Finished: The Chain (McKinty) A suspenseful, page-turning, perfect read for a long airline flight, The Chain is about a single mother whose 13 year old daughter is kidnapped. The kicker is...the kidnapper says the mother must kidnap another child, contact those parents, and the ransom for THAT child be paid, before her own daughter will be released. Hence...the chain. Parents are trapped in a nightmare where they have no choice but to commit a crime and put another set of parents exactly what they are going through before their own child is released. And, we all know that parents will do anything for their children. The children are always returned unharmed (of course, because they are being held by other parents whose own child is being held by someone else!) The people who run the entire operation ask for a ransom that they know the parent(s) can afford. Over the years, they've made millions. They are an adult twin brother and sister pair who were rescued from a cult their mother had taken them to as infants. Rescued by their father and survivalist-type grandfather at an early age, they were raised by their grandfather after their father died. They are both extremely intelligent, one even working in the FBI, but they are obviously devoid of any morals. The single mom who we follow throughout the story, Rachel, is a divorced, cancer-surviving mother of Kylie, who has just been kidnapped when the story begins. Rachel's ex-husband, who had left her for another woman, is in the periphery of the story, and becomes more prominent when it ends up that his newest girlfriend is, unknowingly to him, the female half of the brother/sister duo! After Rachel kidnaps another child, and Kylie is returned unharmed, and Rachel returns HER victim unharmed, she is contacted by another former parent victim. With his urging, Rachel decides to get to the bottom of who started the chain...even though they are threatened with death to their loved ones and themselves if they ever go to the police or speak of the kidnapping after their child is returned. She enlists the help of her ex-husband's brother, who she's always been close to, and together, they end up uncovering the twin duo, with no time to spare, since her ex-husband has taken Kylie to his new girlfriend's cabin in the woods for a fun weekend. New girlfriend is all set to kill Kylie when she finds out that Rachel has gone against the agreement and started investigating them. The story culminates in happy endings all around with the death of the twins and their grandfather, the breaking of the chain forever, the mental recuperation of Kylie, and the new relationship between Rachel and her ex-brother-in-law. A great summer read. :-)

Finished: Lucky Per (Pontoppidan) Revered in Denmark as "the great Danish" novel, Lucky Per follows the story of one man, Peter Andreas Sidenius, aka, Per. The book won Pontoppidan the Nobel Prize in 1917. It truly was a long, detailed book, similar to how it was reading War and Peace for me. There was so much discussion of Denmark's economy and politics and especially religion as we were given insight into not only Per's deep, and often depressing thoughts, but also those of the first woman he became engaged to, Jakobe, a Jewish heiress. Per, having been raised by a strict, Christian father and loving, but sickly mother, along with his several brothers and sisters, felt differently from everyone in his family from a young age. He didn't at all embrace the religion that their family thrived on. The book is far too long and expository for me to recap the entire story. I did enjoy it, though, despite the many tangents and pontifications. I think I might just include part of the book jacket cover here, which probably explains the book better than I can! I'm so happy to have received this book from my son. :-)

"Pontoppidan provides a panoramic view of the contradictions of the modernizing world through the portrait of a single driven and beleaguered soul. Per Sidenius, unhappy son of an austere clergyman, rejects his faith and flees the Danish countryside for the capital city. Gifted and ambitious, he arrives in Copenhagen...." "Per's obsession is a grandiose engineering scheme that he believes will reshape both Denmark's landscape and its minor position in the world. While working relentlessly to achieve this inflated vision of personal and national destiny, he pursues the fiercely independent heiress Jakobe Salomon..." "Though Per's ambitions come to grief along the way, at its heart his story turns on his belated understanding of the true relationship between luck and happiness."