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AMERICAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BOOK REVIEW

DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT GOOK

JULY 2016

The BEST suspense for your summer reading!

From John Boyne, author oF

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS, comes another extraordinary story oF

World War ii WHEN PIERROT BECOMES AN orphan, he must leave his home in Paris for a new life with his aunt Beatrix, a servant in a wealthy Austrian household. But this is no ordinary time, for it is 1935 and the Second World War is fast approaching; and this is no ordinary house, for this is the Berghof, the home of Adolf Hitler.

H“ Will captivate teens.” —SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED REVIEW

“A compelling account of the attractions of power, the malleability of youth, and the terrible pain of a life filled with regret.” —THE GUARDIAN

“A story full of suspense and heartbreak that will leave readers wanting more. Compare this book to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” —SCHOOL LIBRARY CONNECTION

AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK

HENRY HOLT

IMPRINTS OF MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S PUBLISHING GROUP

contents

JULY 2016

columns 04 04 05 06 09 10 12 12

Lifestyles Well Read Library Reads Whodunit Book Clubs Audio Romance Cooking

on the cover

During Private Eye July, discover the best new mysteries and thrillers to keep you flipping pages all summer long. Cover image © Taylor Schena

book reviews

features 14 18 19 19 20 23 28

21 FICTION

My Father Before Me by Chris Forhan

t o p p i c k : Miss Jane

Clay Byars Gina Wohlsdorf Domestic suspense Cozies Kate Summerscale Political fiction Victoria Schwab

Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

by Brad Watson The House at the Edge of Night by Catherine Banner

This Is Where You Belong by Melody Warnick

Barkskins by Annie Proulx Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

83 Minutes by Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne

This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell

The Return by Hisham Matar Eve of a Hundred Midnights by Bill Lascher

Night of the Animals by Bill Broun

meet the author 13 Tiffany Reisz

Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty by Ramona Ausubel

29 TEEN

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon

t o p p i c k : The Memory Book

How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball

Local Girl Swept Away by Ellen Wittlinger

The Inseparables by Stuart Nadler

Remix by Non Pratt

Jonathan Unleashed by Meg Rosoff

Run by Kody Keplinger

Judenstaat by Simone Zelitch Invincible Summer by Alice Adams

25 NONFICTION

by Lara Avery

30 CHILDREN’S

t o p p i c k : Nine, Ten by Nora

t o p p i c k : My Father and Atticus

31 Esmé Shapiro

Finch by Joseph Madison Beck

Raleigh Baskin Best Frints in the Whole Universe by Antoinette Portis

How to Be a Person in the World by Heather Havrilesky

The Voyage to Magical North by Claire Fayers

Lassoing the Sun by Mark Woods

The World from Up Here by Cecilia Galante

White Trash by Nancy Isenberg

A M E R I C A’ S B O O K R E V I E W PUBLISHER Michael A. Zibart

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

CHILDREN’S BOOKS OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Allison

Cat Acree

Hammond

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

ASSISTANT EDITOR

CONTRIBUTOR

Julia Steele

Lily McLemore

Roger Bishop

EDITOR

ASSISTANT EDITOR

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Hilli Levin

Penny Childress

Lynn L. Green

The Massive International Bestseller A Turbulent and Heartwarming Tale Of Grief, Tenderness and Passion

MANAGING EDITOR

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

EDITORIAL INTERN

Trisha Ping

Sukey Howard

Rachel Hoge

Elizabeth Grace Herbert

ADVERTISING OPERATIONS Sada Stipe

MARKETING Mary Claire Zibart

CONTROLLER Sharon Kozy

EDITORIAL POLICY BookPage is a selection guide for new books. Our editors evaluate and select for review the best books published in a variety of categories. Only books we highly recommend are featured. BookPage is editorially independent and never accepts payment for editorial coverage.

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“Profoundly moving and expertly told. The wisdom and magic in these pages will linger long after the book is closed.” —#1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs “A heartbreaking story of love and loss that will twist readers up in knots. . . Essential for any foreign literature or women's ﬁction collection.” —Library Journal “Martin-Lugand’s sparse but “Ma emotionally forceful style, aided by Smith’s translation from the original French, catches the sweeter moments between two people embittered by loss.” —Kirkus Reviews

columns

LIFESTYLES

WELL READ

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

BY ROBERT WEIBEZAHL

Out on a limb Two books in this month’s column are about practicality in shelter, more or less, so by way of healthy contrast I first offer you a luscious tome of structures that are more like fantasies come to life. My 8-year-old daughter spied Dream Treehouses (Abrams, $45, 240 pages, ISBN 9781419719745) on the coffee table and asked, “Are these real ?” Yes, dear, amazingly they are. The 40 treehouses pictured here in full-color pho-

tographs and watercolor design drawings are situated in all corners of the globe and are typically 50 to 65 feet above ground. They’re also incredible feats of engineering by the French design company La Cabane Perchée: Great care is given to protect the health of the tree into which each house is built—no nails are used, no branches are cut. As fascinating as the exteriors of these treehouses are, the interior details, which reveal thoughtful use of space and multipurpose furnishings, are just as impressive. Some of these are for children, but more are designed for use by adults, and all will give you—assuming you are a lover of trees and the outdoors—a sense of beautiful possibility for a dream (backyard?) getaway.

CABIN FEVER Timber framing—a type of postand-beam construction—may seem like a specialized skill, but as Will Beemer illustrates in Learn to Timber Frame (Storey, $24.95, 192 pages, ISBN 9781612126685), it’s not out of reach for the average person. Beemer is a founding member of the Timber Framers Guild, and with his wife he runs the Heartwood School for the Homebuilding Crafts in Washington, Massachusetts. In this book, he carefully explains the layout

Finding Peter Pan systems, tools, cutting procedures and foundation and enclosure systems required to build a timber frame structure. Detailed plans for a 12-by-16-foot building, with instructions for making the frame bigger, smaller or with other variations such as a loft are also included. Through timber framing, Beemer aims “to empower our hands, to train our eyes for quality and beauty in the design of things, and to explore the ways we might live in a more honest relationship with our planet.”

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES Anyone else out there feel overwhelmed by the vast options in home design and decor? As my husband and I begin the long-awaited process of adding on to our bungalow, I somehow don’t think an occasional peek at Pinterest is going to suffice. To the rescue comes Home Decor Cheat Sheets (Ulysses Press, $16.95, 128 pages, ISBN 9781612435541), a simple visual guide to furnishings and interior elements such as types of doors, windows, blinds and beyond. This is an incredibly quick and informative study: In an hour or so you can go from having no idea what a cabriole is to being conversant in the styles of everything from sofas to lamps to cabinet knobs and nails. You’ll learn the best ways to hang art, position and size a rug and light a bathroom; you’ll understand how to create layers of light and master proportion and scale. Decisions will still have to be made, and there’s that pesky matter of a budget—but a visit with this slim and practical volume should be an incredible step up in the game.

Peter Pan is one of the most enduring characters in all of literature. The boy who won’t grow up speaks to children and adults alike, and his story, first given to the world by J.M. Barrie at the beginning of the last century, has been adapted and co-opted innumerable times since. The story of Peter’s origins in Barrie’s real-life relationship with the young Llewelyn Davies brothers has been told before, most famously in the film Finding Neverland. In The Real Peter Pan (Thomas Dunne, $27.99, 416 pages, ISBN 9781250087799) Piers Dudgeon reveals how sanitized that movie’s version of events was, hinting at a far more complex and disquieting connection between Barrie and the boys, particularly the second youngest, Michael. Dudgeon, who previously wrote Neverland: J.M. Barrie, the du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan, says this new book isn’t principally about Barrie, but the claim is a weak one. The first half of the book is largely about the author, and in the latter half, when Michael reaches his boarding school and university years, Barrie still dominates much of the narrative. This emphasis is unavoidable, since it is how the writer insinuated himself into this family that fascinates and incites speculation about his motives. Barrie seems to have fallen in love, at least emotionally, with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the daughter of novelist George du Maurier (and aunt to novelist Daphne). His love extended to her five young sons, for whom Barrie became a sort of second nanny, playing vigorous games with them in London’s Kensington Gardens that would provide the impetus for Peter Pan’s fictional adventures.

Dudgeon finds no evidence that Barrie and Sylvia were lovers. Her husband, to whom she seemed devoted, was still alive when this unconventional household arrangement began, although he died soon after. The also-married Barrie, Dudgeon suggests, was likely a latent homosexual, although there is no documented proof. Barrie, wealthy from his writing, was generous with the family, and when Sylvia died, leaving the boys orphans, he stepped in (with no legal decree) as guardian. The older boys seemed largely immune to Barrie’s charms, but the younger ones, particularly Michael, became his special projects. Dudgeon acknowledges, as others have before him, that Barrie’s interest in the prepubescent boys would set off alarm bells today. Reading between the lines of the many letters and recollections quoted here, it is hard not to subscribe to the possibility that untoward feelings were at play. With no indisputable evidence, however, Dudgeon focuses more on the psychic damage done to Michael by Barrie’s intense “love.” As he grew up, Michael seemed inclined to distance himself from Barrie and the Peter Pan legacy. He drowned while at Oxford, and many believed at the time that it was suicide. There may never be a definitive answer to the true nature of the Barrie-Llewelyn Davies situation, but The Real Peter Pan further opens the window on a compelling literary backstory. Going well beyond a consideration of possible inappropriate behavior, Dudgeon does well in linking the sylvan settings of Peter Pan with Michael’s love of the natural landscape, and he makes strong connections between the Barrie classic and Peter Ibbetson, a novel by Michael’s grandfather. Barrie fans may find The Real Peter Pan somewhat disillusioning, but that does not diminish the book’s value.

Selected from nominations made by library staff across the country, here are the 10 books that librarians can’t wait to share with readers in July.

DARK MATTER by Blake Crouch Crown, ISBN 9781101904220

What if you woke up in a world where your life took a very different path? That’s the premise of Crouch’s compulsive, surprising new thriller.

THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 by Ruth Ware

Scout Press, ISBN 9781501132933 This unsettling second novel from bestseller Ware (In a Dark, Dark Wood) takes place on a luxury cruise where travel writer Lo sees a woman fall overboard—but no one believes her.

THE LAST ONE by Alexandra Oliva

Ballantine, ISBN 9781101965085 In this fast-paced thriller, Oliva blends a dystopian tale with a biting critique of media to tell the story of a reality TV show contestant’s fight for survival. Read our review on page 16.

AMONG THE WICKED by Linda Castillo

Minotaur, ISBN 9781250061577 Chief of Police Kate Burkholder must infiltrate a secretive Amish community to discover the person responsible for the death of a young girl.

THE UNSEEN WORLD by Liz Moore

Norton, ISBN 9780393241686 A daughter tries to uncover the truth about her genius father’s past in a beautiful literary novel from the author of the 2012 bestseller Heft.

TRULY MADLY GUILTY by Liane Moriarty

Flatiron, ISBN 9781250069795 Clementine and Erika’s lifelong friendship is tested after a fateful barbecue in this perceptive new novel from the author of Big Little Lies.

Proud, industrious, creative, generous, and patriotic – that’s the Spirit of America! You’ll read stories about:

ALL IS NOT FORGOTTEN by Wendy Walker

America’s heroes – service members, military families, veterans, first responders

THE HOPEFULS by Jennifer Close

9/11 fifteen years later – from the families of the lost, to the air traffic controllers who were on duty, to the spirit of a united nation in the days that followed

St. Martin’s, ISBN 9781250097910 What if you could forget the worst thing that ever happened to you? In this suspenseful thriller, the victim of a violent assault takes a drug to erase her memory. Read our review on page 16.

Knopf, ISBN 9781101875612 Ambition, politics and marriage combine in this perceptive new novel set during the early days of the Obama administration. Read our review on page 23.

SIRACUSA by Delia Ephron

Blue Rider, ISBN 9780399165214 Two married couples find their relationships challenged on an Italian vacation in Ephron’s darkly comic story of domestic discord. Read our review on page 19.

NINE WOMEN, ONE DRESS by Jane L. Rosen

Doubleday, ISBN 9780385541404 The proverbial little black dress holds more than a touch of magic for many different women in this delightful, heartwarming story. LibraryReads is a recommendation program that highlights librarians’ favorite books published this month. For more information, visit libraryreads.org.

Traditions – from baseball to apple pie to parades to our national parks American ingenuity, from the space program to made-in-America to our can-do attitude The red, white, and blue – our flag and what it means to us

www.chickensoup.com 100% made in the USA

columns

WHODUNIT BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Skillful red herrings in an English police procedural Crotchety Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond returns in Peter Lovesey’s clever new mystery, Another One Goes Tonight (Soho Crime, $27.95, 400 pages, ISBN 9781616957582). Diamond is a bit out of his element in his 16th adventure, plucked from his customary duties to investigate a

notice another victim, an elderly cyclist pitched far off the roadside. The incident threatens to be a PR nightmare for the police department, so Diamond is tasked with damage control. The cyclist turns out to be a member of a loosely knit group of train aficionados, several of whom have recently died

single-vehicle road accident involving a police car. The driver was killed in the crash, and the second officer was seriously injured. But the team of first responders didn’t

under suspicious circumstances. Punctuating the crisp police procedural text are several italicized notes—apparently from a serial killer. But Lovesey is a master of

The man who shattered her trust is back to protect her. “Palmer knows how to make the sparks fly.” —Publishers Weekly

Available now in print and ebook.

www.DianaPalmer.com • www.HQNBooks.com

16_181_BookPage_Defender_2.indd 1

misdirection; just when you think you have it all sussed out, you’ll find yourself back at square one, without so much as a clue.

CLASSIC CAR CRIMES Martin Walker’s engagingly droll series featuring Bruno, Chief of Police, is a longtime favorite of mine. Fatal Pursuit (Knopf, $25.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9781101946787) centers on shenanigans involving an iconic Bugatti automobile that went missing during World War II and could fetch tens of millions of dollars at auction. Recently, documents have been unearthed that suggest that the car may be secreted away somewhere near Bruno’s hometown of St. Denis, France. The timing could scarcely be better, for St. Denis is hosting its first-ever car rally, and the streets are filled with classic Jaguars, Citroëns, hot-rodded Volkswagens and, of course, Bruno’s well-used 1954 Land Rover. But when there are avaricious car collectors at hand and a multimillion-dollar car is their potential holy grail, it should come as no surprise that someone is willing to stoop to murder to secure the prize. Readers can expect great plot and great milieu, but the icing on the gâteau is Bruno himself. Of all the cops in all the cop books I’ve read, he is the one whose home I would like to visit, to partake in one of his delicious-sounding meals and perhaps a bottle of Bergerac red.

READY FOR TAKEOFF Shane Kuhn’s standalone novel The Asset (Simon & Schuster, $26, 288 pages, ISBN 9781476796215) poses the compelling question of how far one will go in the service of one’s country, especially in times of national emergency, heavy secrecy and plausible deniability. The man named Kennedy suffers from what he calls “terminal illness,” a product of the endless succession of airports he visits in his consultancy work as a security expert for the TSA. And expert he is, having been well trained by the Israelis, who have thwarted every single potential incident of terrorism aboard 2016-05-02 12:01 PM

a flight out of Israel. Kennedy strives to achieve that standard in the United States. But lately there have been disturbing rumblings about large-scale munitions purchases in the lax-law countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. The rumors swirl around an opportunistic suspect who goes by the name of Lentz. Kennedy is drafted as the somewhat reluctant team leader of a group of exceptionally talented misfits, including a hacker or two, several mercenaries and a pop singer who displays a remarkable natural proficiency at espionage. Together they must bring down Lentz before Lentz brings down the country. My suggestion: Don’t read this timely, edge-of-theseat thriller on an airplane.

TOP PICK IN MYSTERY James Sallis’ atmospheric and disturbing Willnot (Bloomsbury, $26, 192 pages, ISBN 9781632864529) isn’t exactly a mystery of the “crime-investigation-resolution” type. It is rather more like real life, with some motivations left ambiguous and some loose ends never to be tied up. And it is all the more compelling for that. To describe the book with any adherence to the plot is to leave the reader of the review somewhat puzzled. There is a small-town doctor who is part Atticus Finch, part Truman Capote, a kindly but pragmatic observer of the human condition from the perspective of a gay man in the rural South. There is a clearing in the forest, containing the bones of a number of people who may or may not have been murdered. There is a furtive paramilitary fellow who displays a propensity for getting himself and those around him in the line of fire, in the literal sense. And there is a backstory that involves 1950s sci-fi writers, both famous and obscure. Some books are character driven; others are plot driven. Willnot is prose-driven—a rarity, and a most welcome one.

Enter the

EVEREST SWEEPSTAKES Many chances to WIN!

Indie Summe r Readin g Grou p Top Cho ice

AFTER THE WIND

tells the tragic1996 Everest story that Into Thin Air didn’t tell There were many factors at play leading up to Summit Day: a leader highly driven by competition and publicity, critical decisions made for the wrong reasons, and of course, the impending storm. In spite of the months spent in a cold and hostile environment and the physical and mental rigors of high-altitude climbing, Michigan native Lou Kasischke survived because just 400 feet from the summit, when he felt it was too late, he made the lifesaving decision to turn back from his quest and head back down the mountain… and home to his wife.

Available now wherever books are sold

enter to win at bookpage.com/contests

1 GRAND PRIZE WINNER

Receives a $250 gift card to REI, a signed copy of After The Wind, and the Everest movie on DVD!

10 SECOND PLACE WINNERS

Receive 14 copies of After The Wind for your reading group and a copy of the Everest movie on DVD!

25 THIRD PLACE WINNERS

Receive two copies of After The Wind – one for you and one to donate to your beloved local library!

“Kasischke’s perspective and analysis may shock those who have relied on Into Thin Air as the most accurate account of what happened.” — New York Book Festival “Kasischke’s miraculous account of survival is paired with the love story of his connection with his wife Sandy. Intense and profound.” — Midwest Book Review

Now in paperback, with new material: A Conversation with the Author & Book Group Questions Lou Kasischke was a consultant on the Everest movie u See more at AftertheWind.com No purchase necessary. Contest begins on July 1, 2016 and ends on July 31, 2016 at 11:59 CDT. For official rules and more information, go to www.bookpage.com/contests

Great Books for Summer Reading Now in Paperback and eBook

“A fun, fast-paced, completely engrossing tale.... Let me rave: this book is brilliant and enjoyable on every level.”

Sparkles with African sunshine and wit.”—The Dallas Morning News

“Charming and hilarious.... Alexander McCall Smith’s world is sweet and timeless.”—The Seattle Times

“Utterly charming....

Such a tender, carefully polished work that it seems like a blessing.” —The Washington Post

A Best Book of the Year: The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, BookPage, and more

—Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Rumor

“Endearing, amusing....

JANE SMILEY’S THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS TRILOGY “A monumental portrait of an American family and an American century.”

“Moving....

An old-fashioned tale of rural family life.” —The Washington Post

“Wondrous....

Mesmerizing.... Develops lives that are rich, mysterious and constantly changing.” —The Washington Post

are explored with biting intelligence, great narrative skill, good humor and generosity of spirit.” —The New Yorker

A Best Book of the Year: BookPage, The Washington Post, NPR, and more

—Los Angeles Times

VINTAGE

“Compelling.... Relationships

Enter our Summertime R&R Sweepstakes for a chance to win great books and a tote bag! Enter at ReadingGroupCenter.com

ANCHOR

columns

BOOK CLUBS BY JULIE HALE

Written in the stars Elsa Hart’s impressive first novel, Jade Dragon Mountain (Minotaur, $15.99, 368 pages, ISBN 9781250072337), takes place in China in the early 1700s. Unjustly cast out of Beijing, former imperial librarian Li Du takes up a life of wandering. He makes his way to Dayan, a bustling town on the Tibetan border, where Tulishen, his cousin, serves as magistrate. Thanks to information provided by astronomers, Emperor Kangxi will soon come to Dayan and—to all appearances—order an eclipse of the sun. The town’s inhabitants

eagerly await the miracle. But when a Jesuit astronomer is murdered, intrigue sweeps through the community. Tulishen orders Li Du to identify the guilty party—a task that proves a challenge in a town of surprises, where people aren’t who they seem. From this exotic plot, Hart spins a compelling mystery, and she fleshes out the tale with elements of Chinese history and literature. Li’s own story figures into the narrative, pointing to the next installment in the series, out this fall. This is an intoxicating debut from a promising new writer.

A FINAL CHAPTER Beloved novelist Kent Haruf died in November 2014. His last book, Our Souls at Night (Vintage, $15, 192 pages, ISBN 9781101911921), is set in familiar territory: Holt, Colorado, the small town that has provided the backdrop for his previous books, including Plainsong (1999). Addie Moore, a 70-year-old widow, finds herself bonding with Louis Waters, whose late wife was her friend. Addie and Louis are empty-nesters who face lonely nights at home and begin sleeping

together— without having sex—to keep each other company. Their friendship stirs up gossip in Holt, and Addie’s son and Louis’ daughter aren’t thrilled about the new chapter in their parents’ lives. But as the two become close, sharing stories and memories, they realize that the attachment they share is more important than other people’s opinions. The narrative moves fluidly through time, flashing back to the pasts of Addie and Louis as their relationship deepens. Haruf’s lean, unembellished prose is the perfect vehicle for the story of their unexpected connection. Fans will find much to savor in this poignant, beautifully executed novel.

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS Ron Rash’s sixth novel, Above the Waterfall (Ecco, $15.99, 272 pages, ISBN 9780062349323), is a suspenseful, poetic tale set in the North Carolina mountains. Part of a community that’s been forever altered by crystal meth, Les is a vigilant sheriff on the brink of retirement. He finds a likeminded soul in park ranger Becky, who is struggling to escape the weight of her tragic past and shares his deep love of nature. When an oddball character named Gerald Blackwelder is blamed for poisoning a trout stream that lies on the grounds of a popular resort, Becky goes to bat for him. But the case is far from cut and dried, and Becky and Les soon find themselves enmeshed in a dark plot involving family conflict and divided loyalties. This brisk, compelling novel is narrated by both Becky and Les. A chilling portrayal of contemporary Appalachia, it’s the work of a writer at the peak of his powers.

Fresh Book Club Picks for Summer

Forever Beach by Shelley Noble

“An uplifting story of love, trust, friendship, and the ever-changing face of family.” —Wendy Wax, USA Today bestselling author of Sunshine

A Certain Age

by Beatriz Williams

Beatriz Williams brings the Roaring Twenties brilliantly to life in this enchanting and compulsively readable tale of intrigue, romance, and scandal in New York high society.

The Sun in Your Eyes

by Deborah Shapiro “Put down everything and pick up The Sun in Your Eyes! It’s beguiling, funny, bighearted and true – the perfect summer book. You’re welcome.” —Ann Hood, bestselling author of The Knitting Circle

Girl in the Woods

by Aspen Matis

“A lovely tribute to the healing power of wilderness.” —Nicholas Kristof, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

@Morrow_PB

@bookclubgirl

William Morrow

Book Club Girl

Audiobooks that Make A splash! Read by the authors “Mother and daughter give an entertaining, down-to-earth narration as they reflect on various aspects of their lives.”

—AudioFile (Best Book of the Year) on Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?

columns An idealistic struggle Many historians have called the Spanish Civil War the first battle of World War II. For the 2,800 Americans who went to Spain to fight with the Spanish Republic against Gen. Francisco Franco and his fascist forces, it was a war that had moral clarity, wreathed in idealism and romanticism. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (Recorded Books, 15.5 hours) is Adam Hochschild’s extraordinary evocation of that time and of those

Read by Henry Leyva “This thriller procedural packs plenty of pulse-raising action.” —Publishers Weekly on Out of the Ashes

Read by Caroline Lee “[Caroline] Lee’s unusual vocal timbre coupled with outstanding acting makes this a listening experience you can’t tear yourself away from. What a delight.” —AudioFile on Big Little Lies, Earphones Award winner

who fought, witnessed and wrote about it. Through books, journals and letters, Hochschild follows the stories of a few of the volunteers, plus celebrated writers like George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway and New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews. Powerfully and provocatively, he explains the complicated politics of the war, with Hitler and Mussolini backing Franco and using Spain as a testing ground, Stalin backing the Republicans, and the U.S. and Western Europe staying away. Franco won, idealism was defeated, but these brave men and women will stay in your heart.

Ilya S. Savenok/Stringer

GOOD FELLOWES

Read by Dylan Baker “An assured, powerful novel that blends suspense and rich family drama....It is, in a word, unforgettable.” —William Landay, author of Defending Jacob

Listen to excerpts on www.UnabridgedAccess.com

AUDIO BY SUKEY HOWARD

If you’re still suffering from “Downton Abbey” withdrawal, as I am, here’s the perfect cure. The wonderfully talented “Downton” writer has a new historical novel called Julian Fellowes’s Belgravia (Hachette Audio, 16 hours). In April, the novel was made available in weekly installments through an app that could morph from print to audio on your phone or tablet. But now, you can revel in the story the old-fashioned way, listening to Fellowes’ fabulous tale in its entirety. The audio version, read by Juliet Stevenson, who easily moves from the buttery British tones that belong upstairs to accents found

below in the servants hall, has all the gossipy social intrigue of Downton and all the cliffhanger tension of a serial. Set in London in the 1840s, when the emerging middle-class nouveau riche could aspire to the upper echelons of society, the plot twists around a long-held secret that affects the colorful cast of characters in different ways, sparking kindness, love and romance, and envy, greed, rage and deception. Delicious!

TOP PICK IN AUDIO In the author’s note at the end of Peacekeeping (Macmillan Audio, 14 hours), Mischa Berlinski’s brilliant new novel, is an oblique disclaimer that he is not the unnamed narrator in the book. Be that as it may, Berlinski lived in Haiti from 2007 to 2011, and his compassion for this devastatingly poor nation, buffeted by both the well-meaning and the overtly evil, takes us into Haiti’s heart, its poverty and its people’s pluck in the face of that poverty. The story Berlinski weaves into this consummately observed landscape is set mostly in remote Jérémie, where Terry White, a former Florida cop with debts to pay, is now part of the U.N.’s alphabet soup of peacekeepers. Determined to right wrongs, he gets involved with an idealistic, American-educated judge, who decides to run for the Haitian Senate against the current corrupt Sénateur. Meanwhile, White begins an affair with the judge’s gorgeous, green-eyed wife. Ably narrated by Ben Williams, Peacekeeping is a wild ride through the bankrupt politics of class and color, with finely drawn characters and unforgettable scenes touched with humor and irony.

High Summer, High Drama Make your summer sizzle with these great beach reads from ON SALE 7/5

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columns

ROMANCE

COOKING

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

BY SYBIL PRATT

Lover of darkness A man with paranormal powers finds his fated mate in Shadow Rider (Jove, $7.99, 480 pages, ISBN 9780515156133), the first in Christine Feehan’s new S hadow series. Stefano, oldest of the wealthy and notorious Ferraro family, sees Francesca Cappello on the streets of Chicago and knows she has his same gift—an ability to ride the shadows and move about unseen. His family uses their various

supernatural powers to serve up justice, and while he falls for Francesca immediately, he worries that his family’s unconventional—and illegal—crime-fighting might scare her off. Francesca has troubles of her own, however, and turns to Stefano for help, quickly learning what marrying a Ferraro would mean. As an orphan, she longs for the closeness of a family like Stefano’s, but becoming his bride has implications beyond agreeing to belong to a domineering and protective man. Can she accept him and the powerful love they share? Gritty action and scorching love scenes make this series launch a winner.

A DANGEROUS MAN It’s a classic tale—brooding loner with a secret past fascinates sheltered heroine—and Diana Palmer tells a version of this story with flair in Defender (HQN, $26.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9780373789733). Paul Fiore works as head of security for millionaire Darwin Grayling, which means he spends time watching over Grayling’s daughters. But soon, the mutual attraction between Paul and the oldest, Isabel, sends him running: The financial gulf is too wide, and he’s too commitment-averse. But years later, he’s back in her life as an FBI

The taste of Malibu agent investigating her father’s illegal dealings. Now an assistant district attorney, Isabel has told herself she’s over the silly crush from her youth, but her feelings for Paul return. She wants to avoid Paul and any further risk of heartbreak, but she also wants to stop her cruel and ruthless father. An assassin’s contract on Isabel makes matters more dire, and Paul will do anything to protect her. Palmer’s latest is a sensual and suspenseful read.

TOP PICK IN ROMANCE An aristocrat and an unconventional lady find love and adventure in the first in Mary Jo Putney’s Rogues Redeemed series, Once a Soldier (Zebra, $7.99, 368 pages, ISBN 9781420140927). Following the Peninsular War, Will Masterson is ordered on one last mission before he returns home: a journey to San Gabriel to view how the small mountain kingdom has fared. In this ravaged land, he meets Englishwoman Athena Markham, companion and advisor to the presumptive queen. He’s intrigued by her competence and independence, and the attraction pleasantly surprises them both. Athena, the daughter of an infamous courtesan, has suffered for those circumstances and warms to handsome Major Masterson’s sincere acceptance of her illegitimacy. However, when she learns that he’s titled, she knows there is no future for them—society would never accept her. Before Will has time to persuade her differently, a lethal force threatens the country, and they are caught up in trying to save something bigger than themselves. Will they live to find happiness? Once a Soldier is a thrilling, romantic tale.

Helene Henderson’s Malibu Farm Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $40, 304 pages, ISBN 9781101907368) is one of those rare cookbooks that’s truly transporting. Leaf through the recipes, illustrated with Martin Löf’s luscious photographs, read Henderson’s charmingly idiosyncratic, personal and opinionated header notes, and you’ll find yourself in the perpetual summer of Malibu’s epic beaches.

Henderson takes readers to her backyard farm dinners, where we meet her fluffy-footed hens and spoiled goats and savor the simplicity of the food served there and, now, at her café at the end of Malibu Pier. Henderson, born in the north of Sweden, came to the U.S. when she was 17, dreaming the American dream. She was a caterer and private chef who gave cooking classes that morphed into farm dinners, then into a thriving restaurant business with three locations. The 100 recipes celebrate fresh, organic, locally sourced ingredients that originate in the coop, the hive, the olive grove and more—and range from Goat Cheese Potato Pizza and Roasted Mustard Brussels Sprouts to Saffron Ice Cream. California, here we come.

FIRE AWAY! Whether you get fired up in the summer or go at it with glee all year round, there’s never a shortage of grilling guides or gurus. Among this year’s crop, The Total Grilling Manual: 264 Essentials for Cooking with Fire (Weldon Owen, $29, 224 pages, ISBN 9781681880471) has the requisite info on tools and techniques, plus tips on brines and rubs, smoking and stoking, and recipes for every-

thing grillable—from roasting a whole pig on a spit to toasting s’mores with a dollop of dulce de leche. Lots of tantalizing, almost-edible color photos highlight burgers, briskets and buttery béarnaise sauce, kebabs, Korean BBQ and Seared Salad, Sicilian Swordfish, Grilled Gazpacho, Moroccan Lamb and much more. With a sturdy, shiny cover and heavy, coated stock, this manual should be able to withstand sauce spills, grease stains and the sticky fingers that are part of the joy of cooking with live fire.

TOP PICK IN COOKING Some like it hot, as they say, but all cooks love it hot. Heat and how it’s applied is what turns raw ingredients into delicious dishes. In his indispensable series of single-subject technique cookbooks, Michael Ruhlman, James Beard Award-winning author and visionary cook, has offered engaging master classes in Roasting and Braising. Ruhlman’s How to Sauté: Foolproof Techniques and Recipes for the Home Cook (Little, Brown, $20, 192 pages, ISBN 9780316254151), with full-color, step-by-step photos, is the latest in the series. Because sautéing seems the simplest and most ordinary cooking method, it’s easy to overlook its subtleties. But, as before, Ruhlman’s aim is to help you understand and master the complexities and nuances of this technique. He gives you the basics, the tools you need, the staples to have on hand. Then, with each of the 23 superb recipes for sautéing meat, fish, vegetables and one terrific 10-minute dessert to perfection, he explores a different facet of this elegant, elemental way to cook.

the title of your new book? Q: What’s

ANDREW SHAFFER

meet TIFFANY REISZ

Q: Describe the book in one sentence.

events from bourbon history inspired this novel? Q: What

Q: How much drinking did you do for “research”?

one thing everyone should know about a Kentucky girl? Q: What’s

your guilty pleasure? Q: What’s

Q: Words to live by?

THE BOURBON THIEF The author of the popular (and sexy) Original Sinners series, Tiffany Reisz takes a new turn with The Bourbon Thief (MIRA, $15.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780778319429), a Southern gothic saga of scandal and lies swirling around a million-dollar bottle of bourbon. A Kentucky native who studied theology before becoming a writer, Reisz now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her boyfriend and two cats.

features

CLAY BYARS INTERVIEW BY ALICE CARY

For a paralyzed twin, a poignant new path

h hi,” Clay Byars says, answering the phone at his home in what he calls “horse and cow country” in Shelby, Alabama, about an hour south of Birmingham. “How are you?”

The fact that 43-year-old Byars is giving a phone interview is nothing short of a miracle, given that he nearly died not once, but twice—in a pair of events that he chronicles in the intensely powerful memoir Will & I. Not much has been easy since, he writes: “Actions as simple as brushing my teeth, shaving and showering all begin with the question ‘How am I going to do this?’ ” Writing remained one of the few things he could still accomplish without struggle and quickly became “a healing obsession.” Telling his story, however, proved to be anything but easy. “I figure that with all the different drafts,” Byars says, “I’ve probably been working on it for about 15 years. So it’s been a while.” In 1992, during his sophomore year at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, Byars was riding in a car with friends when an oncoming car veered into their lane. Byars likely would have died at the scene had not a passing motorist removed a piece of broken jaw from his airway. Additional injuries included nerve damage

WILL & I

By Clay Byars

FSG Originals, $14, 208 pages ISBN 9780374290283, eBook available

MEMOIR

to his right shoulder that left him unable to bend his elbow. Meanwhile, his identical twin brother, Will, was hours away, back at home in Birmingham, studying for a test and unaware of the accident. Just before midnight, though, Will was suddenly awakened by a throbbing pain in his jaw. “We’ve had incidents like that throughout our lives,” Byars says. “People used to ask us what it’s like to be a twin. My response was always, what’s it like to not be a twin? So I didn’t think much of Will’s jaw pain at the time of my wreck.” Tragically, things went from bad to worse. About nine months later, a New Orleans neurosurgeon nicked Byars’ vertebral artery while attempting to repair the nerve damage, causing him to have a massive stroke. For several weeks, he experienced Locked-In Syndrome, leaving his brain unable to communicate with his body. “It was a weird feeling,” Byars remembers, “and it’s sometimes hard to think about that now. The best way to describe it is having one dream inside of another and waking up, but not being fully awake yet from the first dream.” Byars says the neurosurgeon continued to practice, eventually retiring. When Byars’ parents tried to sue, the surgeon was so respected that other doctors weren’t willing to testify against him. He never apologized, but Byar says, “I kind of understand why he didn’t. He didn’t want to make himself liable.” The initial prognosis was dire, with the best-case scenario that he would remain paralyzed from his eyes down. Will recognized that his brother was “conscious and trapped,” which was unbearable to witness, so he said nothing and left. To others, Will’s reactions might have seemed abrupt, but Byars understood, writing, “Every stage of life we’d gone through not just together but as a unit, as a unity.”

Ever so slowly, Byars began to regain movement, first in his right leg and right thumb. While others rejoiced, hoping that Byars would recover fully, Will held no such illusions, and once again, quickly left his brother’s hospital room. “He didn’t know what to say, and I couldn’t speak,” Byars writes. After months of physical and occupational therapy and workouts at a nearby gym and on his home elliptical, Byars never did fully recover, but today, he walks, drives and lives independently. His vocal cords were left extremely weak, and he’s been taking singing lessons for a number of years, trying to strengthen his “head-injury voice.” As he explains in his memoir: “I like being able to do things I’m not supposed to do. . . . According to my MRI, I should have been more or less a vegetable.” The “Will” in Will & I refers not only to his twin brother, but to Byars’ own incredible will, something that he understood anew while still in the hospital, in what he describes as a “liberating flash of vision.” Both of these “wills,” it turns out, have remained essential to his survival. Undeterred by his vocal problems, Byars is an engaging communicator. In addition to our phone conversation, he answers follow-up questions by email and shares a letter he wrote to Will about his hospital vision, which he later understood to have been the Zen experience of satori, or enlightened consciousness. “It wasn’t a neardeath experience,” he wrote. “On the contrary; it was the greatest affirmation of life I’ve ever felt.” Byars eventually finished college, and he now writes short stories and serves as an assistant editor for Narrative magazine. Will ended up marrying Byars’ high school girl-

friend, and Byars eats dinner with the couple and their three daughters each week. “In many ways, our relationship hasn’t changed since the wreck,” Byars explains in his book. “We are no longer physically equal, but we are more open with each other than we used to be.” When asked if he ever feels jealous of Will, Byars responds, “Sometimes I’m envious of the ease with which he can do things that take me hours, if I can do them at all, but on the whole, no.” Byars’ first attempt to write his story took the form of fiction, but he deemed the storytelling ineffective and too linear. He kept at it, though, eventually attending the Sewanee School of Letters to work with writer John Jeremiah Sullivan, who suggested that he weave his voice lessons into the tale and who also helped him pare down his manuscript. “We went over it line by line, working for about three months,” Byars remembers. The result is compact, substantial and thoroughly compelling— reminiscent of neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi’s posthumous bestseller, When Breath Becomes Air. While Kalanithi addressed the prospect of his impending death from cancer, Byars tackles the question of facing an immensely compromised life. When I suggest that Byars read Kalanithi’s book, he does, later emailing to tell me how much he admires it, and adding, “I wish he’d been my neurosurgeon.”

AN INSPIRING TRUE STORY

SET IN THE MIDST OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA

By 1970, racial tension was at a breaking point in the southern town of Gallatin, Tennessee. Desegregation had emotions running high. The town was a powder keg ready to erupt. But it was also on the verge of something incredible. “The relativity of the blending of sports and race relations is more important today than ever before. More Than Rivals gives the reader a little of both sides.” —TOM & DICK VAN ARSDALE, Indiana University All-Americans; twelve-year NBA players; three-time NBA All-Stars

“A riveting true story of friendship between two boys—one black, one white—during the racially polarizing years of the Deep South. This book will inspire and touch the hearts of young and old alike.” —ROSCOE ORMAN, actor; entertainer; and for forty years played Gordon on Sesame Street

www.MoreThanRivals-thebook.com

Available wherever books and ebooks are sold.

cover story

PRIVATE EYE JULY BY G. ROBERT FRAZIER

Dive into a summer of suspense

eaders looking for a great escape from the everyday routine during their vacation will find it in five of the most offbeat thrillers to hit bookshelves this summer. Whether it’s an alternate history in which slavery never ended or a television reality show turned survivor tale, these books will keep readers turning the pages on the plane or on the beach. In her debut novel, The Last One (Ballantine, $26, 304 pages, ISBN 9781101965085), Alexandra Oliva delivers a pulse-pounding psychological tale of survival. The book starts innocently enough as the 12 contestants on a television reality show are pitted against each other in a game of endurance. The story follows the group through a series of physical challenges and tests of fortitude, with the winners advancing to compete on another night and the losers sent packing. But when a mysterious illness begins taking its toll, things take a dramatic turn. The competitors are all but cut off from the real world and even lose contact with their TV hosts and camera people, leaving them to fend for themselves. At first blush, main protagonist Zoo believes it’s all part of the game, but the deeper she treks into an increasingly apocalyptic landscape, the more desperate and real her situation becomes. The question she must inevitably ask is, how far is she willing to go before her emotional, physical and mental capacity give in to the truth? Oliva masterfully manipulates her characters and the setting, creating a mash-up of popular TV genres: “Survivor” meets “The Walking Dead.”

FORGET-ME-NOT Wendy Walker continues the theme of psychological suspense with her latest novel, All Is Not Forgotten (St. Martin’s, $26.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9781250097910). The thriller, which has already been optioned by Reese Witherspoon for an upcoming Warner Bros. movie, poses a question: What if you could take a drug that would

make you forget about a traumatic experience? The experimental drug is perfectly suited to military members suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but what if it’s given to someone who is the victim of a violent rape? That’s exactly what happens to teenager Jenny Kramer. But while the drug is able to erase the experience of her rape from Jenny’s memory, the physical and emotional scars remain. Helping Jenny come to grips with the trauma is Dr. Alan Forrester, a psychiatrist who acts as the narrator of this harrowing story. But as Forrester delves deeper

whose job is to return escaped slaves to their rightful owners. Like the famed Underground Railroad, slaves vying for freedom make their way across state lines via the Underground Airlines, a system of package trucks, over-the-road haulers and stolen tractor-trailers. Victor’s mission is to infiltrate the system, discover the whereabouts of each escapee and report them to his bosses, who in turn swoop in to apprehend the runaway slave. Of course, things aren’t always what they seem, and Victor’s bizarre allegiance to his employer comes into question when one of his

into the events of that awful night, and the search for the perpetrator intensifies, Forrester’s own life is rocked by the possibility that his son may have committed the foul deed. The twists and turns of the story all lead up to a read you will not soon forget.

cases turns out to be an insider working to upend the slave empire from within. With Victor’s routine shattered, he’s forced to question everything and determine what it is he stands for, regardless of the consequences. Winters handles the controversial topic with sensitivity, yet isn’t afraid to ask some bold questions along the way.

ALT-WORLD RENEGADE With a timely novel focusing on race and equality, Ben H. Winters turns the issue of slavery on its head in Underground Airlines (Mulholland, $26, 336 pages, ISBN 9780316261241). In this astonishing alternate history, slavery in America did not end at the climax of the Civil War, but instead has continued to the present day in four states in the Deep South. What’s more, Winters’ main character, Victor, is a free black man

ONLY THE LONELY Iain Reid’s debut novel, I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Scout Press, $22.95, 224 pages, ISBN 9781501126925), is a tightly crafted, taut thriller that readers can easily finish in a single sitting— perhaps on a lounge chair by the pool. The novel follows a pair of lovers as they embark on a long road trip to meet the parents of the boyfriend, Jake. Things start

innocently enough as the narrator recounts how she met Jake, how she was drawn to him and him to her, despite their unremarkable features. But lurking behind everything, our narrator feels a sense of dread and malice altogether unexplainable. Part of it harkens back to a mysterious stranger she once saw looking in her window and to an anonymous caller’s unnerving phone messages. When Jake decides to take a detour, and our narrator is ultimately left abandoned at a deserted high school, the suspense and danger build. Reid’s straightforward voice firmly places the reader in the head of “the girlfriend” as she tries to cope with the psychological torment facing her in this dark and compelling novel.

HOW HE DIED At first take, Everything I Don’t Remember (Atria, $25, 272 pages, ISBN 9781501138027) by Jonas Hassen Khemiri may seem like a daunting read. The novel swiftly hops from one narrator to another, from one time frame to the next, as it follows a decidedly unconventional story structure. But once readers dive in and allow themselves to become fully immersed in the narratives, they’ll be in for one of the most engrossing novels of the summer. A winner of the August Prize, Sweden’s most prestigious literary honor, the novel recounts the tragic life of a man named Samuel through interviews and conversations with the people around him, all leading up to a fatal car crash. At the root of the novel, however, is a complex puzzle of whether Samuel’s death was the result of a tragic accident, a planned suicide or murder. Piecing together the answers is an unnamed narrator who must come to grips with his own interpretation of himself and those around him. Khemiri’s stylistic approach is sure to keep readers of Everything I Don’t Remember enthralled every step of the way.

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Visit the beautiful coast of Maine in a journey of the heart with the award-winning author Holly Chamberlin.

“Passionate, cutthroat, and brilliant.”

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—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review, Best Books of Summer

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features

GINA WOHLSDORF

Horror and laughs in a clever slasher novel

ebut thrillers tend to fall into two categories: the perfectly plotted handshake that introduces us to the promise of a series to follow and, very rarely, the unexpected high dive that turns convention on its head, dazzling us with its sheer audacity.

Count Gina Wohlsdorf’s Security among the high-board thrillers, both for its narrative daring and successful weaving of horror, humor and Fifty Shades of Grey hotness into one unforgettable reading experience. We enter the luxurious 20-story Manderley Resort in Santa Barbara less than 24 hours before its grand opening. Tessa, the general manager, rides roughshod over housekeeping, front desk and food & bev on the lower 19. The 20th floor remains off-limits to all but the resort’s elite security team, which monitors a state-of-the-art security system specifically designed to protect the world’s one-percenters. But behind this behind-thescenes, pre-grand opening frenzy lurks a masked killer who is systematically retiring the help, one by one, in gruesome ways. Why the carnage? And who’s narrating this grim tale? Wohlsdorf offers clues in the chapter headings, which simply consist of security camera numbers. Then, less than 20 pages in, she doubles the intrigue by splitting the descriptive

SECURITY

By Gina Wohlsdorf

Algonquin, $25.95, 288 pages ISBN 9781616205621, audio, eBook available

THRILLER

narrative briefly into two columns. Then three. Then four. Wohlsdorf breaks into laughter when I admit my first reaction was, “Oh God, no!” “Yeah, this could go so wrong!” she admits during a call to her home in Denver. “I was aware that it was a really, really sensitive device, and I didn’t want it to come across like a device. Whenever the head of security was seeing two or three things at once, I split the page. But I was aware of it as an instrument to sometimes get something across thematically, like splitting the page between a very graphic sex scene and also a staff member’s flight—this duality of sex and death, which is classic to the slasher genre.” And she would know. Growing up in Bismarck, North Dakota, Wohlsdorf dealt with her own preadolescent anxiety by immersing herself in the big-screen mayhem of such cinema slashers as Halloween’s Michael Myers, Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees and Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger. Little did she realize that life would soon nudge her into exploring horror from a whole new perspective: her own. “When I was 13, I got hit by a car going a good 30 miles per hour; it whacked me into the gutter and broke my upper arm clean in half. I looked up from the gutter and just started screaming, and people came to help,” she recalls. “As I was lying there, I suddenly realized: This is what you’ve been afraid of your whole life. You might die here, but you’re OK; it’s a beautiful day, the sun is out, birds are singing and that’s awesome. Lying in the gutter, I realized, you know, it’s really ridiculous how much time you’ve wasted being scared when this is it—you’re here and you’re fine.” Several years later, she took her first stab at writing a slasher novel.

“I loved Stephen King, read everything by Stephen King and loved reading horror, but there was no ‘slasher’ novel,” she says. “So I sat down and tried to write one, and I was like, ‘Well, that’s why; that’s awful!’ It didn’t work at all. It just read wretchedly, and I kind of gave up.” To her surprise, her page and screen influences—including the Daphne du Maurier classic Rebecca (set in part in the Cornish estate of Manderley) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (with its creepy deserted hotel)— combined to inspire a new horror novel idea. But where to set it? “I’m notoriously spatially challenged; you turn me in a circle and I get lost, even in places that “As a kid, I I’m very, very was always familiar with,” wondering Wohlsdorf what Michael admits. “So when I had the Myers was doing when he initial idea for Security, I sat wasn’t on the down and drew screen. Does a very simple schematic of he snack? Does he make the hotel. I knew there phone calls or were 20 floors do laundry?” and an external pool and a glass cover. So I had a really good grasp of the grounds.” She knew from experience that her killer would have to be three-dimensional to carry off such a locked-room mystery. She fashioned hers after one of her screen favorites. “As a kid, I was always wondering what Michael Myers was doing when he wasn’t on screen. Does he snack? Does he make phone calls or do laundry?” she says. “So in my book, the killer is kind of the most human character, because you

I N T E R V I E W B Y J AY MacD O N A L D

see him do all of those things. He’s human; he makes mistakes and he’s funny. He drags a liver along the floor like a tin can. Come on, that’s funny! You almost like him. You almost want to hang out.” Recent public concerns over privacy and security, including Fox Sports reporter Erin Andrews’ hotel stalking lawsuit, provide the powerful subtext that drives Security. And once again, Wohlsdorf’s personal experience helped bring the security fears to life. “I had this boss I once worked for who was bugging her breakroom. And we tested it, as workers will, and it was very strange to know that she could be listening at any time to our conversations, which she did quite often,” Wohlsdorf recalls. “Why would she need that? I’m sure that her rationalization was, that’s when you’re safe, when you just know everything that goes on. But that’s also when you’re so vulnerable, because that’s when your megalomania can really hobble your relationships. You see that in Security as well.” For Wohlsdorf, whose works-inprogress include a father-daughter thriller and a “zombie romance,” facing some of life’s darkest fears has opened up more than just literary possibilities. “It’s life possibilities, too,” she says. “Writing’s scary, and trying to make a living is akin to suicide! Being fearless helps a lot.”

DOMESTIC SUSPENSE

COZIES

BY AMY SCRIBNER

BY BARBARA CLARK

Till disaster do us part

Quirks and crimes

arriage is a challenge under the best of circumstances—devoting your life to one person for all of eternity, through better or worse, richer or poorer, driving through Midwestern storms and facing your husband’s mistress in a foreign country.

iterary references and messages from the stars add wit and wisdom to three cozy mystery debuts, wherein leading ladies go toe-to-toe with the odd, the cultish and the rapacious.

OK, those last two examples aren’t found in most wedding vows. But they are found in two new books that examine the darker corners of marriage. Call it the domestic suspense genre. In Siracusa (Blue Rider, $26, 304 pages, ISBN 9780399165214), the incomparable Delia Ephron introduces us to couples Michael and Lizzie and Finn and Taylor. The foursome is traveling to Italy together, along with Finn and Taylor’s precocious daughter, Snow. These people, it must be said, have absolutely no business traveling together. Michael, a semi-famous playwright who has struggled to recapture the magic of his early professional success, has been cheating on Lizzie with a waitress. Finn and Taylor barely speak other than to argue about Snow, an impressionable preteen who idolizes Michael. Finn and Lizzie, who used to date, still have an undeniable spark. Meanwhile, Michael tries to hide the fact that the woman he’s sleeping with has unexpectedly turned up at their hotel in the rundown Sicilian town of Siracusa. Add a whole lot of Italian wine to the inevitable illicit sex and bitter secrets, and a recipe for the perfect vacation this is not. When Snow goes missing, the families reach their boiling point, and harsh, irreversible truths emerge. This is a thrilling, perfectly paced and deeply satisfying read by a masterful writer. Listen to Me (HMH, $25, 208 pages, ISBN 9780544714441) is a much quieter—but no less impactful—book by the acclaimed author of Reunion and The Fates Will Find

Their Way, Hannah Pittard. Laced with dreadful anticipation, Listen to Me is a spot-on depiction of the creep factor of road trips, with their desolate rest stops and weird encounters with strangers. Mark and Maggie are driving from their Chicago home to his parents’ Virginia farm. Maggie was recently attacked on the street near their home, the butt of a gun to the back of her head leaving her unconscious and with lingering psychological trauma. She finds herself withdrawn from her life as a wife and veterinarian, reading the news online, compulsively seeking the worst in her fellow humans. Mark struggles to be patient with Maggie’s recovery, and to resist the furtive email come-ons from his lovely teaching assistant who seems so, well, normal in comparison to his damaged wife. The road trip is meant to help them reconnect. They don’t realize when they hit the road that they’re driving straight into a powerful storm slicing its way through the Midwest. When the couple hits a total blackout in West Virginia, they hunker down for the night in a remote hotel. Mark takes their dog out for a pre-dawn walk, and a parking lot confrontation turns ugly, forcing Maggie to reckon with her own deep-seated fears. As Pittard writes, evil—sometimes anonymous, sometimes known—not only exists, it thrives. Both books are gorgeously written sketches of marriages gone sour, and reminders that sometimes the scariest bogeymen are the ones in our own minds.

Katherine Bolger Hyde puts a new spin on classic crime with Arsenic with Austen (Minotaur, $24.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9781250065476), the first in a new series that mixes old-fashioned romance and danger with a dose of very contemporary greed. Emily Cavanaugh’s aunt has left her a fortune, which includes much of the land in Stony Beach, Oregon. When Emily returns to the quiet coastal town where she spent many childhood summers, she finds the villagers divided by their ideas for the town’s future. The boorish mayor, a greedy real estate developer and Emily’s sort-of cousin try to convince her to develop the town with a luxury resort and fancy boutiques. Soon a murder hits close to Emily’s doorstep, and along with Luke, her former childhood love, she sets out to discover the killer’s identity, even calling into question whether Aunt Beatrice may have been “helped” into her grave. Puzzler fans and literary junkies alike will enjoy the fun as passages from Jane Austen’s novels bolster and embellish Emily’s investigations.

WHAT THE STARS SAY In Connie di Marco’s The Madness of Mercury (Midnight Ink, $14.99, 312 pages, ISBN 9780738749129), astrologer Julia Bonatti knows that Mercury retrograde is a planetary aspect with plenty of dangers. As author of the local newspaper’s horoscope column, Julia has been targeted as a witch by cult leader Reverend Roy and his Prophet’s Taberna-

cle, who are not averse to threats or vandalism. To make it worse, someone has passed the word to law enforcement to lay off the socalled prophet’s case. Julia seeks safety by moving in with her friend Dorothy and helping to care for Dorothy’s elderly aunts, but trouble mounts when Aunt Eunice runs off to join up with the volatile Reverend. Danger figures in the stars for Julia, along with mixed astrological energies, some wolves in sheep’s clothing and an amiable stranger with a down-under accent.

LIBRARY CRIMES In Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli’s series debut, A Most Curious Murder (Crooked Lane, $25.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9781629536064), characters and scenes from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland take on a zany, modern-day aspect. In the small, peaceful town of Bear Falls, Michigan, the Little Library—its only library—is vandalized and destroyed. The demise of the small structure, lovingly set in place by Jenny Weston’s mother, causes dismay among the townsfolk, and Jenny turns sleuth to discover the perpetrator. She’s aided, like it or not, by her nextdoor neighbor Zoe, a little person with a big penchant for quoting children’s literature. Zoe becomes a person of interest when a murder takes place in her garden—of the very person suspected of vandalizing the library. Lewis Carroll is practically another character in this offbeat, talky tale. There’s even a touch of romance—for Jenny, he’s the “kind of friend a woman needed at times like these.”

features

BEHIND THE BOOK BY KATE SUMMERSCALE

The true-crime writer, a different kind of sleuth

y fascination with the story of The Wicked Boy began when I read a newspaper report from July 1895 about a horrific murder in East London. The body of a 37-yearold woman had been found rotting in the front bedroom of a small terraced house while her two sons, aged 12 and 13, played cards in a room downstairs. When confronted by the police, the older boy, Robert, immediately confessed to having stabbed Emily Coombes to death 10 days earlier. He said that he and his brother, Nattie, had plotted together to kill her. Both were charged with murder and remanded in jail. Intrigued by why the boys had killed their mother, I decided to seek out more information about the crime. There were scores of newspapers published in England in the mid-1890s, many of them digitized and easy to search, and their richly detailed reports helped me chart the movements of the brothers in the days before and after their mother’s death. Then I started to look further afield.

1. THE TRIAL TRANSCRIPT Almost as soon as I began searching online, I found a digitized transcript of Robert’s trial for murder at the Old Bailey. (Nattie

THE WICKED BOY

had been discharged so that he could testify against his brother.) The transcript gave me a wealth of leads: names of the boys’ neighbors, relatives, schoolteachers, employers; the pawnbrokers with whom they pledged goods; the owner of a coffeehouse at which they dined; the shopkeeper who sold Robert the murder weapon. It also supplied details of the mental instability in the family—Robert’s as well as his mother’s.

2. THE FOLDER OF EVIDENCE At the National Archives in Kew, southwest London, I found transcripts of the witness statements and the documents submitted in evidence at the trial. Among them was a letter in which Robert tried to scam money from a cashier at the London docks; a letter in which he tried to persuade his father, who had sailed to New York, to send money home; and a letter from Emily Coombes to her husband, written on the day before her death. This last note gave me my first direct glimpse of the victim of the murder, not just as the object of her son’s violence but as a loving, protective, agitated woman.

3. THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

By Kate Summerscale

Penguin Press, $28, 400 pages ISBN 9781594205781, eBook available

TRUE CRIME

I visited the working-class East London street on which the family had lived. Their house had been demolished, but most of the buildings in the terrace were still standing. Directly opposite was the brick wall of a school playground, with the word “BOYS” inscribed by the entrance arch. Robert had graduated from this school just a few weeks before the murder. He had been a star pupil, a clever and musical boy much praised by his

teachers, but after graduating he had faced a lifetime of grinding labor in a shipbuilding ironworks on the Thames. I walked from the schoolyard to the site of the shipyard by the docks.

4. THE PENNY DREADFULS Some commentators argued that Robert had been inspired to murder by the “penny dreadful” stories that had been Richly detailed found in his house. I reports helped tracked down me chart the as many as I movements of could of the the brothers in titles identithe days before fied in court, many of them and after their reprints of mother’s death. American dime novels. It was astonishing to sit in the British Library reading the very stories that Robert had read, and to imagine the fantasies that they fed: of wealth and glory, adventure and escape.

5. THE GRAVESTONE At the Old Bailey, Robert was found “guilty but insane” and sent indefinitely to an asylum for criminal lunatics. I learned from the asylum records that he had been discharged 17 years later, at the age of 30. At first, I could find no trace of his life after this, but eventually, on a website about Australian cemeteries, I came across a photograph of his gravestone in New South

Wales. The stone bears a plaque inscribed with his name, his date of death and his military rank and number. By checking these against First World War records, I learned that he had served with honor at Gallipoli. My only clue to what became of Robert after the war was a phrase on the gravestone: “Always remembered by Harry Mulville & family.” I traced the Mulville family through the New South Wales telephone directory, and then traveled to Australia to meet Harry Mulville’s youngest daughter. Thanks to her, I was able to learn the ending of Robert Coombes’ story. Though he seems never to have spoken about the murder to those he knew in Australia, in 1930 he performed an act that could be understood both as an atonement and as a kind of explanation of his crime. English writer and journalist Kate Summerscale, formerly the literary editor of the Daily Telegraph, transforms odd and fascinating history into thrilling, award-winning narratives, from the social timeline of marriage to gripping true-crime tales. In The Wicked Boy, Summer scale exhumes the details of a fascinating Victorian-era murder mystery. Essay text © 2016 Kate Summerscale.

reviews T PI OP CK

FICTION

MISS JANE

A big-hearted story of a small life REVIEW BY JESSICA PEARSON

About three pages into Miss Jane I found myself both transfixed and perplexed. Who is this Brad Watson and why am I just now discovering him? A finalist for the 2002 National Book Award and a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and Granta, he is certainly a known quantity. But finally with Miss Jane, it seems he has a novel that will break him out to the wider readership he so deserves. Set in Mercury, Mississippi, in the early 20th century, Miss Jane is the story of Jane Chisolm, a woman born with a genital birth defect that renders her “useless” in a time when a woman was intended for two purposes: marriage and motherhood. Contrary to other independent-minded literary heroines like Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening or the unnamed narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s By Brad Watson short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Jane is not actively shunning social Norton, $25.95, 288 pages expectations, but rather forced into a life of solitude by circumstances ISBN 9780393241730, eBook available beyond her control. But her curiosity, courage and resolve to live life on LITERARY FICTION her terms places her in the company of these unique characters. In Miss Jane, Watson creates a rural Mississippi that exudes Southern gothic at its very best. Jane is a heroine considered by most in her community, including her family, to be damaged goods. And yet, through her relationship with a country doctor who supports and advocates for her, and the gentle boy who loves her despite her abnormality, Jane emerges as the member of her family who experiences the truest forms of love and connection. Like the peacocks that the doctor raises on his farm, Jane’s strange yet beautiful spirit possesses a haunting, anachronistic beauty. Miss Jane is a truly original novel with a character that readers will cherish. Watson has delivered Visit BookPage.com to read a Behind the a striking and unforgettable portrait. Book essay by Brad Watson.

THE HOUSE AT THE EDGE OF NIGHT By Catherine Banner

Random House $27, 432 pages ISBN 9780812998795 Audio, ebook available POPULAR FICTION

British writer Catherine Banner’s first novel for adults, The House at the Edge of Night, takes place on the imaginary Italian island of Castellamare, off the coast of Sicily. Amedeo Esposito, the island’s only doctor, finds himself jobless after being suspected of sleeping with il conte’s wife. To support his own wife and their newborn child, Amedeo takes over a café bar perched high on the cliffs overlooking the Med-

iterranean. Among the bougainvillea, serenaded by the crashing waves, this house at the “edge of night” becomes the place generations of Espositos and other islanders gather to gossip, pray, lament and face the changing times. The novel begins in 1914 and spans almost a century. Life on the island is increasingly influenced by the two world wars, tourism, politics and other world events. In fact, so fine-tuned are the historic events within the story that one almost forgets that Castellamare doesn’t actually exist. Just like the characters, the reader is torn between the romance of island life and the world beyond. This magical novel is a fantastic Italian escape with just the right dose of drama, love and hope. If possible, enjoy with a glass of limoncello. —CHIKA GUJARATHI

BARKSKINS By Annie Proulx

Scribner $32, 736 pages ISBN 9780743288781 Audio, eBook available LITERARY FICTION

Annie Proulx’s enthralling, multigenerational epic, Barkskins, opens in 1693 in the vast North Woods of New France (now Canada) with the arrival from France of two indentured woodcutters, or “barkskins.” René Sel feels with the first swings of his axe that he is “embarking on his life’s work.” But, blunted hatchet in hand, the ailing Charles Duquet can only nibble at his first tree. Duquet soon flees

into the forest, changes his name to Duke and reappears as the canny founder of a Boston-based timber empire. Sel falls in love with a Mi’kmaw woman and fathers three children who mostly view themselves as native people. The remainder of this 700-pluspage novel follows the lives of the Sel and Duke descendants up until 2013. The story unfolds against a background of social and political upheavals, beginning with the French and Indian war and ending with contemporary environmental conflicts. The Sels struggle to maintain a native culture as the natural world is altered by forces in which, for their own livelihoods, they must participate. The more powerful Duke family, whose timber interests eventually range throughout the world, has its own set of tragedies—and comedies. Proulx’s human characters— their lives and deaths—are vividly conceived. Her portrayals of them are nuanced. In a recent interview, Proulx said she has been thinking about and researching this book for many years. It shows. Barkskins brims with a granular sense of human experience over a period of 300 years. And like many novels by excellent writers, Barkskins encourages understanding, if not empathy, for characters whose outlooks we might usually dismiss. The idea that the vast forests of North America could never be diminished, for example, is expressed often by her early characters. With hindsight, we scoff at such a notion today. But Proulx allows us to feel the reasonableness and need for such an outlook at the time, making us question our easy assumptions about people of the past. And yet the most moving and most consistent character of Barkskins is the world’s forests. One of the great achievements of this novel is to create a sort of tragic personality for the environment. Proulx’s beautiful prose renders an exultant view of the life of forest worlds lost to us, in both their grandeur and their indifferent menace. It will be very difficult for someone to finish reading Barkskins without a deep sense of loss. —ALDEN MUDGE

reviews VINEGAR GIRL By Anne Tyler

Hogarth $25, 240 pages ISBN 9780804141260 Audio, eBook available LITERARY FICTION

In the year in which we mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler joins a distinguished group of writers that includes Margaret Atwood and Howard Jacobson in reinterpreting the bard’s works for Hogarth Press. Vinegar Girl transports The Taming of the Shrew from Padua to Tyler’s beloved Baltimore, and the product is a witty novel that reveals both the durability of Shakespeare’s themes and Tyler’s talent for creating pleasantly eccentric characters and engaging portraits of contemporary domestic life. As someone who hates small children, Kate Battista couldn’t be more ill-suited for her work as a preschool teacher’s assistant. Her unfailing candor has put her job in jeopardy, and at 29 she is still living with her father, a fumbling, self- absorbed microbiology researcher at Johns Hopkins University, and a sullen sister half her age. Given Kate’s severely circumscribed prospects, it’s hardly surprising when her father seizes on the idea of having her wed his Russian research assistant, Pyotr Shcherbakov, whose visa is about to expire, saving him from deportation. As preposterous as that union may seem, Tyler gives Kate a credible interior life, permitting her to wrestle with the absurdity of participating in what she thinks of as “human trafficking,” weighed against her fear that she’ll live out her days as the “old-maid daughter still keeping house for her father.” When her sister pleads with her to call off the wedding, Kate’s plaintive cry that “This is my chance to turn my life around, Bunny,” resonates with real emotional force. With the characteristic light touch of her 20 previous novels, Tyler plausibly depicts the halt-

FICTION ing evolution of Kate and Pyotr’s relationship as her family and friends look on with attitudes that range from bemusement to alarm. As befits such a genial comedy, the roadblocks that separate the couple from the altar are predictably mild, but Tyler deploys them to illuminate character, not garner unearned laughs. Vinegar Girl is a bittersweet novel that both honors and extends its source material. —HARVEY FREEDENBERG

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE By Maggie O’Farrell

Knopf $26.95, 400 pages ISBN 9780385349420 Audio, eBook available

the complexities of marriage. Beautiful and bittersweet, This Must Be the Place will make O’Farrell’s longtime fans swoon while prompting new readers to wonder why they’ve only just discovered her. —STEPHENIE HARRISON

NIGHT OF THE ANIMALS By Bill Broun

Ecco $26.99, 560 pages ISBN 9780062400796 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION

In the near future, London labors under the rule of a brutal king. Suicide cults, spawned in America, are making their way around the world LITERARY FICTION on a mission to kill animals as part of their path to ascendance. While technological marvels abound, With seven books to her credit, access to them has been corrupted based on the law of averages alone in ways that reward the rich and you might think that Irish author punish the poor. Maggie O’Farrell would be due to At the bottom of this decadent deliver a dud. On the contrary: Her society exist the Indigents, a growlatest novel proves that practice ing segment of people addicted to really does make perfect. This an insidious hallucinogen, Flôt. Must Be the Place may be her best Among the lowest of these poor work to date. and lost is Cuthbert Handley, O’Farrell returns to the topics that whose life was upended when a have become her literary bread and childhood accident claimed his bebutter over the years: love, loss and loved brother decades earlier. Now the things that make—and break—a homeless and deep in the clutches family. Daniel Sullivan has more of a Flôt addiction, Cuthbert begins than a passing familiarity with all to hear the voices of animals in the London Zoo, which has become three of these things. We first meet Daniel in 2015, living with his two the last repository of many species young children and his reclusive on Earth. Their calls drive Cuthbert wife on a remote patch of land in to an action that will either plunge Ireland. However, as subsequent society into chaos, or save it. chapters jump between past and A magnificently textured story, present, as well as other characters’ Night of the Animals benefits from perspectives, the complex web of author Bill Broun’s liberal use of relationships and choices that have Midlands dialect, which reinforces brought Daniel to this place and Cuthbert’s unshakable connection continue to shape his life are slowly to his past and its native folklore. illuminated. The result is an intriLikewise, the animals’ speech is cate and emotional jigsaw puzzle tethered to their origins and expewhose pieces interlock in immense- rience. As the distinction between ly satisfying—and startling—ways. the voices of the creatures and the Nimbly bounding though time internal whispers of Cuthbert’s and space, the narrative unfolds addiction fades, Broun maintains a with a cinematic quality, and O’Far- remarkable balance between magrell’s prose manages to be both inti- ic and madness. This strange tale is mate and expansive in its tone and both cautionary and captivating. — G E R R Y PA I G E S M I T H keenly perceptive in its insights on

SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF EASE AND PLENTY By Ramona Ausubel

Riverhead $27, 320 pages ISBN 9781594634888 Audio, ebook available LITERARY FICTION

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” In Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, PEN Center USA Fiction Award winner Ramona Ausubel explores that theme quite handily. This ideal summer novel grapples with a Tolstoyan knapsack overflowing with Serious Themes: Love. Betrayal. Death. Wealth. Privilege. War. Coming of Age. And yet, Ausubel has nimbly managed to capture these in miniature, a mini solar system that orbits around the dollar, with a fluctuating gravitational pull that shapes and distorts all the objects in its sphere. Make no mistake: Edgar and Fern Keating, the book’s protagonists, are easy to dislike. Not only are they suffused with the treacly bouquet of kids whose safety net allowed them to try on hardship as a fashion statement, but they make some staggeringly irresponsible choices. Long story short, the trust-fund babies’ trust fund runs out, and they are thrown into an existential crisis, to which they respond in unpredictable ways. As the novel bounces back and forth in time (from 1966 to 1976), Ausubel peels away the layers of Edgar’s and Fern’s personae, offering nonjudgmental insight into the events that shaped them and their chosen trajectories. By the end of it all, anyone not rooting for the couple (and their irrepressible daughter, Cricket) to pull off an overtime win needs to look more within themselves than toward the author, who has stitched together an affecting and quietly powerful character study of people who are different than you and me. —T H A N E T I E R N E Y

FICTION THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEP By Joanna Cannon Scribner $25, 368 pages ISBN 9781501121890 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION

mystery, part coming-of-age novel, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep presents our complicated world with compassion and humor, seen through a child’s eyes. —LAUREN BUFFERD

Visit BookPage.com for a Q&A with Joanna Cannon.

HOW TO SET A FIRE AND WHY In the Gospel of Matthew, God categorizes his flock as either obedient sheep, or goats who lack faith and compassion. But people are not so easily summed up in Joanna Cannon’s debut novel, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, a gentle story about the damage done by the secrets we keep and the judgments we make. The novel opens in the mid1970s in a suburban British housing estate called the Avenue, on a blisteringly hot summer day. The disappearance of a local woman, Mrs. Creasy, has residents on high alert, and the rumors are flying. Grace, a precocious 10-year-old, and her best friend, Tilly, decide to investigate. They start with the vicar, who delivers a confusing sermon on the whereabouts of God. Given this start, the girls become certain that if they can locate the Almighty, Mrs. Creasy is sure to follow. The spirited girls take their questions about faith from house to house, trying to make sense of the fragmented accounts and mixed messages they hear. What becomes clear to the reader, if not the girls, is that their neighbors are keeping a deadly secret—one that may have led to Mrs. Creasy’s departure. The novel is told from the points of view of the innocent but perceptive Grace and six of her neighbors, including the absent-minded Dorothy; Brian, kept on a short leash by his overbearing mother; and John Creasy, the increasingly frantic husband of the missing woman. The Avenue, with its flawed but sympathetic characters living chockablock on the suburban street, is Cannon’s most successful creation, and one in which her insight into the problems of ordinary people is most persuasive. Part

By Jesse Ball

Pantheon $24.95, 304 pages ISBN 9781101870570 Audio, eBook available LITERARY FICTION

The teenage narrator of Jesse Ball’s heartbreaking sixth novel, How to Set a Fire and Why, is Lucia, but as far as the world is concerned, she is nameless and worthless. When the story opens, we learn that she’s functionally orphaned. Her father is dead, her mother driven to such madness that she no longer recognizes her own child. Reduced to penury, Lucia lives with her elderly aunt Lucy in a converted garage whose rent they can’t afford. At one point, Lucia’s shoes are so run down that her toes poke through. What she does have is her father’s old Zippo, and even this gets her into trouble when she attacks a boy at her school for daring to touch it. This gets her sent to another school, where she falls in with a loosely organized bunch of teenage pyromaniacs. The idea of burning things up and burning things down, to inflict hurt on a world that has inflicted hurt on her, captures Lucia’s imagination. At times, the reader may not like Lucia very much. She lies, she cheats, she steals; her thoughts about her peers are uncharitable, to put it mildly; she smarts off to authority figures, often to her detriment. On the other hand, she’s devoted to her aunt and goes out of her way to visit her psychotic mother. Other adult authority figures rarely respect her, the kids in school despise her, her petty crimes come about because a lot

spotlight

POLITICAL FICTION BY MICHAEL MAGRAS

Novel takes on democracy

hatever one may think of politics, one has to concede that elections provide juicy material for works of fiction. Two new novels offer very different portraits of modern politics, yet share common traits, including an insider’s view of the political process and sacrifices required in the quest for power.

The feistier of the two novels is The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear (Knopf, $24.95, 272 pages, ISBN 9780451493194), by Stuart Stevens, a political consultant who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. The Dow has plummeted, and the government has divided Google into separate companies. When the incumbent Republican president chooses not to seek re-election, two candidates vie to replace him: Hilda Smith, the sitting vice-president, and Armstrong George, the fire-breathing Colorado governor who—sound familiar?—wants to build a large security fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. The narrator is J.D. Callahan, Smith’s campaign manager, who hopes a Smith victory will help him become a pundit with his own TV show. First, however, he has to get through the GOP convention, which, coincidentally, is in Callahan’s native New Orleans. His job is complicated, however, by his two half-brothers: one a former felon who wants financial help for his run for public office, and the other a neo-Nazi who owns a strip club and may be responsible for bombs that have imperiled the convention. The humor may be too broad for some readers, but this funny, fast-paced novel offers a perspective that only a seasoned campaign strategist like Stevens could provide. Jennifer Close’s latest, The

Hopefuls (Knopf, $26.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9781101875612), set during the first six years of the Obama administration, is a more somber affair. Beth, our narrator, moves from her beloved New York to D.C. so her husband, Matt, can pursue his dream of entering politics. (Close moved to D.C. with her own husband, who also worked on the Obama campaign.) Shortly after their arrival, Matt and Beth meet Jimmy Dillon, who works in the White House travel office, and his wife, Ashleigh, a Texas gal who tells Beth minutes after meeting her, “I can just tell we’re going to be best friends.” The couples grow close, but Matt soon becomes jealous of Jimmy’s more exciting job, with duties that include flying to Hawaii to perform advance work for the Obamas’ vacation and playing golf with the President. After Obama’s re-election, Jimmy moves to Texas with Ashleigh to run for railroad commissioner and asks Matt to manage his campaign. But the campaign puts a strain on both marriages, especially when Jimmy starts spending time alone with Beth. Unlike Stevens’ book, The Hopefuls focuses on a retail form of politics: going door-to-door, attending church picnics, canvassing for votes. Yet both novels entertain with keenly observed inner-circle perspectives and shrewd insight into how personal politics can become.

reviews of the time she doesn’t even have money to buy food. Maybe, this angry, sad but hopeful book suggests, having no name has its benefits, especially for kids who have nothing to lose. In an age of grotesque inequality, it’s something to consider. —ARLENE McKANIC

THE INSEPARABLES By Stuart Nadler

Little, Brown $27, 352 pages ISBN 9780316335256 Audio, eBook available FAMILY SAGA

Tragedy comes in threes. A myth or not, it’s true in the Olyphant family. Henrietta and Harold Olyphant didn’t have it all, exactly, but what they had was great. They met when she was a brash young professor. Over their decades-long marriage, Henrietta published a racy novel whose legacy she’s never quite escaped, and Harold opened a restaurant whose success eventually ended. Soon after, so too did their notquite-fairy-tale romance: Harold slipped and hit his head on the front walk. Nearly a year after his death, Henrietta’s pain remains acute—and it is made even more so by her dwindling bank account. Now the Olyphants’ daughter, Oona, has separated from her husband and moved back in with Henrietta. When a topless photo of Oona’s daughter, Lydia, starts making the rounds, three generations of Olyphant women find themselves under the same dilapidated roof. Stuart Nadler’s female protagonists are so fully formed and relatable that readers may be surprised to realize the author is male. The Inseparables braids the stories of these generations, creating an emotional landscape that draws the reader into each character’s world. Henrietta’s relationship to her late husband, in particular, paints a vivid image of an imperfect but meaningful marriage. As the Olyphant women wrestle with

FICTION their predicaments, they learn another truth: Sometimes, strength and love also come in threes. —CARLA JEAN WHITLEY

JONATHAN UNLEASHED By Meg Rosoff

Viking $25, 288 pages ISBN 9781101980903 Audio, eBook available COMIC FICTION

They say dogs are man’s best friend and good judges of character, to boot. In Jonathan Unleashed, the title character finds out all that and more about his brother James’ dogs, who come to live with him when James moves to Dubai. Freshly ensconced in his first “real-world” job, Jonathan welcomes the companionship of Sissy and Dante. Compared to his own fumbling quest for self-knowledge, the cocker spaniel and border collie seem to be wise and all-knowing. Jonathan hits more lows than highs, especially once his girlfriend, Julie, moves in. Among her many defining traits, Julie doesn’t care for dogs. As their relationship accelerates toward an imminent livestream wedding, Jonathan deteriorates. It’s up to the dogs to save him. In Jonathan Unleashed, National Book Award finalist Meg Rosoff captures both the existential and mundane, the ridiculous and absurd of the young urbanite making his way in New York City. Her writing is quick and entertaining, creating scene after vivid scene much like the comic book masterpiece Jonathan labors over at night, after his day job writing ad copy for an office supply store. His neuroses are laughable but also, in a sense, universal. What are we doing with our lives? Why are we part of the relationships we are in? Rosoff’s tale feels reminiscent of movies like 500 Days of Summer, full of friends who give sage but unheeded advice, hipster clichés, roller-coaster self-reflection and improbable escapades at every turn. —MELISSA BROWN

JUDENSTAAT By Simone Zelitch Tor $25.99, 320 pages ISBN 9780765382962 eBook available ALTERNATE HISTORY

Imagine a people beleaguered by enemies throughout the ages, and at last murdered by the millions, in the heart of the civilized world. Imagine that this catastrophe leads directly to a political solution for the survivors: a sovereign state, an ingathering of the displaced remnant, in a land full of historical resonance for this wandering people. Imagine that this new Jewish state is founded on a combination of the visionary socialist idealism of its founders and the opportunistic cynicism of the world’s superpowers. Finally, imagine that its founding is possible only through the displacement of the region’s non-Jewish population, with tragic and ongoing consequences. Sound familiar? It had better! It is the universally known and endlessly argued story of Judenstaat, the wonder of the postwar era, the Jewish state founded in 1948 on lands formerly known as Saxony, bordering Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia . . . or did I mean to say Israel, founded on lands formerly known as Palestine? The glory of Simone Zelitch’s page-turning alternate history is the uncanny precision with which she has deftly transformed the threads of actual events into the stunning new fabric of her novel. The verisimilitude of the tale grows in the telling: It is a Jewish historian who is our heroine, her self-appointed task to uncover the troubling facts of Judenstaat’s founding. Her mission is fueled by the murder of her husband, a Saxon who knew too much, adding a mystery element to this compelling story. From the very beginning—Abraham, Jacob, David—it has always been the leaders with uneasy consciences who have kept the flame of Jewish ethics alive. Despite its status as

fiction, Judenstaat is now an indispensable text in that history. —MICHAEL ALEC ROSE

INVINCIBLE SUMMER By Alice Adams

Little, Brown $26, 320 pages ISBN 9780316391177 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION

Growing up and growing apart from friends is an inevitable—and bittersweet—part of life, one that has been poignantly captured in Alice Adams’ debut novel, Invincible Summer. The novel starts in 1997 as four friends graduate on the brink of a new millennium, and takes them through 20 summers. Readers follow the characters through the decades, from the sunny coast of the Greek Islands to the rainy streets of London. Evie, the quiet and practical main character, finds her inner confidence while pursuing a high-profile finance job. The sweet and irresistibly lovable Benedict stays in academia to pursue a Ph.D. in physics, only to spend his life chasing scientific discoveries that are as frustrating as his love life. Added to the mix are cool siblings Sylvie and Lucien—who, despite their failures, are infinitely relatable characters. The creative Sylvie was marked from the start as a great artist but struggles to make her way in the real world, while her playboy brother works as a night club promoter. Readers at any stage of life will see themselves within the pages of Invincible Summer and will recognize the terror of adulthood and the difficulties of keeping friendships alive. Adams, whose own background is as diverse as her characters’ (she has worked as a waitress and an investment banker, and has a B.A. in philosophy), particularly shines when focusing on Evie’s finance job. With beautiful attention to detail and keen observations on life, love and even finance, Adams has crafted a delightful novel that is as insightful as it is breezy. —HOPE RACINE

NONFICTION T PI OP CK

LASSOING THE SUN By Mark Woods

MY FATHER AND ATTICUS FINCH

Thomas Dunne $26.99, 320 pages ISBN 9781250105899 eBook available

A real-life Atticus Finch

TRAVEL

REVIEW BY ANNE BARTLETT

Like almost everyone else in the U.S., Atlanta attorney Joseph Madison Beck had read To Kill a Mockingbird, and he decided in 1992 to satisfy his curiosity about the similarity between the novel and an episode in his own family history. He wrote to author Harper Lee: Did she know about his white father’s legal defense of an African-American man accused of raping a white woman in 1938, not far from where Lee was then growing up in south Alabama? No, Lee wrote back politely; though she could see there were “obvious parallels,” she didn’t recall the case at all. The case in Troy, Alabama, was locally notorious at the time, but whether or not it had any unconscious influence on Lee, the story outlined in Beck’s family memoir, My Father and Atticus Finch, is absolutely worth knowing as an illuminating instance of the staggering By Joseph Madison Beck racism of the Jim Crow South and of the complications of its social Norton, $25.95, 240 pages order. ISBN 9780393285826, eBook available Joseph Beck’s father, Foster Beck, a young rural lawyer, was strongMEMOIR armed into defending the accused rapist by a judge who was embarrassed by how bad the Alabama legal system had looked in the recent “Scottsboro Boys” case. At first reluctant to take the case, Beck became convinced that the defendant Charles White was innocent, and he fought for him to the tragic end. His strong legal argument ran into a wall of white intransigence. In Lee’s novel, the courageous Atticus ultimately goes on with his respectable life; Foster Beck was not so lucky. He paid for the rest of his days for the “crime” of defending a black man too vigorously. His son has delved into court records to narrate the trial, but also beautifully describes the region’s community rituals—hunting doves, killing hogs, making cane syrup. More importantly, he lovingly portrays his parents and grandparents in all their complexities. Foster Beck and his wife-to-be Bertha Stewart were honorable people who were punished for fighting injustice, and this book is a fine tribute.

HOW TO BE A PERSON IN THE WORLD By Heather Havrilesky

Doubleday $24.95, 272 pages ISBN 9780385540391 eBook available SELF-HELP

If you gravitate toward wholesome, “Dear Abby”-style advice, steer clear of Heather Havrilesky. But if profound, profane wisdom is your jam, this book is for you. How to Be a Person in the World compiles some of Havrilesky’s best columns from “Ask Polly,” which ran first on quirky website The Awl, then on New York magazine’s The Cut. It also includes a lot of fresh

material. Saying that Havrilesky has a way with words is like saying Marilyn Monroe liked diamonds. Havrilesky doesn’t just write—she dances with the words, building empathetic responses that can’t be classified as just advice columns. They are more keen observations of human behavior. “When you spend your days staring at bony teenagers in tall boots and touching soft things that cost more than your monthly salary, it eats away at your soul like a hungry little demon-rabbit,” she writes to a woman working in fashion who feels miserable and shallow. “Repeat after me, WB: ‘I will not lose myself. I can earn money and create art, too. I can befriend Buddhists and women in $300 heels. I am not a one-dimensional, angry human with boundary issues, like

those others who get so fixated on being ONE THING AND NOTHING ELSE.’” It was hard to choose a favorite quote, mostly because she’s so pithy but also because so many of the quotes I loved in this book included a string of F words. The contents are divided into sections with titles such as Flaws Become You and Weepiness is Next to Godliness, each prefaced by a deadpan comic strip. Whether she’s tackling alcoholism, STDs or deadbeat boyfriends, Havrilesky is a pure joy to read. She’s the tough-love friend who tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. As she tells one advice seeker, “This is your moment. Seize your moment, goddamn it!”

For those who may find it hard to accomplish their goals in a day’s time—or, as in this case, a year— we can be grateful that, according to an ancient Hawaiian legend, Maui lassoed the sun and made it promise to slow down its trek across the sky, so that his mother could get her work done. Be glad, too, that Mark Woods won a year’s sabbatical from his newspaper job to visit 15 national parks, a journey he shares in Lassoing the Sun. It becomes a dazzling experience indeed, one that honors the memory of his own mother and her inspiring love of the parks. From sunrise on January 1 atop Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park in Maine, to sunset on December 31 on a volcano rim in Haleakalā National Park in Hawaii, Woods serves as guide and guru as the National Park Service celebrates its first 100 years. The anniversary comes laden with questions about the future of the parks. What’s the best way to manage wildlife? How can the parks be protected from potentially destructive private interests, like uranium mining near the Grand Canyon? Will light pollution rob parks of their starry skies? How many climbers on Yosemite’s Half Dome are too many? Will rising seas doom Dry Tortugas National Park? What if the parks become irrelevant? Woods folds these big questions around his own midlife angst and grief over his mother’s dying days near her beloved Saguaro National Park. Remembering his family’s past trips to the parks, and bringing along his wife and daughter as he revisits them, Woods weaves a timeline that traverses generations, raising more challenges for the future every step of the way.

—AMY SCRIBNER

—PRISCILLA KIPP

reviews WHITE TRASH By Nancy Isenberg Viking $28, 480 pages ISBN 9780670785971 Audio, eBook available HISTORY

Our understanding of the past often relies on mythmaking or selective memory. So it has been with American history. We often think of ourselves as a “classless society,” but the impoverished and landless are often missing from our story. Using a wide range of sources, historian Nancy Isenberg seeks the truth in her superb White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. This survey of social class is sweeping, detailed, carefully documented and well written. It shows that, contrary to what we may believe, marginalized and expendable people have been part of our heritage from the start. Most British colonizing schemes in the 17th and 18th centuries were built on privilege and subordination. Wishing to reduce poverty in England, those regarded as idle and unproductive, including orphans, were sent to North America where they worked as “unfree” laborers. Waste men and waste women, as they were called, were an expendable class of workers who made colonization possible. The much admired thinker John Locke, who greatly influenced American revolutionaries, was also a founding member of and the third largest stockholder in the Royal African Company, which had a monopoly over the British slave trade. Contemptuous of the vagrant poor in England and preoccupied with class structure, Locke, in his Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669), basically declared war on poor settlers in the Carolinas. The area divided into two colonies in 1712, and Isenberg traces in detail the curious history of why North Carolina became, as she writes, “the heart of our white trash story.” Government efforts to improve

NONFICTION the lives of the poor have repeatedly met with strong resistance. The Freedmen’s Bureau, established in 1865 to extend relief to “all refugees, and all freedmen,” and the Resettlement Administration of the 1930s both failed to produce longterm success. Isenberg writes: “Pretending that America has grown rich as a largely classless society is bad history, to say the least. . . . Class separation is and always has been at the center of our political debates, despite every attempt to hide social reality with deceptive rhetoric.” Her incisive and lively examination of this phenomenon deserves a wide readership. —ROGER BISHOP

MY FATHER BEFORE ME By Chris Forhan

Scribner $26, 320 pages ISBN 9781501131264 Audio, eBook available MEMOIR

Chris Forhan’s aching, lyrical memoir excavates both a lost father and a lost era in American history. The middle child in an Irish family of eight, Forhan came of age in the 1960s and ’70s. He recalls spirograph toys and the Beatles, Jell-O and tuna casserole, JFK and the moon landing. These details are important because they help Forhan cinematically recreate the family from which his father absented himself, ultimately by suicide in 1973. Who was Ed Forhan? This is the central, animating question driving My Father Before Me, a mystery that continues to haunt his adult children. Their family life was riddled with silences: Where did Ed go when he didn’t come home at night? Was his apparent mental illness a result of unchecked diabetes, childhood trauma, bipolar disorder or all (or none) of those factors? His son Chris interviews his mother and siblings, and looks through family photos and newspaper clippings to find answers.

An award-winning poet, Forhan writes with grace and intelligence about the very process of constructing a memoir. How can he trust his memories of his father, these flashes that may reflect desire more than fact? By bringing in the voices of his siblings and mother, he fleshes out this portrait of a haunted and wounded man, adding heft and color to the fragments of memory. Forhan learns more about Ed’s tragic and lonely childhood, one of the many things the family never spoke of directly. Ultimately this memoir documents four generations of fathers and sons and tracks the patterns of damaging emotional behavior passed down through the family. Now that Forhan is himself a father to young sons, it is essential to recollect his father, if only to free himself from the burden of his influence. Fortunately for the reader, his journey is beautifully and resonantly captured here. —CATHERINE HOLLIS

SEINFELDIA By Jennifer Keishin Armstrong Simon & Schuster $26, 320 pages ISBN 9781476756103 Audio, eBook available ENTERTAINMENT

Maybe we should add “Seinfeldia” to the lexicon, joining “yada yada,” “sponge-worthy” and “Festivus.” In Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s view, espoused in the book of the same name, it’s not just a play on the title of the NBC sitcom that ran from 1989 to 1998 and starred comedian Jerry Seinfeld and featured four friends dedicated to zero personal growth. It’s an imaginary place, still thriving thanks to obsessive fans and enduring memes. And Seinfeldia (the book, that is) is the essential travel guide. Armstrong is on familiar turf here: She also wrote Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, about “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” and spent a decade on the staff of Entertain-

ment Weekly. It’s a safe bet that she had a blast writing Seinfeldia, revisiting its origins, debriefing its writers (still shell-shocked from dealing with famously punctilious co-creator Larry David) and catching up with former cast members and network executives. She’s at her best with tales from the writers, eager to dish about their turn at bat. Encouraged to mine their daily lives for stories, they came up with plotlines about dates gone wrong, shenanigans at the zoo and transgressions of the all-important “social contract.” But eventually the mines are emptied and it comes down to, as one writer once said, “sitting in an office in Studio City.” And how did “the show about nothing” change everything? In Armstrong’s view, just look at shows like “The Office,” with its awkward humor, or “The Wire,” with its narrative complexity— both “Seinfeld” staples. But perhaps there’s nothing new under the sun: We learn that Michael Richards, who played “hipster doofus” Kramer, gleaned acting tips from watching Gale Storm in the 1950s sitcom “My Little Margie.” —KEITH HERRELL

THIS IS WHERE YOU BELONG By Melody Warnick Viking $26, 320 pages ISBN 9780525429128 Audio, eBook available HAPPINESS

Melody Warnick was not loving where she lived. After moving to Blacksburg, Virginia, Warnick looked around with dismay. The trees were menacing. She knew no one. She had young children. She was tempted to stay in and bingewatch Netflix. But she decided to try to make herself fall in love with Blacksburg. This Is Where You Belong reveals the steps in her journey, which will be relevant to many of us. As Warnick points out, Americans are, and have been for some time, “geographically restless.”

NONFICTION Warnick establishes that she has “low place-attachment” through an inventory, which she includes for readers. To raise her depressingly low score, she devises and attempts various “Love Where You Live” experiments. What follows are 12 chapters about ways to dial up place affection: walking, eating local, buying local, getting to know neighbors. She traces the research that indicates why these activities are meaningful and often supplements her research by interviewing a place-making expert. Warnick knows how to make her interview subjects sparkle and brings together the various elements of the book with finesse. Back in Blacksburg, her experiments have her doing all manner of tasks, from delivering muffins to organizing a sidewalk chalk festival. The biggest pleasure of the book, though, is the way Warnick’s search will help readers reflect on their own locales. As someone who was already “deeply attached” to my place (according to the quiz), one might think I found little to take away. On the contrary, I gained fresh insight about why my hometown favorites—from food to friends to public places—make me more measurably connected to my city. I also found a handful of bright ideas to get to know it better. As far as experiments go, that’s a satisfying result. — K E L LY B L E W E T T

83 MINUTES By Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne Thomas Dunne $27.99, 432 pages ISBN 9781250108920 eBook available BIOGRAPHY

was wrong at 11:51 a.m., and 83 minutes later, 50-year-old Jackson was pronounced dead at UCLA Medical Center. Drawing on court documents and other materials, 83 Minutes examines what happened during that time, along with the tragic factors that brought Jackson and Murray together, resulting in Jackson’s death and Murray’s imprisonment. Despite his immense earnings and accomplishments, Jackson was facing financial ruin and was addicted to prescription drugs. He relied on the anesthetic Propofol, which he called “milk,” to help ease the rush of adrenaline after rehearsals and shows and allow him to sleep. Murray was in financial trouble as well, and all too happy to enable Jackson’s dependencies. Instead of carefully monitoring his patient, Murray likely had stepped out of Jackson’s bedroom/“medication room” to answer emails and make phone calls, likely not noticing when Jackson stopped breathing. He was on the phone with his mistress, in fact, when he abruptly ended the call, and the final chaos ensued. Meanwhile, Jackson’s three children were playing in the den, under the care of their nanny, and his chef was preparing a Cobb salad for the family’s lunch. Although 83 Minutes doesn’t deliver any bombshells, Jackson fans will find the book a sadly fascinating minute-by-minute account of the singer’s last days and hours. —ALICE CARY

THE RETURN By Hisham Matar

Random House $26, 256 pages ISBN 9780812994827 eBook available MEMOIR

On June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson was preparing for 50 sold-out “This Is It” concerts when he stopped breathing at the Los Angeles mansion he was renting. His personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, who was administering medication intravenously to help him sleep, noticed that something

In The Return, Libyan novelist Hisham Matar (In the Country of Men) tells the harrowing story of his search for his father, Jaballa Matar. Early in Muammar Qaddafi’s regime, Jaballa served as a U.N.

diplomat, but he was soon accused of criticizing Qaddafi and forced to flee to Cairo with his family. In 1990, while Matar was at university in London, Jaballa was kidnapped by Egyptian secret police and sent to Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. Matar’s narrative roams through time, moving from his 2012 visit to see family in Tripoli and Benghazi after Qaddafi’s downfall (Matar’s first visit in 33 years), to the distant past—when his grandfather fought against the brutal Italian occupation of Libya. He recounts his efforts to gather scraps of information, meeting with former prisoners who might have seen Jaballa. At times, the memoir reads like a spy novel: In the 1980s, Qaddafi’s spies kept tabs not only on Jaballa but also on family members, following Matar’s brother when he was at boarding school. Decades later, Matar connected with Qaddafi’s “reformist” son Seif, who’d promised him an answer about what had happened to Jaballa. Seif put Matar through a series of phone calls and clandestine meetings in London hotels, mixing threats and compliments, meetings that ultimately proved fruitless. The Return beautifully chronicles the vagaries of life as an exile and the grief of wondering about a father’s suffering. Yes, Matar’s memoir is sometimes bleak in describing the Qaddafi regime’s decades of bizarre repressive actions. But it also offers a portrait of a loving family and a needed window into Libya, not only its troubles but also its beauty, and the many kindnesses Matar encountered there. —SARAH McCRAW CROW

EVE OF A HUNDRED MIDNIGHTS By Bill Lascher

Morrow $26.99, 416 pages ISBN 9780062375209 Audio, eBook available HISTORY

The lot of a war correspondent has always been one of improvisa-

tion and compromise. Apart from the constant prospect of being maimed, killed or captured, there are the enduring problems of locating reliable sources, minimizing the distortions of censorship and finding ways of transmitting dispatches from the battlefield to the newsroom. Conditions were particularly dicey for American reporters covering the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific. Prominent among these imperiled scribes were two newlyweds: Time’s Far East bureau chief Mel Jacoby and his freelance-writer wife, Annalee. Both had reported extensively from China prior to Mel being transferred to Manila, the capital of the Philippines, just weeks before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. A distant relative of Mel, author Bill Lascher constructs his account of the pair’s reporting and their dramatic flight across the Pacific primarily from the massive collection of personal letters, newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs and films Mel’s mother preserved. Mel was born into a Hollywood family with movie connections but gravitated to journalism during his years at Stanford. He and his future wife, Annalee Whitmore, both worked on the Stanford Daily but barely knew each other at the time. Both were interested in the people and politics of China, which was then under assault from an expansionist Japan. Prior to teaming up with Jacoby, Whitmore had been a scriptwriter for MGM with an Andy Hardy movie to her credit. Lascher spends the first half of the book tracing Mel’s reporting work in China and the last half tracking Mel and Annalee’s harrowing escape from Manila and Corregidor as the Japanese forces poured in. Traveling only at night, they eventually made it to safety in Australia. Although it is incidental to the main narrative here, students of journalism will be fascinated by the level of control Time Inc. owner Henry Luce exerted over his reporters’ stories in order to control how China would be portrayed to the world. —EDWARD MORRIS

teen

VICTORIA SCHWAB

Putting a morbid streak to good use

nexpected monsters haunt the latest young adult novel from Victoria Schwab, who considers This Savage Song “the strangest, darkest book I’ve ever written.” The freedom to explore this creepy new territory comes from her—and her publisher’s—trust in her readership.

“I’ve been really careful to develop an author fandom,” says Schwab during a call to her home in Nashville. “If you have a book or series fandom, you get pressure to stay in your lane and do what works. With an author fandom, I’ve been given more and more creative freedom to be as different and daring as I want, and my readers have been staying with me.” Schwab, who also writes as V.E. Schwab, has 11 books and counting to her credit—adult, YA and middle grade novels rife with dark settings, sinister storylines and supernatural goings-on. Some of her works have comic-book roots, while others draw upon magic, science-fiction or fantasy tropes. “All of my work has a speculative thread, and all of my work has me,” explains Schwab. “[This Savage Song] is the most me. It’s a merger of what I’ve been writing for several years as an adult author and a YA author . . . and it’s about things I’ve wanted to explore but haven’t had the window to do it.” That window’s certainly open

THIS SAVAGE SONG

By Victoria Schwab

Greenwillow, $17.99, 464 pages ISBN 9780062380852, audio, eBook available Ages 14 and up

FANTASY

now, and Schwab dove through it and into the dark, Gotham-esque world of Verity, a future metropolis divided by war and ruled by two very different men: Callum Harker, a ruthless crime boss, and Henry Flynn, a kind leader trying to maintain the city’s six-year truce even as Harker moves, with devious determination, to break it. And there’s another problem plaguing the crime-ridden city: monsters born of violence and hungry for flesh, blood and souls. In the meantime, the children of these two men—Kate Harker and August Flynn—have both reached an age where they want to be more like their fathers. Kate, an only child whose mother died when she was young, has gotten herself kicked out of six boarding schools in five years. Now she’s been sent home, where she hopes to show her father she’s tough enough to earn his attention and love. August has a different perspective on things, not least because he happens to be a monster (as are his two siblings), and it’s getting harder and harder for him to deny his real nature. Attempting to suppress our true selves to gain approval is an age-old struggle, one that Schwab clearly delights in exploring, as Kate and August engage in verbal sparring, scary physical combat and mental and emotional gymnastics as the city threatens to fall into ruin around them. “The epigraph for the book is a line from [my earlier novel] Vicious,” she says, “because I was really inspired by the concept from Vicious—the potential for humans to be monsters and vice versa. I wanted to take that and add the societal question, what about humans makes them so monstrous to each other and the world around them?” She adds, “Being pagan, I think a lot about the natural world, the

cycle of give and take, the notion of balance. If we put that much hatred and bloodshed in the world, there has to be something left, some sort of repercussive force and blowback.” In the world of This Savage Song, monsters spawn from malicious deeds—the steeper the crime, the more dangerous the monster. As the monsters of Verity reveal themselves and their varying levels of destruction, cunning and violence, Kate and August begin to question everything they thought “What about they knew humans about good makes them and evil. That’s the so monstrous fun of it, to each other Schwab says. and the world “I feel so around them?” passionately about this book . . . and the freedom to write a YA novel that asks existential questions about humanity. It’s a risky book, but I think for the right people, they’ll see what they need to see in it . . . about what we can and can’t change and the difference between the two, and at what point we have to self-destruct or self-accept.” That’s something Schwab has thought about a good deal in terms of her own life. She had a happy childhood and has always been independent, always off in her own world. “I definitely had a morbid streak,” she says. “I definitely hung my teddy bears from the stair railing, execution-style.” She adds, “The first story I ever wrote was about the Angels of Life and Death. Death killed Life, and the whole world died. I was 8. It was the precursor to everything I write.” Schwab says that early focus on death, and her interest in plumbing

INTERVIEW BY LINDA M. CATELLITTO

it in her work, stems from longheld fears about her father’s health. “He is Type 1 diabetic and has been for 60 years. [When I was a child,] I took it on myself to keep him alive. . . . I was hyper-vigilant of the people around me, especially my parents. The idea that if I wasn’t paying enough attention they could die made me observant to a fault.” Plus, she says, “It also makes for a kind of god complex: If you just pay enough attention, you can keep all of the balls in the air. It’s the same as a writer: You become a little god in your own world.” Although Schwab’s father was told he’d never see age 50, he’s now 67 and recently retired to a house in the French countryside with Schwab’s mother. The author is working on her next phase, too: She just purchased an apartment and is getting used to a new tattoo, a key that stretches down her forearm. “I see writers as gatekeepers,” Schwab explains. “We provide the keys to these worlds and can’t control whether or not readers step through, but we can give them access.” Fans will be glad to know there will be plenty more books to access, including adult novels and a follow-up for Kate and August. “It’s nice to have job security,” Schwab says with a laugh. “And every time I sell a new book, I think about how I get to keep doing this thing I love.”

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TEEN

THE MEMORY BOOK

Memories soon to be lost REVIEW BY JULIE HALE

In Lara Avery’s heartfelt, funny and bittersweet new novel, a gifted teen’s future is derailed when she’s diagnosed with a debilitating genetic condition. High school valedictorian Sammie McCoy can’t wait to escape small-town Vermont and start college at NYU. But when she learns she has Niemann-Pick Type C (NPC), her freshman-year plans begin to look unlikely. “Basically,” Sammie says of NPC, “it’s dementia.” Due to the disorder, Sammie will eventually lose her memory, and so she begins chronicling the major events and little details of her life on a laptop, “writing to remember” all the things she’s bound to forget. Meanwhile, she hides her condition from her friends, which works just fine until she bungles a critical debate-club tournament. Avery is a skillful storyteller who lets Sammie’s decline unfold gradually over the course of the novel. From the start, Sammie comes across as smart and sassy, an overachiever with all the answers, but as By Lara Avery Poppy, $17.99, 368 pages NPC takes over, she regresses. Her thoughts and perspectives become ISBN 9780316283748, eBook available less sophisticated, more childlike—a reflection of her inner deterioAges 15 and up ration. Avery fleshes out the narrative with a cast of authentic characters, including Maddie, Sammie’s debate-club partner (who sports an FICTION electric-red mohawk), and Stuart, a handsome would-be writer and Sammie’s longtime crush. Avery presents Sammie’s story not as a tragedy but as a tale of self-discovery. Without lapsing into sentiment or melodrama, she tackles big questions in a style that teen readers will find appealing. The Memory Book is a memorable read, indeed. remembers the truth about Lorna. How easily Lorna could manipulate By Ellen Wittlinger everyone, how she always seemed to get her way and captured Finn’s Merit Press heart when Jackie loved him more. $17.99, 270 pages ISBN 9781440589003 Slowly, Jackie begins to reclaim Audio, eBook available her independence, working on her Ages 14 and up photography and hoping, despite her fishing family’s expectations, FICTION to make a life as an artist beyond the Cape. She even discovers that there are other guys besides Finn, namely Cooper, an up-and-coming Everyone always does what Lorna says, especially her BFF, Jackie, novelist, who’s cute, charming— her boyfriend, Finn, and Lucas, and 30. Just as Jackie starts to form sewho is (not-so) secretly in love with her, too. When Lorna slips crets of her own, her taut narration takes on Gone Girl-style twists as off the rocks in Provincetown on Cape Cod and into the icy Atlantic she pieces together why Lorna disOcean, her disappearance leaves a appeared. Author Ellen Wittlinger proves once again why she’s a gaping hole in their lives. In Local Girl Swept Away, 17-year-old master of realistic fiction, creating Jackie recounts the tense months believable dialogue, events and after Lorna goes missing and how it emotions, especially as Jackie must affects their tight circle of friends. decide if she’s still one of Lorna’s Jackie’s initial disbelief and grief pawns in the end. slowly give way to anger as she —ANGELA LEEPER

LOCAL GIRL SWEPT AWAY

REMIX By Non Pratt

Simon & Schuster $17.99, 320 pages ISBN 9781442497757 eBook available Ages 14 and up FICTION

Kaz and Ruby are road-tripping to a music festival with friends, a summer blowout to shake off some ghosts and renew their friendship. Kaz is smarting from a breakup with a guy she thought had forever potential. Ruby is academically adrift, and with her beloved brother heading out into the world, she needs to get a plan in place—after some quality time in the mosh pit. Remix celebrates female friendships while being brutally honest about how they can fall apart. Author Non Pratt includes hilar-

iously on-point details about the grunginess of field camping, from trashed Port-O-Lets to strangers making out in your tent at odd hours. Kaz and Ruby’s alternating points of view can be difficult to tell apart, but this speaks to the ways they overlap as friends. There are some funny supporting players sharing their campsite who enhance the festie vibe. Remix reminds us that boyfriends are hardly worth fighting over, but female friendships are absolutely worth fighting for. —HEATHER SEGGEL

RUN By Kody Keplinger Scholastic $17.99, 304 pages ISBN 9780545831130 Audio, eBook available Ages 14 and up FICTION

No one in the tiny town of Mursey would expect legally blind Agnes Atwood to run off with bad girl Bo Dickinson. Everyone in Mursey knows the Dickinsons are nothing but white trash. For her part, Bo is drawn to Agnes. Maybe it’s due to Agnes’ aching desire for freedom, or maybe Bo is a little in love with Agnes. In any event, the two decide to steal Agnes’ sister’s car and run away. In alternating chapters, Bo describes the events on the road, and Agnes fills in the backstory. At first glance, the girls seem to be archetypes of small-town Southern personas. Bo is labeled a druggie and a whore, but she conceals sensitivity beneath her brokenness. Church-going Agnes is obedient and docile, but she craves escape. Her blindness adds another dimension to the story, although she is surprisingly conscious of visible elements such as “rich, sweet-tea” eye color and less attuned to sensation, sound and smell. Like Wendy Wunder’s The Museum of Intangible Things, this road trip explores the boundaries of friendship and truth. —DIANE COLSON

reviews T PI OP CK

CHILDREN’S

NINE, TEN

A day that changed everything REVIEW BY ANITA LOCK

Nora Raleigh Baskin’s latest novel focuses on how four young teens turn tragedy into hope after the events of September 11, 2001. Two days prior to the events of 9/11, four random middle schoolers lead very different lives: Will is white and lives in Pennsylvania; Sergio is black and lives in New York; Aimee is Jewish and recently moved to California; and Naheed is Muslim and lives in Ohio. Will, Sergio, Aimee and Naheed are all dealing with personal and familial issues, and they are unaware that the next 48 hours will totally alter their perspectives on life and provide an opportunity for them to stand up for what is right. It’s not difficult for adults to recall what life was like before and after 9/11, as well as where they were or what they were doing when Flight By Nora Raleigh Baskin 11 flew directly into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. But Atheneum, $16.99, 208 pages as Baskin states, “For young students today there is no ‘before 9/11.’ ” ISBN 9781442485068, eBook available With Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story, Baskin offers middle grade Ages 8 to 12 readers a small glimpse of how the world suddenly changed on that MIDDLE GRADE fateful day. Parallel narratives with journal entry chapter headings and the use of shifting, profound scenes during the events of 9/11 keep Baskin’s plot constantly moving. The result is an absolutely stunning read. On planet Boborp, “teef” are long and tempers short. This, Portis notes with a knowing wink to the reader, is not at all how it is By Antoinette on Earth. Heightened emotions Portis and fierce loyalties are the name Roaring Brook of the game, as Yelfred and Omek’s $16.99, 40 pages playdate—starting with a “nice ISBN 9781626721364 yunch”—devolves into a mighty Ages 3 to 7 meltdown. After all, frints on this PICTURE BOOK planet tend to “use their teef and not their words.” Not like on Earth, of course. When one frint bites It’s all fun and games till your best friend bites off your tail. In her the other’s tail off—don’t worry, latest picture book, Antoinette Por- they regenerate on Boborp—the friendship is momentarily ended. tis expertly captures the dynamics Until it’s not. Because this is the of human toddler play in the form of two aliens from planet Boborp. way of young creatures, no matter “Yelfred and Omek have been the planet they call home. Portis’ palette is eye-popping (no best frints since they were little pun intended, given that the frints’ blobbies.” This, the book’s opening favorite game is eye ball in the sentence, gives readers a taste of the creative wordplay therein. Portis peedle pit, which involves playing also brings readers a Boborpian catch with eyeballs) with bright, Glossary on the front and back end- heavily saturated hues. The humor and pacing are spot-on, and in the papers—which are, quite possibly, closing endpapers, readers will the most entertaining endpapers find an invitation to make up their of the year. There’s almost no need own words. (“Your turp!”) for this glossary, as readers will run with the alien words, assimilate It’s out of this world. quickly and have a blast. —J U L I E D A N I E L S O N

BEST FRINTS IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE

THE VOYAGE TO MAGICAL NORTH By Claire Fayers

Holt $16.99, 320 pages ISBN 9781627794206 eBook available Ages 8 to 12 MIDDLE GRADE

In her debut novel, Claire Fayers creates a swashbuckling voyage in a vividly imagined fantasy realm where the sum of the world’s knowledge is kept on an island and protected by a sisterhood of librarians. As a child, Brine Seaborne was found in an abandoned rowboat with no memory of where she came from. Now 12 years old, Brine is fed up with being the housekeeper for a grumpy magician, with only his insufferable apprentice, Peter, for company. So when she and Peter are forced to flee the magician’s house due to a ploy gone horribly wrong, Brine sees it as a chance to finally discover

where she came from. Before long, Brine and Peter find themselves aboard the legendary pirate ship known as the Onion, sailing to find Magical North, a place shrouded in myth and legend. This rollicking, high-seas adventure is a celebration of girl power and a testament to the magic of storytelling. —HANNAH LAMB

THE WORLD FROM UP HERE By Cecilia Galante Scholastic $16.99, 320 pages ISBN 9780545848459 eBook available Ages 8 to 12 MIDDLE GRADE

Twelve-year-old Wren Baker longs to be brave, and she certainly needs all the courage she can muster. Her mother has been hospitalized for depression, and her father has left to tend to her in Ohio. This means that Wren is suddenly living with an aunt and a cousin named Silver whom she’s only just met. Wren also feels responsible for her younger brother, Russell, who has Asperger’s and who needs her now more than ever. In Cecilia Galante’s adept hands, these relationships are admirably and deeply explored. Not only are these characters wonderfully authentic, The World from Up Here is full of multiple adventures, including a ride in a glider plane and a runaway horse—experiences that anxious Wren never dreamed she could handle. There’s also mystery, in the form of Witch Weatherly, a hermit who lives on the top of Creeper Mountain—whom Silver is determined to meet, and who ends up playing a pivotal role in Wren’s ongoing family drama. Wren learns that she can reach unimaginable heights, heeding the glider pilot’s advice: “Take a look. . . . It’s not every day you get to see the world from up here.” —ALICE CARY

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Ooko the fox has a stick, a leaf and a rock, but he doesn’t have a friend. When Ooko spots another fox playing with a furless, two-legged friend called a “Debbie,” he decides to get a Debbie of his own—but things don’t quite go as planned. Esmé Shapiro studied illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, and Ooko (Tundra, $16.99, 40 pages, ISBN 9781101918449, ages 3 to 7) is her debut picture book. Shapiro lives in Brooklyn.

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A WORLD OF IDEAS

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WORDNOOK

BY THE EDITORS OF MERRIAM-WEBSTER

ROYAL DIGS

Dear Editor: Is there a difference between a castle and a palace? C. W. Martinez, California A castle is a fortified building or set of buildings. It was a defensive structure built to withstand attack. The word castle traces through Old English and Old North French to the Latin castellum, meaning “fort” or “fortress.” Castellum is the diminutive form of castrum, or fortified place. A palace, on the other hand, is a huge home of splendor and luxury, often built on high ground. The Palatium or Palatine Hill in Rome was the site of a number of large dwellings from about the 4th century B.C. Caesar Augustus took one of these as his residence, and the building of more imperial residences on the Palatine Hill by subsequent Roman emperors led to the use of Palatium to mean “the emperor’s residence.” In Late and

Medieval Latin palatium became a generic noun denoting any royal or imperial residence, as well as the royal court and royal authority, and then any princely house or manor of a lord. When paleis or palais, the Old French outcome of palatium, first appeared, it referred simply to the luxurious residence of an important person, and this sense was carried into Middle English palais and Modern English palace.

“trembling,” from Spanish temblar, meaning “to tremble.” Temblar comes from Medieval Latin tremulare, which, it should come as no surprise, is also the ancestor of English tremble. Tremulare ultimately goes back to Latin tremere, which means “to tremble.” Temblor was first used for earthquake in the southwestern U.S. during the late 1800s.

JENNER’S BREAKTHROUGH

ALL SHOOK UP

Dear Editor: Is it true that the word vaccine comes from vacca, the Latin word for cow? If so, what’s the story? L. P. Stratford, Connecticut

Dear Editor: In the news about the recent earthquakes in Ecuador, the word temblor is often used. Wouldn’t trembler be more accurate? D. N. Marion, Indiana The words tremor and t remble naturally come to mind in connection with earthquakes, making trembler seem like an apt synonym for earthquake. Temblor actually fits in this mold as well. In Spanish, temblor literally means

JULY

Toward the end of the 18th century, the English physician Edward Jenner set about investigating the truth of the folk wisdom that people such as dairymaids who contracted cowpox thereby gained immunity from smallpox, a much more serious disease. Working from this premise, he inoculated

an 8-year-old boy with material taken from a milkmaid’s cowpox sores. After the boy contracted and recovered from cowpox, Jenner proceeded to inoculate him with smallpox. Immunity had been provided, and the boy did not contract the disease. When Jenner published his documentation of 23 such cases in June 1798, he employed the medical Latin name for cowpox, variolae vaccinae, literally, “cow pustules.” This led to the use of vaccine matter or vaccine virus for the cowpox inoculum (the virus-continuing material used in inoculations), and vaccinations as a name for the inoculation procedure. French authors writing about Jenner’s work used the word vaccine alone in 1799 as a term for cowpox, and vaccine in 1801 as a term for the cowpox inoculum. English soon began to employ vaccine in the same sense. Send correspondence regarding Word Nook to: Language Research Service P.O. Box 281 Springfield, MA 01102

Test Your Mental Mettle with Puzzles from The Little Book of Big Word Puzzles SYLLABARY

DIFFICULTY: COMPLETION:

TIME:___________

Link word segments together in the grid below to create words, and enter them in the blanks

DICTIONARY UNSCRAMBLE

DIFFICULTY: COMPLETION:

TIME:___________

Unscramble the letters below to form words that match the Merriam-Webster definitions. noun A tropical forest where plants and trees grow very thickly LUGEJN=

SLOYMT= adjective Higher in quality Three-Syllable Verb

TREEBT=

Three-Syllable Noun

adjective Kept from knowledge or view SCETRE=

Five-Syllable Noun

Three-Syllable Verb Four-Syllable Noun Three-Syllable Adjective

adverb To a great degree ANSWERS EXAMINE HAMBURGER COOPERATION NECESSARY FASCINATE DEDICATION RIGOROUS

Four-Syllable Adjective

workman.com

GYHHIL= transitive verb To become aware of (something or someone) by seeing, hearing, etc. ONECTI= WORKMAN is a registered trademark of Workman Publishing Co., Inc.

ANSWERS JUNGLE MOSTLY BETTER SECRET HIGHLY NOTICE

adverb Almost all or almost completely