Maine Books

Although I am a committed hard-boiled mystery reader, Thomas Cook writes mysteries which are well beyond most in character development and psychological drama, i.e., very well-written novels which happen to be mysteries. Places In The Dark is no exception.

It is the story of two brothers with contrasting outlooks on life, each reflecting one of their parents. The younger, William / Billy, identifies strongly with his Mother in his zest for experiencing life with all of its messy emotions and becomes the newspaper editor. The older, Cal, identifies strongly with his Father in applying logic and reason to everything to the point of robbing it of its joy and becomes, what else, a lawyer [ :>) ].

A young woman with a mysterious past and an enigmatic presence, Dora March, moves to their small town and captures William's heart; William is murdered; the woman leaves town, and Cal is obsessed with guilt, the desire to avenge his death by solving the mystery, and the desire to find Dora. No need to spoil it for you. Very highly recommended!

This author is superb. I would call his books melodramas, as opposed to thrillers. They are passionate love/hate stories, with, yes, murder and mayhem, but they read like soap opera/potboilers. The thing is, there are so many soap opera/potboilers that are as boring as...well...soap, and his aren't. I loved this particular tortured tale except for one thing: the character of Billy seemed a bit lacking. He was too much "one-way," too "good" and actually a little dim, not just as a character but in personality as well. It's obviously a Cain and Able story (read: Cal and Bill). And Dora, the mystery woman, is well fleshed-out (for a mystery woman). But I couldn't care that much about Billy. He just - well - bored me. Also, the ending, while it came as something of a surprise, was something of a let-down. My thought was, "And so the point of all this was.....?????" Still, Cook is a masterful writer; vivid. For all the flaws, he's among our best popular novelists.

Many of Thomas Cooks novels are beautifully written and include captivating and fully drawn characters. Unfortunately, Cook seems capable of writing only one kind of book--a story told in flashbacks. His books never proceed in a linear fashion. Read one or two of his books and you've basically read them all.
It's a shame that Cook doesn't deviate from his flashback formula because he is truly an excellent writer.

In addition to the formulaic plot device, *Places in the Dark* also suffers from cardboard characters whose motives and lives are never fully examined.

This was my first introduction to Thomas Cook and it will definitely not be my last. The book is centered around a mysterious woman, Dora March, who appears out of nowhere in a small town in New England, and dramatically affects the lives of two brothers that fall under her spell. One brother, the editor of the local newspaper, falls in love with her and hires her on at the paper after her rich, elderly employer dies. The older brother, a lawyer and the local prosecutor, is wary of the woman and his brothers relationship with her, and seeks to uncover the mysteries of her past. Before he can do so, the woman skips town in the wake of the apparent murder of the younger brother. The story is presented as a series of flashbacks that flesh out the interrelationships between the brothers and the young woman and casts light on the mysterious events that lead to the expiration ot the younger brother and a cast of other characters. Eventually the loose ends dovetail as the author masterfully, and cleverly, unveils the shocking denouement that had me in awe of his expert abilities. I'm not one that easily surprised and am usually quite wary of anytime I have to suspend disbelief, especially when the tables are turned in a thriller. Not so this book - it was so refreshing to have the rug masterfully, and expertly, pulled from beneath with nary a glass falling from the table. Excellent!

Reading books is a wonderful and, at times, a boring process. It seems that one must read so many books that fail to move, that are well thought out, excellently written but at the last page you are left with perhaps a smile, ocassionaly a mild comment, "oh, that was a good book". But, just every so often one happens upon a book that reaches deep down beyond the surface of the maundane and leaves you with the feeling that the few hours you have just spent were some of the more meaningful hours of your life. That's what "Places in the Dark" has done for me.

The story was very interesting, a young woman heads out with a friend, leaves with a stranger and goes missing. However, I couldn't get past all the cop narrative. While I think it's important to get to know who's on the case, I really don't want to read page after page about what the cops are thinking or feeling. I want to know more about Amy and what happened to her. I also found it odd that the cop on the case would say he had to look into Amy's mother's "beautiful eyes". What's that about? Stick to the facts. I don't care if her mother was beautiful or what her eyes look like. Just tell me about Amy and the killer and what happened. Sorry. As far as true crime goes, this one's a snoozer.

I am a fan of true crime and pretty much won't read anything but. This book was one of the best I've ever read. And I have read tons by some of the best authors. Extremely well written and very easy to follow. You can feel the sincerity, passion and pain of the police, prosecutors, friends and family. Great insite into how police really do their job.

I work in law enforcment in a western state. I read a lot of true crime and am always intrigued by a book written about a case by its investigators. I was quite impressed with Finding Amy. Not only was the book well-written, but the case was truly an investigative miracle. I wish more investigations were run like this one was. It is so obvious that a higher authority had a hand in things and I found it refreshing that those involved recognized that. Where I am, we don't have a big problem with territorial agencies, thankfully. But, it is great that where it would it normally was a problem, those involved with the investigation were able to overcome that.

One question I was left with was what happened to Amy's stepfather? He stops being mentioned toward the end of the book and wasn't listed as one of the relatives at the trial or sentencing.

FINDING AMY, written by Deputy Chief Joseph Laughlin and mystery writer Kate Clark Flora, is the absorbing true-life story of the disappearance of Amy St. Laurent, a 25-year-old Pratt and Whitney employee who vanished while at a bar, The Pavilion, in the Old Port area of Portland. She accepted a ride home from another customer at the bar, and then disappeared, never to be seen again, until she was found buried in a shallow grave in the woods over six weeks later.

The book tells the story of the investigation, and it is especially effective because it intersperses journal entries by Chief Loughlin (then Lieutenant), in which he describes police procedure and how the detectives are focusing their search and why. The character development of these hard-working law-enforcement personnel is absorbing, because it shows how seriously they do take their work, and how personally it affects them.

This book should be read by all young women who think they "know it all". Frequently, they don't, and take chances which can be deadly. This was certainly the case for Amy St. Laurent. The book is a cautionary tale about how someone who looks perfectly innocent and seems to want to be helpful can have very deadly hidden qualities that emerge later on. It is well written and the organization is excellent as well.

You will definitely enjoy FINDING AMY if you are interested in the effects of true crime on both the family members and friends and the law-enforcement personnel who work these cases.

This book has no depth, no characters , and is poorly written. I was so tired of reading about the "whinning" police officers. We are tired, we have not slept, our families miss us, ect. We know that, we appreciate you and this book is about Amy St. Laurent. When writing a true crime novel stick with the facts it makes a much better read.

Dead Souls by Michael Laimo is an example of how someone can mistranslate sections of the bible and come up with disastrous results. The writing is much better and the prose is smoother that the previous novel that I read, "Deep in the Darkness". The main plot is Benjamin Conroy's obsession with resurrection and the possibilities. I could say more, but I prefer to avoid any possible spoilers. There are also a couple sub plots, one dealing with the main protagonist's life living with a very religious mother, the history of the house that he is the sole heir of, and another that may reveal too much.

In this book, Mr. Laimo switches back and forth every other chapter to tell his tale during two different time frames. To some, this may be a turn off as the book jumps back and forth every chapter, but for me it was not so. The chapters are really short and only deal with two different situations at a time and so this actually did not hurt the flow of the story and helped a lot to enhance the suspense and made me want to keep reading to see what was going to happen next. The character development was well placed and since the story in both time frames only spans a few days, so even though there was not a lot of development, what there was made sense and didn't miss out or put too much in. The characters themselves didn't seem one dimensional and so I was actually able to connect with a few of them and also feel some sympathy towards them.

Now, if you are a person who only likes a little bit of gore in your horror novels, then this one is not for you. This book, once the initial setting and story arc get moving, is full of gore and does not pull any punches. It is just one thing after another and the gore is so detailed that you could see it, smell it and feel it all around you.

Some criticisms:

1. I like to have quite a bit of gore in my horror novels, but in this case it actually seemed too much and took away from the story in the sense that it just never seemed to end and became a bit boring reading about it. The gore just went on and on because there was so much of it.

2. This has nothing to do with the author. Once again this book also comes with an order form smack dab in the middle of the book, but this time I made sure that I tore out only the order form and not one of the pages.

Some positives:

1. The suspense. The way that the story was separated into the small chapters and ending a chapter at a critical moment. There were times that I was only going to read a few chapters and then go to bed and I found myself still reading ten chapters later.

2. The flow was a lot better and I didn't find myself having to stop and reread anything. Mr. Laimo was able to continually choose the right words to keep everything alive.

3. Even with only a few days advancing in the storyline, Mr. Laimo was still able to add just the right amount of character development and also was able to create the feelings in the reader to be able to connect with
the characters I was reading about.

Overall, I was very satisfied that I purchased this novel and glad that I have read it. I will not say that I am a complete fan yet, but I am still curious to read his other novels and see how he may be able to entertain me more. If you love to read about blood and gore, then this is a novel for you. There is not a lot of sex and nudity in it but when he gets you to the sex part, it is no holds barred. As for being scary, well, it is hard to read anything that is actually scary to the point of nightmares or even looking over ones shoulder anymore, so for me, no, nothing really scary. I would have chosen 3 1/2 stars if it was offered so I had to choose 4 because it was definitely better than average.

If a movie version was to be made it would be rated R/NC-17 for Graphic Violence, Explicit Blood and Gore, Adult Situations, Adult Language, Nudity, and Strong Sexual Content, (there is a part with a sexual scene that is described in this book to the point of being X-rated or more)

'Dead Souls' had me gripped within the first 30 pages and kept me compulsively reading right until the very end. The alternating chapters of 1988 and 2005 provide the background to current circumstances and help to build a great deal of suspense that grows as 18 year old Johnny Petrie returns to claim his inheritance...and gradually learns the truth about his destiny. There's gore aplenty in scene after gruesome scene. A solid writer, Laimo is blessed with a fantastic imagination. He's also skilled at creating a wonderfully menacing mood as well as painting a bloody portrait with words. Horror fans will not be disappointed. A perfect vacation read.

Dead Souls was my first Laimo book, I wasn't sure what to expect because I have been lucky so far with some of the new horror authors I have tried, and I feared I was pushing my luck. This was a very fast read at the standard Leisure horror length of 330 pages and can easily be read in an evening. The writing style is simple and straight forward, and the verbiage is standard enough that you won't need to whip out your thesaurus.

Short Summary: We have two tales going on simultaneously in the book, 18 years apart. Johnny Petri just turned 18, and longs to break away from his controlling religious zealot mother and his loafing father who pays no attention to him. Johnny suddenly gets his chance when he receives a letter from an attorney stating that he has a large inheritance for him to come and claim now that he is 18. Meanwhile - 18 years earlier, Benjamin Conroy has enlisted his family to help him perform a ritual that he believes will secure their everlasting lives, allowing them to return as saviors the same as Jesus. Things begin to go awry and Benjamin turns out to be a little more out there than we previously thought. Several deaths later (in both times) Johnny finds himself fast approaching the Conroy house, and the evil that has remained within it's walls.

First I would like to compliment Laimo for his masterful way of switching back and forth between the two times in the book. Many authors have tried it and most fail by giving away too much in one time or another which erases the tension in the other half of the book. (Example - Dan Simmons "Fires of Eden" the diary gives away everything that is about to happen in the regular time) Laimo handles this masterfully, leaping back and forth between the two tales, giving enough of a hint to make the reader suspicious of what will happen but never laying it out in their lap. The story weaves tightly around the religiously insane, one who believes he has unlocked the secrets hidden deep within the Bible, the other who lives in panic and terror, hiding behind their belief like a security blanket. Now even though the religiously insane are the focal point and driving force of the novel, this book never ventures too deeply into actual religion. There is a strong message about those who seek so deeply in their religion for something to make them special that they become mislead, misguided, and easily manipulated by the darker forces in the world.

Now many have said that this is a very gory book, I didn't find it to be over the top, or gruesomely described, but then again I have read hundreds of horror books, so I'm a bit jaded when it comes to the gore level. There is also some sex in this book, but it isn't a major feature, and the descriptions don't come anywhere near a Laymon book.

What did I not like about this book? Two things, first the editor needed one more read through before publishing... there are a few small typos and one instance that really threw me where Johnny was referred to as Eddie. Second the ending is very hurried, and the climax becomes a bit muddled to the point of my needing to re-read a paragraph or two to figure out exactly what was transpiring and make sure I hadn't missed anything. The ending wasn't bad, but it could have used a little reworking because there were so many characters in a small space, amidst chaos that I kept wondering - okay so these two are fighting, what are the rest of them doing? Just standing around and watching?

On the whole this book was a fairly fun read, it's quick and rather mindless. I didn't feel that it pushed the envelope in any sense, but it was entertaining. If you've read through all of your other horror books and don't know where to go next, give this one a shot, Laimo won't be for everyone but I do know that I will read more by him.

The first word that comes to mind after reading this book is "WOW". From the beginning up to the very end it was non stop horror with a plot that kept getting more and more interesting as you turned to the next page.

I honestly didnt think I would ever read a book as good as the Demonologist... until I read this book. This is the perfect book that I cound enjoy viewing as a movie and could see it receiving an Oscar.

Its a shame that there arent other authors out there whom put the same amount of effort,hard work, and thought into creating a well written masterpiece as well as Michael Laimo only seems able to do.

Tomorrow I will be starting Fires Rising....psyched about that one!

This book gives the true meaning to "edge of your seat"!! From the beginning to the end it is full of twists and turns!! The way Michael describes the people and places really make you feel connected to each and every character!! It was very hard for me to put this book down once I started! I highly recommend any book written by this very talented writer!

Excellent book, very well written in the usual "Coogan" way, that is, skilfull, fluent and full of nice anecdotes. Gives an insightful portrait of one of Ireland's greatest men and my personal favourite. Eireann go brach!

An informative humanizing biography that provides a good picture of revolutionary Ireland. More photogrpahs would have made for 5 stars.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants an intense indepth study of Collins and Ireland of his time. This is easy to read and full of interesting information about the man and those around him. Collins was a genius who shaped the fate of modern Ireland and did so with an acute sense of how far he wcould go to achieve what he wanted.

It really makes me wonder how much better off Ireland would have been if he had not best lost so early in his life.

This is an extarodinary book about an extraordinary man. It is well wriiten, it is exciting and easy to read. It gives a wonderful insight into the life and times of Ireland during this remarkable time

Although the pages and the sophisticated writing style might intimidate one, if you stick to it and read the book to the end, you will NOT regret it. It was my first book in Irish History and I have learned so much from reading it. This book is amazing beyond words. If you buy it, you won't reget it.

I love this book! I could not put it down! I also can't wait to start trying her recipes, they sound delicious! I could almost taste the blueberry coffee cake as I was reading! I am on to "Dean and Berried"!

Delighted to discover this author, heroine and inn! The mysteries are well developed and the recipes are an extra treat. I hope there will be more than two!

I can't even finish it, it's so poorly written and so boring. I am so disappointed. I thought I had found a new author to read. Oh, well.

I just finished "Murder on the Rocks" and while I think this series has potential, the writing needs to be edited better.

1. Natalie frequently complains about how she is flat broke and unable to eat at restaurants. She runs out of groceries and ends up with nothing to eat but a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. However, she is constantly baking up huge batches of cookies and brownies to take to friends and neighbors around the island. Whenever she needs something out of the freezer, she is pawing through chuck roasts and bacon to find the fruit she needs. So is she broke and hungry or not?

2. When a guest at her inn is found dead, Natalie sneaks into his room (against direct police orders) and finds significant evidence that she then hides. When the police later suspect her of being the killer, Natalie is unable to show evidence pointing away from her, because she stole it from the crime scene. Is she really this stupid?

3. An intruder breaks in and clobbers Natalie. She doesn't bother to call the police immediately, instead just waits for them to show up the next day.

4. Natalie pretends to be someone she's not in order to obtain private information she has no right to, and opens and reads her guests' mail.

While the plot is presented as "Natalie is a suspect in a murder she didn't commit and tries to find the real killer" she is guilty of numerous counts of obstruction of justice and just plain stupidity. It was hard to swallow.

Natalie Barnes has decided to go for broke and trade her life saving for a Bed and Breakfast called the Grey Whale Inn on Cranberry Island in Maine. Soon the slimy Bernard Katz shows up and announces plans to change the whole inland into a mega resort which will include turning the Grey Whale into a parking lot. So no one is surprised when he is found dead, the only surprise is the who and why. Natalie just has to stay alive long enough to get the whole story out. Great start to a new series plus great recipes at the end of the book.

Oh, and someone needs to tell the author that you don't get knitting wool from a goat.

They don't seem to require reading classic literature in the schools any more, so I decided to build a classics library for my 12-year old granddaughter. She has read them all, including this one, so it wasn't a bad idea. Now, if I could just get her to call her old grandfather more often....

One of my three favorite books from my childhood. I have read reviews of how difficult this book is to understand or read by small children. Nonsense! I first read this book when I was 6 years old, one year after learning English and had no problem with it. I read it many times until my mother threw it away. I looked for it for a long time and finally found it 54 years after first reading it. I still love it.

This book is okay. I wouldn't read it more than twice. It was really boring till the end. Then it got good. I would recomend this book to kids from ages 9 - teens. Rebecca has a life that i would never want. She is so happy and bouncy. I don't like that. In my opinion, this is book is not very exciting. I was so glad when I finished it. Because then I could read a better book. It was kind of hard to follow, cause a lot of things were going on at once. I really think younger kids should read it. I don't think it deserves a classic. But that is just in my opinon. Read it if you would like. I just didn't like it. It was okay though. So good luck!

As I started to read this book I got a sense that it was not going to be the thrilling adventure that I usually look for in a book. This was okay because sometimes you need a book that can slow it down and you can relax with. I am sorry to report that this book was so slow it almost came to a stop. Although it is a story of a girl who moves from her farm home to a small town to live with her aunts nothing more exciting than Rebecca selling enough soap to get a lamp for some friends that aren't very well off happens. While it is a great thing to see family helping family to get an education, something more adventurous like a love interest, or a friend saving her best and most loved toy from the clutches of a wicked aunt could spice up a story. Maybe I am a reader who is not excited by someone learning to sew and this kind of book is your cup of tea but it is not mine. In my opinion the lack of substanance is almost suffocating and I will not be drowned by another reading of this book.

Rebecca has been my friend since I read her story in a cheap Whitman hardback when I was a little girl. A lively and creative 10-year-old girl is sent to her maiden aunts to receive a good education, but chafes under the restrictive yoke of her elder aunt. As Rebecca learns to channel her energies into positive action, she remains unquenched by her dour aunt and lends joy to both the younger aunt, but also the elderly Cobbs and her best friend, Emma Jane Perkins. The vocabulary in the story may be a bit high for younger readers as REBECCA was not actually written as a children's story; it was the best seller of the year 1904. There is a sequel, NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA, that is worth finding, with more adventures of Rebecca, the Simpson children, and even Emma Jane.

I assumed this was an historical biography and bought it without trying a sample - BIG MISTAKE.
In reality, it's a not very well done piece of trashy fiction. If you're into that genre, get well done trashy fiction like a "Fu Manchu" novel.
I deleted this thing.

I think the book should be titled "Mildred Gillars". The "Axis Sally" period, although the most notorious part of her life was relatively short. Mildred Gillars life took so many turns I found it difficult to put the book down. The story is a real page turner. I applaud the author Fuller for doing an outstanding job of writing and organizing the story. The book should be made into a movie.

I just finished reading Axis Sally and as often happened when reading a good book; I wanted the writer to go on. I'm sure the remaining part of Mildred Gillars life was a story in itself that someday will be told. .

Fascinating, entertaining, historical, thought provoking, all the above plus. This is a totally well rounded story of a woman unwilling to be satisfied with a mundane status quo life. The author had me laughing, crying and wondering all the while what next? My criticism is that I found it difficult to stop reading and get on with my work. I was constantly tempted to turn just one more page

Reading Axis Sally, I am amazed at the ability of the author to revive the era and quickly get into the person of Mildred Gillers as she is entering Hunter College as awkward freshman in the fall of 1925. At first, I felt a kinship to Mildred Gillars and her desire to exceed her ordinary birth given fate. As she proceeded to make choices to achieve recognition, I wanted to caution her as to the ramifications of the directions she was taking, but of then, I am only the reader. In the end, the recognition she received far exceeded her wildest expectations or nightmares. It is a magnetizing, story of one of the most notorious women of the 20th century. The author does an outstanding job of bring the people, the times and the events to life.

Great book with wonderful stories and tips regarding wildlife and living in the great outdoors.

I read "Cache Lake Country" in 1968. I was delighted to find it in print again...like meeting an old friend.
Thank you.

I'm going to be a little less enthusiastic, but only a little, than some of the other reviewers here. I really did like this book, but for some reason it just didn't quite pull me into the time, place, space the way it did some others- although it didn't miss by much.

This is a very unique book-probably reminding me of my old Boy Scout Fieldbook (a little more detailed and survival-oriented than the handbook) more than a typical non-fiction work. The illustrations are great as well as occasionally light-hearted, and if you are at all handy or have an engineering or for that matter, culinary bent, you will find plenty of recipes and blueprints for food, tools, gadgets- even crystal radio sets or birch bark canoes. While some of these you'd probably have to find some supplemental information to make, most come so well described and diagrammed that you could probably build them or bake them directly from the book.

For me the best part is the author's midwest and at times almost cowboy way of describing life. His time around rough loggers in the days when horses and two man saws were still the order of the day especially captured my imagination. Like many readers, I'm a lot hermit, and the thought of life in a cabin in the north woods with nothing but snow, bear, moose, and wind has a certain charm, and I'm grateful to Rowlands for giving enough of a story to enjoy a bit of that charm vicariously. An excellent and unique book, and for some it will probably become a treasured possession.

I have read a lot of outdoor books over the last 40 years, and this is one of the best. I am going to research the author, John J. Rowlands, because he was obviously a fascinating man who lead a very interesting life. This book tells about 12 months living in a cabin on a lake in Northern Onatario. At the time Rowlands was working as a timber cruiser, evaluating forests for use as lumber. He happened upon his ideal lake and was lucky enough to get stationed there by his company. He was also very lucky to have two great friends living within miles (within signaling distance via the various drums, horns etc. they engineered), on other little lakes. Together the three lived every outdoor boy's dream life of independence and adventure. This book has stuff about canoes, wild animals, sled dogs, snowshoes, knives, axes, the history of the lumber camps, and many boy-scout like craft projects. I just wish it was a lot longer.

A good book but I didn't think it was as easy to read as friends lead me to believe. A tremendous amount of reference material, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

it's rare that a novel where the writing is so dang good you keep doing the same paragraph over and over again also happens to have some amazing characters and a really strong and compelling narrative. everyone in Edinburgh (the book, not the place) is dragging around a mountain of issues, but they all come across as human, and complex, and ultimately comprehensible.

While there were a few things about the writer's style I didn't like (no quotation marks, made it difficult to decipher when something was said verses thought. Some conversations with multiple characters were often not tagged for the reader to know who said what) but all in all it was easy to fall into this world created by Chee. I was able to identify with several of the characters (though my experiences as a boy were not as damaging as they were to Peter, Fee, and their friends). I would definitely recommend it!

Alexander Chee's Edinburgh is necessary, is timely, and is downright gorgeous despite it's sometimes ugly subject matter.

This is the story of Fee--how his life ended up the way it did, on a beach, deciding to live instead of die.

It is also "a fox story. Of how a fox can be a boy. And so it is also the story of a fire." The significance of the fox comes from Fee's heritage--the myths of the shape-shifting fox demon and how that demon returns and speaks through those possessed. Most importantly, it is about how the fox demon turns back into a human being, back into a man.

The significance of fire is that it is how things die; they are set alight and then they extinguish, keeping their secrets:

"Burning hides what burns there. Somewhere deep in him was a memory of light that pierced him from end to end like a spit."

Mostly, it is a tragic love story. Unrequited love. Burning love. The horrible love of a man for young boys. The wondrous love of a boy for another boy. The unbearable love of a teenager for his teacher. The never-ending love of a boy for his lost sisters.

There is also a love so desperate that it sends its owner underground, beneath the earth into tunnels he builds so that he might hide from the love and bury himself alive: entomb himself within it for to do so would mean his beloved was trapped in that moment with him.

This is a rich, many-layered novel, filled with mythical allusions and using language that is always gorgeous. You will marvel at the beauty of these sentences even when what the author is describing is something you do not want to see.

Read it.

I was wary of the subject matter, but a friend's recommendation got me to read this book. The three page prologue was so captivating that I immediately read it again, out loud. This a writer of astonishing depth and command. One example: Fee, the protagonist is numbed by his experience of molestation, but that allows him to report all the following events from that remove. Terrible events transpire, but the reader wants to stay with Fee because he is incapable of over-dramatizing. This subtlety allows the reader a depth of understanding. I had no idea where the novel would go next. Every time it moved toward the traditional telling of this story, it would veer in another direction. Brilliant. Surprising. Deeply affecting.

I enjoyed discovering how Chee presents this story in such a unique, blunt, and spiritual way. The plot moves fast enough to keep the reader's attention but slow enough that the reader has enough time to capture the drama of the moment. It is a deceptively easy read. Despite the simplicity of the language, the theme is complex on many levels. I also enjoyed the shift in the point-of-view in the third part of this book. Through most of the book the narrator is Fee. However, in the third section, "And Night's Black Sleep Upon the Eyes," the point-of-view shifts to Warden, who narrates this section. This shift in point-of-view contributes to the plot by allowing the reader to understand the background Warden and Fee share, as well as Warden's part in seducing Free or, at least, his willingness to be seduced by Fee. Most of all, I enjoyed Chee's masterful use of similes which pepper the narrative. I enjoyed this story very much and I recommend it to others.

This book I bought from the author when i was in Gettysburg and i went home and read it and from the first page i loved the book i'm really into novels and when i found out that it was one i was really looking toward reading the book.
I suggest for anyone thats into the civil war should read this book and its great how the two main characters meet in the book too.

Now I'm not saying this was a bad book. I actually read it in two days. However, with the title "courage on little round top" i was expecting a little more of the engagement on little round top. it wasn't until the very last chapter of the book that the engagement took place. if you really want to read about little round top i would say Shaara's Killer Angel's will do the trick. Again, a very good book just took a while to get to the actual "courage"

After seeing the Civil War epic Gettysburg (Widescreen Edition) when it was first released, I made a special trip cross-country to the battlefield and, like the author of COURAGE ON LITTLE ROUND TOP, stood at the monument to the 20th Maine at the left extremity of the Union line and paid silent tribute to Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and his regiment which waged there such a stalwart defense. In a contemporary world so lacking in heroes, I put the gallant Chamberlain on a modestly tall pedestal, an atypical action that even survived my subsequent reading of the man's biography, In the Hands of Providence: Joshua L. Chamberlain and the American Civil War.

Here, author Thomas Eishen strives to add a human side to the battle for Little Round Top on the second day of the Gettysburg collision by re-creating in novel format the thoughts, words, and actions of Chamberlain and one of his opponents, 2nd Lieutenant Robert Wicker of the 15th Alabama Regiment, as they may have occurred during the couple of days prior to and during the assault.

It was the fictionalization of the days prior that perhaps reduced this book in my estimation inasmuch as Chamberlain and his regiment are assigned their do-or-die position by brigade commander Col. Strong Vincent only on page 250 of this 289-page volume. So, if you're hoping for an exhaustive immersion in the struggle for the hill, forget it. Rather, the preceding pages are filled, much like GETTYSBURG the film, with protagonists' dialog and mental preoccupations that are, at best, plausible but unremarkable script-filler and, at worst, an inane look at men under arms as they swan about the countryside pre-battle. Moreover, I was singularly unimpressed with the very few maps accompanying the text. Indeed, the one showing the opposing lines on Little Round Top was not much bigger than a postage stamp and would've required the use of a magnifying glass had I cared to bother with it.

I'm at obvious odds with other 5-star reviews of COURAGE ON LITTLE ROUND TOP. Perhaps my expectations were too great. In any case, I wouldn't recommend spending the money for this title unless you're seeking a very light read for an airplane trip to Pennsylvania, in which case it's perfectly satisfactory.

The author credits Michael Shaara's "Killer Angels" as being responsible for the start of his interest in the Civil War. This novel is a piece of lightweight fluff which I find difficult to read because boredom sets in quickly. Most of the book is meaningless dialogue and character's thoughts which do little to inspire the reader.
As an avid Civil War buff who has read plenty of history, both primary and secondary source material, finds enough historical inaccuracies in this book to wonder how it ever managed to find a publisher. Characters wander around the novel with no good reason. Major historical figures make an appearance with little connection to the fictional characters and the true story of the battle on Little Round Top. The author takes forever to set the scene for that struggle and the reader has to struggle with boredom to ever reach that point in the novel.
I have visited the battlefield at Gettysburg many time since my first trip at the age of 2. I have walked the field many times in many years. Eishen may have made a visit to the monument to the 20th Maine, but I wonder if he climbed Little Round Top by the route of attack by the Alabama regiments.
I had expected more mention of the other units involved in this engagement and I was sadly disappointed.
As an aside, there are enough typos and mispellings throughout the book which make it even more annoying.

Thomas Eishen nails a good one. Gettysburg is perhaps the greatest single battle of the civil war in terms of how the war ended. Eishen does an excellent job in novel form to keep the reader's attention. Written similar to the style of Jeff Shaara, one will not have a hard time reading this one. It is not boring history. It is an easy and enjoyable read and will add knowledge to what you think you might know about Gettysburg. Buy it. Enjoy it.
C Park