Haunted Heart by Lisa Rogak

Title:  Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King
Author:  Lisa Rogak
Pages:  289
Genre:  Non-Fiction
Publisher:  St. Martin's, 2008
Series:  Stand Alone

"I want to write about spiders because it's the one theme that cuts right across and scares just about everybody," he said. "To me spiders are just about the most horrible, awful things that I can think about."

Synopsis:  A fascinating look at the life of the author who created such modern classics as "Carrie," "IT, "and "The Shining."  One of the most prolific and popular authors in the world today, Stephen King has become part of pop culture history. But who is the man behind those tales of horror, grief, and the supernatural? Where do these ideas come from? And what drives him to keep writing at a breakneck pace after a thirty year career?

In this unauthorized biography, Lisa Rogak reveals the troubled background and lifelong fears that inspire one of the twentieth century's most influential authors. King's origins were inauspicious at best. His impoverished childhood in rural Maine and early marriage hardly spelled out the likelihood of a blossoming literary career. But his unflagging work ethic and a ceaseless flow of ideas put him on the path to success. It came in a flash, and the side effects of sudden stardom and seemingly unlimited wealth soon threatened to destroy his work and, worse, his life. But he survived and has since continued to write at a level of originality few authors could ever hope to match. Despite his dark and disturbing work, Stephen King has become revered by critics and his countless fans as an all-American voice more akin to Mark Twain than H. P. Lovecraft.

"Haunted Heart" chronicles his story, revealing the character of a man who has created some of the most memorable---and frightening---stories found in literature today.

Review:  I knew that Stephen King was an odd man.  You'd have to be to write the believable, scary stories that he writes.  What I didn't realize was how hard his life was before he became the King of Horror.

I usually have a really hard time with non-fiction books, but this one was written in a very approachable and interesting manner.  It told things that I never knew about the man who is my very favorite author.  I didn't realize quite how old the book was and wish that the book had been published later and told more of Mr. King's life now.  Other than that, I have no complaints.

I was really amazed at how much I did enjoy the book and how quickly the pages turned.  I highly recommend it.

Rating:  9.5 / 10

The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston

Title:  The Monster of Florence
Author:  Douglas Preston
Pages:  315
Genre:  Non-Fiction
Publisher:  Grand Central, 2008

Spezi didn't immediately understand.  "He took her vagina away?  Where?"  As soon as the question was out he realized how stupid it sounded.

"It's simply not there anymore.  He took it away with him."

Synopsis:  In the nonfiction tradition of John Berendt ("Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil") and Erik Larson ("The Devil in the White City"), New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston presents a gripping account of crime and punishment in the lush hills surrounding Florence, Italy. — In 2000, Douglas Preston fulfilled a dream to move his family to Italy.

Then he discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14th century farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence. Preston, intrigued, meets Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn more. This is the true story of their search for--and identification of--the man they believe committed the crimes, and their chilling interview with him. And then, in a strange twist of fate, Preston and Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation. Preston has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi fares worse: he is thrown into Italy's grim Capanne prison, accused of being the Monster of Florence himself. Like one of Preston's thrillers, The Monster Of Florence, tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and suicide-and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi, caught in a bizarre prosecutorial vendetta.

Review:  This is a chilling True Crime novel, told by two men, one who lived through the crimes and one who happened upon them later.  Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi spent innumerable hours trying to find the facts behind the killings by the Monster of Florence.

I found their suspect to be completely believable and quite probably the guilty party.  But the government, from the police, to the judges, to the mayor didn't believe.  The man who killed all of these couples is still walking free while several men have served time for crimes they didn't commit.

Beyond the obvious murders, there is an entire dark tale of political figures using a horrible crime to better their positions.  It's scary and makes me glad I live in America and not Italy....and, then again, makes me wonder if it would have really turned out any differently either way.  Blind greed and the need to be right are assuredly not just Italian traits.

At the end, this book forces you to question your ideas of justice in a whole new light....and to realize, in the end justice isn't always served even by those sworn to uphold it.

Rating:  7.5 / 10

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by John Grisham

Title:  The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
Author:  John Grisham
Pages:  360
Genre:  Non-Fiction
Publisher:  Doubleday, 2006

Synopsis:  John Grisham's first work of nonfiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet. — In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A's, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory.

Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits--drinking, drugs, and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours a day on her sofa.

In 1982, a 21-year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear, they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder.

With no physical evidence, the prosecution's case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row.

If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you.

Review:  I was naive.  I thought our justice system was the best one in the world, in the history of the world.  I now realize that it is only as good as the people involved in it.  Everyone, from the judge to the prosecutor, to the 'expert witnesses' were corrupt and wrong and ruined four lives.

I was shocked, disturbed and infuriated, just as the synopsis promised.  I was also saddened.  And uplifted and hopeful because somebody out there eventually brought the facts to light and saved the life of Ron Williamson and freed Dennis Fritz.  It's unfortunate, but the other two men who were convicted by the same dishonest system for a different crime, Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot, are in prison for life.

Ron's life was saved too late.  He was so mentally unbalanced and the 14 years he spent in correctional facilities just exacerbated his problems.  What a sad, sad group of people who cared nothing for justice and sent innocent people to jail and one to death row.  The only bright spot, if you can call it that, is 20+ years later, the actual killer of Debra Carter is behind bars for life.

I couldn't put this book down.  I easily finished it in less than 24 hours.  It is horrifying and sad and eye-opening....and true.

Rating:  10 / 10

Army Wives by Tanya Biank

Title:  Army Wives:  The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage
Author:  Tanya Biank
Pages:  261
Genre:  Non Fiction
Publisher:  St. Martin's Griffin, 2006

Synopsis:  Army Wives goes beyond the sound bites and photo ops of military life to bring listeners into the hearts and homes of today’s military wives.

Biank tells the story of four typical army wives who, in a flash, find themselves in extraordinary circumstances that ultimately force them to redefine who they are as women and wives. This is a true story about what happens when real life collides with army convention. Army Wives is a groundbreaking narrative that takes the listener beyond the army’s gates, taking a close look at the other woman – the army itself – and how its traditions, rules, and wartime realities deeply impact marriage and home life.

Review:  As a huge fan of the Lifetime Television series based on this book, I was prepared to be either thrilled with this book or disappointed by it.  I knew there wouldn't be a middle ground.

The book is okay, but certainly not the same great story as shown in the television series.  Ms. Biank is a news reporter and it shows in her writing style.  While I understand that this is a factual account, her writing style comes across as cold and detached, which may be right for a newspaper but is just not quite good enough for a book.  I'm glad the book wasn't any longer.  I was losing patience and interest.

However, the importance of the book is clear.  It surely must have helped open the military's eyes to the fact that quite a few military marriages were unhappy.  And that, unfortunately, that unhappiness led to deaths in several cases.  I can only hope that now, almost 10 years later, the military has addressed these issues and made some kind of reliable system to help those in need.

I wouldn't read it again but I'm not sorry I read it.

Rating:  2.5 / 10

Tiger Tiger by Margaux Fragoso

Title: Tiger Tiger
Author: Margaux Fragoso
Format: PB
Pages: 314
Genre: Non Fiction / Memoir
Publisher: Picador, 2012
ISBN-13:   978-1250002426  
Series: Stand Alone

Synopsis:  A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011 A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title — Tiger, Tiger is a Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction title for 2011A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2011 title One summer day, Margaux Fragoso meets Peter Curran at the neighborhood swimming pool, and they begin to play. She is seven; he is f... more »ifty-one. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child's paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice.

In time, he insidiously takes on the role of Margaux's playmate, father, and lover. Charming and manipulative, Peter burrows into every aspect of Margaux's life and transforms her from a child fizzing with imagination and affection into a brainwashed young woman on the verge of suicide. But when she is twenty-two, it is Peter, ill, and wracked with guilt, who kills himself, at the age of sixty-six.

Told with lyricism, depth, and mesmerizing clarity, Tiger, Tiger vividly illustrates the healing power of memory and disclosure. This extraordinary memoir is an unprecedented glimpse into the psyche of a young girl in free fall and conveys to readers, including parents and survivors of abuse, just how completely a pedophile enchants his victim and binds her to him.

Review:  This is a really tough book to read.  It was hard for me to understand in places how no one knew what was happening to the little girl named Margaux.  I did find it to be a well-written book, but I didn't like it as much as other people seem to have.

Rating:  8 / 10

A Secret Gift by Ted Gup

Title: A Secret Gift
Author: Ted Gup
Format: HC
Pages: 346
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Press, 2010
ISBN-13:   978-1594202704  
Series: Stand Alone

Favorite Quote:  The fourteen-year-old author -- the last and only living link to the B. Virdot letters -- was now ninety, a great-great-grandmother who lived at the Laurels of Masillon, a nursing home just outside Canton.

Synopsis:  An inspiring account of America at its worst-and Americans at their best-woven from the stories of Depression-era families who were helped by gifts from the author's generous and secretive grandfather. — Shortly before Christmas 1933 in Depression-scarred Canton, Ohio, a small newspaper ad offered $10, no strings attached, to 75 families ... more »in distress. Interested readers were asked to submit letters describing their hardships to a benefactor calling himself Mr. B. Virdot. The author's grandfather Sam Stone was inspired to place this ad and assist his fellow Cantonians as they prepared for the cruelest Christmas most of them would ever witness.

Moved by the tales of suffering and expressions of hope contained in the letters, which he discovered in a suitcase 75 years later, Ted Gup initially set out to unveil the lives behind them, searching for records and relatives all over the country who could help him flesh out the family sagas hinted at in those letters. From these sources, Gup has re-created the impact that Mr B. Virdot's gift had on each family. Many people yearned for bread, coal, or other necessities, but many others received money from B. Virdot for more fanciful items-a toy horse, say, or a set of encyclopedias. As Gup's investigations revealed, all these things had the power to turn people's lives around- even to save them.

But as he uncovered the suffering and triumphs of dozens of strangers, Gup also learned that Sam Stone was far more complex than the lovable- retiree persona he'd always shown his grandson. Gup unearths deeply buried details about Sam's life-from his impoverished, abusive upbringing to felonious efforts to hide his immigrant origins from U.S. officials-that help explain why he felt such a strong affinity to strangers in need. Drawing on his unique find and his award-winning reportorial gifts, Ted Gup solves a singular family mystery even while he pulls away the veil of eight decades that separate us from the hardships that united America during the Depression. In A Secret Gift, he weaves these revelations seamlessly into a tapestry of Depression-era America, which will fascinate and inspire in equal measure.

Review:  I'm not a huge fan of non-fiction, but this story seemed to hold promise.  It was quite good in parts and quite dry in others.  I can't say I loved it, but I'm still glad I read it since it is a true story that I otherwise never would have known about.

Rating:  5 / 10

Escape by Carolyn Jessop

Title:  Escape
Author:  Carolyn Jessop
Format: HC
Pages: 413
Genre: Biography
Publisher: Broadway, 2007
ISBN-13:  978-0767927567
Series: Stand Alone

Favorite Quote:  Nine lives were at stake:  those of my eight children and my own.

Synopsis (PBS):  The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s courageous flight to freedom with her eight children. — When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.

Carolyn’s every move was dictated by her husband’s whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse—at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife’s compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name.

Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop’s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.

Review:  This was an incredibly eye-opening book.  It was very hard to read in places.  I really had no idea there were people living in this manner.  The entire lifestyle of the members of the FLDS is strange and unbelievable and, really, horrifying to me.  Ms. Jessop's bravery inspired me and her story is unlike any other I've read.

This was a fast read and almost impossible to put down.  It wasn't the best book I've ever read, but it was well worth the time to read.

Rating:  7 / 10

Lucky by Alice Sebold

Title:  Lucky
Author:  Alice Sebold
Format:  HC
Pages:  250
Genre:  Non-Fiction / Memoir
Publisher:  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999
ISBN-13:  978-0684857824
Series:  Stand Alone

Favorite Quote:  No one can pull anyone back from anywhere.  You save yourself or you remain unsaved.

Synopsis (Amazon):  Enormously visceral, emotionally gripping, and imbued with the belief that justice is possible even after the most horrific of crimes, Alice Sebold's compelling memoir of her rape at the age of eighteen is a story that takes hold of you and won't let go.

Sebold fulfills a promise that she made to herself in the very tunnel where she was raped: someday she would write a book about her experience. With Lucky she delivers on that promise with mordant wit and an eye for life's absurdities, as she describes what she was like both as a young girl before the rape and how that rape changed but did not sink the woman she later became.

It is Alice's indomitable spirit that we come to know in these pages. The same young woman who sets her sights on becoming an Ethel Merman-style diva one day (despite her braces, bad complexion, and extra weight) encounters what is still thought of today as the crime from which no woman can ever really recover. In an account that is at once heartrending and hilarious, we see Alice's spirit prevail as she struggles to have a normal college experience in the aftermath of this harrowing, life-changing event.

No less gripping is the almost unbelievable role that coincidence plays in the unfolding of Sebold's narrative. Her case, placed in the inactive file, is miraculously opened again six months later when she sees her rapist on the street. This begins the long road to what dominates these pages: the struggle for triumph and understanding -- in the courtroom and outside in the world.

Lucky is, quite simply, a real-life thriller. In its literary style and narrative tension we never lose sight of why this life story is worth reading. At the end we are left standing in the wake of devastating violence, and, like the writer, we have come to know what it means to survive.

Review:  I admit it.  I did not believe that Ms. Sebold could touch me again as she did with her novel, The Lovely Bones.  I was wrong.  This book is full of sorrow, danger, suspense, and pure horror.  It should be required reading for every young woman.  The tale told here and the lessons to be learned from it are just incredible.

While I still think I really do like the previous novel better, this is a true story.  It is hard to imagine a worse true story, but the author does not sugar coat it.  It is harsh and hard to read a times.  The truth is often hard to bear, but this author does not shy from truths even when they are about herself.  It also has lighter, funnier moments.  The writing is fluid and the book is impossible to put down, making it a quick read.

I usually will pass by non-fiction because I find it boring.  This book is the exception to that rule.  I loved it and will not ever forget it.

Rating:  10 / 10

The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices by Xinran

Title:  The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices
Author:  Xinran
Format:  PB
Pages:  241
Genre:  Non-fiction
Publisher:  Anchor, 2003
ISBN-13:  978-1400030804
Series:  Stand Alone

Favorite Quote:  When you walk into your memories, you are opening a door to the past; the road within has many branches, and the route is different every time.

Synopsis (Amazon):  When Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to “open up” China took root in the late 1980s, Xinran recognized an invaluable opportunity. As an employee for the state radio system, she had long wanted to help improve the lives of Chinese women. But when she was given clearance to host a radio call-in show, she barely anticipated the enthusiasm it would quickly generate. Operating within the constraints imposed by government censors, “Words on the Night Breeze” sparked a tremendous outpouring, and the hours of tape on her answering machines were soon filled every night. Whether angry or muted, posing questions or simply relating experiences, these anonymous women bore witness to decades of civil strife, and of halting attempts at self-understanding in a painfully restrictive society. In this collection, by turns heartrending and inspiring, Xinran brings us the stories that affected her most, and offers a graphically detailed, altogether unprecedented work of oral history.

Review:  Asia has always intrigued me.  It seems like such a strange and beautiful part of the world.  The lives of the women in this book are strange, but not very beautiful.  The thought that people still live in such poverty and with such lack of choices seems almost impossible.  I wonder if these stories could even be true.  They seem so awful and sad.  They also inspired and touched me.

As an American woman I found it hard to understand how anyone would allow themselves to be treated the way most of these women do.  Still, it broke my heart and made me thankful for the life I do have.

This is really a quick read.  I didn't have a lot of reading time this week, so it took longer than it should have.  The author's writing style is intimate and concise.  I enjoyed it.

Rating:  6 / 10