Showing posts with label john. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john. Show all posts
Friday, February 24, 2017
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Before: Miles "Pudge" Halters whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more.
Then he heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself.
She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.
After: Nothing is ever the same.
Then he heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself.
She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.
After: Nothing is ever the same.
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A Sneak Peek on Looking for Alaska by John Green
The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party. To say that I had low expectations would be to underestimate the matter dramatically. Although I was more or less forced to invite all my “school friends,” i.e., the ragtag bunch of drama people and English geeks I sat with by social necessity in the cavernous cafeteria of my public school, I knew they wouldnt come. Still, my mother persevered, awash in the delusion that I had kept my popularity secret from her all these years. She cooked a small mountain of artichoke dip. She festooned our living room in green and yellow streamers, the colors of my new school. She bought two dozen champagne poppers and placed them around the edge of our coffee table.
And when that final Friday came, when my packing was mostly done, she sat with my dad and me on the living-room couch at 4:56p.m. and patiently awaited the arrival of the Good-bye to Miles Cavalry. Said cavalry consisted of exactly two people: Marie Lawson, a tiny blonde with rectangular glasses, and her chunky (to put it charitably) boyfriend, Will.
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Thursday, February 23, 2017
Grimm the Chopping Block by John Passarella
Grimm the Chopping Block by John Passarella
Meanwhile missing persons cases in Portland seem to be on the increase.
As more bones are discovered, Portland homicide Detective Nick Burkhardt and his partner Hank Griffin investigate - but there seems to be no connection between the victims...
A brand-new original story set in the Grimm universe.
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An Excerpt from Grimm: the Chopping Block by John Passarella Ebook
Brian Mathis wondered if he’d made a mistake bringing Tyler, his twelve-year-old son, to Claremont Park. Their little adventure had been fun and cheerful and full of father-son-bonding promise until they left behind the paved path and picnic tables, and wandered into the woods on a course prescribed by the virtual compass in the GPS app on Brian’s smartphone. The overnight rainfall had turned what would have been a reasonable hiking path into a treacherous endeavor. Lagging behind his father, Tyler had already fallen twice on gentle inclines slick with mud. And now the boy was coated with the stuff?hands, knees, shoes, and a caked spot on his chin he’d rubbed the same moment his patience had expired.
Victim of his own clumsy misadventure, Brian proceeded on a twisted ankle?which continued to throb in counterpoint to his heartbeat?and reminded himself to take his eyes off the compass now and then to pay attention to his footing. Minutes later, head down and cursing under his breath, he walked right into a low-hanging branch. Hell of an example he was setting for his kid.
“You said we were close, Dad,” Tyler groaned, prefacing that indictment with a prolonged sigh.
“We are close,” Brian said. “But I told you before. The coordinates aren’t exact.”
“So what’s the point?” Tyler hurled a rock the size of a ping-pong ball at the nearest tree trunk. The thwock of the impact startled a squirrel, which scampered along one branch, jumped to another nearby and scurried out of sight.
“Don’t throw rocks.”
“Nothing else to do.”
Ignoring the boy’s complaint, Brian explained, “The coordinates take us to the general vicinity, then we look around until we find it.”
“Why?”
“Because… it’s like searching for buried treasure.”
“I’m keeping it.”
“No,” Brian said. “We sign the logbook and leave the container where we found it. The honor system. If we take it, the next person will go through all this trouble for nothing.”
“You said I could take something,” Tyler reminded him.
“Swap something,” Brian said. This particular geocache supposedly contained small toys. If you took something, you were supposed to leave behind an object of equal value. “You brought a soldier?”
“Yeah,” Tyler said, rolling his eyes at his father.
It had been years since Tyler played with toy soldiers, which was why he had no qualms about leaving one behind. Tyler hoped for an upgrade, maybe a used video game or something equally unlikely. So his father had spent most of the car ride to the park trying to quash those expectations.
“The search is the fun part, not the prize at the end.”
“Some fun,” Tyler grumbled loud enough for his father to hear.
Secretly, Brian regretted not selecting a cache with the lowest level of difficulty for their first attempt. Instead, he’d chosen a cache closer to home, but with the next highest level of difficulty. A cache with toys, even cheap toys, he’d thought, would appeal to the boy. Brian’s second mistake was misjudging the rapid pace of Tyler’s maturity. At his current age, things transitioned from “cool” to “lame” in a hurry. Since the divorce, Brian saw his son less than he would have liked. The boy’s growth spurts took place in the uncompromising strobe light of his meager custody schedule.
As a bank of rain clouds passed overhead, the woods became prematurely dark. Shadows deepened like an ink spill soaking the ground around them. The odor of moist earth rose like a clinging mist, enveloping them.
Brian stopped, rubbed the back of his forearm across his damp forehead and said, “We’re here.”
Tyler stood beside him, turned in a circle and shrugged. “Nothing.”
“It’s here somewhere,” Brian assured him, but worried somebody before them might have removed the cache in violation of the honor system. If they left the park without finding anything, his son would never let him forget it. “Remember that time you dragged me through the woods in waist-deep mud for nothing?” Because exaggeration would become a key component in this particular trip down memory lane.
“What about the clue?” Tyler asked.
“Oh?right! The clue.” In his growing paternal anxiety, Brian had almost forgotten about the clue associated with the cache. He checked his phone. “It says, ‘Fall up the hill.’”
They both cast expectant gazes around, as if expecting a hillside to magically rise from the surrounding forest, crowned with a glowing treasure chest like a reward in one of Tyler’s video games.
“That hill?” Tyler finally asked, pointing straight ahead. Brian looked behind them, then straight ahead. They had been following an incline for a bit, something he might have noticed if he hadn’t been mesmerized by the compass on his cell phone. Ahead of them marked the top of the rise, surrounded by an irregular ring of deciduous trees in various states of decay.
“Must be it,” Brian acknowledged. “So how do we ‘fall up’?”
We both figured out the falling down part easily enough, he thought, with a chagrined shake of his head.
Tyler scrambled up the slope, littered with broken branches, twigs, and clumps of dead leaves well on their way to mulch that nevertheless rustled underfoot. He slipped once and caught himself on both hands before his knees touched the muddy ground again.
“Careful,” Brian said, making his own way upward, mindful of his tender ankle.
Tyler picked up a stout branch the length of a cane and swung it around to disperse the leaf mounds. When he reached down to flip over a football-sized rock, Brian caught his shoulder.
“Watch out for snakes,” he cautioned.
The possibility of encountering a snake, poisonous or otherwise, seemed to excite the boy’s imagination, but he took extra care as he grabbed the edge of the rock and flipped it over, poised to spring away to avoid the threat of fangs. Instead, he grunted in obvious disappointment as several freshly exposed worms coiled in the dirt.
Tyler circled to the left, poking and sweeping with his branch, while Brian wandered into a tangle of dried brush and broken tree limbs at the edge of the clearing. Brushing away twigs and dried leaves, he discovered a jagged tree stump and, angling away from it, on the far side of the rise, the decaying length of the entire tree trunk, which retained only a few scattered branches.
“A deadfall,” Brian whispered, then again, louder. “A deadfall.”
“What?” Tyler called, glancing briefly over his shoulder.
“This downed tree,” Brian called to his son. “It’s a deadfall.”
“So?” Tyler replied, more preoccupied with a section of tangled underbrush and loose mounds of dirt?excavated, no doubt, by some burrowing woodland creature?than his father’s pronouncement.
“Don’t you get it?” Brian asked. “The clue: ‘Fall up the hill.’ It’s a deadfall?on this hill.”
“You found it?”
“Not yet…” Brian pocketed his phone and swept both hands across the brittle and decaying debris piled around the deadfall. He omitted telling Tyler that this was a more likely spot for a hidden snake than the underside of a rock. Besides, if Brian had unraveled the clue to the cache’s location, he wanted to find it before leading the boy to yet another disappointment. Once he unearthed it, he’d call Tyler over to claim the prize. He might just salvage the day after all.
Crouching, Brian caught a glint of color in the natural pocket formed between the tree stump and its fallen trunk; something metallic, painted bright red. Gotcha! he thought in an unexpectedly strong moment of satisfaction.
Before calling his son over to claim the small square tin, he leaned forward to examine the shadowy depression. He swept the ground with the beam of his keychain flashlight. Though he doubted he’d find broken glass or rusty nails or even an irritable snake, he wanted to be sure, lest their excursion end on a sour note?or a trip to the emergency room.
“Tyler, come here,” Brian said. “Think I found something.”
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Thursday, February 16, 2017
Playing for Pizza by John Grisham
Playing for Pizza by John Grisham
Rick Dockery is the third-string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. In the AFC Championship game, to the surprise and dismay of virtually everyone, Rick actually gets into the game. With a seventeen-point lead and just minutes to go, Rick provides what is arguably the worst single performance in the history of the NFL. Overnight, he becomes a national laughingstock—and is immediately cut by the Browns and shunned by all other teams.
But all Rick knows is football, and he insists that his agent find a team that needs him. Against enormous odds, Rick finally gets a job—as the starting quarterback for the Mighty Panthers . . . of Parma, Italy. The Parma Panthers desperately want a former NFL player—any former NFL player—at their helm. And now they’ve got Rick, who knows nothing about Parma (not even where it is) and doesn’t speak a word of Italian. To say that Italy—the land of fine wines, extremely small cars, and football americano—holds a few surprises for Rick Dockery would be something of an understatement.
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An Excerpt from Playing for Pizza by John Grisham Book
It was a hospital bed, that much appeared certain, though certainty was coming and going. It was narrow and hard and there were shiny metal railings standing sentrylike along the sides, preventing escape. The sheets were plain and very white. Sanitary. The room was dark, but sunlight was trying to creep around the blinds covering the window.
He closed his eyes again; even that was painful. Then he opened them, and for a long silent minute or so he managed to keep the lids apart and focus on his cloudy little world. He was lying on his back and pinned down by firmly tucked sheets. He noticed a tube dangling to his left, running down to his hand, then disappearing up somewhere behind him. There was a voice in the distance, out in the hallway. Then he made the mistake of trying to move, just a slight adjustment of the head, and it didn’t work. Hot bolts of pain hit his skull and neck and he groaned loudly. “Rick. Are you awake?” The voice was familiar, and quickly a face followed it. Arnie was breathing on him.
“Arnie?” he said with a weak, scratchy voice, then he swallowed.
“It’s me, Rick, thank God you’re awake.” Arnie the agent, always there at the important moments.
“Where am I, Arnie?”
“You’re in the hospital, Rick.”
“Got that. But why?”
“When did you wake up?” Arnie found a switch, and a light came on beside the bed.
“I don’t know. A few minutes ago.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like someone crushed my skull.”
“Close. You’re gonna be fine, trust me.”
Trust me, trust me. How many times had he heard Arnie ask for trust? Truth was, he’d never completely trusted Arnie and there was no plausible reason to start now. What did Arnie know about traumatic head injuries or whatever mortal wound someone had inflicted?
Rick closed his eyes again and breathed deeply. “What happened?” he asked softly.
Arnie hesitated and ran a hand over his hairless head. He glanced at his watch, 4:00 p.m., so his client had been knocked out for almost twenty-four hours. Not long enough, he thought, sadly.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Arnie asked as he carefully put both elbows on the bed’s railing and leaned forward. After a pause, Rick managed to say, “I remember Bannister coming at me.”
Arnie smacked his lips and said, “No, Rick. That was the second concussion, two years ago in Dallas, when you were with the Cowboys.” Rick groaned at the memory, and it wasn’t pleasant for Arnie either, because his client had been squatting on the sideline looking at a certain cheerleader when the play came his way and he was squashed, helmetless, by a ton of flying bodies. Dallas cut him two weeks later and found another third-string quarterback.
“Last year you were in Seattle, Rick, and now you’re in Cleveland, the Browns, remember?”
Rick remembered and groaned a bit louder. “What day is it?” he asked, eyes open now.
“Monday. The game was yesterday. Do you recall any of it?” Not if you’re lucky, Arnie wanted to say. “I’ll get a nurse. They’ve been waiting.”
“Not yet, Arnie. Talk to me. What happened?”
“You threw a pass, then you got sandwiched. Purcell came on a weak-side blitz and took your head off. You never saw him.”
“Why was I in the game?”
Now, that was an excellent question, one that was raging on every sports radio show in Cleveland and the upper Midwest. Why was HE in the game? Why was HE on the team? Where in the hell did HE come from?
“Let’s talk about it later,” Arnie said, and Rick was too weak to argue. With great reluctance, his wounded brain was stirring slightly, shaking itself from its coma and trying to awaken. The Browns. Browns Stadium, on a very cold Sunday afternoon before a record crowd. The play-offs, no, more than that—the AFC title game. The ground was frozen, hard as concrete and just as cold. A nurse was in the room, and Arnie was announcing, “I think he’s snapped out of it.”
“That’s great,” she said, without much enthusiasm. “I’ll go find a doctor.” With even less enthusiasm.
Rick watched her leave without moving his head. Arnie was cracking his knuckles and ready to bolt. “Look, Rick, I need to get going.”
“Sure, Arnie. Thanks.”
“No problem. Look, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just be blunt. The Browns called this morning—Wacker—and, well, they’ve released you.” It was almost an annual ritual now, this postseason cutting.
“I’m sorry,” Arnie said, but only because he had to say it.
“Call the other teams,” Rick said, and certainly not for the first time.
“Evidently I won’t have to. They’re already calling me.”
“That’s great.”
“Not really. They’re calling to warn me not to call them. I’m afraid this might be the end of the line, kid.”
There was no doubt it was the end of the line, but Arnie just couldn’t find the candor. Maybe tomorrow. Eight teams in six years. Only the Toronto Argonauts dared to sign him for a second season. Every team needed a backup to their backup quarterback, and Rick was perfect for the role. Problems started, though, when he ventured onto the field.
“Gotta run,” Arnie said, glancing at his watch again. “And listen, do yourself a favor and keep the television turned off. It’s brutal, especially ESPN.” He patted his knee and darted from the room. Outside the door there were two thick security guards sitting in folding chairs, trying to stay awake.
Arnie stopped at the nurses’ station and spoke to the doctor, who eventually made his way down the hall, past the security guards, and into Rick’s room. His bedside manner lacked warmth—a quick check of the basics without much conversation. Neurological work to follow. Just another garden-variety brain concussion, isn’t this the third one?
“I think so,” Rick said.
“Thought about finding another job?” the doctor asked.
“No.”
Perhaps you should, the doctor thought, and not just because of your bruised brain. Three interceptions in eleven minutes should be a clear sign that football is not your calling. Two nurses appeared quietly and helped with the tests and paperwork. Neither said a word to the patient, though he was an unmarried professional athlete with notable good looks and a hard body. And at that moment, when he needed them, they could not have cared less.
As soon as he was alone again, Rick very carefully began looking for the remote. A large television hung from the wall in the corner. He planned to go straight to ESPN and get it over with. Every movement hurt, and not just his head and neck. Something close to a fresh knife wound ached in his lower back. His left elbow, the non-throwing one, throbbed with pain. Sandwiched? He felt like he’d been flattened by a cement truck. The nurse was back, holding a tray with some pills. “Where’s the remote?” Rick asked.
“Uh, the television’s broke.”
“Arnie pulled the plug, didn’t he?”
“Which plug?”
“The television.”
“Who’s Arnie?” she asked as she tinkered with a rather large needle.
“What’s that?” Rick asked, forgetting Arnie for a second.
“Vicodin. It’ll help you sleep.”
“I’m tired of sleeping.”
“Doctor’s orders, okay. You need rest, and lots of it.” She drained the Vicodin into his IV bag and watched the clear liquids for a moment.
“Are you a Browns fan?” Rick asked.
“My husband is.”
“Was he at the game yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“How bad was it?”
“You don’t want to know.”
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Paper Towns by John Green
Paper Towns by John Green
The John Green Collection includes Printz Award–winning Looking for Alaska, Printz Honor book An Abundance of Katherines, Edgar Award–winning Paper Towns, and #1 New York Times bestselling The Fault in Our Stars.
Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life, he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.
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An Excerpt from Paper Towns by John Green Ebook
With a bag in each hand, I paused for a moment outside the van, staring at her. “Well, it was a helluva night,” I said finally.
“Come here,” she said, and I took a step forward. She hugged me, and the bags made it hard to hug her back, but if I dropped them I might wake someone. I could feel her on her tiptoes and then her mouth was right up against my ear and she said, very clearly, “I. Will. Miss. Hanging. Out. With. You.”
“You don’t have to,” I answered aloud. I tried to hide my disappointment. “If you don’t like them anymore,” I said, “just hang out with me. My friends are actually, like, nice.”
Her lips were so close to me that I could feel her smile. “I’m afraid it’s not possible,” she whispered. She let go then, but kept looking at me, taking step after step backward. She raised her eyebrows finally, and smiled, and I believed the smile. I watched her climb up a tree and then lift herself onto the roof outside of her second-floor bedroom window. She jimmied her window open and crawled inside.
I walked through my unlocked front door, tiptoed through the kitchen to my bedroom, peeled off my jeans, threw them into a corner of the closet back near the window screen, downloaded the picture of Jase, and got into bed, my mind booming with the things I would say to her at school.
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Wednesday, February 15, 2017
The King of Torts by John Grisham
The King of Torts by John Grisham
The office of the public defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit D.C. every week.
As he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds himself in the middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that would totally change his life—that would make him, almost overnight, the legal profession’s newest king of torts...
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An Excerpt form The King of Torts by John Grisham Book
The shots that fired the bullets that entered Pumpkin’s head were heard by no less than eight people. Three instinctively closed their windows, checked their door locks, and withdrew to the safety, or at least the seclusion, of their small apartments. Two others, each with experience in such matters, ran from the vicinity as fast if not faster than the gunman himself. Another, the neighborhood recycling fanatic, was digging through some garbage in search of aluminum cans when he heard the sharp sounds of the daily skirmish, very nearby. He jumped behind a pile of cardboard boxes until the shelling stopped, then eased into the alley where he saw what was left of Pumpkin.
And two saw almost everything. They were sitting on plastic milk crates, at the corner of Georgia and Lamont in front of a liquor store, partially hidden by a parked car so that the gunman, who glanced around briefly before following Pumpkin into the alley, didn’t see them. Both would tell the police that they saw the boy with the gun reach into his pocket and pull it out; they saw the gun for sure, a small black pistol. A second later they heard the shots, though they did not actually see Pumpkin take them in the head. Another second, and the boy with the gun darted from the alley and, for some reason, ran straight in their direction. He ran bent at the waist, like a scared dog, guilty as hell. He wore red-and-yellow basketball shoes that seemed five sizes too big and slapped the pavement as he made his getaway.
When he ran by them he was still holding the gun, probably a .38, and he flinched just for an instant when he saw them and realized they had seen too much. For one terrifying second, he seemed to raise the gun as if to eliminate the witnesses, both of whom managed to flip backward from their plastic milk crates and scramble off in a mad flurry of arms and legs. Then he was gone.
One of them opened the door to the liquor store and yelled for someone to call the police, there had been a shooting.
Thirty minutes later, the police received a call that a young man matching the description of the one who had wasted Pumpkin had been seen twice on Ninth Street carrying a gun in open view and acting stranger than most of the people on Ninth. He had tried to lure at least one person into an abandoned lot, but the intended victim had escaped and reported the incident.
The police found their man an hour later. His name was Tequila Watson, black male, age twenty, with the usual drug-related police record. No family to speak of. No address. The last place he’d been sleeping was a rehab unit on W Street. He’d managed to ditch the gun somewhere, and if he’d robbed Pumpkin then he’d also thrown away the cash or drugs or whatever the booty was. His pockets were clean, as were his eyes. The cops were certain Tequila was not under the influence of anything when he was arrested. A quick and rough interrogation took place on the street, then he was handcuffed and shoved into the rear seat of a D.C. police car.
They drove him back to Lamont Street, where they arranged an impromptu encounter with the two witnesses. Tequila was led into the alley where he’d left Pumpkin. “Ever been here before?” a cop asked. Tequila said nothing, just gawked at the puddle of fresh blood on the dirty concrete. The two witnesses were eased into the alley, then led quietly to a spot near Tequila.
“That’s him,” both said at the same time.
“He’s wearing the same clothes, same basketball shoes, everything but the gun.”
“That’s him.”
“No doubt about it.”
Tequila was shoved into the car once again and taken to jail. He was booked for murder and locked away with no immediate chance of bail. Whether through experience or just fear, Tequila never said a word to the cops as they pried and cajoled and even threatened. Nothing incriminating, nothing helpful. No indication of why he would murder Pumpkin. No clue as to their history, if one existed at all. A veteran detective made a brief note in the file that the killing appeared a bit more random than was customary.
No phone call was requested. No mention of a lawyer or a bail bondsman. Tequila seemed dazed but content to sit in a crowded cell and stare at the floor.
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Thursday, February 9, 2017
The Runaway Jury by John Grisham
The Runaway Jury by John Grisham
Every jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to him.
In Biloxi, Mississippi, a landmark tobacco trial with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake begins routinely, then swerves mysteriously off course. The jury is behaving strangely, and at least one juror is convinced hes being watched. Soon they have to be sequestered. Then a tip from an anonymous young woman suggests she is able to predict the jurors increasingly odd behavior.
Is the jury somehow being manipulated, or even controlled? If so, by whom? And, more important, why?
Is the jury somehow being manipulated, or even controlled? If so, by whom? And, more important, why?
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An Excerpt; The Runaway Jury by John Grisham Book
The face of Nicholas Easter was slightly hidden by a display rack filled with slim cordless phones, and he was looking not directly at the hidden camera but somewhere off to the left, perhaps at a customer, or perhaps at a counter where a group of kids hovered over the latest electronic games from Asia. Though taken from a distance of forty yards by a man dodging rather heavy mall foot traffic, the photo was clear and revealed a nice face, clean-shaven with strong features and boyish good looks. Easter was twenty-seven, they knew that for a fact. No eyeglasses. No nose ring or weird haircut. Nothing to indicate he was one of the usual computer nerds who worked in the store at five bucks an hour. His questionnaire said he’d been there for four months, said also that he was a part-time student, though no record of enrollment had been found at any college within three hundred miles. He was lying about this, they were certain.
He had to be lying. Their intelligence was too good. If the kid was a student, they’d know where, for how long, what field of study, how good were the grades, or how bad. They’d know. He was a clerk in a Computer Hut in a mall. Nothing more or less. Maybe he planned to enroll somewhere. Maybe he’d dropped out but still liked the notion of referring to himself as a part-time student. Maybe it made him feel better, gave him a sense of purpose, sounded good. But he was not, at this moment nor at any time in the recent past, a student of any sort. So, could he be trusted? This had been thrashed about the room twice already, each time they came to Easter’s name on the master list and his face hit the screen. It was a harmless lie, they’d almost decided. He didn’t smoke. The store had a strict nonsmoking rule, but he’d been seen (not photographed) eating a taco in the Food Garden with a co-worker who smoked two cigarettes with her lemonade. Easter didn’t seem to mind the smoke. At least he wasn’t an antismoking zealot.
The face in the photo was lean and tanned and smiling slightly with lips closed. The white shirt under the red store jacket had a buttonless collar and a tasteful striped tie. He appeared neat, in shape, and the man who took the photo actually spoke with Nicholas as he pretended to shop for an obsolete gadget; said he was articulate, helpful, knowledgeable, a nice young man. His name badge labeled Easter as a Co-Manager, but two others with the same title were spotted in the store at the same time.
The day after the photo was taken, an attractive young female in jeans entered the store, and while browsing near the software actually lit up a cigarette. Nicholas Easter just happened to be the nearest clerk, or Co-Manager, or whatever he was, and he politely approached the woman and asked her to stop smoking. She pretended to be frustrated by this, even insulted, and tried to provoke him. He maintained his tactful manner, explained to her that the store had a strict no-smoking policy. She was welcome to smoke elsewhere. “Does smoking bother you?” she had asked, taking a puff. “Not really,” he had answered. “But it bothers the man who owns this store.” He then asked her once again to stop. She really wanted to purchase a new digital radio, she explained, so would it be possible for him to fetch an ashtray. Nicholas pulled an empty soft drink can from under the counter, and actually took the cigarette from her and extinguished it. They talked about radios for twenty minutes as she struggled with the selection. She flirted shamelessly, and he warmed to the occasion. After paying for the radio, she left him her phone number. He promised to call.
The episode lasted twenty-four minutes and was captured by a small recorder hidden in her purse. The tape had been played both times while his face had been projected on the wall and studied by the lawyers and their experts. Her written report of the incident was in the file, six typed pages of her observations on everything from his shoes (old Nikes) to his breath (cinnamon gum) to his vocabulary (college level) to the way he handled the cigarette. In her opinion, and she was experienced in such matters, he had never smoked.
They listened to his pleasant tone and his professional sales pitch and his charming chatter, and they liked him. He was bright and he didn’t hate tobacco. He didn’t fit as their model juror, but he was certainly one to watch. The problem with Easter, potential juror number fifty-six, was that they knew so little about him. Evidently, he had landed on the Gulf Coast less than a year ago, and they had no idea where he came from. His past was a complete mystery. He rented a one-bedroom eight blocks from the Biloxi courthouse—they had photos of the apartment building—and at first worked as a waiter in a casino on the beach. He rose quickly to the rank of blackjack dealer, but quit after two months.
Shortly after Mississippi legalized gambling, a dozen casinos along the Coast sprang forth overnight, and a new wave of prosperity hit hard. Job seekers came from all directions, and so it was safe to assume Nicholas Easter arrived in Biloxi for the same reason as ten thousand others. The only odd thing about his move was that he had registered to vote so quickly.
He drove a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle, and a photo of it was flashed on the wall, taking the place of his face. Big deal. He was twenty-seven, single, an alleged part-time student—the perfect type to drive such a car. No bumper stickers. Nothing to indicate political affiliation or social conscience or favorite team. No college parking sticker. Not even a faded dealer decal. The car meant nothing, as far as they were concerned. Nothing but near-poverty.
The man operating the projector and doing most of the talking was Carl Nussman, a lawyer from Chicago who no longer practiced law but instead ran his own jury consulting firm. For a small fortune, Carl Nussman and his firm could pick you the right jury. They gathered the data, took the photos, recorded the voices, sent the blondes in tight jeans into the right situations. Carl and his associates flirted around the edges of laws and ethics, but it was impossible to catch them. After all, there’s nothing illegal or unethical about photographing prospective jurors. They had conducted exhaustive telephone surveys in Harrison County six months ago, then again two months ago, then a month later to gauge community sentiment about tobacco issues and formulate models of the perfect jurors. They left no photo untaken, no dirt ungathered. They had a file on every prospective juror.
Carl pushed his button and the VW was replaced with a meaningless shot of an apartment building with peeling paint; home, somewhere in there, of Nicholas Easter. Then a flick, and back to the face.
“And so we have only the three photos of number fifty-six,” Carl said with a note of frustration as he turned and glared at the photographer, one of his countless private snoops, who had explained he just couldn’t catch the kid without getting caught himself. The photographer sat in a chair against the back wall, facing the long table of lawyers and paralegals and jury experts. The photographer was quite bored and ready to bolt. It was seven o’clock on a Friday night. Number fifty-six was on the wall, leaving a hundred and forty still to come. The weekend would be awful. He needed a drink.
A half-dozen lawyers in rumpled shirts and rolled-up sleeves scribbled never-ending notes, and glanced occasionally at the face of Nicholas Easter up there behind Carl. Jury experts of almost every variety—psychiatrist, sociologist, handwriting analyst, law professor, and so on—shuffled papers and thumped the inch-thick computer printouts. They weren’t sure what to do with Easter. He was a liar, and he was hiding his past, but still on paper and on the wall he looked okay.
Maybe he wasn’t lying. Maybe he was a student last year in some low-rent junior college in eastern Arizona, and maybe they were simply missing this.
Give the kid a break, the photographer thought, but he kept it to himself. In this room of well-educated and well-paid suits, he was the last one whose opinion would be appreciated. Wasn’t his job to say a word.
Carl cleared his throat while glancing once more at the photographer, then said, “Number fifty-seven.” The sweaty face of a young mother flashed on the wall, and at least two people in the room managed a chuckle. “Traci Wilkes,” Carl said, as if Traci was now an old friend. Papers moved slightly around the table.
“Age thirty-three, married, mother of two, doctor’s wife, two country clubs, two health clubs, a whole list of social clubs.” Carl clicked off these items from memory while twirling his projector button. Traci’s red face was replaced by a shot of her jogging along a sidewalk, splendidly awash in pink and black spandex and spotless Reeboks with a white sun visor sitting just above the latest in reflective sport sunglasses, her long hair in a cute perfect ponytail. She was pushing a jogging carriage with a small baby in it. Traci lived for sweat. She was tanned and fit, but not exactly as thin as might be expected. She had a few bad habits. Another shot of Traci in her black Mercedes wagon with kids and dogs looking from every window. Another of Traci loading bags of groceries into the same car, Traci with different sneakers and tight shorts and the precise appearance of one who aspired to look forever athletic. She’d been easy to follow because she was busy to the point of being frazzled, and she never stopped long enough to look around.
Carl ran through the photos of the Wilkeses’ home, a massive suburban trilevel with Doctor stamped all over it. He spent little time with these, saving the best for last. Then there was Traci, once again soaked with sweat, her designer bike nearby on the grass, sitting under a tree in a park, far away from everyone, half-hidden and—smoking a cigarette!
The same photographer grinned stupidly. It was his finest work, this hundred-yard shot of the doctor’s wife sneaking a cigarette. He had had no idea she smoked, just happened to be nonchalantly smoking himself near a footbridge when she dashed by. He loitered about the park for half an hour until he saw her stop and reach into the pouch on her bike.
The mood around the room lightened for a fleeting moment as they looked at Traci by the tree. Then Carl said, “Safe to say that we’ll take number fifty-seven.” He made a notation on a sheet of paper, then took a sip of old coffee from a paper cup. Of course he’d take Traci Wilkes! Who wouldn’t want a doctor’s wife on the jury when the plaintiff’s lawyers were asking for millions? Carl wanted nothing but doctors’ wives, but he wouldn’t get them. The fact that she enjoyed cigarettes was simply a small bonus.
Number fifty-eight was a shipyard worker at Ingalls in Pascagoula—fifty years old, white male, divorced, a union officer. Carl flashed a photo of the man’s Ford pickup on the wall, and was about to summarize his life when the door opened and Mr. Rankin Fitch stepped into the room. Carl stopped. The lawyers bolted upright in their seats and instantly became enthralled by the Ford. They wrote furiously on their legal pads as if they might never again see such a vehicle. The jury consultants likewise snapped into action and all began taking notes in earnest, each careful not to look at the man.
Fitch was back. Fitch was in the room. He slowly closed the door behind him, took a few steps toward the edge of the table, and glared at everyone sitting around it. It was more of a snarl than a glare. The puffy flesh around his dark eyes pinched inward. The deep wrinkles running the length of his forehead closed together. His thick chest rose and sank slowly, and for a second or two Fitch was the only person breathing. His lips parted to eat and drink, occasionally to talk, never to smile. Fitch was angry, as usual, nothing new about that because the man even slept in a state of hostility. But would he curse and threaten, maybe throw things, or simply boil under the surface? They never knew with Fitch. He stopped at the edge of the table between two young lawyers who were junior partners and thus earning comfortable six-figure salaries, who were members of this firm and this was their room in their building. Fitch, on the other hand, was a stranger from Washington, an intruder who’d been growling and barking in their hallways for a month now. The two young lawyers dared not look at him.
“What number?” Fitch asked of Carl.
“Fifty-eight,” Carl answered quickly, anxious to please.
“Go back to fifty-six,” Fitch demanded, and Carl flicked rapidly until the face of Nicholas Easter was once again on the wall. Paperwork ruffled around the table.
“What do you know?” Fitch asked.
“The same,” Carl said, looking away.
“That’s just great. Out of a hundred and ninety-six, how many are still mysteries?”
“Eight.”
Fitch snorted and shook his head slowly, and everyone waited for an eruption. Instead, he slowly stroked his meticulously trimmed black and gray goatee for a few seconds, looked at Carl, allowed the severity of the moment to filter in, then said, “You’ll work until midnight, then return at seven in the morning. Same for Sunday.” With that, he wheeled his pudgy body around and left the room. The door slammed. The air lightened considerably, then, in unison, the lawyers and the jury consultants and Carl and everybody else glanced at their watches. They had just been ordered to spend thirty-nine out of the next fifty-three hours in this room, looking at enlarged photos of faces they’d already seen, memorizing names and birthdates and vital stats of almost two hundred people. And there wasn’t the slightest doubt anywhere in the room that they all would do exactly what they’d been told. Not the slightest.
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Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Grimm the Icy Touch by John Shirley
Grimm the Icy Touch by John Shirley
The first original novel to tie-in with the hit US show inspired by the Grimm Brothers classic fairy tales.
There once was a man who lived a life so strange, it had to be true. Only he could see what no one else can: the darkness inside, the real monster within. And he’s the one who must stop them..
This is his calling. This is his duty. This is the life of a Grimm.
When a torched body is found in an underground tunnel, Portland Police Captain Sean Renard takes one look at the victim’s burned claws and assigns the case to homicide detectives Nick Burkhardt and Hank Griffin. They soon discover that a international crime cartel named Le Touche Givre (The Icy Touch) is threatening Wesen into joining their illegal drug-smuggling operation, and brutally murdering those who refuse.
As they close in on the cartel, Nick begins to realise that their charismatic and dangerous leader is just as intent on tracking him down...
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An excerpt from Grimm - the Icy Touch by John Shirley ebook
On a cold dawn, on March 1, 1815, six ships arrived together on the Mediterranean coast of France. The flagship of this small fleet was the brig Inconstant, carrying the exiled Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his retinue. The vessels dropped anchor in the Golfe-Juan, near the Cape of Antibes, just a 147 miles north of Corsica, where, not much more than forty years earlier, the Emperor’s destiny had begun to unfold.
Johann Kessler waited in the launch for the return of the Emperor of France. Kessler’s tanned, dark-eyed face was impassive, but his heart was troubled because amongst the other seven men waiting in the gently rocking boat with him was one Alberle Denswoz?and Kessler was sitting beside him. The irony fairly tingled in the air: Denswoz was Hundjager Wesen, after all. Kessler had only recently discovered the man’s Wesen nature when Denswoz let down his guard, briefly revealing his true bestial form.
Not so long before, the old folk tales collected by the Brothers Grimm?tales of witches, wolf-men, dragons, and many others?had become enormously popular. Few readers knew that the creatures described by the Grimms actually existed. The brothers themselves had assumed they were only mythology.
But in the dark heart of each fairy tale was something true; something fantastic yet real: the Wesen. Some were essentially beast-men, and women, disguised as human; some were more monstrous.
Another ancient line of beings, both human and more than human, sought out the more dangerous Wesen and destroyed them. Lately, in sardonic homage to the compilers of the fairy tales, these secretive hunters were called... Grimms.
As far as Kessler knew, Denswoz was unaware that one of these almost superhuman beings was seated next to him.
Now, the Emperor climbed lithely down to the boat that would take him ashore. Colonel Mallet helped the great man into the stern sheets.
The Emperor was a compact, pale, slightly plump, long-nosed man with deep-set eyes and black hair. He was wearing a long black overcoat, and a white weskit over which slanted his sash; his famous bicorn hat adorned his head. He peered through the streamers of mist rising from a sea the color of his gray-blue eyes; he strove to see if anyone awaited them on the shore. Napoleon would have preferred to take a place in the bow, but Colonel Mallet had begged him to sit in the stern, for fear of hostile sharpshooters awaiting them on the beach. They had escaped easily from Elba, with almost 1,100 grenadiers, while the British and Bourbon ships were away; but the journey to the French coast had been tediously dragged out by contrary winds, so that the Emperor joked that Inconstant had lived up to its name. In that time, word may have reached France of the Emperor’s impending return. Enemies could be waiting.
Kessler was half expecting to see Bourbon soldiers on the shore, perhaps a detachment from one of the hostile garrisons in Provence, training cannon on the launch. He had no wish to die in a cannon fusillade, nor did he wish Napoleon’s death. But the Emperor’s own scouts stepped into view on the beach to wave the all clear. Kessler’s spirits rose?and though it was a chill daybreak on a cold sea, everyone in the boat was smiling, their eyes bright. They were back in France after ten months of exile on the island of Elba. La France!
Johann Kessler was German, but had become a French citizen under Napoleon; Denswoz was Austrian but when Austria had been annexed by Napoleon, he had eagerly sought to advise the Emperor?only recently had he been accepted, on sailing to Elba. In fact, Kessler suspected that Denswoz was in part the cause of the Emperor’s decision to return to France. Denswoz?and the coins. Kessler had only caught a glimpse of the large, curious Greek coins that the Emperor kept in his coat pocket; that he took out from time to time; that seemed to transfer their ancient shine to those gray-blue eyes...
If Kessler’s theory was confirmed, these were no ordinary coins. They were strange and powerful artifacts, created on an island of Greece centuries ago?they’d passed through many hands: Caligula had clasped them lovingly; Nero had caressed them. They had vanished into China, last seen in the Han Dynasty. If they’d reappeared, and if the dark Wesen had given them to the Emperor, it might be that Kessler’s true, secret cause was hopeless.
The coxswain directed the sailors to begin rowing, and the launch set off, as the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte turned to speak to Colonel Mallet.
“Yonder is an olive orchard, Colonel,” he said. “Let us bivouac there until everyone is ashore and organized for the march.”
“Very good, my Emperor.”
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Monday, January 30, 2017
Let It Snow Three Holiday Romances by John Green
Let It Snow Three Holiday Romances by John Green
The New York Times bestseller!
Sparkling white snowdrifts, beautiful presents wrapped in ribbons, and multicolored lights glittering in the night through the falling snow. A Christmas Eve snowstorm transforms one small town into a romantic haven, the kind you see only in movies. Well, kinda. After all, a cold and wet hike from a stranded train through the middle of nowhere would not normally end with a delicious kiss from a charming stranger. And no one would think that a trip to the Waffle House through four feet of snow would lead to love with an old friend. Or that the way back to true love begins with a painfully early morning shift at Starbucks. Thanks to three of today’s bestselling teen authors? John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle? The magic of the holidays shines on these hilarious and charming interconnected tales of love, romance, and breathtaking kisses.
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An Excerpt from Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances by John Green Ebook
It was the night before Christmas.
Well, to be more precise, it was the afternoon before Christmas. But before I take you into the beating heart of the action, let’s get one thing out of the way. I know from experience that if it comes up later, it will distract you so much that you won’t be able to concentrate on anything else I tell you.
My name is Jubilee Dougal. Take a moment and let it sink in.
See, when you get it up front, it’s not that bad. Now imagine I was halfway through some long story (like I’m about to be), and I dropped that one on you. “By the way, my name is Jubilee.” You wouldn’t know what to do next.
I realize Jubilee is a bit of a stripper name. You probably think I have heard the call of the pole. But no. If you saw me, you’d get the idea pretty quickly that I’m not a stripper (I think). I have a little black bob. I wear glasses half the time, and contacts the other half. I’m sixteen, I sing in choir, I attend Mathletes events. I play field hockey, which lacks the undulating, baby-oiled grace that is the stripper’s stock and trade. (I have no problem with strippers, in case any strippers are reading this. I’m just not one. My major concern, stripage-wise, is the latex. I think latex is probably bad for your skin because it doesn’t allow it to breathe.)
My objection is that Jubilee isn’t a name?it’s some kind of a party. No one knows what kind. Have you ever heard of someone throwing a jubilee? And if you did, would you go? Because I wouldn’t. It sounds like something where you have to rent a large inflatable object, put up bunting, and make a complicated plan for trash disposal.
Come to think of it, it might be interchangeable with hoedown.
My name has a lot to do with this story, and like I said, it was the afternoon before Christmas. I was having one of those days when you feel that life . . . likes you. Finals were over and school was done until New Year’s. I was alone in our house, which was feeling very cozy and snug. I was dressed for the night in a new outfit I’d saved for?a black skirt, tights, a sparkly red T-shirt, and my new black boots. I was drinking a little eggnog latte that I’d cooked up for myself. All my presents were wrapped and ready to go. It was all leading up to the big event: at six, I was supposed to go to Noah’s house?Noah Price, my boyfriend?for his family’s annual Christmas Eve Smorgasbord.
The Price Family Annual Smorgasbord is a big deal in our personal history. It was how we got together in the first place. Before the Smorgasbord, Noah Price was just a star in my sky . . . constant, familiar, bright, and far above me. I’d known Noah since the fourth grade, but it felt like I knew him in the same way that I know people on television. I knew the name. I watched the show. Sure, Noah was a bit closer than that . . . but somehow when it’s real, when it’s your life . . . that person can feel even farther off and more unobtainable than an actual celebrity. Proximity doesn’t breed familiarity.
I had always liked him, but it never really occurred to me to like him, like him. I never thought that was a reasonable thing to want. He was a year older than me, a foot taller, broad of shoulder, bright of eye, and floppy of hair. Noah was the whole package?athlete, academic, school-government bigwig?the kind of person you think must only date models or spies or people who have laboratories named after them.
So when Noah invited me to come along to El Smorgasbord on Christmas Eve last year, I more or less ruptured an eye in my excitement and confusion. I couldn’t walk straight for three days when I got the invitation. It was so bad that I actually had to consciously practice walking in my room before I went to his house. I had no idea if he had asked me because he liked me, or if his mom made him (our parents know each other), or because he lost a bet. All my friends were just as excited, but they seemed to understand it more than I did. They assured me that he had been eyeing me in Mathletes, laughing at my attempts at trigonometry jokes, bringing me up in conversation.
It was all so crazy . . . as weird as finding out that someone had written a book about my life or something.
When I got there, I spent most of the night safely propped up in a corner talking to his sister, who (though I love her) is not exactly deep. There is only so much you can say about your favorite brands of hoodies before you feel the conversational walls closing in. But she can go like a champion. Elise has some Thoughts on the Subject.
I finally took a break just as Noah’s mom was setting out another plate and I could make the Oh-excuse-me-but-doesn’t-that-look-good excuse. I had no idea what was on it, but it turned out to be pickled fish. I was backing away, but his mom said, “You have to try a piece.”
Being a bit of a lemming, I did. But this time, it worked out, because that’s when I noticed that Noah was watching me. He said, “I’m so glad you took some.” I asked him why, because I really think I suspected it was all a bet. (“Okay, I’ll ask her to come, but you guys have to give me twenty bucks if I can make her eat pickled fish.”)
And he said, “Because I’ve been eating it.”
I was still standing there with what I assume was a very enchanting expression of total stupidity etched on my face, so he added, “And I couldn’t kiss you unless you’d had some, too.”
Which is both gross and breathtakingly romantic. He could always have just gone upstairs and brushed his teeth, but he stayed and lurked by the fish for me. We snuck off to the garage, where we made out under the shelf of power tools. That was the start of it all.
So, the particular Christmas Eve I’m about to tell you about wasn’t just any Christmas Eve: this was our one-year anniversary. It was almost impossible to believe it had been a year. It had all gone by so fast. . . .
See, Noah is always really busy. When he emerged into the world, tiny and wriggling and pink, he probably had to get footprinted and out of the hospital as quickly as possible to get to a meeting. As a senior, a member of the soccer team, and president of the student council, his time had been whittled away to almost nothing. I think in the year that we had been dating we had had about a dozen proper dates with just Noah and me going somewhere by ourselves. About once a month. We’d had plenty of joint appearances. Noah and Jubilee at the student-council bake sale! Noah and Jubilee at the soccer-team raffle table! Noah and Jubilee at the food drive, in the tutoring room, at the homecoming-organizational meeting . . .
Noah was aware of this. And though tonight was a family event with many people in attendance, he promised me there would be time just for us. He had made sure of it by helping out in advance. If we put in two hours at the party, he promised, we could escape to the back room and exchange our gifts and watchThe Grinch Who Stole Christmastogether. He would drive me home, and we would stop for a while. . . .
And then, of course, my parents got arrested, and all of that went to hell.
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The Broker by John Grisham
The Broker by John Grisham
In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.
Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis. Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. The question is not whether Backman will survive—there is no chance of that. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him?
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In the waning hours of a presidency that was destined to arouse less interest from historians than any since perhaps that of William Henry Harrison (thirty-one days from inauguration to death), Arthur Morgan huddled in the Oval Office with his last remaining friend and pondered his final decisions. At that moment he felt as though hed botched every decision in the previous four years, and he was not overly confident that he could, somehow, so late in the game, get things right. His friend wasnt so sure either, though, as always, he said little and whatever he did say was what the President wanted to hear.
They were about pardons-desperate pleas from thieves and embezzlers and liars, some still in jail and some whod never served time but who nonetheless wanted their good names cleared and their beloved rights restored. All claimed to be friends, or friends of friends, or die-hard supporters, though only a few had ever gotten the chance to proclaim their support before that eleventh hour. How sad that after four tumultuous years of leading the free world it would all fizzle into one miserable pile of requests from a bunch of crooks. Which thieves should be allowed to steal again? That was the momentous question facing the President as the hours crept by.
The last friend was Critz, an old fraternity pal from their days at Cornell when Morgan ran the student government while Critz stuffed the ballot boxes. In the past four years, Critz had served as press secretary, chief of staff, national security advisor, and even secretary of state, though that appointment lasted for only three months and was hastily rescinded when Critzs unique style of diplomacy nearly ignited World War III. Critzs last appointment had taken place the previous October, in the final frantic weeks of the reelection onslaught. With the polls showing President Morgan trailing badly in at least forty states, Critz seized control of the campaign and managed to alienate the rest of the country, except, arguably, Alaska.
It had been a historic election; never before had an incumbent president received so few electoral votes. Three to be exact, all from Alaska, the only state Morgan had not visited, at Critzs advice. Five hundred and thirty-five for the challenger, three for President Morgan. The word "landslide" did not even begin to capture the enormity of the shellacking. Once the votes were counted, the challenger, following bad advice, decided to contest the results in Alaska. Why not go for all 538 electoral votes? he reasoned. Never again would a candidate for the presidency have the opportunity to completely whitewash his opponent, to throw the mother of all shutouts. For six weeks the President suffered even more while lawsuits raged in Alaska. When the supreme court there eventually awarded him the states three electoral votes, he and Critz had a very quiet bottle of champagne.
President Morgan had become enamored of Alaska, even though the certified results gave him a scant seventeen-vote margin. He should have avoided more states. He even lost Delaware, his home, where the once-enlightened electorate had allowed him to serve eight wonderful years as governor. Just as he had never found the time to visit Alaska, his opponent had totally ignored Delaware-no organization to speak of, no television ads, not a single campaign stop. And his opponent still took 52 percent of the vote!
Critz sat in a thick leather chair and held a notepad with a list of a hundred things that needed to be done immediately. He watched his President move slowly from one window to the next, peering into the darkness, dreaming of what might have been. The man was depressed and humiliated. At fifty-eight his life was over, his career a wreck, his marriage crumbling. Mrs. Morgan had already moved back to Wilmington and was openly laughing at the idea of living in a cabin in Alaska. Critz had secret doubts about his friend his ability to hunt and fish for the rest of his life, but the prospect of living two thousand miles from Mrs. Morgan was very appealing. They might have carried Nebraska if the rather blue-blooded First Lady had not referred to the football team as the "Sooners." The Nebraska Sooners!
Overnight, Morgan fell so far in the polls in both Nebraska and Oklahoma that he never recovered.
And in Texas she took a bite of prizewinning chili and began vomiting. As she was rushed to the hospital a microphone captured her still-famous words: "How can you backward people eat such a putrid mess?"
Nebraska has five electoral votes. Texas has thirty-four. Insulting the local football team was a mistake they could have survived. But no candidate could overcome such a belittling description of Texas chili. What a campaign! Critz was tempted to write a book. Someone needed to record the disaster.
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Friday, January 27, 2017
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
From the #1 bestselling author of *The Fault in Our Stars*
Michael L. Printz Honor Book
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy?loving best friend riding shotgun?but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl. Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.
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As the water began to splash over his skinny but unmuscled stomach, he thought of Archimedes. When Colin was about four, he read a book about Archimedes, the Greek philosopher who’d discovered that volume could be measured by water displacement when he sat down in the bathtub. Upon making this discovery, Archimedes supposedly shouted “Eureka!” 3 and then ran naked through the streets. The book said that many important discoveries contained a “Eureka moment.” And even then, Colin very much wanted to have some important discoveries, so he asked his mom about it when she got home that evening.
“Mommy, am I ever going to have a Eureka moment?”
“Oh, sweetie,” she said, taking his hand. “What’s wrong?”
“I wanna have a Eureka moment,” he said, the way another kid might have expressed longing for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
She pressed the back of her hand to his cheek and smiled, her face so close to his that he could smell coffee and makeup. “Of course, Colin baby. Of course you will.”
But mothers lie. It’s in the job description.
Colin took a deep breath and slid down, immersing his head. I am crying, he thought, opening his eyes to stare through the soapy, stinging water. I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it’s impossible to tell because I’m underwater . But he wasn’t crying. Curiously, he felt too depressed to cry. Too hurt. It felt as if she’d taken the part of him that cried.
He opened the drain in the tub, stood up, toweled off, and got dressed. When he exited the bathroom, his parents were sitting together on his bed. It was never a good sign when both his parents were in his room at the same time. Over the years it had meant:
1. Your grandmother/grandfather/Aunt-Suzie-whom-you-never-met-but-trust-me-she-was-nice-and-it’s-a-shame is dead.
2. You’re letting a girl named Katherine distract you from your studies.
3. Babies are made through an act that you will eventually find intriguing but for right now will just sort of horrify you, and also sometimes people do stuff that involves baby-making parts that does not actually involve making babies, like for instance kiss each other in places that are not on the face.
It never meant:
4. A girl named Katherine called while you were in the bathtub. She’s sorry. She still loves you and has made a terrible mistake and is waiting for you downstairs.
But even so, Colin couldn’t help but hope that his parents were in the room to provide news of the Number 4 variety. He was a generally pessimistic person, but he seemed to make an exception for Katherines: he always felt they would come back to him. The feeling of loving her and being loved by her welled up in him, and he could taste the adrenaline in the back of his throat, and maybe it wasn’t over, and maybe he could feel her hand in his again and hear her loud, brash voice contort itself into a whisper to say I-love-you in the very quick and quiet way that she had always said it. She said I love you as if it were a secret, and an immense one.
His dad stood up and stepped toward him. “Katherine called my cell,” he said. “She’s worried about you.” Colin felt his dad’s hand on his shoulder, and then they both moved forward, and then they were hugging.
“We’re very concerned,” his mom said. She was a small woman with curly brown hair that had one single shock of white toward the front. “And stunned,” she added. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Colin said softly into his dad’s shoulder. “She’s just?she’d had enough of me. She got tired. That’s what she said.” And then his mom got up and there was a lot of hugging, arms everywhere, and his mom was crying. Colin extricated himself from the hugs and sat down on his bed. He felt a tremendous need to get them out of his room immediately, like if they didn’t leave he would blow up. Literally. Guts on the walls; his prodigious brain emptied out onto his bedspread.
“Well, at some point we need to sit down and assess your options,” his dad said. His dad was big on assessing. “Not to look for silver linings, but it seems like you’ll now have some free time this summer. A summer class at Northwestern, maybe?”
“I really need to be alone, just for today,” Colin answered, trying to convey a sense of calm so that they would leave and he wouldn’t blow up. “So can we assess tomorrow?”
“Of course, sweetie,” his mom said. “We’ll be here all day. You just come down whenever you want and we love you and you’re so so special, Colin, and you can’t possibly let this girl make you think otherwise because you are the most magnificent, brilliant boy?” And right then, the most special, magnificent, brilliant boy bolted into his bathroom and puked his guts out. An explosion, sort of.
“Oh, Colin!” shouted his mom.
“I just need to be alone,” Colin insisted from the bathroom. “Please.”
When he came out, they were gone.
For the next fourteen hours without pausing to eat or drink or throw up again, Colin read and reread his yearbook, which he had received just four days before. Aside from the usual yearbook crap, it contained seventy-two signatures. Twelve were just signatures, fifty-six cited his intelligence, twenty-five said they wished they’d known him better, eleven said it was fun to have him in English class, seven included the words “pupillary sphincter,” 4 and a stunning seventeen ended, “Stay Cool!” Colin Singleton could no more stay cool than a blue whale could stay skinny or Bangladesh could stay rich. Presumably, those seventeen people were kidding. He mulled this over?and considered how twenty-five of his classmates, some of whom he’d been attending school with for twelve years, could possibly have wanted to “know him better.” As if they hadn’t had a chance.
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