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The Girl Who Chased The Moon
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Interviews
S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
John Hart
In a letter to his readers, John Hart talks about becoming a writer and the challenges he faced in writing The Last Child.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Sarah Blake
Sarah Blake talks about her inspiration for The Postmistress, set in Europe and Cape Cod in 1940.
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   Summary and Book Reviews

The Summons: Summary and book reviews of The Summons by John Grisham, plus links to an excerpt from The Summons and a biography of John Grisham.

The Summons The Summons
by John Grisham
Hardcover: Feb 2002,
384 pages.
Paperback: Dec 2002,
384 pages.

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Critics' Opinion:   good
Readers' Rating:  3.5 Stars
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Book Summary

Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He's forty-three, newly single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has a younger brother, Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family's black sheep.

And he has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known to all as Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee mansion and become a recluse.

With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons for both sons to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. It is typed by the Judge himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for Ray and Forrest to appear in his study.

Ray reluctantly heads south, to his hometown, to the place where he grew up, which he prefers now to avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray.

And perhaps someone else.

Book Reviews


Good  USA Today - Deirdre Donahue
Some of my happiest, most relaxing reading moments have been spent in the entertaining company of John Grisham. And his new novel, The Summons, ranks as my absolute favorite in many years. After taking a break from writing legal thrillers to write the more literary A Painted House and the holiday fable Skipping Christmas, the prolific Grisham appears more fresh. First, there is an ending too delicious and morally instructive to give away. Second, the novel, Grisham's 14th, skillfully tours the New South of gambling casinos, endless self-storage centers and ultra-rich lawyers who sue multinational corporations.

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