I am an out lesbian who's been involved with queer politics and HIV issues for 15 years, but I just recently got around to reading Dr. Cammermeyer's book. Even after all my years of being "out," I found her story and life so far to be fascinating and inspiring. It's wonderful to have another role model for my own life! I encourage anyone interested in finding out how women can change society and military policy to read this book. It's also a good read for the role of women in the Vietnam war and in the National Guard. Dr. Cammermeyer is truly a "great American," as the military admitted while in the same breath sanctioning her discharge. Her story is all about one person having the integrity and strength to stand up for what she believes to be right, using the legal system to out-maneuver the military, and continuing to be a passionate and out-spoken supporter of banishing ALL types of discrimination. But her book is also an amazing window into the life experiences that fully shaped her to be the person who she is today. Daughter, mother, soldier, nurse, life partner, healer, activist: Dr. Cammermeyer is a hero on so many levels, and you'll have the chance to learn about all of it in her book. (The made-for-TV movie starring Glenn Close as Dr. Cammermeyer and Judy Davis as Diane, her life partner, is also fabulous!)

In 1996 I was fired from a government law enforcement position due to my orientation. I hit bottom, emotionally and financially. This book helped me see we have to fight discrimination, that I can survive this ordeal and come out a better person. It is a story of courage from a real hero, and I reccomend it no matter what your orientation, military status, or personal beliefs.

Clearly reveals the absurd and cruel policy of the military concerning lesbians and gays. How disgusting that an institution of the U.S. government shows such bigotry, ignorance, and distain for a group of people, not to mention an individual who served her country with dedication and distinction. How disgusting the bigotry continues in the military and throughout our government.

John Saul's "Shadows" is decent book, but leaves the reader unsatisfied in some respects. The plot involves an exclusive school for the gifted where a devious technology is used at the expense of the students. One of the downfalls of the book is the lack of character development. The author doesn't seem to know what he wants to do with the roles of several characters. The main character, Josh, plays a somewhat inconsequential role in the climax of the novel. The growth of other characters were left somewhat underdeveloped. Further, the author reveals the primary mystery a little too soon. However, the novel is cleverly written to touch the emotions of readers (though, I won't elaborate to preserve the mysteries of the novel). Overall, it was a good (but not great) novel. Reviewed by Jay A. Goklani

Shadows is really great. Every detail in this novel shows that John had prepared well before begin the first line. I appreciate overall of it. I read this book many years ago but it is still alive in my head. But, well, when he said (by means of using his characters) "everyone knows that comitting suicide is wrong, but why?", it's supposed that he should give some answers to it, whether his own preference or something else. Moreover, I doubt whether gifted children are really hated by their classmates...

In Shadows, John Saul plays the vulnerability of the gifted child against a modern day mad scientist. The weaving of brilliant children, technology and obsession with power make this story a schematic tapestry of a futuristic Grimms-like fairy tale. Though the book has a slow start, it is well worth the wait as Saul takes the reader from the dusty town of Eden to the beautiful setting of the Barrington Academy, a private school for gifted children. But within the magnificence of the old mansion lie secret rooms and gory experiments. It's a thriller to the end, and will scare any parent with a gifted child into a few sleepless nights

This slim volume is nowhere near as fascinating as Anne McCaffrey's full length Pern novels. Its worth is that the 4 stories it contains serve to fill in gaps in the overall picture. The stories are short and somewhat simplistic but present a view of Pern not otherwise dwelt on - children hoping to impress dragons for example. Not quite a book to add to one's library but for all Pern fans, a nice set of glimpses. I only wish Anne had focused on some other Pernese professions - maybe the Healer Hall (2 of the 4 stories are dragon-rider oriented)?

Personally, I've never been that into short stories. Mainly because they're not long enough. It seems like in a lot of cases just when I'm getting really interested in the story, it ends. I'm the type of person who likes to read full sized or even larger than normal novels. And if the novel is part of a series then even better. That being said the short stories from this book are much more my style, since they are from a series (the Pern series to be exect). This book includes two short stories that have been published before in other books. One short story that is part of a larger story. And one new short story. If you are a fan of the Pern series this book is definately worth having.

I call the first story a classic because, well, in the McCaffrey Universe in my head it is. In fact, the Littlest Dragonboy was _the_ story that got me reading Pern in the first place. I adore this story for that reason and others. To me, it encompasses all that Pern represents, justice, kindness and simplicity. It is that simplicity that draws me back to this long lived series time and time again.

The second and third stories are beauties as well. The Girl Who Heard Dragons is one of my Mother's favorites. A sweet story with a predicitable, but still sweet ending. The Runner of Pern is wonderful because it explores a totally new aspect of our beloved Pern, with Ms. McCaffrey's characteristic, opposites- attract romance thrown in. A story that left me smiling like I had just seen an old friend.

Finally, the last story in the book did not sit well with me at all. It was just too cozy and sweet. This may sound hypocritical of me, after all, K'van's story is awfully sweet too, I just couldn't really believe this one. (I won't spoil it for you, but it's extremely predictable) Maybe the horrible event that I have been dreading has happened. Perhaps like so many fantasy readers before me I have become disillusioned with the Dragonlady. Everyone told be the day would come, but I swore it would not happen to me. Ah, who knows? All I can do is cling to my fondness of The White Dragon and hope that I can hold out a little longer.

Anyway, I say buy it, or at least check it out from the library and read the first three if you haven't already. As for the new one, which I am assuming most of you veterens of Pern are looking for in this book, I'd skip it and read any wannabe's story from one of the hundreds of fan weyrs on the web, it'll be the same thing.

I haven't read a John Saul book in years, but I remembered him being very good, so when I saw this one at the swap meet I grabbed it right away. Unfortunately this book did not live up to my expectations. Like the previous reviewer, I fear that I may have drifted away from enjoying Saul's style.

I thought the writing in this book was really weak for the most part. Problem number 1: The plot was very basic and was stretched too thin. It may have worked as a short story or novella, but not as a 350+ page novel. Thus, in order to fill up the pages, we get lots of repetition (after reading the fifteenth detailed description of Joey's "urges," I was ready to throw the book across the room) and development of useless characters whose ONLY purpose in the story was to be killed in a gory fashion. I read the restored version of THE STAND right before this, and although THE STAND is 1200 pages long it contains far less useless/boring material than GUARDIAN.

Problem Number 2: The prose reeks of false drama. Nearly every chapter or section ended with an over-the-top dramatic sentence fragment. In addition, by the end of the book, most of the paragraphs were one-sentence dramatic statements. This is a great device to use once in a while to trigger a response in the reader, but it kills the tension when practically the entire book reads that way. I was actually laughing by the end of the book because it was getting so ridiculous.

Problem Number 3: This book is predictable! I guessed the two major "surprise" plot elements before the book was a quarter of the way through, and I am usually terrible at figuring out mysteries. Once you figure out what is going on, the story becomes a series of mindless death scenes. Again, I think this is the result of trying to stretch a perfectly good idea for a SHORT piece into an entire novel. The suspense for such a simple (and I don't mean "bad") idea just can't be credibly kept up for so long.

Problem Number 4: The end is unsatisfying, cliched, and an obvious set-up for a needless sequel. Come on John, we know you can do better than this!

I hope I'm not offending any John Saul fans out there, but I really think this novel needed more work before it was ready for primetime. The feeling I got reading this was that he was churning out a formulaic thriller simply for the sake of the dollar$ he would make. It felt like he was hardly trying. I guess that's okay, if you don't mind reading the same thing over and over from the same author, but now I'm scared to pick up any of his more recent stuff. Saul appears to have been stricken with the dreaded John Grisham Syndrome. Here's hoping he'll snap out of it soon.

I would have liked to give this book a lower rating than a 4, however, it is so well written then you can picture the events and during the story you grow to understand and like the characters so much, that it deserves at least a 5 just for that reason. No one can deny that Mr. Saul is a very good writer. The reason I reduced the rating is because of content. As I said, you come to genuinely care about the characters. There are a lot of children in the book, those are the characters I most cared about. The problem is that children start to get killed in particularly horrific manners -- one sweet child who died in the book, could have been spared and the book would have been fabulous. The death, a grisly one, was not necessary to the plot, and did not help in the building of the conclusion.

I was so upset by this book at the end that I swore I would never read another book by Mr. Saul.

This was the first John Saul book I have ever read. It Wowed me so much, that ever since I have be finding and reading anything and everthing written by Saul. The story is easy to read (with 1 or 2 slightly slow parts) and keeps you turning pages long into the night. The characters are very well developed and even though it is "supernatural" in contant he really leads you to believe that it is real. Let me say one thing, out of the 12 Saul books I've read, I have never been disappointed!

This entire book felt like the initial set up to an exciting story that never happened. The book read like a high level summary of what could have been a very interesting and exciting murder mystery. This is the first M. Truman book I've read so I'm hoping that given her success this just happens to be one of her weaker efforts.

The most interesting thing about this book is that Truman really knows her Washington. Otherwise, this quick and easy read is standard formula fare. Her characters are mildly interesting, and this book plays on the Russian mafia as the evil ones. Good book to read at the beach.

this book was read by me after it came out in paperback! I loved it so much. Great plotting and very well told. I had to make sure that I am going to read her next book. She is so great about plotting the murder scene. I won't tell you who did it but Do enjoy this one. Mrs. Truman is really great at putting a plot together. Great characters as well.

John Saul has been writing clichéd horror novel after clichéd horror novel for years. Not that that's a bad thing - his novels are usually compelling and, at the very least, fun to read. Manhattan Hunt Club provides Saul fans with a different twist however. No supernatural occurrences, no possessed children, no haunted houses. Instead, Saul gives readers a pretty standard thriller.

As with most of Saul's novels, the characters are under-developed, the plot is straightforward, the action often intense but the outcome predictable. Manhattan Hunt Club is a simple novel yet the plot is interesting enough to draw readers in. I personally thought that Saul could have introduced a little more background about the NYC underground world. Additionally, as other reviews have pointed out, the coincidences in the novel were ridiculous. While the novel wasn't at all plausible, these coincidences made it seem even more ridiculous.

Overall, Manhattan Hunt Club is a fun read. Its not a fabulous novel, nor is it horrible. Just entertaining.

The Manhattan Hunt Club is a much different read than all of the other John Saul books I have read. There's no family curse or haunted youths to be found here; rather, this is a book of gritty, gripping realism. I admit it took me a while to get completely wrapped up in the story, but the final hundred pages had me captivated. The book starts with young college student Jeff Converse trying to help a lady being attacked in the subway; his good Samaritanism earns him a conviction of attempted murder as the victim fingers him as her assailant. Then a freak accident as he is being transferred to another prison finds him taken down into the unseen depths below the New York subway system, thrown together with a bona fide murderer, and forced to play a game he can barely comprehend: you win, you go free; you lose, you die. So begins a terrifying ordeal pitting Jeff and his new-found friend against a team of vigilantes straight out of The Most Dangerous Game. Meanwhile, Jeff's father and his "uptown girl" girlfriend refuse to believe the evidence given to them that Jeff in fact died in the traffic accident. They eventually go into the tunnels themselves in search of Jeff, and the convergence of all the characters takes place in an exciting climax of action.

There are some surprises in these pages, and a feeling of justice that sometimes does not find its way into Saul's fiction. The makeup of the Manhattan Hunt Club and the ideas behind its formation are disturbing yet frighteningly plausible. Saul does an admirably fine job of humanizing the homeless in all of their guises; the characters we meet underneath the subway tunnels are not all bad or shiftless, yet even some of the best of them, through their mute cooperation with "the game," cause one to face some troubling propositions and wonder if, in their shoes, he might do the same thing. The most enlightening character here is Jinx, a young girl who found a home beneath the city after running away from her mother's abusive boyfriend; despite the bad luck life has sent her way, she retains her dignity and bravely seeks to do the right thing when she does not have to get involved at all.

One is struck by the fact that much of this story could in fact be true to life. There are people living the kind of life described herein, but John Saul would seem to have done such unfortunate folks a great service. He brings out the humanity of these people, making the point that they are not all druggies and addicts but are all too often very human characters forced to live as best they can. Perhaps the motivation fueling some of the true villains here, the members of "the club," is not strongly enough developed, and the character of Jeff's deeply religious mother is somehow forgotten along the way, but The Manhattan Hunt Club is an increasingly compelling read that will take you into the filthy subterranean tunnels alongside its characters and very likely change you in some way by the time you finally manage to find the light at the end of the tunnel.

When I finished "The Manhattan Hunt Club," I had to check to make sure it was really written by John Saul. I've always been a fan of Saul's novels, although many of them were so similar in theme and characterization, it's hard to tell them apart. However, with this shocker, Saul demonstrates his gift for characterization and riveting suspense.
Jeff Converse's fate is one of those "I Can't believe these idiots think this man is guilty." Once the seemingly impossible plot emerges (sort of a twisted "The Deadliest Game"), we follow Jeff's horrifying entrapment in the massive tunnels of New York. Add some really strong supporting characters such as his estranged parents, his undoubting girlfriend, and a heinous bunch of villains, you have quite a story here. Jagger, the ruthless killer, who becomes a friend to Jeff, is also a great character---couldn't help seeing Vin Diesel in the movie role. The real stars though are the homeless people. Particularly, the teenage Jinx. She's a really well-developed, fleshed-out character, whose bravery and perseverance, help Jeff immensely.
This, undoubtedly, is Saul's best book yet. His departure from a true "horror" novel to psychological suspense is welcoming, and one can only hope he keeps up the good work. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

I was undecided on whether to give this book two stars or three. Everything I've read lately of John Saul's has been so bad I wonder why I keep going back to him. With this novel, I remembered, if faintly, why I once enjoyed him. If there were a two-and-a-half vote, I'd give Nightshade that honor.

It's not bad. Luckily, Saul goes into more of the gorier, disgusting scenes he was so good at in 'Second Child'. The storyline, though, was much the same; the family falling apart at the seams, the distrust and suspicion of everyone in town, the old family "secret", the slow loss of sanity of one of the main characters...nothing ever seems to change much in his plots. The names and locations may change, but the basic story remains the same.

Given that, this was much better than his recent efforts. I didn't find myself as bored with the story; in fact, I sped through it in two days to get to the end. If you are a previous Saul fan, you should and probably will read this one. I'll keep reading as long as he keeps writing. Hopefully soon he can come up with a slightly different story.

Nightshade is a poisonous European plant, also known as Belladonna. This title implies that something is deteriorating rapidly - the world of New Hampshire's Hapgood family. Actually one more meaning, I'll mention it later in this review.

Let's start with the Hapgood house, we've Matt Moore, his mom Joan, his stepdad Bill Hapgood and his grandmom Emily Moore.

Life looks great and sweet but it starts turning to nightmare when Emily (she has Alzheimer's Disease, a brain disease that impairs mental and emotional functions) accidentally burns down her own house and moves in with the Hapgoods. Then Emily claimed Cynthia (who is Joan's sister and dead) has returned. Moreover, Matt starts to have erotic dreams that Cynthia satisfies herself on him and leaving behind the pungent scent of her Nightshade perfume. Then one day Bill is killed while hunting with Matt and no doubt Matt is then accused to be the killer. Finally, Joan is trying to find the real killer and the story continues...

The author weaves a fascinating prose with dark family incidents. Trepidation, dread, doom all gathering. It's a enjoyable read of horror and suspense.

With Nightshade, John Saul gets back to what he does best, giving birth to a story almost as chilling and compelling as his premier masterpiece Suffer the Children. Forget biomedical experimentation, genetic manipulation, and all of the other external forces that often lie behind Saul's plots; this book marks a return to good old-fashioned madness and horror. Of course, we start with the perfect all-American family-Joan Moore Hapgood, her son Matt, and husband Bill who has always thought of his step-son as his own true son. Suddenly, Joan's grim, bitter, nasty, Alzheimer's-afflicted mother almost burns her own house down and comes to live with the Hapgoods. Emily Moore is obsessed with her daughter Cynthia, the perfect child whom she refuses to believe is never coming back home to her. Immediately, Matt's nights are filled with the horrible nightmares he had not experienced since leaving Emily's home as a child to move to the home of his new step-father. Watching his mother-in-law tearing his happy family apart, Bill simply leaves his wife and son to the misery of Emily's company. A series of tragedies unfolds, affecting not only the family but the entire close-knit community. Matt changes into a haunted young man, seeing suspicion and dislike pointed toward him from everyone he has ever cared about. Misery turns to the ultimate tragedy, and the reader is left to ponder just who is responsible. Is it Matt, who looks guilty in the eyes of everyone else? Is it his aunt Cynthia, whose presence comes to permeate the house and exert an unhealthy influence on Matt's life in spite of the fact that she is long-dead? Or could it be someone or something else?

Saul hits a home run with this novel. Whatever suspicions the reader entertains, the truth is never truly known in spite of its foreshadowing, not until the ultimate conclusion. As the plot progresses, Saul slowly but surely increases the tension, drawing the reader further and further into this fascinating story. One is never really sure what to think about the action as it unfolds. Even when the true source of the horror is revealed a couple of chapters before the end, the heightened sense of expectation and worry for the characters so well-presented and seemingly real continues unabated. To some degree this is a ghost story, but it is better described as psychological horror. Madness makes for a much more compelling villain than outside entities, and that is why Nightshade stands as one of John Saul's most compelling novels. Filled with insanity, ghostly impressions, terror, murder, a bit of blood and gore, and a surprise or two at the end, Nightshade reveals the true talent that resides in the mind of an author too little appreciated by the horror community.

John Saul has figured out the future of best selling novels. New ideas, theoretically possible ideas and it affects human kind on a huge scale. While Saul is a typical horror/suspense novelist, this book shows how broad his range has become. "Suffer the Children and "Punish the Sinners" were two of his early white knuckle novels. The Presence keeps you guessing and asking questions. Plus it's a huge bonus if you are interested in Vulcanology, Archeology or Astronomy. Even though he may not have done all his homework, and some items could be better explained, this was a smart story and the main characters were well developed. The only true problem with the book was the title. It really had nothing to do with the story. This is a must read for people interested in scientific novels

This is the first time I read anything from John Saul and I found it fast paced and very entertaining. I do not recommend having this book next to you while driving as I tended to pick it up during stop lights and got "honked at too many times". The characters were believable which is hard to find in many thrillers these days. This book has all the ingredents to become a movie. So everyone should check this one out before Hollywood gets it's hands on it. Mr. Saul has a new fan from Japan!

I have recently just finished reading the book titled "The Presence." I feel that this book was really good. The reason why I think this is because it gives you a feel of what the main character "Michael" is really going through. The book is about Michael having trouble with a bully at his school. When Michael's mom finds a job in Haleakala, Maui she decides that she should take it because it would be a whole lot better for Michael and his mom moved there. When he arives there he starts having the same problem as he was in his other school but this time it is a little bit worse because there was more than just one bully. After a few weeks he starts making friends and he is having a really great time scuba diving and school. He even saved a life and made a friend all one day. Suddenly when something happens to Michael's best friend a horrible truth dawns.

Once you read the book you will really enjoy it. You will also want to read more of his books because his style is really cool. I have read a couple of John Saul's books and I have really understood what type of style he has and I really enjoy reading it. This book is some what like the book "Whispers" By: Dean Koontz.They are both kind talking about presences in a different way. If I were to choose which book would have a higher rate I would choose " The Presence" because it is a better, just how it slowly starts coming together than telling you the whole thing at once. If I rated this "Whispers" I would give it about a 3.5.The reason why is because at first the book really starts off at a fast pace. I really recomend "The Presence" to all of my friends and family members because it is a really great choice of book for anyone into mystery and horror types of books.

This is the first John Saul novel I've ever read. I hope his others aren't this formulatic and drawn out, only to reveal a disappointing conclusion.

The story is one that, sadly, has been done over and over again in print AND on film. Anne Jeffers, ace reporter, watches serial killer Richard Kraven, whom she helped convict, die in the electric chair. At almost the same time, thousands of miles away, Anne's husband suffers a massive heart attack. Dead for over two minutes, Glen Jeffers recovers, but his personality is just never the same.

The gruesome murders attributed to Richard Kraven start all over again - four years after his incarceration. Who can be the killer? Is there an accomplice? Are these copy cat murders? Who can say?

Unfortunately, anyone who's ever seen the movie "Fallen" or an old 1980's horror film (the name of which escapes me now), knows what has happened.

Saul throws a few mugafins our way, but to anyone experienced in reading a variety of books can see right through the fluff.

The most disappointing aspect of the book is that the ending feels thrown together. It's as if Saul had a specific number of pages that he had to supply to his publisher, and he didn't want to go below or above that number. In short, the book just sort of ends. It's not satisfying.

The police in this book are more bumbling than the team that investigated the Jean Benet Ramsay case in Colorado. They haven't investigated all their leads and the proof that Kraven was the serial killer is never really fleshed out. The central characters don't act believably and the trains of thought displayed don't follow a logical flow.

And when was the last time you heard of a convicted murderer on death row being executed within four years of his incarceration? Four decades maybe - four years - never!

I wanted to like this book, because the writing wasn't bad as a whole. Sure, it was a pulp novel - I knew it would be - but it wasn't poorly written - just poorly thought out and executed.

In Black Lightning, John Saul builds his plot around a serial killer of unusual distinction. I have a morbid fascination with serial killers and their motivations, but midway through the book it was quite apparent that Saul was going in a weird direction; glimpses into the mind of the maniac dwindle with time, and the door to insight is slammed shut by the paranormal elements of the story. This is by no means a bad novel; it's always nice to read a Saul novel that has nothing to do with some type of hundred-year old curse or mysterious genealogy. The writing is quite tight and riveting in places. The scenes describing one character's acrophobia attacks are incredibly intense, and the descriptions of the individual murders are painstakingly realistic.

The novel begins with the execution of serial killer Richard Kraven. Journalist Anne Jeffers, who worked diligently to assure the killer's conviction, is there to witness the event. While Kraven is being electrocuted, Anne's husband is suffering a near-fatal heart attack. The doctors don't seem to really do anything at all for Glen Jeffers, but he is soon back home resuming a fairly normal life. Warned by the doctor that her husband's behavior may be changed as a result of the heart attack, Anne and eventually her children become increasingly disturbed by Glen's behavior. They would really have worried had Glen told them he was having blackouts; he continually finds himself having to explain actions he has no conscious memory of having performed. Meanwhile, a new killer is on the loose, committing murders eerily similar to Kraven's handiwork. Soon the killer begins entering Anne's home secretly and leaving her messages. When cops begin finding Kraven's "signature" on fresh murder victims, a signature that no one besides the deceased Kraven and the cops could possibly know about, things go from bad to worse. When the killer finally turns his eyes toward his nemesis Anne Jeffers, things get worse still. This is no average serial killer, as Anne soon discovers when he strikes truly close to home.

The basis of this novel winds up seeming a little hokey. Midway through the novel, the story switched directions on me a little bit, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but by the time I reached the conclusion, this potentially impressive plot really started sputtering. At times, incidents and dramas last a little longer than they should, and this drags down an otherwise fairly brisk story. I can't address the paranormal aspects of the tale without divulging too much information, but it is not quite original and pushes the limits of credulity in the context of the novel Saul constructed around it. There are also a few subplots that seem important early on but sort of fade into obscurity, such as the relationship between Anne and the lead detective. Sometimes riveting, sometimes a little drawn-out, Black Lightning is a perfectly satisfactory horror novel. It makes a good change of pace for Saul, who sometimes seems to get in a rut of old curses and young teenagers. The effort is undeniably there, but unfortunately the book seems to shoot itself in the foot at the very end.

I enjoyed this novel to an extent, but it was predictable at certain parts. The character development was excellent, though and it was fast - paced. And thank goodness - no neat ending in sight.