CD Giveaway - 33Miles, "One Life"
Ends Aug 4, 2010
The country-pop sound established in their eponymous debut is a mainstay for this album as well, and even adds a little more southern flavor.
CD Giveaway - Phil Wickham, "Cannons"
Ends Aug 3, 2010
With an opening shot that hits the sonic pinnacle, this collection of spiritual Brit pop/rock is heavily influenced by Keane, Travis, Coldplay, and U2.
Publication Date: September 2, 2008 Publisher: Simon Pulse Author: · Elizabeth Scott Grade: A
Elizabeth Scott's Living Dead Girl instantly goes for the throat, never letting go, choking the reader as surely as the story's villain, Ray, chokes and otherwise abuses his victim.
Ray is an uncommon animal. Genus: pedophile. Species: girl-lover. Common nomenclature: monster. His actions are related to the reader through the words of fifteen-year-old Alice, whom Ray abducted and renamed when she was ten. (Renaming the protagonist "Alice" is not accidental. So-called girl-lovers celebrate an annual Alice Day to revel in their debauchery. Ms. Scott has done her homework.)
With lyrical precision, Scott takes the reader backward and forward in time, to see step by step, blow by blow, explicitly demonstrating the relationship between Ray and Alice, as we see her broken in mind and spirit. Ray's physical abuse is backed up by verbal threats, threats that Alice knows full too well are not empty words at all.
There was another Alice before me. Ray let her go when she turned 15.
He drove her all the way back to where she used to live, to where she was when she was another girl, back to her before.
Her body was found in a river, floating downstream just a mile from the house she grew up in.
Ray used to tell me this story a lot, pulling me close and saying, "But I'll make sure that doesn't happen to you. I'll keep you safe. All you have to do is be good. Be my little girl forever. You can do that, can't you?"
I am 15, and I figure soon Ray will kill me.
I could run, but he would find me. He would take me back to 623 Daisy Lane and make everyone who lives there pay.
He would make everyone there pay even if he didn't find me. I belong to him. I'm his little girl.
All I have to do is be good.
But Alice's future isn't quite so cut-and-dried. Because Ray is deviating from the pattern. Yes, Alice is getting too old for him to maintain his demented fantasy, and he's going to need another Alice soon -- very soon. But Ray has another role for Alice to play first: she's going to help Ray select and abduct his next victim. And since that means Ray's attentions will be taken off of herself, broken Alice is only too willing to go along with the plan.
Living Dead Girl is a powerful, frank, heartbreaking novel that leaves the reader feeling raped and desolate. Alice's situation is deplorable and disgusting -- and, sadly, all too plausible. This is a book that will take courage to read and discuss with others -- and it's a book that's too important not to do so.
