A. J. Hartley

In a future dystopian society, a group of teenagers who are guilty of some kind of deviant behavior (or behavior that is deemed deviant by society) are sent in a spaceship to another planet of their solar system for reeducation. We really have to suspend disbelief there, because it's absurd that to make them attend a few lectures and watch videos about good citizenship for a few weeks they'd sent them on an interplanetary voyage instead of reeducating them on their own planet.

In any case something goes wrong. The automated spaceship goes to a different, farther-away planet and crashes there. While they wait for rescue that may or may not come, the teenagers, utterly unprepared for the task, have to survive in a hostile environment and deal with some mysteries and strange events.

The book is very readable and entertaining. I liked the first person narration and the dynamics between the characters. It works well as a fast-paced thriller and as a tense mystery. I felt there were some missed opportunities to make the SF elements more interesting, but in any case it was a quite enjoyable read. It offers enough closure to stand on its own, but the door is open for sequels if the author chooses to write them.… (more)

(2006)Tried this book after review on The Eclectic Review. Deborah Miller, an assistant curator at an Atlanta museum stumbles on what appears to be the hunt for a Mask of Atreus and the body of Agamemnon of the ancient Greeks. Turns into a deadly hunt for Adolf Hitler's body and a neo-Nazi who is going to use it to bring back the Third Reich in some form. Pretty good mystery.(PW)Rich with historical and archeological detail, this well-constructed debut from Hartley celebrates the power of legend while delivering an engrossing mystery that skips nimbly between continents and cultures. At the heart of the story is Atlanta museum curator Deborah Miller, who's returning home after a successful exhibit when she receives a cryptic call telling her she needs to go back to the museum. Deborah does so only to find her friend, museum owner Richard Dixon, lying dead amid a cache of possibly priceless artifacts. Why was Richard hiding them? And, most importantly, what item from the stash was worth killing for? At first, Deborah believes the missing item to be a Mycenean death mask, but after exploratory trips to Greece and Russia and multiple attempts on her life, Deborah begins to suspect that the object in question is more powerful than a mere mask. Hartley has created an enduring heroine in Deborah, who's courageous, loyal and smart enough to learn from her mistakes.… (more)

Macbeth is probably my favorite tragedy of Shakespeare's, and I very much enjoyed this novel, which provides greater depth and detail to the tale. It's not just an effort to place the play in novel form - the authors provide a foreword and afterword which explain how they went about taking inspiration from both the play, actual history, and their own imaginations. It's a rich, occasionally overblown, narrative, solidly contextualized in the historical setting of 11th century Scotland.

The audio, as narrated by the great Scottish actor Alan Cumming, is a delight.

4 stars… (more)