Every word rings true in this disturbing demonstration of how hard it is to stop a massacre even when you know it’s coming....
A stark look at one of the tragedies of our time: school shootings.
Potter County deputy sheriff Chip Jeffers, Potter High School resource officer Kim Miller, and guidance counselor LeAnn Dunne agree: Someone’s planning a school shooting. Notes found in the boys’ bathroom remind LeAnn of Columbine. In a pre-emptive attempt to stop trouble, they notify the faculty; Chip calls on prison chaplain/sheriff’s investigator/recovering alcoholic John Jordan (And the Sea Became Blood, 2019, etc.); and Kim and LeAnn compile lists of the students they think most likely to carry out such a horrible crime. The names include Tristan Ward and Denise Royal, arty goth types putting on a pretentious, badly written play, and snarky Mason Nickols and Dakota Emanuel, the only students to make both women's lists. John reasons that the attempt will take place on the day of the play, the anniversary of the Columbine massacre. After police officers and teachers search the building and find nothing, the play goes off as planned. That night, at a local bar, a couple of nonalcoholic beers give John the yen for something stronger, and he falls off the wagon. The next morning, explosions and gunshots rock Potter High, and John, arriving eight minutes into the attack, rushes to help Kim, who’s wounded and alone. In the smoke and confusion John and Kim are fired upon by a student who's only trying to help and whom John shoots and critically wounds. Even after an investigation clears John, he can’t forgive himself, and he continues to drink. Despite warnings by his boss and attacks by the press, he won’t give up his attempt to identify the masked killers.
Every word rings true in this disturbing demonstration of how hard it is to stop a massacre even when you know it’s coming. The aftermath is heartbreaking and the ending a real shocker.Pub Date: June 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947606-37-1
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Pulpwood Press
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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