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All Meat Looks Like South America by Bruce McCall
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
The Black Island by Georges Remi Hergé
The Blues of Flats Brown by Walter Dean Myers
The Bungalow Mystery (Nancy Drew #3) by Carolyn Keene
The Cave by Steve McGill
Chicka Chicka 123 by Bill Martin Jr. and Lois Ehlert
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Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron
Duck in a Truck by Jez Alborough
Enemies and Allies by Kevin J. Anderson
Frozen Tears by Mary Ann MacAfee
Haven Stones: The Last Unicorn by Richard Carbajal
Humanism for Parents — Parenting without Religion by Sean Curley
Hurricane by Arnaldo Ricciulli
I Spy Christmas by Jean Marzollo
If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss
Immortality Inc. by Robert Sheckley
Mars: The Red Planet by Isaac Asimov
Monsters! Draw Your Own Mutants, Freaks & Creeps by Jay Stephens
North from Calcutta by Duane Evans
Perseverance: True Voices of Cancer Survivors by Carolyn Rubenstein
Read Me edited by Gaby Morgan
Resonance by A. J. Scudiere
Right to Remain Silent by Penny Warner
Sahwira: An African Friendship by Carolyn Marsden
The Shining by Stephen King
Son of the Great River by Elijah Meeks
The Sun by Ralph Winrich
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
That's Not My Dinosaur by Fionna Watt
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
What the Hell is a Groom and What's He Supposed to Do? by John Mitchell
Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner
You Suck by Christopher Moore
Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
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Hurricane: 11/15/09

Hurricane uses the end of the Mayan calendar as a backdrop for a disaster thriller. Daniel Mayhew has a theory for bringing tropical depressions under control before they become hurricanes. Meanwhile Kelly Delany has a theory that global warming will create the need for a new class of hurricane: category six. Kelly and Daniel if they work together along with the navy might be able save lives and prevent devastation. Unfortunately for them, General Lowe is standing in their way as a member of the "Lucky Thirteen."

Hurricane is an odd book. It has an interesting pair of lead characters with believable families and plausible back stories. Likewise Florida feels like Florida; it is both a setting and a supporting character

What it lacks though is a firm footing in the disaster genre. It reads like a hybrid of a speculative fiction, a disaster story and spy novel (Cussler, Clancy, Flemming). The typical book has three parts: introduction of the characters and the possible disaster, the disaster itself and the fall out from it. Things are exacerbated by human nature: officials slow to move, so-called experts cutting corners, and so forth

In Hurricane the human nature aspect is replaced by the "Lucky Thirteen" acting for reasons never fully established. They act like the villains who Dirk Pitt or James Bond go after novel without the heroes to come and take them down in a one on one fire fight. With the focus turned from the danger of the storm to the "Lucky Thirteen" the category six storm ends up being an empty threat

My final reaction to Hurricane is mixed. I like the main characters and off the wall solution to the hurricane threat. I don't think "Lucky Thirteen" were fleshed out enough to be a successful foil to Daniel and Kelly. Instead they end up taking away precious plot development time from the novel. It would have been more interesting and more thrilling if Daniel and Kelly fail early on to call into doubt their solution when the huge storm is barreling down on Florida

I received the book from the author to review. I have since released it via BookCrossing.

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