1984
SUMMARY: Winston Smith lives in a society where the government controls people's lives every second of the day. Alone in his small, one-room apartment, Winston dreams of a better life. Is freedom from this life of suffering possible? There must be something that the Party cannot control - something like love, perhaps?
After America
From Publishers Weekly
In this sequel to Without Warning, Birmingham delivers a stirring account of the events after "the Disappearance," tracking a group of survivors in New York, Seattle, Texas, Kansas City, Berlin, Salisbury, and London. Shortly before the Iraq War, a wave of unknown energy passes over most of North America, scouring humanity and triggering chaos. Now the wave is gone, and the survivors face the challenges of rebuilding their empty continents. In the Texas Administrative Division, an ex-general wages a war of ethnic cleansing against the new immigrants coming in search of opportunity; in New York, hoards of scavengers pick through the ruins of the city. Meanwhile, over a billion Muslims are left homeless after Israeli nukes make the Middle East uninhabitable, and they need somewhere to live. As American forces attempt to retake the East Coast, an inexperienced president finds his leadership tested. Though his dialogue often feels functional or formulaic, Birmingham's inspired speculation is ingenious and engrossing. Along with colorful if not entirely sympathetic characters and a wicked sense of the absurd, this should make excellent pool-side reading.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Now, three years later, a skeleton U.S. government headquartered in Seattle directs the reconstruction of an entire nation—and the battle for New York City has begun.
Pirates and foreign militias are swarming the East Coast, taking everything they can. The president comes to the Declared Security Zone of New York and barely survives the visit. The enemy—whoever they are—controls Manhattan’s concrete canyons and the abandoned flatlands of Long Island. The U.S. military, struggling with sketchy communications and a lack of supplies, is mired in a nightmare of urban combat.
Caught up in the violence is a Polish-born sergeant who watches the carnage through the eyes of an intellectual and with the heart of a warrior. Two smugglers, the highborn Lady Julianne Balwyn and her brawny partner Rhino, search for a treasure whose key lies inside an Upper East Side Manhattan apartment. Thousands of miles away, a rogue general leads the secession of Texas and a brutal campaign against immigrants, while Miguel Pieraro, a Mexican-born rancher, fights back. And in England, a U.S. special ops agent is called into a violent shadow war against an enemy that has come after her and her family.
The president is a stranger to the military mindset, but now this mild-mannered city engineer from the Pacific Northwest needs to make a soldier’s choice. With New York clutched in the grip of thousands of heavily armed predators, is an all-out attack on the city the only way to save it?
From the geopolitics of post-American dominance to the fallout of Israel’s nuclear strike, After America provides a gripping, intelligent, and harrowing chronicle of a world in the maw of chaos—and lives lived in the dangerous dawn of a strange new future.
Deception Point
EDITORIAL REVIEW: From the *New York Times* bestselling author of *The Da Vinci Code* comes an explosive, high-tech thriller that takes readers from the chilling depths of the Arctic Ocean to the treacherous heights of Washington power. When a new NASA satellite spots evidence of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory...a victory that has profound implications for U.S. space policy and the impending presidential election. With the Oval Office in the balance, the President dispatches White House Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton to the Milne Ice Shelf to verify the authenticity of the find. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic academic Michael Tolland, Rachel uncovers the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery -- a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy. But before Rachel can contact the President, she and Michael are attacked by a deadly team of assassins controlled by a mysterious power broker who will stop at nothing to hide the truth. Fleeing for their lives in an environment as desolate as it is lethal, their only hope for survival is to find out who is behind this masterful ploy. The truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all. In *Deception Point,* bestselling author Dan Brown transports readers from the ultrasecret National Reconnaissance Office to the towering ice shelves of the Arctic Circle, and back again to the hallways of power inside the West Wing. Heralded for masterfully intermingling science, history, and politics in his critically acclaimed, blockbuster thrillers *Angels & Demons* and *The Da Vinci Code,* Brown has crafted a novel in which nothing is as it seems -- and behind every corner is a stunning surprise. *Deception Point* is pulse-pounding fiction at its best.
First Among Equals
Review
"This engrossing, well-spun tale of ambition and will-to-power is a pick-hit in the summer sweepstakes. Archer received his usual high marks for readability and gives his novel a pleasing sense of substance."-Publishers Weekly
"All the elements that make for a great commercial fiction: ambition, lust, greed, duplicity...a whale of a tale."-Newsday
"Top-flight entertainment."-United Press International
"Archer invests his novels with drama, irony and suspense-First Among Equals is no exception...fascinating."-The Boston Herald
"A razzle-dazzle fictional turn...engaging...pertinent and compelling."
-The Washington Times Magazine
-The Washington Times Magazine
"Archer is a master entertainer."--Time Magazine
"There isn't a better storyteller alive."-Larry King
"Archer is one of the most captivating storytellers writing today. His novels are dramatic, fast moving, totally entertaining-and almost impossible to put down."-Pittsburgh Press
"Cunning plots, silken style...Archer plays a cat-and-mouse game with the reader."
-The New York Times
-The New York Times
"A storyteller in the class of Alexander Dumas...Unsurpassed skill...making the reader wonder intensely what will happen next."-The Washington Post
Product Description
Charles Seymour, second-born son, will never be the earl like his father, but he did inherit his mother's strength-and the will to realize his destiny...Simon Kerslake's father sacrificed everything to make sure his son's dreams come true. Now it is Simon's chance to rise as high as those dreams allow...Ray Gould was born to the back streets but raised with pride-a quality matched by a sharp intellect and the desire to attain the impossible...Andrew Fraser was raised by a soccer hero turned politician. Now it's his turn for heroics, whatever the cost.
From strangers to rivals, four men embark on a journey for the highest stakes of all-the keys to No. 10 Downing Street. Unfolding over three decades, their honor will be tested, their loyalties betrayed, and their love of family and country challenged. But in a game where there is a first among equals, only one can triumph.
Shall We Tell the President?
From School Library Journal
Starred Review. The FBI has six days to stop a plot to assassinate the President in this title originally published in 1977 as a stand-alone thriller and refashioned in 1987 to complete No. 1 New York Times best-selling author Archer's "Kane and Abel" trilogy. The narration is by Audie Award winner Lorelei King (_Tallgrass_), who also read the last entry in this series, The Prodigal Daughter (Jeff Harding read the first; abridged recordings of all three are available from Macmillan Audio). King performs expressively, adding just the right amount of excitement to the story. The abridgment is skillfully executed; it is impossible to tell where material has been omitted. Highly recommended.—Ilka Gordon, Siegel Coll. of Judaic Studies Lib., Cleveland
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Outrageous top-notch terror.” —_Vogue_
“Holds the reader in a vicelike grip.”—_Penthouse_
“The countdown is the thing; the pace, the pursuit, the what-next…”—_Boston__ Globe_
“The only difference between this book and The Day of the Jackal is that Archer is a better writer.”—_Chicago__ Tribune_
The Great Train Robbery
The Great Train Robbery is a bestselling 1975 historical novel written by Michael Crichton. Originally published in the USA by Alfred A. Knopf (then, a division of Random House), it is currently published by Avon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. It is the story of the Great Gold Robbery of 1855, a massive gold heist, which takes place on a train traveling through Victorian era England on May 22, 1855. Most of the book takes place in London.
SUMMARY:
"A nineteenth-century version of THE STING...Crichton fascinates us." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW In teeming Victorian London, where lavish wealth and appalling poverty live side by side, Edward Pierce charms the most prominent of the well-to-do as he cunningly orchestrates the crime of the century. Who would suspect that a gentleman of breeding could mastermind the daring theft of a fortune in gold? Who could predict the consequences of making the extraordinary robbery aboard the pride of England's industrial era, the mighty steam locomotive? Based on fact, as lively as legend, and studded with all the suspense and style of a modern fiction master, here is a classic caper novel set a decade before the age of dynamite--yet nonetheless explosive.... From the Paperback edition.
SUMMARY:
"A nineteenth-century version of THE STING...Crichton fascinates us." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW In teeming Victorian London, where lavish wealth and appalling poverty live side by side, Edward Pierce charms the most prominent of the well-to-do as he cunningly orchestrates the crime of the century. Who would suspect that a gentleman of breeding could mastermind the daring theft of a fortune in gold? Who could predict the consequences of making the extraordinary robbery aboard the pride of England's industrial era, the mighty steam locomotive? Based on fact, as lively as legend, and studded with all the suspense and style of a modern fiction master, here is a classic caper novel set a decade before the age of dynamite--yet nonetheless explosive.... From the Paperback edition.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Amazon.com Review
Mohsin Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, dealt with the confluence of personal and political themes, and his second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, revisits that territory in the person of Changez, a young Pakistani. Told in a single monologue, the narrative never flags. Changez is by turns naive, sinister, unctuous, mildly threatening, overbearing, insulting, angry, resentful, and sad. He tells his story to a nameless, mysterious American who sits across from him at a Lahore cafe. Educated at Princeton, employed by a first-rate valuation firm, Changez was living the American dream, earning more money than he thought possible, caught up in the New York social scene and in love with a beautiful, wealthy, damaged girl. The romance is negligible; Erica is emotionally unavailable, endlessly grieving the death of her lifelong friend and boyfriend, Chris.
Changez is in Manila on 9/11 and sees the towers come down on TV. He tells the American, "...I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased... I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees..." When he returns to New York, there is a palpable change in attitudes toward him, starting right at immigration. His name and his face render him suspect.
Ongoing trouble between Pakistan and India urge Changez to return home for a visit, despite his parents' advice to stay where he is. While there, he realizes that he has changed in a way that shames him. "I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared... I was saddened to find it in such a state... This was where I came from... and it smacked of lowliness." He exorcises that feeling and once again appreciates his home for its "unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm." While at home, he lets his beard grow. Advised to shave it, even by his mother, he refuses. It will be his line in the sand, his statement about who he is. His company sends him to Chile for another business valuation; his mind filled with the troubles in Pakistan and the U.S. involvement with India that keeps the pressure on. His work and the money he earns have been overtaken by resentment of the United States and all it stands for.
Hamid's prose is filled with insight, subtly delivered: "I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth." In telling of the janissaries, Christian boys captured by Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in the Muslim Army, his Chilean host tells him: "The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget." Changez cannot forget, and Hamid makes the reader understand that--and all that follows. --Valerie Ryan
A Conversation with Mohsin Hamid
Set in modern-day Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid's debut novel, Moth Smoke, went on to win awards and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His bold new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a daring, fast-paced monologue of a young Pakistani man telling his life story to a mysterious American stranger. It's a controversial look at the dark side of the American Dream, exploring the aftermath of 9/11, international unease, and the dangerous pull of nostalgia. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons shared an e-mail exchange with Mohsin Hamid to talk about his powerful new book
Set in modern-day Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid's debut novel, Moth Smoke, went on to win awards and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His bold new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a daring, fast-paced monologue of a young Pakistani man telling his life story to a mysterious American stranger. It's a controversial look at the dark side of the American Dream, exploring the aftermath of 9/11, international unease, and the dangerous pull of nostalgia. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons shared an e-mail exchange with Mohsin Hamid to talk about his powerful new book
Read the Amazon.com Interview with Mohsin Hamid
From Publishers Weekly
Hamid's second book (after Moth Smoke) is an intelligent and absorbing 9/11 novel, written from the perspective of Changez, a young Pakistani whose sympathies, despite his fervid immigrant embrace of America, lie with the attackers. The book unfolds as a monologue that Changez delivers to a mysterious American operative over dinner at a Lahore, Pakistan, cafe. Pre-9/11, Princeton graduate Changez is on top of the world: recruited by an elite New York financial company, the 22-year-old quickly earns accolades from his hard-charging supervisor, plunges into Manhattan's hip social whirl and becomes infatuated with Erica, a fellow Princeton graduate pining for her dead boyfriend. But after the towers fall, Changez is subject to intensified scrutiny and physical threats, and his co-workers become markedly less affable as his beard grows in ("a form of protest," he says). Erica is committed to a mental institution, and Changez, upset by his adopted country's "growing and self-righteous rage," slacks off at work and is fired. Despite his off-putting commentary, the damaged Changez comes off as honest and thoughtful, and his creator handles him with a sympathetic grace. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.