by Thomas C. Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 10, 2017
An entertaining frontier shoot’em-up.
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Cattle drivers battle Native Americans, rustlers, and soreheaded farmers in this Western.
Morris’ (The Edge of Forever, 2010) rip-snortin’ sequel finds legendary Texas Ranger Raifford MacReynolds; his wife, Kathryn; his straight-shooting 15-year-old stepson, Tom McKlarren; and Tom’s sweetheart, Sara, back at their ranch on the Waco frontier in the turbulent aftermath of the Civil War. They finish old business when The Wolf, the Comanche chieftain who kidnapped Kathryn and Sara in The Edge of Forever, returns seeking vengeance and gets a bloody welcome. Then Raifford and Tom add their 1,000 cows to the 6,000 head that cattle baron Henry Kleyburn is driving north to the railroad at Sedalia, Missouri. Raifford heads a security detail featuring 20 heavily armed Rangers and a stone-faced Apache scout named Bad Thing, who wears a necklace of finger bones taken from vanquished foes. Raifford and his men have their work cut out for them as the cattlemen are assailed by another Comanche war party, a gang of bushwhackers, Kansas “regulators” running an extortion racket under threat of stampeding the herd, a posse trying to arrest two Mexican cowboys on false charges, and a band of varmints that includes Jesse James. There are also quieter wrangles with Cherokees seeking payment for safe passage across Indian Territory and Missouri farmers voicing concerns that the Texas longhorns will spread fever to their own cattle. As in his preceding book, Morris steeps readers in what is essentially a military campaign as Raifford and Tom constantly scan the horizon for concealed enemies and ambush sites, calculate rifle ranges and assault routes, and plan convoluted surprise attacks. The action is often gripping, as in a white-knuckle pursuit of The Wolf by Raifford and Tom through terrain dotted with hidden firing points. But Raifford and company so outclass the black hats that, with the body count surging into the triple digits, the violence doesn’t always feel sporting. Still, Morris’ mix of classic cowboy opera with well-observed period details, colorful characters, and sublime dialogue—“If you stop wiggling your head around, he’ll fix the noose so it’ll break your neck. Otherwise you’ll be dancing on thin air for a while”—makes for a savory read.
An entertaining frontier shoot’em-up.Pub Date: July 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5442-3953-8
Page Count: 418
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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