Night of the howling dogs

Night of the Howling Dogs by Graham Salisbury

From the back cover:

On the Big Island of Hawaii, Dylan's scout troop hikes down into the desolation of an ancient lava flow to camp on a small beach below the volcano. It's beautiful. Peaceful. But there's a problem: Louie Domingo. He and Dylan share a secret history, and it lies like a shark beneath the surface of everything they do.

Until the world comes apart.

Foreshadowed by two mysterious howling dogs, a disaster of unearthly proportions strikes. No one is spared its horror. But over the next hours Dylan learns the true meaning of leadership and the will to survive. More amazing still is the this story actually happened.

I read this one this weekend. I liked the fact that it is a retelling of an actually event - a huge 7.2 earthquake that unleashed a tsunami, and the idea that a boy scout troop is camped on a deserted beach and is eleven miles from the nearest road (uninhabited) makes this into a trilling survival story. I thought the tension between Dylan and Louie added a more complex thread to the story and would recommend this book lots of our readers.

Loads of new books

For any of you that missed coming to library this last week, you missed my excitement over the two huge boxes of books that arrived on Tuesday. I've been real busy trying to prepare them so you can take them out, as well as reading a book a day - for booktalks next week. Here's some of my favourites from this new batch.

Alive: the story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the forty-five original passengers and crew, only sixteen made it off the mountain alive. For ten excruciating weeks they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, they were forced to do what would have once been unthinkable ...
This is their story -- one of the most astonishing true adventures of the twentieth century.

Toucing the Void by Joe Simpson

Joe Simpson and his climbing partner Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death. The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain Simpson was dead, returned to base camp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall but, crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten, was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson hopped, hobbled and crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching the base hours before Yates had planned to break camp. How both men overcame the torments of those harrowing days is an epic tale of fear, suffering and survival; a piognant testament to the unshakeable courage and friendship.