The Passage by Justin Cronin Ballantine, $27.00, 766 pages, ISBN 978-0-345-50496-8 The Passage is a scary, scary novel about the end of the world as we knew it. A top secret government program goes terribly out of kilter, (so what’s new?) and the vampires they’ve been creating as a potential war weapon escape, wreaking havoc on the world . . . ending civilization about as quickly as you
Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto Scribner, $15.00, 258 pages, ISBN 978-1-4391-6666-6 Tough guys . . . that’s the subject of this weeks MBR number twenty-two. Now. I realize when I wrote the preceding sentence, that every one of you readers out there remember a tough guy, or gal, know a tough person or two . . . heck, maybe you are a tough individual with the chops to prove it.
Ringer by Brian M. Wiprud Minotaur, $26.99, 342 pages, ISBN 978-0-312-60189-8 In a small attempt to start things back toward normalcy, maybe even give a few of you a smile for a moment or two, the MBR for this week is a book titled Ringer. In it, protagonist Morty Martinez, a “gentleman of means and leisure” living in La Paz, Mexico, is given a quest to recover an ancient
The Four Stages of Cruelty by Keith Hollihan Thomas Dunne, $25.99, 294 pages, ISBN 978-0-312-59247-9 This week’s MBR is The Four Stages of Cruelty it’s a first novel and, oh boy, it’s a prison book. You may have a job you love to hate; you might even work in a prison . . . but I’d bet none of you ever worked in a place like the fictional and
A Bad Night’s Sleep by Michael Wiley Minotaur, $24.99, 258 pages, ISBN 978-0-312-55224-4 This week’s MBR will be short and sweet. It takes place in Chicago, sometimes called “America’s second city,” and features a private investigator, or PI, named Joe Kozmarski, a failed cop and known drunk. A Bad Night’s Sleep is his third book in the Kozmarski series. It’s a thrill ride from start to finish, as
Now &Then by Robert B. Parker Putnam, 2007, $25.95, 296 pages, ISBN 978-0-399-15441-6 This week, I stuck my arm w-a-a-y down in the old book bag, and just like Jack Horner, pulled out a plum: an unread Spenser novel by Robert B.Parker titled, Now & Then. The story begins when Spenser, Boston’s most well-known private investigator accepts a case from a man trying to find out if his
London Boulevard by Ken Bruen (Minotaur, 2009, $24.99, 250 pages, ISBN 978-0-312-56168-0) With all the hoo-hah, fubaring and gigantic jug-flinging coming from our nation’s capitol these days, as well as daily displays of incompetence and rooster-crowing by our elected representatives of every stripe . . . I just had to take a break from the news and current events. So, paraphrasing John Prine, (one of my wife June’s favorite
ROBOPOCALYPSE by Daniel H. Wilson (Doubleday, $25.00, 347 pages, ISBN 978-0-385-53385-0) Through the magic of literature, the MBR NO. 16 will jump from the long-ago, (MBR No. 15), to the not so-distant future, with a book called ROBOPOCALYPSE, about a war between robots and humans. It’s a thriller-diller of a novel I found near-impossible to put down. Like the works of Stephen King, ROBOPOCALYPSE will thrill, entertain and scare
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe (Hyperion, $25.99, 362 pages, ISBN 978-1-4013-4090-2) In commemoration of old-fashioned cursive writing, this week’s Mysterious Book Report No. 15 will be about an old-fashioned witch hunt. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane is about the search for a hand-written book of herbs, remedies and cures compiled during the colonial period by a healer named Deliverance Dane, who was later caught
The Final Storm by Jeff Shaara (Ballantine, $28.00, 480 pages, ISBN 978-0-345-49794-9) I don’t know about you, but I’m not a huge fan of some modern devices, cell phones being at the top of my personal (we hates them) list, so I’m slow to adopt a lot of the newest “must-have” gadgets and doo-dahs smart young folks are coming up with these days. But, like automatic transmissions in cars,