A Week of Entertainment: Kindle Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly's Feb 18th Issue

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the February 18th issue include:

House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home, by Mark Richard. Nan A. Talese, 2011. Print length: 224 p. MEMOIR. EW's slant: "...effortlessly killer prose...the man can tell a full story in the flick of a phrase." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $12.93. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Called a 'special child,' Southern social code for mentally - and physically - challenged children, Richard was crippled by deformed hips and was told he would spend his adult life in a wheelchair. The son of a solitary alcoholic father whose hair-trigger temper terrorized his family, and of a mother who sought inner peace through fasting, prayer, and scripture, Richard spent his bedridden childhood withdrawn into the company of books. As a young man, Richard, defying both his doctors and parents, set out to experience as much of the world as he could - as a disc jockey, fishing trawler deckhand, house painter, naval correspondent, aerial photographer, private investigator, foreign journalist, bartender and unsuccessful seminarian - before his hips failed him. While digging irrigation ditches in east Texas, he discovered that a teacher had sent a story of his to the Atlantic, where it was named a winner in the magazine’s national fiction contest launching a career much in the mold of Jack London and Mark Twain. A superbly written and irresistible blend of history, travelogue, and personal reflection..." - Amazon.

West of Here, by Jonathan Evison. Algonquin Books, 2011. Print length: 496 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...the kind of work that begs to be called sweeping, with its large cast of characters encompassing multiple eras, sturdy American themes of community and nature, and a style that could be called cinematic..." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (17 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $14.55. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A century after the late-19th-century settlers of Olympic Peninsula to the west of Seattle set out to build a dam, their descendants want to demolish it to bring back fish runs, providing one of the many plots in this satisfyingly meaty work from Evison (All About Lulu). The scenes of the early settlers track an expedition into the Olympic wilderness and the evolving relations between settlers and the Klallam tribe, provide insights into early feminism, and outline an entrepreneur's dream to build the all-important dam. By comparison, the contemporary stories are chock-full of modern woe and malaise, including a Bigfoot watcher and seafood plant worker who wishes to relive his glory days as a high school basketball star; an ex-convict who sets out into the wilderness to live off the land; and an environmental scientist who is hit with an unexpected development. Evison does a terrific job at creating a sense of place as he skips back and forth across the century...this is a damn fine book." - Publishers Weekly.

A Widow's Story, by Joyce Carol Oates. Harper Collins, 2011. Print length: 432 p. MEMOIR. EW's slant: "...as searing as the best of her fiction." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (8 reviews).Kindle edition $14.99; Hardcover $15.07. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a 'secondary infection' while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific 'siege' of grief with her signature perception...Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound 'pilgrimage' from chaos to coherence." -Donna Seaman for Booklist.

The Terror of Living, by Urban Waite. Little, Brown and Company, 2011. Print length: 320 p. THRILLER. EW's slant: "...Waite brings a nimble touch to the material. Throwaway lines are rendered with surprising delicacy, and Living's knife-fetishist villain makes for an oddly endearing sociopath." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99, Hardcover $13.83. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Phil Hunt is in deep trouble. Hunt is on the run from two men: Drake, the deputy sheriff who intends to catch him, and Grady, the vicious hitman who means to kill him. For twenty years Hunt has lived in Washington State, raising horses with his wife on his small farm. He's tried to stay out of trouble, wanting only to make a living and taking the occasional illicit job in order to do so. Then his last delivery goes horribly wrong, and the chase is on from the mountains down into the Puget lowlands..." - Amazon.
"A hell of a good novel, relentlessly paced and beautifully narrated. There's just no let-up. An auspicious debut." - Stephen King.