BookOpinion

BOOKOPINION REVIEW: How far could you go to save someone?

With his last few novels, Dean Koontz has proven he is at the top of his game. Readers will find yet another winner in The Husband.

Mitch Rafferty is a seemingly mild-mannered landscaper. He lives a simple, happy life in sunny California. Until the moment his cellphone rings and a voice on the other end claims he has kidnapped Mitch’s wife and demands a $2 million ransom. Stunned and completely out of his element, Mitch scrambles to find a way to save his beloved wife, Holly.

The fast-paced novel offers up plenty of twists and turns. A variety of characters, ranging from the thoroughly likable Mitch to some of Koontz’s most evil villains, will keep you on the edge throughout the read.

 ”This is a book about a man — Mitch — who was raised to see the world in shades of gray and to think like a moral relativist,” wrote Koontz about the novel. “He rejected the teaching of his father, and he leads an ethical life; but he has been numbed, by his upbringing, such that he cannot recognize true evil. In the course of this story, he awakens to the reality of evil in the world, perhaps even Evil in the upper case.”

The Husband definitely ranks as one of my favorite Koontz offerings. It is somewhat reminiscent of earlier works, such as Mr. Murder and Velocity. (And if you haven’t read those two, you should!)

 – Jane Leisteiner

Some fans of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code may know that he hid several codes on the front of his book cover for fun. In these Good Morning America videos below, he discusses the codes and talks about his interest in such puzzles from a young age.

"I grew up in a household where riddles and codes were just part of the way we had fun," Brown says. "On Christmas morning when most kids would find presents under the tree, my siblings and I might find a treasure map with codes that we would follow from room to room and eventually find our presents hidden somewhere in the house. So, to me, codes have always been fun."

Brown discusses hiding the codes on the cover of his novel. When he returned to the show on a later broadcast, he revealed the location and answers for the codes. More than 40,000 people cracked the codes, and in a drawing a winner was chosen for a free trip to Paris.

For the answers to the cover riddles, click here to watch Brown discuss them. 

Dean Koontz talks about his novel Odd Thomas in this brief interview. He has written three books in the popular Odd Thomas series.

Koontz says, "I've always been fascinated by Southern novels that are about eccentrics and virtually everyone in the novel in an eccentric. And I wanted to right a novel that was sort of like that. That everybody you met was really an usual character in this town and unusual in a very believable and interesting way. Odd Thomas is one of my favorite of my own books."

Here's a trailer for the Odd Thomas series: Odd Thomas Director's Cut Trailer

Also, check out BookOpinion's review of the latest book in the Odd Thomas series, Brother Odd: Click here for Brother Odd Book Review

Finally, here's a description of Odd Thomas from a Koontz press release:

"The dead don't talk. I don't know why." But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy, if possessed of a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill and rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn. Maybe he has a gift, maybe it's a curse, Odd has never been sure, but he tries to do his best by the silent souls who seek him out. Sometimes they want justice, and Odd's otherworldly tips to Pico Mundo's sympathetic police chief, Wyatt Porter, can solve a crime. Occasionally they can prevent one. But this time it's different. A mysterious man comes to town with a voracious appetite, a filing cabinet stuffed with information on the world's worst killers, and a pack of hyena-like shades following him wherever he goes. Who the man is and what he wants, not even Odd's deceased informants can tell him. His most ominous clue is a page ripped from a day-by-day calendar for August 15.

Today is August 14.

In less than twenty-four hours, Pico Mundo will awaken to a day of catastrophe. As evil coils under the searing desert sun, Odd travels through the shifting prisms of his world, struggling to avert a looming cataclysm with the aid of his soul mate and an unlikely community of allies that includes the King of Rock 'n' Roll. His account of two shattering days when past and present, fate and destiny converge is the stuff of our worst nightmares—and a testament by which to live: sanely if not safely, with courage, humor, and a full heart that even in the darkness must persevere.

More than 30 years after J.R.R. Tolkien’s death, a new book, The Children of Hurin, has been put together by his estate. The novel, built from Tolkien’s unpublished manuscripts by his son, now in his 80s, goes on sale today.

Currently, the book is listed as No. 2 on Amazon’s bestseller list, behind pre-orders of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The novel has an initial print run of 500,000 books, but will likely sell millions. Below are excerpts from a book review by the Sunday Times:

It is not a children’s story like The Hobbit, and it is much darker than The Lord of the Rings. This is Tolkien in Wagnerian mode. Indeed, it may be possible to say that it is echt Tolkien…

…The Children of Hurin, in its own dotty but also awe-inspiring way, works.

Six thousand years before Bilbo Bag-ginsfound the ring of Sauron, Turin and Nienor were born to Hurin, called the Steadfast, lord of Dor-lo-min, husband of Morwen. Turin waged war against Morgoth and slew Glaurung, the first of the dragons of Morgoth. But…

No, I’d better not go on. The plot of JRR Tolkien’s The Children of Hurin is about to thrill and intrigue millions. It has an initial print run of 500,000 worldwide, but that will be just the beginning. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has sold 150m copies — 50m of those since Peter Jackson’s films were released. Another 50m copies of other Tolkiens, primarily The Hobbit, have also been sold. It is safe to say that the “great tale” of Turin is about to become a global myth.

The book has been retrieved by Tolkien’s son Christopher from his father’s assorted writings. It was begun in 1918, but never formally organised into a novel. Christopher has now done this, using, it is said, only his father’s words, with few grammatical changes. In theory, this raises the possibility of the retrieval of other great tales from this period — The Fall of Gondolin, Beren and Luthien has been suggested, and The Lay of Leithian — but, in practice, none of these seems to be in the complete, though dispersed, state of The Children of Hurin. This will probably be the last finished Tolkien tale.
More from The Children of Huren Review by the Sunday Times.

Below are excerpts from a Reuters story on the release of the novel:

LONDON (Reuters) - Tolkien’s son and literary executor Christopher, now in his eighties, constructed “The Children of Hurin” from his father’s manuscripts, and said he tried to do so “without any editorial invention.”

Already told in fragmentary form in “The Silmarillion,” which appeared in 1977, the new book is darker than “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” for which Tolkien is best known…

…The story is set long before “The Lord of the Rings” in a part of Middle-earth that was drowned before Hobbits ever appeared, and tells the tragic tale of Turin and his sister Nienor who are cursed by Morgoth, the first Dark Lord…

MEGA-SALES

Brawn estimates that 150 million copies of “The Lord of the Rings” have been sold worldwide, 50 million of those since Jackson’s films were released from 2001, plus 50 million copies of other Tolkien works.

He tried to counter any impression that “The Children of Hurin” was an attempt to cash in on the Tolkien legacy, after the posthumous “The Silmarillion” was mockingly dubbed “The Sellamillion.”

“One of the things preventing ‘The Children of Hurin’ being published in recent years is that there will always be a slightly ungracious segment out there saying it is another ‘cash-in’,” Brawn said.

“I hope people don’t see it as a ‘cash-in’ as that was never the intention when publishing it.”

…Asked if it was fair to assume “The Children of Hurin” would be the last “new” Tolkien work to be published, he replied:

“I think it is a reasonable assumption. There are other tales in ‘Silmarillion’ that could stand alone in this manner, but none of them have attached to them this amount of developed text.”

Stephen King sits down at the YouTube offices and talks about his new book, Lisey’s Story. He also reads an excerpt of the novel in these two clips by YouTube.

King talks about the inspiration of the book as he tells a story his editor relayed to him about a reclusive author who puts a manuscript into a safe deposit box every year, never publishing them. Turns out the author is J.D. Salinger. A woman at the bank asks Salinger if he’s going to publish a new book and Salinger replies, “What for?”

“I started to play with the idea,” King says. “Suppose you had a really well-known, famous author who dies and the story goes around that he left manuscripts. Lisey Landon is menaced by this man who is essentially sicked on her by a college professor. The college professor is a little bit eccentric but he’s sane. The guy he hires to get the manuscript is crazier than a bed bug and he’s very, very dangerous.”

Author Nora Roberts reviewed the book, saying “Lisey’s Story is bright and brilliant. It’s dark and desperate. While I’ll always consider The Shining, my first ride on King’s wild Tilt-A-Whirl, a gorgeous, bloody jewel, I found, on this latest ride, a treasure box heaped with dazzling gems. A few of them have sharp, hungry teeth.”

Publisher’s Weekly says, “the bestselling author proves he’s still the master of supernatural suspense in this minimally bloody but disturbing and sorrowful love story set in rural Maine. Lisey’s husband, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Scott Landon, has been dead for two years at the book’s start, but his presence is felt on every page. Lisey hears him so often in her head that when her catatonic sister, Amanda, begins speaking to her with Scott’s voice, she finds it not so much unbelievable as inevitable. Soon she’s following a trail of clues that lead her to Scott’s horrifying childhood and the eerie world called Boo’ya Moon, all while trying to help Amanda and avoid a murderous stalker. Both a metaphor for coming to terms with grief and a self-referencing parable of the writer’s craft, this novel answers the question King posed 25 years ago in his tale ‘The Reach’: yes, the dead do love.”

In this first video, King mostly jokes with the YouTube staffers about how much he likes YouTube and teases them about their offices. In the second video, he tells the story about how J.D. Salinger inspired this novel. He then reads a passage from Lisey’s Story. Click on the video below for Part 1:

Part 2 of Stephen King at YouTube

Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Several other Pulitzers were handed out for the following books:

NEW YORK, April 16, 2007 (UPI) — “The Road,” Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic wandering of violence and longing, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the New York committee announced Monday.

Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,” an analysis of Islamic fundamentalism, earned the Pulitzer for general non-fiction, the Pulitzer Prizes Web site said.

“Rabbit Hole,” the tale of an ordinary couple whose suburban existence is shattered by a terrible accident, earned David Lindsay-Abaire the prize for drama.

“The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation” by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, a book about the reporting of the civil rights movement, earned the Pulitzer for history.

“The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher” by Debby Applegate took biography honors.

“Native Guard” by Natasha Trethewey won in poetry.

The committee awarded a special citation to Ray Bradbury for his “distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.”

Author David Balducci’s new book, Simple Genius, will hit book stores April 24. Balducci has written 12 previous books that have landed on the New York Times Bestsellers list. The novel is already listed in Amazon’s top 100 bestsellers, hovering at No. 58 at the moment.

Baldacci brings back protagonists from previous novels, Hour Game and Split Second — ex-Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell.

Publishers Weekly describes this latest book: “Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have reached a crisis in their relationship in this less than compelling Washington political thriller from bestseller Baldacci. When Maxwell instigates a fight with the most intimidating bruiser she could find at a local bar and lets herself be beaten unconscious, despite her superior fighting skills, her partner suggests she voluntarily commit herself to a psychiatric facility. While Maxwell reluctantly undergoes treatment to find the childhood roots of her death wish, King probes the suicide of a scientist found on the grounds of Virginia’s Camp Peary, a mysterious CIA facility. Both mysteries are fairly run of the mill, lacking the sharp twists and expert pacing that characterize Baldacci’s fiction at its best.”

Library Journal adds: “With former Secret Service agent Michelle Maxwell in a psychiatric institution (following Hour Game), partner Sean King consoles himself by agreeing to investigate a murder at an exclusive scientific retreat–where a lot of suspect characters have ties to the institution tending Maxwell. Will the two team up to figure out what’s happening? You bet.”

Baldacci has a multi-city book tour to promote Simple Genius that starts next week. For more details, click here.