[Just Susan]

A really good book to read...
China Run by David Ball

This is an excerpt and summary:
"Allison realized she'd been awake for twenty-four hours. She hadn't done that since college. It had been the most remarkable twenty-four hours of her life -- hours in which, for better or worse, a choice had been made, a line crossed. There was no going back. Each time she thought about it, she felt the same strange shock: She was a straitlaced civil engineer from Denver, huddled in the bowels of a broken-down cargo boat on the Wan Li Chang Jiang, the Yangtze River. Hunted by police, with her stepson and a baby that wasn't legally hers. "With all that, she was not even heading toward Shanghai, toward home. "Instead, she was heading upriver, deeper into the heart of China...." AS FRESH AS TODAY'S HEADLINES -- THE CHILLING, SUSPENSEFUL STORY OF A MOTHER, A NEWLY ADOPTED CHILD, AND A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT TRYING TO SEPARATE THEM... For Allison Turk, the journey to China to claim the daughter she is adopting had been a trying experience, a series of false starts and long waits. Forced to travel without her husband, she makes the trip with her nine-year-old stepson. She hopes it will be a bonding experience, but so far this hasn't happened. When she finally holds the little girl in her arms, however, she knows that the trip has been worth all the effort and ag gravation. In only two days, she will board a plane for home, taking with her the greatest pride and joy she has ever known. Then suddenly everything unravels. Summoned to an emergency meeting of the adoptive parents, Allison is told a mistake has been made -- a "clerical error." The Americans have been given healthy infants rather than children with special needs, for which they are technically qualified, and they are told they must exchange their babies for different children. Allison is faced with a terrible decision: Should she capitulate and surrender the child she has come to love intensely, or risk an attempt to reach the American consulate in Shanghai, where she might at least have a chance to negotiate and keep her baby? Joining with several other American couples caught in the same dilemma, Allison chooses to run. There is a more sinister reason underlying the nightmare than they know about, and their flight spawns a massive manhunt led by a ruthless police colonel wielding all the terrifying apparatus of a police state. What ensues is tense, dramatic, and totally believable -- a race in which Allison not only struggles with her infant daughter and recalcitrant stepson, but is caught in a political tug-of-war that forces her to display a depth of courage and a strength of will she had never known she possessed. Inspired by a true-life incident, China Run takes the reader on a breathtaking chase across China that is gripping, compulsively readable, and frighteningly real.

[beady]

Thanks Susan sounds really good, and I am looking for something really good to read...

[Just Susan]

Just a warning, Beady. You won't be able to put it down.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/r...hina-run_x.htm

[Peachie]

Thanks, Susan. I'm always looking for the next great book to read. Sounds like Mr. Peachie will have to wait for dinner when I read this one!

[Just Susan]

You are most welcome Peachie. Let me know if you like it.

Tal thanks for putting up that link I read it and the book really is that good. Made me want to read it again.

I have read all of David Ball's other books.
excerted from a review of him..."His novels include Empires of Sand, China Run, and Ironfire. He is currently at work on a fourth book, which may be the best book ever written."

[mdwriter]

If you liked China Run, you'll like Rabbit in the Moon by Deborah and Joel Shlian. The couple writes medical mysteries together and this one is their best. It takes place in China, 1989 around the time of the Tiananmen massacre. I bought a copy at Barnes and Noble at Sumter Landing a few weeks ago when they were there for a book signing. I think they have a few autographed copies left in the store. It's a page turner.

[graciegirl]

That sounds good. I love medical mysteries.

Boomer. Beady. I started THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE, and a dog dies in the preface. I need someone to tell me that it isn't going to be sad all the way through.

I am such a chicken anymore about dismal books and movies.