by Jon James Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2015
An appealing blend of hard-boiled noir and action-movie excitement with a romantic, worshipful heart.
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In Miller’s novel, a dying former tabloid reporter tells the story of his 1939 cruise-ship adventure—involving Greta Garbo, Nazis and a beautiful British secret agent—to a young journalist hoping for an exclusive.
In 2000, James Pressman, a hustling young documentary film producer, sits down to interview Seth Moseley. The ancient, emphysema-ridden ex-reporter claims to have a never-before-told story about Greta Garbo from September 1939. Moseley was a struggling New York City newshound then, on the run from gambling debts and desperate to snap a candid photo of the elusive star. Pressman is disappointed—and fired—when Moseley gives him a shaggy dog story instead. Then a slip on black ice lands Pressman in Moseley’s hospital room. Moseley just didn’t like Pressman’s boss, he says, and to make amends, he’ll share the full story of how he stowed away on the SS Athenia and encountered her secret cargo: Garbo. Moseley narrates a romantic, dangerous adventure aboard the ocean liner—the first ship to be downed in World War II—including a liaison with a gorgeous barmaid who’s hiding a secret, tangling limbs with the glorious Garbo and thwarting evil Nazi thugs. Listening to this tale of dawning heroism, Pressman is inspired to make his own bold plan that will fill in the pieces of more than one puzzle, get the story, and win Sarah, his beautiful raven-haired nurse. Miller (Adapting Sideways: How to Turn Your Screenplay into a Publishable Novel, 2010) writes a fast-paced, humorous story well-grounded in fascinating historical details. The characters have more depth than usual for ripping yarns: Both the young Moseley and Pressman have mother issues (James’ died when he was 8); both long for connection while they fear responsibility. Miller adeptly provides historical background and vividly evokes Garbo’s on-screen magic. It’s a drawback that only gorgeous women are worthwhile in this story (an innocent fat woman’s photographic humiliation is played for laughs), but this could be seen as consistent with the star-struck, glamour-dazed natures of both narrators.
An appealing blend of hard-boiled noir and action-movie excitement with a romantic, worshipful heart.Pub Date: March 17, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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