Author Lee Brooks is an actor who appeared in several television shows and the movie “Sideways.” His book Stealing Castro’s Daughter: a memoir, depicts Cuba accurately and in a heartfelt way depicts the failure of the Communist government on the island. It is a love story whose antagonist is Fidel Castro’s oppressive regime and its failed political machine. The book introduces us to characters from Castro’s secret police, human smugglers, corrupt politicians and officials in various surrounding islands and good people who just want to see love triumph over every obstacle. I think this book could make a great movie. (I’m sure Lee Brooks knows this already.)

The problem that I have with the book is that it is poorly written and horrendously edited. There are numerous grammatical mistakes in the book and at least two repeated words in a sentence. I felt it was so amateurish that I looked up the publisher’s web site. It turns out that the “publisher” is a self-service publisher that charges to print anyone’s book and distribute it. That explains the lack of professionalism in the book. I think Lee Brooks should have hired a professional to write the book or at least edit it.

Author Colum McCann received the National Book Award for Let the Great World Spin and it is well deserved. While reading the book, I felt I had been transported back to the early 1970s. The issues of the day are all described through the lives of the characters. You feel the anguish that mothers feel towards the loss of their sons in the Vietnam war. You experience the moral decay of New York city and the hopeless and helpless life of three generations of prostitutes. You also feel the dramatic similarity in the despair of rich and poor alike. More importantly, you also get a sense of how our warmth and love for one another is redemptive. It conquers all obstacles and makes a few very unlikely people become friends, lovers and married couples.

I think that this is a great book—one that will be used in schools and that will withstand the test of time to become a classic of American fiction. I love it and can’t wait to see more work from this excellent author.

My reading of the book makes me feel that it is historically accurate. My only reservation is that the authors may have a liberal bias. I do not know enough about their backgrounds to make a definitive statement. What I do know is from the inside flap of the book which says that John Heilemann is the national political correspondent and columnist for "New York" magazine and that he has written for "The New Yorker," "Wired" and "The Economist." Mark Halperin is editor-at-large and senior political analyst for "Time" magazine and also worked for ten years as the political director for ABC News. Their resumes do not exactly provide any reassurance of lack of bias.

The book is well written and is extremely interesting. I had to force myself to put it down and do other things. Because of this, I would recommend the book. My favorite quote from the book is from then Senator Hillary Clinton on March 3, 2008: “I have a lifetime of experience I will bring to the White House. Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he made in 2002.”

There were only two chapters that really captivated me. One was about Lynn who is one of the partners at the ad agency. In the chapter, she deals with her potential breast cancer alone by driving around Chicago. It was interesting because your could really feel warmth towards her and her fears. It also exposes a very human side to a character that is otherwise portrayed as all business.

The other chapter that I enjoyed was the last one. One reason I liked it was that I could move on to a more interesting book, but I also liked it because you get to find out several interesting facts about what happens to all the characters. Like real life, some characters end up in somewhat messy circumstances and others succeed.

of months, his social circle discovers that the Chilean girl is not really from Chile at all. The discovery of her duplicity forces her to disappear completely from parties and other events.

Many years later, Ricardo moves to Paris and through a series of friends and events runs into the “Chilean” girl again. This time she is posing as a guerrilla fighter that is on her way to Cuba on a scholarship to become trained by Fidel Castro’s communists. He once again pledges his undying love to his “bad girl.” She offers to stay with him in Paris and marry him if he can convince the leaders of the guerrilla movement to release her from having to go to Cuba. Ricardito, as she refers to him, is unable to accomplish this and she leaves to Cuba. They agree to be together at the end of her training in Cuba.

She starts her “bad girl” career by shacking up with a Cuban military leader. When Ricardo sees her years later she is with a rich Parisian gentleman. The story traverses decades of a love affair that is largely one sided. Ricardo loves the bad girl, but never measures up in her mind. She is a woman in pursuit of riches and safety. He is a mediocre translator who has no aspirations beyond his happy existence.

The richness of detail in this book makes you feel for both characters. It is a book so superbly written that it cannot be put down once you start reading it. There are many story line twists and revelations that make the story compelling. You end up liking all the characters in the book—including the bad girl.

I recommend this book unequivocally. If you know Spanish, you might want to read it in the native language. However, I felt that the English version was perfectly and eloquently translated.

In the world of Dean Koontz, everything is possible. In his books, I have read of people with supernatural powers, Elvis roaming the country as a sad ghost, and dogs that can do just about anything. This book is no different. Cubby has a brilliant son who attempts to build time travel machines and devices that can affect the space-time continuum. There is, of course, a dog with supernatural powers in the book. No one knows this for sure until close to the end of the story, but the dog can do some amazing things.

It is easy to think that this is a book written by an author who is a little crazy, but it is not. The book is just a fun story with a moral message. This is also consistent with all of Dean Koontz’s books. I enjoyed reading the story and absolutely loved the last couple of sentences that relate to the title of the book. I would quote it here, but it might ruin some of the story for you. Get yourself a copy, you won’t regret it.

Linda. The stranger assumes that the “good guy” is a hit man. The real hit man walks in a while later and strikes up a conversation with the good guy. Tim, the good guy, hands over the money to the hit man and tells him that he has had a change of heart.

This beginning would get anyone interested in what happens next and that is exactly what happened to me. I was not disappointed with this story. Dean Koontz weaves an intricate tale that is better than any suspenseful movie I have ever seen. The assassin is a bad-ass who seems to be well connected and who kills relentlessly and without one bit of mercy or guilt.

No one is exactly what you are led to believe in the book. You discover near the end of the book, the true nature of the “good guy” and his, and Linda’s past. The writing is excellent and enchanting. Here are the two first sentences of the book: “Sometimes a mayfly skates across a pond, leaving a brief wake as thin as spider silk, and by staying low avoids those birds and bats that feed in flight. At six feet three, weighing two hundred ten pounds, with big hands and bigger feet, Timothy Carrier could not maintain a profile as low as that of a skating mayfly, but he tried.

I recommend this book highly. Buy one now, or go to the Lincoln Park (NJ) library or one closer to you and borrow it.

The narrative takes place at the end of the Cold War in Krakow, Poland. The focus is on sex, more sex and group sex. The story is difficult to believe because of the overwhelming Catholicism of Poland, but this is a story—not a history. In the story, there are two expatriate Americans living in Poland. These two are perhaps the characters most lacking in morality. One has abandoned a woman at home who has just delivered his child and the other is his cousin who likes to engage in sex with anyone who is willing to drop his pants—including her cousin. Together they embark on a life of irresponsibility and decadence.

As I mentioned early in this review, the book is excellently written and the characters are vivid. What is lacking is cohesive story to tie it all together. There are some subplots that are creative and entertaining, but there is no overall plot to take you from point A to point B. If there were such a storyline the book would be perfect. This quote should give you an idea of the quality of the writing:

Morality, she said lightly, is a circus tent. The big top. It’s gilded, gawdy, flocked, and garish. High, pointy, righteous, and mighty. (She shaped this out with her hands, molding a two-foot circus tent in the air in front of them.) It looks gorgeous from above, and it keeps us hidden from the eye of God. We love morality. We need it. We like it. Just like we like our traffic laws. But it’s really only there fro what’s hidden inside it. Inside the tent—that’s where we get to cheer and scream. Inside’s where we eat teeth-rotting food and fly the trapeze, where we walk the tightrope, drive the animals crazy with whips and chairs and meaty treats. There’s no good. There’s no evil. Morality is nothing but a flimsy old tent, the pretense of knowing right from wrong in a beautiful world where anything goes!

I recommend the book for the quality of the prose and its almost poetic beauty, but must hold back from saying that it is a must read.

It took me a while to get used to the disjointed writing that Mr. Palahniuk has put forth with this book. The shifting point of view is also very disconcerting for at least a third of the book. After that, you do get the idea and understand what is going on. In the first third of the book, you read passages that are the same, but are from the point of view of different Misters in the queue and really don’t get it. (At least, I did not get it.)

I was disappointed with this book. I thought the story line was awful. I thought the characters lacked depth. I thought the premise was boring and trite and like a porn film, it had no plot or intrigue. This book was recommended to me by a friend who had read some other works by the same author. Honestly, I wish he had not recommended it and I had kept my money. Stay away.

If anyone falls short in Bateman’s eyes, he believes that they are subhuman and does not think twice about killing them in the most painful and demeaning way he can conjure. He routinely burns dollar bills in front of homeless people and then gouges their eyes with a knife to show them how powerful he believes he is. He kills women and dismembers them and often cooks and eats their parts. In one chapter, he copulates with one date’s decapitated head. In other words, this is one sick character and book.

The book is grisly and not for the faint of heart. It starts off slow, but then becomes a blood-soaked roller coaster ride of decadence and evil. It is full of gore, drug use and characters who are completely jaded and see no value in a simple life. After reading this book, I felt like I should go to the nearest place of worship just to make sure no demons had possessed me. If it were not for the fact that the book is a satirical look at the culture of excess, it would have no redeeming value.

One positive thing that could be said about the book is that it is well written and makes you feel like you are there experiencing the action. It was orders of magnitude scarier and more repulsive than the film that was released with the same name. This is a testament to the descriptive writing that Bret Easton Ellis produced.

Patrick Bateman has no redeeming characteristics. He cannot even understand or accept love from his fiancé or from his secretary who is not-so-secretly in love with him. He is a human being devoid of humanity. If you are into a graphic portrayal of decadence at its worst, then this book is for you.