Product Description
Annabelle is a beautiful stranger with a mysterious past, planning the heist of the century - two short cons to fund a long con, then a life of unashamed luxury, incognito in a foreign land. Jonathan DeHaven, the shy head of the Rare Books Division at the Library of Congress, is planning nothing more than an uneventful day amongst his cherished collection. But when Jonathan is found dead by Caleb Shaw, a member of the Camel Club, two conspiracies are destined to meet as the Club determines to track down the dead man's long-lost wife - and Annabelle decides to avenge the death of her beloved ex-husband. Unfortunately, the victim of Annabelle's long con has sworn eternal revenge and Jonathan's killers will stop at nothing to keep the truth about his death, and the code they have perfected over the years, from surfacing... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (182)

the colletors
just as exciting as his other books --could not put it down--just about got caught in the CIA web

The Collectors
I love David Baldacci's books. This is the first "Camel Club" I've read. I will be looking for more.

My first one of his, but not my last
I work in a public library and I see Mr. Baldacci's books come and go on a regular basis.I decided to take the plunge and read The Collectors.I'm pretty happy with my choice.

I don't have a lot of patience for books that fail to draw me in right away.In this book, the author delivers - big time.There are two stories running side by side in this non-stop thriller.The story lines are believable, enticing and educational as well.

I will admit to a certain bias as I am a book lover and that is central to one of the story lines in the book.With that said, I've tried to not color my opinion too much in this regard.

If you have not had the chance to read any of Baldacci's stuff then you are missing out on some great writing.

Get this book.I believe you will not be disappointed

Would love to find out how it ends
As with all David Baldacci stories this one does not disappoint. Unfortunately tape #4 is so warped it cannot be played. I had to surgically remove it from the player.

Great book
Loved this book, it is the second installment in the Camel Club collection.David Baldacci, another great book. ... Read more

Product Description
A novel about writing a novel in which the invented world is as much infused with wit and genius, as the theme of inventing it. It is a celebration of the infinite possibilities of the art of fiction, and a wry demonstration of its limitations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (70)

Mixed Bag
Everyone should know, first off, that the Dover thrift edition is NOT a graphic adaptation.For some reason, Amazon has attached editorial reviews from the hardcover edition of the graphic novel version to this page.

Now, the book itself offers a range of experiences from delightfully hilarious to annoyingly tedious.Lots of the "funny" parts depend on an understanding of 18th-century social mores.I'm sure some of it went over my head but I'm enough of a nerd to have enjoyed most of the drollery.I think...

The story is whimsical, told all out of order by a scatterbrained, easily-distracted narrator.Tristram Shandy himself is hardly in the novel at all; aside from narrating it, he only appears momentarily as a newborn infant and then as a boy about 6 years old - and his role in both incidents seems peripheral to the carryings-on of the other characters.Each turn in the story reminds the author of something else, and he turns aside to tell stories inside of stories, each of which are necessary to give the reader some vital "background information" .. with the result that the main story hardly moves forward at all.It takes nearly 200 pages just for Tristram to be born! and even then the reader isn't quite sure it has happened since the conversations and minute actions of the other characters are magnified to such an importance that the narrator's own birth is hardly observed.For the most part this rambling comes across as "quirky and delightful" and the novel flows along quite pleasingly in spite (or perhaps because) of it.The digressions add layers to the story.

Except when they don't.The "chapter upon noses" which is a translation of a fictitious(?) Latin work by the great Slwakenbergius, has little bearing on the story.Like most of the book, it builds up to a climax and then stops short of resolution, leaving you to wonder what was the point.It leads nowhere, but at least it was interesting.The same cannot be said of Book VII, which is a sort of travel diary of Tristram (in the novel's "present" time) touring France by post-chaise.Although this is the only significant appearance of Tristram himself as a character in the book, it has absolutely nothing to do with the story/stories he was telling, and it is neither very interesting nor very funny.It serves as nothing but a pointless interruption, delaying the reader for 50 pages before getting to the part we were waiting for:Toby's courtship of the widow Wadman.

This last section goes along nicely for a while, and then the book stops.It doesn't end; it just stops right in the middle of a conversation, with the courtship unresolved and most of the reader's questions unanswered.This is perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the entire novel, but I have to admit it's frustrating.I had trouble deciding whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars but I think it entertained me more than it exasperated me, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt ... and round up from 3.5.It's worth reading once, just for the experience - there's no other book quite like it - and the price of the Dover Thrift Edition can't be beat.

Great Find!
Peter Barker is a marvelous reader, and Sterne is a wild man writer.
Something to be savored and smiled at over time.Many times a laugh aloud!
Don't be in a hurry, or you'll miss mosst of the fun.

How to Ride a Hobby-Horse
At the end of Volume 6 of this work, Mr. Shandy as the teller of his own life story provides a drawing of his narrative line over the previous volumes.Each one is twisted beyond all recognition, of course, since he has been doubling back, digressing, and indeed doing pretty much everything except getting a move on.He promises faithfully that in Volume 7 his narrative will resemble nothing but the very straightest of lines - he's reached the hour of his own birth (in six books) and will proceed from that moment in strict chronology, utterly without interruption.At the beginning of the next volume, however, he suddenly tells us that the Devil is after him and races off to France in an attempt to outrun the old fox - he doesn't get back to his own story until Volume 8.

This gives you an idea of what you're in for."The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy" consists primarily of the author's attempt to not tell a story - indeed, it's about practically everything in the world except its ostensible subject.While the narrator's interruptions and digressions are generally funny in themselves, there's an additional level of humor in the lengths to which he goes to get in his own way.It's a great read, but it makes things rather difficult when it comes to telling the story itself.

There's a plotline of sorts, to be sure, which has to do with the night of Tristram's birth and what a complicated project that turns out to be.In addition to that, Tristram amuses himself with chapters on the nature of obsessions (or hobby-horses, as he calls them), chapters on how to argue with your wife, chapters on sermon-making, chapters on chapters and even a chapter on digressions.This last, by the way, consists primarily of Tristram insisting that he does not have time to talk about digressions and will do it later, and when he comes to the end of the chapter immediately realizes that he has just written his chapter on digressions.Yes, it's a digression from the chapter on digressions that itself comprises the chapter on digressions.Whew.

Now, this whole business begins with Tristram complaining that his parents should have paid more attention to what they were doing at the moment he was conceived - it seems that his mother interrupted the marital act that night by suddenly asking her husband if he had remembered to wind up the clock.You can see from this initial interruption that "Tristram Shandy" bears a pretty consistent tone throughout, including the famous bit where Uncle Toby begins a sentence in Volume 1, Chapter 21, and doesn't get around to completing it until several chapters into Volume 2, Chapter 6 - a gap of about 25 pages.One might be tempted to think of this novel as just a nutty diversion from more serious matters.

This isn't entirely true.Structurally this thing looks like a Godawful mess, but then again Sterne lived at a time when the structure of the English novel was still under construction.More importantly, although the content of the novel veers all over everything, the thematic elements don't.What you get here is commentary, from a variety of angles, on the pernicious effects of taking yourself too seriously.Tristram's father, for instance, an intelligent man, has retreated into the country for uninterrupted study and thus come up with some of the screwiest notions in literature.He thinks, for instance, that a man's destiny is governed to an enormous extent by the size of his nose and by his first name, of which the name "Tristram" is by far the most destructive.So you can imagine how upset he gets when a faulty set of forceps flattens his baby son's nose at the very moment of birth, and when an incompetent cleric christens the boy by that horrid name a few minutes later.

All unbelievably ridiculous, of course, made more so by the careful, studious, and above all lengthy manner of telling.Tristram quotes all manner of ancient and contemporary scholars on these subjects, as indeed on all subjects.Thus we come to understand that this kind of pedantry, even on the most critical topic, makes fools of us all.

That is to say, what makes all these interruptions and diversions so hysterical is that the narrator actually thinks they're all necessary - he has his reasons for each and every one.He's not just a madman; on the contrary, he's so intent on demonstrating what he means that all he comes up with is nonsense.

Of course, no one should require 450 pages to communicate a point like that, so Sterne was careful to make all his sub-stories as entertaining as possible.He succeeded beautifully, too."Tristram Shandy" was a huge popular success, so much so that those who disliked it had to publish their disdain in the daily papers.Which is fine, except that many of them objected to the undeniably bawdy subject matter, declaring that literature ought to have a moral purpose behind it and decrying the vulgarity of popular taste.Sterne couldn't have come up with a better piece of nonsense if he'd tried - here were some of the generation's brightest minds getting as finicky about a harmless amusement as the biggest fools in the novel itself about their various hobby-horses.The author might as well have jumped up and yelled "Gotcha!"

You might take that as a warning.If you read this thing resisting its diversions from what you might consider good sense or taste, it will trip you up on every page.So just enjoy the ride.

Benshlomo says, What?

Excellent
It was in wonderful condition and came in a timely manner.I'm quite happy with the purchase!

Easier and cheaper than the bookstores
This was an easy way to buy my daughter's books for college.We will do it this way from now on. ... Read more

Product Description
A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? But even as Rome's richest citizens relax in their villas around Pompeii and Herculaneum, there are ominous warnings that something is going wrong. Wells and springs are failing, a man has disappeared, and now the greatest aqueduct in the world - the mighty Aqua Augusta - has suddenly ceased to flow-Through the eyes of four characters - a young engineer, an adolescent girl, a corrupt millionaire and an elderly scientist - Robert Harris brilliantly recreates a luxurious world on the brink of destruction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (202)

Pompeii in Audio CD format
I actually liked this audio version.It was very well narrated.Very detailed in its description of life in Pompeii during the time.
I wish the author would have concentrated more on the actual volcano eruption rather than on the problem encountered with the aquaduct but then I realize that the aquaduct was his main theme for the book.Also, I wish there would have been more details regarding the characters.The female character was hardly exploredand also her connection to the main character.
Overall, I did enjoy the novel very much...

Wanted to choose 3.5 stars
After The Ghost (and the film The Ghost Writer) I wanted more Robert Harris. I respect Pompeii, but it didn't feel as accomplished to me. It has some of the Harris intelligence in the description of people, but the description of place is easily dominant. A history buff might revel, but that's not me. Roman civilization is no model for me, and a picture painted of the culture pales after a while A natural events buff might revel in the eruption described at length, but I found the characters rendered inconsequential and gray under the weight of Vesuvious. Another review warned that folks who wanted formula adventures should stay away. Harris has the taste and sensitivity to avoid crude formulas. But the plot follows predictable paths. And isn't shy about using some degree of coincidence to wrap things up.

With The Ghost, I was involved in the story, intrigued by the characters, welcoming of the plot twists, and made thoughtful by the politics subtext. I'd like to find more Robert Harris like that.

Pomp and circumstance
The waters have stopped flowing from the aquedect - who you gonna call? Dambusters! The water engineer heads out amid widespread corruption in Pompeii, thwarts a murder plot, finds out what happened to his predecessor, falls in love, and investigates the ominous rumbling from the nearby Vesuvius.

Sounds good no? Harris is good at building up the air of menace in the days preceding the eruption. Every action can be looked at as minor compared to the devastation coming and he really does a great job of creating an atmosphere of anticipation in the reader. He's also done a great job at recreating the feel of living in Roman times, as well as supplying a lot of information on Roman aqueducts giving you a sense of awe and genius for the Roman Empire.

Where he falls down though is in the characterisation. Attilius, the engineer, is the hero. He's a stoic, good looking gent who sends his pay home to his mother and sister in Rome. He doesn't take bribes, he's hardworking, and is disliked for his strict attention to detail (all for the good of Rome naturally). He's so perfect in fact that he's boring. But he's not alone. A equally dreary love interest is introduced who meets the engineer no more than 3 times briefly but over the course of those 3 encounters the reader is supposed to buy that they have fallen madly in love and would die for each other. The whole reason for the engineer to rush back to Pompeii after escaping it is because of this love interest and as such everything feels very contrived.

It's this lack of convincing that stops the reader in their tracks because there's no real reason, once the eruptions start, to care what the engineer's motivations are. He's a paper thin cardboard cut out and so is his love interest. So what?

The third act also falls down. Harris does a great job of setting the scene but once Vesuvius erupts he somehow manages to make it boring. For a thriller to fail in the third act is not a good sign and I could quite easily put the book down and do anything else.

It's not a bad novel by any means it just seems trite at times which spoils the overall effect. Harris has obviously done his research, it's just a shame the same effort didn't go into making an interesting enough scenario to take place during this immense natural disaster or characters worth caring about.

Wonderful story
I first read this book at my mother-in-law's home in Germany and was thoroughly engrossed by the story and the author's interpretation of Pompeii and what happened there so long ago.This is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it.Anything by Robert Harris is GREAT!

Unputdownable
Great story. Great setting. Beautifully written. Get the hardback. The cheap paperbook is unworthy of such a great novel. ... Read more

Product Description
Vocabulary of 2000 words. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

The Masters best?
Alastair Maclean was possibly the best adventure writer ever (although I am very fond of Desmond Bagley).

This is his second book and maybe his best. The Guns of Navarone concerns the almost suicide mission of a small group of men to Navarone to destroy a set of German guns that are impregnable.

It is a solid story and there are the usual Maclean traits throughout the book (questionable dialogue, red herrings, traitors etc) but it is a solid read and far better than so many of the more recent fare of adventure writing we see.

great!
Arrived in time...pages a little yellow, but that was to be expected!No problems...

If You Like War Stories, You'll Like The Guns of Navarone
My first contact with The Guns of Navarone was the 1961 movie staring Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn.My first contact with the book upon which the movie was based was the Kindle edition, and it is that which I now review.

I must say right out of the gate that those who loved the movie will find that while the overall objective remains the same - to destroy The Guns - there are many differences between the movie and the book.For example, "Butcher" Brown in the movie is not a butcher in the book, Cpl Miller is not the whineing brat that the movie protrays him as, Major Roy Franklin in the movie is a very young Lt. Andy Stevens in the book, etc.Also, there is no female spy or traitor in the book and no "born" killer from the bronx, and neither Quinn's character, Andrea Stavros, nor Pecks character Capt. Keith Mallory, are quite the hard nosed bastards that the movie protrays them to be.And finally, the movie producers altered some scenes significantly and left others out completely

But these are minor points compared to the places where the book seems to have trouble making a transition between two different thoughts and story lines.I don't know if it was the author or the conversion from print to electronic format that is to blame, but it appears at times that MacLean is talking about one thing for several pages and then, without warning or pause, from one paragraph to the next, he is talking about something entirely different, leaving the reader lost and trying to figure out what just happened, what s/he just missed.I also had a difficulty accepting MacLean's descriptions of some of his characters, because he seems to provide contradictory descriptions at different points in the book.

Still, all-in-all, these are small things that do not make one bit of difference to the overall story.The book still presents some high adventure, pitting a small handful of brave men against seemingly impossible odds.

As for those who say the story line is predictable, don't worry about them.I expect it is somewhat predictable when you've had 50 years in which to see the movie orhave your friends tell you about it.Just buy the book (or this Kindle version) and enjoy it the way the author meant it to be enjoyed.

Good adventure story, but grandiose and repetitive
Strong points:A largely fast-paced adventure story---not bad for something written 52 years ago---with a lot of excellent local color and rich information about WWII.MacLean's passion and talent as a writer make this book a worthwhile read.

The weaknesses:The book gets over-the-top in grandiosity at points.His band of main characters read almost like cardboard cutout superheroes, with their BRILLIANCE, and STRENGTH, and COURAGE, and PERSEVERANCE, and HUMANITY, and ETHICS, and SACRIFICE, etc., etc.The effect worked at first---as it's fun to project one's own desire to be a hero onto these folks---but when their perfection gets repeated fifty times it gets a little old.Also, the book is essentially an endlessly repeating series of impossible situations from which the main characters narrowly escape (from the not-so-clever Germans).This effect also worked at first, but loses its tension as the book goes on...

The Guns of Navarone
I have to smile when I see people make so much of MacLean's lack of writing syle or prose or some predictability of the story.Come on folks, this is plain old action entertainment.....never meant to win literature awards.Just enjoy yourself like you do when you read Harry Potter. You're not reading great literature, you're reading a fine story that keeps you interested, is fast moving and often keeps you on the edge of your seat.This is why so many of MacLean's novels have made it to the screen.It's simply entertainment.You want great prose with your action?Step up to Stevenson, Dumas, Cooper or Sabatini.

"The Guns" is a great action story that moves quickly and keeps you interested all the way through. Despite some predictability and weaknessess in the writing style, just enjoy it for what it is.....a 20th century, WWII action story.Read it and have fun!






... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Fun Action
I've read a few of Reily's stand alone books and enjoyed them, but this first book in this series is great. I like the concept, the characters, the action/suspense, and the writing style. Jack West reminds me a little of Dirk Pitt, but somehow his actions and strategy seem more real. I think fans of Cussler or DuBrol would enjoy this series.

Book was requested
The Book was as Stated.

I have a friend in Iraq and he had told me he was reading a book and would like the second in the series. I ask him what that was and he told me "Seven Ancient Wonders" by Matthew Reilly. Then he told me I'd never find the book as it didn't come out in the States till the New Year "2010" Well I found it on Amazon and ordered it for him for Christmas and he was Amazed That I found the book and that I got it for him. So Thank you

Seven riveting wonders
Reilly's back and his latest thriller explodes off the page with the force of tornado. He introduces us to a new character, Australian superhero and all-round good-guy, Jack West Jr., whom we meet on the run with nine other people, one of which is a 10yr old girl, named Lily, (which explains the subsequent names) and the rest are Wizard, Woodsman, Fuzzy, Stretch, Princess Zoe, Pooh Bear, Noddy and Big Ears.
Other than Lily and the Wizard - an elderly professor capable of matching the fittest trained soldiers from the `mice' nations (as Reilly puts it several chapters later) - the rest are handpicked warriors bristling with every weapon known the man and with a few others borne from Reilly's imagination. The best of the lot is the `warbler' which is to West as the trusty maghook is to Schofield. This creation is able to deflect bullets by emitting a powerful electro-magnetic field.
So, we find ourselves sitting back in a comfortable armchair, drink perched on one side having carefully arranged three hours personal time, ready to be taken on the rollercoaster ride that is a Matthew Reilly novel.
Take a deep breath, suspend disbelief, forget quibbling about the overuse of punctuation and cliched one-liners and prepare to be entertained in a manner that no Hollywood blockbuster could currently hope to match.
The premise (given just after the first mission is completed) is that we are fast approaching the several thousand year old cycle of the alignment of the Tartarus sunspot and the Earth. It turns out that the Great pyramid once bore a golden capstone with a crystal that diverted the power of the sun and gave three options to humanity. The first, to not do it and suffer the destruction of the planet, the second to give peace on Earth and the third to enable a nation to earn a thousand years of supremacy. All of which brings the international best onto the stage to hunt down the prize. To achieve this the task force under West has to reassemble the capstone which Alexander the Great cut into seven pieces and hid at each of the ancient wonders. To compound the problem ,as six of the seven wonders no longer exist they all got moved elsewhere and only a little girl, named Lily, has the ability to read the work of Thoth and translate the text pointing to where each piece is hidden.
So, seven wonders, seven missions.
The first mission finds the team locating the head ofthe Colossus in the Sudan. A race against the European team headed by Captain del Piero and the Americans led by West's old mentor, Marshall Judah, with the vicious Cal Kallis of the American CIEF force. The second Mission is for the base of the mirror at the top of the Pharos Lighthouse concealed inTunisia at Hamilcar's refuge, the third Mission is an inmate break out from Guantanamo Bay via its golf course, the fourth Mission forthe Statue of Zeus and Temple of Artemis, it's capstone pieces now located at the Louvre and Vatican. After an interim piece about an attack on the Kenya station where the team looked after Lily for ten years, mission five relocates the Hanging Gardens which, other than the Pyramid is the only intact wonder (for about three hours tillthe mighty stalactite is dropped on West). Mission Six takes usto the tomb of Alexander at the Temple of Luxor and we finally end up on the Day of Tartarus at the Great Pyramid where all the protagonists come together for a fitting explosive finale.
Over the course of nearly five hundred pages Reilly weaves us through more ancient traps than the largest maze in the world, uses more weaponry than a small war, has more near-deaths, survivals and acts of derring-do than any Errol Flynn movie and still has our cast come out nearly intact with a grin on their faces having saved the world. Reilly's arrival a few years ago with Contest, heralded a new action writer who took the concept of action far beyond anything that contemporary writers produced. Reality is not a byword for Reilly and to criticise them for unrealism is to miss their point entirely. What they are superb at is captivating your attention so entirely that the cup of tea on the armchair rest gets forgotten and goes quietly cold.

The next Cussler
The strategy was often silly and the characters were kind of flat, but the edge-of-your-seat urgency and pseudo-history babble were great.This was a good airplane book in the way that Cussler's usually are. ... Read more

Product Description
Three of Thomas Hardy's best-loved works are now available on audio. 12 cassettes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Great Fiction
Cornwell has a fertile mind; always a pleasure to get lost in his story telling.

Bernard Cornwell author
Mr. Cornwell writes a fantastic tale with lots of historical settings. I highly recommend all of his books!

' Round the Horn
Extraordinary yarn; one can literally feel the storms of Cape Horn and smell the lush forests of Patagonia.Best nautical book I have read.

Keeps you turning pages.
A nice easy read that keeps your attention. I am the type of person that lays a book down and never picks it up, not this book.
Worth the price, and a nice book to hand over to the next person.

A different Bernard Cornwell.
I think this shows the fantastic versatlity of the author. From the Starbuck chronicles, to Sharpe, to Stonhenge to this! I have read everything Mr Cornwell has written. This is off the beaten track for him and yet is still spellbinding. ... Read more

Product Description
Playaway is the easiest way to listen to a book on the go. An all-in-one format, the player and content are combined in one 2 ounce unit and it comes with everything you need to start listening immediately. No separate player needed, no CDs, no downloadsjust press play!

Hypnotic.... The master of the plot twister has done it once again. The survivors of The Other Side of Midnight come back for one last round of play in this compelling sequel set in post-war Europe. Catherine Douglas, a victim of tragedy and amnesia, is taken in by the world's richest man. Haunted by faint memories of the past, Catherine must remember the truth before the man who put an end to her husband sets his murderous sights on her. ... Read more

Product Description
Millions of readers around the world have relished Jeffrey Archer's shortstories. Now, for the first time, all three collections are gathered together inone handsome volume.

One of the most acclaimed authors writing today, JeffreyArcher is a dazzling storyteller. A master of character and suspense, he has agift for the unexpected plot twist that has catapulted all three of his shortstory collections--A Quiver Full of Arrows, A Twist in the Tales, and Twelve Red Herrings--onto international bestseller lists and earned himwidespread critical praise.

The stories from A Quiver Full of Arrowstake is on a tour of ancient heirlooms and modern romance, of cutthroat businessand kindly strangers, of lives lived in the realms of power. Fortunes are madeand squandered, honor betrayed and redeemed, love lost and rediscovered. AsPublishers Weekly said about this collection, "Somerset Maugham neverpenned anything so swift or urbanely witty as this."

The spellbinding storiesfrom A Twist in the Tale leads us on a journey of thwarted ambition,undying passion, and unanswered honor--to placers we've never visited and peoplewe'll never forget. Readers will meet an extraordinary cast of diversecharacters: a philandering husband who thinks he's committed a perfect murder, aself-assured chess champion who plays a beautiful woman for stakes far higherthan the secrets of a Swiss bank. The New York Times raved about ATwist in the Tale, "Jeffrey Archer plays a subtle cat-and-mouse game with thereader in twelve original stories that end, more often than not, with ourcollective whiskers twitching in surprise."

From his inventive thirdcollection, Twelve Red Herrings, comes a dozen delectable morsels inwhich human beings are given opportunities to seize, crucial problems to solve, ordangers to avoid. And buried in each is a red herring Archer challenged hisreaders to uncover. In these stories things are never quite what they seem: animprisoned man is certain that his supposed murder victim is very much alive, afemale driver is tailed relentlessly by a menacing leather-jacketed figure in a pursuing vehicle; a young artist gets the biggest break of her career, an escapedIraqi on Saddam Hussein's death list lands unexpectedly in his homeland. TheDaily News Express hailed Twelve Red Herrings as"Outstanding...White-knuckled suspense and witty denouncements."

Thesethirty-six tales are Jeffrey Archer at the peak of his form. Wonderfullyentertaining, The Collected Short Stories will astonish, delight, andenthrall Archer's many fans, both old and new. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Collected Short Stories
Jeffrey Archer is one of my favorite authors.This is an excellent compilation of his stories.Sometimes I just like to grab a book and have a short read.Good work, Jeffrey Archer!

I love his writing style.
Jeffrey Archer is one of my favourite authors. I feel bad that this author is not given his due in the americas. For that matter even short stories are not given their due. Buy this! you will love it.

Atrocious Spelling
I love Archer's short stories, but the spelling errors that occur during the conversion to the Kindle format are numerous.Apparently the computer spell checker that was used changes "the" to "die" quite frequently.Poor spelling and punctuation permeates the Kindle offerings and really make me second guess my decision to go with Kindle books.I would give the bound book 5 stars, but the Kindle version only rates 3.

Very impressive anthology!
This collection was my first exposure to Jeffrey Archer's writing. I have to say, I've never read a collection of short stories that had such a large percentage of 'good' stories. There were so many good, great, and borderline classic stories, that the few that didn't measure up are barely noticeable.
I particularly liked 'Old Love', 'Christina Rosenthal', 'The First Miracle', and 'The Hungarian Professor'.
The various courtroom thrillers were good too, especially
'Trial and Error'.
Among the humorous entries, I enjoyed 'The Chunnel'(now I'll have to see if Archer ever published it!), as well as 'One Man's Meat'(especially the 'A Point' ending), 'Broken Routine', and 'Cheap at Half the Price'.
I'll look out for more of Archer's material.

An excellent collection!
THE PLOT:
An amazing collection of 36 shortstories from a master storyteller combining romance, history, danger, twists, international intrigue, and domestic angst.

WHAT I LIKED:
Obviously with 36 shortstories, one cannot simply provide a generic list of key elements. A really nice mix, particularly some of the ones with twist endings. Here is an overview of each of the stories and the ratings for each.
- NEVER STOP ON THE MOTORWAY: Woman driver is chased by a van down the motorway, with the context backlit by recent rapes and murders. Fantastic twist. 5.00
- OLD LOVE: Two competitors, one boy, one girl compete against each other in everything including who loves the other more and are inseparable throughout life. 4.50
- SHOESHINE BOY: Mountbatten (sic) pays a visit to St. George's where a drastically underfunded Governor rolls out the red carpet. 4.50
- CHEAP AT HALF THE PRICE: Mrs. Rosenheim wants a bauble from the jewelry store but has to play hustle to get the men in her life to commit to buying it. 4.00
- BROKEN ROUTINE: A man whose routine is unflappable is somewhat disturbed by a brash youth on the train who wants to read his paper and smoke his cigarettes. Nice twist. 4.50
- AN EYE FOR AN EYE: A woman has an alibi for the death of her husband: she was not only in the hospital (although the time is shaky) but also blind...or is she? 4.00
- THE LUNCHEON: A up and coming man takes an attractive (married) woman to lunch to try and get business favours. Unfortunately lunch is expensive and he has no budget. 3.50
- THE COUP: Two business rivals are stranded in Nigeria during a coup, and they end up resolving their differences and being the real coup. 3.50
- THE PERFECT MURDER: A man commits an accidental murder of his mistress after finding out she was also stepping out with another man, and manages to frame the man for the murder. Cute twist at end. 4.00
- YOU'LL NEVER LEARN TO REGRET IT: David is dying of AIDS and leaving everything to Pat. They trick the insurance company despite his condition and collect handsomely on David's death. But insurance companies are sometimes trickier than one might think, as are their brokers. 3.75
- THE FIRST MIRACLE: A cute twist on an old tail has an historical figure running errands around the birth of Christ. 3.50
- THE LOOPHOLE: Two friends get into a heated argument at the club and not only engage in slander but also physical fighting, leading to a legal battle and an eventual settlement, yet the two remain friends. 4.00
- THE HUNGARIAN PROFESSOR: An Englishman visits Hungary for the Olympics and meets a Professor who knows all about England and wants to practice his English and talk about all the sites in London. 4.25
- THE STEAL: A tightly-budgeted couple takes a vacation and are forced to endure the overblown ramblings of an obnoxiously rich couple, up to and including the purchase of an oriental rug. 4.75
- CHRISTINA ROSENTHAL: A strange story of a Jewish marathon runner and the gentile woman he fell in love with, and the strange stories of their love over time. 4.25
- COLONEL BULLFROG: A Colonel becomes a POW in Asia shortly before the end of WWII and the strange relationship that develops between the captive and the captors. 4.00
- DO NOT PASS GO: A political refugee resettles in America, but during a return flight to the area of his birth, his plane is forced to land in Iraq, where there is a bounty on his head. 3.50
- CHUNNEL VISION: A strange tale of a man about to be dumped by his latest fling, where the woman runs up expensive charges at a restaurant where the man explains to an old friend a detailed plot of an upcoming novel. The old friend, also a novelist, is horrified as the plot is the plot of his latest best seller, and the man doesn't know. 4.00
- DOUGIE MORTIMER'S RIGHT ARM: A story of rowers and the mysterious cast of the arm of one of the first rowers which keeps disappearing from the rower's club. 3.75
- CLEAN SWEEP IGNATIUS: A Nigerian Minister of Finance wants to cut out the heart of corruption and flys to Switzerland to get the names of the citizens in his country who have Swiss bank accounts. 4.00
- NOT FOR SALE: An up-and-coming artist gets swept off her feet by a gallery owner who wines and dines her to finish some stunning paintings for her first showing, with initially tragic results. 4.00
- ONE-NIGHT STAND: Two male friends are inseparable until they meet a woman that impresses both of them, despite each being already married, and they both pursue her with reckless abandon, cutting each other off in each attempt until one finally succeeds. Neat feminist twist. 4.50
- A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS: An art hustler likes to borrow paintings and then return them, while at the same time picking up the nearest available wife for a turn around the studio. Burned twice, a gallery owner plots a terminal revenge. 4.00
- CHECKMATE: An elaborate plan to trick a woman into bed revolves around a game of "strip"-chess. But the plan goes too well for awhile, and then a final twist to set things right. 4.00
- THE CENTURY: A sports tale of an elaborate cricket match of Herculean competition between two giants at Oxford and Cambridge. 3.50
- JUST GOOD FRIENDS: A strange bar tale leading to a new companion for a recently-bruised male ego. 4.00
- HENRY'S HICCUP: A rich man tries to hold on to his comfortable life despite the impact of the Great War in Europe. After the war, he's disappointed to find privilege doesn't return to the owner. 4.00
- A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE: An upright (and uptight) businessman tries to export his business values to Mexico when he tries to get a construction contract. 4.50
- TRIAL AND ERROR: More of a short novella than a short story, this is the tale of a man convicted of murder who hires the straightest arrow at Scotland Yard to find the corpse which he thinks is still walking around very much alive, and that his wife was in on the frame. 4.50
- THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN: A publisher visits a club in NYC and grabs hold of a story of a backgammon championship from the 1930s and how a non-player apparently beat the world champion despite numerous setbacks that week. 4.50
- À LA CARTE: A boy wants to follow his father's footsteps working at a car factory, but his father makes him work for a year in London to see if he can find something more upwardly mobile, and he does: chef! 4.00
- THE CHINESE STATUE: A man travels to China as a diplomat and is given a statue of some value by a peasant, and has to try and find a way to repay the debt. 4.50
- THE WINE TASTER: A wine taster is challenged to a duel of palates by an unscrupulous rich upstart. 4.00
- TIMEO DANAOS...: A bank branch manager with pretensions to grandeur takes his wife on a Mediterranean cruise, and she wants to buy a new dinner service. 4.00
- NOT THE REAL THING: A strange combination of foreign governments, an engineer who helps rebuild their basic services, a woman with two suitors who marries the engineer, and the desire of the engineer to show up his now important former rival (despite the fact that the engineer won the girl). All in all, a story worthy of medals (a subplot of the story). 4.50
- ONE MAN'S MEAT...: A story told in two parts. The first part is the intro -- a man sees a beautiful woman entering a theatre, and finagles a seat next to her. Then, he asks her to dinner and the story diverges into four possible endings.
-- RARE: Everthing goes perfectly, all too well in fact, and the ending is a depressing twist. 4.00
-- BURNT: The woman's husband turns up, so the night is a bust and goes downhill from there. 4.25
-- OVERDONE: Everything goes horrible between the two, and the woman is basically a shrew and the meal feels like a battlescene. 4.00
-- À POINT: An amazing combination of optimism and lightheartedness that outshines the other three endings by far. 5.00

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
That there weren't even more stories or that some of the really good ones weren't longer!

THE BOTTOM LINE:
A good collection of stories: 4.25 lilypads out of 5.00.

Date of Review: July 27, 2003
Format Reviewed: Hardcover ... Read more

Product Description
A lonely woman of fifty-three vanishes in fog; a fat twenty-two-year-old never returns from an early morning walk . . .

Experienced policemen know that most missing persons either turn up or go missing on purpose. But fresh young D.S. Freya Graffham won’t drop it — until she discovers what links the people who disappear on “The Hill,” young and old, men and women, even a little dog. Susan Hill writes with compassion, humour and a unique understanding of the details of daily life.


From the Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

Great writing but plot disappoints
Susan Hill is a talented writer, but I won't be reading any more of her books--(plot spoiler warning)unlike real life, the author has choices.When you spend a significant portion of the book focused on a sympathetic character, you do not kill them off in a particularly heartless way. I have also sworn off Elizabeth George for the same reason.As far as her "main character" Simon Serrailler, he is another boringly enigmatic, artistic policeman.
If you want to read mysteries with a heart, I recommend Sophie Hannah, Charles Todd or Donna Leon.

Marvelously titled from the Crabbe poem, "The Borough"...
People are disappearing in the small English town of Lafferton and Detective Freya Graffham, a recent transfer from London, picks up the thread and takes ownership of the case. She sees patterns and intuits a sinister shadow around missing people long before the others in her station, including her watchful, enigmatic Chief Inspector, Simon Serraillier.

This is the first in a series by respected writer Susan Hill, who is better known for her gothic suspense novels ("The Lady in Black"). Not a speck of gothic flavour here. I've read ahead before writing this review and these are rich, imaginative police procedurals in the style of Ruth Rendell or P.D. James at their best. And Serraillier is, of course, a dish.

One of the marvelous elements of this and subsequent Serraillier books is how much his family is woven into the fabric of the story (the small-town setting helps in this regard). He is the only outlier in a multi-generation family of doctors and he is also a triplet, whose sister Cat is a large presence. His other triplet is a doctor in Australia, but I fancy he'll make an appearance in later books. His mother is a force of nature and his father is a gifted but chronic crank who loathes Serraillier's chosen profession and never wastes an opportunity to take a snotty swipe.

The abductor is a voice from the start of the book and contributes a slowly realized rationale for the abductions. And the police are well and truly stumped and must attend to other, more clearly defined problems. Also running through the story is a central thread that addresses the subject of alternative medicine, the people who seek it, and the people who provide it. I found this element of the book to be quite educational, even though much of it is applied common sense.

And so Freya soldiers on and acquaints us with Lafferton as she tries to find her place on the squad and in the social life of this small cathedral town. We get to know Serraillier and family through her fascinated eyes. And while there is a resolution of sorts to the abductions, Hill does a brave thing. Not every element of the book is wrapped up nicely at the end.Life is messy and I appreciate this aspect of her storytelling. There are threads left unsnipped and, while some of them yield storylines for subsequent books, some are left dangling. I've read other reviews where this is a problem for the reader, but I find it to be realistic.

As with many of my reviews, I've done the research on words and phrases that aren't familiar to me and might not be to you as well. So here you go (hardback page numbers):

4 - dreich = miserable, cold, wet weather
6 - eau de nil ("water of the Nile") used in reference to paint = pale green colour
14 - locum = placeholder or temporary replacement
60 - Nissen hut = corrugated steel, semi-circular building; originated in WWI and used widely since; Quonset hut is a variant
103 - aconites = winter flower also known as Wolf's bane; upturned yellow cup-like flowers
110 - reefer jacket = a "pea coat" for officers!
117 - wern stones = ancient structure made of relocated stones for ceremonial purposes; there is a Pen-Y-Wern Stone Circle in Shropshire.
129 - po faced = narrow-minded and judgmental
157 - schtum (I thought I might know this and I was right) = keeping quiet, mum
162 - "it's a hiding to nothing" (love this) = no way to win
178 - ley lines (should have remembered this) = invisible lines that align places of geographic and/or anthropological interest
205 - sarnie = sandwich

Enchanting first in series
First in a police procedural series set in the fictional UK town of Lafferton. Although it's billed as a "Simon Serrailler" series, we barely get to meet this Chief Inspector and nothing is told from his point of view til the very end. We spend most of our time with his new DS, Freya Graffham, newly installed, a transfer from the Metropolitan Police in London. She's looking for a little peace and quiet and time away after a brief but disastrously disheartening marriage.

When the owner of a small care home for dementia patients calls in at the police station to report one of her employees missing, Freya investigates briefly and gets a feeling that something is 'off' about the disappearance. When a second person, a young depressed girl also vanishes, her boss gives the go-ahead for a more in-depth investigation and Freya discovers several other missing people from the town that have as yet gone unexplained. They are of both sexes, a variety of ages and backgrounds, and seemingly have nothing in common. We know what's going on, as some chapters are written from the POV of the person who has taken these people--we just don't know who he is, although I did guess that about halfway through. It's still very interesting to watch Freya and her DC make the connections, often relying on intuition as to what clues are important.

The story itself is wonderful with great details about the town and surroundings, the settings, and Freya's life. There's a surprise ending that takes your breath away, and some parts of the story and some characters that don't have a whole lot of connection to the main problem, but are interesting nonetheless. What threw me off is the publisher's calling this the "Serrailler" series...for unless we actually get to see Simon Serrailler in action more next time, to me it would be best just called the Lafferton series, as we're introduced to many other characters that we know much better than Simon. Although he's intriguing, he's still nothing more than a cardboard cutout of a character at this point.

And now for something a little different
As other reviewers have noted, this book was written with a fine disregard for typical whodunit and police procedural conventions. For that reason alone, I found it memorable.

I've learned to be wary when an author is touted as a successor to Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine. If I had a buck for every such comparison I've seen, I could fund a fancy latte habit, never mind just buy a cup of coffee. That said, when I imagine what the Inspector Wexford series would have been like if they'd been Barbara Vine novels instead of Rendell books - I end up with something a lot like the Simon Serrailler series.

In this first book in the series, Simon Serailler is selfish, self-absorbed, emotionally withholding, enmeshed in his family of origin, and enigmatic. I found it hard to believe him as an effective law enforcement officer.

The characters in this book, apart from its supposed protagonist, were generally interesting and sometimes unusual. I figured out whodunit pretty quickly. Although I love Brit police procedurals and really wanted to like this book, I thought the crime plot was lame.

The weaknesses of "The Various Haunts of Men" were tolerable enough that I went on to read the rest of the books in the series.

Brilliant characterizations
Detective Sergeant Freya Graffham has left London and the Metropolitan Police for the small cathedral town of Lafferton. She doesn't miss London a bit and wastes no time in exploring her new home. She fits in well with her fellow officers and is intrigued by Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler. Graffham is a very intuitive person, and there's something about a missing persons case involving an older woman named Angela Randall that she just can't let go. When other people in the area begin to go missing, Graffham senses she really is on to something. Is there a killer preying on the people of this small town?

The Various Haunts of Men moves very slowly and deliberately until the last hundred pages when it really picks up speed. The pacing almost mirrors that of the killer. I knew the killer's identity very early on, but as only a secondary matter of importance, it didn't ruin the book for me at all. Hill's focus was squarely on her characters and setting her stage for the other books to follow in the series.

I try my best to avoid spoilers in my reviews, so I must limit my remarks with regard to this book. Hill's characters were brilliant-- perfect for a character-driven reader like me-- but the weakest of the lot was Simon Serrailler himself. Everyone seemed to put him on such a high pedestal that it's a wonder he didn't get a nosebleed, and he was so enigmatic that it was almost impossible to "read"or like him. I'm tempted to say that I wasn't all that impressed with him, but I have a strong feeling that I was set up by Hill, so I'm reserving judgment until I've read the next book in the series.

Read it (The Pure in Heart) I will because Hill has populated her stage with one of the more intriguing casts of characters I've encountered in a long time. She also has shown right from this beginning that she's quite willing to take risks with them. I definitely want to see what she does next. ... Read more