Book Description

This digital document is an article from Children's Digest, published by Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc. on May 1, 2004. The length of the article is 374 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Tornado safety rules.
Publication: Children's Digest (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2004
Publisher: Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc.
Volume: 54Issue: 3Page: 8(1)

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Semana, published by Spanish Publications, Inc. on March 26, 1998. The length of the article is 485 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Comparten marido. (dos hermanas en Honduras; incluye artculo con breves notas internacionales, 26 de marzo de 1998)(TT: They share husband) (TA: two sister's in Honduras; includes article with brief international news items, March 26, 1998)
Publication: Semana (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 26, 1998
Publisher: Spanish Publications, Inc.
Volume: v5Issue: n266Page: p3(1)

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Builder, published by Hanley-Wood, Inc. on August 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1423 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Excessive force slammed! Shattered homes left in the wake of a Maryland super tornado point out both the strengths and shortcomings of modern building codes.
Author: Matthew Power
Publication: Builder (Magazine/Journal)
Date: August 1, 2002
Publisher: Hanley-Wood, Inc.
Volume: 25Issue: 9Page: 122(6)

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Book Description

Award-winning author Alice Blanchard delivers the must-read literary thriller of the year--a twister of a tale about a detective trying to outwit a killer--and Mother Nature--in Tornado Alley. ... Read more

Reviews (51)

NY Times Book Review:
"Nothing about the delicately rendered psychological terrors of Alice Blanchard's debut novel, ''Darkness Peering,'' could have prepared us for the howling horrors of THE BREATHTAKER. Set in a region of rural Oklahoma known as Tornado Alley, this gale-force thriller charts the warped progress of a serial killer who strikes only during tornadoes and models his handiwork on their devastation. That should be enough of a charge for one book, but such is Blanchard's artistry that she whips up even more excitement by taking us joy riding with storm chasers who jump into their trucks and ride into the path of the big twisters. ''Heroin for the heartland'' is their catchphrase for storm chasing. As one enthusiast puts it, ''When you chased the wind, the ground fell away from under your feet and you were transported someplace else.''

Charlie Grover, the seasoned police chief of Promise, Okla., joins these daredevils when his 16-year-old daughter is kidnapped by the killer and driven into the eye of a majestic storm -- a plot development that satisfies genre conventions but seems superfluous in a story that gets more blood-pumping effects from its spectacular weather reporting. In truth, Blanchard writes so well that even her quiet descriptions of desolate towns and lonely people are good enough to rattle the rafters."

What a great book!!!
I read this on a plane ride across country and couldn't put it down. It's a fast-paced page-turner with great scares, great characters and an outstanding premise that is very well-executed. The hero, sheriff Charlie Grover, is a deeply conflicted character trying to raise his daughter alone in the face of hunting a very smart and crafty serial killer who has managed to cover his tracks for years by making his kills look like the storms did it. Meanwhile, his daughter has fallen in love with a bad kid and gets into trouble because she thinks she knows much more than she actually does about the world - a very believable teenage character. The storm-chasing is well-researched, as is the forensics work. This author is keenly aware of keeping emotional conflict front and center at all times, which effectively adds to the tension being cranked up chapter by chapter from a taut and gripping plotline. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun and entertaining read that is also a quality piece of literature.

Breathtakingly gruesome!
I awarded this book 4 stars because I was unable to stop reading it, even though it was gruesome enough to curl the hairs on the back of your neck. Police Chief Charlie Grover finds three mutilated bodies in a house in the aftermath of a tornado. An initial look seems to show the victims of the storm but closer inspection reveals not only deliberate stab wounds made by someone in an attempt to make it appear as storm damage, but also reveals that from each victim, a tooth has been roughly pulled out and replaced with an animals' tooth. This in itself was nearly enough to cause me to abandon the book, but as the author had by then introduced some fascinating characters, I was compelled to continue. Charlie is drawn into the strange world of the storm chasers, dare-devils who take incredible risks to travel to the very edges of huge storms. It's an exciting, pacy book, albeit one laced with really nasty details of the crimes of a pyschopathic killer.

BLEW ME AWAY!
I LOVED this book! It was scary, intriguing, complex, mysterious, gripping and extremely well-written. I especially loved Charlie's relationship with his daughter - a very realistically-written teenage girl going through an inner battle with her hormones. The science of it all is well-described and interesting. You come away from this book learning a few cool things about tornado chasing. I would love to read more by this author. 5*****

A Very Windy Tale
Author Blanchard has a novel idea for a mystery: a serial killer who does his evil deeds at the scenes of tornadoes. Chief of Police Charlie Grover has difficulty understanding how anyone could make such careful predictions of tornado touchdowns that he could enter a home just as the storm struck. The average reader will also have such difficulties. So Charlie visits the resident meteorologist whose beauty is described at great length. Charlie, of course, falls immediately in love with her despite author Blanchard's telling us that pulchritudinous Willa has coarse, greasy hair. Now isn't that a neat mental image to carry in your head every time Willa enters the scene? Ms. Blanchard also wants you to know that she had a dictionary of meteorology at her side when she wrote the book so she could insert stuff that sounds like "inverted diacritical layers that push the particle potential well above the diaphanous part of the lower troposphere." Hey, I would have loved to get a basic education in tornado-ology, but terms are tossed out and never explained. It's akin to the macho male adventure writer who fills his novel with tedious and gratuitous descriptions of various firearms and munitions.

Ms Willa really doesn't contribute a single thing to the solution of the crime. She is just there as a romantic interest for Charlie who is overcome by her greasy hair. Charlie has had a hard life. He is a widower with a painful past, a drunken father, and a teenage rebellious daughter whose head seems to be stuffed with cotton balls.

Anyway Charlie is hot on the trail of the "debris killer", and the author tosses in several very obvious red herrings. This is the sort of tale where you sit there uttering a repeated mantra of "I don't believe this." Charlie, for instance, zooms down the highway in an ancient pickup truck. While eating up the miles at 60 plus miles an hour he finds time to use a laptop computer, and holds a flashlight in one hand while hanging onto a roadmap with the other. I mean who needs to steer anyway? Of course he is talking on the CB radio all during this. In a tornado scene one guy flees in a vehicle and another runs away on foot. Which of these two does the tornado fling up into the air? Well the guy in the car, silly. The one on foot easily outruns the twister.

Hey, those were the plausible scenes. Elsewhere in the book a seriously injured gentleman is pronounced brain dead. About an hour later he wakes up, and very very shortly thereafter is partying like crazy.

The novel is suitable airplane reading I guess. I actually like to read books like these once in a great while. They are always good for a few laughs. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Airpower, published by Sentry Books, Inc. on March 1, 2002. The length of the article is 4244 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Tempest tossed: The Day mother nature nearly knocked America's Strategic Air Command out of business!
Author: Arnold House
Publication: Airpower (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2002
Publisher: Sentry Books, Inc.
Volume: 32Issue: 2Page: 40(12)

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Science Weekly, published by Science Weekly, Inc. on October 29, 1999. The length of the article is 1274 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Tornadoes.
Publication: Science Weekly (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 29, 1999
Publisher: Science Weekly, Inc.
Volume: 16Issue: 5Page: 1

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from American Scientist, published by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society on July 1, 1999. The length of the article is 1000 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Meteorologists are finding that some tornadoes are quite hard to predict due to their ability to form quickly. These nondescending tornadoes, so-called because they develop from the ground up instead of their usual pattern of descending from the clouds, were first experienced in Minnesota in 1997. The nature of nondescending tornadoes was the subject of a study by researchers Robert Davies-Jones and Jeffrey Trapp of the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, OK. They came up with a mathematical model of a nondescending tornado and arrived at the conclusion that such an event can be tricky to detect even with Doppler radar.

Citation Details
Title: Tornado rising.(difficulty of predicting nondescending tornadoes)
Author: Dana Mackenzie
Publication: American Scientist (Refereed)
Date: July 1, 1999
Publisher: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
Volume: 87Issue: 4Page: 312(2)

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Masthead, published by National Conference of Editorial Writers on June 22, 1999. The length of the article is 1482 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: An editorial writer relates how the Leaf-Chronicle newspaper managed to continue publishing even after a tornado devastated its office in Clarksville, TN. Despite losing everything in her office, she was able to provide interesting news by sending an e-mail to the National Conference of Editorial Writers listserv and her fellow editorial writers provided her with material and moral support. The Leaf-Chronicle is churning out news in the Foodland grocery store where they have set up shop temporarily.

Citation Details
Title: The Troll survived: a tornado diary.(Leaf-Chronicle newspaper continues ot publish even after tornado devastates its office)
Author: Alane S. Megna
Publication: The Masthead (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 1999
Publisher: National Conference of Editorial Writers
Volume: 51Issue: 2Page: 20(2)

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Humpty Dumpty's Magazine, published by Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc. on April 1, 2000. The length of the article is 626 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Ask Doctor Cory.(asthma; tornado safety)
Author: Cory SerVaas
Publication: Humpty Dumpty's Magazine (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2000
Publisher: Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc.
Volume: 48Issue: 3Page: 34

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by Review of Contemporary Fiction on June 22, 1993. The length of the article is 1292 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Tornado Pratt.(Brief Article)
Author: Jack Byrne
Publication: The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 1993
Publisher: Review of Contemporary Fiction
Volume: v13Issue: n2Page: p239(2)

Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Capper's, published by Ogden Publications, Inc. on December 9, 2003. The length of the article is 507 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Towns hit by tornadoes begin recovery.(Pierce City and Stockton, Missouri)
Author: Connie Farrow
Publication: Capper's (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 9, 2003
Publisher: Ogden Publications, Inc.
Volume: 125Issue: 25Page: 6(1)

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Kids Discover, published by Kids Discover on June 1, 1996. The length of the article is 368 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Magnificent Fury. (photographs of various stages of tornadoes with descriptions)
Publication: Kids Discover (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 1996
Publisher: Kids Discover
Volume: v6Issue: n6Page: p6(2)

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from National Underwriter Property & Casualty-Risk & Benefits Management, published by The National Underwriter Company on May 19, 2003. The length of the article is 440 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Tornadoes may pass $2B. (Top Stories of the Week).(storm damage claims)
Author: Mark E. Ruquet
Publication: National Underwriter Property & Casualty-Risk & Benefits Management (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 19, 2003
Publisher: The National Underwriter Company
Volume: 107Issue: 20Page: 6(1)

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