While this novel claims to be suspenseful, its rather humdrum plot filled with thoroughly boring characters doesn’t have a lot of suspense to it. Yorke tries to be Ruth Rendell, but really, she should know better.

Carrie Fisher’s (yes, Princess Leia) first novel is a mishmash of styles that ultimately disappoints. The main character, an actress named Suzanne, is drifting through her Hollywood world, asking unimportant questions about relationships, drugs and life. Try all you like, but it’s hard to get attached to someone who is so unattached to her own existence.

Mirror starts out all right, with a mysterious mirror and a little dead boy reflected inside it. But it quickly degenerates into the ridiculous, involving a plot to put together Satan’s body and bring it back to life, with some gross stuff involving people cutting out their own tongues and getting devoured by Satan’s penis. Sorry, but I just couldn’t buy it. Maybe I was laughing so hard I forgot to be scared.

This is the bittersweet retelling of the history of a family, a family with its own peculiar insecurities and rivalries, which is nonetheless bound together by love, even if the family members realize that too late. A quiet, slow-moving book, it is also an engrossing read with real, engaging, multi-faceted characters.

When I first read the concept for this book on the back cover – people who are compelled to walk even after they have died – I thought it sounded mysterious and cool. But as with the other Little novels I have read, an interesting premise is quickly transformed into a far-fetched plot with uninteresting characters and an ultimately unexciting climax. This one concerned witches and evil spirits, and there were very few walking dead people, considering the title. I’m not quite sure why Little is considered such a shining light in the horror genre when his novels can’t even measure up to the formulaic but still suspenseful works of Dean Koontz.

This novel follows an eccentric named Morgan as he bumbles through his life, putting on one costume after another, one persona after another, in an effort to discover who he really is. It’s not him but the woman who falls in love with him who discovers that, though. A quiet, entertaining read.

I didn’t think that this novel lived up to the strength of Tyler’s other publications. It concerns the aftermath of a little girl’s accidental death and its effects on the people who live in the same house: her family and neighbors. While the prose and characterization, as always, are strong, the story isn’t that compelling. It just seems to amble along to no spot in particular.

Guterson deftly weaves his story of a fisherman’s drowning death and the man who is accused of his murder from flashbacks, incorporating a murder trial, a love triangle and the experiences of Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps during World War II. Despite some overlong descriptive passages, this is a beautiful, slow-moving read. The climax does fall a little flat, but that doesn’t negate the enjoyment of getting there.

A lukewarm early offering by a gifted novelist. The story concerns a young man trying to leave behind his home of six sisters, but I suggest you skip it altogether in favor of one of Tyler’s later, and much better, offerings.

You can’t really take this novel seriously, what with the cannibals, cargo cults, an organ-harvesting conspiracy, a talking fruit bat and the theft of a 747 from a Hawaii airport. But it is a funny and light adventure fantasy, set in the South Pacific, with a band of memorable characters and a plot that concerns, among many other things, the establishment of a new religion worshiping a WWII fighter pilot named Vincent. A fun read for your next island vacation.