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TENDER NO JUDGMENT

Name: TENDER NO JUDGMENT
Author: Elle St. John
ISBN: 978-0-9978681-3-5

From the The Desperation To Power series , Vol. 1

by Elle St. John ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2017

An often effective blend of offbeat romance and high-stakes action-adventure.

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Love blossoms between unlikely partners in St. John’s (No Boundaries, 2016, etc.) steamy contemporary romance.

Sabrina Turov, the young woman at the center of this sensual new novel, works in a bookshop in Crescent Heights, California, and is quietly pleased with the place, which she considers “a bookstore for real readers, who read to expand their minds and awaken their passions.” She believes that she’s met just such a reader, a “Prince Charming” named Jeffrey Ivanov, who takes her to a glamorous event after they’ve been dating about a month. But then he leaves her at an abandoned gas station in the Desolation Mountain wilderness to fend for herself overnight in a storm, wearing nothing but a flimsy party dress. She’s rescued by military veteran Micah Hudson. He did tours of duty in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, but since his return, he’s lived in the mountains, seeking peace and solitude. Despite the apparent mismatch of a quiet young woman in a fine dress and a grizzled, formidable warrior, Sabrina and Micah are instantly attracted to each other. Indeed, St. John devotes a sizable portion of the novel to their exploration of this attraction, in both emotional and explicitly sexual terms. She blends this element fairly seamlessly into the book’s main storyline, which involves the Russian mob, Ivanov’s illicit connections, and FBI operatives who are more than willing to use Sabrina and Micah in the pursuit of their own goals. A great deal of this thriller plot is predictable, though, and the serviceable prose does little to liven things up. But the story does nicely build momentum as it goes along, and the portrait of Micah as a tortured but honorable warrior who feels himself to be “a cripple in his mind, half a man,” is consistently engaging.

An often effective blend of offbeat romance and high-stakes action-adventure.

Pub Date: March 3, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-9978681-3-5

Page Count: 424

Publisher: John Star Shaw

Review Posted Online: April 28, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."

Pub Date: April 8, 1974

ISBN: 0385086954

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
by Stephen King & Peter Straub

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU LIKE IT DARKER
by Stephen King

- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.