John Grisham - The Partner

Literary slugger John Grisham returns with a story about-- surprise!--a lawyer in trouble. Patrick Lanigan had been a young partner in a prominent Southern law firm. He had a beautiful wife, a new baby girl, and a bright future. Then one winter night Patrick was trapped in a burning car; the casket they buried held nothing but ashes.
A short distance away, Patrick watched his own burial then fled. A fortune was stolen from his ex-firm's offshore account. And Patrick ran, covering his tracks the whole way.
But, now, they've found him!

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Ted Dekker - Thr3e

Dekker delivers another page-turner with this psychological Christian thriller about Kevin Parson, a 28-year-old seminary student who suddenly becomes the target of an evil nemesis called Slater. Obsessed both with Kevin's downfall and the number 3, Slater initiates a game in which Kevin must answer riddles to avoid Slater's destructive, potentially murderous retribution. Slater particularly wants Kevin to publicly confess a secret sin, and Kevin is at a loss as to what that sin might be. Once Dekker establishes this premise, he masterfully takes readers on a ride full of plot twists and turns. Not only does he spin a compelling tale of cat and mouse, but he also creates a narrative world in which it's possible that no one is quite who he or she seems. Dekker gradually discloses his protagonist's nightmarish childhood and delivers an almost perfect blend of suspense, mystery and horror. Dekker's prose is strong, putting him in a league above many other evangelical Christian writers and showing improvement over his previous work. Aside from following certain Christian fiction guidelines such as making his gorgeous 20-something characters entirely virginal, Dekker eschews most of the conventions of evangelical fiction. His spiritual message is subtle and devoid of the theologically and politically conservative agenda present in other novels.

Bryce Courtney - Tommo and Hawk

This novel - a sequel to 'The Potato Factory' (a great book, mind you!), is a rollicking tale of 2 unlikely brothers, with a lot of grisly adventure and the typical BC-style of lots of bad things happening that make you really care for the characters and then, gee, things seem to turn out OK in the end (but not without a lot of pain and suffering, thank you Charles Dickens).
Nevertheless, I loved this book for all of the 650+ pages that Bryce decided to put into it... Being very critical, I would say that gee yep, this coulda been better and all (as I did not like all of the things that happenend in the end), but it was a great read from one of the best authors in the land of OZ (for this type of literature). He has a great style and command of words that makes you want to know what is going on with the characters, and is very conscious of what is going on at the time as well. No, this is not big time literary stuff, but it is simply GREAT entertainment that won't leave your head and will keep your mind off the othe worries of the world...

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Robin Cook - Crisis

Guidall's experienced reading brings a pleasant touch of class to Cook's latest thriller. A distinguished and self-confident physician, Craig Bowman is delivered an ego-shattering blow when he is sued for malpractice by the husband of one of his patients, hypochondriac Patience Stanhope, who died while under his care. The trial takes up the bulk of this wordy novel. Bowman's wife asks her brother, medical examiner Dr. Jack Stapleton, to use his expertise to help with her husband's defense. Stapleton agrees, but what should be a routine forensic exercise quickly turns into a dangerous trail of lies, deception and murder. While it takes some time to get to the story's climax, Cook eventually ties up all the loose ends, although the denouement feels more gimmicky than surprising. Guidall exhibits admirable vocal talents as he manages to keep this overwritten novel moving at a satisfying pace, and the ease with which he works his way through the mounds of legal and medical jargon throughout the book is a testament to his skill as a narrator. Fans of Cook's writing should enjoy this dignified presentation.

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Michael Connelly - Closers

A city that forgets its murder victims is a city lost. This is where we don't forget," Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch is told by his new boss, as he ends a three-year retirement and rejoins the Los Angeles Police Department at the start of The Closers, the 11th installment of Michael Connelly's Edgar-winning series. Having long ago demonstrated his knack for cracking previously unsolved homicides, Bosch is assigned to the newly re-branded Open-Unsolved Unit (aka "cold case" squad), and charged with resolving the 17-year-old abduction and slaying of a mixed-race teenager.
Rebecca Verloren, 16, was discovered missing from her Chatsworth home on a July morning in 1988. Her corpse and the gun that ended her life were later found on a hill behind the house. An autopsy revealed that she'd recently undergone an abortion, and a piece of skin tissue--presumably the killer's--was found trapped inside the murder weapon. Only now, though, has DNA science matched that tissue to Roland Mackey, a dyslexic 35-year-old tow-truck operator with no obvious connection to the deceased. It's up to Bosch, once more partnered with Kizmin Rider, to determine whether Mackey offed Becky Verloren, or was at least an accessory to that tragedy. But the more Bosch and Rider dig into this dusty crime, trying in part to determine whether racial animosity might have been involved, the more pain and resistance they encounter. Becky's white mother maintains the teen's old bedroom as a shrine, while her shattered father, an African-American chef, has vanished into LA's homeless community. Of the two original investigators on the case, one has since committed suicide, and Bosch suspects that the other--now a police commander--is helping to keep the lid tight on some old departmental secrets, perhaps linked to our hero's nemesis, Deputy Chief Irvin S. Irving.
Understandably rusty after three years sans shield, Bosch makes his share of personal and professional mistakes here--including one that supplies The Closers with a lethal, plot-turning climax. But the greater problem is that Connelly exhausts so much time and effort following his protagonist through the tedium of modern police procedures, that he neglects what readers have liked more about this series in the past: its persistently deft exploration of Bosch's lonely, haunted soul (which remains mostly out of sight in this tale), and the author's frequent flights of lyrical prose (also not much in evidence). Would-be novelists wanting an example of a solidly constructed cop tale need look no further than The Closers. But readers hoping to learn why Connelly is so well-respected in this genre should turn, instead, to previous Bosch titles such as The Concrete Blonde, Angel's Flight, or City of Bones.

Harlen Coben - Drop Shot

Sports agent Myron Bolitar has under contract one of the hottest young male tennis players around. When a young former tennis star is murdered (shortly after Myron met with her), he finds that the two cases may be connected--and that he's involved. Showing his talents in a story that moves from high society to lowlifes, Jonathon Marosz ably shifts characters and pace, and captures the wry humor of Myron and the grittiness of the physical threats and violence he encounters. Solid narration brings out the best of the characters.

Tom Clancy - Without Remorse

I do enjoy Clancy novels that exhibit his main character, the famous Jack Ryan. Without Remorse is one of the best military style fiction books of all time, rivaled only by the likes of The Bourne Identity and one of my favorite non-fiction reads known as BAT 21. The introduction to the character John Clark is a peaceful one, and that goes for his newly found girlfriend as well. Soon something terrible happens, and Clark takes on a form of vigilante justice that knows no bounds. His victims have absolutely no idea who they are messing with, because his former background alone puts him at the top of the world's most vaunted class of warriors. The novel is not just a shoot 'em up throat slasher though, and if you know. Tom Clancy and his writing style then you already know that anyways. Clancy has the ability to put great depth and researched details into the background of both the locations that the stories take place in, as well as the characters and the various kinds of hardware used. On top of that, there are sub plots that deal with betrayal and political intrigue that make Without Remorse one of the best fictional tales in quite some time. There are military/techno style writers, and then there is Tom Clancy...
...and then there is Without Remorse. The people like John Clark are not just automated killing machines, make no assumptions there because Clancy is able to add an extreme emotional toll to the players throughout, giving them a dramatic feel of realism that makes Without Remorse a somewhat sleeper of a classic. Without Remorse is also being made into a major motion picture and is set to release some time in 2008. By Mason Vaquero "Engineer" (Colorado)

Batman - Knightfall

Broken Bat is the first of two volumes collecting Knightfall, the much-talked about Batman storyline--much talked about because it was the story in which Batman gets defeated. The huge, muscle-bound villain Bane has but one goal in mind, to break Batman. The end of this volume is somewhat shocking compared to standard, mainstream comic book continuity.

Dean Koontz - Demon Seed

This new edition of Demon Seed is an updated version of a novel that Koontz wrote in the 70's (of which a film version was made). The basic plot of the story is that a super-intelligent computer named Proteus becomes self-aware, and falls in what he thinks is love with the wife of the scientist who helped design him. He enters her fully-automated house by way of the controlling computer, and soon has her trapped inside. His aim is to impregnate the woman and inject into the foetus his own consciousness.
What makes this book particularly interesting is the fact that Koontz uses Proteus to make a social comment on the male mind and how it perceives women. It really gives a fascinating insight into the male psyche, through the eyes of the computer who thinks he loves this woman and can use that as an excuse to hurt her as much as he pleases. Definitely an interesting read, and one which will make both sexes think.

Dean Koontz - Brother Odd

Bestseller Koontz's third Odd Thomas novel (after Forever Odd) offers an irresistibly offbeat mix of supernatural horror and laugh-out-loud humor. A resident of St. Bartholomew's Abbey, a monastery in the Sierra Nevada mountains, Thomas has the ability to see the spirits of the dead, a gift he has used to resolve mysteries and prevent future tragedies. As the story opens, the seer is unsettled by visions of bodachs, sinister ghostlike entities whose appearance precedes some dire tragedy. Thomas frantically searches for some sign that will help him head off disaster, even as St. Bart's is thrown into turmoil by the disappearance of one of its members. Thomas must figure out both the identity of the person or being behind the terror and the most effective way to restore peace to his haven. While newcomers may find the villain's underlying motive a bit over the top, the narrator's engaging voice should continue to give this series cross-genre appeal.

Stephen King - Carrie

Why read Carrie? Stephen King himself has said that he finds his early work "raw," and Brian De Palma's movie was so successful that we feel like we have read the novel even if we never have. The simple answer is that this is a very scary story, one that works as well--if not better--on the page as on the screen. Carrie White, menaced by bullies at school and her religious nut of a mother at home, gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers, powers that will eventually be turned on her tormentors. King has a way of getting under the skin of his readers by creating an utterly believable world that throbs with menace before finally exploding. He builds the tension in this early work by piecing together extracts from newspaper reports, journals, and scientific papers, as well as more traditional first- and third-person narrative in order to reveal what lurks beneath the surface of Chamberlain, Maine.

Thomas Harris - Red Dragon

Lying on a cot in his cell with Alexandre Dumas's Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine open on his chest, Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter makes his debut in this legendary horror novel, which is even better than its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs. As in Silence, the pulse-pounding suspense plot involves a hypersensitive FBI sleuth who consults psycho psychiatrist Lecter for clues to catching a killer on the loose. The sleuth, Will Graham, actually quit the FBI after nearly getting killed by Lecter while nabbing him, but fear isn't what bugs him about crime busting. It's just too creepy to get inside a killer's twisted mind. But he comes back to stop a madman who's been butchering entire families. The FBI needs Graham's insight, and Graham needs Lecter's genius. But Lecter is a clever fiend, and he manipulates both Graham and the killer at large from his cell. That killer, Francis Dolarhyde, works in a film lab, where he picks his victims by studying their home movies. He's obsessed with William Blake's bizarre painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, believing there's a red dragon within him, the personification of his demonic drives. Flashbacks to Dolarhyde's terrifying childhood and superb stream-of-consciousness prose get us right there inside his head. When Dolarhyde does weird things, we understand why. We sympathize when the voice of the cruel dead grandma who raised and crazed him urges him to mayhem--she's way scarier than that old bat in Psycho. When he falls in love with a blind girl at the lab, we hope he doesn't give in to Grandma's violent advice.

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