The Graveyard Book: It just gets more and more interesting →
If such a thing as a “Young Adult Novel” masterpiece exists, then this is for everyone. This book is also considered a “Modern Classic.”
This book had the tone of the 2nd half of Stephen King’s book Fairy Tales because it is such a different world from Bod, Nobody Owens’s point of view was developed from inside the graveyard. His youth was unique of course, but the feeling of his dead parents and friends were natural to him and offered some important life lessons.
We learn about the importance of community and feel our life experience with children who grow up and go into the world to fail and get up and try again.
Bod learns from Silas, the ghost Silas that being alive means “infinite potential.” “You can do anything, make anything, dream anything,” Silas tells him. “If you can change the world, the world will change.
Silas obviously believes in free will as well as fate.This may seem to be a conflicting conclusion but free will relates to our exercise of will through choices in the present, whereas fate is the sum total of the effect of past choices that influenced our present life.
Exercise of free will in the past becomes our fate in the present.
.
Fairy Tale a Novel by Stephen King →
This is a different book for Stephen King, but it doesn’t surprise his fans that he did such a great job with it—a good starting place for those afraid of his books.
The Fairy Tale is a dark fantasy published on September 6, 2022. The novel follows Charlie Reade, a 17-year-old high school kid who lives with his father, George, who inherits keys to a hidden fantasy realm and finds himself leading the battle between forces of good and evil.
When Charlie was seven years old, his mother was struck and killed by a van, and the resulting grief led his father to alcoholism, from which he eventually recovered.
One day, Charlie discovers his elderly neighbor Mr. Howard Bowditch injured in his yard and calls an ambulance. Charlie agrees to watch Mr. Bowditch's German Shepherd, Radar, while Mr. Bowditch stays in the hospital and cares for him when he returns home. Mr. Bowditch shares with Charlie his .45 caliber handgun and a stash of gold pellets that he uses to pay the hospital bills. Several months later, Radar's health has significantly declined, and Mr. Bowditch suffers a heart attack and dies. He leaves Charlie a recorded message, revealing that he is 120 years old and that the locked shed in his backyard contains a portal to another world. In this world exists a magical sundial that was the secret to his longevity. He also reveals the world as the source of his gold. Determined to prolong Radar's life, Charlie seeks out the sundial and revitalizes the dog.
The fantasy world adventure is the last half of the book, and it lives up to the title. It is a skillfully crafted fairy tale.
Desperation, by Stephen King →
In 1991, when he was driving his daughter's car cross-country, Stephen King first came up with the idea for the book “Desperation” as he passed through Ruth, Nevada, a small town with seemingly no inhabitants.
U.S. Route 50 is a transcontinental highway in the United States; the Nevada portion crosses the center of the state and is named "The Loneliest Road in America.” The name originates from large desolate areas with few or no signs of civilization. US 50 turns south from Interstate 80 after leaving Utah and looks like a shortcut to Lake Tahoe on the map.
Ruth is a small town in White Pine County, Nevada, along the route in the middle of the state. In 2010 it had a population of 440. Ruth was built as a company town for the adjacent Robinson Mine, a large open-pit copper mine, which was still in operation as of 2013.
In King’s story of Desperation, traffic and law and order are regulated by Collie Entragian, a giant uniformed madman who considers himself the only law west of the Pecos. God forbid you should be missing a license plate or find yourself with a flat tire.
There's something very wrong in this town, and Entragian is only the surface of it. The secrets in Desperation's landscape and the evil that infects the city are both excellent and terrifying.
Young David Carver seems to know what is wrong and why being in tune with the good that wants to fight the evil. Things don’t go well for David or any of those trapped in the town., David's father is attacked by a demonic eagle and murdered in front of him after watching his mother and father die. Just another, I can’t put it down, story by Stephen King.
Revival, by Stephen King →
A new minister comes to town, and almost everyone in the tiny Maine town comes to love the new minister, his beautiful wife, and his young son.
Mrs. Jacobs, the minister’s wife, and her child die in a terrible auto accident. The young minister loses faith and turns against God and religion in his sermons leading to the town banishing him from the city.
The former minister spends years as a sideshow con man but then has a new plan and pretends to regain his belief in God and becomes a miracle-working faith healer. Electricity is part of his approach to healing, fueled by his lifelong experiments with electricity.
A former resident, Jamie, of the town he came to before the accident, has grown up and become a heroin addict. Jamie seeks out Jacobs' healing electrical treatment cure to overcome his addiction. Still, after being treated, Jamie experiences strange side effects, including sleepwalking and stabbing himself in the arm with sharp objects. Jamie starts to see Jacob as a fraud and looks into the many others that Jacobs has healed. As it turns out, many of them have experienced similar side effects; some have killed themselves and others.
Jacobs contacts Jamie to tell him that his childhood sweetheart, Astrid, has developed terminal cancer, and he agrees to heal her, but only if Jamie becomes his assistant. Jamie agrees, and Astrid is cured.
Jamie continues experimenting with his particular cure, which he calls "secret electricity.” He plans to heal people using a surge of energy from a lightning rod going into a terminally ill woman named Mary Fay. The healing works, but not in the way Jacobs intends.
The revived Mary Fay becomes a doorway to the afterlife. When things get ugly, they find a dimension where dead humans are enslaved for eternity by insane beings. The plot thickens with plenty of horrors to come.
.
Don't Trust Her, by Elizabeth Boles →
Paige invited her friends, Court, Faith, and Blanche, for a girls' getaway at her mountain cabin. After they arrive, an ice storm hits, and they are stranded with no phone or internet.
They share secrets about their lives and some shared events from High School, and then we learn that three of them have been blackmailed by someone. The plot seems predictable, but then it twists, and we don’t know what to expect. One of them turns up dead. It looks like it may be suicide, but it is questionable. The other three try to leave but end up wrecking the car. They are stuck with each other until the ice melts. However, one of them may be a murderer.
Was the death a murder? Will the other three make it out alive, and will one confess to the murder if they do?
The title suggests “Don’t Trust Her.” The question is, who is “the her”?
Finders Keepers by Stephen King Review ( # 2 in the Bill Hodges Trilogy) →
Tom Saubers goes to the job fair where the book, “Mr. Mercedes”, begins. Tom becomes one of those lined up for work, only to be maimed by the attacking Mercedes and left unable to earn a living. So it is a fantastic coincidence that the Sauberses live in the house where Morris lived right after the 1978 robbery and that the 13-year-old Pete Saubers finds a trunk full of literature and loot that Morris buried nearby.
John Rothstein is an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold but hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash and the real treasure, notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.
Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Saubers finds the treasure. Pete’s father, Tom Sauber, had gone to the job fair where “Mr. Mercedes” begins. Tom had lined up waiting for work opportunities only to be maimed by the attacking car and left unable to earn a living. So it is a fantastic coincidence that the Sauberses live in the house where Morris lived right after the 1978 robbery and that the young Pete Saubers finds a trunk full of literature and loot that Morris buried nearby.
Finders Keepers is an investigative company headed by Bill Hodges. He retired from the police force right after the Mr. Mercedes incident and was helped by Holly Gibney and Jerome Robinson. They are tasked with rescuing Pete Saubers from the deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s released from prison.
Bill Hodges Trilogy
Mr. Mercedes #1
End Of Watch #3
.
Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King (The Bill Hodges Trilogy Book 1) →
The case goes unsolved, and ex-cop Bill Hodges is out of hope when he gets a letter from a man who loved the feel of death under Mercedes’s wheels…
Several months later, an ex-cop named bill Hodges, still haunted by the unsolved crime, contemplates suicide. When he gets a crazed letter from someone claiming credit for the murders, Hodges is shaken and returns from his retirement, believing another l attack w l come and intends to prevent it.
Brady Hartsfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again but plans that next time he’s going big, with an attack that would take down thousands.
From the book’s front flap, we learn: “Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.”
Note from Spring 2021: This trilogy was made into a TV series. Was the series as good as the books? The series gave some deeper insight into the characters and was well done. The books were a little better, of course.
Bill Hodges Trilogy
Finders Keepers #2
End Of Watch #3
Never Far Away by Michael Koryta
She becomes a guide in the Allagash Wilderness in northern Maine. Ten years later, Doug dies in a car accident. Daughter Hailey, now 13, calls Nina’s pager, believing it’s the way to contact her aunt, Leah Trenton.
Leah comes for the children and takes them, and they start a new life in Maine. Word of Doug’s death reaches Corson Lowery, the man who thought he had paid to have her killed. He learns the children have been picked up and sends two new assassins to find her.
The plot and characters quickly pull us in and the characters. This is the first time I have read this author, and his skill at developing the story impressed me the most.
5 Stars
Split Second, by David Baldacci
Two Secret Service agents sworn to guard those under their official protection lost them in a single moment. Michelle Maxwell, against her instincts, let a presidential candidate out of her sight for the briefest moment, supposedly alone with a widow in the locked and guarded room with a coffin. Still, the man whose safety was her responsibility vanished into thin air.
Eight years earlier, Secret Service agent Sean King allowed his attention to be diverted for a split second, and the candidate he was protecting was gunned down before his eyes.
Both Agents, Michelle and Sean, see their destinies converge as the latest loss takes place, and both of the discredited agents uncover a shocking truth. Their losses were planned long ago, are connected, and far from over.
Not a surprise is the storyline, plot, and action that holds our interest to the end.
The City, by Dean Koontz →
The City is a novel by Dean Koontz and is a different approach that we who are fans of this author are used to. Some may have felt it was slow and spent their time thinking about how different it was. It did take some time to get into but it was a story that pulled you in more and more as your read.
It is the story of Jonah Kirk, son of an exceptional singer and grandson of an great “piano man” and on his own way to becoming a “piano man”. We meet Jonah at 8 years old and follow him closely as he grows up. Years later in his fifties he writes us the story and says:
“The city change my life and showed me that the world is deeply mysterious. I need to tell you about her and some terrible things and wonderful things and amazing things that happened… and how I am still haunted by them. Including one night when I died and woke and lived again.
