Storm Cycle

May 18, 2009
At the start of this fast-paced romantic thriller, the second from the bestselling mother and son Johansen team (Silent Thunder
), Rachel Kirby, a computer whiz in Houston, Tex., is working hard to spur medical research on Krabbe’s disease, a rare nervous-system disorder afflicting her sister, Allie. After Rachel narrowly survives a sniper’s bullet, she receives an e-mail from John Tavak, a stranger who claims to be trapped in an Egyptian tomb, where he’s met Peseshet, an ancient physician who may have a cure for Allie’s ailment. The sisters set off on a globe-trotting adventure featuring gunfights, explosions and contrived romantic subplots. Rachel finds herself attracted to the enigmatic Tavak, while Allie starts falling for Hal Demanski, a spoiled billionaire who ends up aiding their efforts to get Peseshet’s secrets before an evil pharmaceutical company does. Despite the lack of character development or surprising plot twists, action fans should be satisfied.

June 1, 2009
TakingWorld Wide Web to its extreme, the Johansens weave a sinuousthriller that pits a supercomputeragainst hieroglyphicsin an ancient Egyptian burial chamber. Hoping to discover a cure for the rare illness threatening her sisters life, Rachel Kirby, the head of a prominent university technology center, has invented a way of harnessing theunused operating capacity of the worlds PCs and game consolesto create a mighty computer network with limitless powercoveted by corporations, individuals, and the governmentfew with motives as altruistic as hers. When Rachel receives a cryptic and urgent e-mail from John Tavak, a soldier of fortune trapped in a remote Egyptian tomb, she gets caught up in an ominous international chase that brings her tantalizingly close to unlocking the secrets of her sisters disease while putting her in the path of ruthless mercenaries hell-bent on solving the mystery before she can. Although they would have done well to abandon the contrived romance between Rachel and John, the Johansens Indiana Joneslike saga admirably succeeds in combining dazzling, labyrinthine action with the exotic allure of ancient history to deliver a pulse-pounding adventure intricate enough to satisfytech-savvy geeks and hard-core adrenaline junkies alike.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)