Marion the librarian Female, 56, Married. GA, USA

If you have a fear of deep water, sharks, and being lost at sea, then you can look forward to as much terror in this book as any modern day thriller, except for the fact that everything in this book really happened. This is the story of the worst naval disaster in U.S. history. It took place two weeks before Japan surrendered at the end of WWII, so the event itself was upstaged by the dropping of the atomic bomb (which ironically was facilitated by the very ship involved). History and suspense rolled into one---outstanding read. Five stars, would give more if possible.

Good quick read. Classified as YA literature, but easily entertaining for us old folks. A young boy's perception of reality in small town Montana is wrenched askew when it is discovered that his highly regarded uncle is not what he seems, and his father is forced to wrestle with the age old battle of good vs. evil.

Sister of actress Elizabeth McGovern, Cammie McGovern writes this story of an autistic boy, Adam, who is involved in a murder. Adam's mother has to rely on her knowledge of her son's disorder and the clues he gives her to unwind the "whodunit." Much of her messy past is uncovered in the process. Cammie McGovern is a mother to an autistic son, so she writes with authority and feeling. Quick and entertaining read.

This YA novel is two parallel stories in one, happening eighteen years apart. Too many strange names & intersecting plot lines made it a little confusing to me until I read reviews and finally understood the relationship of the two stories. Once that was out of the way, I enjoyed the unfolding tale of Narnie, Jude, Taylor, Jonah, et al, but it didn't have the emotional impact described by other readers. Mature, thinking teenage girls will probably be the biggest fans of Jellicoe Road.

I loved Bohjalian's Skeletons at the Feast, which is a grim WWII story. This book, which has been hailed as his finest, left me a bit askance. Not to give anything away, a number of F. Scott Fitzgerald's characters in the Great Gatsby are interwoven into this story. This is pretty strange in and of itself. I have never read Gatsby. I understand that if one has read it, it is easier to understand the parrallels in this story. The "big surprise" at the end was not such a big surprise to me. Not my favorite. Oh well.

Larry Cook is a hardened nose-to-the-grindstone farmer in Iowa. His wife dies leaving three young girls. Superimpose a little King Lear and you have A Thousand Acres. One of my favorite quotations:"It was imperative that the growing discord in our family be made to appear minor...the paramount value of looking right is not something you walk away from after a single night...it is something you embrace, the broken plank you are left with after the ship has gone down." Survivors of dysfunction find a little bit of healing in reading about a worse situation. God bless all the Ginny Cooks in the world.

A short synopsis of the story: A young Jewish woman, Lillian, loses her entire family in a murderous Jewish pogrom during 1920's Russia. Thinking her young daughter also died, she immigrates to the U.S. in search of a better life. After carving out a niche for herself in NY, she finds out that Sophie did not die, but was taken in by neighbors. Lillian takes on the daunting task of travelling back to Russia via the Bering Strait in order to reach Sophie.

Oh my. I have led a sheltered life. I haven't been accosted by men for sexual favors in exchange for food, shelter, transportation, or other every day things that I take for granted. This was a gritty story, hard to read in places. At times, it put me in the mind of the Rolling Stones' lyrics "you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need." At times the story was told from an omniscient point of view, so the reader had the luxury of knowing the fate of all the characters. It wasn't sewn up neatly, but competently. Lillian experienced staggering loss, but she also found great fulfillment.