Average customer rating:
- This well written novel is darker and grittier than most in this genre
- A spectacular debut!
- Keys People: READ THIS BOOK
- Hall Starts with a Bang
- A great south Florida mystery
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Under Cover of Daylight
James W. Hall
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Psychological & Suspense
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Hall, James W.
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ASIN: 0393321258 |
Book Description
James W. Hall's haunting debut novel first introduced the rugged character Thorn and the breathtaking South Florida landscape where he lives. Thorn's past includes a savage act of revenge on the drunken hit-and-run killer of his parents. Now, fifteen years later, Thorn still cannot escape that moment, or the darkness he took into his soul that night. Not even his best friend, Sugarman, knows the truth. Not even Sarah Ryan knows the depths of her lover's pain. Then suddenly, the nightmare begins again as Thorn's foster mother is found slaughtered. Thorn can almost taste the rage as he stalks her killer and waits.
Customer Reviews:
This well written novel is darker and grittier than most in this genre.......2006-11-24
I'm a big fan of James Hall and have read all his novels. While Under Cover of Daylight was his first novel, it was actually the last one I read - and it's one of his best.
As far as South Florida crime novelists go, Hall is darker and grittier than most. Like his contemporaries, Hall's novels are filled with quirky characters and villains that are as likely to kill one another as they are to harm the novel's hero. His heroes (Thorn in this case) are flawed and complicated. But what sets Hall apart from other writers in this genre is his writing. The Keys literally leap off the page with prose that is almost poetic at times.
Hall is one of the best writers working in the crime genre. His novels (this one included) deliver the quirky characters and twisted comedy we expect from a South Florida crime novel but with a much darker edge.
A spectacular debut!.......2003-07-11
In 1987's "Under Cover of Daylight" James W. Hall introduces Thorn, the nonconformist antihero, and reveals his troubled past.
It is a believable suspenseful story of secrets, revenge, personal loss and an elaborate land grab scheme.
A drunken driver who escaped conviction killed Thorn's parents.
At age nineteen, Thorn avenges their death.
Twenty years later, living in the Keys---life seems good for Thorn. His hand made bone fish flies are in huge demand---there is plenty of time for Thorn and his friend Sugarman to enjoy the Keys lifestyle---and prosecuting attorney Sarah Ryan has entered his life.
And then---a psycho hired killer murders Thorn's adoptive mother (who actively opposes the condo developers). Once again Thorn is compelled to find justice on his terms.
This is a dynamic debut novel. All the characters are richly drawn; the Keys come vividly to life, the plot races along and the resolution is most satisfying.
"Under Cover of Daylight" is a most worthy reread for all fans of James W. Hall and Thorn.
Keys People: READ THIS BOOK.......2003-06-01
I haunt the bookstores for good novels pertaining to the Keys and only recently did this important work of Hall's become available. Although this is where it all starts with Thorn - great character background and motivational set up - it is also a fine read. Would you believe, greedy developers willing to bend the law and squeeze the little guys out for obscene profit: a lack of concern for the character and individualism of Keys communities, condos at any costs? Somehow the book seems relevant today, and when the characters repeatedly stress they are not against progress but somewhere we must draw a line we hear the same complex emotions that are at the heart of every development discussion today, twenty years after the original publication. All this and a great Thorn style plot. Perfect for those rainy/windy days when the bonefish are shying away or the lobsters are not in season.
Hall Starts with a Bang.......2002-11-03
I have always tried to read and authors books in order but unfortunately I failed miserably when it came to Hall's Thorn books. Most series where you read the books out of order its a minor miss step but here it was a huge mistake. While Hall's books, for the most part, can stand on its own you don't truly understand the Thorn character until you've read Daylight.
Under Cover of Daylight is not just a story of murder and revenge but a scathing biopsy of the everchanging culture of Southern Florida. As we cut through the layers of this shifting society we take an uncomfortable look two people who relationship give a whole new meaning to love-hate. While the literal suprises are few the emotional surprises are many.
A great south Florida mystery.......2002-09-12
I don't know how I managed to go this long without being aware of James W. Hall, but I did. I was a huge Travis McGee fan and, although Hall's Thorn character is quite different from John D. McDonald's wonderful knight-errant, it was great to return to south Florida for a terrific story. Thorn is a much more gritty character than McGee, and Hall's writing style is also grittier. Thorn is a hermit-like eccentric with a troubled past who earns a living in the Florida Keys making bonefish lures. He winds up in the middle of a mystery that he decides to resolve himself. Hall describes his setting beautifully and fills his version of the Keys with some odd and quirky characters. All of his characters, even the minor ones, are rich and well fleshed out. The story flows smoothly and the pages fly by. I'm looking forward to reading all of Hall's mysteries, especially those featuring the Thorn character. Very highly recommended.
Average customer rating:
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Under Cover Of Daylight
James Hall
Manufacturer: Mandarin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
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Action & Adventure
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ASIN: 0749308621 |
Average customer rating:
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Under Cover of Daylight
Manufacturer: Mysterious Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Literature & Fiction
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| Essays
| Foreign Language Fiction
| General
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| History & Criticism
| Large Print
| Letters & Correspondence
| Poetry
| Short Stories
| United States
| Women's Fiction
| World Literature
ASIN: 9994933531 |
Amazon.com
In the elaborate fictional cosmos Michael Moorcock has created, Elric and the various vonBeks are all aspects of the Eternal Champion who fights for the Balance, preventing both Law and Chaos from dominating the universe and trapping it in either barren sterility or pointless fecundity. Elric, the albino sorcerer and last prince of the inhuman empire of Melnibone, was the creation of Moorcock's adventurous pot-boiling inventive youth, just as the vonBek family featured in the heroic fantasies of his more thoughtful middle-life.
In The Dreamthief's Daughter, he brings together Elric and Ulric vonBek, last scion of the family, and we finally learn the sin for which the perpetual villain Gaynor the Damned was doomed: Nazi occultists are searching for the Grail and the Black Sword and must be prevented from attaining them. Ulric seeks allies wherever he can find them, including Oona, who wanders through dream realities and with whom he falls in love. This is fast-moving phantasmagorical stuff with ambiguously virtuous heroes and baddies whose villainy and charm is total. Moorcock's immensely powerful visual imagination and sense of the innate drama of crucial scenes make this a breathtaking read. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
In the elaborate fictional cosmos Michael Moorcock has created, Elric and the various vonBeks are all aspects of the Eternal Champion who fights for the Balance, preventing both Law and Chaos from dominating the universe and trapping it in either barren sterility or pointless fecundity. Elric, the albino sorcerer and last prince of the inhuman empire of Melnibone, was the creation of Moorcock's adventurous pot-boiling inventive youth, just as the vonBek family featured in the heroic fantasies of his more thoughtful middle-life. In The Dreamthief's Daughter, he brings together Elric and Ulric vonBek, last scion of the family, and we finally learn the sin for which the perpetual villain Gaynor the Damned was doomed: Nazi occultists are searching for the Grail and the Black Sword and must be prevented from attaining them. Ulric seeks allies wherever he can find them, including Oona, who wanders through dream realities and with whom he falls in love. This is fast-moving phantasmagorical stuff with ambiguously virtuous heroes andbaddies whose villainy and charm is total. Moorcock's immensely powerful visual imagination and sense of the innate drama of crucial scenes make this a breathtaking read. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk
Download Description
Michael Moorcock returns triumphantly to his best-known character, the albino prince, Elric of Melniboné. In the first of three new tales of the doomed swordsman, Moorcock plaits differing realities effortlessly, mixing the eternal city of Tanelorn with the rise of Hitler's Germany. In the 1930s, Count Ulric von Bek has been harried and imprisoned by the Nazis for a black sword that is part of his family's history. Almost dead, he is rescued from Sachsenhausen concentration camp by two unknown figures--an Englishman called Bastable and an albino girl, Oona. With them, he journeys to a strange, underground world. And there he meets a figure known to him only from dreams, in which they are somehow the same person, yet separate: Elric of Melniboné. As their stories intertwine, von Bek comes to know of Elric's past, and their very beings become one. Sometimes Elric is in control, sometimes Ulric, and the neverending struggle between Law and Chaos must be fought in both their universes.
Customer Reviews:
Super Reader.......2007-08-30
The Dreamthief's daughter is a sort of parallel Elric story of sorts. However, it is based around Von Bek. This time, Count Ulrich Von Bek of nazi Germany.
Von Bek has a sword called Ravenbrand, which, in another life, is Elric's Stormbringer. The nazis are aware of its power, and the resistance brings it to Von Bek's attention, beginning a conflict between Von Bek and his nazi relative, with appearances by Elric and other versions and parts of the Eternal Champion saga.
Another battle for the multiverse begins.
Once upon a time, Moorcock was a decent Sword & Sorcery writer.......2005-08-29
ONCE UPON A TIME, Moorcock, a FANTASY writer (despite his pretentions) who created a character called Elric (his claim to fame), wrote some pretty entertaining stories about an albino prince (which was more or less a sensitive, middle-class man's reaction to Robert E. Howard's great macho superhero, Conan). Unfortunately, like many other authors, the fame went straight to his head and he became a pompous intellectual type whose years have since been devoted to leftist soapboxing and tearing apart some of the great writers of fantasy fiction. Spare us, Mike, and go back to what you were best at: writing enjoyable escapist fiction. Your political views are completely molded from a life spent living the soft, pampered lifestyle of a middle-class Englishman and I'd rather not be subjected to your myopic philosophies and political opinions while reading an Elric book. Actually, wait a minute. As a matter of fact, I guess I don't have to be subjected to your blather at all. Indeed, I shall never read another one of your silly books again after slogging through this one (the last straw, it was) -- at least anything older than your original Elric series.
PS: Funny that as much as your hate Howard and Tolkien they'll always be remembered more than you.
From a Moorcock Fan: Mike's Abysmal Worst EVER.......2005-04-25
Nevermind patron demons of Law and Chaos, this book clearly proves that Michael Moorcock's muse has abandoned him completely, transmuting our yarn spinner into a sermonizer. How many more Elric stories must we endure in which he's whisked away to another dimension? (At least this time we haven't been slapped with the usual automatic amnesia for the albino at the finish.) All in all, this book is the Wizard of Oz hung with multiverse musings. And war is bad musings.
If Elric is Moorcock's best character, vonBek has become his worst. A navel-gazer of the first division with a propensity for inaction, vonBek narrates most of the story to the reader's detriment.
Boring, boring, boring.
If you want to maintain your respect and affection for Moorcock, just pretend this one was never written.
Elric defeats Hitler.......2004-12-18
Once upon a time their was an author named Michael Moorcock, and he wrote short fantasy novels, and they were good. Then he got famous, stopped writing novels and became a philosopher, thinking many deep thoughts such as "war is dumb because people should be nice to each other because was is stupid"
In 2001, he decided to write a new novel. As with his previous novels, the main character is an albino with a soul stealing sword. Unlike his previous novels, it is really long (460 pages), no good people get hurt (despite three major battles), there's little action, tons of dialog (all of it variations on "why can't we all get along"), Elric cries alot and everyone lives happily ever after, right down to a beautiful wedding and five happy children.
The plot is simple. Chaos and Law fight across the multiverse but that war will soon end because the entire multiverse is going to be destroyed. Everything hinges on a single day in 1940 when Hitler's luftwaffe bomb England. In order to save all existence, Elric teleports to Germany, summons some dragons and leads them into battle against the Luftwaffe. In the meantime, Hitler, with the help of one of Satan's devils, uses the Holy Grail to summon Arioch
i learned many things in this book. First, all Germans are sweet, peace-loving people who wouldn't hurt a fly. Only Hitler was bad. Second, Hitler was a tiny, scared, incompetent little child who couldn't conqueor a playground much less Europe. Every win he had was due to pure luck. Third, Hess asked Elric if he could join his side. Fourth, many British people thought Elric was actually king Aurthur. Fifth, Stormbringer, the sword with a will of its own, is a noble sword that refuses to hurt innocent people. Sixth, Arioch likes to write poems about farting.
Although the book is long and covers three major battles, there is very little action. That's because roughly 400 of the 460 pages are dedicated to the main character saying over and over "Hitler is bad, WW2 wasn't Germany's fault, Britian sure is a great country, let's all be nice". He doesn't describe how Hitler is bad, he simply asserts it over and over. Some action happens, but it is over in a few pages, followed by dozens of pages of "don't people understand that war never solves anything?". The book is extremely light on descriptions and very heavy on monologues. For example, a demon who once served Satan but left when "Satan proved insufficiently committed to the cause of evil" (pg 386) is about to sacrifice Elric's daughter when Elric bursts in, Stormbringer covered in Nazi blood. So the demon, being only human (apparently demons are human), shoots Elric with a .38 caliber pistol. Elric then pretty much dies but snaps out of it thanks to the Holy Grail. That whole sequence is described in probably 5 paragraphs. The rest is spent thinking about how war is bad.
Once upon a time, Moorcock wrote interesting books. Now it appears he has contracted syphillis and gone insane.
Brilliant development.......2004-03-29
I was amazed by this book. Somehow Mr Moorcock has managed to create another Elric book which comes close to having the power of what is indisputably the best of the series, Stormbringer. Unlike the previous reviewer, I found it fresh and exciting and a deepening and broadening of the Elric mythos. While the 'underground' sequences are slower than the rest of the book, I felt that this was deliberate, recreating the kind of 'classic' effect you find in writers like E.R.Eddison or even the great Professor Tolkien who is Mr Moorcock's only equal. Other reviewers have described the plot very thoroughly and anything I added would be a spoiler. But I would recommend this novel one hundred percent. Not only has Mr Moorcock lost none of his old magic, he has added to and made deeper what has gone before. Highly recommended to new and old Moorcock fans!
Product Description
The First of 3 new tales of Elric, of Melnibone, the doomed swordsman, Moorcock plaits differing realities effortlessly, mixing the eternal city of Tanelorn with the rise of Hitler's Germany.
Book Description
BILL - the perfect Spaceship Trooper: big, brawny and brainwashed...
BILL - the perfect hero: ready to go anywhere, do anything to save his own neck, which is probably the only part of his body that is still his own...
BILL - back in the Army Hospital for yet another transplant and looking forward to a spot of R and R (which every Trooper translates as Rutting and Rotgut), and some respite from his troublesome adventures...
BILL doesn't have a hope. The nurses are steel robots, and he seems to have acquired a goat's foot - not for luck - at least, not the good kind. And the goat's foot seems to have acquired a goat-lady - the exceedingly demanding kind. She knows all about tasteless pleasure, and she aims to teach Bill everything he never wanted to know...
Average customer rating:
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Bill The Galactic Hero Series, Complete Set of 7 Sci-Fi Novels (Bill the Galactic Hero, The Planet of Robot Slaves, The Planet of the Bottled Brains, The Planet of Tasteless Pleasures, The Planet of the Zombie Vampires, The Planet of Ten Thousand Bars, The Final Incoherent Adventure)
Harry Harrison ,
David Bischoff ,
Robert Sheckley ,
Jack C Haldeman , and
David Harris
Manufacturer: Avon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000RH6ZZ0 |
Amazon.com
It's easy to fall into high-fat, fast-food habits when we're busy, and who isn't busy? The American Heart Association has a solution: 200 recipes that are tasty, healthful, low-fat, and fast. The recipes--conveniently spiral-bound--take 20 minutes or less preparation time, and most take just a few minutes of additional cooking time. (Some require more cooking time, but you don't have to hover over them.) Don't skip breakfast when you can make Cinnamon-Bran Pancakes (total time: 11 to 14 minutes), Stuffed French Toast (16 to 18 minutes), or a Banana-Kiwi Breakfast Shake (5 minutes) in less time than it takes to pick up a muffin on your way to work. Your family or guests won't guess you whipped up dinner in a hurry when you make Pasta-Crusted Fish with Marinara Sauce (15 minutes), Sherried Seafood Sauté (15 minutes), or Skillet Chicken Thighs with Dried Berries (20 minutes). The book has an assortment of one-dish meals like Salmon and Brown Rice Bake, Black Bean Lasagna, and Chicken with Broccoli and Bulgur. There are also appetizers, vegetables, breads, sandwiches, salads, and desserts. All recipes include preparation time, cooking time, and nutritional information: calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat (total, saturated, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated), cholesterol, and sodium. Yummy photographs decorate the book. --Joan Price
Book Description
In our hectic era, who has time to spend hours in the kitchen creating tasty, healthful meals? Yet when we try to eat fast, we almost always resort to eating fat (think: fast food). This indispensable cookbook from one of the most trusted names in the health field breaks the fast-fat connection. Nearly every one of its mouthwatering, low-fat, low-cholesterol recipes can be prepared in under 30 minutes. Here is the opportunity for millions of Americans to start living the more healthful lifestyle they know they should.
Customer Reviews:
Except for the lack of pictures............2007-05-28
this is an excellent cookbook. A lot of few ingredient recipes, and lots of recipes that don't call for exotic ingredients. I hate finding a good recipe and then there's that one ingredient that I don't have on hand, or worse yet, one that I have to go to a gourmet store to find. None of that in this book!
Yummy Food!.......2007-05-21
This is an excellent cookbook! It even includes kid friendly recipes - pancakes, chicken, cookies, krispy treats, etc. The selection is excellent and we haven't found a recipe we didn't like!
no pictures.......2007-05-07
Book needs pictures for high school students to see what the recipe will look like when made.
speedy delivery.......2007-04-03
Book was sent to a 3rd party who made no complaint of it's condition. Therefore assume condition was good. Delivery was excelent. Thank you.
Amazing recipes.......2007-03-31
Contains amazing recipes that are healthy and delicious, and also fit in with some well-known diets (e.g. South Beach).
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