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Title: Hunter's Run Author: George R. R. Martin File Type: Mobi Subject:Science-Fiction Description:From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Martin (Song of Ice and Fire series), Dozois (_Strange Days_) and Abraham (_A Shadow in Summer_) revisit classic themes of exploration, exploitation and what it means to be human in this gritty SF adventure. Humanity has finally reached the stars, only to find that all the best spots have been claimed by other races—the Silver Enye, Turu, Cian and others. Human colonists serve as world-building crash-test dummies, dropped onto empty planets deemed too dangerous or inconvenient for other races, to pave over whatever marvels and threats evolution had put there. On the misbegotten colony planet of São Paulo, ore prospector Ramon Espejo has no illusions, especially about how the Enye view humanity. Then Ramon murders the wrong man in a drunken fight and takes off into the wastelands to avoid the Enye authorities. Once in the outback, he discovers he's not the only one trying to hide from the Enye—and that the deadly cat-lizards called chupacabras are far from the worst dangers on São Paulo. This tightly written novel, with its memorable protagonist and intriguing extrapolation, delivers on all levels. (Jan.) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. FromIn music, supergroups of established artists are rarely greater than the sum of their parts. The same often goes for science fiction, but critics agreed that these three authors beat the trend by producing a tight, consistent novel. Whether because of Martin’s decades of collaborative work, Dozois’s long career as an editor, or Abraham’s fresh prose style, every reviewer said the book seemed as if it were written by one person. The only complaint came from reviewers who had read an earlier, novella-length version of the story; they felt that expanding the story enriched it somewhat, but not by much. While it would be hard to match Hunter’s Run with any of these authors’ previous works, it can certainly be called a successful experimentâ€and a compelling SF novel.br 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Title: Fever Pitch Author: Nick Hornby File Type: Mobi Subject:Autobiography Description:Amazon.com ReviewIn the States, Nick Hornby is best know as the author of strong and strong, two wickedly funny novels about being thirtysomething and going nowhere fast. In Britain he is revered for his status as a fanatical football writer (sorry, fanatical soccer writer), owing to Fever Pitch--which is both an autobiography and a footballing Bible rolled into one. Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year--the year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly moved way beyond fandom into an extreme obsession that has dominated his life, loves, and relationships. His father had initially hoped that Saturday afternoon matches would draw the two closer together, but instead Hornby became completely besotted with the game at the expense of any conversation: Football may have provided us with a new medium through which we could communicate, but that was not to say that we used it, or what we chose to say was necessarily positive. Girlfriends also played second fiddle to one ball and 11 men. He fantasizes that even if a girlfriend went into labor at an impossible moment he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle. Fever Pitch is not a typical memoir--there are no chapters, just a series of match reports falling into three time frames (childhood, young adulthood, manhood). While watching the May 2, 1972, Reading v. Arsenal match, it became embarrassingly obvious to the then 15-year-old that his white, suburban, middle-class roots made him a wimp with no sense of identity: Yorkshire men, Lancastrians, Scots, the Irish, blacks, the rich, the poor, even Americans and Australians have something they can sit in pubs and bars and weep about. But a boy from Maidenhead could only dream of coming from a place with its own tube station and West Indian community and terrible, insoluble social problems. Fever Pitch reveals the very special intricacies of British football, which readers new to the game will find astonishing, and which Hornby presents with remarkable humor and honesty--the unique chants sung at matches, the cold rain-soaked terraces, giant cans of warm beer, the trains known as football specials carrying fans to and from matches in prisonlike conditions, bottles smashing on the tracks, thousands of policemen waiting in anticipation for the cargo of hooligans. The sport and one team in particular have crept into every aspect of Hornbys life--making him see the world through Arsenal-tinted spectacles. --Naomi GesingerFrom Publishers WeeklyBrought to print to take advantage of Americas presumed fascination with the 94 World Cup (the first ever held here), Fever Pitch is a 24-year obsessional diary of English club football (soccer, to us Americans) games Hornby has witnessed and the way these games have become inextricable from his personal life. Hornby is the kind of fanatic who merely shrugs about the tyranny the sport exerts over his life--the mumbled excuses he must give at every missed christening or birthday party as a result of a schedule conflict. Sometimes hurting someone, he writes, is unavoidable. These occasions tend to bring out disappointment and tired impatience in his friends and family, but it is when he is exposed as a worthless, shallow worm that the similarly stricken reader can relate to the high costs of caring deeply about a game that means nothing to ones more well-adjusted friends. These moments are fleeting, however. The book has not been tailored for American audiences, so readers lacking a knowledge of English club footballs rules, traditions, history and players will be left completely in the dark by Hornbys obscure references. Unfortunately, he has neither Roger Angells ability to take us inside the game nor the pathos of Frederick Exleys brilliantly disturbed autobiographical trilogy. Though Hornby does show flashes of real humor, Fever Pitch features mainly pedestrian insights on life and sport, and then its on to the next game--the equivalent, for an American reader, of a nil-nil tie. Author appearances. br 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Title: The Last Illusion Author: Rhys Bowen File Type: Mobi Subject:Mystery Description: Irish immigrant and PI Molly Murphy is thrilled to have a ticket to the theater to see a trio of illusionists that are all the rage. Indeed, headlining is Harry Houdini, the most sensational of them all; he has just returned from entertaining European kings and queens for a brief run on Broadway. But before Houdini can even take the stage, the opening act goes horribly wrong and to the crowd’s shock the illusionist saws into his assistant. In the aftermath, the stunned performer accuses Houdini of tampering with the equipment he keeps under lock and key. And he’s not the only one critical of “The King of Handcuffs.” Risking his life every night, Houdini has raised the stakes to such a perilous level that he’s putting lesser acts out of business. With everyone on edge, Houdini’s wife hires Molly to be part investigatorpart bodyguard, but how can she protect a man who literally risks his life every night? And how is she going to uncover whether these masters of illusion are simply up to their tricks or if there truly is something much more treacherous going on. With sparkling wit, charming characters, and historic detail, multiple award winner Rhys Bowen brings early-twentieth-century New York City and the fantastic performers of the time vividly to life in *The Last Illusion*.