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THE FLORENTINE DECEPTION

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In Nachenberg’s thriller debut, a computer-security expert finds evidence that a 137-carat diamond is stashed somewhere, but dangerous people may be looking for the same thing.

Alex Fife is living comfortably after he and his college pals sold their cybersecurity startup company to ViruTrax. Cleaning up a computer from an estate sale, Alex learns that its now-dead owner, Richard Lister, an archaeologist, may have been peddling the Florentine Diamond, stolen nearly a century ago. Alex sees a potential for adventure and checks out Richard’s house, which is on the market, where Alex is convinced Richard has hidden the diamond. But he soon realizes that someone else may want the precious stone (he hears someone creeping around the house late at night). A prospective buyer, unaware that Richard’s dead, sends angry emails to Richard’s account, vaguely threatening the deceased’s brother, Ronald. But what Richard was trying to sell may be about much more than the diamond. The author’s novel boasts equal servings of excitement, suspense and humor. Alex makes an offer on the house just so his engineer friend Steven can pose as an inspector and have good reason to scour the place; Steven hams up his performance for a realtor, superfluously (but hilariously) donning a fake mustache. The latter half of the novel is more exhilarating, as more than one formidable foe is revealed, and Alex, along with a few friends, is indisputably in peril. The protagonist initially is selfish—his apparent interest in finding the diamond is to combat boredom—but his ultimate determination to help Ronald will garner him plenty of sympathy with readers. He’s also a believable hero, not immune to making mistakes or being stumped by seemingly simple tasks. Getting access to Richard’s body at the UCLA Medical School—it may hold the key to getting inside a secured panic room—turns out to be an arduous undertaking; it’s also the book’s highlight, as it features Alex’s grandfather, Papa, who charmingly plays the part of a sickly old man by humming softly to himself. Computer terminology is clear enough without overelaboration, and Alex’s final chance to stop the baddies appropriately returns to where it all started—in front of a computer.


Tackles multiple genres—thriller, action, comedy—and champions each one with panache.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher

Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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