It's Sunday. Let's Talk BOOKS 📚

I have been addicted to books since around the fifth grade

You can read the longish introduction to the series in either

Let’s Talk BOOKS 2023-04-02 Genre: Romance

Let’s Talk BOOKS 2023-04-16 Genre: Mystery & Thrillers 

Other previous editions of Let’s Talk BOOKS: Let's Talk BOOKS 2023-04-23 Genre: YA (Young Adult)It's Sunday. Let's Talk BOOKS 📚 May 7, 2023 Genre: Detective  It's Sunday. Let's Talk BOOKS 📚 May 21, 2023 Genre: Science Fiction  It's Sunday. Let's Talk BOOKS 📚 May 28, 2023 Genre: MilSpec  It's Sunday. Let's Talk BOOKS 📚 June 4, 2023 Genre: Time TravelIt's Sunday. Let's Talk BOOKS 📚 June 11, 2023 Genre: Fantasy

Genre — Horror 

Oh, that introduction about Stephen King didn’t clue you in? Yes, we’ll be covering Horror this weekend. Now, let me explain up front that I’m not a fan of horror. I won’t watch horror television or films, they give me nightmares. 

But books are another thing, I can read horror, but sadly, for me far too much of it isn’t interesting. So my experience with the genre is limited. 

Of course, Mr King’s novels make a big hit in my limited play list. My favorite story by King isn’t the one that most people like, like The Shining or The Stand or It or Christine. My favorite is The Talisman. 

Much like The Shining, there is a juvenile boy who is the main character in this tale. His short life is full of danger and fear, his mother dying of a slow drawn out illness. But Jack meets someone who tells him there may be a way to save his mother’s life, if he dares… 

Stephen King— The Talisman

Blurb from Wiki entry on the novel: 

Jack Sawyer, twelve years old, sets out from Arcadia Beach, New Hampshire, in a bid to save his mother Lily, who is dying from cancer, by finding a crystal called "the Talisman". Jack's journey takes him simultaneously through the American heartland and "the Territories", a strange fantasy land that is set in a universe parallel to that of this world. Individuals in the Territories have "twinners", or parallel individuals, in our world. Twinners' births, deaths, and (it is intimated) other major life events are usually paralleled. Twinners can also "flip" or migrate to the other world but only share the body of their alternate universe's analogue. When flipped, the twinner, or the actual person, will automatically start speaking and thinking the language of where they are flipping into subconsciously.

In rare instances (such as Jack's), a person may die in one world but not the other, making the survivor "single-natured", with the ability to switch back and forth, body and mind, between the two worlds. Jack is taught how to flip by a mysterious figure known as Speedy Parker, who is the twinner of a gunslinger named Parkus in the Territories. In the Territories, the beloved Queen Laura DeLoessian, the twinner of Jack's mother (a movie actress known as the "Queen of the B Movies"), is dying as well.

Justin Cronin— The Passage 

From the GoodReads page for The Passage

IT HAPPENED FAST. THIRTY-TWO MINUTES FOR ONE WORLD TO DIE, ANOTHER TO BE BORN.

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors, but for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—toward the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun.

I’ve read a lot of vampire stories over the past few decades, but this one was particularly unnerving, as it started out the same way The Stand did — a mistake at a military base changes the entire future of the world, and not in a good way. Not at all. 

Dean Koontz— Lightning 

Blurb from the Goodreads entry for this book

The first time the lightning strikes Laura Shane is born...

The second time it strikes the terror starts... though eight-year-old Laura is saved by a mysterious stranger from the perverted and deadly intentions of a drug-crazed robber. Throughout her childhood she is plagued by ever more terrifying troubles, and with increasing courage she finds the strength to prevail - even without the intervention of her strange guardian. But, despite her success as a novelist and her happy family life, Laura cannot shake the certainty that powerful and malignant forces are controlling her destiny.

Then the lightning strikes once more and shatters her world. The adventure - and the terror - have only just begun...