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)

A Counterfeit Betrothal, by Mary Balogh

Rating: 1/5
Publisher: Dell
259 pages
1992
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers

Description: Lady Sophia Bryant has no intention of marrying anytime soon. Her one desire is to reunite her parents, who have been estranged for fourteen years. Surely, if she happens to announce her betrothal—even a false one—they will be forced to see each other. Devilishly handsome Lord Francis Sutton seems perfect for such deceit, always agreeable to games of passion in which he has nothing to lose. The trap is set—if only Lady Sophia can keep her foolish heart from falling prey to her brilliant snares. (From the back cover)

Last Days, by Adam Nevill

Rating:1/5
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
531 pages
2013
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers


Description: Last Days by Adam Nevill is a Blair Witch style novel in which a documentary film-maker undertakes the investigation of a dangerous cult—with creepy consequences 

When guerrilla documentary maker, Kyle Freeman, is asked to shoot a film on the notorious cult known as the Temple of the Last Days, it appears his prayers have been answered. The cult became a worldwide phenomenon in 1975 when there was a massacre including the death of its infamous leader, Sister Katherine. Kyle’s brief is to explore the paranormal myths surrounding an organization that became a testament to paranoia, murderous rage, and occult rituals.  The shoot’s locations take him to the cult’s first temple in London, an abandoned farm in France, and a derelict copper mine in the Arizonan desert where The Temple of the Last Days met its bloody end. But when he interviews those involved in the case, those who haven’t broken silence in decades, a series of uncanny events plague the shoots. Troubling out-of-body experiences, nocturnal visitations, the sudden demise of their interviewees and the discovery of ghastly artifacts in their room make Kyle question what exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in him? (From the back cover.)


Review: What a difference the ending of a book can make.