Duma Key

By Stephen King

After a work accident that almost kills him and leaves him without one arm, millionaire and entrepreneur  Edgar Freemantle decides to leave his building company in the hands of his associate in order to look for a place to start a new life and to escape from a stormy divorce and suicide.

Duma Key is his destination. A house by the beach in the state of Florida where he takes up drawing and finds out that in spite of being short of one arm, his talent begins to be more than he expected...  He soon discovers this new place is haunted and at the same time it's haunting him.

I'll just say: read this book if you like what I call "vintage King".  This the same Stephen King I read in novels such as The Dead Zone or Pet Sematary.  Well-developed characters and a storyline building up to a scary climax.

Zombie Fallout

by MARK TUFO

If I write a summary of this book, you may think: "OK, right. Another zombie book about the breakout and so on and so forth.  Been there, done that."  I would have thought so if I'd read the synopsis before reading the book.

Anyway we do have another story here.  Yes, it's survival horror but with other elements I haven't seen or read before in this genre.  It includes a whole family; parents in their forties, kids in their teenagehood or early adult life and Henry, their faithful farting bulldog.  Add also close friends to the family and neighbours in the middle of the zombie outbreak.  But there is more: Mike Talbot, the head of the main family, is the narrator through most part of the novel and leads us along the story. He describes the horror of the events in such a hilarious way that you don't know whether to be scared or to burst out laughing. It's a real treat.

The only negative point I found is that the text needs some editing, but I shouldn't complain after having had such a great time.  The book can be found for free at amazon.  Check it out!

NOTE: This is the first instalment of a series of 8 books,

Fantastic Voyage

by Isaac Asimov

Two antagonist countries see their battle for scientific progress and military intelligence outbalanced when the most brilliant scientist of one of the opposite nations crosses the boundaries in benefit of the other. However few hours after arriving at his exile he becomes the victim of an attack that leaves him in a comatose state. A group of scientist and a secret agent are miniaturized together with a nuclear submarine in order to be injected into the body of this scientist, who holds in his mind a terrible scientific secret.  This uncanny team has 60 minutes to travel through his blood system to wipe the blood clot in this genius's brain.  If they fail, this man will die and mankind will be doomed.

I really enjoyed this book, which was based on the script of the 1966 movie.  Asimov changed some scientific mistakes in the story and created an amazing sci-fi thriller. It's full of action but at the same time it's so full of real facts about the human body and how it works that after finishing the book, the reader has had a great time and learnt some interesting things about anatomy.

I think Asimov tried his best at making the story less Hollywood-like but still the characters lack elaboration and are rather plain, which is the only drawback I found in the book.  He re-wrote the story again under the title Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain.  I haven't read this second book but from what I've seen the plot is exactly the same, so I guess Asimov wrote it for his own satisfaction or because he was not convinced about the first one.

All in all, it's an entertaining book, mixing up sci-fi and spy fiction.  Ideal for those who want to have fun after a tougher reading.  It doesn't matter if you are not a great fun of sci-fi books.