by Martin A. Rosen ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A sometimes–tongue-in-cheek exploration of how humanity might respond to alien contact.
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A debut sci-fi novel about the Roswell UFO crash, the ship’s alien occupants, and the photographers determined to expose the truth.
Twenty-eight-year-old Casey Foster is a photographer for the Washington Post. Still a relatively new recruit at the newspaper, he’s typically given fluff assignments, yet he craves challenging work that carries more weight. His grandmother calls from Roswell, New Mexico, to tell him that his grandfather, Newton, has died. After flying west for the funeral, Casey receives a shoebox from his grandmother—Newton’s parting gift. Inside is a series of 15 black-and-white photos, taken by Newton as a young man in July 1947. Casey uses the Post’s photo lab to sharpen and colorize the quickly shot pictures, which depict metal debris, the Roswell Army/Air Force Base medical center, and a body on a table. He quickly connects the pics with the famous Roswell flying saucer crash, which the government is believed to have covered up with a weather balloon story. He calls the Pentagon with a fake name to learn more, but the military proves tight-lipped and begins to track him. A man named Tommy Lee follows Casey and his girlfriend, Leah Anne, back to Roswell to keep tabs on this photographer whose connections and tenacity may reveal a conspiracy that’s more than 60 years old. Author Rosen’s debut features crash courses on the Roswell incident, the efforts of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and the Hubble Space Telescope. He leverages the real science—and fun, fictional alien biology, such the visitors’ red insectlike eyes—against caricatures of presidents Barack Obama, both Bushes, Carter, and Clinton (who in one meeting is portrayed as “daydreaming of donuts and cigars”). Sometimes the author’s characterization of Casey as a stud goes overboard, as when Leah Anne tells him, “You kept me up all night. Animal” or he enters a room wearing “nothing but a smile.” Despite the presence of government agents and a knife-throwing Native American, science and politics drive the story. By the end, Rosen brings readers just short of a narrative payoff, which will likely happen in the sequel.
A sometimes–tongue-in-cheek exploration of how humanity might respond to alien contact.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9882807-1-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Silver Alien Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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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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