Finished: Eye of the Needle (Follet) Another very good page turning book by Follet, and he wrote it when he was only 27!! It's a story based on a set of real life events that took place in World War II...the deception used by the Allies to trick the Germans into thinkng that the coming assault by the Allies (one whose success or failure would alter the outcome of the war) was going to take place in Calais and not in Normandy! I didn't know about this history so even though the book was fiction, it was based on real life events that were fascinating. Apparently the U.S and Great Britain staged a huge fake army, complete with troop barracks and cardboard fighter airplanes, that when reconnaissed from the air by the enemy would look like a huge military presence was building  closer to Calais than Normandy. That trickery, along with carefully faked and "intercepted" messages stating the Allies' intentions did, in fact, end up tricking Hitler, keeping him from sending the necessary  troops to defeat the Allied troops landing at Normandy. In Eye of the Needle there are three main characters: Faber, Lucy and Professor Percy Godliman. Faber is a cold-hearted, dangerous, methodical  spy for the Germans who has been ensconced in England. His mission is to find out whether there really is such a huge military presence headed to Calais, or whether it's a ruse, and report back to Hitler himself. None of the American or British intelligence members have ever seen his face. He is known simply as Die Nadel (the Needle) because of the stiletto knife he uses to kill. Hitler's entire decision about where to place his troops rides on Faber getting the info and then making a rendezvous with a German submarine off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland. Percy, the professor, is a retired British agent with MI5 and is one of the best. He's called back into service to work with Scotland Yard's young lieutenant Fred Boggs. Together they stay right on the tail of Faber, who HAS now acquired photos of the sham barracks and airplanes. As they close in on The Needle, the normally unflappable spy makes two mistakes. First, he takes a fishing boat out in a stormy, raging North Sea to try and rendezvous with the submarine. Second, when he crashes, near death on Storm Island, ten miles out to sea he develops an uncharacteristic soft spot for one of its four inhabitants, Lucy Rose. Lucy and her husband live on the island with their three year old son, Jo. Married only four years before and unknowingly pregnant before their wedding day, Lucy lives with her cold, distant, sometimes cruel husband, David, who suffered  the loss of both legs on their wedding day in a horrific car accident. He had been all set to leave to be a fighter pilot in the British air force  the next day. His life shattered, his father sends him and his family to recuperate in one of the two cabins on Storm Island. David develops great upper body strength, learns to drive his special made jeep and befriends and works with the only other island inhabitant, old Tom, the sheephearder, whose purpose  on the island is to operate the one radio and be a first lookout for any enemy activity that may threaten Scotland. When Faber stumbles to Lucy and David's cabin door, there is an instant attraction between them since Lucy has neither been loved or made love to by her husband in four years. Lucy nurses Faber back to health, and he cleverly finds out that there are only four people  he'll have to deal with on the island a woman, a cripple, a toddler  and an old man....an old man who has the only radio...one Faber will use to call the submarine  and transmit his info to Hitler. Faber seduces Lucy but ends up developing  that soft spot for her so he doesn't kill her He does end up killing David and old Tom. When Lucy figures out what's  going on, she actually seduces Faber one last time and while he's sleeping afterward, takes Jo and her husbands liaded gunsm and high tails it to old Tom's  cabin. She finds Tom dead, but she also find a the radio! She can only manage to get off an SAS before Faber, who has now figured out that she's  on to him, makes his way there too kill her and send his message. The SOS does manage to alert Percy and Lt. Boggs who rally the coast guard and helicopters. Until they arrive, though Lucy is on her own! She manages to keep Faber at bay with the guns and an ax...even chopping off some of his fingers. When he finally gets the best of her, he dashes upstairs to send his message. Tough as nails Lucy unscrews the kitchen light bulb and puts  her hand in the socket, shorting  the whole house and causing  herself to pass out. She's  also prevented Faber from contacting  his submarine.  He comes downstairs  ready to kill her but he can't....he finds her to be too extraordinary. He decides instead to run for the cliffs, make his way down and swim for the submarine. However,  Lucy follows and throws a huge rock at him causing him to lose his balance and crash to his death on the rocks below! Lucy has killed the infamous Die Nadel!!! Of course, then all the help arrives. The MI5 sends a fake message to Hitler from Die Nadel telling him that reports of a huge presence near Calais are true, and the rest is truly history! :-) A really good book!

Finished: The Moon is Down (Steinbeck) A short, but very discerning book about the rigors of war on both the invaders and the invaded when a coastal town in an unnamed Northern European country is forcefully occupied by troops from another unnamed country. Steinbeck wrote this story, while he was heavily supporting the Allies in World War II, as a piece of propaganda for the Allies. Though the countries aren't named, the invaded town is in the thinly veiled country of Norway which was occupied by the Germans in WWII. The invaders never refer to Hitler, but refer to "the Leader". The coastal town is important for the fishing industry, but more importantly, it is a coal mining town. The Leader has sent down orders that the coal mine must be confiscated, railways built, and the coal shipped to their army for use. I don't really feel like writing a huge recap with all the characters because the book is still resonating very deeply with me. The colonel who is responsible for the attack is a war veteran from  World War I, so he's seen the travesty of his army being slaughtered, driven back in the snow, and defeated by Russia...yet he's still not willing to learn from any mistakes. Or, he just realizes that no matter what he already learned, he has no choice but to follow orders. His mindset, and the mindset of his men (and apparently The Leader) seems to be that if you cut off the head of the snake, the rest of the townspeople will fall into line. As they occupy the mayor's mansion, the colonel tries to use the mayor as a person who must deal out the punishment to his own town so that it's easier coming from someone they know rather than the aggressor. The mayor tries to explain that he's not an all-powerful person...that he was elected by the people and is, in essence, "the people" himself. One towns person is killed when he accidentally kills an officer while defending himself in the coal mine, and he is executed as a lesson. The colonel thinks this will quell the townspeople, but it only serves to make them a stronger unit as they subtly begin doing things to rebel and compromise the coal mining process. The months drag on and the mayor and the colonel have several meaningful talks, but the colonel's hands are tied and he never fully grasps that free people will prevail and win out over the ones trying to force them into servitude. At the end, the colonel listens to the advice of the one towns person who had been the spy and traitor in the beginning, making sure the town's security forces of a mere twelve men were out at a festival in their honor far from town on invasion day. This store owner tells the colonel that the only solution is to threaten the people, who are definitely hampering the invading army's progress, with the death of their highly respected mayor. So, though he is afraid of dying at the end, the mayor does get a message out that the people should prevail and keep showing resistance. He can't make the colonel understand that killing him will not weaken the people, but strengthen them and that more leaders will rise up from the multitude of men. It's just a very interesting and sad look at war...especially at the townspeople on one side and the enlisted men on the other, who are really nothing more than townspeople from their OWN towns thrown into the war like so many others. Not all are the officers with the mindset of the men who follow and revere the Leader. I really have enjoyed all the Steinbeck books I've read, as depressing as many of them are, they just dig deep and make you think about how things realistically were and sometimes still are today.

Finished: Far From The Madding Crowd (Hardy) Another Hardy classic, and this one with a happy ending...eventually. A headstrong, beautiful young woman, Bathsheba Everdene, inherits her uncle's farm in England and decides to run it by herself rather than be dependent on a man to do so. She's not full of herself or manipulative, but she most definitely has three different men in love with her. Early on, before she inherits the farm, she's at work helping a different aunt on a different farm when she meets neighboring farmer, Gabriel Oak. He has invested all his money in the sheep he keeps, and is doing just fine. He is, at that time, higher ranking in society than Bathsheba. Gabriel and Bathsheba share a brief closeness, and she runs from her feelings and leaves her aunt's farm...soon after that she inherit her other uncle's farm. In their brief encounter, Gabriel falls in love with Bathsheba, but can do nothing about it when she leaves. Sadly, Gabriel's entire investment is lost, and thus his farm, when an inexperienced sheep herding dog leads all his sheep over a cliff to their deaths! Gabriel is then forced to travel from town to town looking for work. When he ends up in Bathsheba's town, he ends up saving her farm crops from a fire without even knowing it's her farm. She hires him on immediately to be her shepherd, but it's a very lowly job compared to what he once was. She doesn't acknowledge their prior closeness, but does come to depend on his advice, honesty, dependability, and friendship. Gabriel's a good man and does all he can to help Bathsheba to succeed in the farming and sheep raising field of mostly men. And, despite still being in love with Bathsheba, Gabriel even goes so far as to give her advice to marry Farmer Boldwood when he comes courting, because Boldwood is in love with Bathsheba and with his neighboring farm, would provide Bathsheba security and a good future. Boldwood borders on craziness in his love for Bathsheba, though, and she doesn't really return his feelings. She promises to think about his marriage proposal while he's away for six weeks....but, of course, while Boldwood is away, the dashing Sergeant Troy comes to town and turns Bathsheba's head. Unfortunately, Sergeant Troy is not a nice guy. He's already responsible for wooing Bathsheba's uncle's maid, Fanny, to the point where Fanny left her job and followed Troy's regiment, giving herself in every way to Troy. Troy dumps Fanny, as he truly has no respect for women. He woos Bathsheba and convinces her to marry him, against the solid advice of Gabriel, who is one of only two people who knows that Troy compromised Fanny's reputation and then left her. Bathsheba, with hearts in her eyes, though, falls completely for Troy and marries him. She comes to regret it soon enough when he doesn't care nearly as much about the farm as she does. He resigns his commission in the British military and would rather spend his time drinking with the boys and going off to gamble away Bathsheba's money at the horse races. When Boldwood returns to town and realizes that Troy has swooped in and taken his soon to be fiance, he's devastated. Of course, Bathsheba tries to tell him that she never promised him she'd marry him, but he's still very affected. One day, Bathsheba and Troy meet a very sick and fragile Fanny on the road. Bathsheba has no idea who the woman is, but Troy begs Fanny to meet him the next day in the next town over. Sadly, Fanny is in terrible shape. She makes it to the town, but dies, along with her newly born baby. Bathsheba finds out what Fanny meant to Troy and they have a huge fight. Troy leaves the farm and is presumed dead when his clothes are found by the shore of a treacherous whirlpool spot near the ocean. We couldn't possibly be so lucky for him to be dead though. No, a fishing boat picks him up. Instead of going home to Bathsheba, though, Troy stays gone for several weeks and makes ends meet. He doesn't love Bathsheba any more and he's afraid if he goes back, he'll be legally responsible for her failing farm...or the farm he assumes must now be failing because he's not there. In fact, Bathsheba doesn't truly believe that Troy is dead, but she keeps her farm going with the able help of Gabriel, who is now also doing most of the work on Boldwood's farm, since Boldwood is still a bit despondent. Boldwood gets it into his head, though, that once six years has passed and Troy is truly considered legally dead, that Bathsheba will marry him. He begs, pleads, and guilts Bathsheba into saying she'll give him an answer by Christmas as to whether she'll become his betrothed in six years. It's pretty strange! Boldwood holds a huge Christmas party where he plans to put a ring on Bathsheba's finger. He's practically just forced her to say yes she'll marry him in six years (even though she does not love him at all, but feels she owes him) when who should crash the party but Sergeant Troy!! He's Alive! He has seen that Bathsheba has been successful on the farm and decided to go back and live off her money rather than live hand to mouth. When he grabs Bathsheba and insists that his wife come back with him to the farm, Bathsheba has a momentary female moment and screams. When she screams, Boldwood, thinking her harmed, grabs a gun and kills Troy. Boldwood's men prevent him from then killing himself, but he goes to town and turns himself in at the prison. Gabriel, as usual, is there as a rock for Bathsheba. He is actually given control of Boldwood's farm by Boldwood, who is sentenced to life in prison, so Gabriel comes back up in the world from hard work and honesty. However, Gabriel still loves Bathsheba and thinks that she would never love him, especially after what she's been through. When he tells Bathsheba that he's going to leave and make his way in America, she gets terribly upset and asks why he would desert her. He says he knows she would never have agreed to a life with him, even though she's always known he loves her. She says, but you never asked, did you? So...they have this admission of loving each other and get quietly married with the farm men that work for Bathsheba very thrilled for the both of them. A happy ending! Yay! I was so worried that Bathsheba was going to be pregnant by Troy and die or be raped by Boldwood or something. She ended up being a good, hardworking person who got the good, hardworking guy in the end! I really enjoy Hardy's writing. He's very descriptive in setting up his nature scenes and environment and slowly letting you get to know the supporting characters as well as the main characters. A good book!

Finished: Palace of Desire (Mahfouz) The second book in the Cairo Trilogy, the family saga written by Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The story of tyrannical Egyptian patriarch, al-Sayyid Ahmad abd al-Jawad, his dutiful wife, and their five children continues five years after the first book and the tragic death of middle son and aspiring law student, Fahmy. Though al-Sayyid Ahmad swore off his drinking, womanizing, and carousing with friends for an entire year after Fahmy's death, he is now back to his old ways, once again going out every night, only to come home in the middle of the night and expect his wife, Amina, to help him get undressed, wash his feet, etc. And, as he did with his old habits, al-Sayyid Ahmad falls in love with a prostitute much younger than himself, going so far as to buy her a houseboat to live on. When she insists that he marry her and have two wives, al-Sayyid Ahmad draws the line and says no. The prostitute then dumps him and goes after his already married oldest son, Yasin. Yasin is much like his father. He falls in love more with the pursuit of women, and then tires of them after a few weeks. Unfortunately, he's on his second marriage and tired of his second wife right after the honeymoon, so when pursued by the prostitute, Zanuba, who wants to be a "real lady", he actually cheats on his second wife with her, divorces his second wife and marries Zanuba. Meanwhile, the years since Fahmy's death have been hard on his mother, Amina. There isn't much story for her, but she's a shell of who she used to be. Youngest son, Kamal, who was only twelve in the first book, is now seventeen and graduating from school, having successfully completed the exams to allow him to continue on with university study. His father wants him to be a lawyer at the very least, but Kamal is the dreamy-eyed romantic and wants to study literature and philosophy, which means going to the Teacher's College instead of the prestigious Law School. Much of the story is spent on Kamal's idealism and his unrequited love for his best friend's sister. For awhile, you think maybe he has a chance, but it ends up she was just using him to make the true person she wanted to propose to her jealous. With Kamal we get the most inner turmoil and reflection with his almost every thought being written by the author before Kamal speaks, usually saying the opposite of his deep, tortured thoughts. The two sisters, Aisha and Khadija, are both still married to the older men (brothers) they were married off to in the first book. Aisha is still the beautiful non-wave making sister, and she now has three young children, a daughter and two sons. Khadija is still the outspoken force she always was and is at constant odds with her mother-in-law who wants to tell her what to do. Khadija now has two young boys. The book is very well written and stays on the verge of delving into the political climate of the time in Egypt. Kamal and his friends have many lengthy political discussions, but not so lengthy that you lose interest. It's hard not to care about the more sympathetic characters. I'm not really so attached to the father or the older brother, since I can't stand their behavior...even if it was typical,"expected" and condoned behavior at that time in that country. As the book was winding down, I was in the process of deciding if I wanted to read book three when a cruel cliffhanger was tossed in at the end. :-( We were left with Aisha's husband and two young sons clinging to life from a typhoid outbreak, while the rest of the grandchildren stayed at al-Sayyid and Amina's house. I have a feeling the next book will take another jump and we will have lost those beings. :-(

Finished: Right Behind You (Gardner) The latest book by one of two authors whose every book I read! In this one, Gardner brings back the married duo of detective Rainie Connor and FBI profiler, Pierce Quincy. The very first book I ever read of Lisa Gardner's years ago involved a crime where Rainie and Quincy met and worked together. Several books later, they ended up married. I love the characters, love the books, and love that they are set on the Oregon coast! In this one, Rainie and Quincy are about to adopt their 13 year old foster daughter, Sharlah, who they took in three years before. Sharlah was only five when her abusive father stabbed her alcoholic mother with a butcher knife and watched as her father then tried to chase down her beloved, protective nine year old brother, Telly. Handing Telly a baseball bat, she then watched as her brother beat their father to death out of self-defense. Blacking out in the process, Telly also accidentally hit Sharlah and broke her arm. When authorities finally got involved, both kids were kept apart "for their own good" and put in separate foster homes. Having finally ended up with Rainie and Quincy, Sharlah hasn't seen Telly in eight years, when his face appears on a surveillance camera showing that he is the number one suspect in the deaths of a convenience store worker, another customer, and as the police soon discover, his two foster parents, great people who had taken him under their wing and were teaching the seventeen year old all about life skills, about caring about other people, about being part of a family. Could Telly really have murdered the only adults to ever have taken an interest in him? And, when Sharlah goes looking for Telly, will he still love his little sister or is she in danger? Another great, page-turning book, again set on the Oregon coast! :-)

Finished: Lonesome Dove (McMurtry) A great, sprawling, epic of a book, a Pulitzer Prize winner, with characters that you instantly love or hate, who you root for and against...a book that I savored and hated to see end. Lonesome Dove is the story about two famous ex-Texas Rangers, best friends, Woodrow Call and Augustus McRae, who decide to leave the ranch they've settled on in Texas after retiring from the Rangers, to drive hundreds of head of cattle all the way to the unexplored Montana, just on the word of another ex-partner of theirs, Jake Spoon. Jake, who is mostly a self-centered, gambling, lady's man, convinces Call that he should be the first person to drive cattle and horses up through the dangerous Comanche country, and other Indian territories to Montana and make a mint settling the first horse and cattle ranch. Once Call gets the idea in his head, there's no stopping him. Even his best friend and partner of 40 years, Gus, can't get him to see reason. Gus would rather stay in Lonesome Dove and drink whiskey on the porch and visit the one prostitute in town, the beautiful, sweet and young Lorena. However, Gus isn't about to let Call go off and have this adventure on his own, so he agrees to go and take their motley crew of cowhands from the Hat Creek Cattle Company, Call and Gus' livery company. The crew consists of Pea-Eye, who has traveled with the Captain, as Call is known, for years and is loyal and a great cowhand, but very dumb; Deets, Call's right-hand man and superior tracker, a black man who can smell weather and trouble coming a few days out; Bolivar, the Mexican cook; Dish Boggett, the most talented cowboy of the hands, a young man who is hopelessly in love with Lorena; and Newt Dobbs, a teenage boy who has been raised by Call and Gus since his mother, another prostitute named Maggie, and apparently the only woman Call has ever been with, died. Everybody but Newt knows that Newt is Call's son by Maggie, but Call is stubborn and refuses to admit that he didn't do the right thing and stay with Maggie, who loved him. He'd rather never acknowledge Newt than admit being mistaken or weak. Then, there's also the good-looking Jake Spoon. The minute he rides into town and sees Lorena, he falls for her and she for him. The men are used to Lorena never talking much and just doing her business but suddenly she's animated and happy. Jake throws a wrench into Call's plans by insisting that he bring Lorena along on the arduous cattle drive. Call hates this idea, but he also hates to lose Jake as a cowhand. Too much happens to be able to recap the entire book. The gang takes on a few more cowhands, and a few tragedies happen along the way....including the death of one of the young Irish immigrant cowhands as he crosses the very first river they come to and he accidentally rides into a nest of water moccasins and is bitten to death. :-( The biggest tragedy early on is when Jake selfishly rides into town to gamble, leaving Lorena alone in their tent allowing the evil Blue Duck, a half Indian, half Mexican bandit, to kidnap Lorena. He mercilessly drags her across the terrain and sells her first to some other Indians, who constantly abuse her, and then to a couple of trappers who abuse her the same way. By the time Gus comes to the rescue (because Jake is too selfish and cowardly to go after her), Lorena is just a former shell of herself, is half dead, can no longer speak and clings to Gus for dear life for the rest of the cattle drive. He nurses her back to health, but she becomes very dependent on him. Meanwhile, Dish is doing an excellent job driving the cattle, but he is jealous of Gus and Lorena's closeness and he's still head over heels in love with Lorena. And, Newt is learning all about the hardships of living on the land and being at the back of the cattle drive. Other characters come into the story and cross paths with either Gus or Call. The "girl that got away" from Gus, Clara, who turned down his marriage proposal only to marry a "boring" horse-trader, now lives on a ranch in Nebraska. Her husband lies comatose in their house after being kicked in the head by a horse. Clara is raising her two young girls after losing all three of her sons as young boys. Over in Arkansas, we meet sheriff July Johnson. He's been married a short time to Elmira, who is in love with another man and has a ten-year old son, Joe, from yet another man. Elmira is tired of being married to July, even though it's only been a few months. When July's brother is accidentally shot by a gambler, his sister-in-law insists that July chase the culprit to Texas. It ends up, the culprit is none other than Jake Spoon! So, they are all destined to meet up. Elmira insists that July take little Joe with him. When he does, she leaves town in search of the man she loves, Dee Boot. Out on the road July meets up with Gus as he is out to rescue Lorena. He goes with Gus to help out, and doesn't even pull his gun before Gus has gunned down all the men but Blue Duck, who escapes. When July gets back to camp, Blue Duck has killed little Joe and the deputy sheriff who'd been traveling with them. :-( July feels terribly guilty. Elmira takes up with a couple of buffalo hunters who are traveling the direction she wants to go to try and find Dee boot. What she had never told July was that she is pregnant with his child. She ends up at Clara's ranch in Nebraska about to give birth!! She nearly dies giving birth, and then up and leaves the baby, a boy, with Clara and continues her search for Dee. Eventually, after learning through a letter that his wife has left him while he's away, July quits chasing Jake Spoon and starts going after Elmira. July makes his way to Clara's and Clara puts two and two together and realizes that July is the father of the baby she now loves. When July realizes that Elmira truly wants nothing to do with him or their baby, he stays on at the ranch and helps Clara out with duties and her girls. Gosh, so much happens in this book. Sadly, the gang ends up losing Deets, the first major character to die. Call insists that they keep going north. He's determined to make it to Montana, but not before Gus insists on stopping in Nebraska to see Clara, his long lost love. Despite possible jealousy, Clara takes to Lorena like a daughter, and Lorena takes to the "normal" life. Gus and Clara share some memories, and Gus reunites with July Johnson, who is still working there. Clara tells Gus that the trail is no place for Lorena and invites her to stay on with them. Lorena, much to both Gus' and her own surprise, says yes. The Hat Creek gang continues on and has made it into Montana when Gus and Pea Eye ride ahead scouting one day. A small band of Indians catch them by surprise and shoot Gus with a couple of arrows to the leg. Gus sends Pea Eye back to fetch Call, and when the Indians finally leave, he sets out for the closest town. By the time he gets there, his leg is black and must come off. By the time Call gets to the town, the doctor tells him that Gus will die if the second leg doesn't come off as well but Gus refuses. He makes Call promise to deliver letters to Clara and Lorena and to take his body back to Texas to be buried. Call agrees to the promises, and then loses his best friend, the irascible Gus. Call puts Gus on ice until winter is done, and heads back to the herd. They keep driving even further north until Call is finally satisfied with their location. He then enlists the cowhands to build a log cabin, corrals, etc. When spring comes, he wants badly to tell Newt that he's proud of him and how he has turned into a fine horseman....and that he's his son. Instead, Call, the man of few words and fewer emotions, gives Newt his famous mare, Hellbitch, his gun, and his father's pocket watch. He does everything but say the words that Newt is his son. Of course, by now both Gus and Clara had told Newt that Call was his father, so Call's refusal to be able to say it just confuses Newt. Call leaves to take Gus' body back to Texas and has his own misadventures along the way. He nearly dies, but finally makes it to the spot where Gus wanted to be buried, and then back to the run down ranch house of the Hat Creek gang in Lonesome Dove. I see that there is a sequel to Lonesome Dove and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to read it! Larry McMurtry is truly in a class of his own in developing characters and making the reader really feel for them! He is responsible, after all, for my favorite movie of all time, Terms of Endearment! I see more McMurtry in my future. :-)