For the fans, their numbers also legion.
The Hartes again.
And their numbers are legion—in fact, no fewer than 53 names are featured in the genealogy upfront, not including Evan Hughes, heroine of Emma’s Secret (2003) and an American twig of the Harte family tree. Now dwelling in London, lovely Evan lives and breathes retail, just like long-dead Emma Harte, the plucky shopgirl who started it all. Now that Evan has her dream job as an assistant to Linnet O’Neill, Emma’s great-granddaughter, she’s planning a future with her true love, Gideon Harte, Linnet’s cousin and a newspaperman. Linnet, though, has other things to worry about after she fields a frantic phone call from her half-sister Tessa—Adele, Tessa’s precious little girl, has disappeared! Has Mark Longden, Tessa’s estranged husband, kidnapped the child? The cad. Is he after (gasp!) the Harte money? Billions are at stake, and, yes, Adele may be in danger as well. When the clan gathers to discuss the matter, one quiet voice of dissent is raised: Evan wonders whether Adele was in fact taken by a pedophile. Jack Figg, ace investigator, wonders ditto. Carefully modulated anguish sets the tone: Tessa presses a hand to her mouth. Mummy will have to be told before American TV broadcasts the news worldwide! Perhaps it’s just as well that Mummy, otherwise known as Paula O’Neill, director of Harte’s department store in Knightsbridge, is in New York, musing on the cityscape and recapping the legacy of Emma Harte for the umpteenth time, not to mention the family’s power, immense wealth, and ineffable sense of privilege. Yet not even all those wonderful things can stop history: it seems terrorists have flown planes into the World Trade Center. Newspaperman Gideon sees it on CNN and is suitably aghast. But back to the plot: Evan’s dear ones are about to find out that everything is not what it seems, and the revelation of still more family secrets is looming. And—good heavens!—what about Adele?
For the fans, their numbers also legion.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-30704-7
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
IN THE NEWS
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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