Category Archives: Fiction

Review: ‘Deed So, by Katherine Russell

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Deed So
Deed So
Katherine Russell
CreateSpace, 438 pages
November 2010
Buy this book from Amazon or Read the first chapter for free

Product Description (from Amazon.com):
It is 1962, and Agnes Hayden Bashford, Haddie, a brainy Southern teen from a tradition-bound family, dreams of breaking free from suffocating expectations placed on girls and from Wicomico Corners. She vows to escape to the exhilarating world beyond its narrow borders, like her handsome, older friend Gideon Albright who is going to Vietnam. A series of shocking incidents brings the outside world crashing down on her peaceful village, exposing long-buried family secrets and setting Haddie on a collision course with an unstable firebrand who will have to silence her to protect his identity. Haddie witnesses the fatal shooting of a black teen by a white down-on-his-luck farmer trying to protect his retarded son. The resulting murder trial attracts outside agitators and political aspirants, and pits townspeople against each other. Excited about being a witness in the trial, Haddie sees her moment of notoriety dissolve into frustration and discomfort and tragedy claim the people around her. The racially-charged case exposes civic fault lines and secrets within Haddie’s own family, shattering her comfortable home life, and unleashes an arsonist who terrorizes the community by night. In Deed So, a young girl and an entire town lose their innocence in the last year of innocence, the year before the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights struggle, feminist activism and the Vietnam War changed America forever.

Haddie, the main character in Katherine Russell’s novel Deed So is the same age as my mother. That thought kept running through my head as I was reading her story, and mentally juxtaposing it with the stories my mother had told me about growing up in New Jersey in the same year. Haddie had a friend who was a soldier in Viet Nam – my mother’s only brother chose to go to Canada instead… Haddie was a witness to ethnic persecution – my mother, on a field trip to Washington D.C., saw Dr. King holding one of his first vigils, sitting alone and silently at the Lincoln Memorial. Separating my mother’s real story from Haddie’s fictional one proved difficult for me as I was reading this book.

And it’s a wonderful book, albeit one about some very un-wonderful events. Russell’s characters are vivid and completely three-dimensional, and the opening, in a Southern church supper makes you almost smell the ham, and hear the clinking of silverware against china. Her parents are portrayed not as Evil Adults, but as very human people who love their daughter and try to ride the line between encouraging her precocious intelligence and protecting her relative innocence.

I also enjoyed reading about Haddie’s friendships with the other girls her age – the sneaking of cigarettes and looking at the pictures in Grey’s Anatomy made me laugh – it’s such a universal experience for young girls in the pre-Internet age.

When the book turns darker, first because of a fight that Haddie witnesses, and which results in a court case, and later because of a series of fires that may or may not be related to the trial (I’m not telling!), Russell doesn’t flinch. Her characters represent the broad spectrum of public opinion about the rights and roles of African Americans during the civil rights movement, and while many of those opinions are decidedly unPC by modern standards, they are true to the period, and to the region.

The mark of a good writer, a good storyteller, is to take a difficult subject and present it in a fashion that is both interesting and compelling. In Deed So Russell has done exactly that.

Review: STTNG: A Sea of Troubles

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A Sea of Troubles
STTNG: A Sea of Troubles
J. Steven York & Christina F. York
Simon & Schuster Digital, 200 KB
October, 2007
Buy it from Amazon >>

Description (from Amazon.com):
A new six-part epic covering the first year of service of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E, leading up to the events of the hit movie Star Trek: First Contact.

The U.S.S. Enterprise-E has launched, with Captain Jean-Luc Picard in command. In addition to many familiar faces, the new ship also has some new crew members — among them, conn officer Sean Hawk and security chief Linda Addison.

But soon Picard is devastated to learn that there’s a saboteur on board — in the form of a changeling infiltrator from the Dominion! Picard and his crew must learn who the changeling replaced and stop it before it destroys the fleet’s finest ship…

Late last year, I read book three in this six-part Star Trek: The Next Generation series “Slings and Arrows” because sometimes I want the comfort of familiar characters having new adventures. I was not disappointed. So when I bought books one and two at the beginning of the year, I expected to be equally pleased. The thing is, sometimes you forget that buying books is not like buying custom laptops. Sometimes books are different than what you expect. This book was.

I was expecting plot. I was expecting political machinations. I was not expecting the level of darkness and intrigue that was evident in this novel, and frankly, I thought the Dominion storyline was overdone in TNG and DS9, as it was. Odd, I know, considering that I’ve really enjoyed it when OTHER TNG novels have departed from the sanitized fluffy view of the future that Star Trek tends to be.

What I am enjoying in this book, and in the second one, which I’ll talk about another day, is Data’s ongoing process of learning to deal with his new emotions. I never felt that this was ever handled well in the movies, and I like that he isn’t just perfectly assimilating all those feelings.

Bottom line: Not a bad e-read, but not all I hoped.

Goes well with: hot chocolate and butter cookies.

Review: A Pointed Death, by Kath Russell

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A Pointed Death
A Pointed Death
Kath Russell
CreateSpace, 352 pages
August, 2010
Buy from Amazon >> OR Read the first chapter for free..

Product Description (from Amazon.com):
In A Pointed Death, biotech consultant Nola Billingsley discovers that one of her clients is stealing proprietary information from other startups. When the scion of a prominent Chinese-American family is murdered, Nola is convinced his death stems from his employment at the company pilfering scientific secrets. Nola seeks the identity of the killer and the destination of the purloined genetic data. Lanky fraud investigator Robert Harrison wants her to leave sleuthing to the professionals and leap in bed with him, but hardheaded Nola is convinced she and her band of biotech pals can solve the mystery. When the going gets tough and danger looms, she has her shorthaired pointer Skootch to watch her back as the action accelerates from lab to ocean’s edge in San Francisco, the city where biotech was born. A Pointed Death is a funny, sexy who-done-it set in a smart industry, a ‘Malice Corporate’ unfolding in a town everyone loves but secretly believes is in need of its own twelve-step program.

When I was offered the opportunity to review Kath Russell’s lighthearted mystery novel, A Pointed Death, I jumped at the chance. I mean, this was a mystery with a female protagonist, that took place in San Francisco (my spiritual, if not actual, home town) and featured a short-haired pointer as a pet/sidekick. As I told the publicist, “I really, REALLY want to read this, and not JUST because I ALSO have a short-haired pointer.” I’m glad I did, because this book was a delightful read from start to finish, and the perfect novel for the post-holiday doldrums – not stupid, but not so intellectual that you find yourself exhausted after three pages.

I really loved Nola Billingsley as a character. She’s strong, spunky, and smart, but she’s also completely feminine, and reads as if she were a real person, rather than a mere character. The scenes between her and her aging-southern-belle mother are priceless (my own mother is not a southern belle, but aging radical feminists aren’t that different when they’re your parents, really), and the relationship Nola has with her bouncy, silly dog, Skootch (who is very much like my own bouncy, silly dog, Maximus) made me laugh not just because of the humor, but because it was dead-on accurate. How many of us have dogs who can smell when we’ve done the horizontal bop, and seem to judge us for it? How many of us with dogs ever get to go to the restroom without an audience?

I also liked Nola’s relationship with Harrison, the cop handling her case. Hardly the stuff of romance novels, it was very much an exploration of how grown-ups respond to chemistry and attraction – sometimes lovely, sometimes awkward, and often frustrating.

The mystery plot was also well-constructed. What seemed at first like yet another embezzlement story ended up touring three cultures: biotech, e-commerce, and Chinese-Americans. All three were fairly represented, and the combination was compelling and interesting all the way through.

This book has a tag implying that Ms. Russell might write more of Nola’s story.
I really hope that’s true.

Goes well with: Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl, and a chilled Anchor Steam beer.

Review: STTNG: Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment

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ST:TNG Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment
Keith R. A. DeCandido
Simon and Schuster, 320 pages
March, 2008
Buy this book from Amazon.com >>

Product Description (from Amazon):
A new Federation President has been elected, and his first order of business is to attempt to restore the alliance with the Klingon Empire. To that end, he sends Captain Picard to Deep Space 9, in the hopes that Picard’s relationship with Chancellor Gowron might lead to a normalization of relations.

At first, things go well, as Gowron agrees to meet with Picard and Captain Sisko of DS9 on a neutral planet — but when their runabout is shot down, it’s up to Commanders Worf and Data to find out the truth before their captains are killed!

I hadn’t read a new Star Trek book in a while but I always enjoy Keith DeCandido’s additions to the franchise, and I’d been wanting something that took place post-series but pre-Nemesis, that all my favorite characters. I wasn’t disappointed at all – even though some of those characters were off-screen, their presence was still felt, and while this was essentially a DS9 crossover, it was a legitimate one. Picard and Sisko must team up to fix the Federation-Klingon Empire alliance (I maintain that the best way to lose weight fast is to try and out-fox the Klingons) and of course Data and Worf, working from the Enterprise and the Defiant have to help.

The thing about Star Trek novels is that they’re best when they expand the Trekiverse, giving us glimpses of parts of future life that the shows don’t. This novel was a bit short on that, but still a satisfying read.

Goes well with tea, Earl Grey, hot.

Publish this Book: Lethal Inheritance by Tahlia Newland

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Lethal Inheritance
Tahlia Newland
Seeking a publisher.
Read the first chapter >>

Product Description (from the author’s Website):
If last night was real then Ariel should be dead, but her mother has disappeared, there are bruise marks on her neck and that hideous beast in the photo looks frighteningly familiar.

When demons kidnap her mother, Ariel undertakes a rescue mission in a mysterious and unpredictable world in a hidden layer of reality. Demons who feed on fear are hunting her, and they’re aiming to kill. She needs help fast, but can she trust the quirky old guide who says he can teach her how to fine tune her mind into a powerful weapon? And what should she do about Nick, whose power is more than he or she can handle?

Ariel’s journey challenges her perception, tests her awareness and takes her deep into her heart and mind to confront, and ultimately transcend, her fear and anger.

It was a while ago that Australian YA author Tahlia Newland introduced herself to me and her book Lethal Inheritance, but I’m glad she did, because not only is she a delightful person to have as a blog buddy, she’s also a talented author.

Frequent visitors to this blog know that I’m a strong proponent of YA novels. I think the female characters we meet in YA (young adult) fiction are some of the best female characters in contemporary literature, and because the target audience is a little younger, a little fresher, authors have a lot more room to play with reality. Not that their writing can come from any place other than Truth – even the most preposterous stories (ahem – Christopher Moore’s work – ahem – still have some kind of basis in Truth) and teens are especially adept in finding the places where things do NOT ring true. But they can bend physics a little, and adjust life, the way writers who work in adult contemporary fiction (and I mean small-a adult not ADULT XXX adult) cannot. Well, Christopher Moore and the whole magical realism genre aside.

But I digress. The sample chapter of Lethal Inheritance is gripping and compelling. There’s character, there’s action, there’s suspense, and there’s risk…it grabs you, shakes you up, and leaves you dangling over a cliff.

Someone needs to publish this work.
Someone needs to publish it now!

Goes well with: a warm blanket, hot cocoa, and comfort food – mac-n-cheese or s’mores.

RetroReading: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

In preparation for seeing the movie tonight, I re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows earlier this week. Yes, I know the movie is only half the story. Yes, I know the movies never have everything the books do, but even so, I felt it important to refresh my memory of the story.

I noticed a few details in this reading that I don’t remember reading when I first read the book the day it was released, and it was nice to re-visit the original version of the characters, but I’m also left wondering if Harry stayed small-ish in the books because Dan Radcliffe is not particularly tall.

As the daughter of a fashion designer, one thing I’m intrigued by is what Hermione’s beaded bag will look like. I mean, I know there are custom drawstring bags that have beadwork, but I also know that most beaded bags are tiny little clutch purses. I think my mother has one, I know my grandmother had a couple that I used to play with.

Mostly though, I’m looking forward to the experience of seeing a fun movie in an opening night crowd.

Review: Six Clicks Away, by Bonnie Rozanski

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Six Clicks Away
Six Clicks Away
Bonnie Rozanski
Kindle edition, 309kb
Amazon.com, September 2010
Buy this book from Amazon

Product Description (from Amazon.com):
As miraculous as our wired world may be, everything connected to everything else eventually shows its downside. A rumor, a virus, a financial crisis – these days, they all cascade throughout the world in record time. SIX CLICKS AWAY tells the story of a single ripple through a tangled web, and how one person can affect us all.

In Bonnie Rozanski’s captivating novel, the social network becomes a stage for six indelible, interconnected characters: a lonely writer in Toronto, pining for her lost love; an unemployed engineer in Seattle who finds himself working at the Pike Place Fish Market. There is a young collections operator in Bangalore, India, who can’t stop caring about the people from whom she collects; and a seedy real estate magnate who gets his just desserts. Finally, there is a down-on-his-luck actor, an old friend of the Dalai Lama, who finds enlightenment from a most unlikely source.

A chain of falling dominoes is set in motion when Jeremy and Rachel, an unlikely duo of a geek and a Jersey girl, contact a friend on Myface.com, the largest social network on the planet. That friend contacts another, and another, each link bringing the pair one step closer to the goal of reaching the Dalai Lama, their choice of exotic target on the other side of the world. What they expect is that their simple classroom project will demonstrate “six degrees of separation,” the idea that everyone on this planet is connected in six short links to everyone else. What they get, however, is a cascade of the unexpected.

As the product description says, there’s a strong element of “Six Degrees of Separation” in Bonnie Rozanski’s latest novel, and I have to confess, it’s this element that made me say yes when she emailed to offer me a review copy (an electronic one – yay for green publishing!) I sent her document to my Kindle for comfortable reading, and found myself laughing, nodding, and otherwise reacting to this book as if I knew the characters (I’m pretty sure I went to school with some of them.)

I enjoyed all the characters, especially Jersey girl Rachel, whose accent I could clearly hear in my head, the way you can look at a picture of a modern sofa and know exactly how it would feel beneath you. I loved the invention of the facebook-esque MyFace social network, and I thought the publication of this novel was especially timely since it coincided with the movie The Social Network.

There are any number of novelists who try to use the Internet as a plot device. Most of them fail by either being too trendy, or being so far out of date that it pulls you out of the story. Rozanski, on the other hand, has given us a story where the ‘net is as much a character as the human characters, but manages to feel completely organic within the world in which her novel takes place.

If you’re at all geeky, or just love a good read, this book is for you.

Goes well with: diet Dr. Pepper and nachos.

Review: The Flim-Flam Fairies, by Alan Katz

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The Flim Flam Fairies
The Flim-Flam Fairies
Author: Alan Katz
Pages: 32
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Buy from Amazon.com >>

Product Description (from Amazon.com):

Say the word “fairies” and it conjures the image of little winged beings made of gossamer and light, exquisitely dressed in shimmering gowns or twirly little bejeweled skating costumes. Not so with The Flim-Flam Fairies. Be prepared for the crazy antics of the Fart Fairy, Snot Fairy, Dirty Underwear Fairy, as well as a few other less-than-enchanting fairies as they persuade their way into and out of children’s lives in attempts to take over the Tooth Fairy’s under-the-pillow enterprise. A silly story that will have the kids falling into their pillows with laughter!

To be honest, I’d never heard of this book until a friend recommended it as a good audio selection for my nephew, who is dealing with a serious illness. If you’re between the ages of four and eight, you’ll love this book, because it’s got pictures that are rich enough to almost be art prints, as well as a story that gathers up all the gross, disgusting, imaginative things that kids love, and mixes them with fairies. I mean, how cool is that?

In terms of plot, there really isn’t much, as this is more a series of introductions of these disgusting alternative fairies and a game of gross one-upping, but it’s silly and fun and perfect for young kids.

Review: Under Orders, by Dick Francis

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Under Orders
Under Orders
Dick Francis
Buy it from Amazon >>

Description (from Booklist):
After an absence of six years, Dick Francis comes thundering up the track with a thriller that resoundingly demonstrates that the acclaimed author, if anything, may have gained a few steps. Francis re-summons his most popular protagonist, Sid Halley, a champion jockey turned sleuth, whose racing career was shattered when a horse fell on him and then an adversary mangled his left hand. Last seen in Come To Grief (1995), Halley, who brings racing knowledge, spirit, and resilience to whatever case he tackles, remains one of the most exquisitely developed characters in crime fiction. This adventure starts with Cheltenham Gold Cup day, during which one racegoer drops dead, a horse collapses after a stirring win, and the victorious jockey is discovered shot to death in the parking lot. Juggling several sleuthing assignments, Halley finds himself working not only for the father of the slain jockey but also for a Lord who wants to know if the races his horses run in are being fixed. The plot keeps delivering shocks as Halley’s investigation is derailed by threats and violence against his new love. And Francis once again proves himself a master of detail, seamlessly incorporating fascinating facts about DNA technology, myoelectric hands, Internet gambling, and even stitches. Wow. Connie Fletcher

After seeing Secretariat the other week, I was desperately craving Dick Francis novels. I’m sure there are other writers who bring the racing world to life just as well, but his books always offer the perfect blend of mystery, horses, humor and even a touch of romance, all dressed up in British English. I mean, you get the sense that former jockey-turned-detective, Sid Halley would even remember to send thank you cards after going to dinner, without being reminded.

As this was my first Dick Francis novel in years (I’ve read almost everything he wrote prior to about 1998, and am now catching up), it took me a few pages to get back into the rhythm of his writing – but only a few. Soon enough we were clipping along at a lovely canter, and I enjoyed reading about Sid’s trouble with his artificial arm (nice use of that to foreshadow the climax of the novel, btw), his lovely, solid relationship with his Dutch scientist girlfriend, and his continued friendship with his ex-father-in-law.

I also enjoyed the mystery (two, really, one involving an online betting system, the other involving race performances) – and the fact that even in his last years, author Francis continued to embrace modern technology. Cell phones, online gambling, fixing races – his research is always evident but never showy, and really, the only flaw in Under Orders is that, like most Dick Francis novels, it ended too quickly.

Goes well with: fish and chips and a beer

Review: Baby Bonanza, by Maureen Child

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Baby Bonanza
Maureen Child

Product Description (from Amazon.com):
Twins? The startling revelation that his affair with Jenna Baker had produced two little boys was almost impossible to grasp. Tycoon Nick Falco had never considered himself the settling-down type, yet now that fatherhood had been thrust upon him, he was determined to give his sons his name. But their mother wasn’t about to let him back into her life…at least not without those three little words Nick had never, ever said.

Sometimes a Silhouette romance can be just as much of a boost to your mood as a multivitamin can be to your health, and this book was no exception. Formulaic? Of course. Dashing hero with feisty heroine in preposterous situation? You bet. But, at the same time it was also a lovely two hours or so of reading on a day when all I wanted was light fluffy stories with happy endings.

Of course, the fact that I got this book in Kindle version for free, didn’t hurt.

Still even with all the “required elements” that a Silhouette Desire novel has to have, and even though I don’t believe a woman finding herself pregnant after a one-night stand would keep the babies, author Child created a lovely mood and I’m seriously lusting after the beach house at the end of the book.

Goes well with hot tea and banana bread.