Monster by Frank Peretti is a nice read and a modern take on the legend of the Sasquatch. Peretti has been labeled as a “Christian author,” which is probably a fair way to describe the man. But to pigeonhole his writing as “Christian fiction,” fit only for a certain spiritual segment of the population, would be a mistake.

Certainly Monster is written from a Christian world view. There is no cursing (but there is a fair amount of violence). There is an element of Creationism vs. Evolutionism in the book. But it never comes across as preachy. Monster isn’t a story constructed around a message. The book stands on its own as a compelling work of literature. The subtext remains appropriately subsumed to the development of the story.

Monster is the story of a camper, Beck, lost in the woods who is “rescued” against her will by a Sasquatch. Injured, lost, and torn from her element, Beck must learn to survive by accepting the social mores of the creatures with whom she is, for better or worse, bound.

Parallel to her tale of survival, her husband and a band of searchers must battle against time, nature, and the quite unnatural in their efforts to find Beck. Motives are questioned, loyalties stretched, and trusts betrayed in the intense search that takes place in the days following Beck’s disappearance.

Part mystery, part adventure, and part sociological commentary, Monster is a fast-paced and light read. Paretti has the gift of creating a real and powerful sympathy for his characters. He develops the central characters to such depth that the reader feels their pain and their joy. And in one shocking instance toward the end of the book, I found myself actually angry with Beck for the choice she made.

Peretti manages to write the interaction between human and sasquatch in a way that rings true. The beasts, somewhere between man and animal in intelligence and behavior, are believable without a hint of the hokey-ness that has plagued such depictions in other literary attempts to capture that dynamic.

I cannot keep up with the number of books that Stephen King has churned out through the years. Somewhere along the way I have lost count. There are too many of his books already, and it seems that he’s always there, every time I am in a book store there is another Stephen King book waving at me from the shelves, begging to be read. I stopped reading him years ago, not because his books have lost their magic but because there are many other authors and their works to read. But King’s new book, Under the Dome, somehow found its way into my collection.

I was somewhat surprised to see how much has changed in King’s writing. I am not talking about his writing style, it is still the same, although it seems to have matured a lot; what has changed is how he deals with his characters now. The novel is thick with emotions. King has found a new power–the ability to bring us into the very depth of each character’s soul without any effort at all. The book is more than a thousand pages, but you barely notice the number of turns you make while you are at it, at least it was what I felt while reading the book.

Under the Dome is set in the small town of Chesters Mill, which suddenly is cut off from the rest of the world by a dome that descends on the town.  The dome is invisible but it is there, the town feels its presence when a small plane suddenly bursts into flames after it hits the dome. A truck carrying logs crashes on the dome. What the dome is made of and why it is there, King does not explain clearly during the first half of the book, and this is one of the things that hooks you and keeps you turning the pages.  But if you are very observant, you’ll see some hints that King drops here and there early in the development of the story.

Under the Dome can be considered one of Stephen King’s best works. In this book he successfully merges the real world with the  fantasies that only he can create.

Millions of copies of this book have been sold.  Written by Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo started off as a sensation across Europe and has now moved on to be a  national bestseller in the United States as well. It is a combination of a murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. It kept me itching for more as I breezed through the pages, and I never wanted to put it down.

How does the plot go? Well, the story exists due to the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden, forty years ago. Her uncle, Henrik Vanger, believed that there was something behind this disappearance, so he hired Mikael Blomkvist to investigate the case. A middle-aged journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, publishes the magazine Millennium in Stockholm. Vanger convinced Blomkvist to take the case under the conditions that Blomkvist would help his financially strapped magazine, and he promises to give him information to prove Wennerström is corrupt. The cover that the  Mikael uses when researching this murder is that he is spending a year writing the Vanger family history.

He then is aided, via coincidence, by Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker who possesses of the  wisdom of someone twice her age. Though at first it seems as though Mikael is the main character, as the story grows, readers come to realize that real main character of the story is Lisbeth Salander. As they investigate the disappearance the two find astonishing pieces of information about the family, they as the hunters become hunted, and also an unexpected connection between themselves.

USA Today has said that the book is “mesmerizing” while Fresh Air (NPR) has said that it is “A super-smart amalgam of the corporate corruption tale, legal thriller and dysfunctional family psychological suspense story.”  Others, like the Boston Globe, say that it is “exceptional…meticulously plotted, beautifully paced, and features a cast of two indelible sleuths and many juicy suspects.” It was an amazing book, and I cannot wait to begin reading the second of the series– The Girl Who Played With Fire.