This is not a history book, despite the impression you might get when you first read the title. This is not a work of “historical fiction” either. Yet, history most definitely plays a big part in this book. This is also not a book for little girls. Some more mature teens might be able to read it, despite all the drug references, but, for reasons I will explain later, I’m not sure they would relate to it very well. No, this is a book written for grown women, despite the main character describing her tumultuous year as a Seventh Grader.

Allison Glass, now an adult and a veterinarian, thinks back to when she was thirteen years old. The year was 1975. Her parents, (whose marriage is starting to crumble), just moved into a new house in a new town. This left poor Allison stuck starting a new school year in a new school where she had no friends. What is worse, is that this she is about to start Seventh Grade, an awkward and tense school year that no one I know of enjoyed. What is tragic is that Allison has just been diagnosed with scoliosis, and will be starting this most difficult of school years wearing a large metal and plastic brace that covers her entire back and extends to her neck. There isn’t any way to hide it. She is doomed to be “the girl in the brace”.

What saves Allison is her new friend, Kate, who rides up to her on horseback slightly before the school year starts. Each girl owns a horse, and loves to ride, and the two of them hit it off and become very close. Women who read this book will think back to their own middle school friends, and wonder whatever became of them. Much of this book is about what it means to be a friend, how important it is to have a best friend, and how incredibly intense friendships are when you are thirteen years old.

History plays a big part in this story. The girls, (when they aren’t riding their horses), are working on a project for their history class that will be presented in May of 1976. The guidelines for this project are as vague yet important sounding as many of the school projects I remember receiving in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. All the girls were certain of was that the project must have something to do with the history of the town. So, they create a “lost heroine”, and take turns writing her story, squeezing in the little facts and details along the way. Each chapter in History Lesson for Girls begins with a few paragraphs from the lost heroine’s diary. I thought this was a very creative idea, but, this was the 70’s, the era in which dioramas were considered to be the absolute pinnacle of educational forms of display, and so, the girls didn’t get very high marks on their work. That doesn’t matter to them, though. By then, way too many other, much larger tragedies have happened.

Anyone who is old enough to have lived through the 1970’s will recall how patriotic we all were back in 1976. It was America’s bicentennial, after all, and the world was very red, white, and blue, indeed. I had forgotten how festive that all felt. It’s not like now, where flags are displayed, but tied into the thoughts of our troops fighting a war that a growing number of American’s don’t want. It was a much happier representation of patriotism back then, without all the fear that is mixed into it today.

Sheehan captures the 70’s so well it’s like walking right back into it. Orange shag carpet, and “wings” in our hair. Smoking still acceptable in restaurants. Ashtrays on people’s living room coffee tables, and a general unspoken acknowledgment that many teens smoked cigarettes. Everyone agreed that smoking cigarettes was not good for you, but, with “Smoking Stinks” campaigns not getting started until sometime around the late 70’s, people were not into hassling other people about smoking just yet. Phones that had cords attaching the handset to the base, with one “ring tone” available, and no caller I.D. or voice mail options. No cell phones. None of that existed yet. I am not at all certain that teenagers who read this book will be anywhere near as excited by all of this as I was. For me, it was “Hey, I remember that!”. They are too young to remember that.

Another thing I remember about the 70’s that Sheehan includes is the general attitude that teens were basically smaller adults. I mentioned that teens smoked, and no one really thought much of it. Kate’s parents drink and allow their teenagers to drink alcohol, and offer Allison some along with them. It was acceptable for teens to come into bars and hang around if their parent’s were attending a party in that bar that night. Kate’s parents are very up front about discussing sexuality with whoever is listening, and that includes Kate and Allison. No one really is concerned if the teens are having sex, despite them being only thirteen. Kate finds herself, more than once, hit on by some of her parent’s male friends. In addition to drinking and smoking, Kate’s parents (whose marriage is crashing down around them), smoke pot, and do cocaine, sometimes while drinking, and always in front of their kids. No one is the slightest bit worried about having the police called. It was a different time. Those of us who remember what the 70’s were like will find this book nostalgic. I think that anyone too young might just see this book as one big scandal after another, and miss out on the actual story. Would teens today even recognize the music that Allison and Kate groove to?

Allison’s parents, on the other hand, are very “New Age”, when “New Age” itself was new. Much of this is a desperate attempt to try anything and everything to fix Allison’s back, and avoid the surgery she might need if the brace doesn’t do a good enough job of correcting her crooked spine. They try faith healers, yoga, strange health foods, swimming lessons, and whatever else they come across. Her mom is an artist, and her dad is a poet who enjoys meditation. They were very ready for the New Age movement. Will all of this effort work? Allison hopes so, but is skeptical, as most Seventh Graders are by nature. What makes her more skeptical is that she doesn’t see much difference in the yoga instructors and faith healers than she does in Kate’s father, a man who has changed his first name to “Tut”, and has written a book that bastardizes ideas from many different cultures, including Egyptian, and basically is encouraging people to live their lives only doing what makes them happy, despite the consequences that doing so will have on other people in their lives.

Things take a turn for the worse in a number of ways, and the story gets moving pretty fast. This was a time period where divorce was still something people gossiped about, and affairs were completely devastating. Allison and Kate find their families lives entwined, and not in a good way. By the end, we are left with a series of tragedies, and the grown up Allison, still affected by it all.

It’s a serious book, and one that envelopes you in the story, if you are the right age to read it. It’s not a light and airy “summer read”, but instead, a deep dive into the past. Readers tired of the “chick-lit” books they read while on vacation, but searching for a book with a little more meat to it, but still geared for women readers will dig this book.

Zombies spawned from cell phones, what could be cooler than that? The action starts almost immediately, and is violent, bloody, and fast. Before you know it, the zombies are everywhere. I couldn’t put this book down.

The story line is a simple one. Clayton Riddell is coming back home from an interview, which went well. He stops for a moment and gets in line to buy an ice cream. Then, all hell breaks loose. People go from normal to psychotic in seconds flat. No one sees it coming. All Clayton can figure out, at first, is that everyone who has gone crazy and homicidal had a cell phone. The people are still alive, but are suddenly acting more like zombies. They aren’t the slow, stupid, lurching zombies, either. No, they are fast, as in the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” kind of fast. Perhaps because they are still alive?

From there, the story is about survival. What do you do, when surrounded by what is basically a pack of zombies? Where do you go? Clayton must make some quick decisions. Cell isn’t simply about avoiding death by fast moving monsters. It also touches on what happens to people’s minds when they are dropped into this horrific situation. Who do you trust? How can you tell who is safe, and who is going to become violent? How do you figure out what caused this, so it doesn’t happen to you? Makes for a tense story. King excels in mixing psychological and physical horror. Just when his characters think they have things figured out, the zombies change. They act differently, and seem to be getting “smarter”.

Then there’s the moral dilemma. Is it right to kill off these zombies, in order to save not only yourself, but also the other, still unaffected, “normal” humans who are left? I mean, they are still people, right? They are alive, aren’t they? Or, have they stopped being “people” once they lost their minds and got all bloodthirsty? Staggering.

The only thing I didn’t absolutely love about this book was the ending. King doesn’t simply tell you if a particularly important action by the main character worked, or if it didn’t work. The book ends just as Clayton is doing the action. I was kind of mad, because I wanted to know for certain one way or the other. Instead, King has left it unclear. Either he wanted the readers to decide for themselves what should happen next, or, he is leaving room for a sequel to this story. I’m hoping for a sequel, but not exactly holding my breath.

The back of the book says that Stephen King does not own a cell phone. Neither do I. I hate them. I hate when people use them while driving, as they swerve into my lane and almost hit my car. I hate when people come into my retail job, ask me to find them something, and can’t manage to stop their conversation on the cell phone long enough for me to figure out what exactly it is they are looking for. I hate that they force me to be rude, and interrupt their conversation just to provide the help they asked me for in the first place. I hate the T.M.I people, who shout “too much information” across stores and restaurants, because the person on the other end of the cell phone has a bad connection, or is in a noisy place, forcing us all to hear about someone’s surgery, or the night someone drank too much. But mostly, I hate that we have become a nation of people who feel the need to isolate ourselves from the possibilities of having a random conversation with other passing humans. People now seem to feel like they must be constantly connected to this security blanket that “wireless” provides. It sickens me when I see a room full of people out somewhere for a night, all chatting away… to people who aren’t even in the room, instead of with someone who is actually standing next to us. Perhaps, King felt some of the same things I do, and that’s what inspired this book.

If you are a Stephen King fan, you will love this book. It’s just that special. If you are a fan of zombies, and like stories that include them, don’t pass this one up! If you hate, hate, hate cell phones, as much as I do, you will get sadistic pleasure from this book. I highly recommend it.

Bangkok can be beautiful, and brutal, sometimes simultaneously. This book is both, and you get dropped right into the middle of it. You can hear the noise on the crowded streets, see the bright colors, smell the food, sweat in the humidity and the fierce, intense, heat of the day. Things happen faster and more violently than expected, and after the horror, people just go on with their lives as if nothing of importance had happened. Left me shocked speechless more than once.

Poke Rafferty, an American, goes to Bangkok to write his next book. He’s a travel writer, and his books are guides designed to make it easy to find trouble in exotic locations. Now, Rafferty has found that this little research vacation has somehow turned into a life that he is willing to fight to keep.

He has fallen in love, and started a serious relationship with Rose, a woman who used to be a “dancer”. Now, she is trying to run a cleaning business, and make a better life. Rafferty is also trying to adopt a girl named Miaow, who he saved from the streets. No one knows how old she is, so they decided one day that she is eight. It’s not very clear exactly what happened to this little kid before Rafferty unofficially adopted her, but whatever it was, it can’t have been good. At the start of the book, Miaow brings home another street kid, named “Superman”, and insists he stay with them. The kid is bad news, and eventually the reader finds out how he got to be so screwed up. Rafferty is also trying to adopt Miaow legally now, but is having all sorts of problems with that, and “Superman” is starting to grow on him. He is trying his best to make this all work in a country where things don’t stay together for long.

Then, in between chapters about this little (almost) family, the reader gets dropped into scenes with characters that don’t seem to have any relation to the story, (at first). By the end, the pieces fit together, the picture is clear, and it’s not something easily recognizable if you happen it come from an American viewpoint. Rafferty finds himself changing his mind and his concept of right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral, over and over again, as he faces each new nightmare.

Things go horrifyingly bad. This is not a book to read while you eat your lunch! Scenes in this book freak me out more than anything else I have read in a long time, and, keep in mind, I am a big fan of the works of Stephen King, and also tend to read books about bloody, terrifying, vampires. The difference is that the things that happen in A Nail Through The Heart can, and have, and are still happening, to real people. I found myself absolutely sickened, over and over again, especially with some of the things that happen to children in this book.

Rafferty winds up in the middle of a mess when an Australian woman asks him to help her find her missing uncle. The uncle was living in Bangkok for several years, but suddenly seems to have vanished. This uncle turns out to be keeping some bad secrets, and is no saint. There is a scene at the beginning of the book with two men trying to dig a safe out of a hole in a big yard. Almost everything else springs from there. Things twist and turn around themselves, and connect in unexpected ways.

I found that I couldn’t put this book down, despite the intensely graphic events. Readers need to have a strong stomach, and the ability to put aside the nightmarish scenes found within these two covers once you finish reading. I would not recommend this book to someone who is very sensitive, or anyone who was abused as a child. Take my word for it, if that is you, you don’t want to go here. However, people who enjoy mysteries that keep you just a few steps away from the right track, and zoom by at a fast clip… this is the book for you. I promise you will be blind sided for most of the ride.

Personally, I don’t know if I can read this book over again someday. Despite that, I wanted to know how it all came together, how it ended, and who got what they deserved, so I couldn’t put it down, cringing all the way. There are some images I’d like to remove from my head now, thank you very much, but can’t quite get them to leave. They are like “hungry ghosts”. Here is a book where the title is a perfect match for the story, and not in the obvious way. Read this one with caution.

Exile is a work of fiction. But given the nature of these times, this book feels very real. The punch-out scene in Exile covers a suicide-bomb assasination that takes place in San Francisco. The bomber’s target is the Israeli Prime Minister, and the plot unfolds with all of the explosive fire and carnage you can dream up. But don’t be fooled into thinking this book is only filled with big explosions and nothing else. Exile digs deeply into the state of things in the Middle East, with a lot of focus on the Israel/Palestine situation, and how it affects the rest of the world. I found the middle part of the book fascinating, as it depicts the protagonist’s travels through ancient sacred cities and rough backstreet ghettos, searching for clues as to who is behind the bombing. Overall, Exile is an enjoyable read, and really DOES have something for everyone. Mystery, international intrigue/espionage. There’s even a complex love triangle between the book’s protagonist, his former lover and a hardline Palestinian fundamentalist. I don’t want to give away too much there but two words: Paternity test! If you’re a fan of Grisham or Tom Clancy, or if you’re just looking for something more than a beach read this summer, I strongly recommend that you check out Exile.