BookPage January 2017

AMERICA’S BOOK REVIEW

DOWN UNDER DEBUTS

Two hot new Australian literary stars hit U.S. shores

HOW TO BE HAPPY

Advice for ringing in a bolder, brighter 2017

TEEN NIGHTMARES

A debut author’s mosaic of high school cruelty

SUGAR,

you ain’t so sweet Gary Taubes on the health toll of our favorite addiction

JAN 2017

Cuddle up with a cozy mystery.

Escape to another place and time.

All available now.

Available in print and ebook.

www.CarinaPress.com

www.HQNBooks.com

contents

JANUARY 2017

columns 04 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

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Lifestyles Well Read The Hold List Whodunit Book Clubs Romance Cooking Audio

America’s sweet tooth is causing more harm than we know. Journalist Gary Taubes digs deep to uncover sugar’s shocking health effects in The Case Against Sugar.

Cover photo by Kirsten Lara Getchell

book reviews

features 12 13 14 15 16 23 25 29

on the cover

18 FICTION

The New Odyssey

by Patrick Kingsley

t o p p i c k : The Girl in Green

Australian fiction Lindsey Lee Johnson Joanne Harris Happiness New year, new you Clinton Kelly Personal finance Jerry Spinelli

The Lost City of the Monkey God

by Douglas Preston

by Derek B. Miller The Bear and the Nightingale

by Katherine Arden

American Hookup by Lisa Wade The Meaning of Michelle edited by Veronica Chambers

The Afterlife of Stars

by Joseph Kertes Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

26 TEEN

t o p p i c k : A List of Cages

by Robin Roe

Transit by Rachel Cusk

meet the author

Night of Fire by Colin Thubron

Stone Mirrors by Jeannine Atkins

Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel

You Don’t Know My Name

by Kristen Orlando

The Second Mrs. Hockaday

by Susan Rivers

The Book Jumper

by Mechthild Gläser

Fever Dream

by Samanta Schweblin

12 Darynda Jones

Love and First Sight

by Josh Sundquist

The Winter in Anna by Reed Karaim

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

by Chelsea Sedoti

The River at Night by Erica Ferencik Human Acts by Han Kang

The Truth of Right Now

by Kara Lee Corthron

The Midnight Cool by Lydia Peelle

22 NONFICTION

t o p p i c k : In the Great Green

Room by Amy Gary

31 Samantha Cotterill

30 CHILDREN’S

t o p p i c k : Flying Lessons & Other

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes by Brad Ricca How America Lost Its Secrets

by Edward Jay Epstein I Hate Everyone, Except You

by Clinton Kelly The Unsettlers by Mark Sundeen Valley of the Gods

by Alexandra Wolfe

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EDITOR

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Lynn L. Green

Sukey Howard

MANAGING EDITOR

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

MARKETING

Trisha Ping

Allison Hammond

Mary Claire Zibart

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

CONTRIBUTOR

CONTROLLER

Cat Acree

Roger Bishop

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EDITORIAL POLICY

BookPage is a selection guide for new books. Our editors evaluate OPERATIONS DIRECTOR and select for review the best books Elizabeth Grace Herbert published in a variety of categories.

Only books we highly recommend ADVERTISING OPERATIONS are featured. BookPage is editorially independent and never accepts Sada Stipe payment for editorial coverage.

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Stories edited by Ellen Oh XO, OX by Adam Rex A Greyhound, a Groundhog

by Emily Jenkins The Sweetest Sound

by Sherri Winston One Last Word by Nikki Grimes

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columns

LIFESTYLES

WELL READ

B Y S U S A N N A H F E LT S

BY ROBERT WEIBEZAHL

Briding dirty

The wisdom of books

Even though I’ve been hitched for a decade, Weddiculous (HarperOne, $22.99, 288 pages, ISBN 9780062455604) is a book I’d want in my clutches if stranded on a desert isle. Seriously, it’s that funny. The fabulous title sets the perfect tone: Comedian Jamie Lee’s guide to modern nuptials—and all the nuttiness they entail—is written in an ultra-casual style that’s sure to charm today’s irreverent AF

tips, starter shopping lists and information about online sources for plant-based oils, butters, waxes, powders, pigments and other ingredients. The savings from making your own makeup, Rayma suggests, can be enormous.

If Sephora makes you shaky— whether because you love or loathe big-name beauty—this book may be the cure.

brides. (If you think AF is short for “auto focus,” this book may not be for you.) Lee’s mission is to fight the tyranny of “Big Bridal” with belly laughs and unfiltered reports from her wild wedding ride. All the usual how-to territory gets covered, including newer stuff like choosing a wedding hashtag and writing a “how we met” narrative for the wedding website. But we’re really here for the rude, crude comic relief on every page. Can some single friend of mine put a ring on it ASAP so I can shove this book in their face? Kthxbye.

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES

NATURAL TOUCH-UP Makeup is among the more mystifying of everyday items— ever scan the ingredient list of your mineral powder foundation?

But thankfully these days we have DIY guides for whipping up almost anything from scratch.

Marie Rayma’s Make It Up (Running Press, $20, 192 pages, ISBN 9780762460847) speaks to those who want to understand the compounds of cosmetics and formulate their own safe, cruelty-free items at home. These recipes are mostly written for small portions—a single mask or pot of lip gloss—but this book’s thorough instructions could easily be a launch pad for an artisanal line, should the entrepreneurial urge strike.

Rayma provides color-blending

4

Beauty and pleasure in the smallest things: This is a sort of mantra at the heart of A Year Between Friends (Abrams, $24.95, 208 pages, ISBN 9781419722462), the latest installment of an ongoing art project formed from the long-distance friendship of Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes. Vettese and Barnes live with their families in Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon, respectively. Their first book collected the photographs each shot and posted on a shared blog as a morning ritual. As their lives have changed, so has the artistic product of their correspondence.

Now the shared offerings include recipes—Vettese’s mother’s cranberry sauce, Barnes’ sweet potato biscuits—and crafts, as well as images that preserve the quiet, sweet details of family life and nature’s seasonal gifts. This book unfolds month by month, meditative and soothing in its imagery and ideas for simple, seasonal projects. But what makes it remarkable is the poignant honesty of the letters between Vettese and Barnes, which lay bare the truth that, amid all the moments of beauty, life will shoulder us with great pain. This is a beautiful, unique book—a reminder to us all to celebrate seasons and stoke friendship.

Will Schwalbe charmed many readers with The End of Your Life Book Club, a memoir of time spent reading with and to his mother in her final days. Schwalbe’s thoughtful and diverting follow-up to that bestseller, Books for Living (Knopf, $25.95, 288 pages, ISBN 9780385353540), offers another highly personal expedition through the art of reading. In 26 short chapters, he shares insights garnered from a lifetime of reading, finding lessons in books for cultivating and embracing the qualities needed for a well-lived life.

Schwalbe has catholic tastes— “there is no book so bad that you can’t find anything in it of interest,” he professes—and his reading list is broad, ranging from classics such as David Copperfield and 1984 to recent bestsellers to more obscure volumes of poetry and even children’s books. His selections are not meant to be prescriptive, but rather a sampling of books that have helped him navigate through life and, hence, might be of interest to others who seek wisdom rather than mere entertainment in what they read.

Not surprisingly, some of the clearest messages Schwalbe finds reside in books that are themselves “message” books: The Little Prince on friendship, Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea on retreating and recharging, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird on sensitivity.

These are perennial sellers precisely because they offer timeless philosophies for living. More interesting is when Schwalbe digs deeper to root out less apparent interpretations. “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” he suggests, provides permission to set aside external (and internal) expectations and discontinue certain pursuits for no reason other than we would prefer not to. He points out that Stuart

Little teaches us that life is a journey without a neat and tidy ending, and makes the compelling, if not fully fleshedout, argument that The Odyssey shows us that mediocrity does not necessarily equal failure.

Schwalbe’s reading triggers deeply honest, often raw memories of departed friends and mentors, of past mistakes, or prompts the acknowledgement of personal foibles.

In these poignant passages, Books for Living can take on a melancholy air, effective as memoir, if less so as literary inquiry. The connection between Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and the perceived betrayal of a troublesome friendship, for instance, is never really made. And, most frustratingly, when Schwalbe holds up Song of Solomon as a work of greatness to be admired (an evaluation with which I wholeheartedly concur), he fails to offer specifics to back up that claim.

By its very nature, though, a book such as this one needs to be personal and revealing because its true purpose is not to tell us what Schwalbe has read but to It is easy spark our own to forget connections that while with what information is we have read all around us, and will read.

Books for knowledge is Living is not often harder meant to offer to acquire. a fixed reading list (although readers may certainly want to turn or return to some of Schwalbe’s suggestions). It offers a way of reading itself. Particularly now, in our always-plugged-in, noisy world, it is easy to forget that while information is all around us, knowledge is often harder to acquire. We turn to books out of curiosity and the hope that they will teach us something and delight us, Schwalbe says, adding, “Good books often answer questions you didn’t even know you wanted to ask.”

THE HOLD LIST

Top book club picks for

January

In this brand-new feature, BookPage ­editors share curated lists of the best books—old and new—on a variety of subjects. Feed your TBR!

For fans of relationship thrillers

Brains and belly laughs

THE MARRIAGE LIE

Serious literary fiction is all well and good, but sometimes you’re looking for a story to make you laugh. Fortunately, you don’t have to choose between the two—these novels successfully combine smiles with substance.

When one woman sets off on a desperate quest to uncover what her husband was keeping from her, the answers she finds shock her to her very core.

Kimberly Belle

THE PORTABLE VEBLEN by Elizabeth McKenzie Read even one page of The Portable Veblen and you’ll realize you’re in the presence of a unique comic voice. Veblen is just fine on her own, living in a ramshackle house in Palo Alto and translating from the Norwegian in her spare time—until she falls in love with an ambitious doctor with a more conventional lifestyle. Can their personalities mesh for the long term? And is that squirrel in the attic trying to tell her something? Fans of the freewheeling humor of writers like Daniel Handler should take note.

APEX HIDES THE HURT by Colson Whitehead The world of marketing is rife with opportunities for satire, and Colson Whitehead (who just won the National Book Award for The Underground Railroad) takes on this target in his acerbic third novel, which finds a sleepy town trying to revamp itself as a high-tech mecca. In swoops the novel’s central (unnamed) character, a branding wiz best known for his work on a line of bandages. Apex Hides the Hurt was published 10 years ago, but Whitehead’s commentary is perhaps even more trenchant in today’s hyper-branded world.

For fans of Nordic Noir novels MARKED FOR LIFE Emelie Schepp This first novel of a suspenseful, chilling trilogy introduces us to enigmatic and unforgettable prosecutor Jana Berzelius.

For fans of dark and twisty mysteries

MERMAIDS IN PARADISE by Lydia Millet

ONLY DAUGHTER

In our 2014 interview with Lydia Millet, she revealed that she tends to laugh out loud while she’s writing. Readers of her books will understand that impulse; as our interviewer put it, not doing so while reading Millet’s work is a challenge. Mermaids in Paradise, a hilarious novel about a honeymoon gone outrageously wrong, is her funniest work yet, effortlessly blending satire, social commentary and rollicking adventure.

THE MARK AND THE VOID by Paul Murray There is a laugh on every page of Irish writer Paul Murray’s third novel —which might surprise you, given that The Mark and the Void stars an investment banker and is set in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But Murray’s spot-on satire of the way we live now resonates even as it amuses, resulting in a narrative that lingers.

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD by Jincy Willett If the title didn’t make it clear to you, Jincy Willett’s first novel does anything but take itself seriously. Twin sisters Abigail and Dorcas are (say it with me) different as night and day, and when they fall in love with the same man, disaster strikes. Familiar story, but in Willett’s hands it takes on a new life and surprising twists and turns, resulting in a novel unlike any other. David Sedaris counts himself among Willett’s many fans.

Anna Snoekstra In this chilling psychological thriller, one woman’s dark past becomes another’s deadly future.

For fans of cautionary tales WE ARE UNPREPARED Meg Little Reilly A young couple must face a cataclysmic storm that threatens to decimate their Vermont town and the Eastern Seaboard in this penetrating debut novel.

Do we have a story for you!

BookClubbish.com

@BookClubbish

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columns

WHODUNIT

BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Try not to lose your head When a new Scandinavian mystery hits the stands, you pretty much know it’s going to be good, and Swedish author Camilla Grebe’s The Ice Beneath Her (Ballantine, $27, 368 pages, ISBN 9780425284322), translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel, does not let the team down. All the triedand-true adjectives apply here: gripping, atmospheric, nuanced and, of course, graphically violent.

The scene is set as a beautiful woman lies dead in the home of a much-vilified Stockholm business-

officer who is the handler of one of the most valuable double agents in Pakistan. But when that double agent’s cover is blown, Malik becomes persona non grata, along the lines of “The Spy Who Got Kicked Out into the Cold.” He won’t stay that way for long, however, because his checkered past has become known to master Pakistani espionage agent Major General Javid Aslam Khan, who will find some use for Malik, alive or dead.

If you’re in the mood for duplicity, violence and behind-the-scenes

evidence to suggest that her cousin may have been involved.

A tenant across the courtyard claims he saw Kate’s cousin and the murdered woman together on numerous occasions, although her cousin denies knowing the victim. But even with all of Kate’s neuroses ready to dominate her life at a moment’s notice, she cannot begin to imagine the true enormity of the situation. High tension, lightning-fast pacing and psychological drama in spades all lead up to the ultimate question: Is it paranoia if somebody really is out to get you?

TOP PICK IN MYSTERY man—and not peacefully deceased, but beheaded, with the head artfully arranged adjacent to the body. The crime bears disturbing similarities to an unsolved murder from 10 years earlier. To complicate matters, the chief suspect has disappeared, his abandoned girlfriend is on the warpath, and the lead profiler in the case suffers from what may be early onset dementia. And that’s just the setup. Through it all, the true killer remains as elusive as smoke on a breezy day, and when the twist comes, it’s one that even jaded Nordic noir fans likely won’t see coming.

DOWN AND OUT

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If you are planning to write a novel about spies, it would be good to have some intelligence credentials. Such credentials don’t come a lot more, well, credible than those of author Simon Conway, a former British Army officer who was tasked with clearing land mines and unexploded bombs in many of the world’s contemporary war zones. His latest novel, The Agent Runner (Arcade, $24.99, 312 pages, ISBN 9781628725995), draws on that experience as he spins the tale of Edward Henry Malik, an MI6

political deal-making, you’ve come to the right place. Conway delivers in such an authoritative manner that the reader may suspect this is a true story that never quite made it to the headlines.

KILLING COUSINS Peter Swanson’s psychological thriller Her Every Fear (Morrow, $26.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9780062427021) has “movie adaptation” written all over it. It has an alluring location, a fragile yet resilient protagonist and a thoroughly Hitchcockian storyline, replete with the requisite false starts and plot twists. Some time ago, Kate Priddy suffered a terrifying and nearly fatal attack at the hands of an ex-boyfriend. He still haunts her dreams, and she is plagued with panic attacks in her waking hours.

On impulse, she accepts an offer from a distant cousin to swap her London flat for his tony Italianate apartment in Boston, a six-month trade ostensibly to facilitate the cousin’s temporary posting to the U.K. Things begin to go downhill the day after she arrives in Beantown, when she discovers that her new next-door neighbor has been murdered, and there is

Two Days Gone (Sourcebooks Landmark, $15.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9781492639732), Randall Silvis’ gripping new literary thriller, tells the story of a life turning from charmed to charred in the wink of an eye. Looking in from outside, you might think Thomas Huston had it all: a beautiful wife, three charming young children, a book atop the bestseller list and a tenured professorship at a prestigious Pennsylvania university. But not anymore, for his family lies dead in their suburban home, stabbed and slashed with almost surgical precision, and Huston is on the run. Sergeant Ryan DeMarco, who knows Huston peripherally, cannot get his head around the idea that Huston was responsible for the heinous act. But DeMarco has demons of his own to stare down, and he realizes that he may not be thinking empirically. Tension climbs and nerves fray as Huston tries to make sense of his family’s murder and DeMarco relentlessly follows the trail of clues. The fact that this book will be marketed as genre fiction is misleading; it’s more than that. It’s literature posing as a mystery, like works from Attica Locke or Louise Penny. Two Days Gone will be one of the best reading investments you make this year.

BOOK CLUBS

BY JULIE HALE

A doomed journey Ariel Lawhon’s intriguing novel Flight of Dreams (Anchor, $16.95, 384 pages, ISBN 9781101873922) focuses on the tragic 1937 flight of the Hindenburg. The large airship departed from Frankfurt, Germany, on May 3 and blew up on May 6 in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Was the explosion an accident? A crime?

Lawhon plays with the possibilities in this gripping whodunit, which features an unforgettable cast of players. The novel’s chapters are named for separate characters, each based on a real-life Hinden-

burg passenger. “The Stewardess,” an attractive widow named Emilie Imhoff, is falling for “The Navigator,” Max Zabel. Gertrud Adelt, “The Journalist,” is preoccupied by “The American,” a shady sort who seems to be up to no good.

Suspense mounts as the novel unfolds, and the reader begins to wonder who will survive the flight.

Lawhon is in perfect command of her material, and she makes wonderful use of the details of the era, creating a lavish portrait of life on the ship and the intimate goings-on between its passengers.

There is much to savor in this authentic depiction of the Hindenburg’s disastrous journey.

SPACE AND TIME Antonia Hayes’ debut novel, Relativity (Gallery, $16, 368 pages, ISBN 9781501105081), is a poignant family story centered on gifted 12-year-old Ethan Forsythe.

Brought up by his mother, Claire, in Sydney, Australia, Ethan is fascinated by physics, in part because of his synesthesia, a condition that allows him to visualize scientific marvels such as sound waves.

Teased at school, Ethan is a fragile boy with few memories of his dad,

Mark, who lives on the other side of the continent.

When Mark comes to Sydney to visit his dying father, he bonds with Ethan through their mutual interest in science and tries to make a go of domestic life with Claire. But a troubling secret from the past threatens to keep the family apart. Hayes deftly incorporates elements of science into the narrative, and she develops the delicate but brilliant Ethan into an intriguing character. Her portrayal of a family trying to come together despite a painful past has depth, compassion and just the right dose of drama. This is an assured first novel that offers book clubs many subjects for discussion.

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS In her impressive historical novel, Georgia (Random House, $17, 352 pages, ISBN 9780812981865), Dawn Tripp delves into the life of visionary artist Georgia O’Keeffe.

In Texas in the early 1900s, O’Keeffe struggles to make ends meet as an art teacher. Her decision to mail her drawings to photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who owns an art gallery in New York, changes her life forever. When the two meet, they feel an unmistakable attraction and eventually fall in love.

Stieglitz, who is 23 years older than O’Keeffe, acts as her advisor, while she, in turn, serves as his muse.

In Tripp’s hands, the story of how O’Keeffe transcends his influence and forges a name for herself as a painter makes for a fascinating narrative. The author drew on the couple’s real-life correspondence to create a riveting account of their turbulent relationship. This acclaimed novel is a must-read for art fans and lovers of historical fiction.

New Book Club Reads for the New Year

Orphan Train

by Christina Baker Kline The #1 New York Times bestseller!

This updated edition contains a special expanded scene and a letter from the author, along with an excerpt from Christina Baker Kline’s new novel A Piece of the World (February 2017).

Hidden Figures

by Margot Lee

The phenomenal true story, and the basis for the major motion picture, about the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space.

Dragon Springs Road

by Janie Chang

A vividly imagined and haunting new novel set in early 20th century Shanghai—a story of friendship, heartbreak, and history that follows a young Eurasian orphan’s search for her long-lost mother.

A Certain Age

by Beatriz Williams

The Roaring Twenties come brilliantly to life in this enchanting and compulsively readable tale of intrigue, romance, and scandal in New York Society.

@Morrow_PB

@bookclubgirl

William Morrow

Book Club Girl

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columns

THE WYOMING MEN ARE BACK!

A most elegant affair Fans of “Downton Abbey” will find much to enjoy in Sharon Page’s The Worthington Wife (HQN, $15.99, 448 pages, ISBN 9780373788545), set in 1925 England. After tragic luck in love, Lady Julia Hazelton has given up on thoughts of marriage. But then she meets the brash American Cal Carstairs, who has inherited the title of Earl of Worthington and

In their quest for true love on the range, are these ranchers bold enough to open their hearts to the women under their protection?

the estate next door to Julia. Cal is attractive, passionate and not at all interested in keeping to the customs of his illustrious yet stuffy family. As Julia tries to impress on him the traditions and values of the estate, they find an undeniable passion. Cal curses himself for his keen interest in the aristocrat’s cool beauty, yet finds himself admiring her kindness and caring. Julia tries to keep her distance, knowing Cal might break her heart––but she wants the man enough to challenge an old family curse. This romantic read is filled with drama and style.

HEARTS ON FIRE

“You just can’t do better than a Diana Palmer story to make your heart lighter and smile brighter.”

—Fresh Fiction Pick up your copy today! www.HQNBooks.com

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ROMANCE B Y C H R I S T I E R I D G WAY

Fantasy intertwines with romance in the exciting Breath of Fire (Sourcebooks Casablanca, $7.99, 448 pages, ISBN 9781492626046) by Amanda Bouchet, the second book in her Kingmaker Chronicles. Cat “Kingmaker” Fisa may have her love, Griffin, by her side, but can their pairing last? He doesn’t know the alarming prophecy that she’s the harbinger of the end of their world––and she dares not tell him.

Instead, the two set out with a small team with the ultimate goal of uniting three kingdoms into one and ruling it in a just manner.

Their resolve is put to the test time

2016-10-27 11:01 AM

and again as their group comes up against mythical creatures and terrifying magic. Through it all, Cat hopes that her powers can save the day, but it’s the entire team and the steadfastness of Griffin’s love that balance her reckless spirit. Still, Cat worries about the harm she may cause, and as danger closes in, she must learn new things about herself as well as commit wholly to Griffin if they’re to survive.

TOP PICK IN ROMANCE Ben Sterling is looking to build a family in Mulberry Moon (Jove, $7.99, 448 pages, ISBN 9780451488022) by Catherine Anderson. At his ranch in Mystic Creek, Oregon, Ben seeks the perfect animal-loving woman to become part of his life. His eye is caught by pretty café owner Sissy Bentley, who, unfortunately, makes it quite clear that she can’t stand him. But a chicken’s escape, the mysterious disappearances of shiny items and one sweet puppy bring the two together. Soon Ben realizes it’s not that Sissy doesn’t want him—she doesn’t want to want him. The woman has trust issues, big time. But Ben is a patient man, and he’s determined to chip away at Sissy’s shell. Sissy worries she’s not good enough for handsome, golden-boy Ben, but it’s hard to stop her wayward heart.

His deep empathy and gentle ways finally break down her barriers, and their future seems secure— until the past shows up to shake Sissy’s foundations. This is the second book in Anderson’s Mystic Creek series, and it’s a tender, feelgood read that’s perfect for every romance lover.

COOKING

BY SYBIL PRATT

An electrifying and addictive new tale of deceit and obsession…

Eating across Italy Do we need to start the new year with yet another Italian cookbook?

The answer is a resounding sì.

Eataly: Contemporary Italian Cooking (Phaidon, $49.95, 512 pages, ISBN 9780714872797) is a big, photograph-filled, capacious compendium inspired by the Eataly markets, which are probably the largest, most prestigious Italian marketplaces in the world.

Eataly goes from soup to nuts, or

rather from antipasti to dolci, with stops for pastas, redolent risottos, veggies of all varieties, meat, fish, chicken, soups, savory and sweet tarts with cakes and cookies in between. There’s also a fabulous, 40-page illustrated glossary of ingredienti italiani, including 34 kinds rice, 51 breads and 80 cheeses. If Eataly is one-stop eating and shopping, Eataly is a one-stop Italian cookbook, and it may be the only one you need. Though the 300 recipes reflect today’s Italian cooking—a little lighter and quicker to get on the table, with an emphasis on fresh, seasonal ingredients— they’re grounded in the great tradition of la cucina italiana.

POTATO PASSION If you take a quick glance at the title, you might think that Smashed, Mashed, Boiled, and Baked—and Fried, Too! (Workman, $16.95, 256 pages, ISBN 9780761185475) is a manual for potato abuse and savaging spuds.

Quite the contrary; it’s Raghavan Iyer’s loving homage to those tasty tubers that might arrive dirtsmeared, but clean up beautifully.

A passionate potato-holic since early childhood, Iyer offers 75 international recipes that celebrate the potato’s diversity and flexibility.

Starting with munchies and finger foods like Llapingachos (filled

Ecuadorian potato cakes) and Cheesy Tarragon Tots, his recipes run the gamut from sides to savory soups and stunning salads, such as a picnic-perfect Moroccan Harissa Potato Salad. There are also enticing entrees like classic Irish Lamb Stew, laced with hearty dark beer, plus an amazingly moist Chocolate Sweet Potato Pound Cake. “Tater Tips” packed with extra info accompany Iyer’s excellent directions.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

“Riveting psychological thriller…

Single White Female on steroids.”

TOP PICK IN COOKBOOKS Whether it’s Southern flavor with Indian flair or Indian flavor with Southern flair, the soul-satisfying recipes in My Two Souths: Blending the Flavors of India into a Southern Kitchen (Running Press, $35, 288 pages, ISBN 9780762457830) are the perfect example of what fusion cooking can and should be. Author and chef Asha Gomez grew up in Kerala in Southern India but has considered Atlanta her adopted hometown for over 15 years. As a curious, intuitive cook, she thinks of her cooking as an evolving conversation between the cuisines of the American South and the Indian South. The bold, bright results of this delicious dialogue, seasoned with Gomez’s carefully crafted instructions and served with lively header notes, are here for all of us to share. Try Puffy Ginger Hoecakes for breakfast and go on to Quick Tellicherry Buttermilk Biscuits or Cardamom Cornbread topped with Tomato Clove Preserves. For a real showstopper, cook up Kerala Fried Chicken and golden-crusted Low Country Rice Waffles with Spicy Syrup and a mango-infused Colonial Trifle. Two Souths are better than one!

—Lisa Scottoline,

#1 New York Times bestselling author

NOW IN PAPERBACK EDITION!

www.MIRABooks.com • www.BookClubbish.com

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NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION:

Listen

TO GREAT AUDIOBOOKS! The life story of Coretta Scott King— as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds

columns A queen’s early years To fill the hole left in our hearts by the finale of “Downton Abbey,” there’s the new PBS/Masterpiece adaptation of Daisy Goodwin’s novel Victoria (Macmillan Audio, 13 hours). Goodwin wrote the script for the TV series, too, and if it’s half as good as the audio version, splendidly read by Anna Wilson-Jones, then we’re in luck.

Steeped in Victoriana since her Cambridge days, Goodwin creates a richly detailed portrait of the

“Magnificent.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A masterpiece of suspense.”

—Booklist, starred review

“[She] turned trauma into power and fear into courage.”

—John Grogan

“As thought-provoking a domestic novel as we have seen this year.”

—Kirkus starred review

Listen to excerpts on unabridgedaccess.com

10

AUDIO

BY SUKEY HOWARD

young, headstrong girl who ascended the throne one month after her 18th birthday. Liberated from the strict isolation imposed by her overbearing German mother, the new queen suddenly finds herself in a world swirling with court and political intrigue. She quickly turns to her middle-aged prime minister, the irresistibly charming, protective Lord Melbourne, to whom she (and we) are immediately drawn.

But two years later, she falls wholly in love with her cousin Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The rest is history: The couple has nine children and Victoria goes on to reign for more than 60 years.

BLOWING THE WHISTLE John Grisham once told an interviewer that his wife didn’t think he could create strong, convincing women characters. His latest novel, The Whistler (Random House Audio, 13 hours), turns that criticism on its head. Lacy Stoltz, happy with her life as an unmarried 30-something, is a lawyer with the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. Looking into judicial ethics has been interesting, if not very exciting. That changes when Lacy gets a complaint from a disbarred, ex-con lawyer who claims to have evidence that a well-regarded local woman judge is on the take, sharing in the millions of dollars,

skimmed, laundered and parked offshore, from a casino operated on tribal land but controlled by a small, ruthless group of mobsters known as the Coast Mafia. As always, Grisham’s taut, fast-paced drama is packed with real social criticism, this time focused on the kind of corruption and injustice that huge amounts of casino cash can generate in criminal hands.

Cassandra Campbell reads with the verve Grisham deserves.

TOP PICK IN AUDIO The murder case Antoinette Conway and Steve Moran are handed on a cold, wet winter morning seems to be an easy-tocrack domestic crime. But in Tana French’s extraordinarily talented hands, nothing is ever as it seems.

The Trespasser (Penguin Audio, 21 hours), her sixth Dublin Murder Squad novel, perfectly narrated by Hilda Fay in a strong Irish accent, brings back Conway and Moran, the youngest members of the Squad. This time Conway, whose scrappy, don’t-tread-on-me attitude has gotten her through the Squad’s misogynistic hazing, tells the tale.

Barbie-doll pretty Aislinn Murray was found dead in her apartment, the table set for two, with candles and wine. Her new boyfriend, Rory, is the odds-on favorite for lover’s-tiff perp. But when an older, suave, cocksure Squad detective barges into the case, determined to nail Rory, something seems off.

As Conway and Moran dig into Aislinn’s backstory and uncover Rory’s quirks, a different killer with a very different motive begins to surface. French’s characters, complex and multidimensional, are expertly drawn and her interrogation scenes are brilliantly done. We can’t wait for more.

cover story

GARY TAUBES

A hard truth to swallow

Y

es, Gary Taubes, the “prosecutor” in the provocative, eye-opening book The Case Against Sugar, took his 8-year-old son trick-or-treating in his Oakland, California, neighborhood on Halloween.

“Clearly I don’t think any of us should eat sugar, and I try to stay away from it,” he says during a call to his home (built by the founders of the Clorox Bleach company) in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood that he shares with his two boys and his wife, the author Sloane Tanen. “But it would be foolish to deny my experience as someone with children and as someone with a sweet tooth.”

Which brings us to the perplexing question raised in his opening chapter: Is sugar a food or a drug? Taubes reports on some astonishing scientific studies of newborns’ first responses to sugar that strongly suggest sugar has addictive properties that are quite different from other carbohydrates.

Taubes himself seems to regard his own sweet tooth as an addictive response to sugar (as well as to high fructose corn syrup, a cheap sugar substitute). “I realized that in thinking about the history of sugar, I had to keep in mind that you might be thinking about the history of a drug,” says Taubes, who speaks rapidly, softly and with passion.

THE CASE AGAINST SUGAR

By Gary Taubes

Knopf, $26.95, 384 pages ISBN 9780307701640, audio, eBook available

NUTRITION

Taubes’ historical account of the rise of the consumption of sugar, covered in the early chapters of the book, is fascinating. For example, this reader had no idea that the addictive power of blended tobacco in cigarettes—beginning with Camel cigarettes in 1912—was created by the introduction of sugar.

“It’s an amazing story!” Taubes exclaims. “It turns out that increasing the sugar content of tobacco leaves—or marinating the leaves in a sugar sauce—has the effect of making the nicotine much more inhalable so that you can bring it into your lungs, which is much harder to do with cigar or pipe tobacco. As such, it made it much more addictive and allowed the carcinogens in smoke to get to this huge surface of the lungs.”

Almost every page of The Case Against Sugar resounds with such revelations. But the heart of Taubes’ prosecution of sugar challenges contemporary beliefs about the underlying causes of obesity and diabetes. His question is this: Why has sugar not been more directly implicated in the dramatic rise of obesity and diabetes? Citing a study of Arizona’s Pima Indians, whose sudden increase in diabetes occurred as they adopted a Western diet early in the 20th century, Taubes says, “The question was, what was causing that? Sugar should have been a major suspect.

In the 1920s very influential public health authorities were blaming the epidemic increases in diabetes and obesity on the prevalence of sugar. And then it vanishes from the conversation. The question is, why did it go away?”

In a chapter called “The Gift That Keeps on Giving,” Taubes documents how the sugar industry was let off the hook when medical and nutrition sciences decided that obesity caused diabetes, and that obesity was caused by an updated, scientific Puritanism that blamed

sloth and gluttony—overeating and a sedentary lifestyle.

“We are seeing worldwide epidemics of obesity and diabetes, and the diseases associated with them—heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s,” Taubes says when asked about our ingrained belief in the sloth-gluttony narrative. “It’s undeniable that as populations begin to eat Western diets, you see these epidemics come along. We now know that both obesity and diabetes are disorders of what’s called insulin resistance . . . and that is a fundamental disorder in what we now call metabolic syndrome. . . . The book is basically saying that the prime susTaubes pect of what’s challenges causing insulin widespread resistance is sugar.” beliefs about If that’s true, the causes of why did mediobesity and cal and health diabetes. researchers get it so wrong?

Taubes, who has at least once refused the food industry’s monetary support for his journalism, is surprisingly agnostic on the ethical issue of who pays for the research.

“The industry needs people who are critical of the data,” he says.

“And the only way they’re going to get them is to pay them. Nobody is ever going to do this for free.”

Nevertheless, Taubes is vigorously critical of the ethical and scientific standards of current nutrition research—often funded by the food industry—as he has been in the previous bestsellers Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories. He says that in earlier books such as Nobel Dreams and Bad Science, he cut his journalistic teeth by looking at experimental scientists in physics, chemistry and nuclear physics. “I was taught by these exquisite scientists how to

© KIRSTEN LARA GETCHELL

INTERVIEW BY ALDEN MUDGE

think about these issues critically and skeptically,” he says.

Turning to contemporary health research, he was shocked to find a lack of similar rigor.

“Critical aspects of the methodology of public health and nutrition research are incapable of establishing reliable knowledge, which is the goal of science.

Because they can’t do it, instead of being hypercritical as they’re supposed to be, they sort of take this philosophy that it’s the best they can do, therefore it’s good enough.

The counter to that is—and I’ve actually given lectures where I’ve said—if that’s the best you can do, get out of the business! Sell shoes, take guns away from gang members, do something useful.”

Taubes says his approach in this book is deliberately prosecutorial. “I really want to get the facts across,” he says. “I’m synthesizing massive amounts of data. It’s based on hundreds of interviews that might spread over years, and it’s invariably based on an unconventional take on the evidence.”

Given his unconventional take, The Case Against Sugar seems destined to be controversial. So does he expect pushback?

“I expect this book to give everybody something to dislike,” he says with a laugh. Then again, New York Magazine has recently asked him to write an article. The working title? “How I’ve Been Vindicated.”

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meet DARYNDA JONES

the title of your new book?

Q: What’s

Q

: Describe the book in one sentence.

are the three things you like best about Charley?

Q: What

harley’s husband, Reyes, is the “ultimate bad boy,” the son of Q: CSatan.

Why do readers (and Charley!) find him so appealing?

your all-time favorite love story?

Q: What’s

your guilty pleasure?

Q: What’s

Q: What New Year’s resolution is at the top of your list?

ELEVENTH GRAVE IN MOONLIGHT Life is a balancing act for Charlotte “Charley” Davidson, who’s both a private investigator and a grim reaper, helping the dead deal with unfinished business on Earth. In Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Minotaur, $26.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9781250078216), the 11th installment of Darynda Jones’ popular paranormal series, wisecracking Charley finds herself in all-out battle with the forces of hell. Jones lives in New Mexico with her husband and two sons.

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spotlight

WORLD FICTION

BY LAUREN BUFFERD

Award winners from Down Under

W

hat sort of voices are shaping Australian fiction? Two new novels offer answers.

Both are firsts for their authors, both were nominated for awards before they were even published and both are by women.

But here, the passing similarities end: Jane Harper’s The Dry (Flatiron, $25.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9781250105608) is a contemporary murder mystery set in a rural town, while Emily Bitto’s The Strays (Twelve, $26, 256 pages, ISBN 9781455537723) takes the reader to Melbourne in the 1930s.

The Dry is one of the most talked-about debuts of the new year. During the worst drought of the century, Federal agent Aaron Falk is called back to Kiewarra, a small town in West Australia, to investigate a murder-suicide. His high school friend Luke Hadler appears to have murdered his wife and son before killing himself: another farmer pushed to the brink by the punishing weather.

As a favor to Hadler’s parents, Falk reluctantly launches an investigation with the help of local policeman Greg Raco. But most of the old residents of Kiewarra aren’t pleased to see Falk, who was run out of town 20 years earlier after being suspected in the death of his classmate Ellie Deacon. As Falk digs into the circumstances around Luke’s death, long-hidden mysteries and animosities begin to surface.

Harper’s story is tightly plotted and moves briskly, the tension as brittle and incendiary as the driedout crops on the Kiewarra farms.

Falk is a quintessential detective: introverted, reserved and deeply wounded. But it is the beautifully evoked landscape and the portrayal of a gloomy outpost on the edge of a desert that are the stars of the show.

The Strays plunges the reader into a more cosmopolitan environment. On her first day of school, the

socially tentative Lily is embraced

by Eva, one of three daughters of the famous painter Evan Trentham and his wealthy wife, Helena.

Growing up in a conventional Melbourne home in the 1930s, where an exciting evening is hot cocoa and a jigsaw puzzle, Lily is fascinated by the Trenthams’ rambling garden and the creative chaos of their family life, especially after Helena invites a group of fellow artists into the family home. This experiment in communal living, with its lack of rules and lively conversations and parties, seems delightful at first. But the youngest daughter, Heloise, troubled to begin with, becomes unnaturally close to her father’s greatest rival, with disastrous results.

The novel is told in a series of flashbacks by the adult Lily, who looks back with a bittersweet mixture of fondness and disgust at the benign neglect under which the girls were raised. When Eva comes back to town for a retrospective of her father’s work, Lily begins to wonder why she was drawn to the Trenthams in the first place.

Bitto loosely based the Trenthams on the Heide Circle, a group of Melbourne artists known for their unconventional lifestyles and named for the Heide communal house in which they lived. But The Strays is more of a psychological study than a historical one: As Lily begins to understand what happened at the Trenthams, she comes to terms with her role as a bystander to her own life. Told in both the breathless voice of an easily infatuated child and the more measured tones of a wiser adult, The Strays is a powerful tale of the consequences of creativity.

features

LINDSEY LEE JOHNSON

The ‘dangerous’ world of high school

I

t was a terrible time for me,” author Lindsey Lee Johnson remembers.

“Everything was just falling apart.” She’s talking about 2008, when her college teaching contract wasn’t renewed because of the economic crash, her boyfriend left and she could no longer afford the home she’d just bought.

To try to put the pieces back together, Johnson moved in with her parents in Marin County, California, and began tutoring high school students at a learning center.

Her first assignment was teaching SAT math, hardly her favorite subject, and her initial encounters with students were disappointing.

“At first I just thought, oh my God, the way they talk, the constant foul language,” Johnson recalls. “It was loud, and I thought, why should I even be doing this? What happened to my life?”

Fortunately, what seemed like a catastrophe ultimately ended up being one of the happiest times in Johnson’s life. As she got to know the students, she enjoyed the new job, ended up marrying a fellow tutor and got the inspiration she needed to write her debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, a page-turning high school drama that’s being compared to Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep.

Speaking by phone from her

THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH

By Lindsey Lee Johnson

Random House, $27, 288 pages ISBN 9780812997279, audio, eBook available

COMING OF AGE

home near Los Angeles, Johnson says she didn’t read Prep or many other books about high school until after finishing her manuscript (at which time she found Prep to be “fabulous”).

“One of the reasons I wanted to write this book was that I saw a need for it,” she says. “I saw a place for a literary vision of contemporary high school and teenagers that was written for adults. I didn’t see much of that in bookstores.”

The seeds of Johnson’s story were sown as she spent hours listening to hundreds of teenage students.

“The experience helped me out of my own head, to stop making everything about me, and actually invest my time in other people, just listening to these kids and really developing compassion and empathy for them—and remembering what it felt like when I was that age,” she says.

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth follows an ensemble cast of characters, beginning with an incident in their eighth-grade year: A boy commits suicide after a love note he writes is revealed on Facebook, prompting merciless ridicule and bullying. The tragedy causes reverberations that linger throughout these characters’ high school years. Set in Marin County, the novel chronicles a wealthy world that Johnson knows intimately, although she fictionalized the high school she once attended. She based her characters on a variety of student archetypes, including Ryan the jock, Cally the hippie, Elisabeth the beautiful girl and Damon the delinquent, but with a twist.

Growing up, Johnson felt that such categories were too limiting, noting that she was both a cheerleader and a nerd. “For each character, I thought of the archetype, and then I gave them a problem,” she notes. Overachieving Abigail, for instance, suffers from loneliness

and takes a particularly destructive path with a male teacher to solve her dilemma. “I remember that feeling of being a teenage girl and going through that awkward phase,” Johnson says, “and feeling unappealing and unattractive. You know, kind of unseen.”

Although Johnson didn’t have to contend with the pressures of social media during her high school years, she vividly remembers a spiral-bound notebook that she and her friends circulated, writing notes to and about “I don’t think one another. “I kids today don’t rememare any ber what we more cruel. wrote in these things,” she It’s just that muses, “but everything I’m sure it they do is wasn’t lovely public.” and nice. I’m sure it was a lot of gossip.”

She adds: “The thing is, those notebooks were private, so their ability to hurt was limited. . . . I don’t think kids today are any more cruel. It’s just that everything they do is public. And so the stakes are raised; the impacts are greater and more far-reaching.”

Johnson acknowledges that several of her characters make what she calls “questionable decisions,” and those are the personalities that intrigue her. “As a writer I’m very interested in characters who are not obviously likable and who do things that make us cringe, because I’m interested in the psychology behind it—and in trying to find empathy even for people I don’t want to empathize with. I think that’s an important job that fiction does in our world.”

© MATT SAYLES

INTERVIEW BY ALICE CARY

She quickly adds a crucial qualifier: “The kids in the book feel 100 percent real to me, but I don’t want people to think that these are real kids that I tutored.”

Their dilemmas feel authentic, including struggles with grades, dating, sex, drinking and drugs.

And when Johnson finished writing these teenagers’ stories, she added yet another layer, inserting several chapters from the point of view of a newly hired young teacher, Molly Nicoll, who becomes overly invested in her students’ struggles.

“I empathize with Molly in particular,” Johnson says. “Being a young teacher is a struggle, especially when you’re not that much older than the students. You want to help them, but you have to walk the line of how invested and involved you get.”

Happily, Johnson’s own teaching and tutoring experiences were productive for both her and her students. “I’ve always wanted to be a novelist,” she says. She wrote her first book at age 24, but says it was so terrible that she “sat down and wrote another one.” The Most Dangerous Place on Earth is her first published novel, but her “fourth or fifth manuscript.”

“There’s no reason why I should have kept going,” she says with amusement, “except that it was the only thing that I cared about.”

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features

BEHIND THE BOOK

BY JOANNE HARRIS

© KYTE PHOTOGRAPHY

A dark and twisted thriller drawn from 15 years of academic memories

M

y grandfather was a teacher. My parents were both teachers.

Their friends were all teachers, which meant that at home, their conversation revolved almost exclusively around teaching. For me, as a child, that meant a constant stream of school stories, drama and intrigue. It also meant that for many years it was more or less accepted that I, too, was destined for the teaching profession.

And when, age 9, I timidly dared to challenge this decree and suggest that I might try writing books instead, my mother showed me a room in our house, in which stood a wall of books—all by 19th-century French novelists, all having died in poverty, of syphilis and TB—after which she said to me: “And that’s why you need a Proper Job!” And so I became a teacher. I liked it—I was good at it—and yet I kept on writing. During that time—over 15 years, most of which I spent teaching in a boys’ grammar school in Yorkshire—three of my books were published, though it was only after the unexpected success of Chocolat that I was able to give up teaching for good. And my mother’s advice served me well, for during those 15 years I was able

DIFFERENT CLASS

By Joanne Harris

Touchstone, $26, 426 pages ISBN 9781501155512, eBook available

SUSPENSE

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to collect enough wild tales, dreadful scandals, quirky characters and everyday moments of drama to fill a hundred books.

I realized during those 15 years that a school is a factory of stories.

Small communities so often are, and schools, with their volatile chemistry, cut off from the rest of the world by arcane rules and rituals, are a kind of microcosm, a mirror for the outside world. And it is from the events and experiences of those 15 years that I built my books—especially Gentlemen and Players, and my new book, Different Class: both set in St. Oswald’s, a fictional boys’ grammar school in the north of England.

Knowing this, it must be tempting for readers to assume that the events depicted in my books are based on some kind of real-life event. The fact is that real life is nowhere near as plausible as fiction, at least as far as schools are concerned, and if I were to base my books on actual, real-life incidents encountered during my teaching career, the critics would scoff and refuse to believe that any such thing had happened. Having said that, schools are filled with stories; they’re communities in which tragedy and farce are only ever the turn of a page away. My teaching career saw plenty of both, and it is inevitable that certain stories, incidents and characters remained in my writer’s subconscious.

The writing process is very much tied up with memory. But St. Oswald’s is a construct, rather than a portrayal of any single place.

It contains elements of schools

(and universities) at which I was a pupil, as well as the schools in which I taught. Some minor incidents are based on things that really happened. The main plots, however, are mostly made-up or loosely based on current events.

As I was writing Different Class, I was also watching the unfolding of the Operation Yewtree police investigation, the results of Ideas are like which rocked dandelion [the U.K.] and seeds, landing implicated where the wind a number of TV and radio takes them. celebrities That year, the in a series of wind was full accusations of tales of past of historical sex abuse. and present This scandal, abuses. with all its complexities, seemed to have disturbing parallels with the book I was writing. Again, I didn’t plan it this way. Ideas are like dandelion seeds, landing where the wind takes them. That year, the wind was full of tales of past and present abuses. Some of them must have made their way into the book I was writing: a story about the past, about memory and perception, about loyalty and childhood and guilt and of the dark side of friendship.

I find my “dark” books at the same time curiously satisfying to write, and emotionally and intel-

lectually draining. But I believe that stories should contain equal proportions of light and shade in order to be meaningful. The monsters of our daily lives are not the demons and werewolves of fairy tale, but sexual predators, murderers and those who hide their malevolence behind an everyday façade. Stories enable us to face our monsters, and sometimes, learn to fight back. Facing them isn’t always easy, but maybe that’s the point.

During her 15 years as a teacher, Joanne Harris published three novels, including the bestselling Chocolat (1999), which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. Since then, she has written 15 more novels, two collections of short stories and three cookbooks.

Her new novel of psychological suspense, Different Class, is set at an antiquated, failing prep school. A new headmaster arrives, bringing changes that seem more corporate than academic. While curmudgeonly Latin teacher Roy Straitley does his best to resist these transformations, a shadow from his past begins to stir—a boy who haunts his dreams, a sociopathic young outcast from 20 years before. Harris lives with her husband and daughter in Yorkshire, where she writes in a shed in her garden.

Visit BookPage.com to read a review of Different Class.

HAPPINESS

BY JULIE HALE

Keep on the sunny side of life

M

ost of us would agree that happiness is a state of mind, one that requires more than a little maintenance. Perfect for giving your attitude a tuneup, the books below are all about achieving—and sustaining—a sunny mindset. Get ready to focus, reflect and feel happy, starting today.

In a 2016 United Nations report, Denmark was named the happiest place in the world, a title the country has earned in previous years.

The sod, it seems, really is greener in Scandinavia. What’s the key to Danish contentment? Copenhagener Meik Wiking, a researcher for the World Database of Happiness, believes it’s hygge (pronounced hue-gah), the feeling of snug domesticity, companionship and security that’s central to the country’s culture.

For those of us who live in less idyllic locations—the U.S. ranked 13th on the list of happy nations—Wiking has written The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living (Morrow, $19.99, 240 pages, ISBN 9780062658807).

In brief, breezy chapters, Wiking outlines ways we can weave hygge into the fabric of our daily lives, offering ideas on everything from decorating (candles are a hygge must-have) to dining (try the recipe for robust Skipper Stew). But hygge, Wiking points out, is much more than an aesthetic. It’s a state of mind that fosters optimism and stresses pleasure over the pressure to be perfect. The hygge way means it’s OK to disconnect from work and assemble with friends, to indulge in—yes—a Danish or two (statistics show that Denmark outeats the rest of Europe when it comes to sugary treats). As life philosophies go, this one sounds pretty sweet.

Author Malene Rydahl presents a different take on what makes Denmark tick in Happy as a Dane: 10 Secrets of the Happiest People in the World (Norton, $14.95, 144 pages, ISBN 9780393608922), arguing that her homeland is flourishing thanks to a solid social

framework and a value structure that emphasizes personal contentment instead of status. Her 10-secrets list features qualities that define Danish society—traits such as trust, a supportive educational system, a sense of unlimited opportunity and an appreciation for simple pleasures.

ed Living (Greenleaf, $22.95, 296 pages, ISBN 9781626343559). The key word here is practical, as Bock provides concrete techniques that can help readers find new ways to flourish.

Bock’s position on self-fulfillment is holistic. She urges us to inventory our lives—to take stock

When applied to our personal lives, Rydahl says, these big-picture elements can generate the same sense of positivity that makes Denmark the happiest place on the map. Rydahl, who is Copenhagen’s goodwill ambassador, suggests simple shifts in perspective. By focusing on community, calibrating the career-life equation and developing independence and self-worth, we can create a strong foundation for fulfillment. From start to finish, Rydahl lays out a persuasive case for making 2017 the year of living Danishly.

of home environment, physical health, career and downtime and, through writing prompts that tap into personal inspiration, envision more rewarding versions of each.

Building self-esteem, finding a sense of purpose and maintaining authentic connections with others are among her areas of emphasis.

“The more we are able to live life on our own terms,” Bock observes, “the more we are able to experience wholehearted success and fulfillment.” If you’re looking for a hands-on plan for cultivating happiness, Bock’s book is for you.

HOW-TOS FOR HAPPINESS For more than a decade, sought-after speaker Halley Bock has worked with companies across the country as an advisor on workplace relationships. She’s the founder of Life, Incorporated, an organization that promotes connection, compassion and good old-fashioned joy as prime factors in personal satisfaction. Bock shares her unique approach to self-growth in Life, Incorporated: A Practical Guide to Wholeheart-

Perigee, $16, 208 pages, ISBN 9780143109631), he shows readers how. Through a series of daily practices that includes planned meditation, Emet offers a blueprint for forming a more mindful mode of living and stopping the cycles of negative thinking that so often undermine happiness.

Drawing on his Buddhist background, Emet provides themes for meditation and soul-searching questions, all aimed at helping the reader develop a more affirmative outlook. He also delves into issues that can complicate daily life, including mood management and relationships. Establishing positive habits and patterns of thinking is central to contentment, Emet notes, but practice makes perfect—we have to act with intention if we want the changes to be permanent. He makes it all seem achievable in this stirring, heartfelt book.

PATH TO A HAPPIER YOU

Full of smart suggestions for finding fulfillment, Rachel Kelly’s Walking on Sunshine: 52 Small Steps to Happiness (Atria, $18, 144 pages, ISBN 9781501146442) is sure to put a spring in your stride. In this mood-brightening guide, Kelly, a bestselling British author and mental health advocate who has struggled with depression, reveals the techniques she relies upon for leading a bountiful life.

POSITIVE PRACTICES In journal entries attuned to the So many of us, it seems, are crea- seasons, Kelly supplies 52 ideas— tures of habit, ruled by schedules one for each week of the year—for and routines. In the midst of all the creating a more satisfying lifestyle. busyness, it’s easy to stagnate—and Try building into your schedule stress (two verbs you should ban“pockets of peace”—times to power ish from your vocabulary in 2017!). down, pause and reflect—in order Are we humans really capable of to become more mindful of the change? According to Zen master present moment. Start practicing Joseph Emet, the answer to that gratitude by pinpointing positive question is a resounding yes, and incidents and recording them in a in Finding the Blue Sky: A Mindful notebook. Tiny tweaks like these, Approach to Choosing HappiKelly says, can make a big difference ness Here and Now (Tarcherin our attitudes and interactions.

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features

NEW YEAR, NEW YOU B Y LY N N G R E E N

Building blocks for personal change

A

re you kicking off 2017 determined to make it your best year yet? Breaking old habits or starting new routines can seem like insurmountable tasks without help and advice. Follow the strategies in the books below, and you’ll have a head start on making meaningful changes in the year ahead.

Take life pro-tips from the experts

Tim Ferriss has attracted a huge following with his website, bestselling books (The 4-Hour Workweek, etc.) and podcast (“The Tim Ferriss Show,” downloaded more than 100 million times) that offer advice on living the life of your dreams. In his whopping new collection, Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and WorldClass Performers (HMH, $28, 704 pages, ISBN 9781328683786), Ferriss distills the wisdom from nearly 200 podcast interviews with high achievers. The “titans” represented here range from “governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger to writer Maria Popova, founder of BrainPickings.org.

Ferriss describes himself as a “compulsive note-taker” who carefully tracks his activities to figure out what works and what doesn’t in his quest to be healthy, wealthy and wise. Similarly, in Tools of Titans, he zeroes in on the actions and behaviors that have helped

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his subjects rise to the tops of their fields. One favorite question, for example, is about the person’s morning routine (performance coach Tony Robbins starts his day with a cold water plunge; entrepreneur Peter Diamandis does stretches in the shower). The tips from interviewees are supplemented with summaries of Ferriss’ own strategies, from “5 Tools for Faster and Better Sleep” to “Mind Training 101.” A Poor Richard’s Almanack for the 21st century, Tools of Titans is a practical and inspiring guide to being your best.

G et off the couch and get organized

If you’re looking for gentle and encouraging advice on tidying up your living space, you should probably steer clear of Unf*ck Your Habitat: You’re Better Than Your Mess (St. Martin’s Griffin, $15.99, $28, 224 pages, ISBN 9781250102959). Author Rachel Hoffman takes a drill-sergeant approach to housekeeping and organization, laying down the law in clear, direct and very funny fashion. One rule is non-negotiable: You will make your bed, every day. “I can hear you whining from here, seriously. I know you don’t want to make your bed. I know you don’t see the point. . . . But a messy bed makes a room look messier and a made bed brings a focal point of clean-

liness and order.” Hoffman spells out the basics of cleaning (“Trash goes in the trash can. Do the dishes every day.”) and instructs the slovenly on how to build better habits.

A chapter on “Emergency Unf*cking” offers helpful tips on handling an impending visit from your mom or landlord.

E at like your life depends on it

A hit with readers when it was self-published, Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food (Flatiron, $27.99, 512 pages, ISBN 9781250113825) is now available in an updated edition. Author Catherine Shanahan, a family physician, was motivated to study the connection between diet and wellness after she suffered problems with her own health.

Through research on cultures around the world, she identified four “pillars” that healthy diets have in common: meat cooked on the bone, fermented and sprouted foods, organ meats and fresh foods.

With a wealth of detail, Shanahan shows how changing what you eat can improve everything from bone strength to memory.

B e bold enough to conquer your fears

Does fear prevent you from achieving your goals? In Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge, and Build Confidence (Avery, $27, 288 pages, ISBN 9780399574023), behavioral expert Andy Molinsky reveals how hard we work to avoid tasks that make us uncomfortable—from public speaking to being assertive with a co-worker. Through procrastination, passing the buck or outright avoidance, we evade what

we’re afraid of. So how can this cycle of fear be broken? Molinsky identifies three Cs—conviction, or a sense of purpose; customization, or finding what works for you; and clarity, being honest about the problem—to help you make the leap and confront your challenges.

S implify and live with less

Though she’s French, author Dominique Loreau has lived in Japan since the 1970s, adopting a Japanese mindset and taking a Zen approach to clutter. Her guide to simplifying, L’art de la Simplicité: How to Live More with Less (St. Martin’s Griffin, $19.99, 256 pages, ISBN 9781250120304), is an international bestseller now available in English thanks to translator Louise Lalaurie. Her outlook shares key elements with Japanese declutterer Marie Kondo (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up), but Loreau takes a more spiritual approach, going beyond tidy closets to advocate minimalism in all aspects of life, from eating to relationships.

The reward for shedding what we don’t need, she asserts, is a purer spirit and a more satisfying life.

Savor your downtime

Let’s face it: Being without our smartphones for even a few minutes can be a distressing experience. In an era of constant connection, how do we wind down and enjoy times of quiet contemplation? Eva Hoffman has some elegant thoughts on the subject in How to Be Bored (Picador, $16, 192 pages, ISBN 9781250078674), the latest in the School of Life series, which tackles some of life’s big questions in slender volumes.

As Hoffman points out, we all have good reasons to be busy, but there are also many good reasons to unplug: cultivating a sense of curiosity about the world, observing what’s around us more closely and, perhaps most importantly, thinking about how we want to live. “This is in a way the major task of any conscious life,” Hoffman writes, “and it has never been easy.”

PUBL ISHER PU

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Baby Loves Quarks!

[Charlesbridge] 9781580895408 $8.95

Vassa in the Night [Tor] 9780765380548 $17.99

The Extraordinary Image [Rutgers University Press] 9780813583099 $27.95

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Mad Enchantment [Bloomsbury] 9781632860125 $30

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The Inquisitor’s Tale [Dutton Books for Young Readers] 9780525426165 $17.99

Maker Lab [DK] 9781465451354 $19.99

The Sun Is Also a Star [Delacorte Press] 9780553496680 $18.99

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Books Do Not Have Wings [Sleeping Bear Press] 9781585369645 $16.99

Sun Moon Star [Triangle Square] 9781609807245 $22.95

River Rose and the Magical Lullaby [HarperCollins] 9780062427564 $18.99

We Found a Hat [Candlewick] 9780763656003 $17.99

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Art of the Pie [Countryman] 9781581573275 $35

In Julia’s Kitchen [ForeEdge] 9781611689136 $24.95

Undeniably Indiana [Quarry Books] 9780253022264 $22

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FICTION

T PI OP CK

THE AFTERLIFE OF STARS

THE GIRL IN GREEN

By Joseph Kertes

Taking a risk for a second chance

Little, Brown $26, 256 pages ISBN 9780316308113 Audio, eBook available HISTORICAL FICTION

REVIEW BY STEPHENIE HARRISON

While much of the world watched the Gulf War play out from the safety of their homes, Derek B. Miller found himself smack-dab in the middle of the action as an American university student studying abroad in Israel in the early 1990s. Now, with The Girl in Green, the award-winning writer (Norwegian by Night) returns to the conflict in Iraq in a darkly comic thriller that lays bare the absurdities of war.

It’s 1991, and the Gulf War has officially ended, but Arwood Hobbes, an American solider, is stationed at a sleepy outpost 100 miles from the Kuwaiti border. He is approached by Thomas Benton, a British journalist keen to visit an off-limits town; reckless from boredom, Hobbes allows Benton to pass. The off-base excursion, however,

By Derek B. Miller ends in tragedy when both he and Hobbes are forced to watch the HMH, $26, 336 pages cold-blooded killing of a young girl dressed in green.

ISBN 9780544706255, audio, eBook available Flash-forward to 2013: In the midst of a different war taking place in Iraq, Benton receives a call from Hobbes. A girl with an uncanny SUSPENSE resemblance to the teenager they watched die 22 years earlier has shown up in a viral video of a mortar attack, and Hobbes thinks she has survived. As impossible and ill-fated as this mission seems, neither man can pass up a second chance to atone for a failure that has haunted them for decades.

A modern masterpiece, The Girl in Green taps into the same satirical vein as Joseph Heller’s war classic, Catch-22, as the two mismatched protagonists set out on a quixotic quest for redemption. Miller, who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the Iraqi war and has worked for the United Nations in disarmament policy, is well qualified to explore the tangled political, bureaucratic, cultural and religious issues at play in the Middle East. His tongue-in-cheek candor brings much-needed levity to the proceedings, making the difficult subject matter relatable and engaging. Bursting with humanity and humor, The Girl in Green is heartbreaking and hopeful in equal measures, delivering nail-biting susVisit BookPage.com to read pense while bringing readers into the heart of the conflict in Iraq. a Q&A with Derek B. Miller.

Vasya finds the stories to be true, and realizes she has special and

By Katherine Arden coveted abilities, she must protect her family from ancient dangers Del Rey $27, 336 pages long believed to be fairy tales.

ISBN 9781101885932 Arden masterfully portrays the eBook available unbridled freedom of her young heroine, as ominous forces loom DEBUT FICTION and the tension heightens between the old ways of the village and the new official religion of Orthodox In her first novel, The Bear and Christianity. Vasya and her family live in a world of beeswax and wine, the Nightingale, Katherine Arden has created a coming-of-age story of warm ovens and deep sleep, rooted in folklore, set in the Rusdescribed in gorgeous and lyrical sian wilderness and surrounded by prose. At the novel’s core lies a the magic of winter. wonderfully woven family tapestry, In 14th-century Russia, Vasya is with generations of sibling friendan unusual girl—wild and strong, ship, ancestral insight and marital perceptive and brave—who grew love.

Arden, who has a B.A. in French up captivated by her family’s frightening tales and legends. But when and Russian literature, spent a year

THE BEAR AND THE NIGHTINGALE

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living and studying in Moscow, and her background in Russian culture delivers an added layer of authenticity. She includes a note concerning her transliteration process and a glossary of terms at the end, lending more context to this textured, remarkable blend of history and fantasy.

A commanding opening of an enchanting new series, The Bear and the Nightingale is a must-read for lovers of history, fairy tales and whirlwind adventures. With an unforgettable setting and an exceptional female protagonist, this literary fantasy is a spellbinding winter read.

—RACHEL HOGE

Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Katherine Arden.

When he’s not making philosophical pronouncements or asking difficult questions, 13-year-old Attila Beck functions as the moral axis around which Joseph Kertes’ slender yet consequential new novel, The Afterlife of Stars, revolves.

Kertes, a Hungarian refugee who escaped to Canada after the revolution of 1956, won the National Jewish Book Award for fiction for his previous novel, Gratitude, which also featured the Beck clan. In this book, set 11 years after the end of World War II in Budapest, it’s not the family’s Jewishness that constitutes the existential threat, but their Hungarian identity, as a revolution against Soviet control is brutally crushed in less than two weeks.

Playing Tonto to Attila’s Lone Ranger (and sometimes Estragon to his Vladimir), younger sibling Robert tells the tale of the family’s escape with a clear-eyed innocence that belies his experience as they are driven from Budapest to Paris to some unnamed Canadian destination.

Part of what makes the book so compelling is its sympathetic portrayal of political refugees at a time when they are frequently misunderstood at best, and demonized at worst. And while Hungary’s then-oppressor, the Soviet Union, no longer exists, recent Russian incursions into Ukraine (and Syria) offer a potent reminder of how, even in the course of a single novelist’s lifetime, history can repeat itself.

But the beating heart of this book is the relationship between Robert and Attila, a remarkable pair of brothers whose bond goes beyond affection, beyond shared history, beyond blood. They are two young men who, once met, you’ll never forget.

—T H A N E T I E R N E Y

FICTION LUCKY BOY

By Shanthi Sekaran Putnam $27, 480 pages ISBN 9781101982242 Audio, eBook available POPULAR FICTION

Kavya and Rishi Reddy, successful Indian-American immigrants living in a charming Berkeley bungalow, have the sort of life that Checo and Soli are hoping for as they set out to cross the border from Mexico. Yet Checo and Soli, teenagers with little more than uncompromising determination and invincible spirit, have the one thing that Kavya and Rishi do not.

Ignacio El Viento Castro Valdez, conceived somewhere in the deserts of Mexico, is the lucky boy that unites the two couples’ stories.

Just when Soli thinks she might make it in America, she gets caught and put in immigration detention with a likely outcome of deportation back to Mexico. As a U.S. citizen born after Soli’s arrival, her 1-year-old son, Ignacio, enters the foster care system and is placed with Kavya and Rishi, who are unable to have a biological child. Like any good parents, the Reddys take on their new role wholeheartedly, forgetting that Ignacio is someone else’s child.

At its core, Shanthi Sekaran’s compassionate second novel is a spectacular saga of motherhood and the choices we make to achieve it. Supporting the main cast are side characters who lend intriguing perspectives born of their own culture and belief systems: the Cassidys, who employ Soli; Uma, Kavya’s traditionally minded mother; and Silvia, the cousin who takes Soli in.

Lucky Boy resonates, raising important questions about our society and our responsibility to those who seek the American dream, even as it forces you to ask, “What would I do?” This is a multidimensional story with lots of emotion, humor and love, and it will appeal to parents and non-parents alike.

Like M.L. Stedman in The Light

Between Oceans, Sekaran presents a complex moral dilemma that leaves readers incapable of choosing sides. Lucky Boy is a must-read.

Fridlund earns a place as a topnotch writer with this remarkable, disturbing debut.

—ARLENE McKANIC

—CHIKA GUJARATHI

HISTORY OF WOLVES

By Emily Fridlund Atlantic Monthly $25, 288 pages ISBN 9780802125873 eBook available

TRANSIT

By Rachel Cusk

FSG $26, 272 pages ISBN 9780374278625 Audio, eBook available LITERARY FICTION

DEBUT FICTION

Like many coming-of-age stories, History of Wolves features a grown-up narrator looking back on an event in her teenage years that forever changed her belief in the way the world works. The brilliance of this novel is that the events that ruined Madeline, aka “Linda,” are so appalling that they may change the way the reader believes the world works as well.

The story opens in the middle of a typically punishing Minnesota winter; the superbly talented Fridlund makes you feel the cold in your joints and imagine the sound of a knock on the crust of ice over a snowdrift. Linda lives with her hippie parents in such poverty that they not only lack central heating but a door: Only a tarp stands between them and the cold.

Then a new family moves into a new house across the lake from Linda: Leo and Patra Gardner and their little boy, Paul. Linda is taken on as Paul’s babysitter. To the perceptive Linda, they are just a shade off normal, which entices her because she’s just a shade off normal herself. But soon the reader, with a skin-crawling dread worthy of any decent slasher movie, begins to realize that something’s more than just not right. You only hope that it’s not what you think it is.

But learning that it’s not what you think it is brings no relief, because what is really going on is ever so much worse. When what happens happens, you want to stop and go back to the beginning of the book to search for the clues you knew had to be there. You’ll find them.

With Transit, the inspired British writer Rachel Cusk continues a trilogy of spare and elusive novels she began with Outline. The narrator of these books is a woman writer called Faye, a name that, appropriately, means confidence or trust— for these novels comprise a series of episodes wherein the narrator remains an aloof interlocutor, prompting thoughtful confessional stories from others while revealing little about herself.

The basic setup—divorced mother of two boys (Faye) moves back to London where she embarks on the renovations of a ramshackle house—provides a nominal structure, as well as two seemingly conflicting qualities: humor and a creeping fatalism. This relocation is just one meaning of the word “transit” explored, though, as the different characters she encounters speak of life changes both bold and banal. With a therapist’s remove, Faye draws out the stories—an old boyfriend left behind 15 years before, a gay hairdresser settling into middle age, a cousin who escaped a bad marriage and is now navigating the uncertain waters of a new one, a bestselling memoirist with a nightmare boyhood to expunge, the displaced Albanian and Polish men working on her flat. Taken individually, these confessionals are singularly entertaining, because Cusk is an unequaled observer of what takes place on the periphery, and she has a keen ear for hearing and recording the ways that people reveal themselves both through what they say and what they do not. Yet it is the cumulative effect of these narratives that gives this

largely plot-free novel its power.

With literary sleight of hand, Cusk is playing narrative tricks, and Transit, like Outline before it, slowly reveals much about Faye, too, no matter how concealed she tries to remain. Transit is a brilliant meditation on change, freedom and the ways we construct our lives, one true or false narrative at a time.

—ROBERT WEIBEZAHL

NIGHT OF FIRE

By Colin Thubron

Harper $26.99, 384 pages ISBN 9780062499745 Audio, eBook available LITERARY FICTION

In the middle of the night, an electrical fire sparks in the basement of an apartment building.

The outcome is set early: The people inside are likely to die. Colin Thubron steps up to the challenge of making his readers care about characters they will soon lose as he tells each tenant’s story.

In one flat, a priest reflects upon the seed of his faith and the heart-wrenching circumstances that permanently uprooted him from his beliefs. A neurosurgeon sleeps alone despite having worked up the courage to recently get engaged. Across the hall resides a woman who dedicated her life to the study of butterflies. In the basement, a photographer has turned to drugs to fulfill a life left empty by uninspired work and disappointing loves. The oldest tenant mulls over the still-tender memories of his younger years at boarding school.

A world traveler contemplates a transformative trip to India during which he revisited the town where he was raised.

All seven tenants experience overlapping struggles and joys that suture their stories together. At times it seems as though Thubron has created only one character with many lifetimes, while still allowing each to be somehow unique, giving the novel an allegorical tone.

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reviews Thubron is a seasoned author and a master of travel writing.

He creates magnificent imagery through truly remarkable vocabulary that is often too precise to define with the use of context clues alone. The most rewarding aspect of Night of Fire is that it is left open to interpretation, making it a perfect pick for a book club discussion. It is not necessarily a quick read, but it certainly lingers in the mind.

—LESLIE HINSON

SMALL ADMISSIONS

By Amy Poeppel

Emily Bestler $26, 368 pages ISBN 9781501122521 Audio, eBook available SATIRICAL FICTION

FICTION on her New York couch. Her friend Chloe, who is Robert’s cousin and introduced the pair, feels guilty.

Her sister worries for Kate’s mental health and connects her with the admissions director at Hudson Day School, who is desperate to fill an admissions counselor position before the rush. Despite a catastrophically bad interview, Kate gets the job. Slowly, slowly, she reclaims her life, her friendships and her way.

Poeppel nails the naked ambition of New York power moms for whom placing their children in a prep school is as important as securing the newest Birkin bag.

Small Admissions is a laugh-outloud funny look at status and rejection in all its forms, from the classroom to the bedroom.

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—MELISSA BROWN

—AMY SCRIBNER

THE SECOND MRS. HOCKADAY

By Susan Rivers

What is it about books set at elite schools? The grosgrain ribbon belt-bedecked cover of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. The anxiety-filled Princeton offices in Jean Hanff Korelitz’s Admission. The bittersweet final days of college in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot.

These stories somehow manage to intrigue even those of us who’ve never set foot in a prep school, let alone an Ivy League college.

It’s no surprise, of course, that Amy Poeppel—author of the deliciously smart Small Admissions—went to Wellesley College and worked in admissions for what her book jacket calls “a prestigious independent school.” Her razor-sharp observations of families desperate to place their darlings in the best Manhattan schools can only come from someone who’s lived in that world.

Kate Pearson was on track to become an academic, applying to grad schools in her chosen field of anthropology. She had a gorgeous if caddish boyfriend, Robert, who was “so ridiculously French, which was somehow an asset and a defect at the same time,” Poeppel writes.

When Robert ditches her as soon as she lands in Paris to live with him, Kate abandons her carefully planned life and takes up residence

ing the major, moving to his remote farm, and mothering Charlie, his son by his first wife. After only two days as husband and wife, the major is called back to the front, and his “fair girl” Placidia must run the farm and protect the homestead.

Passages relating to what Placidia and others suffer build slowly and unfold in painstaking detail, making them all the more appalling. The cruelty in a world besieged by war is hard to fully comprehend.

Men fought on battlefields, but everyone at home was fighting, too— to survive. In The Second Mrs. Hockaday, Rivers gives readers an illuminating glimpse into a part of our country’s past that still has repercussions in the present.

Algonquin $25.95, 272 pages ISBN 9781616205812 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION

FEVER DREAM

By Samanta Schweblin

Translated by Megan McDowell Riverhead $25, 192 pages ISBN 9780399184598 Audio, eBook available SUSPENSE

It’s fitting for a Civil War-era story to be told in letters: The excruciating wait between each hoped-for missive is mirrored in this debut novel’s slow and gradual denouement. Author and playwright Susan Rivers employs not only letters, but also diary entries and inquest reports to tell a story loosely based in fact. In The Second Mrs. Hockaday, Placidia Fincher, young and newly wed to a major in the Confederate army, is jailed and accused of adultery and infanticide. Her husband has been away for two years, adding to the intrigue. Only Placidia and her few slaves, particularly one named Achilles, know what transpired.

As attested to in an author’s note, Rivers’ research has been thorough, and she writes convincingly in a mid 19th-century style and mindset. She is adept at creating arresting imagery and constructs a stark contrast between the life of privilege Placidia left and the life of struggle she comes to upon marry-

Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin’s English-language debut, Fever Dream, snares readers.

It’s a page-turner of mounting dread, unfolding entirely through a conversation between a bedridden young woman and the boy who whispers in her ear.

Amanda lies dying in a hospital clinic in rural Argentina. Sitting next to her is David, a boy who asks her—urges her—to remember the events of whatever trauma rendered her terminally ill. At his behest, Amanda recalls meeting David’s mother, a nervous and elegant woman named Carla. Carla tells Amanda a strange story about a very young David, who drinks the same toxic water that kills Carla’s husband’s prized stallion. To spare her son’s life, Carla calls upon a local woman with medicinal and magical abilities. By splitting David’s soul with another child’s, she saves the boy.

But this is only the beginning.

Why is Amanda in the hospital?

And what has happened to Amanda’s own daughter, Nina? Time and again, Amanda references the “rescue distance,” the variable One of space between Argentina’s her and Nina, finest young the distance writers makes between a mother and her Englishany worst-case language scenario that debut. may imperil her child. “I spend half the day calculating it,” Amanda says. As she recalls more and more details, Amanda begins to tell the story her own way, trying to make sense of what matters in these events and what does not—and decide which threats are inevitable or imagined.

With the urgency, attention to detail and threat of an abrupt ending that define short stories, the novel builds unease seamlessly through exceptionally well-paced dialogue. The sparseness of Schweblin’s prose, translated by Megan McDowell, anchors this strange conversation and keeps it from becoming disorienting.

Minimalist yet complex, monochromatic yet textured, Fever Dream is a delicate and marvelously constructed tale, like a bundle of our darkest worries artfully arranged into our own likeness.

—CAT ACREE

THE WINTER IN ANNA

By Reed Karaim

Norton $25.95, 256 pages ISBN 9780393608502 Audio, eBook available LITERARY FICTION

Reed Karaim’s second novel, The Winter in Anna, is a memorable story of a young man whose life is irrevocably altered by a woman with a tragic past.

Purposeless and confused after his father’s stroke, 20-year-old Eric Valery abandons college for a weekly newspaper in tiny Shannon, North Dakota, “where the

FICTION Midwest becomes the West.” When the news editor makes one mistake too many, a reluctant Eric is given control of the paper. He inherits a staff of three, including Anna, a beautiful reporter about 10 years older and a hundred years wiser than Eric. Anna is as scarred by the world as Eric is unmarked. Yet over the course of a year, they become friends and confidants—there is a tangible “will they or won’t they” vibe—as Eric tries to make sense of his father’s collapse and the guilt he feels. Much more slowly, Anna reveals herself, and in fits and starts we learn about her horrible marriage and the unbearable burden she carries.

It’s a foregone conclusion that things won’t end well. Narrated by a much older Eric, the novel opens with Anna committing suicide by guzzling a quart of bleach in an anonymous Midwestern motel.

The Winter in Anna is both thoughtful and introspective, in the tradition of Pat Conroy and Ward Just, whose own comingof-age tale, An Unfinished Season, comes to mind while reading this one. Karaim, a freelance writer and author of the well-received political novel If Men Were Angels, doesn’t break new ground, but each of his words is impactful and chosen with care. He possesses the subtle, significant ability to build tension slowly and evenly, urging you to devour this smallish novel in one gulp.

—IAN SCHWARTZ

THE RIVER AT NIGHT

By Erica Ferencik Scout Press $26, 320 pages ISBN 9781501143199 Audio, eBook available SUSPENSE

Wini, Sandra, Rachel and Pia are the type of friends that remain close in spite of physical distance and ever-changing lives. Each year, the three take a vacation together. Adventurous Pia has finally convinced her three mates to face a new challenge: rafting the Winnegosset River. The foursome head into the Maine wilderness accompanied by a 20-something guide, Rory. Tension builds as some start to question Rory’s competency, and intensifies when Pia impulsively begins an intimate relationship with Rory.

Despite the emotional chasm, cooperation is required in order to navigate the dangers of the river.

Each bend and rush successfully maneuvered builds confidence.

But when unexpected tragedy strikes, the remaining group must struggle to survive in the remote woods of Maine—injured and with limited supplies. Roaming for help, the group discovers potential salvation . . . but have they actually just revealed themselves to the most dangerous predator yet?

Ferencik, no stranger to creating an effective blend of dread and horror (showcased in her novel Repeaters), continually surprises with as many plot twists and turns as the titular river itself. Following the influence that the various characters’ strengths, flaws, insecurities and determination have on the ultimate resolution is a captivating experience. This is a novel that will burrow in your memory well after its conclusion.

—AMANDA TRIVETT

HUMAN ACTS

By Han Kang

Hogarth $22, 224 pages ISBN 9781101906729 Audio, eBook available WORLD FICTION

What do four girlfriends pushing 40, a collection of foregone dreams and need—that desire for something extraordinary and rejuvenating—become? The precursor for the horrors that unveil themselves in Erica Ferencik’s latest novel, The River at Night.

In December 1979, shortly after the assassination of President Park Chung-hee, army general Chun Doo-hwan assumed the role of South Korean leader. His expansion of martial law and crackdown on

political activities led to the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, an anti-authoritarian movement that began with student demonstrations and ended with the killing by government troops of hundreds of citizens, many of them in their teens.

Han Kang, author of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize-winning novel The Vegetarian, revisits the uprising’s toll on her native South Korea in Human Acts, a harrowing and stylistically The author daring series of of The linked stories.

Vegetarian Kang shifts returns with a perspectives kaleidoscopic and narrative styles throughlook into out the book.

Korea’s past.

The central figure who connects the stories is Dong-ho, a 15-year-old in his third year of middle school who, during the uprising, searches for Jeong-dae, his best friend, whom he believes has been killed. But, in the process of looking for his friend, Dong-ho becomes one of the casualties.

The other stories, set from 1980 through 2013, are told from the point of view of characters who were part of the uprising, including an editor contending with state censorship, an ex-prisoner who was the militia chief in the students’ plan to hold the university’s Provincial Office, a former factory employee traumatized for 20 years by the torture she suffered, Dongho’s mother and, in an audacious authorial move, Jeong-dae’s corpse.

The epilogue focuses on Kang herself, who recalls hearing adults speak of a murdered 15-year-old when she was 9 and now wants to learn all she can about his fate.

Although Human Acts depicts violence in graphic detail, anyone who reads this work will be moved not only by Kang’s poetic telling of horrific events but also by her nuanced treatment of the material. As the ex-prisoner asks, “Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species?” This novel is a thoughtful and humane answer to difficult questions and a moving tribute to victims of the atrocity.

“This is a hell of a country, isn’t it? You choose your story. Then you go out and make it happen.”

In Lydia Peelle’s debut novel, The Midnight Cool, main characters Billy and Charlie are doing exactly that, harnessing their charm, grit and self-reliance to forge a better life. This theme is not new, but in the gifted hands of Peelle it rises off the page in a fresh, daring fashion.

The Midnight Cool opens in the summer of 1916, as war rages in Europe and political tensions are running high. Charlie and Billy are traveling horse traders who arrive in Richfield, Tennessee, a fictional town just north of Nashville. Both are smooth-talking grifters who specialize in the art of the underhanded deal.

Upon arriving in town they set their sights on a gorgeous mare who belongs to the wealthy Leland Hatcher. Despite warnings from Catherine, Leland’s daughter, they purchase the mare only to discover her violent, deadly past. Indebted and unable to unload the temperamental animal, they turn to selling mules to the British army to recoup their lost funds. All the while, Charlie’s feelings for Catherine, a woman very much above his station, are intensifying, and the bonds between Charlie and Billy are beginning to fray.

Peelle is a writer to watch. She deftly recounts the surprisingly fascinating history of mules, who bore the brunt of American labor during this period and whose resiliency and strength made them key players in the war effort, while also giving us a rich, satisfying novel, full of memorable characters grappling with love, loyalty, identity and the struggle to build something that lasts in a rapidly changing world.

—MICHAEL MAGRAS

—J E S S I C A P E A R S O N

THE MIDNIGHT COOL

By Lydia Peelle

Harper $26.99, 368 pages ISBN 9780062475466 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION

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reviews T PI OP CK

NONFICTION

IN THE GREAT GREEN ROOM

An author’s unconventional life REVIEW BY ALICE CARY

One cold winter day in January 1991, Amy Gary, the owner of a small publishing company, struck gold in a living room in Vermont. The sister of the late children’s author Margaret Wise Brown showed Gary a trunk brimming with unpublished material—songs, music scores, stories and poems. From that moment on, Gary’s life changed, as she explains: “For over twenty-five years, I’ve tried to live inside the wildly imaginative mind of Margaret Wise Brown.” Her latest contribution to Brown’s legacy is the fascinating biography In the Great Green Room.

Brown, who wrote more than 100 children’s books, is best known for two beloved classics, Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. Yet her personal life was the antithesis of those soothing bedtime tales, filled with drama, exuberance and, at times, sorrow and loneliness.

Gary’s account captures Brown’s life in vivid, novel-like details and

By Amy Gary descriptions.

Flatiron, $26.99, 304 pages ISBN 9781250065360, audio, eBook available The glamorous children’s writer was certainly a study in contrasts.

The woman who wrote about furry bunnies and other animals was a BIOGRAPHY hunter—this book describes one such hare hunt with hounds. She was also wildly fun and inventive, throwing parties and leading a group of editors and writers in a self-proclaimed “Birdbrain Club.”

Born in 1910 and raised in a privileged background, she was educated at exclusive boarding schools in Switzerland and New England; however, she failed freshman English at Hollins College. Despite her success as a children’s writer, she longed to write more “serious” adult literature, but couldn’t.

Brown desperately tried to avoid the unhappiness she saw in her own parents’ marriage, and yet for most of her life, her love life was a shambles. While summering on the Maine coast she adored, she fell in love with a well-known womanizer who refused to marry her. She also loved and moved in with a woman 20 years her senior, the former wife of John Barrymore, who was often condescending toward Brown’s work. Finally, she found love with James Stillman Rockefeller Jr. (who writes a captivating foreword), a kind, energetic soul about 15 years her junior. They were about to be married when Brown tragically died at age 42, suffering an embolism after having an appendectomy in France.

Visit BookPage.com to For children’s literature buffs and fans of intriguing biographies, In the read a Q&A with Amy Gary.

Great Green Room is a must-read.

MRS. SHERLOCK HOLMES

By Brad Ricca

St. Martin’s $27.99, 448 pages ISBN 9781250072245 eBook available TRUE CRIME

In 1917, the disappearance of an 18-year-old girl named Ruth Cruger caught the nation’s attention.

Wearing her blue winter coat and a floppy hat, the recent high school graduate left her family’s Harlem apartment to run errands on a cold

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February day. At first her family assumed Ruth had gone ice skating, since she’d left with her skates in hopes of getting them sharpened.

But hours later, as the skies darkened and snow fell, Ruth still hadn’t returned home. Retracing Ruth’s steps, her sister tracked down the motorcycle shop where Ruth had left her skates, run by a man named Alfredo Cocchi. A few days later he, too, had vanished.

Police detectives got busy—to no avail. Although they searched Cocchi’s shop, they found nothing.

More than two weeks later, authorities concluded that Ruth had simply run away from home. Unwilling to give up, the Crugers hired a

lawyer and detective named Grace Humiston, who didn’t rest until the case was solved, months later, with the discovery that Ruth had indeed been murdered at Cocchi’s hands.

Brad Ricca’s account reads like a fictional detective story, with the fascinating figure of Humiston at the center. Although she later faded from public view, Humiston remained dedicated to crimes involving women and girls, even publishing a magazine entitled New Justice, aimed at the protection of girls.

Ricca, a filmmaker and expert on comics, brings an interest in popular culture and media to his narrative, much of which had to be

pieced together from newspaper accounts. Ricca’s dramatic, novelistic storytelling makes for a great read. And thanks to his detective work, Humiston and her remarkable commitment to justice have been rescued from obscurity and brought to life.

—DEBORAH HOPKINSON

HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS

By Edward Jay Epstein

Knopf $27.95, 368 pages ISBN 9780451494566 eBook available ESPIONAGE

Since the publication of Inquest, his 1966 critique of the Warren Commission’s report on the Kennedy assassination, Edward Jay Epstein has been probing events he believes were not sufficiently illuminated by the official investigations. He’s been particularly keen on examining the failures of America’s intelligence agencies, both at home and abroad. In How America Lost Its Secrets, he focuses on Edward Snowden’s massive looting and exposure of National Security Agency secrets. And, in Epstein’s mind, it does amount to looting, even though he agrees that Snowden performed a valuable service in alerting Americans to how broadly the NSA is spying on them. “Opening a Pandora’s box of government secrets is a dangerous undertaking,” he asserts.

A dogged researcher, Epstein retraces Snowden’s trajectory each step of the way from geeky teenager to opportunistic intelligence employee to celebrity whistleblower. However, Epstein doesn’t accept the widely held belief that Snowden is simply a whistleblower whose sole aim is to reveal the sinister side of America’s domestic intelligence gathering. He maintains that most of the documents Snowden copied and made public (or has threatened to make public) had to do with America’s spying on such potential adversaries as Russia and China. Further, he doesn’t believe

Snowden acted alone in scooping up thousands of documents. He surmises—with some very persuasive reasoning—that Snowden must have had inside help and outside direction in deciding which intelligence files to raid. Epstein also goes to considerable lengths to explain why the government’s reliance on private, for-profit contractors to assist in its security work— such as the one that hired but failed to check out Snowden—is a built-in Achilles heel.

In spite of the kaleidoscopic array of dates, places and characters Epstein has to deal with, his narrative is immensely readable and carries with it the dark sense of inevitability that flavors all good spy stories.

—EDWARD MORRIS

I HATE EVERYONE, EXCEPT YOU

By Clinton Kelly

Gallery $24.99, 240 pages ISBN 9781476776934 eBook available MEMOIR

He also takes on heavier topics, such as the time he posted his wedding photo on his Facebook fan page on the day in 2015 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.

“The post received 180,000 ‘likes’ and more than 6,000 people stopped whatever they were doing that day to wish us love and congratulations,” he writes. “Five people thought it was appropriate to tell us we were going to Hell. If you’ve never been told by a complete stranger that you’re going to Hell, let me try to explain the feeling to you. It makes you feel something like sadness, but it’s not quite sadness. . . . It’s smaller, subtler, like a thousand shallow pin pricks.”

I read this book in one sitting, so engrossed that I ignored my children, social media and my todo list for several blissful, laughter-filled hours. Kelly delivers a perfect blend of heart, humor and trucker language.

—AMY SCRIBNER

THE UNSETTLERS

By Mark Sundeen

Maybe you’re a newish Clinton Kelly fan, courtesy of ABC’s daytime talk and cookfest “The Chew.”

Or maybe you’ve loved him since his days as the mildly catty co-host of the makeover show “What Not to Wear,” in which he and Stacy London saved legions of American women from slogan sweatshirts and mom jeans.

No matter how you know Kelly, you will know him infinitely better after reading I Hate Everyone, Except You, his hilarious, wise and revealing new memoir. It seems no topic is off-limits for Kelly (except his beloved grandma—see Q&A at right), who grew up gawky and gay on Long Island. He writes warmly of his family, including his stepfather, who gamely took on him and his sister when he married their mom. He recalls his time on “What Not to Wear” with just the right dash of gossip, and writes candidly about meeting his future husband, psychologist Damon Bayles.

Riverhead $26, 336 pages ISBN 9781594631580 Audio, eBook available CULTURE

It’s comforting to curl up with a good back-to-the-land book and imagine ourselves living a charmed life outside of society’s strictures. That’s not this book.

The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today’s America is instead a realistic look at how three families worked—and worked incredibly hard—to create a better world, with varying degrees of success. Sundeen, a journalist and author of The Man Who Quit Money, examines the complex, painful and rewarding journeys of radical retreatants in Missouri, activist urban farmers in Detroit and no-nonsense homesteaders in Montana.

There are few easy answers in

q&a

CLINTON KELLY

Snark and style

T

he former co-host of “What Not to Wear” delivers candid and comical observations on growing up gay and other topics in an entertaining new memoir, I Hate Everyone, Except You.

BY AMY SCRIBNER

HEIDI GUTMAN

NONFICTION

My favorite line from the book is addressed to your fans: “Start focusing on you . . . your power, your value, the stuff that goes way deeper than designer jeans and the perfect shade of lipstick. But also on the perfect shade of lipstick if that makes you happy. Because you deserve to be happy.” What do you think needs to change for women to stop equating their appearance with their value?

A cultural revolution, I suppose. Men and women have tied a woman’s value to her looks for a very long time. That kind of thinking doesn’t magically cease overnight, but we could begin by praising our daughters, granddaughters, nieces for qualities in addition to their beauty, like their intelligence, strength, creativity, talent. And we could start teaching boys at an earlier age not to behave like pigs.

You write about how hurtful it was to you and your husband when Ted Cruz called the ruling on marriage equality one of our nation’s darkest days. You briefly considered moving to Sweden but write, “even if he, or someone just as horrible, becomes president, it’s not worth jumping ship.” How are you feeling post-election?

Well, I’ve been experiencing a wide range of emotions. I want to be clear, I would never leave the United States just because I don’t like a president. I love this country very much and believe the vast majority of Americans are good human beings. But if the Supreme Court reverses its marriage equality ruling, I’ll have a big problem with that, as I’m sure you can understand.

In the hilarious chapter “Clinton for President!” you eat a ­marijuana gummy bear and then talk about how when you’re president, you will make American fabulous again. So, Clinton Kelly 2020?

I’m not gonna lie: Part of me thinks I could do a freakin’ awesome job as president, but another—much larger—part of me doesn’t want to work that hard at anything. Taking all those meetings would be torture for me. If I’m on a conference call that lasts for more than 10 minutes, I want to commit hara-kiri.

You have a funny fake sitcom script in one chapter. Do you think you’ll ever try writing an actual TV pilot?

So glad you liked it! I have a drawer full of sitcom scripts I’ve written.

Writing them and subsequently squirreling them away is a weird habit of mine. I never show them to anyone because I assume people will think they’re stupid. But then again, a lot of really stupid stuff makes its way to television.

Your afterword is addressed to your grandma, saying you didn’t share any stories about her because she’s all yours. Come on, tell us one thing about your grandma!

Aw, she’s just a dream. She’s 97 and originally from New Zealand.

When I was a kid, she’d make me a proper cup of tea—she would never use a tea bag!—with lots of milk and sugar, then read my tea leaves, like a fortune teller. She always saw all these wonderful things happening in my future. . . . And this is why I didn’t include any stories of ours. I’m totally crying. Thanks a lot, Amy!

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reviews Sundeen’s telling of these diverse stories, which he neatly juxtaposes with his own reflections without stooping to the condescension that can creep into stories about the search for a better way. He visits the charismatic Ethan Hughes and his wife, Sarah Wilcox, at the Possibility Alliance in Missouri and is taken with their consensus-driven, computer-free lifestyle, yet admits to personally being seduced by convenience store rotisserie chicken and flashy sports car rentals.

He shows us Detroit natives Olivia Hubert and Greg Willerer, growing vegetables in a downtrodden city where giving apples to the homeless only gives people fresh ammunition to lob at one another in the streets. And he brings us to the backyard skating rink of Montana’s Luci Brieger and Steve Elliot, who must run a tight ship to keep their 40-acre farm going, but don’t mind having a new truck in the driveway.

Sundeen deepens his analysis by including economic data, historical perspective and literary references. Readers will hear not only from the expected writers like Wendell Berry but also from economist E. F. Schumacher and activist ­Malcolm X. Context is everything in this carefully and affectionately reported account of idealists working not to leave the real world behind, but to make it better.

—SHEILA M. TRASK

VALLEY OF THE GODS

By Alexandra Wolfe

Simon & Schuster $27, 272 pages ISBN 9781476778945 eBook available BUSINESS

Imagine that you’re 19 years old and you’ve been offered $100,000 to drop out of college and build the tech start-up of your dreams. For the 20 students who win a Thiel Fellowship each year, with funding and mentoring provided by PayPal founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, this is reality. In Valley of the Gods, Wall Street Journal

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NONFICTION in 2011, 1,000 a day arriving by sea to the Greek islands. Germany and Sweden are swamped with new arrivals, while Hungary closes its borders. Nine hundred refugees cram onto a fragile boat that capsizes in the Mediterranean, trying to reach Italy. Seventy suffocate in the back of an Austrian truck. A drowned toddler washes up on a Turkish beach. The world looks on these people and describes them as everything from opportunistic job seekers to desperate asylum seekers, but nothing stops the flow of refugees. Who are they?

In The New Odyssey, journalist Patrick Kingsley, an award-winning migration correspondent for the U.K.’s Guardian, chronicles A journalist the journeys of chronicles the people behind the numthe desperate bers. Hashem journeys al-Souki is of Syrian Kingsley’s refugees reluctant Homer, forced to fleeing to leave Syria in Europe.

2012 to escape imprisonment, torture and death. He hopes to lead his wife and three sons to a secure future in Sweden.

Kingsley provides Hashem with a camera and a journal. The story that unfolds is intimate, terrifying and ultimately heroic. Along the way are ruthless smugglers, corrupt politicians, courageous locals, dedicated international aid workers, surprising mercies and deep despair. Facebook pages like “The — S A R A H M C C R A W C R O W Safe and Free Route to Asylum for Refugees” and GPS markers are the new lures and travel guides—if THE NEW ODYSSEY there is cell service and a way to charge a phone. Friends and famiBy Patrick lies left behind must pay smugglers ­Kingsley Liveright they cannot trust. $26.95, 368 pages Three years later, Hashem is still ISBN 9781631492556 wondering what the future holds. eBook available His journey is a sharply etched reflection of the disparate refugee IMMIGRATION policies of the European Union, Canada and the U.S. The future it foretells may be what Kingsley calls The stark numbers continue “an abdication of decency” in a to arrive in our daily headlines: humanitarian crisis not seen since 5 million refugees fleeing Syria World War II. since the Arab Spring began there —PRISCILLA KIPP reporter Alexandra Wolfe (daughter of writer Tom Wolfe) profiles several members of the 2011 class of Thiel fellows, among them John Burnham, who aims to mine asteroids for platinum and gold; Laura Deming, who’s focused on extending human longevity; and Paul Gu, who wants to create a new method for loaning money.

Wolfe follows this first class of Thiel fellows from the time when they’re still finalists, waiting to learn if they’ve won an award and undecided as to whether to put off college. She highlights their living spaces (like the communal house depicted in The Social Network, where Mark Zuckerberg and friends lived and worked before Facebook was the world’s highest-valued company), their social lives and their work struggles.

Launching a successful tech startup is incredibly difficult, even with a good idea, an unusual level of intelligence and monetary support, and Wolfe conveys the young entrepreneurs’ ups and downs well.

These stories are interspersed with a more general profile of Silicon Valley, its history, its connection to Stanford University and its oddities, like Cougar Night at the Rosewood Hotel, where “older” women hit on young techies. These asides make for fascinating reading, but they take us away from the Thiel Fellows and their struggles, so we care less about them than we otherwise might have. Still, readers seeking an inside view of this hightech mecca will certainly find it in Valley of the Gods.

THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD

By Douglas Preston

Grand Central $28, 336 pages ISBN 9781455540006 Audio, eBook available EXPEDITIONS

Let author Douglas Preston give testimony to the old adage: Truth is stranger than fiction. As the co-­author, with Lincoln Child, of a series of bestselling suspense novels, Preston has explored mysteries involving sorcery, witchcraft and ancient secrets. Now he chronicles his own true-life adventures in a nonfiction book, The Lost City of the Monkey God. Preston’s quest is to find the ruins of an ancient city in the mountains of Honduras, known as the “White City” or the “Lost City of the Monkey God.” Others have embarked on similar expeditions only to fail, most notably an adventurer who returned in 1940 with spectacular artifacts, but committed suicide before revealing the location of his discovery.

This time, Preston and his team are armed with sophisticated equipment, borrowed from NASA, that allows them to peer beneath the jungle growth to map the contours below. From the air, they detect the outlines of a long-lost civilization. But space-age technology is of no aid once they land and face the perils of the rainforest, including poisonous snakes, vicious jaguars and vengeful drug dealers.

Ironically, their greatest danger occurs on their return home, when they are beset with an incurable illness contracted from a parasite.

Is this affliction of “white leprosy” a mere coincidence, or a curse?

The Lost City of the Monkey God is more than just an adventure story. It examines such modern issues as the ethics of archeological expeditions, man’s destruction of the rainforest and the incessant creep of technology and its effects on indigenous peoples.

Readers will find themselves both shocked and captivated by

NONFICTION this account of mysteries old and new.

—J O H N T. S L A N I A

AMERICAN HOOKUP

By Lisa Wade

Norton $26.95, 304 pages ISBN 9780393285093 Audio, eBook available SOCIAL SCIENCE

THE MEANING OF MICHELLE Edited by Veronica Chambers St. Martin’s $24.99, 240 pages ISBN 9781250114969 eBook available ESSAYS

College students aren’t having as much sex as everyone thinks, professor Lisa Wade writes in American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus. Instead, most students are just talking about hooking up— and participating in a set of rituals that goes along with it.

Wade describes the cycle: pregaming in dorm rooms, dirty dancing at parties and then pairing off in bedrooms where actual sex may or may not occur. The next day, the events are discussed obsessively with friends. The pair who hooked up follow rigid rules, avoiding each other to prove the hookup was meaningless. The next weekend, the whole thing starts again.

To compile specifics about sexual behavior, Wade relied on journals prepared by three classes of freshmen. These journals are predictably scintillating. It’s important to remember, though, that they were prepared for a professor and may therefore be regarded with some skepticism. Wade complements the journals with data from national surveys, dissertation studies and journalistic accounts.

As a teacher at a residential college, I was not totally persuaded by Wade’s representation of sex culture on campuses—there are many students who opt into social circles with other kinds of rituals, and there’s more nuance and complexity in campus culture. Still, American Hookup could be a helpful conversation starter—and Wade’s takeaways about how to make the culture of hooking up kinder and more compassionate are well supported and important.

As the Obamas leave the White House, their departure saddens many, as evidenced by the essays in The Meaning of Michelle, a diverse collection united by admiration in a “praise song” anthology. Whether discussing Michelle Obama’s shapely arms, her fashion sense or her “Evolution of Mom Dancing” with Jimmy Fallon, these 16 writers would all agree with chef Marcus Samuelsson’s observation: “It’s nothing short of stunning the way she manages a 24/7 news cycle.”

Samuelsson got to know the first lady in 2009 while planning and cooking the Obamas’ first state dinner, for the prime minister of India and 400 guests. He concludes, “I think she embodies the ability to shape the conversation around her better than any person that I know.”

Here and there, we learn interesting tidbits of Michelle’s past, such as the horrifying fact that when she attended Princeton as an undergraduate in the 1980s, the family of her first roommate protested to the administration that their daughter had been assigned to room with a black person. (It would certainly be interesting to check in on this family now.) We’re also reminded of smile-worthy moments, such as the self-proclaimed mom-in-chief’s response that if she could be anyone other than herself, it would be Beyoncé.

Those who feel despondent about FLOTUS leaving the White House are likely to rally behind novelist and essayist Cathi Hanauer’s closing plea: “She has said she’ll never run for president herself. To that I say: Never say never, Michelle. Let’s just see where we all are a decade from now.”

— K E L LY B L E W E T T

—ALICE CARY

spotlight

PERSONAL FINANCE

BY AMY SCRIBNER

Make your money work for you

I

n the words of P.T. Barnum, “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.” These books are sure to help your money serve you better in 2017.

Rachel Cruze hates debt. Really hates it. In Love Your Life, Not Theirs (Ramsey Press, $24.99, 272 pages, ISBN 9781937077976), the financial adviser and daughter of money guru Dave Ramsey advises readers to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses and— most importantly—to live debt-free. No credit cards. No car loans. “[W]hatever you have to give up to live without debt is worth the peace of mind you’ll have and the money you get to keep instead of sending it to the bank,” she argues.

The message is hardcore for a country in love with credit, but Cruze makes a compelling argument for using cash for most purposes, building an emergency fund, saving for the future and donating a healthy portion of your earnings.

“People who love their money and stuff more than they love other people will live small, lonely and ultimately ineffective lives,” she writes.

YOU & YOUR MONEY Self-described holistic wealth expert Leanne Jacobs views money as something we earn when we open ourselves to it. In Beautiful Money (TarcherPerigee, $16, 288 pages, ISBN 9780143111511), she details a path to wealth that includes changing our thought patterns about money, building multiple income streams, practicing yoga and (sorry, Rachel Cruze!) building a credit history with a credit card or car loan.

An MBA and former executive, Jacobs clearly knows her stuff.

Her unorthodox approach is not for everyone, but it’s full-hearted and sincere. She advises readers to adopt a wealth mantra, such as: Beauty, abundance and grace flow my way every day. Every cell of my body reminds me that I deserve the very best. In the end, she writes, there is one essential truth about money: “How we treat, respect, discuss, use or abuse money is a real-life measure of our own selfworth.”

SAVINGS SHORTCUTS In Pogue’s Basics: Money (Flatiron, $19.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9781250081414), former New York Times tech columnist and life hack enthusiast David Pogue shares nifty tricks for holding onto more of your hard-earned cash.

By focusing on what he calls “quirks in the system,” Pogue offers some pretty ingenious ways to save, from keeping your tires inflated to reduce gasoline costs, to earning extra cash by signing up for online focus groups.

The advice is packaged in a nicely designed, graphics-heavy book that highlights ballpark savings in red.

Pogue’s tips cover virtually every aspect of life, from tech and TV to food and drink. In The Last Legal Tax Dodges, he lists dozens of deductions and tax credits, downright gleeful as he explains 529 plans, charitable giving and home sales profits. “If you made a profit from selling your home after living there at least two years, the first $250,000 of profit is yours, tax free,” he writes. “If you’re married and filing jointly, make that $500,000. Ka-ching!”

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reviews T PI OP CK

TEEN

A LIST OF CAGES

My brother’s keeper REVIEW BY JUSTIN BARISICH

Julian and Adam are friends turned brothers by way of tragedy.

Though years apart in age and on opposite ends of the personality spectrum, the boys bond over their shared disabilities, their respect for one another’s differences and the fact that they save each other’s lives—more than once.

Adam is a charismatic high school senior with ADHD. Julian is his shy and sweet former foster brother, an incoming freshman with dyslexia. Prior to the start of school, the last time they’d seen each other was five years ago, when Julian’s parents died in a sudden and horrific car accident. Back then, Adam cared for Julian like an older, patient brother, helping him cope with his tragic loss. That was until Julian’s uncle showed up out of nowhere and ripped him from the safe and healthy life he’d had with his foster family. Julian’s strict uncle has no patience for his “odd” behavior, his quietness or his appreciation for

By Robin Roe Disney-Hyperion, $17.99, 320 pages children’s books. And even though everything looks fine to outsiders, ISBN 9781484763803, eBook available all of Julian’s pain is boxed up and pushed beneath the surface. When Ages 12 and up Adam finally begins to notice the signs, it falls to him to save the sensitive Julian from a dangerous home.

FICTION Debut author Robin Roe drew from experiences counseling and mentoring at-risk teens to create A List of Cages. In the same vein as The Perks of Being a Wallflower, this is a raw and eye-opening story, destined Visit BookPage.com to read to spark important and necessary conversations. a Q&A with Robin Roe.

STONE MIRRORS

By Jeannine Atkins Atheneum $17.99, 192 pages ISBN 9781481459051 eBook available Ages 12 and up NOVEL IN VERSE

Through 80 chronological vignettes divided into five dated segments, all set to a lilting prose, Jeannine Atkins brings to life the poignant story of a half NativeAmerican, half African-American artist’s persistent journey to greatness. While Edmonia Lewis is best known as a neoclassical sculptor as well as for her affiliation with Oberlin College, details of her life remain a mystery. Regardless of the lack of data, Atkins offers a believable fictionalized biography in Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and

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Silence of Edmonia Lewis.

In 1862, while attending the recently racially integrated Oberlin College, Edmonia is falsely accused of poisoning two of her classmates.

Days later, she is viciously raped and beaten. Although acquitted of the poisoning charges, Edmonia is accused of stealing art supplies, and her one-year stay at the historic college is terminated and she is sent to Boston. While working as a housekeeper, Edmonia is given the opportunity to learn sculpture.

During the next two years, Edmonia hones her craft and travels to Rome, the “City of Marble.” Over the course of 10 years, Edmonia creates a grand piece she titles “The Death of Cleopatra,” which she presents at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

Combining imagination and the power of words, Atkins’ powerful narrative aptly highlights the harsh indifference and discrimination that Edmonia faces as she forges

ahead to fulfill her dreams. Stone Mirrors provides a window into the achievements of a tenacious woman of color in a white man’s world.

—ANITA LOCK

YOU DON’T KNOW MY NAME

By Kristen Orlando Swoon Reads $17.99, 304 pages ISBN 9781250084118 eBook available Ages 12 and up

ACTION & ADVENTURE

Reagan started martial arts training at the age of 4. At 10, she was shooting high-powered assault rifles. As the daughter of two Black Angels, Reagan is destined to join the elite, top-secret group of international operatives. As Kristen Orlando’s novel begins, Reagan and her parents narrowly escape the

attack of a hit man, forcing them to abandon their home and, not for the first time, start anew with fresh identities. Now 17, Reagan is tiring of these abrupt relocations. She likes living in their current location, where an adorable JROTC student named Luke lives next door.

But this pleasant life may already be compromised. Reagan has spotted a school janitor who stares at her a bit too intensely and a gray van that shows up a bit too frequently. It could be Reagan’s own amped sense of anxiety that has her on edge, but for a girl trained to kill, paranoia is a learned necessity.

This action-packed suspense novel is the first in a new series that features a kick-ass female protagonist whose training regimen and smoldering love interest rival that of Divergent’s Tris Prior. The lightness of the contemporary high school setting is offset by an undercurrent of grisly violence, and Reagan’s tortured contemplation of her own future offers a choice between the happiness of ordinary life and the darkness of the Black Angels legacy. A cliffhanger ending ensures a following of eager readers.

—DIANE COLSON

THE BOOK JUMPER

By Mechthild Gläser

Feiwel & Friends $17.99, 384 pages ISBN 9781250086662 eBook available Ages 12 and up FANTASY

Sixteen-year-old Amy Lennox has inherited what she calls her family’s “crazy gene.” She and her mother are crazy enough to spontaneously decide to move from their home in Germany one morning and be on a plane that afternoon. Their destination? The island of Stormsay off the coast of Scotland, where Amy’s grandmother, Mairead Lennox, Lady of Stormsay, lives in a mansion called Lennox House.

In Lennox House, books are everywhere. There are paintings of people reading, a spectacular oak banister carved in the shape of

N E W F RO M T H E AWA R D -W I N N I N G AU T H O R O F L I E S W E T E L L O U R S E LV E S A N D W H AT W E L E F T B E H I N D

R O B I N T A L L E Y “Our Own Private Universe is the open,

From the acclaimed author of Pushing the Limits

KATIE McGARRY

SOME BONDS AREN’T MEANT TO BE BROKEN

honest, thoughtful coming-of-age queer girls have been waiting for.”

— DA H L I A A D L E R , author of UNDER THE LIGHTS

Books 1 & 2 in the Thunder Road series are

available now!

Love is what happens while you’re busy having fun Find Harlequin TEEN on

“An intoxicating and unforgettable story that kept me glued to the page.”

—Kami Garcia, #1 New York Times bestselling author on Walk the Edge Find Harlequin TEEN on

reviews books and a mysterious, ancient library on the moor nearby, set deep in a cave at the foot of a hill.

Amy discovers she has inherited a secret family birthright: She is a book jumper, with the ability to jump inside stories and interact with the characters she finds there.

Most of all, as a book jumper, she has a duty to protect literature.

Amy’s training includes practice excursions into The Jungle Book, Oliver Twist and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But, along with a fellow reader named Will, Amy uncovers a disturbing problem: There is a dangerous thief in the book world, a thief who is somehow altering stories and stealing ideas from them. And it’s up to Will and Amy to solve the mystery.

Originally published in Germany, Mechthild Gläser’s novel combines romance, fantasy and adventure.

Like Grace Lin’s When the Sea Turned to Silver, The Book Jumper celebrates the enduring power of literature and the integral role that stories can play in young lives.

—DEBORAH HOPKINSON

LOVE AND FIRST SIGHT

By Josh Sundquist Little, Brown $17.99, 288 pages ISBN 9780316305358 Audio, eBook available Ages 13 and up

generationread.com

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TEEN him to see for the first time.

But before Will learns of this secret, he must acclimate to life as a sighted person. Debut novelist (and Paralympian) Josh Sundquist illuminates this surprising and frustrating process with profound insight: It’s like learning a language when you don’t know what language is.

When Will first awakes from the surgery, his eyes are bandaged shut, but he immediately senses a difference in the darkness. To Will, this new darkness is a sound, a thundering noise in his brain that he wishes would go away. Upon first opening his eyes, his brain is flooded with so much visual stimuli that he becomes dizzy and sick.

Best suited for older teens, Love and First Sight will leave readers questioning the definition of beauty and thankful for the gift of eyesight.

to people her own age and her subsequent boredom. She lives mostly in her own head, choosing to find magic in movies, books and her imagination rather than the world around her.

This mystery is less about finding a missing girl as it is about finding happiness and purpose in a complex, often contradictory world.

— K I M B E R LY G I A R R A T A N O

THE TRUTH OF RIGHT NOW

By Kara Lee Corthron

Simon Pulse $17.99, 288 pages ISBN 9781481459471 eBook available Ages 14 and up FICTION

— E R I N A . H O LT

THE HUNDRED LIES OF LIZZIE LOVETT

By Chelsea Sedoti Sourcebooks Fire $17.99, 400 pages ISBN 9781492636083 eBook available Ages 14 and up FICTION

Despite the title, this engaging mystery from debut author Chelsea Sedoti isn’t about the FICTION popular, enviable Lizzie, but about 17-year-old Hawthorn Creely, the lonely outcast who becomes obsessed with Lizzie’s disappearWill Porter is blind and has been ance. Hawthorn has always been since birth. At 16, he’s making his first foray into a mainstream school, a loner. Her sarcasm, dry wit and occasional rudeness have left her but using what he learned at the with only one friend, and even that school for the blind doesn’t stop him from making mistakes, includ- relationship hangs by a thread. So when Lizzie is reported missing, ing almost sitting on someone in the cafeteria. That someone is Nick, Hawthorn inserts herself into Lizzie’s old life by taking over Lizzie’s who—along with academic quiz team members Ion and Whitford— former job and hanging out with Enzo, Lizzie’s sulky artist boyfriend. quickly befriends Will. Will also As Hawthorn and Enzo connect meets Cecily, the fourth member over Lizzie, Hawthorn is enlivened of the academic quiz team, in his by her new adventures, but they journalism class. Will is drawn to Cecily, but there’s something about come at the expense of a tragedy.

Hawthorn is one of the most reher appearance that Will’s friends latable characters in recent young aren’t telling him, and it will come adult literature. Her unhappiness to the surface when he undergoes stems from her inability to connect experimental surgery that allows

After a traumatic year off, Lily’s return to her swanky Manhattan high school has been far from easy.

Most of her friends still blame her for what happened, and the rest treat her with the lightest of kid gloves. The only person who isn’t treating Lily like a pariah is Dari, the artistic new student with a troubled past. Their attraction is immediate and intense, but can it survive a tumultuous year of drama and tragedy?

Playwright Kara Lee Corthron’s first novel is at once a touching romance and a poignant coming-ofage story that’s deeply in tune with the harsh realities many teenagers and young adults face today. From sexual assault to domestic abuse to systemic racism, Lily and Dari encounter obstacles that no teen should have to face, but all too many do. Corthron tells their story with just the right mix of whimsy, grace and gravitas, treating her protagonists and the flawed adults in their lives with the utmost respect.

Lily and Dari’s journey is inspirational, and despite how deeply the deck is stacked against them, they gather the courage to move forward in the best way they can.

The Truth of Right Now is not a lighthearted read, but it’s an important page-turner for young readers growing up in today’s America.

—SARAH WEBER

children’s

JERRY SPINELLI

A young spitfire learns how to break free

W

e are drawn to stories set within prisons, with their tales of escape attempts, the wrongfully accused, rivalries and friendships that turn on a dime and the challenges of life after release. Jerry Spinelli’s latest novel for children takes a different tack: In The Warden’s Daughter, the Newbery Award winning author offers the perspective of another kind of correctional facility resident, middle schooler Cammie O’Reilly.

Cammie and her father live in an apartment in the Hancock County Prison, a fortress-like building in the center of their small town. In many ways, it’s a lot like any other living situation: They have breakfast in the kitchen, he goes to work, she goes to school (when she’s not watching “American Bandstand” with her best girlfriend, Reggie) and other domestic goings-on. But her father’s bedroom window looks out over Murderer’s Row, and her neighbors include prison guards and female inmates, with whom she has daily through-the-fence chats.

It’s quite the interesting life for a curious, smart kid like Cammie— one that was inspired by a friend of Spinelli’s, a real-life warden’s daughter. “After I met my friend Ellen, she told me about her life growing up in the prison,” the author says in a call to the Pennsylvania home he shares with his wife, author Eileen Spinelli. “That was

THE WARDEN’S DAUGHTER

By Jerry Spinelli

Knopf, $16.99, 352 pages ISBN 9780375831997, audio, eBook available Ages 9 to 12

MIDDLE GRADE

15 years ago. It’s amazing it took so many years to realize what a natural story I had sitting in my lap!”

While Spinelli says Ellen’s life doesn’t resemble Cammie’s, the prison in The Warden’s Daughter is much like the real Montgomery County Prison in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where Spinelli grew up. It was there that he had a friend whose background inspired another important element of Cammie’s life: having a mother who sacrificed her life to save her daughter’s.

“I patched in the memory of an old friend and fraternity brother,” Spinelli says, “who was a baby when his mother was crossing the street and didn’t see a milk truck coming, and threw him across the street to save his life.”

Stories and memories combine to make The Warden’s Daughter a coming-of-age tale that’s both familiar and new. Readers who live or have lived in unusual places and small towns will enjoy Spinelli’s spot-on rendering of that sort of life, and those who haven’t will look at such situations with wonder. Anyone who is or has been a 12-year-old on the cusp of 13 will relate to Cammie’s struggle with wanting to be mothered yet wishing people would see how grown up she is. And readers who’ve experienced strong grief will recognize the ways in which those grieving try to carry on, while people around them strive to balance delicate sensitivity and soothing normalcy.

For Cammie, the summer of 1959 is when things go decidedly off-kilter. She’s been doing a pretty good job of compartmentalizing her feelings, finding fun and relief in long bicycle rides, pick-up baseball games, adventures with Reggie and showing her dad how strong

and helpful she can be.

But then, she realizes, “In the weeks after Mother’s Day, something was changing. Enough was no longer enough. . . . I was sick and tired of being motherless.”

Of course, untreated PTSD would wear anyone down, and to make matters worse, the site of her mother’s accident, The Corner, is just blocks away from her Stories and home. memories Intriguingly, combine as Cammie’s feelings to make The swell toward Warden’s a breaking Daughter a point, Spinelli coming-ofdoesn’t shy age tale that’s away from both familiar having her rage periodiand new. cally manifest itself in abusiveness toward those around her, including Eloda, the inmate trustee who’s been working as the warden’s housekeeper.

From a practical standpoint, Spinelli says, “Considering where I wanted the story to end up, that seemed to be the way to frame it.”

He adds, “Not having been parentless [as a child] myself, I did my best to put myself in her situation and went from there.”

Cammie does realize her angry outbursts are wrong, and as best she can, she strives to manage her unmanageable feelings. Friends like ebullient inmate Boo, teenqueen Reggie and even a 5-yearold boy serve as a veritable village of support and friendship—but ultimately, it’s the steadfast and sympathetic Eloda who gets Cammie where she needs to go, emotionally and physically.

This climax between Eloda and

© ELMORE DEMOTT

INTERVIEW BY LINDA M. CASTELLITTO

Cammie is a finely written, heartbreaking, cathartic scene—and far from the only tear-inducing situation in the book. When asked if he ever cries when he writes his books, Spinelli says, “I’ve never had that question, but now that you mention it, I occasionally might get a little worked up as I’m rereading aloud a particular passage. I’m straddling both sides of the fence: being dispassionate enough to write as well as I can, and somehow, without tears flowing, participating as emotionally as I can for the sake of the characters.”

When it comes to prisons literal and figurative, Spinelli (who’s a big fan of the HBO TV series “Oz”) says he joins the rest of us in our continued fascination with that institution and its metaphorical counterparts: “Once in a while, when I hear news about prisoners or even an execution, I find myself thankful I’m not in such a situation,” he says. “[Our freedoms] are suddenly framed and put into perspective . . . just as standing across the street from a building that houses people who don’t have the things we [take for granted] makes us more aware of and sensitive to our assumed conditions.”

As for the real, long-defunct prison on which Cammie’s home is based, it’s currently the subject of several renewal-project proposals (including a lovely one that’s worked into The Warden’s Daughter). And Spinelli’s friend Ellen, the original warden’s daughter? She gave the book “a rave review.”

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reviews T PI OP CK

CHILDREN’S

FLYING LESSONS & OTHER STORIES

Bright stories from diverse voices REVIEW BY HEATHER SEGGEL

A young man spends his summer being shut out of basketball games and learns a valuable lesson about persistence. Choctaw storytelling traditions keep a family in stitches, in between eye rolls. A girl’s anger when her father allows an injustice to stand shifts as she realizes he’s gently changing the world on her behalf. These stories and more fill Flying Lessons & Other Stories, and each unique journey reinforces the notion that diversity in publishing is not just welcome but vital.

The anthology, edited by We Need Diverse Books co-founder Ellen Oh, doesn’t limit itself to the here and now. Grace Lin’s fable “The Difficult Path” describes indentured servant Lingsi’s unexpected journey out of servitude in ancient China, a life made possible because she’s a rare commodity: a female who can read. Debut author Kelly J. Baptist Edited by Ellen Oh sets much of “The Beans and Rice Chronicles of Isaiah Dunn” in a Crown, $16.99, 240 pages public library, where Isaiah escapes his difficult home life and disapISBN 9781101934593, audio, eBook available pears into the notebook his late father left behind. Stories by Kwame Ages 8 to 12 Alexander, Tim Federle, Jacqueline Woodson and the late Walter Dean MIDDLE GRADE Myers, to whom the book is dedicated, never let the reader stay in one place too long . . . and that’s the point.

By turns quick and funny, thoughtful and heartbreaking, Flying Lessons & Other Stories will expand your worldview in quick, addictive bites. Prepare for liftoff and enjoy.

XO, OX

By Adam Rex

Illustrated by Scott Campbell Roaring Brook $17.99, 40 pages ISBN 9781626722880 Ages 4 to 8 PICTURE BOOK

It may be only January, but at year’s end, we’ll look back on this picture book as one of 2017’s funniest.

On the book’s title page spread, we see an ox traipsing along, sniffing a rose, and in the sky the clouds form the dramatic image of a graceful gazelle. Yep, Ox is smitten. Thus this epistolary story begins. Ox sits in his bedroom, an image of the beautiful gazelle on his wall, and writes his first letter, declaring his love for her in no uncertain terms. The entire book consists of their correspondence brought to life in Scott Campbell’s earth-toned, relaxed-line illustrations, though the gazelle’s first

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two letters—because she is such a stah, dahling—are impersonal form letters. Ox, however, doesn’t seem to notice: “This is an amazing coincidence! I have written you two letters, and both times you have written back using the exact same words!”

There’s so much humor here, all of it in Adam Rex’s trademark gloriously understated style. When Gazelle writes (clearly fishing for compliments) that she has many faults, Ox naively responds that she really has only one or two. When she scolds him, he responds with heartfelt thanks, calling her the “unflattering light of my life.” His intentions may be sincere, but he unknowingly stumbles with his words and she becomes exasperated. Love conquers all, though— even narcissism. Gazelle falls for Ox in a deliciously mysterious open ending, in the form of an unfinished letter. The final endpapers show the happy couple in a series of spot illustrations.

This is a book to fall in love with.

—J U L I E D A N I E L S O N

A GREYHOUND, A GROUNDHOG

By Emily Jenkins Ilustrated by Chris Appelhans

Schwartz & Wade $17.99, 32 pages ISBN 9780553498059 eBook available Ages 3 to 7

A Greyhound, a Groundhog opens with a swirly gray oval that, on the next page, transforms itself into “A hound. A round hound.

A greyhound.” A similarly oblong hole soon reveals “A hog. A round hog. A groundhog.” The lithe greyhound and the chubby groundhog stretch—and we’re off! Emily Jenkins’ rhythmic text accompanies Chris Appelhans’ whirling illustrations as these two surprising playmates engage in a spirited romp “around and around and around and around” in a pastel-hued meadow. They pause to marvel at a new discovery, only to take up the chase once more.

Jenkins’ dedication credits Ruth Knauss’ A Very Special House for

the text’s inspiration and rhythmic feel. The playful, circular repetition also may remind readers of the modern classic Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett. Appelhans’ joyful watercolor and pencil illustrations perfectly capture the motion and freedom of the chase, as near-abstract shapes convey the pair’s speed. The carefully controlled palette, in shades of gray, brown, pink and purple, reflects the similarly restrained vocabulary, perfect for young listeners and brand-new readers.

Words and pictures turn around one another, much like the two animal friends whose antics they capture so delightfully.

—NORAH PIEHL

THE SWEETEST SOUND

By Sherri Winston Little, Brown $17.99, 272 pages ISBN 9780316302951 eBook available Ages 8 to 12 MIDDLE GRADE

Life has been challenging for 10-year-old Cadence Mariah Jolly ever since her mother disappeared to pursue her musical dreams. As Cadence desperately yearns for her missing mom, she nurses her own musical and literary dreams in Sherri Winston’s heartfelt novel.

In a book brimming with musical allusions, Cadence lives in Harmony, Pennsylvania, and plans to become a “No.1 Bestselling Author of Amazing Stories.” Meanwhile, not even her family or best friends realize that she’s a gifted singer like her mom. Cadence—so shy that people call her Mouse—is trying hard to summon the gumption to change that.

Opportunity presents itself through youth choir auditions at Cadence’s lively, bustling church.

Winston weaves occasional biblical references throughout the novel but still manages to create a story for all creeds and colors—a rare feat indeed. Too timid to audition in person, Cadence posts an anonymous video that soon goes viral,

CHILDREN’S with news outlets vying frantically to identify the mysterious “Gospel Girl.” Ultimately, Cadence faces the agonizing choice of being true to herself or betraying one of her best friends.

Winston has a superb knack for creating intriguing middle school relationships, natural dialogue and an entire village of believable, multicultural characters. The Sweetest Sound is a deftly written saga that reads like a small symphony.

—ALICE CARY

ONE LAST WORD

By Nikki Grimes

Bloomsbury $18.99, 128 pages ISBN 9781619635548 Ages 10 to 14

poem) and pens a new creation using the words from the original.

Her poems are freshly made while echoing her predecessors.

Interspersed with colorful artwork from Sean Qualls, Christopher Myers, Javaka Steptoe and other lauded African-American illustrators, this is an important and timely poetry collection.

meet SAMANTHA COTTERILL

the title of your Q: What’s

new book?

would you describe Q: How

the book?

—SHARON VERBETEN

DEATH ON THE RIVER OF DOUBT

By Samantha Seiple

Scholastic $17.99, 240 pages ISBN 9780545709163 Audio, eBook available Ages 10 and up

has been the biggest influence on your work?

Q: Who

was your favorite subject in school? Why? Q: What

MIDDLE GRADE

MIDDLE GRADE

“We live in a time when life is hard for many people. Yet there is reason to hope and to dig deep for the strength hidden inside of us.”

From award-winning poet Nikki Grimes comes this prophetic statement, which introduces One Last Word, a collection that combines Harlem Renaissance poetry with clever, thought-provoking and intricately formed poems of her own.

Grimes begins her book with reflections on the notable poets of the early 20th-century Harlem Renaissance, which includes Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and other lesser-known poets, especially emerging women writers. They wrote about race, humanity’s role in the universe, anger, beauty and more. Grimes’ collection couldn’t come at a better time, as she notes: “These literary lights, writing at a time when the lynching of black men filled the news, were more than familiar with racial profiling, racial violence and every variety of injustice imaginable. Yet they ascended to great heights in spite of it all.”

In addition to their words ringing true, the real forte of this book are Grimes’ “golden shovel” poems, a challenging form in which she takes a line (or in some cases, a whole

Readers will enjoy a rapid ride through history in Death on the River of Doubt as Theodore Roosevelt, his son Kermit, explorer Colonel Cândido Rondon and a jungle-hardened crew explore an uncharted river in Brazil’s Amazonian rainforest. In 1913-14, these explorers spent nearly four months surveying the river, during which time Roosevelt also planned to collect wildlife specimens for the American Museum of Natural History.

The expedition started with severe losses, as the team was forced to ditch supplies as mules and oxen died of starvation. This was just the beginning of travails for the crew. In one gripping moment, two canoes became pinned between river rocks, and Roosevelt rushed into piranha-infested waters to help free the boats, gouging his leg in the process. As Roosevelt’s leg wound and a malarial infection brought him near death, he begged Rondon to leave him behind.

Author Samantha Seiple adds realism to the story through explorers’ journal entries and photographs. In his darkest moments, Roosevelt may have doubted his expedition and his own survival, but there is no doubt that this middle grade read earns high marks for historical accuracy and adventure.

—LORI K. JOYCE

Q: Who was your childhood hero?

books did you enjoy as a child?

Q: What

one thing would you like to learn to do?

Q: What

message would you like to send to young readers?

Q: What

NO MORE BOWS In No More Bows (HarperCollins, $17.99, 40 pages, ISBN 9780062408709, ages 4 to 8), the debut picture book from author-illustrator Samantha Cotterill, a girl named Milly loves dressing up her dog, Hugo, in big, beautiful, obnoxious bows. But Hugo isn’t fond of this look, and he runs away, only to discover that maybe some bows aren’t so bad, after all. Cotterill lives in upstate New York with her husband and two sons.

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WORDNOOK

BY THE EDITORS OF MERRIAM-WEBSTER

BATTLE READY Dear Editor: Why is the main combat force of the army called the infantry? Since they are foot soldiers, I would expect the name of this branch to reflect it.

G. P. Leawood, Kansas In the U.S. Army, the combat infantry soldier’s badge is a mark of honor, though colloquialisms such as grunt express another viewpoint about the status of the ordinary foot soldier. The history of the word infantry goes back to the Italian word fante, descended from Latin infans, meaning “infant, child.” Fante originally meant “child,” later meant “youth, boy,” and still later “servant.” In the early 14th century, fante also took on the sense “foot soldier.” In the high Middle Ages, he was typically a lowly figure who was often a servant in the horseman’s retinue and of little value on the battlefield. But in the 15th and 16th centuries the

situation changed, as foot soldiers equipped first with longbows and crossbows and then with pikes and matchlock guns achieved dominance over mounted troops in cumbersome armor. The fanteria— that is, the foot soldiers or fanti, collectively—became a significant branch of the arms, and the Italian word, in the more Latinate form infanteria, was borrowed into English in the 1500s as infantry.

ANGRY GODS Dear Editor: Which came first, the word fury meaning “extreme anger,” or the word fury meaning the three Greek goddesses?

M. L. Greenwood, Indiana No more fearsome figures darkened Greek mythology than the Erinyes. Born of blood drops from the emasculation of the god Uranus, with snakes coiled in their hair, they roamed the land aveng-

ing perjury and murder and carrying out the curses of parent against son. Neither prayer nor tears could sway them, nor sacrifice stave off their wrath. To the Romans, they were known as the Dirae or the Furiae. The latter name is a personified form of the Latin plural noun furiae, meaning “frenzy,” a derivative of furere, meaning “to rage.” Thus the Romans took their word for anger and applied it to the dreaded deities. English fury is borrowed via French from the singular form furia. The earliest known use of the English word fury in print is found in Chaucer’s late 14th-century poem “Troilus and Criseyde,” and the earliest known reference in print to the Greek goddesses as furies appears slightly later in Chaucer’s “The Legend of Good Women.”

compunction and scruple. Where do these words come from?

T. K. Parma, Ohio Perhaps the most interesting of the three words, qualm, is unfortunately of unknown origin.

Compunction derives ultimately from the Latin verb compungere, “to prick hard” or “to sting.” When we express the hope that someone doing wrong will feel some compunction—or will experience a sting of conscience—we are using expressions that embody the same metaphor. Scruple traces to Latin scrupus. In Latin scrupus meant literally “sharp stone.” Metaphorically, Latin scrupus meant “source of uneasiness,” alluding to the way a sharp pebble that has worked its way into one’s shoe becomes a nagging cause of discomfort.

GUILT TRIP

Send correspondence regarding Word Nook to: Language Research Service P.O. Box 281 Springfield, MA 01102

Dear Editor: There seem to be a lot of words for feelings of guilt, such as qualm,

Test Your Mental Mettle with Puzzles from 399 Games to Keep Your Brain Young

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Word Finder—In the Kitchen

• Blue collar • Out of the blue • Big Blue • Blue blood • Blueprints • Blue dog • Once in a blue moon • Blue laws

1. Rage; and stage 2. Scold; and old 3. Plot; and yacht

Rhyme Time

Trivia—Don’t Be Blue

4. Plum; and slum 5. Deuce; and goose 6. Ghost; and toast

7. Canteen; and caffeine 8. Little Rock; and alarm clock 9. Truth; and youth

10. Science; and appliance 11. Bahamas; and pajamas 12. Curse; and nurse

ANSWERS

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workman.com

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● Happening unexpectedly or suddenly.

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● Term used for conservative Democratic office holders.

● Happening very rarely.

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● The nickname for IBM.

● Archaic legislation that enforces religious or moral standards such as prohibitions on Sunday shopping or the sale of alcohol.

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This quiz tests your knowledge of common expressions that use the word blue.

● An architect’s drawings.

● You have this if you’re related to royalty.

Word List

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executive functioning

● Descriptive phrase for a manual laborer.

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long-term memory

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trivia

DON’T BE BLUE

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10. Physics or chemistry; and dishwasher or refrigerator.

5. Low-valued playing card; and a waterfowl known for flying in V-formation during migration.

11. Islands north of Cuba; and sleepwear.

6. A spectral figure; and cooked bread.

12. To swear or blaspheme; and Florence Nightingale’s profession.

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9. Veracity; and, as the saying goes, this is wasted on the young.

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4. Juicy purple fruit; and rundown area of a city with substandard housing.

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Word Finders are excellent brain exercises. Can you find all twenty-five kitchen-related items in the grid—printed forward, backward, and diagonally? For an extra-challenging brain workout, put a two-minute timer on this game and don’t use the word list unless you get stuck.

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3. Small garden area; and luxury boat.

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8. The capital of Arkansas; and a device that wakes you up.

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2. To reprimand or rebuke; and not young.

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7. A soldier’s water bottle; and the stimulant in tea and coffee.

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1. Extreme anger; and area in a theater where the play takes place.

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Each question in this game includes two definitions for two different words. The twist is, they will rhyme.

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rhyme❖ time❖

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