Wide-eyed mid–19th-century humanistic optimism in a breezy, blissfully readable translation by Stump (French/Univ. of...
The first of two new unabridged translations of what Roland Barthes called Verne’s “almost perfect” novel, currently only available in its 19th-century incarnation. In 1865, a year before he invented the “scientific romance,” Verne’s castaway novel, Uncle Robinson, was rejected by his publisher. Ten years later, Verne, now renowned for Around the World in Eighty Days and From the Earth to the Moon, vastly expanded his castaway story as The Mysterious Island—a tale based on real-life Alexander Selkirk (1676–1721), a sailor who joined the South Sea buccaneers and, at his own request, was put ashore on an island in the Pacific off the coast of Chile (in 1704), where he survived alone until 1709, when he was discovered and brought back to Britain. Verne’s own story is a rousing summation of his optimistic expectation that, through the thoughtful uses of technology and the aid of good fellowship and a friendly dog, the human race could survive just about anything. When five Americans—an engineer, a journalist, a sailor, a freed African slave, a young boy and his faithful dog—find themselves stranded in Richmond, Virginia, during the closing days of the Civil War, they steal a balloon and drift into a storm that blows them thousands of miles westward, until the balloon falls apart near a volcanic island in the South Pacific. Though it takes a hundred pages for the group to reunite, another hundred and thirty to guess that they may not be alone, a few hundred more for them to be attacked by pirates and find the attack mysteriously repulsed (by the author’s most famous and enigmatic fictional villain, now tragically dying), Verne’s plot moves along breathlessly through scenes of the castaways surmounting danger through technology (e.g., a watch crystal focusing the sun’s rays to make fire) while having chatty lectures about flora and fauna.
Wide-eyed mid–19th-century humanistic optimism in a breezy, blissfully readable translation by Stump (French/Univ. of Nebraska). (75 b&w reproductions of original illustrations)Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2002
ISBN: 0-679-64236-6
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Modern Library
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
