Clue : A Novel by Michael McDowell, is simply wonderful! Intelligent, witty, and full of surprise twists, this novelization of the movie "Clue" presents a dazzlingly devious interpretation of the board game by Parker Brothers. Complete with extra material not seen in the movie, this novel is a must-have!

If you are looking for a side-splitting comedy, or a humorous mystery, Clue is the novel for you!

In just a few pages Michael P. Kube-McDowell manages to create a complex, believable alien culture. He crafted his characters and setting with such vivid detail, I find myself thinking of this world often. It leads me to re-read this story yet again. I am now on my sixth reading and enjoying it as thoroughly as the first read.

Miriam heads off to college, and becomes homesick despite herself. The war comes to Perdido in the form of barracks and army-men. One of them catches Frances eye, and she falls for him. Queenie's youngest boy Danjo, the result of the rape years ago, leaves to go to war. Old James, who raised the boy, is heart broken but comforted by his daughter Grace. Queenie's daughter Lucille gets in trouble at the Dance Hall, an ex-friend of her brother's returning for a little revenge, and Frances finds out just who's daughter she really is by exacting her revenge on Lucille's attacker. Danjo heads off to Germany, Lucille is pregnant from her attacker and she and Grace move out to a remote farm on Caskey property to raise the baby, Frances marries her army-man, Billy Bronze, and James Caskey succumbs to the dark.
Don't miss this series, you will have to find them in the used book stores but they are worth the search. Creepy, languid tales of the old south told in such flowing prose that you feel the heat and humidity, along with becoming a part of the small town and its gossip.

Oscar meets the dark, as does Queenie. Lilah, Billy & Frances' normal daughter, becomes attached to Miriam and cannot be separated from her. To everyone's absolute surprise, Miriam marries Malcolm. Little Tommy, Lucille's boy raised on the farm by Lucille and Grace, comes of age, and plays an unsuspecting part in the eventual death of Elinor Caskey and her legacy of fear, and inadvertently returns the floods to Perdido, in spite of the levee.
Don't miss this series, you will have to find them in the used book stores but they are worth the search. Creepy, languid tales of the old south told in such flowing prose that you feel the heat and humidity, along with becoming a part of the small town and its gossip.

In book 3 of this 6 book series, Miriam is growing up completely spoiled by Mary-Love, while Frances develops an overwhelming fear of the closet in the spare room. Carl Strickland returns to Queenie and beats her, whereas Elinor takes it upon herself to dispose of Carl in her own way. The depression hits, and when Oscar asks his mother for the money to save him from default, she refuses in an attempt to control him and bring him back from the influence of Elinor. But Oscar severs his ties with her, borrowing the money from his uncle instead, leaving Mary-Love out of favor. James' daughter Grace returns from college in defeat, and takes little Frances on a trip up the Perdido river to its source, where Frances falls deathly ill. Only Elinors baths help her through her crippling illness.
When she is better, the family decides to take a vacation all together, but just before leaving Elinor and Mary-Love have a final show down; Elinor confronting Mary-Love with all of her underhanded and mean tricks.
Just as they are ready to leave at the train station, Mary-Love falls quite ill, and Elinor stays home to care for her. But Mary-Love dies mysteriously anyway, and Sister returns home, abandoning her marriage to take care of Miriam.
Don't miss this series, you will have to find them in the used book stores but they are worth the search. Creepy, languid tales of the old south told in such flowing prose that you feel the heat and humidity, along with becoming a part of the small town and its gossip.

This book is written on many levels, ranging from one man's efforts to understand the source of his own personality to the conflicts on a global basis surrounding the building of a generation starship.

The book is entertaining on the superficial level and rewarding at the deeper, personal level. Within a believable framework, it matches the thrust and parry of Jeremiah - speaking for the Homeworld vs. the head of security of the starship project. In addition, any adult reader will be stimulated to recall memories of their own childhood and the pains of growing up.

I recommend it as both fun and time well spent.

This is a work to be proud of. Just the right combination of action and character development, with a believable setting at the beginning of the 22nd century. Kube-McDowell chronicles the end of the Diaspora project - an ambitious program to send humanity to nearby star systems. The first ship has already left, and a second of five total is about to leave.

But wait! There's more here than meets the eye. Diaspora project geneticists have discovered that there's a genetic sequence in life that actually calls us to the stars. We no more have choice in the matter than the salmon moving upstream to spawn. The web of human activity unfolding in this engrossing tale is overprinted by a genetic pre-destiny, which drives some to the skies, and others to oppose any such venture.

Ultimately the opposers, lead by the shadowy Jeremiah, succeed in halting the project, but not before the second ship leaves. And behind the backdrop of the personal dramas, earth quietly goes to seed, casting its precious packages to the cosmic winds.

An engrossing tale. Compare this to my review of Hogan's "Cradle of Saturn".

the subtle but powerful theme of this book goes to the heart of of the eternal issue of the best of mankind's nature versus the worst...

Someone else mentioned staying up all night to read Vectors. I found myself once again getting far too little sleep because I just wanted to read "one more chapter!"

Other reviewers have been more eloquent than I but I agree that one of Kube-McDowell's strength's has always been making science interesting to a non-scientest like myself. However, I'd say that what I love best about all of Mr. Kube-McDowell's writing is the way he takes an interesting subject, presents all sides of it, and writes characters you really care about to play out the story.

I'd highly recommend this book, especially to anyone curious about the blending of science and spirituality.

This is a story that explores the unknowable and tries to put the lie to the phrase "the country from which no traveler returns". Do we have a soul? Can it be measured?
The background and texture of the very near future is well crafted. I was impressed by his vision of our society's development under "Homeland Security". The on-going issues of university politics, and the general tendency of science to be more reactionary than many would expect make this believable and real.
I very much look forward to any future books in this universe.

I am perhaps not the most objective of sources, as Mike is an old friend of mine. We met our first day of college at Michigan State University (mumble mumble) years ago and have been close friends ever since.

However, what I lack in objectivity, perhaps I can make up for with scope. I've read pretty much every piece of fiction Mike has ever published, a few that he hasn't published, and some of his non-fiction as well.

The story is well enough described in the cover blurb and other materials, so I won't go into that.

All of Mike's books and stories are good, but this is the best yet. In it he combines all his numerous strengths as a writer and human being. Mike has always been able to make the science part of science fiction intelligible to non-science types like me, without talking down, and he weaves the needed explication into the narrative far more seamlessly than most. He was an unusually thoughtful and inquisitive college freshman, and has become an unusually thoughtful and inquisitive mature writer. Without simply falling into credulity, he manages to make the topic of reincarnation, if not yet scientifically respectable, then worthy of cautious inquiry.

More than in most "hard" SF, his characters are fully human and fleshed out, warts and all. The all-too-common "tell the readers what they need to know about quantum mechanics for the story to work, why don't you" kind of dialog is replaced with real conversation between believable human beings. Humor and tragedy interweave in the lives of his characters, just as they do in real life.

I could effuse a lot more, but you get the point.

Do yourself a favor and buy this book. Do some of your friends a favor, and buy them copies, too.

A very well written story of a definitely demented man. The story goes deep into the mind (deeper than anyone should like to go) of a man living in his own twisted world. An excellent book.

First off, this book comes with pictures. Looking at them first will give you an idea of the highly disturbed world you are about to enter. The book is told in first person and you will quickly find that you are inside a truly damaged mind. But not in the way you might think. Not a sociopath or psychopath but someone whose mind is--askew--a bit off. This is probably THE creepiest book I have ever read. Kathe Koja is the only other person I know of that can write in this vein. This, by the way, is the author of the Blackwater series which Stephen King so backhandedly mentions in the intro to The Green Mile. I highly recommend the Blackwater series also but unfortunately it is as difficult to find as this title.

...you may want to check out this obscure little gem, if you can find it. Toplin is told from the perspective of a rather peculiar and unnamed gentleman who lives in a Kafka-esque city. This gentleman, let's just say, has a few odd personality traits. He has several identical suits in his closet that are numbered. He only reads cookbooks (nothing wrong with that really). When he cleans house, it is an exercise of intricacy and thoroughness that borders on obsessive-compulsiveness. Even his sex life is structured and monotonous with no wasted movements or wasted time. And adding to all that, he was rendered colorblind at a young age from an attack by seagulls while he worked one summer at a beach. But the story's just beginning.

The real story starts when he visits a particular diner for the first time ever and sees a waitress so hideously deformed, he believes with every fiber in his being that he has to end her life somehow. Along the way, he runs into people like an insane delivery boy who resents the fact the Army won't let him enlist and the "Tempus Fugit" street gang.

Toplin is the first of two books I've read by Michael Mcdowell, the other being the incredible historical revenge thriller Gilded Needles. Even though two may not seem like much, it was enough to convince me that McDowell is every bit as good as Stephen King or Clive Barker (two writers I greatly respect) and far better than so called horror masters like Little, Laymon, or Koontz. Toplin is not a book for all tastes with its extremely dark tone and uncovential plot, but I highly recommend it for horror fans seeking something original.

I enjoyed this work more than many I've read lately. Good sci-fi without trying to push all the moral envelopes. This is the kind of fiction I've missed in my recent reading.

Sadly, I find that there are too many questions left open at the end of the book. I want the answers. Will I find them in upcoming novels and will it be in a timely fashion? I hope so.

I'd have given the book five stars if it had wrapped up more loose ends.

First of all you have to understand that Asimov had planned for this book to be written and set out guidelines for the authors to follow. Michael P. Kube-McDowell and Mike McQuay have done an excelent job of honoring the foundation/robot universe and their interpretations only improve the depth and color of the story. I think Asimov is smiling on this one.

you can't complain when you're set in the world of the three laws of robotics with a beautiful young woman and a man without a memory--first rate pastiche by the two authors in the book. I loved it!

Anonymous Sender is a most excellent read. They story IS complex and DOES take an intelligent reader to follow, but the chase is well worth it. From the Drug lord trying to make his business grow, to the reluctant hero of a "Big Town" man trying to find peace in "Small Town, USA"; the characters are extremely well developed.
For a first time "out of the gates", McDowell has won his race.

I first read this book when it was release back in 1996. I reread it a few weeks ago, and the book is still fantastic. I would not hestitate to suggest this book to anyone who likes Clancy or Ludlum. Interestingly enough, Mr. McDowell has another book that has been completed, but not sold. I've read the manuscript and it is better than Anonous Sender, as much as I liked that book. Keep your fingers crossed that this one gets out.

McDowell is an author to watch!

I very much enjoyed this novel, as did my family and friends when I shared it. The characters were well developed for a first effort, and certainly better than those of many "experienced" authors. There was a good deal of action, and at root, I identified with the main character. What more could one ask for? Well thought out and presented, with references to parts of American history often forgotten or glossed over. I only wish the author would give us another effort:)