Mitch Rapp is not in this book but many important characters from the "Rapp" series of books appear here. It is DEFINITELY worth reading and I suggest you do so before you start the Rapp series... although it certainly isn't a requisite for understanding the others.
In this brief but significant book, the authors, a grandfather-grandson team, explore how using positive psychology in everyday interactions can dramatically change our lives. Clifton (coauthor of Now, Discover Your Strengths) and Rath suggest that we all have a bucket within us that needs to be filled with positive experiences, such as recognition or praise. When we're negative toward others, we use a dipper to remove from their buckets and diminish their positive outlook. When we treat others in a positive manner, we fill not only their buckets but ours as well.
Patterson's epic tale of the Dunne family, who find themselves trapped in paradise, fighting for their lives, is a strong commercial novel that demands even stronger performances. Luckily, Dylan Baker and Jennifer Van Dyck are up to the challenge and put forth simply infectious performances that will set listeners' pulses racing. Playing distinct adolescent roles as well as a number of others, the two narrators display their wide ranging abilities and captivate to no end. Listeners will be enthralled from the very beginning; this duo knows exactly when to crank up the tension.
'Yellow Kid' Weil - The Autobiography of America's Master Swindler
You'll marvel at the elaborate schemes developed by The Yellow Kid and cry for the marks who lost it all to his ingenuity—$8,000,000 by some estimations. Fixed horse races, bad real-estate deals, even a money-making machine—all were tools of the trade for the Kid and his associates: the Swede, the Butterine Kid, the Harmony Kid, Fats Levine, and others. The Sting (1973), starring Paul Newman and based largely on the story of the Yellow Kid, is entertaining, but is no match for the real deal.
That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter’s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.
