Spider Bones: A Novel Kindle Books Reviews
Spider Bones: A Novel
Kathy Reichs—#1 New York Times bestselling author & producer of the FOX television hit Bones—returns with the thirteenth riveting novel featuring forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan. John Lowery was declared dead in 1968—the victim of a Huey crash in Vietnam, his body buried long ago in North Carolina. Four decades later, Temperance Brennan is called into the scene of a drowning in Hemmingford, Quebec. The victim appears into have died while in the midst of a bizarre sexual prac
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Oliver Twist
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This book was converted from its physical version into the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle version includes wireless delivery.
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September 1st, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Review by Cor Lost For Words for Spider Bones: A Novel
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Source: Received from publicist. Many thanks goes to Loretta from Simon & Schuster for sending me this book for review. I received this book free of charge in exchange for an honest review.
My Rating: 5/5
Temperance Brennan returns in this, the thirteenth and latest, installment by renowned author Kathy Reichs. She needs to unravel the mystery surrounding three bodies, all having been identified as the same man. The cases have her starting out in Quebec, then heading out to North Carolina, and finally ending up in Hawaii. She is joined by her daughter, and by her colleague, Detective Andrew Ryan in Hawaii. The mystery deepens further while there, but Temperance will have to get to the bottom of things if she is going to find out the identities of these three men.
I love the show Bones, but I have to say that Reichs’ books are absolutely my favourite of the two. I impatiently wait each year for Reichs’ newest book, and this one does not disappoint. Tempe is thrown into the mix immediately. What seems to be an easy open and shut case ends up turning into an intricately woven web of deceit. Just when she thinks she’s got things figured out, another layer presents itself. Reichs has done it again, she has created a masterful, and spellbinding book that you’ll be hesitant to put down.
The relationship between Brennan and Detective Ryan plays well throughout the novel, and certainly adds dimension to the book. The secondary characters also add some familiarity and intense interaction which makes the read move along at a faster pace. The plot was intricate in detail and design. It was a true thriller and “whodunit”. I’m almost sad that I finished the book as quickly as I did, but I eagerly await Reichs’ next novel just the same.
All in all, an excellent addition to the Temperance Brennan collection. Fans of Reichs’ novels will love this installment, and those who love the show Bones should give this one a read as it’ll add to the whole Brennan experience. It’ll take you on an exhilarating ride, and leave you breathless wanting more. I also have to say that this cover is absolutely stunning. I love it; almost as much as I love the book.
September 1st, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Review by Brian Baker for Spider Bones: A Novel
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In the usual Tempe Brennan novel, we have a crime that Tempe is called in to help solve through her skills in forensic anthropology, either by clearing up an identification of an old corpse, helping determine a cause of death, or something similar.
This novel is very different. Here we have what seems to be a parade of misidentified bodies, and Brennan’s trying to clear up that confusion as pretty much just a routine procedural matter. There’s no “crime” involved – at least at first – and in all honesty I felt I needed a scorecard to try to keep things straight. In fact, I had to keep going back and re-reading portions of the book, because I’d lose track of who was who on the slabs. It was like a weird version of the Abbot and Costello “Who’s on First” routine.
Further, I kept trying to figure out why I should really care. After all… nothing was really happening here!
This story is 302 pages long (hardback version), and it was page 191 before there was anything at all that could be called “action”. Even after that, it promptly fizzled back away.
There’s way too much information about the military’s efforts to identify war dead; some background on the Vietnam War (more on that in a moment); a whole lot of touristy travelogue-type stuff about Hawaii – WAY too much! – and the usual “do I love him, or don’t I?” stuff about her boyfriends (Make up her mind for her, Kathy. It’s getting old).
As a Vietnam veteran, I can safely say that some of the passages dealing with the war lack accuracy. Kathy, there wasn’t any such rank in the Army as Sp2. Specialist ratings started at Sp4, and went up from there. A “Sp2″ would have been an E-2, and that rank was actually a “Private”.
Well, I didn’t hate it, and I do like the series, so two stars.
September 1st, 2010 at 9:30 pm
Review by Judith Lindenau for Spider Bones: A Novel
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TMI–that’s what folks say these days when one has just experienced information overload. And that’s what I thought about “Spider Bones”. The background academics are overwhelming, and not really relevant to the plot in any meaningful way. Further, the information gets in the way of character development: do we really care about whether the heroine has a love affair with either of the two leading men, or whether her spoiled teenage daughter gets along with another equally spoiled young woman? All the crises and drama seems contrived and somewhat trivial, as does the overload of details about tiger sharks, body recovery, and gang tattoos.
That being said, Reichs is a good prose stylist and I much enjoyed the way she crafts her sentences and writes expository dialogue. It’s a good read, not a great one. Reading ‘Spider Bones’ will take time and you’ll feel like you are swimming in mud sometimes–relax and enjoy it.
September 1st, 2010 at 10:14 pm
Review by Harriet Klausner for Spider Bones: A Novel
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The deceased floater washed ashore near Hemmingford, Quebec. The dead male died during an autoerotic asphyxiation tryst. Identifying the victim through his fingerprints provide a thirteen point match with one problem. The dead man is American John Charles Lowery from North Carolina who was brought home in a body bag from Viet Nam in 1968.
Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan investigates the anomaly. However, Lowery’s father refuses to allow his son’s grave to be exhumed as he insists the family suffered enough decades ago and do not need that grief reopened. Although sympathizing with the father, Temperance insists on knowing who was buried in the grave of John Charles Lowery. She heads to Hawaii where she hopes to look at the Vietnam War records at the Defense department’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, but instead of making progress, her inquiry leads to more questions.
Spider Bones is a great forensic mystery starring a strong lead character and a solid support cast. Brennan is superb as her case twists and turns with more problems, another corpse, helping a local ME with a shark victim, and gang violence. This one is as good if not better than Tempe’s classic case Bones.
Harriet Klausner
September 1st, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Review by Samantha T for Spider Bones: A Novel
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Kathy Reich is usually my favorite author, I look foward to her new books every year and buy them in hardback. As usually her mystery is spot on and kept me engaged from the begining, but her characters left me flat. For the 13th book in the series I was just left ho hum. The relationship between Andy and Tempe and their respective kids was just distracting. They have been together broken up and are now left in this weird limbo that I just find anoying. I love the books where they are together or at least friends at this point it’s just weird. After all these books I find my self invested in these two characters so I am tired of limbo especially when he is so present in the the whole book. Please, either move them away from each other completely or put them together in the next book. This kind of nothing weird relationship distract from an otherwise good mystery
September 1st, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Review by Zack Davisson for Oliver Twist
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This book surprised me, not by the quality of its writing, which one can expect from Charles Dickens, but by the violent, lusty primal quality of the story. This is no dry musty tome, but a vital novel that arouses both passion and intellect. A literal page turner, I found myself having more than one sleepless night when I just couldn’t put it down.Inside are some of the major characters in the realm of fiction; Fagin and his gang of child thieves, including the Artful Dodger. Nancy, the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold. Master Charles Bates (was this a pun even then?) Bad Bill Sikes, who shows the darker edge to all of this dangerous fun, and the innocent, pure Oliver Twist, who is the very definition of nature over nurture.A great book, and one that I am glad to have finally read.
September 1st, 2010 at 11:49 pm
Review by Peter Reeve for Oliver Twist
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Oliver Twist is one of Dickens’ early novels – he worked on The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby simultaneously – and one of his best loved. It has what you would expect from him: memorable characters, evocative descriptions, melodrama, pathos (more often bathos) and a plot that relies on completely incredible coincidences. These latter are sometimes explained away by the characters themselves as being ordained by Fate, benign or otherwise, and must have been more acceptable to a Victorian readership than to one of the present day, who are likely to groan at each ‘who should it be but’ revelation.
The crossovers with Pickwick and Nickleby are noticeable. For example, The Artful’s court appearance is clearly intended to be as funny as Sam Weller’s, although it pales by comparison.
The most famous character is of course Fagin, and Dickens’ casual anti-Semitism in his treatment of him is another thing that might discomfit the modern reader. He references him as The Jew, always in a derogatory manner. That this is a reflection of contemporary attitudes can be seen from Scott’s Ivanhoe, in which Jewish characters are treated with similar hostility and contempt. But it is not the main characters that are most successful – and especially not the title character himself, who is innocent and bland beyond belief – but the supporting cast; Mr. Bumble and his lady, the servants in the house that gets burgled, the old bachelor who keeps threatening to eat his own head, and many others. They make the book a delight.
As always, Dickens is the master of descriptive narrative and he conjures a grim and compelling view of Victorian London’s underside.
If you have not yet read any Dickens, this is not a bad book with which to start, although for younger readers (teens) I would recommend Hard Times as their first. Either book will probably leave you, like Oliver, wanting more.
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:02 am
Review by for Oliver Twist
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A novel of this size can be daunting for the reader. “If I start this book, I’m going to have to spend the next month finishing it”. That’s what I thought anyway. But in Oliver Twist I sailed through the pages. It’s rare that a classic, and I have read many of them, becomes a page-turner but this one did. Maybe I was lucky in not having seen the film versions prior to the reading of the book because I desperately wanted to find out what happened to Oliver and the multitude of other brilliantly written characters who inhabit the pages of Dickens’ classic.The plot is simple. A boy escapes his orphan home to live in London with a group of thieves and pickpockets. He’s saved from this depraved life by a kindly, lonely old gentleman. But the villains, Bill Sykes and especially Fagin, fear that the boy may rat them out and so they kidnap him back. Can Oliver make it back to the life he deserves?Oliver’s story is not a very originally one, but it is enlivened by some of the greatest characters I’ve ever seen written. My personal favourites and there are many, are Noah Claypole who becomes a principle player and a very funny one at that, near the book’s conclusion; and Mr. Brownlow, who’s catchphrase “I’ll eat my own head” had me bursting into laughter. The book is diminished by its excessive sentimentality at the conclusion. Its female characters, apart from the courageous Nancy, are written in a golden light so as to become fantasies rather than the gloriously dirty reality of their male counterparts. A sub-plot between Mary and her boyfriend is ridiculously excessive.Against these weaknesses, the book is a triumph of character. Often memorably played on screen, the two villains have become more famous than the title character, who is slightly simpering. Fagin is deliciously smarmy and Sykes is evil incarnate. They get their comuppance in justifiably brutal fashion. Dickens like most of us was a sucker for a happy ending.
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:09 am
Review by Bianca Kramer for Oliver Twist
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The creative novel Oliver Twist, written by Charles Dickens in 1838, defines a classic of all times. This intense story reflects a young boy’s life in London with no family or place to go. Oliver’s mother dies while giving birth to her son in the beginning of the book. Oliver’s father remains unknown. Throughout the book the reader sees constant struggles. Oliver is befriended by Fagin and his company. Fagin, along with the Artful Dodger, invite Oliver to stay with them and become a thief. During one of Oliver’s pick pocketing adventures; he is caught by Mr. Brownlow. Instead of reprimanding the young lad, Mr. Brownlow decides to raise him. Oliver desperately searches for the answer to his past while trying to stay alive on the streets of London. Ironically, Mr. Brownlow is Oliver’s grandfather. A dominate theme of Oliver Twist examines the importance of family. Oliver’s early years taught him to fend for himself and he suffers from never experiencing a loving and nurturing childhood. The setting of the book plays a powerful role as the story unfolds. Dickens describes the setting of London and all the places that Oliver stays very descriptively. “The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odor. The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and dirt…” (page. 56). Dickens explains the facilities that were available to poor Oliver and makes them sound unbearable. He does an excellent job making the setting come alive and allows the reader to plight. I would recommend all readers at some point in life to delve into this classic. I found Oliver Twist very moving and towards the end hoping only the best for poor Oliver.
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:25 am
Review by for Oliver Twist
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I picked this book up at my local library for a book report. Since I am 14, I didn’t expect to really enjoy this book, but I had heard so much about it so I decided to read it. Once I had read the book, I was surprised at how much I liked it! I could not put this book down. There were numerous occasions where I kept wondering what would happen next. I was surprised by the murder. I guess I kind of saw it coming though since Sikes seems as if he has it in him. The trials Oliver goes through in this book really make you think. I was disappointed by Mr. Bumble. He treated Oliver as if he weren’t human. All in all, I enjoyed the characters. I give 5 stars to Dickens for writing this novel. He has made me an admirer of his books. Now I truly know why he is such a great author. Everyone should experience this book!