Next book

THE WONDERFUL O

Thurber has done it again. The Wonderful O is another of his fables for our time and our children, as fancifully charming as his earlier Many Moons. This time, Thurber creates a villainous pirate crew, headed by a vicious leader, Black. Intent on destroying all things spelled with the letter O, Black and his henchmen are after treasure buried on an island. Finally the good forces spelled with the letter O and the heroine of the story, Andrea, put Black and his cronies to rout. It's not literal, but it's logical if you enjoy Thurberland.

Pub Date: May 20, 1957

ISBN: 1590173090

Page Count: 80

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1957

Categories:
Next book

THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH

It's all quite entertaining and memorable.

Here, Follett sets the thrillers aside for a long, steady story about building a cathedral in 12th-century England.

Bloodthirsty or adventure-crazed Follett readers will be frustrated, but anyone who has ever been moved by the splendors of a fine church will sink right into this highly detailed but fast-moving historical work—a novel about the people and skills needed to put up an eye-popping cathedral in the very unsettled days just before the ascension of Henry II. The cathedral is the brainchild of Philip, prior of the monastery at Kingsbridge, and Tom, an itinerant master mason. Philip, shrewd and ambitious but genuinely devout, sees it as a sign of divine agreement when his decrepit old cathedral burns on the night that Tom and his starving family show up seeking shelter. Actually, it's Tom's clever stepson Jack who has stepped in to carry out God's will by secretly torching the cathedral attic, but the effect is the same. Tom gets the commission to start the rebuilding—which is what he has wanted to do more than anything in his life. Meanwhile, however, the work is complicated greatly by local politics. There is a loathsome baron and his family who have usurped the local earldom and allied themselves with the powerful, cynical bishop—who is himself sinfully jealous of Philip's cathedral. There are the dispossessed heirs to earldom, a beautiful girl and her bellicose brother, both sworn to root out the usurpers. And there is the mysterious Ellen, Tom's second wife, who witnessed an ancient treachery that haunts the bishop, the priory, and the vile would-be earl. The great work is set back, and Tom is killed in a raid by the rivals. It falls to young Jack to finish the work. Thriller writing turns out to be pretty good training, since Follett's history moves like a fast freight train. Details are plenty, but they support rather than smother.

It's all quite entertaining and memorable.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1989

ISBN: 0451225244

Page Count: 973

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1989

Next book

SHOCK WAVE

Cussler's most adult, least comic-strip-y entry yet in the Dirk Pitt sea sagas. Gone is the outlandish plotting of Treasure (1988), when Dirk found Cleopatra's barge in Texas, and of Sahara (199), which unearthed Lincoln's body in a Confederate sub—buried in the desert sands. Now, in his 11th outing, Dirk Pitt and his National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) fight villainous megalomaniac Arthur Dorsett, head of Dorsett Consolidated Mining, which holds the world's wealthiest diamond-mine empire. Pitt and his team must fight as well Dorsett's three daughters, the coldly beauteous Amazonian Boudicca, whose giant strength dwarfs Dirk's; the elegant but heartless Deirdre; and the star-crossed zoologist Maeve, whose bastard twins are held captive by grandfather Arthur so that Maeve will infiltrate NUMA and report on its investigation of his holdings—even though Dirk recently saved Maeve and Deirdre's lives in the Antarctic. First, however, Cussler takes us back to 1856 and a typhoon-battered British clipper ship, the Gladiator, that sinks in uncharted seas off Australia; only eight survive, including Jess Dorsett "the highwayman," a dandyish-looking convict, who discovers raw diamonds when stranded on an uninhabited island. From this arises the Dorsett empire, bent on undermining the world market in diamonds by dumping a colossal backlog of stones and colored gems into its vast chain of jewelry stores and, with one blow, toppling De Beers and all rivals. Worse, Arthur Dorsett excavates by high-energy-pulsed ultrasound, and when ultrasound from all four of his island mines (one on Gladiator Island, near New Zealand, another by Easter Island, the last two in the North Pacific Ocean) happen to converge, a killer shock wave destroys all marine and human life for 30 kilometers around, and now threatens over a million people in Hawaii—unless Dirk Pitt's aging body can hold it back. Tireless mechanical nomenclature, but furious storytelling.

Pub Date: Jan. 2, 1996

ISBN: 0-684-80297-X

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995

Categories:
Close Quickview