John T Hough's newest novel "The Last Summer" is a great read.Mr Hough is a gifted writer whose Chacacters come to life and connect with you on every page.I did not want this beautifully writen book to end.This one is a must read..Michael Mello

This is a beautifully written, engrossing book about complex people and the pain, sadness, and joy that come to them in unexpected ways. John Hough has an unusually fine ear for dialogue and brings the reader into intimate contact with the characters. At the same time while not obstrusively so, the writing has a compelling poetic quality. This is a captivating book about people with interesting sensibilities. It also has a strong narrative line and is a good read. i recommend it highly.

This is fine storytelling, rich and smoothly written without
being slick. It does an excellent job capturing the flavor of
the time and place--Cape Cod in 1968. The book works very well
on a variety of levels: the relationship between an older woman
and a younger man, politics and power structures, and life at a
small-town newspaper. Claire Malek leaves Washington and, by
chance, winds up as a reporter for the Covenant, a twice-a-week
paper in a town on the Cape. She has a lot of learning, and a
lot of unlearning to do about the job. A twice-weekly small-town
paper is not like the N.Y. Times or the USA Today, and the job
of a reporter is very different. You'll learn a great deal from
this novel about the operation of such a paper, from the flatbed
press to the manual typewriters, but there's no getting bogged
down in the details. The author's father and grandfather were
editors of the Falmouth Enterprise (on Cape Cod) and his great-
uncle was Henry Beetle Hough, Pulitzer-winning long-time editor
of the Vineyard Gazette, so the author can describe life on
such a newspaper with loving care.

The Covenant's editor has a son Lane who has just graduated from
college, and who also works on the paper, and there is an
attraction between Lane and Claire, which develops into a
relationship. I have read all too many books which would take
this basic theme and exploit it in an unpleasant manner, but
here things seem very natural and not labored.

The writing style is a joy. As the book gently points out,
as Claire learns, good reporters can tell a story succinctly
and cleanly--they don't waste space, but neither do they
abbreviate. The writing style has this flavor--there is no
sense of padding, no extraneous verbiage, things are told
straightfowardly. Too many novels--too many popular novels--
are short stories padded into 300-page books. John Grisham's
novels seem to be this way, whereas Scott Turow's books are not.
The Last Summer has a fine, easy, unlabored flow to it, and you
don't find paragraphs and pages that you wish had been left out.

There's an epilogue, which brings Claire and Lane back together
after almost 30 years, and the epilogue provides an excellent
counterpoint to the overrated Bridges of Madison County. In
Bridges, each of the lovers has no clue about what the other is
doing over the following years--this never seemed believable--
a top photographer/author who continues his work can be found,
and the photographer can get the local paper, which would let
him know some of what is going on with her life. This is not
always true--it can be hard to find a transient, for example.
In Last Summer, Lane and Claire both stay in the newspaper
business, and, realistically and believably, each has been
able to follow the career and life of the other.

A fine read.

After reading the original Pilgrim's Progress, I wanted to share the story with my 6 year old son. Christian's Journey is a wonderful adaptation which makes the story much more appealing to today's children.

The story is well written, the pictures are big and colorful, and there is a Faith Parenting Guide at the end which gives some ideas for discussion after each chapter. I highly recommend this book!

If you've ever read the classic Pilgrim's Progress, this is a delightful updated adaptation of the traditional classic. This new story has modern kids, a boy and a girl, who learn the value of prayer through their travels on the Narrow Road. It will teach your children the power of prayer while delighting them with a wonderful story.

Runs with the Wind is an excellent book for readers of all ages kids love the excitement and adults love the western lore. It is a rare gem when there are very few if any new westerns being written that are suitable for your son, daughter, mother and father to read.

I would recommend this book and the sequel, Spirit of the Buffalo, to anyone who enjoys a good story.

I am 16 years old and I read Runs With The Wind a couple of years ago. I really enjoyed this book, and so did all of my friends. You see, after I read this book I recommended it to all of my friends, and gave many of my friends copies of their own. I guess amother reason I like this book is because I have been fortunate enough to know the author. As I said before I would recommemed this book to anyone who likes a good adventure.

This is a story that will hold your interest all through the book. It has excitiment, thrills and a few chills. You feel that you are there, living the events along with the people in the story. Good clean reading for all ages. 8 to 80.

This book is available as I own one. This is a great book and begins where Runs with the Wind leaves off but doesn't lose you if you haven't already read Runs with the Wind, which is the first in the series. Both of these books have a lot of excitement and keep your interest until the end. This book is great for all ages everyone in my family has read and enjoyed this book. It is a new western in the old family style.

I read this book every few years to go back to a time when I first discovered America's past-time. There has never been a more magical team than the New York Mets in 1986. It was more than the play everyone remembers--the ball Mookie Wilson's hit that rolled between Bill Buckner's legs when he "peeked" at Mookie hustling down the line. That play was symballic of the entire Mets playoff run. As you read this book, you sit beside Gary Carter during each game of the Mets/Astros NL Series and the Mets/Red Sox World Series. You get a true behind-the-scenes picture of what happens in the dugout, on the field, and in the clubhouse. Any baseball fan, whether or not you love the mets, will love this book.

The idea of the book was good. But as a science fiction reader the details were not well thought out. These people are raised to be an American Indian culture, yet when they are released there is so much they didn't bother teaching them, like what weather or seasons are? Give me a break! The kinds of animals they could encounter that would consider them prey? They didn't include horses as a part of their education? they know they will encounter other possibly violent men, yet they don't teach them basic self defense skills, or strategy. It could have been so much better.

The Chosen ones is unlike anything I have ever read. It's an exciting story that pulls the reader in. The concept may seem strange at first, but it doesn't take long before you realize how possible it is. Hough's idea of creating a multi-race Native American culture to sustain life on this planet after a tecnological meltdown kept me turning pages through the night. My only question is when will the sequal be out?

I read this book directly after finishing Rob Neyer's "Feeding the Green Monster". Both books were written by writers-as-fans, jumping on the Red Sox bandwagon a year after the team made the playoffs (Neyer in 2000, Hough in 1987). The books' approaches have nothing to do with each other, but the results are similar.

Hough's book occurs almost entirely during batting practice. Using a season-long press pass, he went to the Fenway clubhouse and dugout during home games to interview the players and coaches, and find out how these players turned their childhood baseball fantasies into reality, when the author couldn't. There's a lot of breathless descriptions of the sun setting behind the right-field bleachers, or the moon climbing over the stadium. Fenway is almost always empty, save for autograph-hounds above the dugout. Compare to Neyer, who sat in the stands for 81 home games and never met a single player.

The interviews, instead of providing the background for detailed player biographies, are printed verbatim in the book. Hough, over 40 at the time of writing, found it easier to speak with coaches: former Sox star Johnny Pesky, and future Sox manager Joe Morgan (not the blowhard ESPN announcer). These two appear most often and are the funniest characters in the book.

Also fascinating is the glimpse at the Red Sox in transition, in between the aging playoff club of 1986, and the young powerhouse that won the A.L. East in '88 and '90. It's nice to know that Roger Clemens and Ellis Burks, seen here as kids, are still star players today.

The most poignant stories in the book involve aging players who've lost their ability entirely -- Robin Roberts, struggling in the low minors at the end of his career, and Mel Parnell, unable to pitch on Old-Timers' Day. The rest is made up of Hough's junior-high baseball stories. You may feel more charitable about those than I. Recommended in general, if you like the Red Sox.