Thursday, July 17, 2014

Labor Day, by Joyce Maynard


Rating: 0.5/5
244 pages
2009
Publisher: William Morrow
Source: Library book

Description: As the end of summer approaches and a long, hot Labor Day weekend looms, the life of lonely thirteen-year-old Henry Wheeler is irrevocably changed when he and his emotionally fragile mother show kindness to a stranger with a terrible secret. (from the back cover)

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Three to Conquer, by Eric Frank Russell


Rating: 4/5
202 pages
1956
Publisher: Penguin
Source: Borrowed from family
(Note: Does not seem to currently be in print, at least in the US.)

Cover: I don't know what's up with the cover of the edition I read. The flowers don't have anything to do with the story, and it hardly sets the tone for the book.

Description: 'Wade Harper--Forger'. 

That was the cryptic inscription on his card. But it was lucky for the F.B.I. and the world that this tough, thick-set micro-instrument maker who first discovered the dying state trooper just off highway one April afternoon in 1980. For Harper possessed the uncanny telepathic power of 'hearing' thoughts which alone could track down the killers and crack a staggering interplanetary plot to grab world control through men's minds.

How he does it, his desperate fight to convince police and Pentagon of his own innocence and the Venusian threat, and the urgent America-wide manhunt that follows make a skillful scary blend of science and fiction at their best.