A riveting exploration of a little-known period of Texas history intensified by gut-wrenching depictions of people’s...
A former slave with a highly developed sense of justice risks everything to serve it.
In April 1840, Benjamin January, a Paris-trained physician and music teacher, leaves his family in New Orleans (Cold Bayou, 2018,etc.) to try to rescue Selina Bellinger, a former student of his. Selina ran away with a scoundrel named Seth Javel, who took her to the Republic of Texas and sold her as a slave. January follows, pretending to be the slave valet of his friend Hannibal Sefton, whose ownership will protect him. Accompanying them is tough Kentuckian Abishag Shaw, who terrorizes Javel into revealing the name of Selina’s purchaser, a slave trader who thinks nothing of giving prospective buyers a chance to try out the young women he sells. One of his slaves secretly tells January that Selina was sold to a rancher named Gideon Pollack. They hope to buy Selina back, but before meeting Pollack, they run into Valentina Taggart, a woman they know who turns out to be married to Pollack’s neighbor and knows that January is no slave. Valentina, a wild and stunning young woman who agreed to marry Vin Taggart even though she knew her land was her main attraction, agrees to help, but her freedom to act is hampered by the presence of her husband’s hateful mother and aunt. When Pollack, who denies having bought Selina, is badly wounded in a duel, January uses his medical skills to save him. Rescuing Selina, he sends her on the dangerous trip back to New Orleans while he and Hannibal stay to help Valentina, who’s been accused of murdering her husband. The success of January’s mission requires him to use Hannibal as a frontman to cut through the lies and political intrigue raging in a divided Texas, where land is everything and murder an easy way to improve fortunes.
A riveting exploration of a little-known period of Texas history intensified by gut-wrenching depictions of people’s enduring inhumanity.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8909-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52259-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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