SUMMARY: After centuries of calm, the Nameless One is stirring. An army is gathering: giants, ogres and other creatures joining forces from across the Desolate Lands, united for the first time in history under one black banner. By the spring, or perhaps sooner, the Nameless One and his forces will be at the walls of the great city of Avendoom. Unless Shadow Harold, master thief, can find some way to stop them. Epic fantasy at its best, Shadow Prowler is the first in a trilogy that follows professional thief Shadow Harold on his quest for a magic Horn that will restore peace to the kingdom of Siala. Accompanied by an elfin princess, ten Wild Hearts - the most experienced and dangerous royal fighters - and the King's court jester (who may be more than he seems ... or less), Harold must outwit angry demons, escape the clutches of a band of hired murderers, survive ten bloody skirmishes ... and reach the burial grounds before dark. Can he escape a fate worse than death?
Saddened because they have left one of their number in a grave in the wilderness, Harold and his companions continue their journey to the dreaded underground palace of Hrad Spein. There, knowing that armies of warriors and wizards before them have failed, they must fight legions of untold, mysterious powers before they can complete their quest for the magic horn that will save their beloved land from The Nameless One. But before they can even reach their goal, they must overcome all manner of obstacles, fight many battles…and evade the frightful enemies on their trail.
Shadow Chaser is a novel of intricate plots, surprising twists and finely drawn characters that will not leave you when you put the book down. Shadow Chaser is truly something different in the world of fantasy, something special; it is something truly Russian, a fantasy that is gripping and haunting, fascinating and imaginative.
School for Assassins! The hot and arid island of Sicily is infamous as the birthplace of the Mafia. From this Mediterranean spawning ground the deadly forces of evil and corruption have spread to all points of the globe. In the U.S. the Mafias influence has become as sophisticated as it is powerful. . . virtually no city is free of the mobs grip, hardly an industry is untouched by their sinister operations. Now, after a long and bloody wipeout trail across our country, Mack Bolan must lash out at the very root of the Mafia monster. Sicily has seemingly been quite remote from the underworld activities on our shores in recent years, but Bolan has discovered that a top Mafia family in the U.S. has masterminded the formation of a small army of killers in Sicily. They are undergoing intensive training in a small village practically in the shadow of Mount Etna. The purpose of their mission is secret. Bolans initial reconnaissance indicates that they are well into final preparations for what could be a major crime campaign. To strike where? And for whom? There is no time to learn more, or even to warn U.S. authorities. Bolan must go it alone, and face an army of assassins!
Two old friends set out for a weeklong romp through Santa Ynez, Calif., wine country that comically strains their friendship in Pickett's lively debut. Smart, hapless narrator Miles is divorced and broke, and his novel's been rejected all over town. His handsome, "ursine" best friend, Jack, a successful actor, is about to get married, and wants to enjoy a few last days of freedom. Pickett gleefully chronicles their many minor adventures, including the oversexed Jack's attempts at getting laid, a boar-hunting episode and a staged car accident. Add to that massive amounts of wine: oenophile Miles swills rather than sips, and Jack's always been a party guy. While Jack works his charm on the ladies, Miles has his own flirtation with a lovely waitress. Miles can be a delightful narrator, but he's no prince: he's a bore when it comes to wine, for example, and he can get a little pseudophilosophical ("photos mock the present by staring back at us with their immutable luster of our youthful past"). He also thinks nothing of snatching a couple thousand dollars from his alcoholic mother on her birthday. But redemption for all is promised and Pickett takes his readers on a jolly ride. His novel sounds like a perfect buddy flick, and indeed, it will have its chance: Alexander Payne (About Schmidt; Election) is directing it for Fox Searchlight.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Screenwriter Pickett's debut, already a film in the making by Almost Schmidt director Alexander Payne, is a buddy novel in the cinematic vein of Swingers. Two longtime friends, Miles, a struggling, cynical, recently divorced writer and wine snob, and Jack, a soon-to-be-wed TV director, leave Los Angeles for vineyard country on Jack's last week as a bachelor. Their road trip of endless imbibing and carousing feels like Dharma Bums updated with metrosexual panache. Miles is most interested in consuming wine while Jack is hell-bent on consummating one last affair. Jack's suave demeanor and classically handsome mug get both friends into uproarious and dangerous situations in this rambling comedy of errors. Pickett plays the sex-and-the-single-man angle for all its worth here, nodding occasionally at such larger themes as friendship and romance. Call it Nick Hornby lite. Misha Stone
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Edgar-winner Perry (Pursuit) delivers another intelligent, literate thriller. Jack Till, a retired LAPD detective turned PI, has settled into a somewhat monastic existence, at the center of which is his 21-year-old daughter, Holly, who has Down syndrome. Six years earlier, Till helped restaurateur Wendy Harper escape from would-be assailants. Showing her the techniques the police use to track down fugitives, Till taught the woman to assume a new identity and begin a new life. When Harper disappeared, many assumed she was murdered. Now, years later, someone is trying to frame Eric Fuller, Harper's business partner and sometime boyfriend, for her murder. The only way for Till to prove Fuller's innocence is to produce Harper in the flesh, but first he has to find her and persuade her to come back while evading assassins Paul and Sylvie Turner, who have been hired to kill Harper when she resurfaces. As always, Perry excels at the procedural details, keeps up the pace throughout and will have readers guessing until the end. Author tour. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
An Edgar Award-winning author, Thomas Perry (best known for his Jane Whitefield series) knows how to keep the plot moving, and his readers guessing. In his 15th novel, he devotes much of the book to tales of the rival hunters, switching back and forth as both Jack and the married assassins slowly close in on their prey. A couple of reviewers found the pacing a bit slow and the novel overlong. They praised, however, the flashbacks focusing on Jack's daughter and the characterizations of the tango-dancing killers, and they agreed that Perry is still at the top of the cat-and-mouse game of crime thrillers. In fact, more than one reviewer felt Paul and Sylvie Turner deserve a book of their own. Are you listening, Mr. Perry?
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
Deep in London's dangerous slums, Victorians transact their most secret and shameful business. For a price, a man can procure whatever he wants. But for one such man, the price he pays is his life. In sunless Water Lane, respected solicitor Leighton Duff lies dead, kicked and beaten to death. Beside him is the barely living body of his son, Rhys. The police cannot fathom these brutal assaults until shrewd investigator William Monk, aided by nurse-turned-sleuth Hester Latterly, uncovers a connection between them and a series of rapes and beatings of local prostitutes. But then the case takes an even more shocking turn.
The Silent Cry: A William Monk Novel
Readers of Anne Perry's series of Victorian murder mysteries know that her novels are as much social histories as crime stories. She pens her tales with an acute eye for period detail and a strong moral outrage at the hypocrisies and miseries of life in 19th-century England. Mysteries featuring Inspector Thomas Pitt and his upper-class wife, Charlotte, explore the life of the middle class and aristocracy; those that center on William Monk illuminate the back alleys and pauper's hospitals of England's lower classes. In The Silent Cry, Monk and his friend Hester Latterly, an independent young woman inured to life's horrors by her nursing service during the Crimean War, investigate the murder of prostitutes in Seven Dials. As always, Perry's grim landscape of tenements, sweatshops, and boozing kens becomes almost as much a character as the living people who inhabit them, while Monk and Hester's rebellious intelligence and unconventionality keep us coming back for more.
Prolific murder-mystery writer Perry has evaded the scientific precision of modern forensic fact-finding by weaving current-day issues and characters into a richly detailed Victorian-era milieu. One man is found murdered and another on the edge of death in the notorious London slum called St. Giles. Although it looks as if they may have engaged in a mortal fight, they are in fact father and son from a well-to-do family. Later, links develop between these men and a series of violent rapes of prostitutes. Hester Latterly, nurse and protector of the surviving son, Rhys, counterbalances detective William Monk in their mutual pursuit of the truth. By the novel's end, revelations of corruption and depravity break through the severe conventions of upper-class Victorian prudery in a dramatic courtroom scene. Perry followers and others will enjoy this new addition. Highly recommended.?Michelle Foyt, Fairfield P.L., Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A slag is what survivors are calling the slug-like maggots raining from the sky, burrowing inside people, and hollowing out their flesh and their sanity. Slag Attack features four visceral, noir stories about the living, crawling apocalypse. The Devastated Insides of Hollow City - Hack detective Shell joins in the insane search for a girl named Pearl, who just might hold the key to restoring order. Vincent Severity - A woman is taken hostage by a very severe man in a sleazy El Camino. Corpse Mountain - Two guys named Cobra and Commando chug gasoline and help build grotesque robots to save the world. All Alone at the End of the World - Re-introduces Shell in a radically different light, building to a ferocious conclusion.
The year is 1861. The American Civil War has just begun, and London arms dealer Daniel Alberton is becoming a very wealthy man. His quiet dinner party seems remote indeed from the passions rending America. Yet investigator William Monk and his bride, Hester, sense growing tensions and barely concealed violence. For two of the guests are Americans, each vying to buy Alberton's armaments. Soon Monk and Hester's forebodings are fulfilled as one member of the party is brutally murdered and two others disappear-- along with Alberton's entire inventory of weapons. As Monk and Hester track the man they believe to be the murderer all the way to Washington, D.C., and the bloody battlefield at Manassas, Slaves of Obsession twists and turns like a powder-keg fuse and holds the reader breathless and spellbound. . . .
Much of the action in Perry's disappointing follow-up to The Butcher's Boy remains jumpy and disjointed as former hitman Michael Schaeffer, aka Charles Frederick Ackerman, William Wolf or Butcher's Boy, is brought out of hiding in England. Ten years have passed since Schaeffer foiled the attempt of mob employer Carlo Balacontano to have him killed in lieu of payment and then framed the Mafia boss for a particularly grisly murder. As this story opens, Schaeffer avoids an assassination attempt at the Brighton racetrack and realizes his cover has been blown. He returns to New York to find out who ordered the hit and how many bad guys may still be after him. Despite the lurid fascination of the characters' pasts, the plot seems more to congeal than thicken as Schaeffer tries to dispose of or evade all who might be on his trail, including Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Waring, so that he can retire again to the English countryside. With heroes and villains so easily interchangeable, readers may wonder who they should root for, and why. 50,000 first printing.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Perry is the author of four previous novels: Island ( LJ 1/88), Big Fish ( LJ 3/15/85), The Butcher's Boy ( LJ 8/82), and Metzger's Dog ( LJ 9/15/83). His new work brings Charles Ackerman--a.k.a., the Butcher's Boy, a killing-machine-for-hire--out of retirement in England and back to the United States to silence those people he mistakenly thinks have discovered his whereabouts. The story follows Ackerman as he travels coast to coast slaughtering one crime family's head honchos. Perry's book is well written, moves rapidly, and thankfully keeps the gore minimal. But reading it is an uneasy experience--a vicious hitman is not attractive as a main character. Buy where the author's earlier works are popular. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/91.
- A.J. Wright, Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog
SUMMARY: The delightful seventh adventure for popular heroine Amelia Peabody. The 19th-century Egyptologist and her dashing husband, Emerson, return to Amarna, where they first fell in love. When Emerson is kidnapped, Amelia must rescue her husband, find the culprit, and save her marriage.