Excerpt from “Everything Matters!”

“…… as though I didnt expect to see Amy sitting there, drinking mojitos with Kerry and a girl I didnt recognize. She’s heartbreakingly beautiful, her cheeks and shoulders freckled with California sun, her hair longer by a year and straight now. The longer hair is just one of a dozen small ways in which she’s different from how I remember – new bracelet, new green tank top, fingernails elegantly manicured rather than gnawed to the quick….. ….. Except that beneath the paper-thin layer of righteous indignation, all I really want is to spend a couple of hours in her company……

“The two of us laugh often and talk without pause, the easy, intuitive way we always shared returning instantly……”

“Then it’s just her and me. I thought this was what I wanted all along, but somehow, here under the fluorescent, there’s a sudden, powerful awkwardness between us. We stand there a minute longer. I keep willing myself to say something, or else to put my arms around her. But I’m afraid to move, convinced that everything going forward hinges on this moment, that whatever we become, or fail to become, is entirely dependent on what happens in the next few seconds. And I’m paralyzed by the fear that I’ll screw it up. Then the moment is gone. Amy puts her hand on my arm briefly, says ‘See you,’ and walks away. I have all I can do not to follow her like a puppy and beg her to take me home. She gets halfway to her truck, pauses in the middle of the parking lot, and turns back, and for a moment I let myself believe she’s changed her mind, that her love for me has won out and we’ll be reunited in a desperate, twirling Hollywood hug right here outside the pub. But instead she reaches in her purse, rips off the corner of a page in her address book, scribbles something, and presses it into my hand.”

” ‘I’m sorry, Junior,’ she says. She stares at me, searching my face. Then she grasps my wrists and says, ‘Listen, you look terrible. You know that, right? Whatever you’re doing to yourself, stop it. You shld know better. You should be smarter than this.”

“And you should know smart’s got nothing to do with it.”

—

was reading the book when i came across this chapter, and i cant help but think… it just saddens me all of a sudden, just thinking of how it ended…

Filed under: Book Review, Thoughts

Stephen Coonts – Deep Black: Payback

RECRUITED: A CRACK TEAM OF COVERT AGENTS.
Word is out to ex-Marine sniper Charlie Dean and his team of National Security Agency: Infiltrate the highest stratum of Peruvian polictical power and derial a renegade general from acing an election. All Dean has to do is find a way inside an impenetrable bank vault protected by arm guards around the clock – it’s all in a day’s work for the men and women of Deep Black.

ENGAGED: A VIOLENT POLICTICAL COUP.
But things get complicated when Dean and company discover the renegade general’s second plot. The military madman’s ruse – a nuclear weapon he claims is in the hands of Marxists guerillas, a bomb that only he can resuce… and control.

IGNITED: A DEVASTATING TERRORIST PLOT.
When the general and his plot are exposed, the NSA concludes the greatest threat is over. But in fact, it’s only just the beginning……..

Filed under: Book Review

Book Review

Title: The District Man
Author: Peter Cook

Disenchanted with working in Fleet Street on a national tabloid, journalist Mark Devlin returns to his roots in the North to work on a local provincial newspaper.
His timing is bad.
Within a year he is made redundant and has to freelance as a district reporter in a rural area where he uncovers some startling stories that read like fiction.
But are they?

• The young vicar involved with wife-swapping on a new housing estate.
• The teenager who goes missing with tragic results.
• A tramp who turns out to be a jazz virtuoso.
• The gypsy funeral that ends in disaster and
• Show leeks threatened by unexploded bombs, but who put them there?

Peter Cook draws on his vast experience as a journalist and broadcaster to leave us pondering on whether the stories are fact or fiction? And if the former, just where are the villages of Sessington and Bridgefield?

Filed under: Book Review

Book Review

Title: Liars and Thieves
Author: Stephen Coonts

Unafraid to walk both sides of the law to attain his goals, CIA operative Tommy Carmellini is sent to post guard duty at a farmhouse in West Virginia. When he arrives, he finds the guards shot dead and a ruthless team of American commandos killing everyone in sight. Carmellini escapes in a hail of bullets with what seems to be the sole survivor – a stunningly attractive translator, who then steals his car and abandons him after a deadly mountain car chase. But someone else survived the massacre – someone who holds the answers to a deadly conspiracy.
Catapulted into a life-and-death struggle, Tommy must employ all his savvy and skill just to stay alive. But to find out who is hunting him and why, he’ll need the help of retired Admiral Jake Grafton. Now they must learn to tell friend from foe as they fight their way through a poisonous wilderness of intrigue, all the way to a presidential convention in New York City – and to the surprising identity of someone standing on the verge of absolute power who has jeopardized the safety of the entire nation to prevent a dark secret from ever seeing the light of day…

Filed under: Book Review

Book Review

Title: Nine Below Zero
Auhor: Kevin Canty

Driving alone down a snowy Montana road at dawn, Native American Marvin Deernose spots a car wreck. The man he rescues is Senator Henry Neihart, blinded and crippled by a stroke, and a shadow of his former self. In saving his life, Marvin sets in motion a chain of events that will change him irrevocably.
When the Senator’s granddaughter, Justine, a solitary woman in an empty marriage, expresses her gratitude to Marvin, they are immediately attracted to one another. Passion ignites these two lonely, disaffected souls amid their icy, desolate surroundings, until their affair results in violent and unexpected repercussions.

Filed under: Book Review

Book Review

Title: Vertical Dive
Author: Michael DiMecurio

During NATO exercises, the French Navy unveils Le Vigilant, a nuclear submarine so advanced that it can elude any radar system in the water. But France’s maritime marvel is about to become its own worst enemy. A band of Algerian terrorists has hijacked Le Vigilant. They mean to wipe Paris and every major French city off the face of the earth – and then turn their missles against the great Satans of the United States and Russia.
Despite the French Navy’s protests, two NATO subs are called into action: the USS Hampton, captained by verteran sub warrior Burke Dillinger, and the USS Texas, commanded by iron-willed Peter Vornado. Paris is being evacuated. Time is running out. And the coming conflict will pit the ultimate in technological weaponary against pure courage, skill and determination…

Filed under: Book Review

Book Review

Title: At Risk
Author: Patricia Cornwell

A Massachusetts state investigator is called home from the National Forensic Academy in Tennessee. His boss, an attractive but hard-charging woman, is running for governor, and as a showcase plans to use a new crime initiative called At Risk – motto: ‘Any crime, any time.’ She’s looking for a way to employ cutting-edge DNA technology, and thinks she’s found it in a twenty-year-old murder – in Tennessee. If her office solves the case, they’ll all look pretty good, right?

Her investigator is not so sure, but before he can open his mouth a shocking piece of violence intervenes, an act that shakes up not only their lives but the lives of everyone around them…

Filed under: Book Review

Book Review

Title: Mixed Signals
Author: Liz Curtis Higgs

“On the air, Belle’s life was an old-fashioned love song. Off the air, she changed her tune to only the lonely”

Belle O’Brien, the woman behind the warmest voice in oldies radio is ready to stop station-hoping and settle down in historic Abingdon, Virginia.
Her prospects for a husband, though, are small-town slim. Will it be smooth-talking Patrick Reese, who launched her radio career? Moody David Cahill, the enigmatic broadcast engineer? Matthew the Methodist, her oh-so-available pastor? Or the mysterious radio listener wo signs his letters to her, “All Ears in Abingdon?”
As Elvis would say, Its Now or Never…
Belle’s journey toward joy is filled with humor and heartbreak, drama and discovery, until she decides to risk everything and finds it’s never too late to listen to your heart.

Filed under: Book Review

Book Review

Title: Emergency Deep
Author: Michael DiMercurio

U.S. Navy submarine commander Peter Vornado is at the top of his game in underwater warfare when a devastating illness takes him out of the service – and almost to the grave. Without duty, honor, or something to fight for, his life is as good as over.
A terrorist cabel has acquired a scrapped Soviet sub from the Cold War – a technologically advanced failure still able to outrun any torpedo or enemy vessel and strike at will. With a nuclear payload, it will enable the terrorists to fire directly on Israel – and throw the world into chaos. All that remains is to modernize the sub with the latest technology.
Only one man can infiltrate the group, take the helm, and stop a holocaust – a man who has already stared down death, and is ready to do battle once more……

Filed under: Book Review

Book Review

Title: Danger:Contaminated
Author: Stephen Coonts

Dr. James Kegan, a world-renowned scientist, specializing in germ warfare, has vanished from his upstate New York home. But this is no ordinary missing-persons case. Kegan has left behind an unidentified dead man with a .22 caliber hole in his skull – and a contact trail that leads to an alleged terrorist cell.
Unraveling the mystery is a job for Kegan’s best friend, NSA operative Charlie Dean. His mission is to infiltrate the scientist’s circle of associates and decipher Kegan’s confidential research. Dispatched to cover Charlie is Delta Force trooper Lia Francesca. The trail leads them to the core of a wide-spread killer fever that’s been dormant for centuries – and its link to a virus that’s quickly spreading victim by ictim. With time running out, Charlie and Lia must find Kegan, uncover his secrets, cut a terrorist threat to the quick, and stop the unimaginable outbreak of a new biological nightmare.

Filed under: Book Review