A-Z Wednesday - O

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!
To join, here's all you have to do:
Go to your stack of books and find an author whose first or last name starts with the letter of the week.
Post:
1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link (Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc.)
4~ Go to Reading At The Beach and leave your link in the comments.
If you've already reviewed the book, add it or the link to your post.

This week's letter is: "O"

The Inferior by Peadar Ó Guilín



Summary from Amazon:
In this epic story of survival, betrayal, and community, the fittest humans are prized as hunters and for taking care of the Tribe, while those with a number of marks on their Tally sticks, or otherwise deemed useless, are traded for food with other tribes in the region. Stopmouth, a "savage" human with a stutter, is healed by a strange visitor from the Roof following a hunting accident. He and Indrani develop a bond that is scorned by the rest of the Tribe, but is one that will see them through some challenging times as they set out on a journey to try to return Indrani to whence she came. This well-paced fantasy/science fiction blend perfectly introduces community conflict at a base level. Stopmouth and his brother are constantly at odds over their roles in the family and their individual ambition. Power and influence are accepted and controlled in very different ways by these main characters and, from the very first chapters, readers can see that lies and deceit are strong forces on the characters.

A-Z Wednesday - K

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!
To join, here's all you have to do:
Go to your stack of books and find an author whose first or last name starts with the letter of the week.
Post:
1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link (Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc.)
4~ Go to Reading At The Beach and leave your link in the comments.
If you've already reviewed the book, add it or the link to your post.

This week's letter is: "K"

Dark Life by Kat Falls


Summary from Amazon
The oceans rose up, swallowing up the lowlands. Earthquakes shattered the continents, toppling entire regions into the rising water. Now, humans live packed into stack cities. The only ones with any space of their own are those who live on the ocean floor: the Dark Life.

Ty has spent his whole life living deep undersea, helping his family farm the ocean floor. But when outlaws attack his homestead, Ty finds himself in a fight to save the only home he has ever known. Joined by Gemma, a girl from the Topside who has come subsea to look for her brother, Ty ventures into the frontier’s rough underworld and discovers some dark secrets to Dark Life ... secrets that threaten to destroy everything.

My review is HERE

A-Z Wednesday - J

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!
To join, here's all you have to do:
Go to your stack of books and find an author whose first or last name starts with the letter of the week.
Post:
1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link (Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc.)
4~ Go to Reading At The Beach and leave your link in the comments.
If you've already reviewed the book, add it or the link to your post.

This week's letter is: "J"

The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth's Children #1) by Jean M. Auel


Summary from Goodreads
When her parents are killed by an earthquake, 5-year-old Ayla wanders through the forest completely alone. Cold, hungry, and badly injured by a cave lion, the little girl is as good as gone until she is discovered by a group who call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. This clan, left homeless by the same disaster, have little interest in the helpless girl who comes from the tribe they refer to as the "Others." Only their medicine woman sees in Ayla a fellow human, worthy of care. She painstakingly nurses her back to health--a decision that will forever alter the physical and emotional structure of the clan. Although this story takes place roughly 35,000 years ago, its cast of characters could easily slide into any modern tale. The members of the Neanderthal clan, ruled by traditions and taboos, find themselves challenged by this outsider, who represents the physically modern Cro-Magnons. And as Ayla begins to grow and mature, her natural tendencies emerge, putting her in the middle of a brutal and dangerous power struggle.

Special note: The long-awaited sixth and final book:
The Land of Painted Caves by Jean Auel will be published March 29th 2011!

A-Z Wednesday - I

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!
To join, here's all you have to do:
Go to your stack of books and find an author whose first or last name starts with the letter of the week.
Post:
1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link (Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc.)
4~ Go to Reading At The Beach and leave your link in the comments.
If you've already reviewed the book, add it or the link to your post.

This week's letter is: "I"

Atonement by Ian McEwan


Summary from Amazon:
This haunting novel is in effect two, or even three, books in one, all masterfully crafted. The first part ushers us into a domestic crisis that becomes a crime story centered around an event that changes the lives of half a dozen people in an upper-middle-class country home on a hot English summer's day in 1935. Young Briony Tallis, a hyperimaginative 13-year-old who sees her older sister, Cecilia, mysteriously involved with their neighbor Robbie Turner, a fellow Cambridge student subsidized by the Tallis family, points a finger at Robbie when her young cousin is assaulted in the grounds that night; on her testimony alone, Robbie is jailed.
The second part of the book moves forward five years to focus on Robbie, now freed and part of the British Army that was cornered and eventually evacuated by a fleet of small boats at Dunkirk during the early days of WWII. This is an astonishingly imagined fresco that bares the full anguish of what Britain in later years came to see as a kind of victory.
In the third part, Briony becomes a nurse amid wonderfully observed scenes of London as the nation mobilizes. No, she doesn't have Robbie as a patient, but she begins to come to terms with what she has done and offers to make amends to him and Cecilia, now together as lovers.
In an ironic epilogue that is yet another coup de the tre, McEwan offers Briony as an elderly novelist today, revisiting her past in fact and fancy and contributing a moving windup to the sustained flight of a deeply novelistic imagination.

Maybe it's just me but I never felt Briony found atonement - she keep up her fantasy and wrote the conclusion she wanted because she'd never be able to make amends. So even at the end, she continue her delude herself.

A-Z Wednesday - H

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!
To join, here's all you have to do:
Go to your stack of books and find an author whose first or last name starts with the letter of the week.
Post:
1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link (Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc.)
4~ Go to Reading At The Beach and leave your link in the comments.
If you've already reviewed the book, add it or the link to your post.

This week's letter is: "H"

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Trivia - Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King

Summary from Amazon
Middle-aged rock star Judas Coyne collects morbid curios for fun, so doesn't think twice about buying a suit advertised at an online auction site as haunted by its dead owner's ghost. Only after it arrives does Judas discover that the suit belonged to Craddock McDermott, the stepfather of one of Coyne's discarded groupies, and that the old man's ghost is a malignant spirit determined to kill Judas in revenge for his stepdaughter's suicide. Judas isn't quite the cad or Craddock the avenging angel this scenario makes them at first, but their true motivations reveal themselves only gradually in a fast-paced plot that crackles with expertly planted surprises and revelations.