Transcends the common thriller while examining contemporary disregard for privacy.
A compelling, thoughtful thriller that follows a couple’s attempt to escape danger.
In a world where we are forever watching and being watched, can anyone truly keep a secret? This question churns at the center of Miles’ (The Shootings At Summerhill High School, 2012) novel, a tale of deception and intrigue that also serves as a troubling commentary on the loss of privacy. Blissfully celebrating their first anniversary, newlyweds Derrick and Rhiannon Brewster escape to a remote cabin in the mountains. While eating at a restaurant just before their retreat, they witness a horrifying murder. Sen. Wilkins, suspected of being behind a brutal political campaign designed to shut out the democratic candidate, is accosted by an eager young journalist. The senator pulls a gun on the young man and kills him in front of a restaurant full of witnesses; it’s caught on video for good measure. Predictably, the video goes viral, both on news channels and, in an uncut version, all over the Internet. Derrick, a journalist, now finds his job hanging in the balance for having fled the scene of the crime rather than reporting it. Rhiannon’s unwitting appearance in the video astounds one viewer. Rhiannon had foiled Marc David Anthony’s attempt at creating an international data mining operation; she then took on a new identity and went into hiding, unbeknownst to her new husband. Anthony tracks Rhiannon and sends professional hitmen to her house, making it clear he’s thirsty for revenge. The couple soon lands in intense danger, needing to find strength from within themselves and from each other. Suspenseful and captivating, Derrick and Rhiannon’s story brims with love and intrigue as they travel the country in search of safety. Miles tells a fast-paced story that explores what can happen to a couple when they find themselves in extraordinary circumstances.
Transcends the common thriller while examining contemporary disregard for privacy.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-1480272569
Page Count: 260
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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