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POWER CURVE

Name: POWER CURVE
Author: Jr. Herman
ISBN: 0-380-97320-0

by Jr. Herman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1997

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Madeline O'Keith Turner faces a sea of troubles upon becoming the first woman President of the US, and her military aide Robert Bender struggles to guide her through them in a heady change-of- pace yarn from Herman (Iron Gate, 1996, etc.) When a death in the Oval Office puts Maddy Turner in the White House, the comely widow looks for support from Patrick Shaw (her snaky chief of staff) and the true-blue Bender (a three-star Air Force general who wants only to be back with the troops). As it happens, the former California legislator may need something very like divine intervention. Her predecessor secretly sold out Taiwan, and an emboldened Peoples Republic of China is on the move in Asia. Obstinately more concerned with domestic social programs and tax reform, Maddy dithers while Bender burns. Meantime, an unholy alliance of reactionary senators and cabinet members (abetted by the faithless Shaw) is plotting to destroy the Turner presidency. Once the PRC displays its nuclear capabilities with a blast on a deserted but disputed atoll, however, the rookie Chief Executive honors the threat with semi-decisive action. Making Bender her National Security Advisor, she dispatches him to negotiate with the Communist Chinese. Before a deal can be done, hard-liners vying for power in Beijing detain her envoy. At length, she orders a tit-for- tat detonation, which comes a cropper when the atomic warhead fails to explode. With the clock running out on both America's prestige and Bender's life expectancy, the US military scrambles to put another bomb on the showcase target (now occupied by PRC troops). Until the close, though, there's a world of doubt as to whether the bleeding-heart Commander in Chief will use deadly force against an obvious foe. A conventionally macho technothriller with a wicked twist—a female President whose shaky grasp on geopolitical reality drives the absorbing narrative in surprising ways. (First printing of 50,000)

Pub Date: May 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-380-97320-0

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1997

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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.