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| By Stefan Blitz |
Read any good books lately?
This summer I’m trying to catch up on some long neglected titles (The Millennium and Hunger Games trilogies) and have an additional thirty (not including graphic novels) that I’m hoping to get through.
Check out my final installment of the thirty books to get you through the summer. If you missed the previous installments, check out PART 1 and PART 2.
Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver
“The face of war is changing.
The other side doesn’t play by the rules much anymore.
There’s thinking, in some circles, that we need to play by a different set of rules too …”
James Bond, in his early thirties and already a veteran of the Afghan war, has been recruited to a new organization. Conceived in the post-9/11 world, it operates independent of MI5, MI6 and the Ministry of Defense, its very existence deniable. Its aim: To protect the Realm, by any means necessary.
A Night Action alert calls James Bond away from dinner with a beautiful woman. Headquarters has decrypted an electronic whisper about an attack scheduled for later in the week:Casualties estimated in the thousands, British interests adversely affected.
And Agent 007 has been given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to fulfill his mission…
My Life in Comics: The Illustrated Autobiography of Joe Simon by Joe Simon
In his own words, this is the life of Joe Simon, one of the most important figures in comics history, and half of the famous creative team Simon and Kirby. Joe Simon co-created Captain America, and was the first editor in chief of Marvel Comics (where he hired Stan Lee for his first job in comics).
Simon began his prolific career in the Great Depression, and this book recounts his journey to New York City, his first comic book work, his meeting with Jack Kirby, and the role comics played in wartime America. He remembers the near-death of the comics, and the scramble to survive. And he reveals what it was like to bring comics out of their infancy, as they became an American art form.
The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown: A Novel by Paul Malmont
Based on an incredible true episode of World War II history, Paul Malmont’s new novel is a rollicking blend of fact and fiction about the men and women who were recruited to defeat the Nazis and ended up creating the future.
In 1943, when the United States learns that Germany is on the verge of a deadly innovation that could tip the balance of the war, the government turns to an unlikely source for help: the nation’s top science fiction writers. Installed at a covert military lab within the Philadelphia Naval Yard are the most brilliant of these young visionaries. The unruly band is led by Robert Heinlein, the dashing and complicated master of the genre. His “Kamikaze Group,” which includes the ambitious genius Isaac Asimov, is tasked with transforming the wonders of science fiction into science fact and unlocking the secrets to invisibility, death rays, force fields, weather control, and other astounding phenomena—and finding it harder than they ever imagined.
When a German spy washes ashore near the abandoned Long Island ruins of a mysterious energy facility, the military begins to fear that the Nazis are a step ahead of Heinlein’s group. Now the oddball team, joined by old friends from the Pulp Era including L. Ron Hubbard (court-martialed for attacking Mexico), must race to catch up. The answers they seek may be locked in the legendary War of Currents, which was fought decades earlier between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. As the threat of an imminent Nazi invasion of America grows more and more possible, events are set in motion that just may revolutionize the future—or destroy it—while forcing the writers to challenge the limits of talent, imagination, love, destiny, and even reality itself.
Blazing at breathtaking speed from forgotten tunnels deep beneath Manhattan to top-secret battles in the North Pacific, and careening from truth to pulp and back again, The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown is a sweeping, romantic epic—a page-turning rocket ship ride through the history of the future.
The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman: My Life as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Superman and Other Movie Heroes by Vic Armstrong with Robert Sellers
You may not know it, but you’ve seen Vic Armstrong’s work in countless movies.
From performing stunts in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice to directing the actions scenes for recent blockbusters The Green Hornet and Thor, the Academy Award-winning Vic Armstrong has been a legend in the movie industry for over 40 years. Along the way he’s been the stunt double for a whole host of iconic heroes, including 007, Superman, and most memorably, Indiana Jones – as Harrison Ford once joked to him, “If you learn to talk I’m in deep trouble.”
As a stunt co-ordinator and second unit director, Vic is behind the creation of such movies as Total Recall, The Mission, Dune, Rambo III, Terminator 2, Charlie’s Angels, Gangs of New York, War of the Worlds, I Am Legend and Mission: Impossible III, to name but a few, as well as several Bond films.
He’s got a lot of amazing stories to tell, and they’re all here in this hugely entertaining movie memoir, which also features exclusive contributions from many of Vic’s colleagues and friends, including Harrison Ford, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Pierce Brosnan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Angelina Jolie, Kenneth Branagh and Sir Christopher Lee.
Future Imperfect by K. Ryer Breese
When 17-year-old Ade Patience knocks himself unconscious, he can see the future. However, he’s also addicted to the high he gets when he breaks the laws of physics. And while he’s seen things he’s wanted to change, Ade knows The Rule: You can’t change the future, no matter how hard you try.
His memory is failing, his grades are in a death spiral, and both Ade’s best friend and his shrink are begging him to stop before he kills himself. Luckily, the stunning Vauxhall Rodolfo recently transferred to his school and, just like Ade saw in a vision two years previously, they’re destined to fall in love. It’s just the motivation Ade needs to kick his habit. Only… things are a bit more complicated than that. Vauxhall has a powerful addiction of her own. And after a vision in which Ade sees himself murdering someone, he realizes he must break the one rule he’s been told he can’t.
Ade and Vauxhall must overcome their addictions and embrace their love for each other in order to do the impossible: change the future.
Future Imperfect melds the excitement of a classic Marvel Comics hero with the modern romance of Twilight,and the result is a genre-bending Young Adult tour-de-force.
This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein by Kenneth Oppel
Victor and Konrad are the twin brothers Frankenstein. They are nearly inseparable. Growing up, their lives are filled with imaginary adventures…until the day their adventures turn all too real.
They stumble upon The Dark Library, and secret books of alchemy and ancient remedies are discovered. Father forbids that they ever enter the room again, but this only peaks Victor’s curiosity more. When Konrad falls gravely ill, Victor is not be satisfied with the various doctors his parents have called in to help. He is drawn back to The Dark Library where he uncovers an ancient formula for the Elixir of Life. Elizabeth, Henry, and Victor immediately set out to find assistance in a man who was once known for his alchemical works to help create the formula.
Determination and the unthinkable outcome of losing his brother spur Victor on in the quest for the three ingredients that will save Konrads life. After scaling the highest trees in the Strumwald, diving into the deepest lake caves, and sacrificing one’s own body part, the three fearless friends risk their lives to save another.
The Boy At The End Of The World by Greg van Eekhout
Fisher is the last boy on earth-and things are not looking good for the human race. Only Fisher made it out alive after the carefully crafted survival bunker where Fisher and dozens of other humans had been sleeping was destroyed.
Luckily, Fisher is not totally alone. He meets a broken robot he names Click, whose programmed purpose-to help Fisher “continue existing”-makes it act an awful lot like an overprotective parent. Together, Fisher and Click uncover evidence that there may be a second survival bunker far to the west. In prose that skips from hilarious to touching and back in a heartbeat, Greg van Eekhout brings us a thrilling story of survival that becomes a journey to a new hope-if Fisher can continue existing long enough to get there.
The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno by Ellen Bryson
Bartholomew Fortuno, the World’s Thinnest Man, believes that his unusual body is a gift. Hired by none other than P. T. Barnum to work at his spectacular American Museum–a modern marvel of macabre displays, breathtaking theatrical performances, and live shows by Barnum’s cast of freaks and oddities–Fortuno has reached the pinnacle of his career. But after a decade of constant work, he finds his sense of self, and his contentment within the walls of the museum, flagging. When a carriage pulls up outside the museum in the dead of night, bearing Barnum and a mysterious veiled woman–rumored to be a new performer–Fortuno’s curiosity is piqued. And when Barnum asks Fortuno to follow her and report back on her whereabouts, his world is turned upside down. Why is Barnum so obsessed with this woman? Who is she, really? And why has she taken such a hold on the hearts of those around her?
Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History by Ben Mezrich
Thad Roberts, a fellow in a prestigious NASA program had an idea—a romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally.
Thad convinced his girlfriend and another female accomplice, both NASA interns, to break into an impregnable laboratory at NASA’s headquarters—past security checkpoints, an electronically locked door with cipher security codes, and camera-lined hallways—and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: the moon rocks.
But what does one do with an item so valuable that it’s illegal even to own? And was Thad Roberts—undeniably gifted, picked for one of the most competitive scientific posts imaginable, a possible astronaut—really what he seemed?
Mezrich has pored over thousands of pages of court records, FBI transcripts, and NASA documents and has interviewed most of the participants in the crime to reconstruct this Ocean’s Eleven–style heist, a madcap story of genius, love, and duplicity that reads like a Hollywood thrill ride.
You’re Next by Greg Hurwitz
Mike Wingate had a rough childhood – he was abandoned at a playground at four years old and raised in foster care. No one ever came to claim him and he has only a few, fragmented memories of his parents. Now, as an adult, Mike is finally living the life he had always wanted – he’s happily married to Annabel, the woman of his dreams, they have a precocious 8-year-old daughter Kat, and his construction company is about to finish a “green” housing development that will secure a solid future for them all. Then the unimaginable happens – something from Mike’s own past, a past he doesn’t even remember, comes back to visit terror upon him and his family.
Menacing characters show up and begin threatening Mike and, when he reports them, the police seem more interested in Mike’s murky past than in investigating or protecting the young family. Now, with Mike, his wife and their daughter suddenly under attack from all sides, Mike must turn to Shep, a truly dangerous man – and Mike’s only true friend – from their childhood days together in foster care. Together, the two of them will do whatever it takes to protect Mike’s family against the hidden men behind the terrifying warning, “You’re Next!”
