STOLEN PREY, by John Sandford, PDF download

June 10, 2012. The New York Times® Bestsellers
STOLEN PREY, by John Sandford PDF Download. Follow the Download Link 

There hasn't been that much that Lucas Davenport has not witnessed in horrifying murder scenes, but this one seems to be the icing on the cake, one of the worst and hopefully, the last with haunting memories. An entire family in a small town has been killed. What kind of evil mind would murder a husband, a wife, two daughters, and their dogs?

What was the motive for these brutal murders, and where does Lucas begin his investigation? Was this a Mexican gang hit, and was any of the family members involved? What do the Mexican Feds find, does Lucas break the rules, and will the pieces to the puzzle fit? What information were the killers looking for, and did they get it? Was a software company involved, and were the killers drug dealers?

 I highly recommend "STOLEN PREY" to all thriller lovers. John Sandford is a Master storyteller, who delivers an incredible chilling murder-mystery, made for the movie screen. The plot is packed with explosive action as the unique characters come to life in a suspenseful, nail-biting thriller that has you craving for more! Lucas Davenport has seen many terrible murder scenes.

This is one of the worst. In the small Minnesota town of Deephaven, an entire family has been killed—husband, wife, two daughters, dogs. There’s something about the scene that pokes at Lucas’s cop instincts—it looks an awful lot like the kind of scorched-earth retribution he’s seen in drug killings sometimes. But this is a seriously upscale town, and the husband was an executive vice president at a big bank.

 It just doesn’t seem to fit. Until it does. And where it leads Lucas will take him into the darkest nightmare of his life.

Biography of John Sandford  
John Sandford was born John Camp on February 23, 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He attended the public schools in Cedar Rapids, graduating from Washington High School in 1962. He then spent four years at the University of Iowa, graduating with a bachelor's degree in American Studies in 1966.

In 1966, he married Susan Lee Jones of Cedar Rapids, a fellow student at the University of Iowa. He was in the U.S. Army from 1966-68, worked as a reporter for the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian from 1968-1970, and went back to the University of Iowa from 1970-1971, where he received a master's degree in journalism. He was a reporter for The Miami Herald from 1971-78, and then a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer-Press from 1978-1990; in 1980, he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and he won the Pulitzer in 1986 for a series of stories about a midwestern farm crisis. From 1990 to the present he has written thriller novels.

He's also the author of two non-fiction books, one on plastic surgery and one on art. He is the principal financial backer of a major archaeological project in the Jordan Valley of Israel, with a website at www.rehov.org. In addition to archaeology, he is deeply interested in art (painting) and photography. He both hunts and fishes. He has two children, Roswell and Emily, and one grandson, Benjamin. His wife, Susan, died of metastasized breast cancer in May, 2007, and is greatly missed.

THE PASSAGE OF POWER, by Robert A. Caro. PDF download

THE PASSAGE OF POWER PDF Download. Follow the Download Link


Caro's series on Johnson is the best biography I've ever read because Caro knows his man, captures him in all his complexity, and uses his subject to explore the larger issue of how political power is wielded in the U.S.

Some critics have claimed that Caro oscillates between portraying the "good" Johnson and the "bad" Johnson -- and that in the current volume the "good" Johnson takes over. This is not a fair reading of the book. Caro is simply willing to give Johnson his due when he uses power for worthy causes. Johnson's self control and consolidation of power after the Kennedy assassination and his skill in passing Kennedy's tax cut and civil rights act -- which Kennedy probably would not have been able to pass -- are admirable. Johnson's motivation is explained in part by self interest -- the man loves power, and doing great things makes one even more powerful. The whole idea of separation of powers and checks and balances is to let ambitious men make their mark without consolidating too much power. The public can benefit from such ambitious leaders. Part of Johnson's motives were personal and moral -- he identified with the dispossessed given his upbringing and history. These very different kinds of motivations can and do coexist in the same individual.

Thirty years have passed sine the publication of The Path to Power, the first of what Robert Caro had envisioned would be a three-volume biography of America's 36th president. This, his fourth volume, ends in the first months of Johnson's presidency, and Caro's assertion that this is the penultimate volume is a little hard to swallow given the thoroughness he has covered his subject's life even before reaching his time in the White House (with a third of this book's 700+ pages chronicling just the first four months as president). Yet Caro has sacrificed brevity for a detailed portrait of irony in his depiction of a master of political power who suddenly found himself deprived of it.

Caro begins with Johnson at the height of his success in the Senate. Still only in his second term, he had taken the weak position of Senate Majority Leader and turned it into the second most powerful office in national politics, thanks largely to his enormous personal and legislative abilities. But Johnson had his eye on an even larger prize: the presidency itself, an office he had aspired to for decades and which in 1960 seemed to many to be his for the taking. Yet Johnson hesitated to commit himself to the race, fearing the humiliation of a defeat. This created an opening that John F. Kennedy eagerly exploited. With his brother Robert collecting commitments in the west - a region critical to Johnson's chances - Kennedy outmaneuvered the Texas senator and won the nomination, demonstrating just how completely Johnson had misjudged his opponent.

11TH HOUR, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro PDF Download

James Patterson and Maxine Paetro 11TH HOUR  PDF Download. Follow the Download Link 

If you love the Women's Murder Club you will love this book. Two great story lines woven in with Lindsay and Joes' marriage, Yuki, Cindy and Claire and of course Marino.


THE 11th HOUR by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro may be the best Women's Murder Club novel to date. The four long-time friends --- Lindsay Boxer, a San Francisco homicide investigator; Dr. Claire Washburn, an SFPD medical examiner; Cindy Thomas, a newspaper reporter; and prosecuting attorney Yuki Castellano bring their different, overlapping and occasionally conflicting disciplines together to solve crimes. The result is part police procedural, part detective, part murder mystery, and yes, part romance.

So what makes THE 11th HOUR my favorite in the series? It would have to be the mystery elements. The book begins with a cold-blooded killing at a school during a music recital. The killer, known as Revenge, has been targeting drug dealers throughout San Francisco, seemingly killing with impunity. Boxer, who with husband Joe Molinari is pregnant with their first child, is experiencing the ups and downs of pre-natal motherhood when she is assigned to the case. The Revenge killings are barely on Boxer's radar before she and partner Rich Conklin answer a 911 call. A horrifying tableau awaits them: two heads have been arranged in the garden of a house belonging to one of San Francisco's most famous residents.

Boxer's boss wants her working full time on the Revenge murders for two very important reasons: he suspects that the murderer is a cop, and Revenge's latest victim is a cop, too, working undercover in the drug trade. But Boxer doesn't want to let go of the head case. And when more heads turn up in the garden, a forensic investigation courtesy of Dr. Washburn indicates that the decapitation and burial have been occurring for quite a while.

Thus Boxer has two very different and very separate cases, both of which are totally unrelated. She acquires quite a list of suspects in the Revenge murders, and one of the names on the list is her former partner's. As far as the buried head case is concerned, Boxer and Conklin use good old-fashioned police work, including knocking on and down doors literally to get the answers they need. By the time the book ends, they've found a very insane murderer, and one who, when all things are considered, is quite sympathetic.

None of this sounds very romantic, does it? If you're looking for romance, THE 11th HOUR has that as well. Castellano is dating Boxer's boss, and Thomas is seeing Boxer's partner. And Boxer's husband? Well, let's just say that he gets in the biggest trouble that a husband can get into. Oh, and another thing: You never know with a Women's Murder Club book if everyone is going to make it to the end intact. People get hurt in this one, though it's nothing to lose your head over.