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From School Library Journal

YA-Native American Jennifer Talldeer is a private investigator who usually deals with mundane cases of divorce, insurance fraud, and missing persons. Her cantankerous grandfather is teaching her the skills of a shaman and the magic possessed by warriors. When she is hired by an insurance company to look into the bombing of a shopping mall where fragments of Indian artifacts are discovered, both of these interests come into play. The burial ground of her ancestors has been destroyed as well as the mall site, freeing evil spirits who hinder the investigation and threaten to destroy her and the entire world. Jennifer must also deal with the return of her former lover, David Spotted Horse, who is an Indian activist and a prime suspect in the bombing. Skillfully weaving a tale of fantasy, mystery, and Native American folklore, Lackey has written a unique novel sure to appeal to YAs.
Katherine Fitch, Lake Braddock Secondary School, Burke, VA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Jennifer Talldeer, a private investigator and Osage shaman-in-training, follows a trail of sabotage and murder as a routine insurance investigation unearths a conspiracy between an unscrupulous businessman and a powerful spirit of vengeance. Set in contemporary Oklahoma, Lackey's fantasy/mystery crossover draws on the region's rich Native American heritage for atmosphere. Although the villain's identity is apparent early in the tale, a strong female protagonist and colorful supporting characters maintain interest in an otherwise predictable story. The author's popularity should ensure a readership for this title.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An Emmy Award-winning writer for The Colbert Report follows in the (big) footsteps of Bigfoot: I Not Dead.

Monsters have it tough. Besides being deeply misunderstood, they suffer from very real problems: Mummies have body image issues, Godzilla is going through an existential crisis, and creatures from the black lagoon face discrimination from creatures from the white lagoon. At heart, these monsters are human; after all, you are what you eat. Quirkily illustrated, Sad Monsters hilariously documents the trials and tribulations of all the undead creatures monster-mad readers have grown to love, from vampires and werewolves, to chupacabras and sphinxes, and even claw-footed bathtubs.<

From Publishers Weekly

Relating a gruesome story through the first-person narrative of an ingenuous 15-year-old boy, horror novelist Laymon ( The Stake ) appears to aim at the complex tone of Huckleberry Finn . He doesn't even come close, although that parallel might explain his London-born narrator's curiously un-British speech patterns ("gas lamps didn't give off a whole lot of light"). After witnessing Jack the Ripper's final murder on the streets of Whitechapel in 1888, Trevor Bentley is pursued by the psychopath into the Thames and ends up as his prisoner on a yacht bound for America. Improbable plot twists take both characters to Arizona, where the Ripper wreaks havoc while Trevor encounters a couple of snake-oil salesmen, rides with a bandit gang, becomes a crack shot and falls in love with pert, 16-year-old Jesse Sue Longley. The young couple survive a gore-splattered encounter with the Ripper in an Arizona cave, going on to marriage and a career in the snake-oil business. The grisly mutilation scenes induce no horror, Trevor's unrelenting innocence becomes tiresome, and his byplay with Jesse skirts soft-core kiddy-porn.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In 1888, Following a disturbance at home, Trevor Bentley's mother sends the 15-year-old to find his uncle, a constable on the London police force. Trevor embarks on a bizarre sequence of adventures, beginning with his witnessing Jack the Ripper at work. Over the next few months, the Ripper and Trevor pursue each other across the Atlantic and on to Arizona, sometimes exchanging roles of hunter and the hunted. Laymon's other horror novels include The Stake (St. Martin's, 1992) and, under the pseudonym Richard Kelly, Midnight's Lair (St Martin's, 1991). He is an accomplished wordsmith, but Savage 's plot falters with too many improbabilities and the author's denigrating peep show presentation of his women characters. Not a necessary puchase.
- Robert Jordan, Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

SUMMARY: Her weapons: Money and Power. Her target: The most dangerous man in the world--her son. Elizabeht Wyckman Scarlatti has a plan--a desperate, last-minute gamble--designed to save the world from her own son, Ulster, an incalculably dangerous man who is working under the name of Heinrich Kroeger: Unless she can stop him, he is about to give Hitler's Third Reich the most powerful triumph on earth. "Great, astonishing, the most spellbinding suspense in years!"-- "Minneapolis Tribune." "Has that sense of drama and pact that only the best storytellers have."-- "San Francisco Chronicle." "Drive and excitement from first page to last."--Mario Puzo, author of "The Godfather." "Gripping. . .Ludlum writes with imagination and convincing authority."-- "Baltimore Sun"<

The murder of two clam fishermen off the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, draws Commissario Brunetti into the close-knit community of the island, bound together by a code of loyalty and a suspicion of outsiders worthy of the Mafia. When the bossís secretary Signorina Elettra volunteers to visit the island, where she has relatives, Brunetti finds himself torn between his duty to solve the murders, concerns for Elettra's safety, and his not entirely straightforward feelings for her Ö<

In this great American masterpiece, which served as the basis for the classic John Wayne film, two men with very different agendas push their endurance beyond all faith and hope to find a little girl captured by the Comanche.<

From Publishers Weekly

Lescroart starts slowly and takes too much time building reader interest in this latest addition to his acclaimed San Francisco legal suspense series featuring lawyer Dismas Hardy and cop pal Abe Glitsky (The First Law, The Oath, The Hearing). Dismas is firmly ensconced at the top of his flourishing law firm, and Abe has been made deputy chief of investigations, but neither man really enjoys his exalted executive status. Dismas, who seldom finds himself in a real courtroom these days, has become a high-priced legal fixer who takes meetings, goes to lunch and drinks too much, while Abe yearns for the intellectual challenge and physical thrills of a good murder investigation. Dismas's up-and-coming associate, Amy Wu, lands a case defending Andrew North, a troubled 17-year-old who's been arrested for murdering his girlfriend and high school drama coach. In an attempt to have him tried as a juvenile rather than an adult, Amy commits the inexplicable error of admitting her client's guilt to the district attorney before even speaking to the accused teenager. After this egregious blunder, Dismas joins his normally stellar associate as "second chair" in the trial and manages to rescue the case and shake his own disillusionment with the legal system. While readers new to the series might feel a bit left behind (Lescroart spends too much time referring to events in past books, particularly The First Law), old fans and those who persevere will be rewarded with a compassionate look at life's vicissitudes and a thorny multiple murder case.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Lescroart regulars Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky may have survived a deadly shootout in The First Law (2003), but their psyches are on life support. Hardy drinks too much and cuts deals instead of practicing law. Glitsky's still a hardworking "procedure freak," but his guts are killing him, and he struggles in his new hands-off role as San Francisco's deputy chief of investigations. Amy Wu, an up-and-comer in Hardy's law firm, isn't doing well, either; grieving her father's death, she's looking for love in singles bars and spinning out of control. When Wu is retained to represent a high-school student accused of shooting his girlfriend and drama coach, the evidence is so damning, she arranges a plea bargain without consulting her client. He refuses to plead guilty, and Wu's miscalculation alienates her from judge, prosecutor, client, and boss. When Hardy steps in to sit "second chair" and assist on the case--and uncovers evidence that suggests their client may actually be innocent--he rediscovers his love of lawyering. An embattled Glitsky, meanwhile, searches for a serial killer who appears to be executing victims at random. This has some familiar ingredients, including a wealthy, difficult client seemingly caught dead to rights, and some twists are somewhat predictable. But that's no matter. Under Lescroart's assured hand, this perfectly paced tale of legal procedure and big-city politics keeps us turning pages even when it's time to turn in at night. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved