Saturday, February 22, 2014

Wool, by Hugh Howey


Rating: 5/5
56 pages
2011
Publisher: Broad Reach
Source: Amazon.com

Description: They live beneath the earth in a prison of their own making. There is a view of the outside world, a spoiled and rotten world, their forefathers left behind. But this view fades over time, ruined by the toxic airs that kill any who brave them.

So they leave it to the criminals, those who break the rules, and who are sent to cleaning. Why do they do it, these people condemned to death? Sheriff Holston has always wondered. Now he is about to find out.
(from Goodreads)


Saturday, February 15, 2014

101 Places To Not See Before You Die, by Catherine Price


Rating: 3/5
235 pages
2010
Publisher: Harper Collins ebooks
Source: Library ebook

Description: From the Grover Cleveland Service Area to the Beijing Museum of Tap Water to, of course, Euro Disney, "101 Places Not to See Before You Die" brings you lively tales of the most ill-conceived museums, worst theme parks, and grossest Superfund sites that you'll ever have the pleasure of not visiting. Journalist Catherine Price travels the globe for stories of misadventure to which any seasoned traveler can relate--including guest entries from writers such as Nicholas Kristof, Mary Roach, Michael Pollan, Rebecca Solnit, and A. J. Jacobs--and along the way she discovers that the worst experiences are often the ones we'll never forget. (From Goodreads)

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Where Are You Now?, by Mary Higgins Clark


Rating:1/5
7 discs
2008
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Narrator: Jan Maxwell
Source: Library book

Description: It has been ten years since twenty-one-year-old Charles MacKenzie Jr. ("Mack") went missing. A Columbia University senior, about to graduate and already accepted at Duke University Law School, he walked out of his apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side without a word to his college roommates and has never been seen again. However, he does make one ritual phone call to his mother every year: on Mother's Day. Each time, he assures her he is fine, refuses to answer her frantic questions, then hangs up. Even the death of his father, a corporate lawyer, in the tragedy of 9/11 does not bring him home or break the pattern of his calls. 

Mack's sister, Carolyn, now twenty-six, realizes that she will never be able to get on with her life until she finds her brother. Despite her mother's objections, and a mysterious warning against the search, she resolves to discover what happened to Mack. Carolyn's pursuit of the truth about Mack's disappearance swiftly plunges her into a world of unexpected danger and unanswered questions. What do Mack's old roommates know about his disappearance? Can the police possibly believe that Mack is a shadowy predator of young women? Was he also guilty of his drama teacher's brutal murder and the theft of their taped sessions?

Carolyn's passionate search for the truth leads her into a deadly confrontation with someone close to her whose secret he cannot allow her to reveal
.
(From the back cover)

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Trapped Under the Sea, by Neil Swidey


Rating: 5/5
407 pages
2014
Publisher: Crown
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers

My copy is an uncorrected proof.

Description: In the 1990s, Boston built a sophisticated waste treatment plant on Deer Island that was poised to show the country how to rebound from environmental ruin. The state had been dumping barely treated sewage into the waterfor so long that Boston had had America's filthiest harbor, with a layer of "black mayonnaise" coating the sea floor. Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as "beach whistles." But before the dumping could stop, a team of divers had to make a perilous journey to the end of a 10-mile-tunnel, devoid of light and air, to complete the construction. Five went in, but not all of them came out. (from the backcover)