Lost Souls by Lisa Jackson
Mystery, 2008, 403 pgs
Read : 8/2008
Recommended by / Book Club : Series (New Orleans) from FL-Mystery BC Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 3.5 / 3.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: I enjoy Lisa Jackson mysteries and especially the New Orleans Series with it’s cast of characters. Fourth in the series that I’ve read.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
Kristi Bentz, having recovered from her last encounter with a sadistic monster in bestseller Jackson's Absolute Fear, faces an equally terrifying ordeal in this frantic paranormal thriller. Four female students associated with a vampire cult have gone missing at Baton Rouge's All Saints College, where Kristi is pursuing a journalism degree and plans to write about true crime. Kristi by chance rents an apartment once tenanted by one of the missing girls and begins investigating the case, thinking it might make a great first book. Kristi's old college sweetheart, Jay McKnight, provides an unexpected surprise (and protection) when he shows up as the fill-in for one of Kristi's professors. Not too surprisingly, Vlad, the mysterious serial killer, sets his sights on Kristi. Adding hot sauce to the blood bath is Kristi's new supernatural ability to detect anyone marked for a life-or-death struggle when she sees a person go from living color to deadly gray or black-and-white. Jackson peppers the action with insights into the challenges faced by law enforcement agencies trying to solve crimes in post-Katrina Louisiana.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Absolute Fear
Absolute Fear by Lisa Jackson
Mystery, 2008, 480 pgs
Read : 7/08
Recommended by / Book Club : Series (New Orleans) from FL-Mystery BC
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 3.5 / 3.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: I enjoy Lisa Jackson mysteries and especially the New Orleans Series with it’s cast of characters.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
In bestseller Jackson's spine-tingling romantic thriller, the turbo-charged follow-up to Shiver (2006), photographer Abby Chastain, who played a major role in Shiver, finds she may have a half-sister in Eve Renner, the adopted daughter of Dr. Terrence Renner, former head psychiatrist at Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital, a shuttered asylum near (pre-Katrina) New Orleans. When "the Reviver," a tattoo-loving psychopath intent on revenge, almost kills Eve, the amnesia-plagued Eve fears Cole Dennis, her lawyer boyfriend, might be the monster, since she saw him at the scene of her assault (and a friend's murder), though Cole is released for lack of evidence. The body count mounts through many unexpected twists and turns as a grim Det. Reuben Montoya, Abby's fiancé, and his partner, Rick Bentz, try to puzzle out the killer's cryptic clues before he strikes again. A heart-stopping resolution suggests another heavy-breathing update might be in the works.
Mystery, 2008, 480 pgs
Read : 7/08
Recommended by / Book Club : Series (New Orleans) from FL-Mystery BC
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 3.5 / 3.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: I enjoy Lisa Jackson mysteries and especially the New Orleans Series with it’s cast of characters.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
In bestseller Jackson's spine-tingling romantic thriller, the turbo-charged follow-up to Shiver (2006), photographer Abby Chastain, who played a major role in Shiver, finds she may have a half-sister in Eve Renner, the adopted daughter of Dr. Terrence Renner, former head psychiatrist at Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital, a shuttered asylum near (pre-Katrina) New Orleans. When "the Reviver," a tattoo-loving psychopath intent on revenge, almost kills Eve, the amnesia-plagued Eve fears Cole Dennis, her lawyer boyfriend, might be the monster, since she saw him at the scene of her assault (and a friend's murder), though Cole is released for lack of evidence. The body count mounts through many unexpected twists and turns as a grim Det. Reuben Montoya, Abby's fiancé, and his partner, Rick Bentz, try to puzzle out the killer's cryptic clues before he strikes again. A heart-stopping resolution suggests another heavy-breathing update might be in the works.
One Thousand White Women ~: The Journals of May Dodd : a novel
One Thousand White Women ~: The Journals of May Dodd : a novel by Jim Fergus
Fiction, 1998, 302 pgs
Read : 9/08
Book Club : B&N Women’s Book Club
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: Although this is fiction, I enjoyed the story and learning about the ways of the Cheyenne, and how the white women, “the brides” were able to become a part of their “tribe”. It was sad that the peace and harmony which the WOMEN were able to bring between the “whites” and the Indians was destroyed by the MEN of both cultures. I would recommend this book.
Summary : From Kirkus Reviews
Long, brisk, charming first novel about an 1875 treaty between Ulysses S. Grant and Little Wolf, chief of the Cheyenne nation, by the sports reporter and author of the memoir A Hunter's Road (1992). Little Wolf comes to Washington and suggests to President Grant that peace between the Whites and Cheyenne could be established if the Cheyenne were given white women as wives, and that the tribe would agree to raise the children from such unions. The thought of miscegenation naturally enough astounds Grant, but he sees a certain wisdom in trading 1,000 white women for 1,000 horses, and he secretly approves the Brides For Indians treaty. He recruits women from jails, penitentiaries, debtors' prisons, and mental institutionsoffering full pardons or unconditional release. May Dodd, born to wealth in Chicago in 1850, had left home in her teens and become the mistress of her father's grain-elevator foreman. Her outraged father had her kidnaped, imprisoning her in a monstrous lunatic asylum. When Grant's offer arrives, she leaps at it and soon finds herself traveling west with hundreds of white and black would-be brides. All are indentured to the Cheyenne for two years, must produce children, and then will have the option of leaving. May, who keeps the journal we read, marries Little Wolf and lives in a crowded tipi with his two other wives, their children, and an old crone who enforces the rules. Reading about life among the Cheyenne is spellbinding, especially when the women show up the braves at arm-wrestling, foot-racing, bow-shooting, and gambling. Liquor raises its evil head, as it will, and reduces the braves to savagery. But the women recover, go out on the winter kill with their husbands, and accompany them to a trading post where they drive hard bargains and stop the usual cheating of the braves. Eventually, when the cavalry attacks the Cheyenne, mistakenly thinking they're Crazy Horse's Sioux, May is killed. An impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting.
Favorite Passages:
There is beauty and brutality in the novel from both the Indians and the “White man”. As Brother Anthony concludes the journals of May Dodd, he relates the horrors of what happened to the Cheyenne community of Chief Little Wolfe after the village is destroyed and most are killed by the US Army. It is tragic what happened as he contemplates these tragedies.
Pg 293….Perhaps some scholars of religion might be tempted to find here a lesson in the vengeful hand of God. But God is not vengeful, my children. God is full of Grace, Light and infinite Mercy. God did not kill the Shoshone babies. Nor did he punish the Cheyennes in retribution by killing their babies. Misguided men on both sides slaughtered the infants. And God took the souls of His children to His Kingdom.
Fiction, 1998, 302 pgs
Read : 9/08
Book Club : B&N Women’s Book Club
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: Although this is fiction, I enjoyed the story and learning about the ways of the Cheyenne, and how the white women, “the brides” were able to become a part of their “tribe”. It was sad that the peace and harmony which the WOMEN were able to bring between the “whites” and the Indians was destroyed by the MEN of both cultures. I would recommend this book.
Summary : From Kirkus Reviews
Long, brisk, charming first novel about an 1875 treaty between Ulysses S. Grant and Little Wolf, chief of the Cheyenne nation, by the sports reporter and author of the memoir A Hunter's Road (1992). Little Wolf comes to Washington and suggests to President Grant that peace between the Whites and Cheyenne could be established if the Cheyenne were given white women as wives, and that the tribe would agree to raise the children from such unions. The thought of miscegenation naturally enough astounds Grant, but he sees a certain wisdom in trading 1,000 white women for 1,000 horses, and he secretly approves the Brides For Indians treaty. He recruits women from jails, penitentiaries, debtors' prisons, and mental institutionsoffering full pardons or unconditional release. May Dodd, born to wealth in Chicago in 1850, had left home in her teens and become the mistress of her father's grain-elevator foreman. Her outraged father had her kidnaped, imprisoning her in a monstrous lunatic asylum. When Grant's offer arrives, she leaps at it and soon finds herself traveling west with hundreds of white and black would-be brides. All are indentured to the Cheyenne for two years, must produce children, and then will have the option of leaving. May, who keeps the journal we read, marries Little Wolf and lives in a crowded tipi with his two other wives, their children, and an old crone who enforces the rules. Reading about life among the Cheyenne is spellbinding, especially when the women show up the braves at arm-wrestling, foot-racing, bow-shooting, and gambling. Liquor raises its evil head, as it will, and reduces the braves to savagery. But the women recover, go out on the winter kill with their husbands, and accompany them to a trading post where they drive hard bargains and stop the usual cheating of the braves. Eventually, when the cavalry attacks the Cheyenne, mistakenly thinking they're Crazy Horse's Sioux, May is killed. An impressive historical, terse, convincing, and affecting.
Favorite Passages:
There is beauty and brutality in the novel from both the Indians and the “White man”. As Brother Anthony concludes the journals of May Dodd, he relates the horrors of what happened to the Cheyenne community of Chief Little Wolfe after the village is destroyed and most are killed by the US Army. It is tragic what happened as he contemplates these tragedies.
Pg 293….Perhaps some scholars of religion might be tempted to find here a lesson in the vengeful hand of God. But God is not vengeful, my children. God is full of Grace, Light and infinite Mercy. God did not kill the Shoshone babies. Nor did he punish the Cheyennes in retribution by killing their babies. Misguided men on both sides slaughtered the infants. And God took the souls of His children to His Kingdom.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Atmospheric Disturbances
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Fiction, 2008, 240 pgs
Read : 8/08
Recommended by : Entertainment Weekly
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 1.0 / 3.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: I did not finish the book…read 58 pages. I didn’t enjoy the story…it was too far out….to abstract. If it had been part of a book club I might have finished it to take part in the discussion.
Summary : Amazon.com
Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: Imagine what it might be like to realize that the person you love is, in fact, not the person you love but a doppelgänger: or, what Leo Liebenstein coolly terms a "simulacrum" of his wife Rema at the outset of Atmospheric Disturbances. David Byrne's infamous cry that "this is not my beautiful wife" seems the most likely response, but Leo's reaction to this sea change takes unpredictable and dazzlingly plotted turns in the story that follows. Leo's journey to recover the "real" Rema is nothing short of byzantine; among its many mysteries is the delightfully inscrutable Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen, a master meteorologist who in cleverly constructed flashback sequences takes up residence in the daily rhythms of Leo and Rema's marriage and becomes as much a focus of Leo's obsession as his wife's whereabouts. (Think Vertigo but directed by Charlie Kaufman.) Make no mistake: this is dizzying debut fiction, bursting at the spine with beautifully articulated ideas about love, yes, but also--and with maddening resonance--about the private wars love forces us to wage with ourselves. Be sure to keep a pen or pencil handy: it's impossible to resist underlining prose this good
Fiction, 2008, 240 pgs
Read : 8/08
Recommended by : Entertainment Weekly
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 1.0 / 3.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: I did not finish the book…read 58 pages. I didn’t enjoy the story…it was too far out….to abstract. If it had been part of a book club I might have finished it to take part in the discussion.
Summary : Amazon.com
Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: Imagine what it might be like to realize that the person you love is, in fact, not the person you love but a doppelgänger: or, what Leo Liebenstein coolly terms a "simulacrum" of his wife Rema at the outset of Atmospheric Disturbances. David Byrne's infamous cry that "this is not my beautiful wife" seems the most likely response, but Leo's reaction to this sea change takes unpredictable and dazzlingly plotted turns in the story that follows. Leo's journey to recover the "real" Rema is nothing short of byzantine; among its many mysteries is the delightfully inscrutable Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen, a master meteorologist who in cleverly constructed flashback sequences takes up residence in the daily rhythms of Leo and Rema's marriage and becomes as much a focus of Leo's obsession as his wife's whereabouts. (Think Vertigo but directed by Charlie Kaufman.) Make no mistake: this is dizzying debut fiction, bursting at the spine with beautifully articulated ideas about love, yes, but also--and with maddening resonance--about the private wars love forces us to wage with ourselves. Be sure to keep a pen or pencil handy: it's impossible to resist underlining prose this good
The Prestige
The Prestige by Christopher Priest
Fiction, 1995, 360 pgs
Read: 8/08
Recommended by : Page-a-Day Book Calendar
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: Enjoyable book which kept me reading….an interesting twist at the end.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
Priest, one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists (1983 list), has not been overproductive since he made a small reputation with The Affirmation and The Glamour, published here more than a dozen years ago. His new novel (the title of which refers to the residue left after a magician's successful trick) is enthrallingly odd. In a carefully calculated period style that is remarkably akin to that of the late Robertson Davies, Priest writes of a pair of rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London. Each has a winning trick the other craves, but so arcane is the nature of these tricks, so incredibly difficult are they to perform, that they take on a peculiar life of their own?in one case involving a mysterious apparent double identity, in the other a reliance on the ferocious powers unleashed in the early experimental years of electricity. The rivalry of the two men is such that in the end, though both are ashamed of the strength of their feelings of spite and envy, it consumes them both, and affects their respective families for generations. This is a complex tale that must have been extremely difficult to tell in exactly the right sequence, while still maintaining a series of shocks to the very end. Priest has brought it off with great imagination and skill. It's only fair to say, though, that the book's very considerable narrative grip is its principal virtue. The characters and incidents have a decidedly Gothic cast, and only the restraint that marks the story's telling keeps it on the rails.
Favorite Passages:
Pg 101…..The general rule of magic always holds good—what is seen is not what is actually being done.
Fiction, 1995, 360 pgs
Read: 8/08
Recommended by : Page-a-Day Book Calendar
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: Enjoyable book which kept me reading….an interesting twist at the end.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
Priest, one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists (1983 list), has not been overproductive since he made a small reputation with The Affirmation and The Glamour, published here more than a dozen years ago. His new novel (the title of which refers to the residue left after a magician's successful trick) is enthrallingly odd. In a carefully calculated period style that is remarkably akin to that of the late Robertson Davies, Priest writes of a pair of rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London. Each has a winning trick the other craves, but so arcane is the nature of these tricks, so incredibly difficult are they to perform, that they take on a peculiar life of their own?in one case involving a mysterious apparent double identity, in the other a reliance on the ferocious powers unleashed in the early experimental years of electricity. The rivalry of the two men is such that in the end, though both are ashamed of the strength of their feelings of spite and envy, it consumes them both, and affects their respective families for generations. This is a complex tale that must have been extremely difficult to tell in exactly the right sequence, while still maintaining a series of shocks to the very end. Priest has brought it off with great imagination and skill. It's only fair to say, though, that the book's very considerable narrative grip is its principal virtue. The characters and incidents have a decidedly Gothic cast, and only the restraint that marks the story's telling keeps it on the rails.
Favorite Passages:
Pg 101…..The general rule of magic always holds good—what is seen is not what is actually being done.
A Feather on the Breath of God
A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez
Fiction, 1995, 180 pgs
Read : 8/08
Recommended by : Page-of-Day Books calendar
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.5 / 4.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: This was a sad book about the loneliness and longing of immigrants, and the effect on the children. It was an insightful and haunting story told by a nameless narrator. I would recommend it to others.
Summary :
From Kirkus Reviews With a subtle blend of fierceness and evanescence, Nunez's debut comments profoundly on the lasting effects of the immigrant experience and the haunting powers of family. The unnamed female narrator tells a four-part story that begins with her father, a Chinese-Panamanian immigrant who moved to Brooklyn at the age of 12 or 13. She understands little about this workaholic who spent most of his time away from home until cancer felled him. Why didn't he ever learn to speak English? Why, in his 30s, did he switch his name from Chang to the Hispanic surname of his mother? Why did he refuse to discuss anything at all with his children? She can't answer these questions. She can merely collect what she does know and accept that it's too late to understand him. Her German-born mother, Christa, was her father's opposite: Full of rage, grace, beauty, laughter, and sorrow, Christa clung to her German heritage and spoke constantly of her past. The book's second section, which deals with her, is about love and nostalgia, about seeing with all her flaws the one individual who most shaped the narrator's life (``I seem to remember my mother as though she were a landscape rather than a person''). The third part is devoted to the narrator's dream of becoming a ballerina, which, as she poignantly states, ``begins with the dream of being beautiful.'' Here she makes some caustic connections between foot binding and toe shoes; she also recognizes that in ballet she sought escape and discipline. The final section revolves around an ill-advised love affair. The narrator examines the theory that no matter how far you go in life ``you must stick with your own class'' and sees in herself the intense desire to please, charm, and provoke desire. A rich, intelligent tapestry of the connections between language, love, beauty, and forgiveness.
Fiction, 1995, 180 pgs
Read : 8/08
Recommended by : Page-of-Day Books calendar
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.5 / 4.5 (5 best)
Recommendation: This was a sad book about the loneliness and longing of immigrants, and the effect on the children. It was an insightful and haunting story told by a nameless narrator. I would recommend it to others.
Summary :
From Kirkus Reviews With a subtle blend of fierceness and evanescence, Nunez's debut comments profoundly on the lasting effects of the immigrant experience and the haunting powers of family. The unnamed female narrator tells a four-part story that begins with her father, a Chinese-Panamanian immigrant who moved to Brooklyn at the age of 12 or 13. She understands little about this workaholic who spent most of his time away from home until cancer felled him. Why didn't he ever learn to speak English? Why, in his 30s, did he switch his name from Chang to the Hispanic surname of his mother? Why did he refuse to discuss anything at all with his children? She can't answer these questions. She can merely collect what she does know and accept that it's too late to understand him. Her German-born mother, Christa, was her father's opposite: Full of rage, grace, beauty, laughter, and sorrow, Christa clung to her German heritage and spoke constantly of her past. The book's second section, which deals with her, is about love and nostalgia, about seeing with all her flaws the one individual who most shaped the narrator's life (``I seem to remember my mother as though she were a landscape rather than a person''). The third part is devoted to the narrator's dream of becoming a ballerina, which, as she poignantly states, ``begins with the dream of being beautiful.'' Here she makes some caustic connections between foot binding and toe shoes; she also recognizes that in ballet she sought escape and discipline. The final section revolves around an ill-advised love affair. The narrator examines the theory that no matter how far you go in life ``you must stick with your own class'' and sees in herself the intense desire to please, charm, and provoke desire. A rich, intelligent tapestry of the connections between language, love, beauty, and forgiveness.
Shiver
Shiver by Lisa Jackson
Mystery, 2007, 512 pgs
Read : 6/08
Book Club : FL-Mystery BC (5/08)
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: I enjoy Lisa Jackson's mysteries and would recommend this book to others.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
Set in pre-Katrina New Orleans, the new romantic thriller by bestseller Jackson, her first to be published in hardcover, fits all the usual pieces into all the usual holes. A psycho sexual serial killer stalks victims connected to an insane asylum, shut down 20 years earlier but still standing in all its creepy abandonment. Abby Chastain, a portrait photographer on the rebound from a bad divorce, is trying to wean herself off men. Det. Reuben Montoya, the virile, not-by-the-book cop (last seen in 2002's Cold Blooded), is assigned to track down the serial killer. Along the way, Montoya develops—against his better judgment—a soft spot for the libido-tingling Chastain, now in peril because her mother was either murdered or committed suicide at the old asylum just before it closed. Fans of the prolific Jackson (Fatal Burn) should be pleased, but those unfamiliar with the conventions of romance fiction should be prepared for characters who "growl" rather than simply "say" and descriptions of physical beauty along the lines of a "body that wouldn't quit."
Mystery, 2007, 512 pgs
Read : 6/08
Book Club : FL-Mystery BC (5/08)
Ratings (mine / Amazon) : 4.0 / 4.0 (5 best)
Recommendation: I enjoy Lisa Jackson's mysteries and would recommend this book to others.
Summary : From Publishers Weekly
Set in pre-Katrina New Orleans, the new romantic thriller by bestseller Jackson, her first to be published in hardcover, fits all the usual pieces into all the usual holes. A psycho sexual serial killer stalks victims connected to an insane asylum, shut down 20 years earlier but still standing in all its creepy abandonment. Abby Chastain, a portrait photographer on the rebound from a bad divorce, is trying to wean herself off men. Det. Reuben Montoya, the virile, not-by-the-book cop (last seen in 2002's Cold Blooded), is assigned to track down the serial killer. Along the way, Montoya develops—against his better judgment—a soft spot for the libido-tingling Chastain, now in peril because her mother was either murdered or committed suicide at the old asylum just before it closed. Fans of the prolific Jackson (Fatal Burn) should be pleased, but those unfamiliar with the conventions of romance fiction should be prepared for characters who "growl" rather than simply "say" and descriptions of physical beauty along the lines of a "body that wouldn't quit."
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