If on a winter's night a traveler (Calvino) Well, a very interesting book, with a neat hook, that started with promise, but ended up dragging to the end. At the beginning of the book, the author talks to the reader and tells them to sit back and enjoy the book. In the first chapter we start reading about a train traveler on a winter's night who disembarks at a tiny train station where some suspense ensues, and just as the chapter is getting to a climax, it ends. The first line of the book is "If on a winter's night a traveler". The next chapter is told from the viewpoint of "the reader". The reader has been reading this book about the traveler and suddenly when he gets to the climax, there's an error in the book and the pages begin repeating themselves! Over and over they repeat, the only pages being the pages he's already read. Anxious to finish the story and to get a book that is not defective, the reader takes it back to the bookstore where he bought it. The bookseller is so very sorry and says they have had a few books like this of Calvino's latest and tells him the correct book that finishes the story is actually by a Polish author. The reader runs into a pretty woman there for the same reason....to return her defective Calvino book. Her name is Ludmilla and she becomes known as the second reader. So, the reader and Ludmilla exchange a bit of talk, and he asks for her phone number so they can compare the end of the story when they get to it. The next chapter begins in what each of them think is a continuation of the Calvino book, but in actuality, it is an entirely different book with the first line "outside the town of Malbork". At first the reader is dismayed that this is a totally different book than the first one, but he again gets caught up in the story, which is a completely different story, which again ends abruptly right at a climatic point! In this case, the remainder of the book's pages are blank! The reader and Ludmilla get together to try and get to the bottom of things, and then the book gets rather perverse. Every other chapter, the author basically talks to the true reader about reading and writing...or we hear the story of a crazy man whose life mission is to go around creating these false books...or we read the diary of an author who has HAD some of his books hijacked and mistranslated into completely different stories in other languages. So, after each one of those chapters, we get another intriguing chapter of another new book, with a different first line. This goes on until we have read ten different stories that all end right at a crucial point. We never find out the ending of any of the stories or the fates of those characters. It was a clever idea, and people have called Calvino a genius in writing this book, but I felt it got too bogged down with his droning on and on about the expectations of both readers and authors in his "in between" chapters. And, of course, I figured out early on that the first sentence of each book made one long paragraph that kind of made sense, but didn't tie anything together. The reader and Ludmilla have a bit of a love story and are married by the end. For me, I was left really just wanting to know the ending of about eight of the stories. :-) I'm glad I read the book, because it was on a list of "must reads" that I'd been putting off. Done and done and I'm none the worse for it, but really none the wiser either. :-)

Finished: Housekeeping (Robinson) I'm having to let this book sink in. Very beautiful prose, at times bordering on stream of conscious that gets a bit tedious, but very moving piece on how profoundly the loss of loved ones affects a family, specifically, two young girls left behind when their mother commits suicide. This remembering of her mother by the narrator, Ruthie, as a teenager, resonated very strongly in me:

There is so little to remember of anyone--an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long.

I guess this is really pretty much a depressing tale. The girls, Ruthie and Lucille, one year apart in age, are left on the porch of their grandmother's house in a tiny town in the "west" near a huge lake by their mother who proceeds to go and drive her car off a cliff into the lake. This is the same lake that her own father had died in years before when the train he was riding in (on the railroad he worked for) plunged off the bridge traveling over the lake and perished in the depths of the water. I suppose that would set the tone for the mother's life. In any event, she doesn't even let her own mother know that she's leaving the girls there, and they spend hours on the porch alone, thinking their mother is coming back before their grandmother gets home and finds them. The girls are then raised by their grandmother for a few years until she passes away. Then, their mother's sister, who has become a homeless drifter, comes back to town when she hears of her mother's death and she attempts to continue raising the girls who are now in their teens. It's really a recipe for disaster since the aunt, Sylvie, isn't really "all there" herself. Ruthie grows close to her, however, and starts to become just like her, while Lucille determines to break away and lead a more normal life. In the end, Lucille removes herself and goes to live with one of her teachers. When the sheriff informs Sylvie that there will be a hearing to see about the removal of Ruthie from her care, Sylvie and Ruthie burn down the house and run away in the night across the huge expanse of the railroad bridge!! They barely make it across by daylight, where they hop on the morning train just as it begins to cross. Sylvie is going to take Ruthie and teach her to become a drifter. The rest of the town, including Lucille, is left thinking that Sylvie and Ruthie perished off the bridge into the lake which had already claimed the lives of Sylvie's father and Ruthie's mother. They don't ever let Lucille know any differently since they don't want to be caught. I totally did not understand the ending, and had to reread it three times. sigh. Ruthie was just kind of rambling on about what Lucille must be doing and how maybe she was waiting in a cafe in Boston for her to show up or her mother, but they never would? Other than the kind of weird ending, there were so many beautiful passages in the book. I'll put a few more of them down. I think I definitely need to read a book that isn't so depressing the next time around, though!

I always love descriptions involving wind. Here, a description of how the spirit passes on:

....just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves, then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on. 

Ruthie describing her family: Then, too, for whatever reasons, our whole family was standoffish. This was the fairest description of our best qualities, and the kindest description of our worst faults. 

And this last one I just visualized instantly because I have some of these exact old pictures that belonged to my parents with the same black paper on the back having been torn from their old photo albums to give to us:

There was a shoe box full of old photos, each with four patches of black, felty paper on the back. These had clearly been taken from a photograph album, because they were especially significant or because they were not especially significant. 

Finished:  Fool Me Once (Coben) Another great page-turner by one of my favorite current authors, with one of his twistiest endings yet! Maya is a former helicopter pilot who fought in Afghanistan, but was discharged from the military after accidentally ordering the shooting of a vehicle with civilians in it while trying to rescue some of her comrades. Now home in the states, she suffers from PTSD nightmares while trying to raise her two year old daughter, Lily. And, that's not the worst of it. Maya's husband has been murdered. :-( As if that wasn't tragic enough, Maya's sister had been murdered while she was in Afghanistan. Needless to say, her world is reeling. When Maya finds out that the same gun was used to kill her sister and her husband, she is determined to figure out what is going on, all on her own. Matters only become more complicated when Maya views her secret nanny cam and the impossible happens....a man sits down on the couch and plays with Lily...and Lily knows him. When he turns towards the camera, Maya sees Joe's face!!! Could he possibly be alive? As the mystery deepens, Maya speeds around figuring things out. The ending is quite a shocker as we find out first who killed Joe, and then why...and then what actually happens to Maya in the end. I'm always so disappointed when my Harlan Coben books are done!!!

Finished: Arrowsmith (Lewis) Pulitzer Prize winning book about a scientist named Martin Arrowsmith that took me forever to read because it was truly so boring. I believe Sinclair Lewis is more acclaimed for his Babbitt and Main Street, but since he didn't win the Pulitzer for either of those he was maybe awarded it for Arrowsmith as a consolation? Anyway, none of the characters, including Martin, are very compelling or likeable, so that always makes it hard for me to be interested in them or care about them. Martin goes through medical school with a bunch of guys, most who are only concerned about how much money they can make in the future. Martin, on the other hand, just wants to work on experiments in the lab. His mentor is Dr. Gottlieb, who is the one professor who understands him because he is also interested more in making the scientific discoveries than getting rich being a doctor. Anyway, Martin does meet someone, Leora, fall in love, move to her podunk hometown, and become the town doctor for awhile, but his heart isn't into it. He does eventually end up back in a major lab and discovers a potential cure for the bubonic plague. He travels to a tropical island that is being ravaged by the plague and become relatively famous when his cure works. Leora, however, who had insisted on going with him, becomes sick and dies. Martin makes his way back to the states and marries a rich woman who wants to change him from the all-hours-of-the-night lab worker to a socializing socialite. He eventually chucks that life (and their young son) for a cabin in the woods to go back to his first love, working on experiments hoping to cure another disease. I've obviously left out alot of detail, but it simply wasn't that interesting to me. So glad it's over! I think I'll read a page-turner next. :-)

Finished: The Lake House (Morton) Another pretty good Kate Morton page-turner, though this one didn't keep me quite as engaged. Once again the story centers around the secret mystery in a great manor house in England. The Edevane family, Eleanor, Anthony and their three daughters, Deborah, Alice and Clemmie, are living what seems to be a carefree life at their lake house in the country when finally a son is born, Theo. Theo is twelve years younger than the youngest daughter and the light of every one's life! Unfortunately, though, Anthony is plagued by flashbacks from World War I, where he went through the horrors of the trenches. He is particularly disturbed by the horrific memories of his dearest friend, Howard, like a brother to him, who decided to desert the army to be with the young French woman and her child who he has fallen in love with. Though Howard is an officer, he decides to help them escape, but the plan is foiled by the crying baby. Howard is then shot as a deserter. :-( Anthony forever blames himself, and after young Theo comes along, his bursts of "shell shock" violence get worse as he insists on making the baby quit crying. Meanwhile, Eleanor has stuck by her husband and kept his secret since neither of them want their girls to know of his illness. One night, during the annual festival at the lake house, complete with dancing, drinking and fireworks, Eleanor sets a plan in motion that affects the family for the rest of their lives. When they all wake up in the morning, baby Theo is gone. Kidnapped? Murdered? Wandered off? The mystery is never solved. Well, not solved while Eleanor and Anthony are still alive. Seventy years later, a young female detective, Sadie, has been given a month's leave for getting too emotionally involved in her own case of a young mother who left her child alone in an apartment and disappeared. The young mother's own mother suspects foul play, but the police write it off as a runaway mother. Detective Sadie Sparrow feels otherwise, but her insistence on pursuing the case gets her a suspension. When she goes to spend that time off with her grandfather, she gets caught up in the old cold case of the missing Theo Edevane. Her grandfather lives close to the estate where the tragedy occurred so many years before, Loeanneth. Sadie delves into the old library clippings about the kidnapping/possibly murder and discovers that the middle daughter, Alice, is still alive at 86 and the prolific detective novelist, A. Edevane. When Sadie finally gets in touch with Alice, and her thirtyish assistant, Peter, the pieces all start to fall together. Alice has spent years thinking she was the cause of Theo's disappearance because she'd written a wild story about the kidnapping of a toddler from his rich parents as a teenager and shared it with an estate gardener who she realized was in terrible need of money. All these years she has thought herself responsible, but Sadie and Clive,  a retired police officer who was the youngest member of the force during the Edevane case, figure everything out when Alice gives them permission to enter Loeanneth and go through her father's notebooks and her mother's letters. They all go from believing that perhaps Anthony Evedane accidentally killed Theo in a fit of shell shock, with Eleanor helping him to cover it up, to finding out the real truth...which for once, I might add, is a happy ending. :-) It took me much longer to finish this book because I just couldn't get quite as engaged, but all in all, though a little bit predictable, it was still a good Kate Morton book....and I will probably read more of hers! :-)

Finished: The Able McLaughlins (Wilson) The 1924 Pulitzer Prize winner about a community of Scottish immigrants who have settled in Iowa during the Civil War years...and specifically about the McLaughlin family. We find out quickly enough that the McLaughlin's have thirteen children, but the story focuses on their beloved son, Wully, who has been to fight in the Civil War. He arrives home one day after being held as a prisoner of war in the south. He has escaped and takes refuge at home! His mother, father and siblings are beyond delighted, but after nursing Wully back to health, realize that he's got to go back to the army. Before he goes, though, he runs an errand for his mother and meets neighboring farm girl, Chirstie. He is immediately smitten, as is she. They share an emotional kiss, and then he is off back to the war. He's kept under lock and key by his own army, as are all the soldiers who escaped, but didn't come right back so were considered deserters. Finally, a northern general pooh poohs that idea and frees the young men, but Wully is once again sick and after a few months, honorably discharged and sent home to recover. When he's back on his feet, he rushes over to see Chirstie, only to have her violently rebuff him. It takes some time, but he finally learns from her that in recent months, her cousin, Peter, had forced himself upon her and now she was expecting a baby. Furious, Wully goes to find Peter and makes him leave and never come back. Wully then marries Chirstie and suffers the disdain of his own parents and the community when they all realize that Chirstie's baby is coming so soon that Wully must have had his was with her before their wedding. Wully lets himself be shamed and plans to raise the baby as his own, and makes Chirstie promise not to tell anyone the truth. Eventually, Chirstie does tell Wully's own mother, and she restores her worshipful opinion of her son...but doesn't let him know that she knows. Wully and Chirstie build their home on McLaughlin land that his father had set aside, and happily raise baby Johnnie. Johnnie is the light of the family, and all are happy...until one day Peter comes back and approaches Chirstie when she's alone in the house with the baby! He rips her sleeve and she runs screaming from the door to get Wully. Wully hunts and hunts for Peter, determined to kill him but he's nowhere to be found. Many worrisome months go by, and Wully decides that they can't spend all their days looking over their shoulders, especially with Chirstie having to be way out on the farm alone while he's working the fields, so he decides that they'll give up the farming, which has been quite successful, and move to town. While visiting town, Wully is notified that Peter is actually lying in a nearby stable dying. The townsfolk ask Wully if he'll take Peter back in his wagon to his family to die, and he refuses. When Chirstie finds out, she begs Wully to stop the wagon and take Peter to his family. She hates Peter as much as he does, but it isn't right to let him die alone. They eventually go back to get him, and the ride back is terribly stressful, without a word or smile. Then suddenly, baby Johnnie blurts out his very first complete sentence, and Chirstie turns to Wully with the most beautiful, loving smile. They are both so happy! Peter has lifted his head and witnessed how much in love they are. Wully notices that Peter sees that and is instantly full of forgiveness rather than vengeance. He sees that it must hurt Peter more than anything else possibly could to see that Chirstie loves Wully. With that, the story ends as they continue to drive Peter to his folks. The story is pretty good, but a little, hmmm, what's the word...just a little matter-of-fact like many of the earlier novels have seemed to me. It did keep me interested though! More characters were delved into and a good sense of the upbringing of the Scottish immigrants was represented, and of the community pulling together in what was assuredly a hard life on the cold plains. And, I'm glad that Wully and Chirstie got to end up having a happy ending. :-)

Finished: Agent 6 (Smith) The third book in Smith's trilogy about Russian secret police agent Leo Demidov. In this book, it is ten years after Leo and his wife, Raisa, saved their rebellious, adopted daughter, Zoya, from her own destructive path of revolting against their Russian lifestyle. Now, their 17 year old younger daughter, Elena, has been seduced and recruited by a wily Russian agent to help get American communist, Jesse Austin, out of retirement to speak in America, rousing the people to revolt against the U.S. Raisa, Elena and Zoya travel to the U.S. without Leo, much to his dismay, to perform in a joint Russian/American chorale concert to show the world that the two Cold War rivals can perform together and be "friends". Raisa has no idea that Elena will use this opportunity to get in touch with Austin. Years before Austin had visited Russia and then traveled back to America, extolling the virtues of Communism and Russia through his soulful, jazz music, and through many a rousing public speech. Inspired by the innocence and exuberance of Elena, Jesse agrees to meet her on the street corner near the United Nations building, where the choirs are singing, after the concert to give his speech. Meanwhile, the FBI is constantly tailing all the Russian students and especially Raisa and her daughters. One agent in particular, Jim Yates, intimidates Elena and Raisa. As Jesse Austin begins to speak, he is gunned down and the gun is planted on Elena! Raisa arrives during the chaos to shield her daughter and puts the gun in her own pocket. Raisa is then accused of killing Jesse Austin, and Austin's widow goes to the police station and shoots her! Rather than save her life, Jim Yates lets her die a slow death on the police station floor so they can concoct a story that there was a sordid love triangle and Raisa killed Jesse out of jealousy. In reality, at first you think the FBI wanted Jesse Austin killed, but in reality, it is the Russians who decided that if they had Jesse Austin assassinated and made it look like America's FBI had him killed, then maybe the country would rise up and revolt and become communist. OK, that's a far stretch to me, but that was their motive. Anyway, Leo is obviously devastated by the death of his beloved wife Raisa, and sixteen years later, he's still devastated. He's also out of touch with both his daughters who are now married and living in Russia. He's an opium addict and he's been assigned to the worst position a former Russian secret police agent can be assigned to...he's now a Russian advisor in Afghanistan during the occupation  of Afghanistan by Russia! He dreams of making his way to America so he can figure out who killed Raisa and exact his revenge. Long story short, Leo does finally find out that even though Agent 6, aka Jim Yates, didn't kill Raisa, he did let her die a slow, painful death. After realizing that this doesn't bring Raisa back, Leo goes back to Russia a traitor to await his certain death sentence. He finally gets to see his two daughters after several years while he's in prison, and that's where the story ends. Leo is a traitor because to bargain his way to America, he offers the FBI a deal to give them intel about what Russia is doing in Afghanistan so the U.S. can decide whether of not to enter the war. I've left out lots of details but that's the gist of the story. The book was a good wrap up to Leo's story, but out of all the books, I think I liked the first one, Child 44, the best! I just might read more of Tom Rob Smith's work though! :-)

Finished: The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh (Milne) "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred."  Pooh thought for a little.  "How old shall I be then?"  "Ninety-nine."  Pooh nodded.  "I promise," he said.  Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw.

Sigh, I just love Winnie the Pooh, always have. I know I've read all of these stories at different times over the years...mostly to my own kids, and I'm sure when I was younger too...but I've never sat and read the entire illustrated tales. Oh how I love every character! Not much more to say than that. I'm just going to bask in the innocence and love of Poohness right now. :-)

The Namesake (Lahiri) A very good, but very sad book. Not sad in the way of death and destruction or sick children, anything like that...just that the main character's life is not at all happy no matter what decisions he makes. The story is about a man, Ashoke, and a woman, Ashima, from India and Bengali who both marry in the traditional Indian way...set up by their parents. Ashima moves across the world from her family in Calcutta to live with her new husband who teaches in Boston. They are steadfast in their marriage, but not in love. They have two children, the first being a son, in 1968. We get a little back story about Ashoke and find that when he was in his early twenties, he loved the Russian author Gogol, and in particular, his famous short story, The Overcoat. On an overnight train trip one evening, he was the only person in his sleeping cabin who didn't climb in his berth and go to sleep. Instead he stayed up to read Gogol. When the train derailed, buckled and crashed, killing many of the people aboard, all of Ashoke's cabin mates were killed, except for Ashoke. Ashoke saw this as a further sign for him to be enamored of Gogol. Flash forward to 1968 when his son is born. Ashima and Ashoke decide to again go with Indian tradition and wait for her grandmother to name their son. A letter is in the mail from India. However, the hospital will not release the mother and child until there is a name on the birth certificate. Not really understanding that this will be his permanent name, Ashoke gives him the name Gogol, planning to change it to the name the grandmother picks as soon as it arrives. Of course, fate steps in the way and the grandmother has a stroke and Ashima's father dies, so they must travel quickly to India. Gogol is the official name written on the baby's passport, and the name he is stuck with for the rest of his life. Gogol and his sister grow up in American schools, with American friends and customs. They never quite appreciate it when their parents force them to leave school for weeks at a time to travel to India to see relatives...India, where they don't have any of the things they're used to. Yet, at school, despite having some friends, they are still considered just enough "different" to be on the outer fringe of being included as well. Caught between spending weekends with his parents' friends, who are all people of Indian and Bengali descent who they have met in America, and between trying to keep up with his American friends, life is not the happiest for Gogol. On his twelfth birthday, Gogol's father gifts him with a copy of Gogol's short stories, including The Overcoat. He does not tell Gogol how he almost died and had to relearn how to walk and how much the name Gogol means to him. Gogol is pretty much a brat, hates his name, and doesn't do much but stick the book on a shelf, never even seeing the inscription his father has written. As he grows into a typical teenager and then goes to college, he exhibits the fairly typical behavior of ignoring his parents, even lying that he needs to be at school for a project when he really wants to spend time doing the things he enjoys instead of going home every weekend. He's a good student at an Ivy league school. He shows a talent for drawing at an early age and has decided to become an architect. One of the first things he does when he's of age is officially change his name! He picks the name Nikhil, which is what his parents had finally decided to call him when he entered kindergarten, but ironically, five year old Gogol had thrown a fit, so his teachers stuck to his official name and kept calling him Gogol. So, in college, everyone gets to know Gogol and Nikhil....but as we read the book, he's always referred to as Gogol. Anyway, Gogol meets an American girl, Maxine, that he falls for, and she for him, and his parents are devastated that he won't be picking an Indian girl to have a traditional marriage with. He doesn't give too much thought to their feelings and ends up spending more and more time with her and her family, who he comes to love. Suddenly, Ashoke drops dead of a heart attack at the age of 46 and Gogol's life does a complete change. He goes back home to help handle things and even though Maxine is very understanding at first, she doesn't understand why many months later he is still mourning, regretful and wanting to spend so much time with his mother and sister. Maxine and Gogol break up and Gogol goes to work at an architecture firm in New York. He deeply regrets that he didn't speak to his father more and spend more time with him. In one of their last conversations, Ashoke had finally told Gogol about the train wreck, and why Gogol the author meant so much to him...but it was long after Gogol had changed his name to Nikhil. Finally, when Gogol is nearing 30, his mother asks him to call up the daughter of an old friend from India...actually, a girl who he used to hang out with as a youngster on all those Indian/Bengali get togethers. Just to appease his mother, Gogol calls up Moushumi and they meet for drinks. Moushumi is every bit as independent and "Americanized" as Gogol Actually, she has also spent quite a bit of time in France, growing up there first before moving to the U.S., so she's even a bit more worldly. However, despite  their insisting they won't, they actually fall for each other and have a traditional Indian wedding which makes Gogol's mother and Moushumi's parents all very happy! The happiness doesn't last long, however. As a matter of fact, they are not even married for two years when Moushumi starts having an affair with an older man who she met and fell for as a teenager, who is now back in New York and in her life! It's so sad. :-( Gogol doesn't do anything wrong....but also, it's not like they are madly in love with each other...they are more just comfortable. But, they do care for each other and Gogol is blindsided by the affair. He ends up divorced from Moushumi by the time he is 32 and he travels back to his mother's house in Boston for one more Christmas before she moves from his childhood home, which she has just sold, to travel to India. When Gogol makes his way upstairs to grab a camera, he sees that most of his old things have been packed away. His mother wants him to go through them before she leaves. His eyes fall on the old copy of Gogol's short stories, which Gogol had never read! Gogol opens the book to see a very sweet inscription from his father, and realizes with even more regret that his father must have known all those years that Gogol never even gave the book a second glance. Gogol sits down and starts reading the book and the story ends. See? Not an earth shattering sad story, but just very sad in terms of Gogol never really finding happiness. He seems to fight all his life trying to fit in between his Indian/Bengali roots and his American upbringing. Lahiri writes very straightforwardly and nicely and really pulls you into the story and the feelings of each of the characters! This is my second Lahiri book and I just might have to read more. Here's a passage near the end that I really liked:

     In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another. It had started with his father's train wreck, paralyzing him at first, later inspiring him to move as far as possible, to make a new life on the other side of the world. There was the disappearance of the name Gogol's great-grandmother had chosen for him, lost in the mail somewhere between Calcutta and Cambridge. This had led, in turn, to the accident of his being named Gogol, defining and distressing him for so many years. He had tried to correct that randomness, that error. And yet it had not been possible to reinvent himself fully, to break from that mismatched name. His marriage had been something of a misstep as well. And the way his father had slipped away from them, that had been the worst accident of all, as if the preparatory work of death had been done long ago, the night he was nearly killed, and all that was left for him was one day, quietly, to go. And yet these events have formed Gogol, shaped him, determined who he is. They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end. 

Finished: Finders Keepers (King) A thoroughly page-turning book, the sequel to the equally page-turning Mr. Mercedes. In Mr. Mercedes a psychopath stole a Mercedes and ran down a bunch of people standing in the early morning hours in a job fair line, killing several and wounding more. He was then pursued throughout the book by retired police detective Bill Hodges, and his unlikely assistants, yard boy Jerome, and highly functioning savant, Holly. The trio ends up saving the day when they prevent the psychopath, Brady, from blowing up a concert full of teenyboppers. However, rather than kill him, they only put him in a coma after hitting him in the head. Doctors say he will never again think cognitively, but in Finders Keepers, he has come awake and sits for hours staring. Bill Hodges visits him often to see if he can illicit any kind of a response, but only weird things happen, and usually after Hodges leaves so he doesn't witness the weird things....like Brady looking at a picture of him and his equally psycho and now deceased mother and making it tip over. That's just a very tiny bit of the Finders Keepers story, though. This story focuses on the family of one of the victims of the vehicle nightmare, Tom Saubers, who was maimed horribly, having to relearn how to walk all over again. Already out of a job, hence the job fair line, and with a school teacher wife, Linda, a thirteen year old son, Pete, and nine year old daughter, Tina, the marriage of Tom and Linda Saubers is disintegrating, and vocally, right before the eyes of their angst-ridden kids. One day hiking in the woods behind their house, Pete finds an old buried trunk full of moleskin notebooks and quite a bit of money...$20,000 to be exact! He thinks about turning it all in to the police, and then realizes that if he sends the money to his parents a little bit at a time from an anonymous source, maybe it will help them get back through the rough financial times and back on their feet...and sure enough, it does! What Pete doesn't know is that that money and the moleskin notebooks were stolen from famous author John Rothstein thirty years before. In a horrific opening scene of the book, we read as three young hoodlums break into Rothstein's remote cabin, antagonize him into giving his safe combination, and then kill him before taking the money and the books. What two of the hoodlums don't know is that it's only the books that interest psychopath Morris Bellamy. Morris is obsessed with John Rothstein's character Jimmy Gold, from his famous trilogy, The Runner series. (Rothstein and The Runner sounds alot like Updike and his Rabbit, Run series to me!) Anyway, apparently in the first two Runner books, Jimmy Gold has defied convention and his parents and become quite the f.u. rebel. But, by the third book, he's given in to what everyone else has and is married with children and living in a :::gasp:::suburb. This changing of his favorite character has sent young Morris Bellamy over the edge and he decides to kill Rothstein for it...but not before getting his hands on whatever else the recluse has been writing for the past twenty years. So, Morris does all that, and then he kills his two partners who both thought they were just there for the money. Morris has a friend, Andy, who works at a bookstore who has bragged that he could sell any Rothstein writings that came about for quite a bit of money some day. Morris takes this to mean they have a plan, and proceeds to kill Rothstein and steal the notebooks. When Morris goes to Andy, Andy is appalled, screeching at Morris that John Rothstein's murder is all over the news and that he was never part of his plan. Besides he wouldn't be able to sell anything by Rothstein until he had his own shop, several years from now, and especially now that Rothstein was just murdered.  Because of Andy's paranoia, Morris is certain that the police will be on him any minute, so before he can even read any of the moleskin notebooks, he lines the old trunk he bought in plastic and buries the books and money in the forest. Then, as fate would have it, he goes out, gets drunk, blacks out and violently rapes a woman, getting himself sent to prison for 35 years!! Fast forward 31 of those years and we come to the night that Tom Saubers is hit by the Mercedes. A few months later, Pete finds the old trunk that Morris buried out in the woods behind the house that Morris also used to live in, that is now occupied by the Saubers family!! So, thirteen year old Pete starts sending his parents the mysterious money, $500 a month for four years, until it runs out. It really does help keep them on their feet while Pete's dad is able to recuperate and learn to walk all over, and finally start establishing a bit of a business in real estate. Meanwhile, Pete reads all the John Rothstein notebooks and realizes that he's reading two additional novels about Jimmy Gold from The Runner series, a book he had to read in school. In the two new novels, never published of course, Jimmy Gold apparently reverts back to his old self and ways. Pete falls in love with Rothstein's writing almost as much as Morris did, but not in a psychotic way. When Pete is seventeen, a junior in high school, a great student, especially in English Lit, and thinking of colleges for the next year, the money finally runs out. He thinks they'll probably do okay now as a family, but his sister Tina is dying to go to the private school that all her friends do, and her parents can't quite swing that. Pete begins to toy with what he could possibly do to make his sister's dreams come true and contacts a seller of old books...Andy! That's right....35 years later, Andy has his own book selling shop. He's also got a reputation for doing things not exactly above board, which is what young Pete will need if he's going to try to sell a novel from a man that he now knows was murdered and his work and money stolen. Pete thinks he would be in major trouble now for giving all the money to his parents, so he doesn't want to go through proper channels. Well, it just so happens that right as Pete is trying to sell some of the notebooks to Andy...Morris Bellamy is finally getting paroled! He's been in prison for 35 years and is now 59 years old, and he still has only one thought on his mind....go get his moleskin notebooks and read them. For 35 years he's dreamed about what John Rothstein could have possibly written about. Was there more Jimmy Gold? So, the first time he can duck his parole officer, Morris makes his way to where he buried the books and he's thrilled to dig up the trunk. However, when it comes up empty, he's shocked and then enraged. Who in the world has stolen his notebooks??? The only person he can think of who even knew he had the books was his old pal Andy, so he makes his way to Andy's bookshop and pays him a visit. Andy is shocked to see Morris out of prison. Before Morris brutally kills Andy, he makes him tell him that Andy has been making a deal with the real person who has the books...a teenage boy, Pete Saubers. Morris leaves the dead Andy in his book store office, puts the "closed" sign up, takes his car and goes to stake out the Saubers family. Of course, it all makes sense to him when he sees they live in his old house! Meanwhile, Pete has been suffering and nervous and is becoming fidgety and thin. Tina is very worried about him and turns to her best friend Barbara, who was one of the teenyboppers who was saved from being bombed at the concert in Mr. Mercedes. She also happens to be Jerome's little sister! So, Barbara gets in touch with Bill Hodges, who is now working as a private detective with Holly, while Jerome is off at an Ivy League college getting his degree. Tina breaks down to Hodges and Holly and tells them she thinks Pete is in serious trouble. As a matter of fact, she thinks her brother is somehow the one who sent their family the surprise money for all those years, but where could he have gotten the money? Jerome comes home for the weekend, and Hodges, Holly and Jerome hop right on the case. Pete, however, can see them coming a mile away after a brief discussion with Hodges, and he loses them on the day he goes to finalize his deal with Andy. Of course, it's not Andy waiting for him in the shop, it's Morris Bellamy! As Pete sees Andy's decaying body and with Morris' gun pointed at him, he realizes he won't make it out of there alive if he tells Morris where the notebooks are. Pete, being younger and more agile, throws a full decanter at Morris' head, dodges his bullets and runs from the bookstore. Meanwhile, Hodges, Holly and Jerome have figured out how much danger Pete is in because they've figured out that Pete has John Rothstein's old notebooks and they put two and two together about Morris Bellamy being out of prison. Anyway, Pete and Hodges finally talk by phone and Pete indicates that he's worried about his mom and sister at home...that "the bad guy" (Morris Bellamy) knows where they live because he lived there when he was a kid!! Before Pete OR Hodges can get to the house, of course Morris Bellamy gets there first and he shoots Pete's mom. :-( Then, he takes Tina to the old abandoned Rec building near their house and calls Pete. He wants the notebooks traded for Pete's sister! Little does Morris know that the notebooks are right under his own nose!! Pete has hidden them at the Rec building! Pete high tails it to the Rec building with a lighter, some lighter fluid and a plan. With a gun pointed at his tied up sister, Pete threatens Bellamy that he will burn the pile of notebooks, which Pete has poured out on the floor in front of Bellamy's stunned eyes, if he does not release his sister. Morris is crazed with curiosity and can't take his eyes off the notebooks as Pete knows exactly how to hit him where it hurts by letting him know that there are in fact two more Jimmy Gold novels in there, referencing an old girlfriend of Jimmy Gold's from the first book. Don't you want to know what happens? Just as it looks like Morris may give in, he raises the gun like he's going to shoot and Hodges comes down the stairs swinging. The gun goes off hitting no one, but the shock of the sounds makes Pete accidentally drop the lighter on the pile of notebooks!!! Morris screams in horror as he watches his beloved books go up in flames! It's been 35 years and he still never got to read one word! As Hodges and Pete struggle to get Tina untied before the building burns down around them, Morris keeps diving into the burning pile of notebooks trying to save them. The last thing the trio sees as they escape out the window is Morris' charred body still groping for the books. Whew! They make their way back to Pete's house where Holly has stayed until an ambulance comes for Pete's mom...yes, she survives. Yay! I really thought Stephen King was going to kill off the mom, but wait....that's Disney that always kills off the mothers isn't it? ;-) So...in the end, there are no charges against Pete for doing what he did as a young teen. Instead, he's the only person in the world who has read the final two novels belonging to Rothstein, so he gets to actually write his own article for The New Yorker about it! In the last chapter, Hodges once again visits Brady, the killer from Mr. Mercedes, and needles him to try and get a reaction. Hodges just knows that Brady is looking at him, but he can't prove it. After Hodges leaves, Brady concentrates really hard and the water in his hospital bathroom turns on and off, and the picture of he and his mother once again falls over face down. doo-doo doo-doo, doo-doo doo-doo! I think the third book of the trilogy most likely will be Brady waking up and/or causing some kind of telepathic havoc, no? :-)