The Confederation Handbook, by Peter F. Hamilton
Filed under: Peter F. Hamilton, Science Fiction, book review
This is a handbook – a book of “facts”, 
In this galactic almanac Peter F. Hamilton reveals the true potential of his brilliantly realized epic. Expanding on its concepts and complexities, The Confederation Handbook explores the 600-year history of more than 21,500 inhabited worlds, asteroids, and bitek habitats. You can discover how Edenist space colonies are grown; the real story of the Kulu Kings and the exiled Lord of Ruin; why Adamist religions caused the human schism by rejecting Affinity; the tragic legacy of Rubra, the Edenist rebel who created Valisk; learn about Voidhawk breeding and Tyrathca mating rituals, and much more!
The Confederation Handbook covering geology, politics, technology, weaponry, and alien life forms, and is a must read for Peter Hamilton’s legion of fans.
To some extent it is also a book of spoilers. Much of Night’s Dawn consists of going through a long series of adventures to find out the quirks of Hamilton’s galaxy. It is the wealth and appeal of his background, and the daring of his conceit – science fiction that overtly tackles all the issues usually left to religion – that make Night’s Dawn so popular.
With this book you get in neat summary the information that would otherwise require you to read thousands of pages of the trilogy itself. Indeed, if you read the first volume of Reality Dysfunction& and would like to know where the story goes, you have only to read this book, skip the next four and a half volumes, and read the last 100 pages of Naked God, and you will have the plot. On the other hand, readers who have read and learned all the information provided in the trilogy will find little new here.
Running Blind, by Desmond Bagley – classic thriller
Running Blind is another of the thrillers by English thriller master Desmond Bagley that has been made into a movie. It is a great, very suspenseful roller-coaster of a novel that tied me to me chair. 
It all begins with a simple errand – a package to deliver. “It’ll be simple”, they said at the Department. “You’ll just be a messenger boy.” But to Alan Stewart, on a deserted road in Iceland with a murdered man at his feet, it looks anything but simple. Almost immediately, he finds himself in a maze of bluffs and double-bluffs. Set amongst some of the most dramatic scenery in the world, Stewart and his girlfriend, Erin, are faced with treacherous natural obstacles and deadly threats, as they battle to carry out the mission.
Stewart escapes a very cunning trap and in doing so stumbles, almost by accident, on the scary possibility that a top official in British intelligence may actually be a Russian mole. What follows is a spellbinding sequence of action involving the mole, the Russians, some stray CIA agents in fascinating pursuit all across Iceland.
Running Blind culminates in a shootout that contains a huge surprise, and a shocking conclusion.
An excellent thriller! The language and descriptions are excellent, the plot full of surprising twists, and the suspense almost intolerable. Running Blind moves at a faster pace than the average Bagley novel. Still very well worth reading!
The Last Frontier, by Alistair MacLean
Filed under: Alistair MacLean, Thriller, book review
(a k a The Secret Ways) This 
Michael Reynolds is a capable agent but not a superman. He doesn’t even have any fancy technology. He is well trained and resourceful. His skills are immediately put to the test when something goes wrong and he falls into the hands of the ruthless Hungarian Secret Police. In an attempt to continue his mission, he seeks the help of the leader of an underground movement that is set up to smuggle Hungarians over the border into the West.
The Last Frontier was published in 1959, just three years after the crushing of the October Revolution by the Russian troops. It is a tough book to read, and an excellent spy thriller. If you don’t know or have forgotten just how hard-fought the Cold War was for the United States and its Western Allies, and how desperate many people in the Eastern European countries were under Soviet rule, this may be a good book to read. It is, I think, very realistic on some levels, and besides: it is great entertainment, and very exciting. The Last Frontier is recommended to fans of Cold War spy fiction and to fans of Alistair MacLean.
Praise for The Last Frontier:
‘Breathless, bloody and detailed.’ Daily Telegraph
‘Swift-moving, with a tremendous climactic scene on the snow-swept roof of a trans-Hungarian express.’ Glasgow Herald
, Amazon UK
, and Amazon CAN
. See also Bokkilden.no and Tanum.The Eleventh Commandment, by Jeffrey Archer
Filed under: Fiction, Jeffrey Archer, New York Times bestseller, Thriller, bestseller, book review
Connor Fitzgerald works for the CIA. Nobody knows of his double life, 
Actually, Connor is being sent on a bogus mission, set up by the director of the CIA, presumably with the permission of the White House. The job ploy is to eliminate Connor, who has, in the Director’s view, become a threat to her job.
The Eleventh Commandment is another Jeffrey Archer-tale with a lot of twists in the tale, and clearly with some references to the goings on of the real world. Well worth an intensive weekend of reading!
The Bomb Vessel, by Richard Woodman
Filed under: Nathaniel Drinkwater, Richard Woodman, book review, historical fiction, naval fiction
This is a book in the excellent and very realistic historical fiction series from the Age of Sail by Richard Woodman, featuring Nathaniel Drinkwater. This books, The Bomb Vessel takes place early in the Napoleonic Wars, and covers the time period from September 1800 to July 1801. Nathaniel Drinkwater has returned from the Red Sea and is on 
At the same time, he is also forced to deal with a problematic situation that his brother has gotten himself into by murdering his girlfriend and her lover.
Virago, with other known characters such as Mr. Rogers, Tregembo and Mr. Q, joins Nelson’s fleet bound for Copenhagen and Drinkwater has ample opportunity to distinguish himself at the first Battle of Copenhagen in April 1801. And being a man that wants to make something of himself, he throws himself into whatever action he can find. In the end, he is personally congratulated by Horatio Nelson and promoted to Commander.
Drinkwater has developed into a tough and skillful man. As Tregembo states, “Men don’t cross the lieutenant too successfully, zur, leastaways not sensible men”‘. He is a tough and quite formidable fighting man even though his wounds from 20 years of service start to bother him. Drinkwater is quicker tempered and less introspective than Horatio Hornblower, but still in many ways reminds me of him. He is very willing to take risks, has a good understanding of tactics, and no fear in battle. In many ways Drinkwater is a more believable hero than Hornblower!
The Bomb Vessel has great descriptions of the Battle of Copenhagen. As well, Woodman’s descriptions of the historical characters involved seem to be very good. The book is a quick but very entertaining read. One of the better in a very good series!
Prime Time, by Liza Marklund
Filed under: Annika Bengtzon, Liza Marklund, Swedish writer, book review, crime book
This is the fourth book written in Liza Marklund’s series 
In Prime Time, well translated by Ingrid Eng-Rundlow, Annika gets involved in the investigation of a Swedish media personality, perhaps the brightest star of them all, TV presenter Michelle Carlsson. Carlsson has been on a Midsummer Eve party with 12 other people, in a beautiful and remote manor house in Sweden, and is found shot to death in a mobile control room. Michelle Carlsson was shot after a late night of drinking, quarreling and sex.
It is quickly established that more or less all of the other twelve people present both had opportunity and motives for wanting Carlsson dead. Liza Marklund takes us into the world behind the cameras, into a world where very few people like one another, where there is lot of envy and backstabbing, where the competition for the top spot is extremely intense and everybody is involved in a more or less continuous fight for power, money and fame.
With the murder, things get more complicated for Annika Bengtzon. One of the suspects is a close friend. And the relationship to her partner Thomas gets worse – he accuses her of letting the family down. And, on top of all of that, her boss also involves her in a power struggle in the newspaper. So Annika is often angry, complaining and difficult in this book. Meanwhile there’s a killer on the loose – and a tense drama about to unfold in the public eye. And in the center of it all is Annika, who in the end is the one who actually solves the mystery.
Prime Time is an interesting and good book, and times quite suspenseful. Even so, in my opinion it is the weakest of the books in the Annika Bengtzon series. However, it is still well worth reading, and you should, if possible, read the series in chronological sequence – that is, read Prime Time after Paradise and before The Bomber.
at amazon US andamazon UK: Liza Marklund (books and DVD’s)
. Links to books by James Patterson at amazon US
and amazon UK
.Styling Web Pages with CSS: Visual QuickProject Guide, by Tom Negrino and Dori Smith
This book offers a very quick introduction to CSS. 
The book starts with the basics – rules, selectors, classes, IDs, the cascade, internal and external style sheets, Divs, boxes, floats, padding, margins – everything is covered, both in a very basic manner. Next are styling elements, working with images, menus and navigation, and moving styles from internal to external style sheets. Rounding out this project-based guide is working with browsers, both old and new, and debugging CSS.
Styling Web Pages with CSS is very succinct and to the point. However, there are some minor mistakes in it, and there are lots of things that are not explained – so while most of the recommendations in the book work, it is very hard to understand why, and the book provides very little in the way of recommendations for where to go to learn more about particular topics or find more in-depth information.
I would consider this book an introduction for people liking to learn visually. However, it has limited value at all beyond the very first introduction. Generally I would say that this is one of the weaker Visual QuickProject books, and it was not as good as I had expected it to be.
Audacity, Privateer Out of Portsmouth, by J. E. Fender
Filed under: J. E. Fender, book review, historical fiction
This is an interesting nautical fiction novel by J.E. Fender. This is the second volume of the Frost Saga, the story of one Geoffrey Frost, a mariner from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who is a great navigator,
Geoffrey Frost has entered the American Revolution on behalf of the colony of New Hampshire, commanding a captured British sloop o’ war and sailing out of Portsmouth to harass the British fleet. And as Frost doesn’t like to waste time, the story about him too moves fast, with little time spent ashore and lots of nautical action compared to most of the novels about naval warfare in the age of sail.
The story in Audacity, as in the first book in the series, is set during the American Revolution. Here Frost and his crew engage an English frigate very smartly, destroy another English Navy ship, and capture several British trading and supply ships. For Frost and his crew, that means a very nice sum in prize money, and it also serves to enhance Frost’s reputation and influence.
Audacity is very entertaining, rich on historical detail, and has great descriptions of the naval actions the ship engages in. The weakest part of the book is in the exceedingly conceited manner of behavior of the some of the characters, most notably Frost himself. He speaks as if he was reading from a government document or the small print clauses in an insurance policy. I think it is fairly unlikely that anyone ever stood on a quarterdeck and emitted any of the pompous speeches that Geoffrey Frost is guilty of.
Overall, I view Audacity as a very nice read, entertaining, and quite interesting as it deals with the Civil War and the emerging navy of the US. And I enjoy ther hero, the smart and brave Geoffrey Frost a lot!
Praise:
“This entertaining novel .. offers historical detail .. plenty of action, and unforgettable characters.” —Booklist
“The battle scenes are plentiful, the historic references neatly woven in ..”—Concord Monitor
“A seafaring yarn of the American Revolution, Audacity plunges into action and claps on sail.”—The Historical Novels Review
The Disciple, by Stephen Coonts
Filed under: Steven Coonts, Thriller, bestseller, book review, espionage, military fiction
Iran is weeks away from having operational nuclear weapons. Closer, in fact, than the CIA believes. It seems to have every intention of using 
CIA’s Chief of Operations for the Middle East is former Navy admiral Jake Grafton. He knows something is going on, and assigns his best operative, Tommy Carmellini, to work inside Iran. Tommy starts gathering information, and is assisted by a group of dissident Iranians. They are afraid their leader may start a new world war.
Eventually, the facts are on the table. And they are much worse than suspected. Iran has nearly completed production of a dozen nuclear warheads. But the American President refuses to strike Iran first. As he sees it, a broad strike on Iran will be the beginning of the third world war. Instead it will be up to Grafton and Carmellini to stop the disaster from occurring. The countdown to Armageddon has started. Can it be stopped?
Tommy Carmellini, the main character in a recent series of books by Stephen Coonts, has worked with Jake Grafton on a number of missions. He is a retired jewel thief that has been turned into a somewhat reluctant CIA operative. He is a very smooth, careful, intelligent and highly adaptive man who has just the kind of skill set that is required for deep undercover work.
In The Disciple, Stephen Coonts returns to the kind of military and espionage story that he is great at, and that made some other novels, like Cuba, very successful novels. This is a good move by Coonts. He knows how to tell a suspenseful tale of skillful military action and undercover technology.
The Disciple had me pinned to my chair. It is Coonts at his best again. A great book!
The Disciple is a tense and fast-paced thriller, starting with the opening sequence of the Israeli destruction of a Syrian nuclear plant. It never slows down. A great book for fans of military and espionage thrillers. One I recommend.
High Citadel, by Desmond Bagley
Filed under: Desmond Bagley, Thriller, bestseller, book review
Desmond Bagley is an almost forgetten English master thriller writer. But his books are still very well worth reading – elegant, extremely suspenseful, good characters and smart plots. High Citadel is one of his best.
A plane is forced down in the Andes. The survivors – a pilot, two businessmen, 
And as they try to organize their effort to improve their situation, we start to find out that the people involved are not what they say they are. Each has their own past. And, in addition, it soon becomes evident that the survivors have a traitor in their midst.
They manage to get down to a mining camp. There another bad surprise awaits them. What follows is tense, tightly scripted action. The party of survivors gets holed up on one side of a gorge, trying their best to holding off attackers with limited weapons and ammunition and a homemade crossbow. Their hopes rest on a small number who have volunteered to climb the other side of the mountain looking for help.
Every character in High Citadel plays an important role. The action is very tense, and the suspense is present all the time. This is one of Bagley’s best books, well written, exciting and a great read. It is highly recommended for all thriller fans.
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The World of Books- The Devil’s Alternative, by Frederick Forsyth
- A Golden Age for Norwegian Crime Fiction?
- Brilliant surfer crime fiction: The Gentlemen’s Hour by Don Winslow
- A Time in Xanadu, by Lars Gustafsson
- The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron
- Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
- Pandora’s Star, by Peter F. Hamilton – The Commonwealth Saga
- Excellent spy thriller: The Defector, by Daniel Silva
- Little Birds, by Anias Nin
- Shadow, by Karin Alvtegen
- BookGazette
- Great crime fiction: Gone by Mo Hayder
- U-859, by Arthur Baudzus
- Things We Lost in the Fire (DVD)
- Finnish crime fiction – wasting an opportunity?
- New cyber-thriller: Storm by Dave Pearson
- Excellent thriller: The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva
- Lie Down in Darkness, by William Styron
- The Best Vietnam War Novel Ever? Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
- The Gentlemen’s Hour, by Don Winslow
- To Steal Her Love, by Matti Joensuu
- Euro bookblog
- Are The Scandinavian Crime Writers Associations Soundly Asleep?
- The Intruders, by Stephen Coonts
- Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron
- Eaters of the Dead, by Michael Crichton
- The Chairman, by Stephen Frey
- South by Java Head, by Alistair Maclean
- Wyatt’s Hurricane, by Desmond Bagley
- Our Lives, Our Fortunes, by J. E. Fender
- The Man with the Iron Heart, by Harry Turtledove
- HMS Saracen, by Douglas Reeman