Nightwoods by Charles Frazier

From the author of Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons comes a new and thrilling suspenseful novel called Nightwoods.  A young woman named Luce, the caretaker of an old lodge in small-town North Carolina, becomes the guardian of the twin children of her murdered sister. In turn, she must defend them from Bud, their former stepfather, who killed their mother while they watched, and who believes the traumatized children know the location of some stolen money.

Meanwhile, the owner of the Lodge has died and his young grandson, Stubblefield, has shown up to claim his inheritance which includes the lodge and other various businesses and lands around town.  Stubblefield is soon smitten by the young Luce and becomes her ally in protecting the children and Luce.

I loved Cold Mountain and I think this book is a lot like it in it's settings, plots, and flow of writing.  And although the book, to me, is a cliffhanger, I did enjoy it very much and was disappointed that it ended so quickly.  Hopefully, there will be a sequel in the near future.

Published September 27th 2011 by Random House Publishing Group.

In the Sea There Are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda

In the Sea There are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda is based on the true story of a young Afghan boy named Enaiatollah Akbari who, with the help of his mother, escapes Taliban rule in 2000.

It tells the story, in first person, of how his father, in Nava, is enslaved by the Taliban and sent on a mission to retrieve supplies in another city and told that if anything goes wrong, his family would be killed.  Things did go wrong.  His father was killed.  The Taliban threatened to take the two young boys in payment for his father's wrong doing so his mother takes him across the border to Pakistan and leaves him there to fend for himself.

The young Enaiatollah suffers through some very harrowing circumstances as he, alone, finds his way from Pakistan all the way to Italy where he later seeks and attains political assylum.  The situations that he finds himself in are extreme and life threatening such as dangerous border crossings, traveling across bitter cold mountains on foot, crammed into the false bottom of a truck with hundreds of other immigrants, traveling across violant waters in an inflatable raft.

Fabio Geda is an Italian novelist who works with children under duress and helped Enaiatollah put his story in words.

This book was originally published in Italy as Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli by B.C. Dalai editore, Milan, 2010 and translated to English by award wining translator Howard Curtis and published by Double Day books in 2011.

This book really puts into perspective, for me, what it must have been like for Afghans during the last decade.  I had a different view on how people lived and had been treated in the middle east during the war and even now it's not safe for Enaiatollah to return to his family.  For the record, he has contacted his family,  paid for them to travel and live in Pakistan and plans to visit them soon.

It's OK to Tell by Lauren Book

This is a true story about Lauren Book, a 11 year old girl who was sexually, physically, and mentally abused by her nanny, Waldina Flores, for five years.  She endured extreme abuse at the hands of this awful woman including rape, beatings, and torment.  Finally at the age of 17, with the support of her boyfriend, Lauren gets the courage to speak out against her abuser.  Her father then fired Flores who fled to Oklahoma.  Later Flores was arrested and tried and sentenced a life in prison.

 Lauren and her father have fought and succeeded in passing laws to protect innocent victims of child abuse.  She helped pass a law eliminating the statute of limitations for victims of child abuse under the age of 16.  She has also founded Lauren's Kids to educate and prevent child abuse and let others know that it's OK to tell.

There are more than 39 million survivors of sexual abuse in America.  OMG!

1 in 3 girls are sexually abused before the age of 18.

1 in 5 boys are sexually abused before the age of 18.

1 in 5 children are sexually solicited while on the internet before the age of 18.

30% of sexual abuse is never reported.

I read this whole book in less than 3 hours as I was completely enthralled by it.  Through most of it, I had tears streaming down my face at the sheer shock and horror of what happened to this girl.  I hope you read it! 

95% of sexual abuse is preventable through education!

Suffer the Children by John Saul

On the front cover:  Innocence dies so easily. Evil lives again...and again...and again.
This supernatural thriller is about a little girl, Beth, who was murdered by her father, John Conger, a hundred years ago in Port Arbello, New Hampshire.  After the tragic incident, he threw himself over the embankment to the thrashing sea below. 
The Conger family had been prominent in the small town for centuries.  The present day Jack Conger, his wife Rose, and his two girls, Elizabeth and Sarah had fallen victim the Conger curse.  One day while playing in the field, Jack unconciously followed Sarah into the woods and severely beat her.  She survived physically, but mentally she was gone.  She was unable to talk or show emotion at all.  Neither Jack or Sarah knew what had taken control of them that day. 
The spirit of the little girl, Beth, who had died so many years ago by her fathers hand, has taken control of Elizabeth's mind.  Leading her to lure children from the town to a cave at the embankment, where she kept them locked up and eventually killed them.  Elizabeth doesn't remember any of it.  But Sarah, in her mute world, knows.  And she, believed to be insane, is blamed for the dissappearances.  She is taken to an asylum to live out her days. 
Meanwhile, ten years after the murders, Jack Conger takes his wife for a boat ride, and neither of them ever return.  Elizabeth is left alone.  Soon, Sarah, who is still in the asylum, regains her voice and is allowed to visit home.  That is the day that the bodies are discovered in the cave.  Sarah is told that she would have to stand trial and is taken back to the asylum.  Sarah starts to remember.  She suddenly remembers following Elizabeth to the cave, she remembers the flash of the knife, she remembers her sister's face as Elizabeth slashes the  children over and over.  Then her mute face returns.  And Elizabeth, back home, remembers too....
I read this book in two days.  On the edge of my seat.  Chewing my nails.  I often find myself wondering, while reading a book, if it could be made into a movie.  This book could never bemade into a movie because it would be too much for the human mind to accept.  Reading about something horrendous, and actually seeing it are two different things.  Like the movie, Pet Cemetary, where the little boy gets hit by the Semi-truck.  I was okay with reading it, but seeing it on the screen was just too much.  I couldn't watch the rest of the movie. 
This is the third book I have read by John Saul.  I find his style, how should I put it... shocking.  But luring.  I can't resist it. This book was a national best seller and sold more than a million copies.  It was published in 1977 by Dell Publishing. 

Together is All We Need by Michael Phillips

The setting is 1860s Shenandoah, North Carolina at the Rosewood Cotton Plantation.  Sixteen year old Katie Burchard and her half black cousin Mayme, have been keeping a very serious secret.  Both of their families had been killed by marauders after the Civil War.  Katie and Mayme, along with former slave children, have been running Rosewood all by themselves.  Fooling everyone in town to think their families were still alive and well.  Soon, their charade is over when Katie's uncle showed up to find out for himself what was going on and eventually finds out the truth.  But when he tried to make a claim on the plantation and send Katie and her friends away, another uncle showed up with the original deed that had been signed over to him years before.  Apparantly, Katie's parents knew that other uncle would come and try to make a claim. 

This is a story of great human kindness, hatred, and racism.  A time when blacks were very recently freed from slavery, but not by any means free.  A story of determination and dedication to accomplish a sisterhood of love.  This book is part of a series titled:  The Shenandoah Sisters.  I have not read the previous books in the series but plan to soon. 

Michael Phillips is a Christian novelist who has written more than four dozen novels with sales over five million copies.  This book was published in 2004 by Bethany House Publishers.  I believe it was written for young adults but I enjoyed it very much. 

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Just after the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona is in shambles, and Daniel Sempere's mother has been dead so long he can't remember her face.  Daniel is ten years old when his father, the owner of the bookshop, takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books to choose a novel from piles and stacks of books that have been brought there because they were, in essence, forgotten.  This tradition had been passed down for generations by the Sempere family.  Daniel chose a book, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax.  He is told that the book would be his to keep and protect forever and that he must never tell anyone about the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.  Little did Daniel know that the book he had chosen would alter his future forever.  Little did Daniel know, that the author of the book was involved in scandel and murder, love and tragedy.  His curiousity got the better of him when he decided to find out more about the life of Julian Carax.  And the life of Carax altered the lives of many for better and worse. 

This story is so complex that I cannot even begin to review it in it's entirety here.  Even if I tried, it would give away the ending because the truth doesn't take shape til then.  I can only say that Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a master at his art.  This tale is one that will be etched in my memory for a very long time.  One phrase in particular, gave me goosebumps:  ...so long as we are being remembered, we remain alive...     

Published in 2001 in Barcelona and translated to English and published in New York by The Penguin Press in 2004, The Shadow of the Wind spent more than a year on the Spanish bestseller list and is being published in more than twenty countries.  It has been acclaimed internationally. 

Midnight Voices by John Saul

Brad and Caroline Evans lived in a nice little cozy apartment on the East Side of Central Park in New York City which was a better neighborhood than the West Side with their two children 12 year old Laurie and 10 year old Ryan.  Brad had been telling Caroline lately that he felt like he was being watched and followed whenever he went out.  She thought he was just paranoid, until the night he went running late in Central Park.  He never came back.  He had been murdered, his neck snapped from behind. 

After Brad's death Caroline was skeptical of the park but when the kids insisted that they go and play with their friends, she relented, going with them.  Ryan ran to the baseball diamond and she and Laurie sat on a bench to watch.  Suddenly an old woman and a handsome young man sat down with them and started talking to them.  They seemed very nice.  She unwittingly told them all about herself and the next day the old woman showed up at the antique shop where Caroline worked.  She bought a large vase and asked Caroline to deliver it to her at her home which is the huge old spooky mansion called the Rockwell at the edge of the park not far from where Caroline lived with her children.   When she arrived and entered the building she was greeted by the doorman, who seemed like the butler in the haunted mansion at Disney World.  He spoke in monotones.  Suddenly the handsome man was there introducing himself as Anthony Fleming and told her that the old woman was up to her old tricks, trying to find him a wife.  He made her promise to have dinner with him and they decided to play along with the old woman's game.

That was the beginning of the whole nightmare.  Caroline and Anthony married a few months later and she and her children moved into the Rockwell.  Ryan didn't like it from the start recalling ghost and witch stories he had heard from his schoolmates.  They had told him that Rodney, the doorman, was a troll who lived under the bridge in the park.  He also didn't like Anthony Fleming or any of the other tenants in the Rockwell. 

Soon after moving in, both of the children start hearing noises and voices in the night.  Then people were coming into their rooms at night, particularly Laurie's room and hovering over her, poking her, whispering.  The people in her room were the neighbors, even a creepy doctor who lived in the building, started appearing in her room, crooning over her, touching her.  All three of them, Caroline, Laurie and Ryan, were being drugged through the food the neighbors so generously brought them.  But they didn't realize it at the time.  They shrugged it off as fatigue and nightmares. 

Laurie began being strapped to a gurney and taken out of her room every night at midnight, she was inserted with needles and tubes in every part of her body.  These people, the people that lived in the Rockwell, where hooked to the other ends of the tubes and needles, draining her youth out of her body and into theirs.  Then, one day all the old ladies where missing.  In their places where young ladies, who coincidently looked exactly like the older ladies.  Caroline was also being heavily sedated so that all this could take place without her intervening.  She eventually was taken to some creepy old hospital where she would be out of the way, and locked up there.  But Ryan had sensed something wrong about the neighbors from the start.  Locked in his room, he found a hidden door in his closet and found his way out of the house.  He went and found his mother and freed her, then the two went back to the Rockwell and saved Laurie, whose was close to death. 

While I was reading this book one day, in the middle of the afternoon, mind you, my son knocked on my bedroom door, and I just about jumped out of my skin.  I also chewed my nails, which I haven't done in a long time.  Very scary.  An action packed page turner.  It was published in 2002 by Ballantine Books.

Also see ----->Black Creek Crossing  by the same author.