Author: ekkarn

Book 8 of 2012 – A Secret Life: The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland

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Imagine a presidential candidate is accused of fathering a child out of wedlock! Oh, yeah, we had that with John Edwards and Rielle Hunter. Only this candidate admitted paternity, the child was named after his best friend and he still was elected the 22nd president of the United States! The story of this scandal and others form the foundation of Book 8 of 2012, Charles Lachman’s  A Secret Life: The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland. The book claims to reveal for the first time the true story of Maria Halpin the young woman, who according to the book was raped by the future president, give birth to a son,  had her baby taken away from her and  finally was thrown in an insane asylum when she tried to get the child back. While the book may be a little short on proof on all that went on it is still a fascinating read. It is easy reading and provided a look into the politics of 1880’s, as Cleveland rose for a one term sheriff of Buffalo, to governor of New York, and then candidate for President. He was even supported by several staunch Republicans!  Needless to say, I don’t think he’d have a chance of getting elected in today’s political arena!!

For me one of the most interesting aspects of the book was the acceptance of the

English: Portrait drawing of First Lady of the...

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forty-nine year old Cleveland’s marriage to 22 year old Frances Folsom, the daughter of his late best friend Oscar Folsom. Cleveland had known and doted on Frances from the time she was a little girl, climbed on his knee, and called him “Uncle Cleve”!!

The book also touches on his sister Rose’s time serving as First Lady prior to Clevelands marriage and her secret sex life. As well as, Cleveland’s secret cancer operation.

So if you enjoy history, a little on the light side, then this is a book for you. Through out the 1884 campaign, the cry was “Ma. Ma, Where’s my pa!” , when Cleveland won the phrase was turned into “Ma Ma Where’s my Pa, went to the White House, ha,ha,ha!”. I don’t think that would happen today!

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The Genesis Secret – Tom Knox

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The Genesis Secret-Tom Knox

 According to his website, Tom Knox became intrigued with the Turkish archeological site Gobekli Tepe several years ago. The site which is over 10,000 years old just felt like the basis for a good historical thriller only problem was Knox did not write thrillers at the time.

When his finacial situation changed, he returned to the idea and after a couple of years of hard work The Genesis Secret was born. I picked up the book at last fall’s book sale at the Cinnaminson Library and it’s Book 7 of 2012 and it was a good one!

As frequent readers may know, one of my favorite types of books are ones with an historical basis, like  The DaVinci Code or James Rollins and Steve Berry books. The setting of this book is Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?  

The Story

Rob Luttell is a journalist who recently survived an attack by a suicide bomber in Iraq is given a cake assignment to visit Gobekli Tepe, take a few pictures, and write a fluff piece. But the fluff piece soon turns deadly, as the leader of the dig is killed.

Soon Rob and Christine a compatriot of the leader of the dig are on a quest to figure out what happened.  Meanwhile, a second story is unraveling in England as Scotland Yard detective D C Forrester is trying to solve a series of brutal, sadistic murders across England that seemed to be tied to the Hellfire Club.

My Thoughts

I must say that I was not in love with the first half of the book, but as the stories started to blend, and the action picked up (some of it very grizzly and graphic) I became entrawled and couldn’t wait to find out the Genesis Secret.  And when the Secret was finally unraveled it really gives the reader something to think about!!

After finishing the book, I went to Knox’s website and read about all the aspects of the book that are true,  including all of the graphic and grizzly stuff. So if you enjoy historical basis and aren’t put off by graphic violence you’ll enjoy this book! As for me I’ll be on the look out for more books by Knox!

 

Book 6 of 2012 – Eaarth – Bill McKibben

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Book No 6 for 2012 is Bill McKibben’s book Eaarth:Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. The book is written in two parts for first tells us that the planet that we live on is not the same anymore. The climate has changed and made changes to the physical Earth leaving a new planet Eaarth!The second part gives us some hope for the future if we transition properly! One thing that he points out that in order to keep the Earth where it is now we have to reduce the carbon dioxide level to 350 ppm. You can check out Bill’s organization at 350.org! So if you are concerned about our planet check out this book!!

Here’s Bill speaking about the book. He can tell you about it better than I can!

Book 5 of 2012 – American Emperor – David O. Stewart

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So most tines when I read non-fiction I start out well, then get bogged down and end up only reading a third to half of the book. Well, I decided to stick with Book 5 for 2012 American Emperor:Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America by David O. Stewart and I finally finished it tonight! I renewed the book from the library about three times! The book follows Burr’s life basically from the duel with Alexander Hamilton through to his death and focuses mainly on Burr’s plans to conquer the Spanish possessions in Florida and then invade Mexico and set himself up as Emperor. The book was a little slow in parts but overall it was well written. While I have read before about Burr’s treachery and his association with that weasel General James Wilkinson (see another non-fiction book setting on my shelf An Artist in Treason about Wilkinson which I have stopped about a third of the way through) I had not read much about Burr’s trial for treason which I found very interesting. A couple of other parts of the book that I found interesting included a discussion of the Louisiana Purchase most times I just think, oh Jefferson bought this area in 1803 and never think about the assimilation of the people  who lived there into the US! It was hard for the Creoles to adjust. The other was the time it took to get from place to place. The description of Burr’s return trip to Washington from New Orleans in 1805 took from July to November and the description of having to almost cut your way through the forest as you traveled made me realize what an ordeal it was to travel! It took Wilkinson three months to get from New Orleans to Washington for Burr’s Treason trial!

All in all it was a good read and recommended for anyone who likes reading about the history of that time period!

Here’s a video of Stewart talking about the book

Book 4 – The Big Con or maybe Book 3 of 2012

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So I finished book 4 for 2012 The Big Con: Crackpot Economics and the Fleecing of America by one of the senior editors of the New Republic Jonathan Chait. Oh wait that’s Book 4 what about Book 3 I forgot to write about it! What was it oh yeah, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything  by Joshua Foer. Guess I learned a lot, huh! Anyway that book was really good and did have some great ideas for remembering things. Joshua Foer became intrigued by the National Memory Championship and interviewed some of the participants trying to find out what made these people so adept at remembering. What he found out is that they are just like everyone else but they know the tricks of how to remember. From there Foer enters the world of the memory experts and trains to compete. The book follows his journey as he uncovers the secrets that date back to early Greek and Roman times, discuss folks with great memories like S, and some that can’t remember at all and through his journey he discover that a big part of being human is remembering! It amazes me that the world record for memorizing a deck of cards is around 37 seconds! But the tricks of the trade are interesting and some of them are useful for remembering things other than PI to a gazillion digits!

One of the main methods that is used to remember is to convert what you want to remember and then store it in a location in a building, or on a street that you know well. The buildings are called Memory Palaces and the competitors have many that they use. The point is when you need to remember you take a walk back through the Memory Palace and pick up the items you dropped!!

Anyway I was a good read and hopefully some of the tricks will be remembered and can prove useful! Cause like Tom Rush laments as we get older we tend not to remember quite as well! More about Book 4 later!

 

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Book 36 of 2011 – The Wrecking Crew – Thomas Frank

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Mother Jones: Kevin Drum: Republicans Don’t Care About the Deficit

As Drum and Krugman point out the Republicans don’t care squat about the deficit and why should they they created most of it and since it makes government look bad  and they hate government why is it a bad thing!

Book 36 for the year was Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew: How Conservative Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves and Beggered the Nation kinda sum it all up doesn’t it!!The book does sum it all up and tells the tale of how the Republicans have destroyed our functioning government. It’s quotes like these that caught my eyes over the last few chapters:

the main reason that conservative administrations immediately run up as large a deficit as possible is that it defunds the left

or

with their beloved government brought to the brink of fiscal collapse by repeated doses of supply side, the liberals would either have to acquiesce in the reconfiguration of the state or see the country destroyed.

from David Stockman and the Reagen administration: Deficits were a way to smash a liberal state that voters could not be persuaded to part with otherwise

from Robert Reich: “If the public thinks government is wasteful, that’s fine. That reduces public faith in government which is precisely what the Republicans want”

It’s a win-win for the Republicans!

from Louis Brandeis (Supreme Court justice 1916-1939)

“We can have democracy in this country or we can have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both”

So if you want a good primer on the Republican’s tactics for bringing down the government read this book!

Iron House – John Hart – Is It Nearly a Perfect Novel?

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From the first John Hart book I read Down River I was a fan and so are lots of others.  Hart is the only author in history to win the best novel Edgar Award for consecutive novels. (Down River and The Last Child) He has also won the Barry Award and England’s Steel Dagger Award for best thriller of the year. So I was excited when I found his new book Iron House in the library last week and Book 34 for 2011 Iron House did not disappoint!

Here’s a quote from Bill Ott’s Booklist Review:

It isn’t as if Hart’s career needed jump-starting. His first three stand-alone thrillers have been greeted by an ever-growing crescendo of praise, including two Edgar Awards. Definitely not the kind of writer who needs a breakthrough book. And, yet, Iron House lifts Hart to an altogether new level of excellence

Thre Story

Julian and Michael are brothers growing up in an orphanage Iron House. Michael is the strong one, Julian the weak. Julian is constantly abused by a gang of thugs. When Julian strikes back Michael comes to his rescue and then runs from the orphanage on the night a rich woman Abigail Vane comes to adopt them. Michael’s run takes him to the streets of New York where he becomes a fixer for a mob boss and Julian becomes a successful children’s author living with his adopted parents Senator Randall Vane and wife Abigail. When Michael wants to leave “the life” to start a new life with his love Elena, problems arise and soon Michael is on a run for his life. A run that leads him back to his brother and Iron House. Soon Michael is embroiled in another mystery at the Vane Mansion where bodies of the gang of thugs are being found! The answer to all his questions that will save his and Julian’s lives lies you guessed it at Iron House!

Final Thoughts

The writing is impeccable, the characters are all flawed and well drawn. From Michael, Julian, Abigail and her bodyguard Jessup and the Senator. Even the secondary characters are fantastic from the mobsters to the residents of the North Carolina hills. The pages fly by and the tension builds until the last pages and all you can say is Wow!  If it’s not my favorite of the year it’s damn close

So in the words of Patricia Cornwell:

If you crave thrillers that are vividly beautiful, graphic and will make you bleed, try John Hart.

Links

Author’s Website:
Twitter
Facebook
Goodreads: John Hart
Goodreads: Redemption Road
Amazon

About John Hart

John Hart is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, THE KING OF LIES, DOWN RIVER, THE LAST CHILD, IRON HOUSE, REDEMPTION ROAD, and THE HUSH. The only author in history to win the best novel Edgar Award for consecutive novels, John has also won the Barry Award, the Southern Independent Bookseller’s Award for Fiction, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, the Southern Book Prize and the North Carolina Award for Literature. His novels have been translated into thirty languages and can be found in over seventy countries. A former defense attorney and stockbroker, John lives on a farm in Virginia, where he writes full-time. Visit Author Website

Lassiter – Paul Levine

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By Paul Levine

So a couple of years ago after reading Paul Levine‘s book Illegal I sent him a message on Facebook and told him that I liked the book but sill missed Jake Lassiter! He emailed me back and told me that his next book was going to be a Lassiter novel. Well, that book, appropriately named Lassiter is Book 33 for 2011.Jake Lassiter is a “low-rent”  Miami attorney, whose clients are usually not from the upper echelon of the Miami social scene. Lassiter also previously played for the Miami Dolphins and was featured in a series of seven books that started with To Speak for the Dead in 1990 and ended with Flesh & Bones in 1997. I’ve read six out of the seven – Number 1 is the only one I haven’t read. And now thanks to reissusing of the books as e-books  for the Kindle, that can be read for only $2.99!

But now back to the current book Lassiter. For his return Levine has crafted a story that starts in Lassiter’s past, from his website:

Eighteen years ago, Jake Lassiter crossed paths with a teenage runaway who disappeared into South Florida’s sex trade. Now he retraces her steps and runs head-on into a conspiracy of Miami’s rich and powerful who would do anything to keep the past as dark as night and silent as the grave. It’s a tale of redemption and revenge for the troubled Jake.

After a fourteen year lay-off Lassiter has lost none of his snap. Booklist one described him this way

 “Lassiter is smart, tough, funny, and very human. He’s coming on fast as one of the most entertaining series characters in contemporary crime fiction.”

I have enjoyed all the Lassiter books that I’ve read. The characters are always well drawn and the stories always entertaining. In between the Lassiter books Levine has written several standalone books along with another series (almost as good and in some ways better than Lassiter) featuring two other attorneys Steve Soloman and Victoria Lord. There are four  books in that series and like I said they’re all highly entertaining! So check out any of Levine’s books sit back and enjoy the ride!

Now I was all set with my next book. I went to the library the other night to pick up a book for my wife and came back with two books. The new John Hart book Iron House and  Collusion the followup book to Stuart Neville’s fine debut novel The Ghosts of Belfast. I figured I’d start with the Hart book and then the Neville novel. So what happens tonight, I get an email that the new Alex Kava Maggie O’Dell novel Hotwire is now available for digital download to my Kindle!! So I guess I”ll check that one out too, start both books and see which one I like the most and finish that one first! Hum, too many books, too little time!!

 

Book 30 – Northwest Angle – William Kent Krueger

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So you know I love books that take mw to places I’ll never see or teach me things I didn’t know and Book 30 of 2011 Northwest Angle is one of them. Author William Kent Krueger set this book the 11th in the Cork O’Connor series in the area of Minnesota known as the Northwest Angle. This pennisula juts into the Lake of the Woods and is the farthest point north in the lower 48 states. You can not reach this piece of the United States by land without going through Canada! It can of course be reach by air or water, and by by water is how the O’Connor clan got there. As the novel begins Cork O’Connor has brought his family together daughters Jenny and Anne and son Stephen and his sister-in-law Rose and husband Mal to the Lake of the Woods on a houseboat for a restful family vacation. On the day Jenny’s boyfriend Aaron is set to arrive, Cork takes Jenny on a side trip to an island he once visited with his spiritual guide Henry Meloux. The island has pictographs of Ojibwe children on the cliffs of the island. But soon the day turns tragic as an unexpexted “Derecho” hits the area. A derecho is another thing that I didn’t know about. It is a powerful storm a bowed line of thunderstorms with wind speeds of a hurricane and causes massive destruction. A derecho hit the Northwest Angle area in July of 1999 you can read about it here. Soon Cork and Jenny are seperated and Jenny lands on an island and finds shelter after the storm she finds a cabin that has been mostly destroyed by the storm a young mother lies dead in the cabin a search of the cabin reveals

diapers and formula all neatly arranged and soon Jenny finds a baby. Soon someone else comes looking for the baby and Jenny must flee the area of the cabin.  But where is her father and are Rose, Mal and her sister and brother safe and who is the man returning to the cabin? Is he the killer or someone who has been helping the dead mother? All these questions and many others are answered as the story unravels.

Like all of William Kent Krueger’s books “the sense of place is great” as are the characters and the book addresses many other issues outside of the murder, including religion and spirituality and the presence of good and evil. I’ve loved each and every one of Krueger’s books, since the first one I read Purgatory Ridge, for just that reason. So give his work a try!

Here’s William Kent Krueger, who can tell you more about the book then I can

Northwest Angle: A Cork O’Connor Thriller Review

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So you know I love books that take mw to places I’ll never see or teach me things I didn’t know and Book 30 of 2011 Northwest Angle is one of them.

Author William Kent Krueger set this book, the 11th in the Cork O’Connor series in the area of Minnesota known as the Northwest Angle. This pennisula juts into the Lake of the Woods and is the farthest point north in the lower 48 states.

You can not reach this piece of the United States by land without going through Canada! It can of course be reach by air or water, and by by water is how the O’Connor clan got there.

As the novel begins Cork O’Connor has brought his family together daughters Jenny and Anne and son Stephen and his sister-in-law Rose and husband Mal to the Lake of the Woods on a houseboat for a restful family vacation. On the day Jenny’s boyfriend Aaron is set to arrive, Cork takes Jenny on a side trip to an island he once visited with his spiritual guide Henry Meloux.

The island has pictographs of Ojibwe children on the cliffs of the island. But soon the day turns tragic as an unexpexted “Derecho” hits the area. A derecho is another thing that I didn’t know about. It is a powerful storm a bowed line of thunderstorms with wind speeds of a hurricane and causes massive destruction. A derecho hit the Northwest Angle area in July of 1999 you can read about it here.

Soon Cork and Jenny are separated and Jenny lands on an island and finds shelter after the storm she finds a cabin that has been mostly destroyed by the storm a young mother lies dead in the cabin a search of the cabin reveals

diapers and formula all neatly arranged and soon Jenny finds a baby. Soon someone else comes looking for the baby and Jenny must flee the area of the cabin.  But where is her father and are Rose, Mal and her sister and brother safe and who is the man returning to the cabin? Is he the killer or someone who has been helping the dead mother? All these questions and many others are answered as the story unravels.

Like all of William Kent Krueger’s books “the sense of place is great” as are the characters and the book addresses many other issues outside of the murder, including religion and spirituality and the presence of good and evil. I’ve loved each and every one of Krueger’s books, since the first one I read Purgatory Ridge, for just that reason. So give his work a try!

Here’s William Kent Krueger, who can tell you more about the book then I can