Mockingjay

Publisher's Weekly..This concluding volume in Collins's Hunger Games trilogy accomplishes a rare feat, the last installment being the best yet, a beautifully orchestrated and intelligent novel that succeeds on every level. At the end of Catching Fire, Katniss had been dramatically rescued from the Quarter Quell games; her fellow tribute, Peeta, has presumably been taken prisoner by the Capitol. Now the rebels in District 13 want Katniss (who again narrates) to be the face of the revolution, a propaganda role she's reluctant to play. One of Collins's many achievements is skillfully showing how effective such a poster girl can be, with a scene in which Katniss visits the wounded, cameras rolling to capture (and retransmit) her genuine outrage at the way in which war victimizes even the noncombatants. Beyond the sharp social commentary and the nifty world building, there's a plot that doesn't quit: nearly every chapter ends in a reversal-of-fortune cliffhanger. Readers get to know characters better, including Katniss's sister and mother, and Plutarch Heavensbee, former Head Gamemaker, now rebel filmmaker, directing the circus he hopes will bring down the government, a coup possible precisely because the Capitol's residents are too pampered to mount a defense. "In return for full bellies and entertainment," he tells Katniss, explaining the Latin phrase panem et circenses, "people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power." Finally, there is the romantic intrigue involving Katniss, Peeta and Gale, which comes to a resolution that, while it will break some hearts, feels right. In short, there's something here for nearly every reader, all of it completely engrossing.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book...

Catching Fire

Publisher's Weekly..Fresh from their improbable victory in the annual Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta get to enjoy the spoils only briefly before they must partake in a Capitol-sponsored victory tour. But trouble is brewing—President Snow tells Katniss directly he won’t stand for being outsmarted, and she overhears rumbles of uprisings in Panem’s districts. Before long it’s time for the next round of games, and because it’s the 75th anniversary of the competition, something out of the ordinary is in order. If this second installment spends too much time recapping events from book one, it doesn’t disappoint when it segues into the pulse-pounding action readers have come to expect. Characters from the previous volume reappear to good effect: Katniss’s stylist, Cinna, proves he’s about more than fashion; Haymitch becomes more dimensional. But the star remains Katniss, whose bravery, honesty and wry cynicism carry the narrative. (About her staff of beauticians she quips: “They never get up before noon unless there’s some sort of national emergency, like my leg hair.”) Collins has also created an exquisitely tense romantic triangle for her heroine. Forget Edward and Jacob: by book’s end (and it’s a cliffhanger), readers will be picking sides—Peeta or Gale?

Loved this book!

Hunger Games

Publisher's Weekly..Reviewed by Megan Whalen Turner

If there really are only seven original plots in the world, it's odd that “boy meets girl” is always mentioned, and “society goes bad and attacks the good guy” never is. Yet we have Fahrenheit 451 , The Giver , The House of the Scorpion —and now, following a long tradition of Brave New Worlds, The Hunger Games .

Collins hasn't tied her future to a specific date, or weighted it down with too much finger wagging. Rather less 1984 and rather more Death Race 2000 , hers is a gripping story set in a postapocalyptic world where a replacement for the United States demands a tribute from each of its territories: two children to be used as gladiators in a televised fight to the death.

Katniss, from what was once Appalachia, offers to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, but after this ultimate sacrifice, she is entirely focused on survival at any cost. It is her teammate, Peeta, who recognizes the importance of holding on to one's humanity in such inhuman circumstances. It's a credit to Collins's skill at characterization that Katniss, like a new Theseus, is cold, calculating and still likable. She has the attributes to be a winner, where Peeta has the grace to be a good loser.

It's no accident that these games are presented as pop culture. Every generation projects its fear: runaway science, communism, overpopulation, nuclear wars and, now, reality TV. The State of Panem—which needs to keep its tributaries subdued and its citizens complacent—may have created the Games, but mindless television is the real danger, the means by which society pacifies its citizens and punishes those who fail to conform. Will its connection to reality TV, ubiquitous today, date the book? It might, but for now, it makes this the right book at the right time.

What happens if we choose entertainment over humanity? In Collins's world, we'll be obsessed with grooming, we'll talk funny, and all our sentences will end with the same rise as questions. When Katniss is sent to stylists to be made more telegenic before she competes, she stands naked in front of them, strangely unembarrassed. “They're so unlike people that I'm no more self-conscious than if a trio of oddly colored birds were pecking around my feet,” she thinks. In order not to hate these creatures who are sending her to her death, she imagines them as pets. It isn't just the contestants who risk the loss of their humanity. It is all who watch.

Katniss struggles to win not only the Games but the inherent contest for audience approval. Because this is the first book in a series, not everything is resolved, and what is left unanswered is the central question. Has she sacrificed too much? We know what she has given up to survive, but not whether the price was too high. Readers will wait eagerly to learn more.

Megan Whalen Turner is the author of the Newbery Honor book The Thief and its sequels, The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia. The next book in the series will be published by Greenwillow in 2010.

I read this book a few years ago and picked it up again in anticipation of the movie release. Gus, Liza, and I all love this series and can't wait for the movie.

To The Nines

Publisher's Weekly.."My name is Stephanie Plum and I was born and raised in the Chambersburg section of Trenton, where the top male activities are scarfing pastries and pork rinds and growing ass hair." Within pages of this elegant introduction to the latest installment in Evanovich's bestselling numbered series, the less-than-stellar bounty hunter Stephanie Plum has managed to haul in a fat, naked and, yes, furry "skip" who has greased himself up with Vaseline to literally give her the slip. In the midst of taking him to the police station, however, Plum drops everything to help her beloved Grandma Mazur, who calls to say that Stephanie's mom locked herself in the bathroom to escape the craziness of the Plum family. Finally, Plum checks in at the office, where her employer and cousin, the bailbondsman Vinnie, assigns her back-up duty on the thorny case of a missing Indian man, Samuel Singh. Vinnie previously wrote a bond ensuring that Singh would leave the country when his visa expired, so the latter's disappearance drives Vinnie to call in the devastatingly attractive Ranger, his star enforcer, and assign Stephanie to help him. As fans know, the mysterious Ranger has long competed with the equally sexy Morelli to be the object of Plum's desire, so his presence—just as Plum has temporarily moved in with Morelli—keeps the sexual tension high. An awkward plot that takes Plum to Vegas is the weakest course in this meal. Yet Evanovich's many fans will be more than happy with their latest serving of Stephanie Plum—that cute, bumbling, irresistibly average Jersey girl—who just happens to have more laughs, more sizzling sexual tension, and more nonstop, zany adventure than anybody else around.

I was on track to read all of the Stephanie Plum books again but am stopping after #9 as I don't like the later ones as much as the early ones....maybe I'll pick them up later..

Hard Eight

Publisher's Weekly..The menace is more personal for Trenton's favorite bounty hunter and the energy more manic in this latest outing than in last year's Seven Up. As a favor to her mother's next-door neighbor, Mabel Markowitz, Stephanie agrees to check up on the lady's granddaughter, Evelyn Soder, who has suddenly taken off with her little girl, Annie, leaving behind a child custody bond against Mabel's house. The son-in-law is a bad guy who lost his bar to Eddie Abruzzi, a very nasty character who owns Evelyn's building. Soon someone in a bunny suit is trailing Stephanie, her car is blown up, her apartment infiltrated and a dead body appears on her couch. She calls in her associate, Ranger, the gorgeous and mysterious Cuban bond agent, while her sometime boyfriend, Morelli the cop, also gets on the case—a real doozy for which she's not getting paid. On the home front, ever-raunchy Grandma Mazur is eager to assist. Sister Valerie and kids have moved back in as well, so there's nowhere but the couch for Stephanie and one bathroom for all. Valerie is inexplicably attracted to Evelyn's goofy lawyer, who's been tagging along with Stephanie and the ever-outrageous file clerk and ex-hooker Lula, further complicating this twisted case. Life in the Burg takes on a sinister turn with serious results. Evanovich does it again, delivering an even more suspenseful and more outrageous turn with the unstoppable Stephanie, heroine of all those who have to live on peanut butter until the next check comes through. Waiting for nine will be tough.

Seven UP

Publisher's Weekly... It's always a treat to go out on a case with Stephanie Plum, the sassy, adventurous, but not always successful Trenton, N.J., bounty hunter. In her seventh outing (after 2000's Hot Six), Stephanie's employer, her bailbondsman cousin, Vinnie, gives her an easy job: pick up vicious senior citizen Eddie DeChooch, who is constantly sighted racing around Trenton in a borrowed white Cadillac, but whom no one can grab. While in Virginia picking up the cigarettes he's charged with smuggling into New Jersey, he stole the heart from the recently dead body of his enemy, Louis DeStephano. The heart's whereabouts define the darkly hilarious trajectory of the plot. The usual characters inhabit the novel: Steph's former high school buddies, the zonked-out Dougie and Mooner; and Evanovich's best creation, feisty Grandma Mazur. Stephanie's much-resented sister Valerie returns from California with her two daughters, her "perfect" marriage ended, and moves in with her parents, to their dismay. Steph and her lover Joe Morelli almost set a wedding date, but again she avoids commitment, still attracted to fellow bounty hunter Ranger. At times the plot meanders: Stephanie and pal Lula spend too much time running from house to house in the inbred Burg neighborhood, while two semi-retired crooks looking for DeChooch keep breaking into her apartment for little reason. All in all this is another zesty Evanovich read, but one that doesn't quite hit the high marks of her last two. (June 19)

Hot Six

Publisher's Weekly...Sexy, smart-talking New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum returns for her sixth wildly amusing mystery (after 1999's High Five). Determination and contacts (she's grown up with half the cops and crooks in Trenton) compensate for Steph's poor aim with a gun, bad luck with cars and soft-hearted approach to her job (one bail jumper evades her four times). The police are after her mentor, the mysterious Ranger, wanted for killing drug and gun dealer Homer Ramos. Claiming he's innocent, Ranger persuades Steph to help him keep an eye on the Ramos clan. Steph teams up with her lover, vice cop Joe Morelli, then strikes out on her own when she realizes neither Joe nor Ranger will share information with her. When Mafia thugs get involved, she barely avoids kidnapping and torture. Meanwhile, there's her love life to deal with. Can she be physically attracted to Ranger and be in love with Joe? Evanovich spins all these threads, plus more, into a lunatic tapestry of nonstop action peopled by wacky characters straight out of a 1930s screwball comedy: Steph's Grandma Mazur, 80 years old, with the world view of a teenage punk; Mooner and Dougie, two lovable but zonked-out stolen goods dealers who have a closeout sale before going to jail; Habib and Mitchell, mobsters who follow Steph when Mitchell's wife doesn't need the car for kids' soccer games; and Steph's co-worker and pal, Lula, a gun-toting ex-prostitute always ready for an adventure. Evanovich just keeps getting better.

High Five

Publisher's Weekly...Fans of Evanovich's tales of the adventures of Stephanie Plum (Four to Score, etc.), Jersey girl and bounty hunter extraordinaire, have been eagerly anticipating this next installment in the popular series. The good news is that the novel is just as wacky and over the top as its predecessors, and that the disaster-prone Stephanie has brought along her usual wild-and-crazy crew of sidekicks and loony relatives to help her chase down felons. Evanovich even manages to make the dowdy working-class city of Trenton, N.J., seem like a hip, edgy place for her funky characters to live. But Trenton also has its share of nefarious criminals for Stephanie to pursue--folk like Randy Briggs, the dwarf, who not only repeatedly eludes her grasp but keeps taunting her as a loser. Stephanie careens through her days, looking for her missing Uncle Fred and taking on FTA (failure to appear) cases for her cousin Vinnie, a bail bondsman. Further complications ensue when she tries to earn extra money by moonlighting on quasi-legal ""security"" jobs for Ranger, her dangerously sexy mentor at the bounty-hunting game. Ranger is looking awfully good to Stephanie these days, and she is finding it hard to choose between him and old flame Joe Morelli. Evanovich tells her fast-paced and furiously funny story expertly. The action never stops, the dialogue is snappy and the characters are more than memorable. Readers can't miss with this one.