Missing Mona is an excellent detective/suspense novel. It is about a car mechanic who takes off in his Turbo Bronze Barracuda to drive cross country to Los Angeles. As he is leaving he picks up a beautiful hitchhiker named Mona. What follows takes Tommy on the adventure of his life. Missing Mona will take you on a thrilling ride all the way to the end of the book. Make sure to add this one to your collection and happy reading. I personally loved this one and will read it again and again!
Michael J. Robinson Reviews Christopher Bernard’s Dangerous Stories for Boys
Christopher Bernard’s Dangerous Stories For Boys reaches into the abyss and brings us (men) back to a time and place where our world was full of doubts, fears, and lack of courage. Many boys finding their way into manhood become trapped in and stifled by society’s rules and regulations. There’s a deep psychological aspect to the experience of growing up into manhood. The age where it seems to begin is at ten and throughout adolescence. Many boys may find that their world is chaotic, disingenuous, and full of traps—emotional, physical and mental—all of which can be dangerous.
It’s hard for the boys to figure out what path to take in the midst of the experience of adolescence and pre-adolescence. As we see in one story, changes in one’s family, such as a move, only heighten the disorientation. Matt’s family relocates to the city after living on a farm and he struggles with the strain of transforming himself to survive in the new environment. There’s a profound difference between growing up in the country and in the city. However, meeting people of different backgrounds and cultures is a prerequisite for maturity, even a baptism by fire, as it has been said; but an important step towards developing into a fully mature and well-adapted person.
Many adult men have long since forgotten these rites of passage, but Christopher Bernard reminds us of those moments in a harmonious way. Each story has a rhythm that stays intertwined with the other in a cadence that works well. My thoughts followed the lives of these young men, anxious to see how it would all turn out for them. I found myself reliving my own story of growing up, which made me feel frightened and uncertain of my future. Attempting to control each event becomes futile as the environment shapes the characters’ actions. Still, as with the other boys, even while going through a maze of fear and disorientation, Matt resolves not to surrender to his new world and to maintain his identity.
“Shadow in the Water.” This story is intense and familiar to us. Alan must question his own values, and his strength in order to be himself. It’s difficult to walk away from the challenges of peer pressure to say no to others. Alan finds himself confronted by realities that challenge his fantasy that he can be just one of the boys.
It’s impossible not to continue to follow the story without remembering your own experiences. Story after story, Bernard gives us something to contemplate. The reader cannot help but follow each boy through his adventure and have concern for him. As you become attached to each one of them, you are exposed to your own shadows of the past. I found some stories long only because I wanted to know what would take place with the boys. But it was worth the wait to read the ending without skipping pages.
QUALMS
.
Wrap the sea
around the neck of
this pregnant virgin,
She would never
be satisfied.
Let the forest starve
of trees.
Even if mountains
adorn
the cap of oasis
oh her barren head,
high into the frosty
silver heavens.
This pregnant virgin
would not
be satisfied,
for a heart heavy
with love’s child
cries not of pain
but dilemma.
. AKOR EMMANUEL OCHE is a Nigerian poet and critic who has been globally anthologised.
Recipe for a snow day by Tony “Glamortramp” LeTigre
Wake to find the world is white
(better late than never)
Campus closed
(first bottle of wine)
One somewhat dissatisfying cigar
One relationship broken by phone
Fine cheese and greasy good chicken
(second bottle of wine)
Shy sky blushing blood at the magic below
Several bad movies including one that’s so bad it’s SO GOOD
Artistic blockage and a dash of depression for which the cure is indolent hedonism
Stories of Zana, a Russian ape-woman of the 19th century who wasn’t terribly bright but had incredible upper body strength and a penchant for adult grapejuice
(third bottle of wine)
Resolve to read the complete works of Shakespeare this year
Tuna fried in olive oil and garlic with ginger on top
“They should move Christmas one month ahead to January if they want to keep having white Christmases,” I said
or maybe you said
(fourth bottle of wine)
And then around 9 p.m. the too-good-to-be-true news:
“Who needs atheists?” he said. “ ‘We
do not believe in God’? Well, I
don’t b’lieve in your blessed humanity.
The sooner humans are wiped out,
the sooner the rest of us can rot
in peace.”
I was intrigued, if startled. Cool,
he looked, rational, serene.
He smiled wanly. But it was no joke
to him, I could see. Nor did he preen
himself on his intellect or heart,
his courage to face the monstrous worst.
“We are, to put it bluntly,
the condign damnable Nazis of the earth,
her Kozentrationlagers’ kommandants,
her curse.” He looked grimly
around at the rumpled bustling street.
