George Harrar

This has a lot going for it. There's the small town, coastal Maine setting, there are really believable characters, there's a mystery that sneaks in little by little, until the plot explodes in the final pages of the book in a finish that leaves the reader totally drained of emotion.

Sam Howe, who left Red Paint Bay to go to the big city to work in journalism, returns to his hometown and buys the weekly newspaper. There is seldom anything exciting to report about, but his family life is show more solid, the town is a picturesque study in "life the way it should be," and Sam finds himself looking forward to the upcoming high school reunion.

Then he hires a recently released convicted felon to work at the paper. When his social worker/therapist wife discovers the new hire was convicted of rape, she makes her displeasure known. At about the same time, Sam begins receiving anonymous post-cards with disturbing and often unfathomable messages. As the story progresses and the suspense builds, the reader is led along a psychological journey of terror from an unknown stalker who seems to know a dark secret about Sam's past.

The story resolution is quite wrenching. To say more would be to spoil a great read where a dark mystery is there at the edges and only blossoms into full bloom at the end. All along, the reader knows something more is going to happen, that something is missing, and must keep reading until the sudden, unexpected ending.

It's a great tale of moral consequences, ethical dilemmas, differing perspectives, secrets, guilt and absolution. The newspaper may in fact have a very newsworthy headline next edition. show less

This book took a little while to grow on me, but by the end, I was quite taken with it. It examines how an incident from graduation night, 25 years before, comes back to haunt Simon Howe, a newspaper owner in the small town in Maine he grew up in. Overall, it was worth a read. I can picture this book very easily as a movie---it has that kind of plot, for better or worse, and here, mostly for better.

In 1942, Isaac Asimov wrote “Runaround,” the classic science fiction story that introduced the Three Laws of Robotics that would come to govern the actions of robots in his robotic-based stories as well as those of other science fiction writers. Since that time, robots have been a mainstay of science fiction and Hollywood tales of space exploration from the days of “Metropolis” to C3PO and R2D2 in “Star Wars.”

But robots aren’t just for movie sets and the pages of futuristic show more fiction.

This Scholastic NOVA Book is divided into three sections . . . Why Robots Can’t Tie Shoelaces But Can Go To Mars, Memorizing The Encyclopedia Doesn’t Make You Intelligent, and If Computers Are So Smart, How Come They Didn’t Invent Artificial Intelligence . . . and helps upper elementary grade readers investigate to learn exactly what robots can and cannot do as they explore the possibilities of robots in their futures. With technology becoming ingrained in the students’ everyday lives, this book introduces them to an assortment of robots, including astrobots, Dinamation dinobots, and Hollywood’s own Robbie, C3PO, R2D2, and Hal.

Colorful drawings, photographs, sidebar essays, and an easy-to-read text all work together to help readers understand robots and computers. A timeline of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence shows the highlights of robotic science and gives young readers a look at the research and what might come next. It’s an engaging first look at artificial intelligence. From supercomputers to Gary Kasparov challenging a computer to a chess match, the diverse information here is sure to spark the imaginations of young readers.

Recommended, especially for readers interested in science and robotics. show less

This is a book I read for research at work. It is part biography, part business management book focusing on the career of Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Digital was a post-WWII start-up that took advantage of new computing technology from MIT and the military and brought it to the commercial market. DEC basically invented the minicomputer in the 1960s. Minicomputers are huge compared to microcomputers (aka - personal computers), about the size of a show more refrigerator, but they provided users with real-time interactive capabilities they could not get with the massive IBM mainframes. DEC's minicomputers sold like hot cakes to corporate and research clients, and by the 1980s the company was the second largest computer company after IBM. Olsen promoted participatory management at the company which made a lot of engineers loyal to the company because of the creative freedom, although working at DEC also involved heated arguments to defend one's ideas. It was a Massachusetts company, part of the Route 128 Tech Corridor that was the center of the computing industry before Silicon Valley took over. Sadly, Digital didn't survive the transition to personal computers but this interesting book tells of an innovative company that made great products through unique management strategies. show less