by Karen Robards ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 3, 1997
Lynn Nelson takes her teenage daughter on a wilderness vacation and winds up saving America from nuclear destruction. Veteran romancer Robards (Hunter's Moon, 1995, etc.) puts another thirtysomething couple through the adventure-and-sexual-tension wringer before they get to have hot, mutually fulfilling sex on a ledge in a pitch-black deserted mine- -he with a bullet wound in his shoulder and she dressed in a battered Wonderbra and with no cigarettes (cold turkeying off nicotine, it seems, has become the newest ritual in tough-guy romance plots). To get closer to her rebellious daughter, Lynn, a single mother and Chicago anchorwoman, helps chaperon 19 teenage girls on a trip into Utah's Uinta National Forest, led by Owen Feldman and his brother Jess, ``a tall, handsome, tawny-maned stranger in skintight jeans, boots, and a cowboy hat, whom she'd caught eyeing her legs before they even said hello.'' After suffering saddle sores, insect bites, and mother-daughter trauma, Lynn falls off a crumbling ledge, along with her daughter, Rory Elizabeth, and is saved by that utterly cool, competent, insolent cowboy. The three begin the trudge back to civilization, a difficult but not impossible hike. But then they discover a compound of cabins with a crucified man displayed out front and a field full of bodies nearby. Jess, it turns out, is a ex-ATF agent who was at Waco, and he has nightmares because he couldn't save all the innocent women and children. He, Lynn, and Rory use all their survival skills to escape the white-robed bad guys, members of a religious cult called the Healers, and then to detonate 12 computer-controlled bombs before the cult can initiate Armageddon. Robards, whose white knights wear jeans instead of armor, knows the sexy grownup romance that's expected of her and always acquits herself well. It's a time-tested product, and she's a skilled producer. (Main selection of the Literary Guild)
Pub Date: Jan. 3, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-31038-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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