravel the mystery of a family tragedy -- a quest with terrifying repercussions.

It has been ten years since twenty-one-year-old Charles MacKenzie Jr. ("Mack") went missing. A Columbia University senior, about to graduate and already accepted at Duke University Law School, he walked out of his apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side without a word to his college roommates and has never been seen again. However, he does make one ritual phone call to his mother every year: on Mother's Day. Each time, he assures her he is fine, refuses to answer her frantic questions, then hangs up. Even the death of his father, a corporate lawyer, in the tragedy of 9/11 does not bring him home or break the pattern of his calls.

Mack's sister, Carolyn, is now twenty-six, a law school graduate, and has just finished her clerkship for a civil court judge in Manhattan. She has endured two family tragedies, yet she realizes that she will never be able to have closure and get on with her life until she finds her brother. She resolves to discover what happened to Mack and why he has found it necessary to hide from them. So this year when Mack makes his annual Mother's Day call, Carolyn interrupts to announce her intention to track him down, no matter what it takes. The next morning after Mass, her uncle, Monsignor Devon MacKenzie, receives a scrawled message left in the collection basket: "Uncle Devon, tell Carolyn she must not look for me."

Mack's cryptic warning does nothing to deter his sister from taking up the search, despite the angry reaction of her mother, Olivia, and the polite disapproval of Elliott Wallace, Carolyn's honorary uncle, who is clearly in love with Olivia.

Carolyn's pursuit of the truth about Mack's disappearance swiftly plunges her into a world of unexpected danger and unanswered questions. What is the secret that Gus and Lil Kramer, the superintendents of the building in which Mack was living, have to hide? What do Mack's old roommates, the charismatic club owner Nick DeMarco and the cold and wealthy real estate tycoon Bruce Galbraith, know about Mack's disappearance? Is Nick connected to the disappearance of Leesey Andrews, who had last been seen in his trendy club? Can the police possibly believe that Mack is not only alive, but a serial killer, a shadowy predator of young women? Was Mack also guilty of the brutal murder of his drama teacher and the theft of his taped sessions with her?

Carolyn's passionate search for the truth about her brother -- and for her brother himself -- leads her into a deadly confrontation with someone close to her whose secret he cannot allow her to reveal.

Careless in Red LP: A Novel (Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers Novels)

Elizabeth George

Amazon Price: $20.40 List Price: $27.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: HarperLuxe Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $13.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Authors, A-Z -> ( G ) -> George, Elizabeth
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Mystery -> General
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Mystery -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 131 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In her most eagerly anticipated novel yet, Elizabeth George brings back Scotland Yard's Thomas Lynley to investigate a ruthless crime.

After the senseless murder of his wife, Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley retreated to Cornwall, where he has spent six solitary weeks hiking the bleak and rugged coastline. But no matter how far he walks, no matter how exhausting his days, the painful memories of Helen's death do not diminish.

On the forty-third day of his walk, at the base of a cliff, Lynley discovers the body of a young man who appears to have fallen to his death. The closest town, better known for its tourists and its surfing than its intrigue, seems an unlikely place for murder. However, it soon becomes apparent that a clever killer is indeed at work, and this time Lynley is not a detective but a witness and possibly a suspect.

The head of the vastly understaffed local police department needs Lynley's help, though, especially when it comes to the mysterious, secretive woman whose cottage lies not far from where the body was discovered. But can Lynley let go of the past long enough to solve a most devious and carefully planned crime?