AMERICA’S BOOK REVIEW
DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK
JUNE 2015
THANKS, DAD
Thoughtful picks for Father’s Day
NOW HEAR THIS
Luis Alberto Urrea learns to love audio
J UDY
BLUME
The beloved children’s author returns to adult fiction with a 1950s drama inspired by three real-life tragedies
PaperbackPicks Paris Match
Eeny Meeny
Stone Barrington is back and better than ever in the astonishing new thriller from perennial fan favorite and #1 New York Times bestselling author Stuart Woods.
“Debuts one of the best new series detectives, Helen Grace... Mesmerizing!” —Lisa Gardner Detective Helen Grace confronts the darkest sides of human nature, including her own, in the most harrowing case of her career.
Feature
of the
Month
“Hamilton remains one of the most inventive and exciting writers in the paranomal field.” —Charlaine Harris
Days of Rage
Ghost Ship
The electrifying new Pike Logan novel from New York Times bestselling author Brad Taylor.
An explosive NUMA® adventure featuring hero Kurt Austin from New York Times bestselling author Clive Cussler.
“Heart-thumping action and insane heroics.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“Nobody does it better…NOBODY!” —Stephen Coonts
Phantom Instinct
Sand and Fire
From the Edgar® Awardwinning author hailed by Stephen King as “the next suspense superstar” comes her new thriller with “a plot as real as your nightmares” (#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child).
From Tom Young, author of The Warriors and The Renegades, comes an explosive new novel of the war on terror.
The Red Room
Only a Promise
John Knox and Grace Chu are back in the new Risk Agent novel— “another hit in this knockout thriller series” (Booklist) by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Choke Point.
The Survivors’ Club: six men and one woman, all wounded in the Napoleonic Wars, their friendship forged during their recovery at Penderris Hall in Cornwall. Now, for one of them, striking a most unusual bargain will change his life forever.
NEW IN HARDCOVER Anita Blake has the highest kill count of any vampire executioner in the country. She’s a U.S. Marshal who can raise zombies with the best of them. But ever since she and master vampire Jean-Claude went public with their engagement, all she is to anyone and everyone is Jean-Claude’s fiancée. It’s wreaking havoc with her reputation as a hard ass—to some extent. Luckily, in professional circles, she’s still the go-to expert for zombie issues. And right now, the FBI is having one hell of a zombie issue.
“Vampires, zombies, and shifters, oh my! And trust me, these are not your daughter’s vampires.” —Literati Book Reviews
contents
JUNE 2015
B O O K PA G E . C O M
features
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12 CELEBRATING AUDIO MONTH
cover story
A Little Bit of Everything for Romance Readers This June!
Three back-to-back plane crashes near Judy Blume’s New Jersey hometown inspired the adult novel she was “meant to write.”
Author Luis Alberto Urrea gives in to audiobooks
14 JONATHAN GALASSI An insider’s view of the publishing world
Cover photo © Elena Seibert
18 FATHER’S DAY
reviews
Four new books make great gifts for dads
21 FICTION
20 J.T. ELLISON
top pick:
The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows
also reviewed:
Meet the author of What Lies Behind
The Rocks by Peter Nichols Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf The Sunken Cathedral by Kate Walbert The Ice Twins by S.K. Tremayne Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez The Shore by Sara Taylor
29 CASSIE BEASLEY A magical middle grade debut
31 PETER SÍS Meet the author-illustrator of Ice Cream Summer
25 NONFICTION
top pick:
Uprooted by Naomi Novik The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein Language Arts by Stephanie Kallos The Jezebel Remedy by Martin Clark The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County by Kristen Green
also reviewed:
A Lucky Life Interrupted by Tom Brokaw Bad Kid by David Crabb On the Burning Edge by Kyle Dickman Under the Same Sky by Joseph Kim Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin
columns 04 04 05 06 06 08 09 11
WELL READ LIFESTYLES LIBRARY READS ROMANCE COOKING WHODUNIT BOOK CLUBS AUDIO
Playing Scared by Sara Solovitch Once Upon a Time in Russia by Ben Mezrich Getting Real by Gretchen Carlson Jacksonland by Steve Inskeep
28 TEEN
30 CHILDREN’S
top pick:
top pick:
Kissing in America by Margo Rabb
also reviewed:
Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella The Notorious Pagan Jones by Nina Berry The Porcupine of Truth by Bill Konigsberg
Lost in the Sun by Lisa Graff
also reviewed:
Little Miss, Big Sis by Amy Krouse Rosenthal Water Is Water by Miranda Paul Nooks & Crannies by Jessica Lawson A Handful of Stars by Cynthia Lord Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
A M E R I C A’ S B O O K R E V I E W PUBLISHER Michael A. Zibart
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WELL READ
LIFESTYLES
BY ROBERT WEIBEZAHL
BY JOANNA BRICHETTO
Styron’s life and times
Getting yourself in gear
We tend to think of William Styron as a novelist—and rightly so, given the enduring power of such works at The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice. Yet Styron, who would have been 90 years old on June 11, was also a prolific and gifted writer of nonfiction, as the doorstop-sized new collection, My Generation (Random House, $35, 656 pages, ISBN 9780812997057), makes plain. This gathering of essays, journalism, book reviews, memoirs and occasional pieces, written over 50 years, offers a congenial glimpse into this eminent American writer’s life and mind. Perhaps the best known of Styron’s nonfiction writings is Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, which chronicled his descent into depression, and My Generation includes a few related pieces, including the New York Times op-ed piece about Primo Levi’s suicide that provided the earliest kernel for the book. But, happily, most of Styron’s autobiographical writing here has a cheerier tone. He writes with considerable charm about his childhood in Tidewater Virginia, his time at boarding school and at Duke University, and his military service during WWII and the Korean War (including the ignominy he suffered when he was falsely diagnosed with syphilis). As the grandchild of slave owners, he returns often to that complicated legacy, offering a beautifully nuanced illumination of a thorny reality without shirking from its shadows. While we might not think of Styron as a political writer (though he did tackle themes such as slavery and the Holocaust in his fiction), My Generation includes his takes on the Clinton White House sex scandal, the 1968 Democratic Convention, the My Lai Massacre and even an evening spent smoking cigars with JFK.
College students today spend more time than ever stressing about career options, job placement and which pragmatic degree will help them snag a living wage after it’s all over. So why is it that so many young people, more than ever, are coming out of school with no idea what the hell to do with their lives? This is the question asked by Roadtrip Nation, an organization
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As the title of the collection suggests, many of the pieces gathered here offer critiques or fond reflections on Styron’s literary contemporaries, many of them friends. He writes with great affection about Truman Capote, Arthur Miller, James Jones, Robert Penn Warren, Irwin Shaw, Philip Roth, Peter Matthiessen, Lillian Hellman and many other writers, as well as editors such as Bennett Cerf, Robert Loomis and Hiram Haydn, who were vital to his career. He pays tribute to his literary antecedents as well, most notably Faulkner and Fitzgerald. My Generation has been painstakingly assembled by Styron biographer James L.W. West III, who includes eight previously unpublished pieces he found among the writer’s papers. Styron “took quite seriously his role as a public author and invested a good deal of effort and energy in the composition of his nonfiction,” West tells us. “He was closely attuned to Even the the issues and slightest concerns of pieces bear his time: as the the hallmarks years passed and he found that make himself unStyron a writer able to move who matters. forward with his fiction, he turned increasingly to the essay and op-ed forms to put his ideas on the record.” This volume speaks to Styron’s larger ambition: to always matter. As is typical of such a comprehensive collection, some of the pieces were written with a great sense of purpose, while others are more casual in their intentions and execution. Yet even the slightest bear the hallmarks that make Styron a writer who did indeed matter: lyrical, carefully considered prose, unvarnished honesty and the impetus that the truth, be it comfortable or ugly, is the essence of literary permanence.
advice in this warm, funny and down-toearth guide. All fancy-schmancy, frou-frou bets are off because you are raising demons. However, you really can live a life among your rambunctious youngsters that is beautifully designed, and Blair walks you through the possibilities one room at a time. From ingenious uses for entryway space to livable living rooms, of more than 300, whose collective from choosing the best spillsoul-searching has led to an annu- proof fabrics to decluttering with al documentary series on public kid-friendly storage, Blair proves television. Their hard-earned that “making a beautiful, happy wisdom is collected in Roadmap: home is not about what we don’t The Get-It-Together Guide for Fig- have or what we want to buy,” uring Out What to Do with Your but rather about the memories Life (Chronicle, $19.95, 368 pages, we make with our children in the ISBN 9781452128450). This is not space we all share. an out-of-touch ode to “followTOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES ing your dreams,” but a practical Are you frustrated by lackluster workbook with sweetly retro illustrations designed to get you where family photos? Sarah Wilkerson, photographer and CEO of the you want to be. Working professocial network Clickin Moms, can sionals have designed activities help with her new guide, Capture like “The Invisible Assembly Line” and the titular “Roadmap” that ask the Moment (Amphoto, $21.99, 256 pages, ISBN 9780770435271). the reader to create diagrams and Wilkerson presents a technique, answer hard, yet necessary questions that will guide and empower tip or creative exercise in each chapter, and all are accompanied students and wandering souls of by a beautifully illustrative photo all ages. contributed by more than 100 feA FAMILY AFFAIR male members of her hugely popular online community. Whether Design Mom: How to Live you’re a complete beginner or an with Kids: A Room-by-Room Guide (Artisan, $29.95, 288 pages, advanced shooter, Wilkerson’s tips will get you thinking about light, ISBN 9781579655716) rocketed composition and storytelling in to bestseller status immediately thrilling new ways, and a handy upon publication. It’s easy to see Photographer’s Reference runs why: This book addresses design through the essential terminolin a novel way—it’s aimed at real, ogy. Wilkerson’s smart suggesmessy and boisterous families tions—“Shoot metaphorically”; with children. No priceless vases “Remember that happiness isn’t or fragile materials are recomthe only emotion worth capturmended here. Renowned interior designer, author of a top parenting ing”—are sure to help you develop the skills necessary to document blog and mother of six, Gabrielle every family moment, big or small. Stanley Blair lays out her best
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 June.
#1
EIGHT HUNDRED GRAPES by Laura Dave
Simon & Schuster, $24.95, ISBN 9781476789255
After a bad breakup, Georgia retreats to her family’s winery—only to discover that there are a few things she doesn’t know about her family.
THE TRUTH ACCORDING TO US by Annie Barrows
Dial, $28, ISBN 9780385342940 The co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society presents a charming coming-of-age story set during the Great Depression. BookPage review on page 21.
THE BOOK OF SPECULATION by Erika Swyler
St. Martin’s, $26.99, ISBN 9781250054807 A Long Island librarian confronts his family’s troubled history after the discovery of a mysterious book in this dark and magical debut novel.
THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP by Nina George
Crown, $25, ISBN 9780553418774 The right book can mend a broken heart, says Monsieur Perdu, and his floating bookstore on the Seine is where to find it. But can he heal his own heartache?
THE INVASION OF THE TEARLING by Erika Johansen
Harper, $24.99, ISBN 9780062290397 This sequel to The Queen of the Tearling finds new queen Kelsea Glynn fighting a desperate battle against the brutal Red Queen and her army.
r e mm r u S r u o Y e u S k a r M u o Make Y r e n r u T r e g e a n P r A u T a Page“Entertaining . . . Engaging and. funny ... “Entertaining . . engaging Marvelously optimistic and funny . . . a marvelously about the future optimistic about of thebooks future of and books and bookstores and bookstores and the the people who love both. people who love both.”” –The Post –TheWashington Washington Post
“A captivating story . . .
“A captivating story . . . Once you start turning Once you start turning pages, there’s thethe pages, there’s no no setting the book down.” setting the book down.”
–The Denver Post –The Denver Post
IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT by Judy Blume
Knopf, $27.95, ISBN 9781101875049 One of our best-loved authors returns with a novel based on events from her own childhood: the story of a series of plane crashes in 1950s New Jersey. BookPage interview on page 16.
THE RUMOR by Elin Hilderbrand
Little, Brown, $28, ISBN 9780316334525 Author Madeline King is suffering from writer’s block—until her best friend’s real-life drama sparks her muse. Can their friendship survive the betrayal?
“Snowbound in Maine, two strangers struggle to “Snowbound in Maine, survive—fi irting, two ghting, strangersflstruggle to survive—fi irting, baring secrets.ghting, Theirflsexy, baring secrets. Their sexy, snappy dialogue will keep snappy dialogue will keep you racing through.” –People you racing through.”–People
THE PRECIPICE by Paul Doiron
Minotaur, $25.99, ISBN 9781250063694 When two bodies are found on the Appalachian Trail, coyotes seem to be the culprits—but game warden Mike Bowditch thinks there may be a human predator on the loose.
MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE’S SORRY by Fredrik Backman
Atria, $25, ISBN 9781501115066 After the death of her grandmother, 7-year-old Elsa sets out on a quest to deliver Granny’s unsent apology letters.
PIRATE HUNTERS by Robert Kurson
Random House, $28, ISBN 9781400063369 The author of Shadow Divers returns with another thrilling adventure story: the search for one of the most famous pirate ships of all time, the Golden Fleece. LibraryReads is a recommendation program that highlights librarians’ favorite books published this month. For more information, visit libraryreads.org.
“A literary first: a book
“A that literary first: feels likea book the love child that feels like the of Saul Bellowlove andchild Hogan’s ofHeroes, Saul Bellow Hogan’s full ofand authorial Heroes, full ofof authorial cartwheels comedy cartwheels of comedy and profundity.” –GQ and profundity.” –GQ
Books for a Life Well-Read Life A Well-Read Begins Here A L GA O N Q U I N P A P E L G O N Q U I N P A PREBRAB CA KC SK S
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ROMANCE
COOKING
B Y C H R I S T I E R I D G WAY
BY SYBIL PRATT
Summer sizzle Making a movie on location defines the action of the charming Beach Town (St. Martin’s, $26.99, 448 pages, ISBN 9781250065933) by Mary Kay Andrews. Location scout Greer Hennessy is in a career slump, and she is quite relieved when she discovers the ideal Florida locale for an upcoming film. But the sleepy town of Cypress
Key comes with an attractive yet cynical mayor who isn’t sure bringing Hollywood to his piece of paradise is a good idea. However, Greer convinces Mayor Eben Thinadeaux to take a chance, and as they get to know each other and their relationship heats up, so does trouble. Casting problems, family issues and a demanding director bring Greer to her breaking point, and she must decide between her job and her family, as well as her growing feelings for Eb. With a great sense of place, this story offers a fun glimpse into the process of making movies as it works its way to a happily-ever-after. Beach Town is perfect reading for a sunny summer day.
GAME OF LOVE Two lonely hearts become partners in a local version of the TV show “The Amazing Race” in Desperado (Berkley, $7.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9780425278376), the first in Lisa Bingham’s new Taggert Brothers series. In hopes of winning a cash prize, restaurateur P.D. Raines teams up with widower Elam Taggart in the “Wild West Games,” a relay race with a historical pioneer theme in Bliss, Utah. Grief-ridden former soldier Elam is not pleased to be a part of the competition, but when his brother asks him to take his spot, Elam can’t say no. What he’s not ready for is love. But P.D.’s
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The smartest recipes smile and unfettered desire make him wonder if lightning might strike twice. After a childhood of neglect, P.D. longs to be secure in a man’s love, but she’s not sure Elam can give her what she needs. Their adventures during the games open their eyes to love, but will they see the truth in time? An entertaining premise, two characters who deserve a sweet reward and a great setting come together in this touching romance.
TOP PICK IN ROMANCE Adventure adds a dash of spice to the delightful historical romance Love in the Time of Scandal (Avon, $7.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780062244925), part of the Scandalous series by Caroline Linden. With her best friends newly married, bored and lonely Penelope Weston takes it upon herself to educate a younger woman on society events and the insincere gentleman who populate them—gentlemen like Lord Benedict Lennox. Benedict cannot believe the annoying temptress Penelope is trying to prevent him from securing a biddable wife, but he comes to her rescue without hesitation when another nobleman accosts her. Unfortunately, this leads to terrible rumors about Penelope and Benedict, and before long, they must marry to avoid a scandal. They are happy to discover that they’re compatible in the bedroom, and all might be well if they didn’t have to struggle against Benedict’s distrust of love, as well as the danger that continues to lurk around them. These two are made for each other, and through openness and understanding, they come to realize this fact. Readers will cheer for the stars of this winning story.
There are Genius Grant winners, a genius bar at the Apple Store, but “genius recipes”? Never thought of such a thing. But Kristen Miglore did, and Food52 Genius Recipes (Ten Speed, $35, 272 pages, ISBN 9781607747970) is the brilliant result. Four years ago, Miglore launched a wildly popular weekly column on the Food52 website
featuring brilliant recipes from the most knowledgeable food-world luminaries, past and present, that give us a smarter version of an often familiar dish, make us think in new ways and raise our cooking IQs. Here, she has collected more than 100 of the greatest hits of the cooking canon. You’ll find Marcella Hazan’s revelatory Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions (all done in 45 minutes), Barbara Kafka’s amazing Simplest Roast Chicken, Alice Water’s perfect Ratatouille, Nach Waxman’s famed Brisket of Beef and Nigella Lawson’s to-diefor Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake, among other treasures. Miglore has added “Genius Tips” on ingredients and techniques, and the photographs are as fantastic as the recipes.
DADDY’S DAY SPECIAL If all fathers were as facile in the kitchen as Dean McDermott, and as fiercely committed to making meals that kids love, we’d be a nation of wonderfully fed, happy families, and picky eaters would be but a dim memory. The Gourmet Dad (Harlequin, $27.95, 224 pages, ISBN 9780373892891), the debut cookbook from the father of five, professionally trained chef and reality TV star, provides us with more than 100 recipes for delicious dinners that will satisfy and gratify the grown-ups and, with easy tweaks and strategies, will have the kids clamoring for seconds (even
the veggies). For instance: Arrange the Heir loom Tomato wedges in a summer salad to look like flower petals; dial back the spices in the meatballs for the fabulous Italian Wedding Soup and garnish it with heartshaped parmesan croutons; entice the wee ones with a small amount of Easy Lemon Curry Chicken sauce and they’ll learn to love exotic flavors. Follow Daddy Dean into the kitchen—you’ll have fun, the kids will have fun and dinner will be a delight.
TOP PICK IN COOKBOOKS Fania Lewando, a pioneer in the Jewish vegetarian movement, published The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook (Schocken, $30, 272 pages, ISBN 9780805243277) in Yiddish in 1938. She and her husband died in 1941, all traces of them gone. But a copy of her book was found, and this translation, with its original, charming four-color drawings from seed packets, brings back a time when the Lithuanian capital city of Vilna was a flourishing center of Jewish culture and when Lewando’s progressive culinary ideas were flourishing in it. How rare that a cookbook tugs at your heart and conjures up a world, and a woman, lost to the Holocaust. Like so many advocates of meatless meals today, Lewando celebrated the bright, healthy flavors of nature’s bounty, updated traditional recipes and helped establish a different, vibrant palette for Eastern European Jews. In the 400 recipes here for everything from salads, soups, sauces and stewed dishes to cutlets, kugels, cakes and compotes, Lewando’s strong, prescriptive voice shines through, and her succinct prewar style is untampered with, except for measurements.
WHERE WILL 2015 TAKE YOU? DK EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDES IS GIVING AWAY A DREAM VACATION—
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Enter for a chance to win: One Grand Prize of $4,000.00 toward your vacation of choice and a Discover More Vacation travel pack, which includes a DK Eyewitness Travel Guide, a plug adapter, a travel journal, a luggage tag, and a tote bag (Approximate Retail Value (“ARV”) $4,065.00), or one of fourteen (14) runner-up prizes, each of which is the Discover More Vacation travel pack as described above (ARV = $65.00 each). No purchase necessary. Open to residents of the fifty United States, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories and possessions, age 18 or older. Sweepstakes begins January 23, 2015. Entries must be received no later than November 2, 2015, 11:59:59 PM Eastern Time. Winners will be selected at random on or about November 6, 2015. Odds of winning depend on number of eligible entries received. Void where prohibited by law. Go to us.dk.com/discovermoresweeps for full rules and to enter.
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columns
WHODUNIT BY BRUCE TIERNEY
You’re messing with the wrong money The old saying “misfortune comes in threes” could not have been truer for rising baseball star Jake Dent, protagonist of Daniel Palmer’s gripping Constant Fear (Kensington, $25, 416 pages, ISBN 9780758293459). All at once, a drunk driving accident shatters his pitching arm; his 3-year-old son, Andy, is diagnosed with diabetes; and his wife strikes out for greener pastures. Fast-forward a dozen years or so, and Jake is getting by as the custodian of a high-dollar prep school. As part of Jake’s employment package, Andy gets free tuition, one of a handful of underprivileged kids among the Richie Riches. Jake is a bit of an odd duck, a zealous survivalist who has trained his son in the arts of camouflage, self-defense and living off the
grid. Andy is a bright kid but has a troubling secret: He and his pals have been using their hacking skills to systematically steal bitcoins from the accounts of their wealthy schoolmates’ parents, a little here, a little there, donating to worthy causes like modern-day Robin Hoods. But now someone using their computer’s ID has absconded with $200 million in bitcoins from
Mexican drug cartels, and a clever, ruthless enforcer is hot on the heels of the thieves. Palmer is no slouch when it comes to ratcheting
Will the marriage pact be fulfilled? Can a man with doubts about love be the right husband for a woman who wants it all? Don’t miss the rest of the series, available now!
www.HQNBooks.com www.LindaLaelMiller.com
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up the tension, and he delivers plot twists right up to the final pages.
FOR DEAR LIFE As Keith McCafferty’s Crazy Mountain Kiss (Viking, $26.95, 336 pages, ISBN 9780670014705) opens, a fading writer, fortified by 15-year-old bourbon, pecks away at a battered blue Olivetti. A faint but unpleasant odor from somewhere in his rented Montana cabin is distracting him. He shrugs it off, throws open the windows to the night chill and sets about making a fire. Almost immediately, the cabin fills with smoke, and he discovers a corpse wedged tightly in the chimney. The body is that of Cindy Huntingdon, an up-and-coming teenage rodeo star who’s been missing for almost six months. It’s a suspicious death to be sure, but there’s no real indication of foul play. Still, the uncertainty doesn’t sit well with the dead girl’s mother, so she hires P.I. Sean Stranahan to look into the case. The investigation harnesses Stranahan into uneasy tandem with Sheriff Martha Ettinger, with whom he has just ended a romance, both of them intact but still feeling the bruises. McCafferty’s newest is nicely done, with a plausible storyline and good characters. Fans of C.J. Box or Tony (or Anne) Hillerman will feel like they’re dropping in on an old friend.
KILLER AMONG US It is no easy task to live up to the appellation “the Hercule Poirot of Canada,” but that is exactly what retired Montreal cop Emile CinqMars must do in John Farrow’s brilliant detective series. In The Storm Murders (Minotaur, $25.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9781250057686), we begin with the classic closedroom murder scenario: Two bodies are found, dead by gunshot—only there’s no gun, and the fresh snow outside shows not a single footprint. The investigators realize too
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late that the only way this can be is if the killer is still in the house. Cinq-Mars is called in to consult on the case, which has international ramifications; he will be working in conjunction with the FBI, which is investigating a series of eerily similar cases in the U.S. This could scarcely come at a worse time for Cinq-Mars, as he’s trying to shore up his shaky marriage and craft some sort of post-police life for himself. This terrific story, with sympathetic characters and Farrow’s crisp prose, is some of the best fiction to come out of Canada. Louise Penny won’t be bumped off the podium, but she’ll have to clear some space next to her.
TOP PICK IN MYSTERY Full disclosure: I know Colin Cotterill personally and have enjoyed all of his books, most before they came out. That said, Six and a Half Deadly Sins (Soho Crime, $26.95, 256 pages, ISBN 9781616955588) would have been my Top Pick notwithstanding. It’s a rollicking installment in the ongoing saga of retired medical examiner Dr. Siri Paiboun, once the somewhat reluctant National Coroner of Laos, circa 1979. One hot day—for they are all hot days in Laos—Siri receives an unmarked package containing a pha sin, a traditional garment of northern Laos. Sewn into the hem is a severed human finger, a decidedly nontraditional design motif. For someone with Siri’s curious nature, the mystery of the finger cannot be ignored, and an investigative trip to the north must be launched, even if it takes subterfuge and a spot of blackmail. Meanwhile, Inspector Phosy is already in the north to investigate the murders of two village headmen, which may go hand-in-hand (sorry) with Siri’s digital (sorry again) conundrum. Deliciously convoluted and endlessly atmospheric, this is guaranteed to delight fans and new readers alike.
BOOK CLUBS BY JULIE HALE
Quentin’s magical quest Lev Grossman brings his acclaimed Magicians trilogy to an end with The Magician’s Land (Plume, $16, 416 pages, ISBN 9780147516145). Banished from the kingdom of Fillory and sacked from a teaching job at Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic, the school he once attended, Quentin Coldwater—a bit world-weary
at the age of 30—hooks up with a band of magicians who are searching for a valuable case, the contents of which are a mystery. The narrative shifts between the magical realm and real-world New York, where Quentin lives with a Brakebills pupil named Plum and makes plans to establish a new kingdom using an obscure spell. In this compelling tale, characters from the past pop up unexpectedly, including some who are supposed to be dead. There are surprises aplenty for the trilogy’s many fans. Grossman pays tribute to Harry Potter and Narnia in this masterfully written narrative, but—like its predecessors—the book earns the status of a classic on its own terms. This is an epic conclusion to a truly magical series.
SNOWBOUND In his gripping Arctic-exploration tale, In the Kingdom of Ice (Anchor, $16.95, 480 pages, ISBN 9780307946911), Hampton Sides tells the true story of a remarkable journey that goes perilously wrong. When newspaper magnate James Gordon Bennett—owner of The New York Herald and the man who sent Stanley to Africa to find Dr. Livingstone—sponsors a spectacular naval mission to reach the North Pole, the undertaking draws international attention. On July 8, 1879, with captain George Wash-
ington De Long at the helm, the USS Jeannette departs from San Francisco, heading for uncharted waters. There is danger in store for the crew, as the ship becomes locked in ice. Forced to abandon the Jeannette, which eventually sinks, the men are stranded in a frigid landscape of ice and snow somewhere north of Siberia. Contending with starvation, storms and polar bears, driven to the brink of madness, they struggle to stay alive. Sides recounts their journey by foot across Arctic ice in thrilling detail. A meticulous historian and world-class storyteller, he spins a dramatic yarn in this adventure-filled narrative of survival.
Fresh
Book Club Reads for Spring The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah, Agatha Christie
“Christie herself, some might say, could do no better.... Enough twists, turns, revelations and suspects to cook up a most satisfying red-herring stew. Literary magic.” —Washington Post
Hotel Moscow
by Talia Carner
“...[a] wonderful evocation of time and place and an insightful post-Cold War thriller which reminds us that in Russia the more that changes, the more that stays the same.” —Nelson DeMille
TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS A deadly virus takes its toll on humanity in Emily St. John Mandel’s bold, accomplished Station Eleven (Vintage, $15.95, 352 pages, ISBN 9780804172448), which was a National Book Award finalist. Actress Kirsten Raymonde belongs to a theatrical troupe that travels by horse-drawn wagons through a post-apocalyptic world, staging Shakespeare for survivors of the virus. When the performers come to a settlement called St. Deborah by the Water, they meet a crazed religious leader who could land them in danger. The novel moves back and forth in time, recounting the stories of actor Arthur Leander, who, in the early days of the virus, died during a performance of King Lear, and of Jeevan Chaudhary, the medic who tried to save his life. As Mandel skillfully reveals, the three characters are connected in surprising ways. Written with assurance and authenticity, this is an extraordinary novel about the endurance of the human spirit and the transcendent power of art.
Whisper Beach by Shelley Noble
When a group of friends reunite in the idyllic beach town where they grew up, they must reevaluate their loyalty to one another or lose their friendship forever.
The Tide Watchers
by Lisa Chaplin
“Lisa Chaplin brilliantly combines suspense and romance while vividly recreating the dangerous world of espionage in Napoleonic France.” —Tasha Alexander, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Counterfeit Heiress
@Morrow_PB
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William Morrow
Book Club Girl
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WHAT KIND OF LISTENER ARE YOU? Audiobooks are great to listen to while doing other things. Whether it’s exercising, crafting, traveling, cooking, or gardening, we have audiobooks to complement any activity!
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AUDIO BY SUKEY HOWARD
Uncommon heroes Christopher McDougall has done it again! If you listened to Born to Run, you’ll know what I mean. If not, you’re in for an experience-expanding audio epic, enhanced by Nicholas Guy Smith’s facile shifts in accent and cadence. Natural Born Heroes (Random House Audio, $45, 12 hours, ISBN 9780804194143) focuses on the derring-do and heroism of a
band of misfits, oddball brainy Brits trained in special ops and Greek partisans—toughened by an age-old tradition of fitness and valor—who went behind Nazi lines during WWII to sabotage the enemy. Along the way, McDougall seeks to understand how they did what they did—and how heroes are made. That takes him, and us, on a wild ride. He profiles so many fascinating characters, cites so many experts, offers so much information on Ancient Greece, WWII and extreme conditioning, that it would boggle the mind if McDougall weren’t such an accomplished synthesizer of disparate data and so uniquely able to weave all these threads into a riveting narrative.
TRUTH BE TOLD Eli’s uncle Poxl West (né Leopold Weisberg) was a Jewish bomber pilot in the R.A.F during WWII, flying sorties against the Nazis, avenging the deaths of the parents he left behind in Czechoslovakia. He was Eli’s hero, the mentor who introduced him to art, theater and music, who read him passages from the book he was writing. Daniel Torday’s wonderfully written debut novel, The Last Flight of Poxl West (Macmillan Audio, $23.99, 9.5 hours, ISBN 9781427265500), opens in Boston in 1986. Poxl has just published his memoir, Skylock, to great acclaim, and Eli is overjoyed. We get to hear Poxl’s sweep-
ing story of his loves and losses, his amorous and aerial exploits, punctuated by Eli’s “interludes,” in which a now-grown Eli looks back on Skylock’s effects, his evolving understanding of Poxl, Poxl’s reversal of fortune (I’ll say no more), and the nature of truth in storytelling. Aaron Abano reads, giving Poxl a softly Slavic voice and Eli a tender, adolescent awe and anguish.
TOP PICK IN AUDIO H Is for Hawk (Blackstone Audio, $34.95, 11 hours, ISBN 9781481530965) is a compellingly unusual book and author Helen Macdonald, a compellingly unusual person. A gifted writer, thinker and ponderer of the curative power of the wild world, she’s also a poet and, most importantly, a falconer. She’s written an intimate memoir of the grief and agonizing loss she lived with after her beloved father’s sudden death, seamlessly intertwining it with her chronicle of training a goshawk, a fearsome and fearsomely difficult bird, which she sets against her long fascination with T.H. White’s sad work on his botched attempt at falconry. Macdonald’s passion for birds of prey began when she was very young, and she’s been enraptured by raptors ever since. So, training a goshawk in an attempt to shed the human world she’d lost trust in by falling into a goshawk’s wild, ferocious domain made a kind of life-saving sense to her. As her relationship with Mabel, the goshawk, proceeds, her place in these two worlds seesaws, then finally balances. Unexpectedly, Macdonald is an extraordinary, nuanced narrator, whose elegant voice makes her eloquent prose even more affecting.
b e s t s e l l i n g
SUMMER Listening! “Peter Hermann is perfectly cast.” —AudioFile on Eye for an Eye
READ BY PETER HERMANN
READ BY SCOTT BRICK WITH SPECIAL BONUS “WRITER’S CUT” READ BY STEVE BERRY
READ BY THE AUTHOR
READ BY AVITA JAY
“A wonderful story.” —Rosamunde Pilcher READ BY JACKIE COLLINS WITH A FULL CAST ON SALE 6/13
READ BY AMY RUBINATE
“When is an audiobook so very, very much more than another audiobook? When it’s read by Jackie Collins, Sydney Tamiia Poitier and a cast of can’t-stop-listeningto characters.” —Beauty by the Books
listen to excerpts at www.macmillanaudio.com
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features
CELEBRATING AUDIO MONTH
An author discovers the joys of audio
I
was never a big fan of audiobooks until I heard Bill Bryson read A Walk in the Woods. Oh, I had enjoyed audios as a kind of archive of authors’ voices, but it seemed like cheating, somehow.
I was a paper man all the way— give me pages, or give me death. Until Bryson’s hilarious complaining stopped me in my tracks and made me laugh out loud. I started bugging others to listen to it. I was like a kid with a new Led Zeppelin album. I bought cassettes of the book for people. I played passages of it in my lit classes to illustrate the Monty Pythonesque delights of awkwardness, discomfort and kvetching. And then I had kids. And with kids came long car trips. Very long car trips. Trips during which, to arrive at Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, one had to traverse Nebraska. Or Oklahoma. Lovely
places all, but somewhat lacking in teen and tween thrills. To avoid losing the kids to handheld devices and Game Boys, we discovered a miraculous combination of the past and the future. Both my wife and I were and are Tim Curry fans. Who could ever recover from the shock of encountering Dr. Frank N. Furter in Rocky Horror? “Oh, Rocky,” indeed. And our kids were Lemony Snicket fans. And here came that sweet transvestite, with that arch and deliciously deranged voice, narrating Lemony Snicket! Everyone in the car was riveted. We all loved these audiobooks, becoming for hundreds of miles a family in the 1930s gath-
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ered around a great radio to travel into unexpected worlds. Perhaps my wife and I were seeing Curry in fishnets in our minds, while the kids were seeing what Lemony wanted them to. But never mind—it worked. And it worked so well, we often hurtled past the various Stuckeys on the road, passing up corn nuts and pecan logs to hear more story. I have a slight bone to pick with Tim Curry, though—his nefarious influence on our literary habits inspired our daughter to force us to listen to all 9,000 hours of his rendering of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Not knocking Jules Verne, mind you. But, really. The upshot, however, was our daughter announcing that she loved science. Poor girl—she thought all science teachers would sound like Curry. Never mind the corsets. Then, it was my turn. I had published this whopping novel called The Hummingbird’s Daughter. It was my life’s work in a real sense—it took me 20 years to write and research it. When the offer came to record the audio, I thought I had to do it. Who was going to do it justice? Not me, perhaps, but at least I would understand all the jokes and get the Mexican cussing right. I have learned that my readers are very particular about their Spanish obscenities. So. Nobody told me that a 600-page book would be a pain to record. Literally a pain—in the posterior. Because you sit on this stool the whole time, maintaining a six-inch distance from the mike. Yoga for non-yoga people. And 600 pages, even at a good clip, means about 40 hours in the studio. Perching. With an engineer endlessly stopping you for “stomach noises,” or “weird clicking in your throat” or “gross mouth sounds.”
© JOE MAZZA
BY LUIS ALBERTO URREA
And a producer listening in via Skype to correct any deviation— even one word—from your own text. NO IMPROVISING. Plus, these shadowy characters stun you by pointing out that words you think you’ve always known are actually pronounced another way and you’ve been saying them wrong. What? Thank God I have tenure, you think, because my colleagues from rhetoric have been snickering at me this whole time! My first producer was a lovely former Broadway musical dancer. “I’m a dancer!” she’d tell me from wherever her fortress of solitude was. “Do you have any idea what we go though? I don’t care if your butt hurts!” But she liked my reading. Except when I used a French word. My accent was appalling, apparently. The studio was an awesome experience, however. One day, my engineer took me to a small toilet and said, “Look at this.” I looked. “So?” I said. “Dude—Madonna peed there.” I said, “Uh. Bronze the toilet seat?” And back to work. If you want to feel insane, by the way, spend 40 hours speaking in the voices of different people all day. Especially when they argue. But you know one thing: Long after you’re gone, your voice will remain. To tell your children a bedtime story. And later still, their children. Me and Tim Curry. Forever. Luis Alberto Urrea is a novelist, poet and short story writer and the author of The Devil’s Highway, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in nonfiction.
JUNE IS AUDIOBOOK MONTH
Tired of reading the same story over and over?
Try something new! Delectable Debuts in Audio.
always serving you something new.
interviews
JONATHAN GALASSI
The good old days of publishing
L
egendary book editor Jonathan Galassi has been at Farrar, Straus and Giroux since 1986 and is now its president and publisher. So why is his rambunctious, captivating first novel, Muse, being published by a rival?
“Oh, I don’t think it would be kosher for us to publish it,” Galassi says during a call to his office in New York. “It would seem like a strange kind of nepotism. Besides, I’d like to feel that my book is legitimate, that it’s being published because someone liked it, not because they had to.” Muse is certainly legitimate— and more than likable. In fact, it’s quite funny and revelatory about an almost-lost world of literary publishing. The novel tells the story of a clash of publishing titans— Homer Stern and Sterling Wainwright—waging long-term war over, well, just about everything. But especially over Ida Perkins, a poet as famous as Ernest Hemingway and as enigmatic as J.D. Salinger. The novel’s protagonist is Paul Dukach, a bookish young man who idolizes Perkins and becomes the foremost authority on her life and work and, eventually, a sort of adopted son of both publishers. Muse is, as Galassi writes in the preface, “a love story. It’s about the good old days, when men were men and women were women and books were books, with glued
MUSE
By Jonathan Galassi
Knopf, $25, 272 pages ISBN 9780385353342, audio, eBook available
LITERARY FICTION
14
or even sewn bindings, cloth or paper covers, with beautiful or not-so-beautiful jackets and a musty, dusty, wonderful smell. . . .” “They say write what you know,” Galassi says regarding the origins of his novel. “The two old-lion publishers are based on people that I did know very well and admired a lot. They were both very engaging and witty people. And they did hate each other. I thought it was a good setup for a look at the publishing business as it used to be.” As portrayed by Galassi, publishers Stern and Wainwright are anything but madam-librarian type book people. They are operatic in their competitiveness and their libidos. “That’s all drawn from life,” Galassi says. “Big egos have big libidos. Having a big ego makes you insufferable in a way, but it also lets you do things, don’t you think? There’s something kind of heroic in a monstrous way about it.” His portraits of these publishers are, Galassi says, “part of the swashbuckling, lovingly satirical, comedic tone of the book.” Although he doesn’t quite admit to it, the milder, more diplomatic character of Paul Dukach probably arises from Galassi’s own sensibilities. Galassi is often described as the most gentlemanly editor in the business. The poet Ida Perkins, however, is pure invention, a character that Galassi clearly loved imagining into life. Muse includes a puckishly inventive “concise bibliography” of Perkins’ work that will make an unsuspecting reading wonder why he has not read any of these inspired works of poetry. It also includes a selection from Perkins’ final collection of poems in which the novel’s protagonist discovers “an onion skin atom bomb” that will alter the balance of power among his contending father figures. “There’s chutzpah involved in writing those poems,” Galassi ad-
mits. “But the thing about the book is that it’s not meant to be realistic. Of course those poems would not be the greatest poems of the century, but there is something that makes them plausible. I loved writing them. They’re not my poems. They’re her poems. They’re in her voice. Part of the fun of it was trying to ventriloquize. It’s all part of this pastiche of literary life, literary culture.” Galassi, by the way, is a well- regarded poet himself and an accomplished translator of Italian poets Eugenio Montale and “Big egos have Giacomo Leopbig libidos. ardi. He was poetry editor Having a big ego makes you of The Paris Review for a deinsufferable cade. His most in a way, but recent volume it also lets you of poetry, Left-handed, do things.” is a semi-autobiographical exploration of the emotional disruption a middle-aged man experiences as his long-term marriage ends and he falls in love with a younger man. Galassi says that after finishing Left-handed, “which has a kind of narrative arc,” he felt he should try writing a novel. “I’d always thought I could never do that. I work with all these people who write novels. I admire what they do, and I wondered, are they really a different species from me? So I thought it’s now or never; why not try. It was a challenge to myself.” Thus in his mid-60s Galassi began to write fiction every day “for as many hours as I could. And then I’d put those pages away and never look at them. I did that for a month. And then I put it away for a year. And then I looked at it a year
© ELENA SEIBERT
BY ALDEN MUDGE
later and decided I had something to work with. I was going against my own editorial faculty that might have prevented me from letting loose.” And then the editor got edited. “Robin Dresser, my editor at Knopf, was very critical and very demanding. I found that I had the most difficulty cutting. I didn’t want to let go of this; I didn’t want to let go of that. I had to go against my desire to have pages. But what matters is not how many pages you have but how good they are. This,” Galassi says with a wry laugh, “is what I tell my writers all the time.” Toward the end of the conversation, the discussion turns to the future of the book, a topic of concern in Galassi’s novel and for Galassi himself. He says that the tsunami of eBooks once predicted to wash away printed books has abated. “eBooks are a big part of our business. But they’re not the whole thing. . . . Books are still books. Many young people really want books as physical objects because book culture is not just about content. It’s an atmosphere, a world of its own, with a physical component. People talk about the ‘erotics of books.’ If you came to my office, you’d see shelves and shelves of books that I’ve worked on and that we’ve published over the years in all their different colors and sizes. Books are beautiful things. They really do furnish a room.”
GREAT BOOKS Ideal Summer Escapes “SO COMPELLING, SO FEARLESSLY IMAGINED,
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that I wouldn’t have put it down for anything.”
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“SUSPENSEFUL, PROVOCATIVE....
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Unsurpassable…observant, devastating prose.”
One of the most memorable teenage protagonists in recent fiction.”
—The Boston Globe
—The Washington Post
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A compelling tale of existential angst, marital betrayal and sexual sin.”
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ANCHOR
cover story
JUDY BLUME
Beloved author weaves a gripping new tale from childhood memories
© ELENA SEIBERT
INTERVIEW BY AMY SCRIBNER
W
hen Judy Blume was a teenager in Elizabeth, New Jersey, three commercial jets crashed in her town within months of each other, each narrowly avoiding schools and orphanages. In retrospect, it’s shocking that she hasn’t considered telling this dramatic story before. But only now has Blume written about it in a novel, In the Unlikely Event. “I must have buried this story, because if I hadn’t, why did it take me so long to write about it? I mean, it’s a great story,” Blume says over the phone from her home in Key West, Florida. “It was so far buried. My daughter became a commercial airline pilot and she said, ‘Mother, how could you never tell me this story?’ I don’t keep secrets, I will tell almost anyone almost anything.” Charming, funny and sounding far younger than her 77 years, Blume recalls the moment when she knew she would write this novel. It was 2009, after Blume heard fellow author Rachel Kushner speak about her new book, which was inspired by her mother’s life in 1950s Cuba. “It was that phrase, ‘In the ’50s,’” Blume says. “A light bulb went off in my head and it came to me like no book had ever come to me: characters, I knew the plot. Of course, there were surprises along
IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT
By Judy Blume
Knopf, $27.95, 416 pages ISBN 9781101875049, audio, eBook available
HISTORICAL FICTION
16
the way, because we would never write if there weren’t surprises.” Blume started with several months of research, which she calls “the best fun I’ve ever had on a book before. I’ve never done research! I just loved it, I loved the process. People kept saying, ‘Yes, Judy, we know, but then you still have to write the book.’” Like most of the great Blume books—I could list some of them, but that hardly seems necessary— In the Unlikely Event is a gripping, compulsively readable story of the joys and sorrows of family. But this one is also a study of how communities respond to tragedy. Fifteen-year-old Miri Ammerman lives with her single mother, her grandmother and her Uncle Henry, a local newspaper reporter who is about to be married. Like most 1950s American teens, Miri’s biggest worries are friends, homework and boys. At least until a Miami Airlines plane carrying 56 passengers from Newark Airport plunges into the Elizabeth River in December 1952. Incredibly, two more planes would crash around Elizabeth in the weeks to come: On January 22, just 37 days after the first crash, an American Airlines flight crashes near a local high school. And on February 11, a National Airlines flight plows into an apartment building. Blume brings not just Miri and her family to life, but many of the passengers on those doomed flights, whom she fictionalized but based on historical records. “I am introducing so many characters in part one,” Blume says. “I told my editor that maybe we need to set up a tree like a Russian novel. She said to me, trust your readers,
so I thought, this is not Anna Karenina. Trust your readers. They’ll follow you.” While this is a novel, the crashes were all-tooreal, and Blume recalls them vividly. “I remember where I was on the day of the first crash, which was a very nasty Sunday in December,” she says. “I was in the car with my parents and my friend Zelda. The radio was on in the car and I remember, ‘We interrupt this program to “I remember bring you this where I was news bulletin.’” on the day of She also the first crash, remembers which was the distinctly a very nasty 1950s reactions of her fellow Sunday in students. December.” “The girls thought it was sabotage,” she says. “The boys all thought it was aliens or zombies. It did seem they—whoever ‘they’ were—were after kids. How else could you explain the crashes? One close to the junior high, one almost right through another school. The third one into the playing field by the orphanage in town.” Blume’s father, a dentist, was called in to identify crash victims by their dental records. The character of Dr. Osner, the father of Miri’s best friend, was pulled from Blume’s recollections of her father, who “was much beloved by all the kids who liked to come to our house because he was warm and friendly and fun. I got ‘Be a good girl, Judy,’ from my mother. My fa-
ther would have said, ‘You go, girl,’ if that was a phrase then. He always told me to reach for the stars.” At this point, Blume chokes up. “I’m going to cry,” she says matter-of-factly. “I always do. I’ll recover quickly. “That’s what I learned from my father,” she continues. “Terrible things happen, and as Henry says to Miri: ‘I’m so sorry, but we go on.’ When she isn’t sure it’s worth it, he reassures her that it is worth it. That’s what I got from my father. I’m a very optimistic person.” These days, Blume and her husband, the writer George Cooper, make their home most of the year in Key West. It’s a long way from New Jersey. “You know, it was one of those things where it was winter in New York and I was trying to write Summer Sisters and I said, ‘Oh, I wish I could go someplace warm,’ ” she says. “We knew someone who lived in Key West, and my husband called her. I said, ‘I can’t go to Key West, it’s too hot.’ She said, ‘Tell Judy I’m wearing polar fleece and she should come.’ We rented a house sight unseen and we totally, absolutely fell in love.” Active members of the community, Blume and her husband started a nonprofit movie theater.
On an average day, Blume wakes up and does a two-mile power walk by the ocean before breakfast (“I love my breakfast,” she says). Her office is a guesthouse just steps from the house. “I slide open my glass doors way to the side, and I’m in a garden and it’s so beautiful,” she says. “I work until lunchtime, and if it’s a first draft, I pray for any distraction. I’ll take any phone calls during a first draft.” She still corresponds with readers, although the nature of that relationship has evolved since she wrote Letters to Judy (1986), which chronicled some of the most personal letters she’d gotten from fans. Rarely does she get snail mail these days. “I do think that picking up a pencil and writing out what you’re thinking and feeling on a piece of paper and licking an envelope and putting a stamp on it and putting it in a mailbox to someone you don’t know and you feel safe, that’s a whole different thing than sending an email,” she says. “There’s more information for troubled kids out there—they don’t have the same questions they once had. This is good!” When I mention that my 10-year-old tore through all the Fudge books last year, she laughs. “It’s a lot of generations [of readers],” she says. “My daughter’s generation was the very first, and to think they are in their 50s now. I love it—how could I not? It’s the best reward for writing anyone could possibly have—to have readers. There’s nothing better than to hear a kid laughing over a book.” After finishing her research, writing the novel (20 three-ring binders’ worth of drafts) and touring to promote it this summer, Blume says she is ready for a different creative challenge. “I said after Summer Sisters, I’m never doing this again, and I meant it at the time,” Blume says with a laugh. “Then this came along, and this time I do mean it, I’m never doing it again. I’m 77! But I have that creative spirit that lives inside of me. I’m not saying I won’t do something again, but it won’t be a long novel. This is the one that I was meant to write. I feel that.”
A SHORELINE OF SECRETS ACROSS FIVE GENERATIONS
“A vivid exploration of the struggle for autonomy and the many meanings of what we call home.”
—EIMEAR MCBRIDE, AUTHOR OF
A GIRL IS A HALF-FORMED THING
“Epic in breadth but glittering in its detail, The Shore is utterly absorbing.”
—CATHERINE O’FLYNN, AUTHOR OF WHAT WAS LOST
“A testament to an exuberant talent and an original, fearless sensibility.”
—THE GUARDIAN
A POWERFUL AND AMBITIOUS DEBUT NOVEL SET IN AN UNFORGETTABLE PLACE
AVA I L A B L E E V E R Y W H E R E BOOKS ARE SOLD
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features
FATHER’S DAY BY HARVEY FREEDENBERG
Wise and witty books for dad
I
f you’re searching for a gift for dear ol’ dad, two celebrity memoirs and two accounts of unusual personal quests are among our recommendations for a Father’s Day reading list.
It’s especially poignant to read Stuart Scott’s memoir, Every Day I Fight (with Larry Platt, Blue Rider, $26.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9780399174063), knowing that not long after the book was finished, the ESPN anchor succumbed to appendiceal cancer at age 49. Writing in a conversational tone, his prose sprinkled with colloquialisms like “dude” and “brotha,” Scott never wavers in his candid account of the struggle with disease that dogged the final seven years of his life, describing how he “refused to curl up and just be a cancer patient,” when he’d head straight from chemotherapy treatments to the gym for a mixed martial arts workout. Famous for trademark phrases like “boo-yah” and for bringing hip-hop culture to ESPN in the age of the “raplete,” Scott recounts the highlights of a career that saw him make his meteoric rise from a reporting job in Florence, South Carolina, to ESPN in a mere six years. In the two decades he spent at the network, he shed the perception that he was nothing more than a “catchphrase guy” and established himself as a dedicated, hard-working professional. What makes this memoir most appropriate for Father’s Day is Scott’s account of his fierce love for his two daughters. Even when he was honored with the Jimmy V Perseverance Award in 2014, Scott steadfastly avoided referring to his seven-year fight
18
against cancer as “brave.” But after reading this revealing and courageous memoir, we can.
MOCKING MIDDLE AGE If you’re offended by explicit language or jokes from a comedian who admits he’s “not very politically correct, nor do I have a very useful filter,” you may want to pass on Brad Garrett’s When the Balls Drop: How I Learned to Get Real and Embrace Life’s Second Half (Gallery, $25, 288 pages, ISBN 9781476772905). But the many fans who enjoyed Garrett’s Emmy Award-winning nine-year role as the big brother on the hit series “Everybody Loves Raymond” will relish a book that blends memoir with pointed and often hilarious musings on the perilous passage through the shoals of middle age. Garrett shares entertaining stories of his early days in comedy, as he moved from small-town clubs to opening in Las Vegas for performers like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. He frankly acknowledges his debt to comedian Don Rickles, something that’s evident in the book’s blunt humor. When it comes to what might loosely be called the self-help portion of the book, Garrett takes dead aim at targets that include vegetarianism, plastic surgery and exercise. He confesses his aversion to monogamy, though at 55 he’s quite content with his 31-year-old girlfriend. “Ultimately, you have
to live right for you,” is Garrett’s theme, and from the evidence he presents here, he seems to have done quite well in that regard.
REACHING FOR THE TOP Austin newspaper reporter Asher Price’s decision, on the eve of his 34th birthday, to spend a year endeavoring to propel his 6-foot2-inch, 203-pound frame high enough to dunk a basketball might seem to some a trivial pursuit. But in Price’s capable hands, Year of the Dunk: A Modest Defiance of Gravity (Crown, $26, 288 pages, ISBN 9780804138031) an exploration of what he calls the “limits of human talent,” is an informative, inspiring and often moving story of how life’s tough challenges can motivate us. Price’s project takes him from a Texas gym, where he’s tutored by 1996 Olympic high jump gold medalist Charles Austin, to the Performance Lab of the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York to the office of British zoologist Malcolm Burrows, an expert on the jumping characteristics of an insect known as the froghopper. While crisply explicating arcana like the difference between fast- and slow-twitch muscles, he documents a punishing exercise regimen that helped him shed pounds and gain vertical lift as he strained to reach his goal. He also describes unobtrusively his experience with an aggressive form of testicular cancer six years earlier. Readers eager to learn whether Price’s project succeeded will have to look to the book for the answer. As is always the case, the outcome is far less interesting than the journey he recounts in this warmhearted story.
TRAVEL FOR THE DARING Albert Podell’s Around the World in 50 Years: My Adventure to Every Country on Earth (Thomas Dunne, $26.99, 368 pages, ISBN 9781250051981) is the extraordinary account of a much different personal journey, or rather a series of them: his successful quest to visit each of the world’s 196 countries (plus seven that no longer exist). Podell, who achieved his goal in December 2012, is an engaging and colorful storyteller, and the momentum of this memoir rarely flags. If you’re looking for a guide to the best all-inclusive resorts of the Caribbean or Europe’s finest fivestar restaurants, look elsewhere. Instead, Podell offers tips for eating monkey brains, advice on how to bribe your way past corrupt government officials and a system for comfort-ranking countries based on the quality of their toilet tissue. At heart, this is an adventure story, one that nearly came to a premature end at the hands of a lynch mob on his visit to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in the middle of the 1965 war between India and Pakistan. That’s only one of the brushes with death or serious injury that enlivened Podell’s travels. Through all these occasionally nightmarish experiences and the daunting logistical challenges he surmounted, Podell never loses his sense of wonder or his dry, punning wit. What’s most impressive is that he logged nearly one-third of his country visits after reaching age 70, including perilous trips to countries like Somalia and North Korea. Even if your desire for exotic travel never takes you out of your reading chair, you’ll find Podell a fascinating companion.
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—LEE CHILD “A terrif i c read from a powerful new voice.”
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meet J.T. ELLISON
the title of your new book? Q: What’s
Q: Describe the book in one sentence.
three qualities that make Dr. Samantha Owens a topQ: Name notch investigator.
the greatest lesson you’ve learned from one of your Q: What’s characters?
you had to sit in a stakeout for 12 hours straight, who Q: If would you want in the car with you?
Q: What’s your proudest accomplishment? Q: Your guilty pleasure? Q: Words to live by?
WHAT LIES BEHIND
JAXMILLER.COM 20
After working as a White House staffer and a financial analyst, J.T. Ellison moved to Nashville and turned to her real passion: crime writing. Her latest thriller, What Lies Behind (Mira, $24.95, 400 pages, ISBN ), finds former medical examiner Samantha Owens drawn back into the world of criminal investigation when an apparent murder-suicide takes place near her Georgetown home. But was the crime scene staged to conceal a more ominous plan?
reviews THE TRUTH ACCORDING TO US
FICTION
Charmer of a coming-of-age tale
By Peter Nichols
Riverhead $27.95, 432 pages ISBN 9781594633317 Audio, eBook available LITERARY FICTION
The Rocks, the second novel by Peter Nichols, has everything you’d hope for in a great beach read: a vivid Mediterranean setting, complicated entanglements, adventures at sea, some hanky-panky and a little heartbreak. But its sunny exterior conceals some sharp observations on human vulnerability and how easily self-preservation can calcify into mere selfishness. The book begins in 2005 on the
—BECKY OHLSEN
REVIEW BY KAREN ANN CULLOTTA
For the irrepressible 12-year-old heroine of The Truth According to Us, growing up in the sleepy West Virginia mill town of Macedonia at the height of the Great Depression proves to be anything but depressing. Fans of Annie Barrows’ bestseller The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, co-written with her aunt, will recognize the author’s affinity for breathing life into her characters. Here we meet young Willa Romeyn; Willa’s charming, albeit mysterious, father, Felix; the ever steady and steely Aunt Jottie; and the family’s summer boarder, the lovely Layla Beck. Spoiled, sheltered Layla has been exiled to Macedonia by her senator father, who is fed up with her irresponsible behavior and ill-chosen suitors. The Works Progress Administration has hired her to write the town’s history—a literary project that holds far more intrigue, romance and adventure than she imagined. Layla is soon passionately and By Annie Barrows eloquently recording the tired town’s colorful and often scandalous Dial, $28, 512 pages, ISBN 9780385342940 history, diligently excavating the myriad skeletons buried in the closets Audio, eBook available of Macedonian high society, including the secrets of her landlords and HISTORICAL FICTION newfound friends, the Romeyns. Despite her best intentions, Layla falls under Felix’s spell. Her adoration does not go unnoticed by the intuitive and envious Willa, who, upon investigating her father’s frequent absences and secretive second life as a “chemical” salesman, is starting to uncover hard truths about the family patriarch. Perhaps not surprisingly for the author of a best-selling middle-grade series (Ivy and Bean), Barrows has crafted a luminous coming-of-age tale that is sure to captivate her grown-up audience. Against a lively historical setting, the joys and hardships of the rollicking Romeyn family will keep readers eagerly turning pages.
THE ROCKS
seduction. With its large cast of eccentrics and their ever-shifting relationships, The Rocks feels a bit like the literary equivalent of a good Netflix binge: a guilty pleasure well-crafted enough that you don’t actually have to feel guilty about it.
Spanish island of Mallorca, at what seems like the end of the story. Gerald and Lulu, both in their 80s, cross paths for the first time in decades. It’s not a happy reunion; we don’t know why, but we know they were married, briefly, 60 years ago. They argue, stumble and then—not 10 pages into the novel—they fall into the sea and drown. From here, the novel telescopes into the past: 1995, 1966, all the way back to 1948. With each step back, we learn more about who Lulu and Gerald were, what led them to Mallorca and drove them apart, and why there’s such tension now between their two (unrelated) adult children. Each scene reconfigures the previous until at last the whole tragic story emerges. Most of the action takes place at The Rocks, Lulu’s seaside hotel, where a group of expats spend
their summers. Lulu is a siren: ageless and beautiful, irresistible to men, but diamond-hard and pitiless. Gerald is quiet and kind, a yachtsman and writer who putters around among his olive trees. They’ve each made a life on the island, each remarried and had a child, but they’re worlds apart. The contrast between the way these two approach the paradise they’ve found shapes the whole novel and everyone in it. Nichols writes with authority and clear affection, especially on anything boat-related. (He has also written a memoir about sailing a wooden boat across the Atlantic.) He can subtly and effectively inhabit multiple voices: a Spanish officer at a port-city jail, the jazz guitarist who plays Sunday nights at the hotel, even the seedy English rake with an appetite for
SAINT MAZIE By Jami Attenberg Grand Central $25, 336 pages ISBN 9781455599899 Audio, eBook available HISTORICAL FICTION
Mazie Phillips-Gordon was a real person. Born in 1897, she ran the ticket booth at New York’s Venice Theater from 1916 to 1938. You may not think that’s such a big achievement, but then you probably haven’t read the Joseph Mitchell New Yorker essay about her that inspired Jami Attenberg’s entertaining new novel, Saint Mazie. In her younger days, Mazie was a good-time girl, drinking with the boys, hanging out with sailors, getting physical with sea captains in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge and going to the track. But what a transformation: She eventually became a patroness of sorts to New York’s downtrodden. She doled out cash, food and cigarettes to the city’s homeless and drunks, including former bankers devastated along with millions of others by the Depression. Her largesse earned her the nickname “The Queen of the Bowery.” Attenberg, whose last book was 2013’s The Middlesteins, structures this fictionalized homage mostly through entries in a diary that Mazie began when she was 10 and continued writing until the late 1930s. (She died in 1964.) Mazie moved to New York from Boston when her older sister, Rosie, and her brother-in-law, Venice Theater owner Louis Gordon, took her and her sister, Jeanie, far from the father who had cheated on their “simp” of a mother. Through these
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reviews diary entries, we meet the characters who had the biggest influence on Mazie’s life. The best thing about this novel is Mazie’s brassy, streetwise voice. She can’t understand why Rosie sees only the crime in the streets and not the “shimmering cobblestones in the moonlight” or the “floozies trying to sweet-talk their customers.” The book also includes Studs Terkel-like oral histories from people who knew or were related to Mazie’s acquaintances. Some of these histories are extraneous, but, otherwise, Saint Mazie is a fascinating portrait of early 20th-century New York and of an unlikely champion of the dispossessed. —MICHAEL MAGRAS
OUR SOULS AT NIGHT By Kent Haruf
Knopf $24, 192 pages ISBN 9781101875896 Audio, eBook available LITERARY FICTION
When an author begins a novel with “And then there was the day”—as Kent Haruf begins Our Souls at Night, a brief, final testament completed shortly before his death last November—you know he knows we know what he’s talking about. This is Holt, Colorado. Over three decades, Haruf has given us six novels counting up all of Holt’s days, beginning with The Tie That Binds in 1984. That title is a principle that covers a lot of ground, straight through to this last one, which brings us to the day “when Addie Moore made a call on Louis Waters.” Addie and Louis are old neighbors, both widowed, children grown and gone, both lonely but used to it. Addie asks Louis if he’d like to sleep with her. Just sleep, that’s all, to keep her company, and maybe talk about things, too. Louis agrees. It becomes an amazing tie, full of unexpected grace, a chance to go back with each other over their ordinary and extraordinary lives. Their pact binds others to them as well—an
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FICTION ancient neighbor, the troubled grandson of a broken home and a sweet dog from the county pound. Townsfolk and family members don’t much like the idea of Addie and Louis sleeping together. This happiness, arrived so late, is a scandal to those others. Haruf is our finest observer of the conflict between duty and love, making goodness almost impossible. It’s the little space inside the “almost” that counts the most, though. We are blessed to have such an excellent final book from this great writer. —MICHAEL ALEC ROSE
THE SUNKEN CATHEDRAL By Kate Walbert
Scribner $25, 224 pages ISBN 9781476799322 eBook available LITERARY FICTION
Kate Walbert has always been a keen transmitter of women’s voices, from conforming suburban wives in the 1950s to British suffragettes during World War I. In her most recent novel, The Sunken Cathedral, Walbert tunes in to a complex chorus of female characters in contemporary Manhattan, a city recently altered by climate change, tragedy and new wealth. Marie and Simone met as war brides on a Brooklyn playground after World War II. Now widowed and in their 80s, they remain engaged and adventurous. At Simone’s urging, they join a painting class at the School of Inspired Arts in a rundown Chelsea tenement taught by Sid Morris, another aging New Yorker buffeted by the city’s changes. Marie’s tenant, Elizabeth, tries to make sense of life in a post-9/11 city, but her anxiety isn’t helped by her son’s school, where the weekly disaster preparedness program is called “What If?” Back in class, Marie’s classmate Helen makes detailed paintings of underwater scenes recalling Hurricane Sandy and other vicious storms that threaten the island. Walbert’s New York is haunted by
strange weather and flood zones, by emergency drills at the public schools, and the destruction of local landmarks to make way for luxury condos. But the city and her citizens are resilient as well. The tapestry of voices weave a rich pattern, and the novel is strengthened by Walbert’s use of footnotes, which allow her characters’ thoughts to move freely from the present to the past, uncovering private or previously unshared memories, especially Marie’s traumatic wartime childhood in France and Elizabeth’s haunted recollections of a cousin’s tragic accident. The Sunken Cathedral is a reference to a piano sonata by Debussy that itself alludes to the mythical story of a cathedral that rises up from the sea. Like Debussy’s impressionistic music, the novel is poetic, full of lyrical imagery and subtle shifts of tone. Ambitious, elegiac and occasionally even funny, The Sunken Cathedral is an emotionally resonant story of people caught in a time of unease and change—and a striking portrait of the way we live now. —LAUREN BUFFERD
Visit BookPage.com for a Q&A with Kate Walbert.
THE ICE TWINS By S.K. Tremayne
Grand Central $26, 320 pages ISBN 9781455586059 Audio, eBook available SUSPENSE
nickname “the ice twins,” which was borne out by their blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin. After Lydia dies in a fall, each family member’s sorrow reveals itself in different ways. Angus gets into a work argument that leaves him unemployed with a London-sized mortgage. Sarah struggles to get along with her husband and find work of her own. Most disturbingly, Kirstie begins claiming that she’s actually Lydia, and that Kirstie is the twin who died. The family seeks a new start— and a less expensive lifestyle—on a Scottish island Angus inherited. Sarah is determined to put their lives back together as they live in and restore a squalid, barely inhabitable lighthouse, the island’s only structure. And if that means learning that the couple buried the wrong twin, well, Sarah is convinced they can move forward. In The Ice Twins, S.K. Tremayne depicts a family as isolated as the tiny isle they call home. Sarah, Angus and Kirstie (or is it Lydia?) have separated themselves from one another and their normal lives. They’re left metaphorically circling one another warily, trying to deduce what’s going on inside. As the Moorcrofts aim to unravel what, exactly, happened when one twin died, readers are given glimpses into each character’s thoughts. The resulting tale, written by a best-selling author under a pseudonym, peels back one layer at a time in a fast-paced, thrilling race to understanding. —CARLA JEAN WHITLEY
BALM It’s difficult to imagine anything more traumatic than a child’s death. But when the deceased child is a twin, the living sibling can be a constant reminder of what’s lost. That’s the case for Sarah Moorcroft, whose twin daughters were so perfectly identical that Sarah and her husband Angus relied on the girls’ word and personalities to determine who was who. Lydia and Kirstie were born on the coldest day of the year, earning them the
By Dolen PerkinsValdez Amistad $25.99, 288 pages ISBN 9780062318657 Audio, eBook available HISTORICAL FICTION
One of the more ghastly aspects of the American Civil War was that it was really the first time that the young country was confronted with mass death. More than
FICTION 600,000 people died in the war, a number that people couldn’t really wrap their minds around—and the government offered no rituals or protocols to deal with such carnage. Often, soldiers were simply buried in mass graves on or near the battlefields where they fell. Séances were the rage as beAn engaging reaved friends historical and family novel explores members tried to contact the the wounds dead; even the left by war. Lincolns held séances at the White House. Added to this were millions of freed slaves who were desperate to reunite with loved ones, both those separated from them by war and those they were parted from by slavery. Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s second novel, Balm, follows a group of refugees who meet in the bustling, reeking and bewildering city of Chicago. There’s Sadie, a young widow who lost her husband in the war and soon discovers she has the terrifying gift of being able to channel the dead. Madge, the fierce “root woman” healer, has come up north from Tennessee. Hemp, an ex-slave, has fled Kentucky to find his wife, Annie, who was sold away before the war—and also to find her daughter, whom he believes he wronged. Of all the characters, Hemp is the one most concerned with doing the right thing. Even as a slave, he waited for a preacher to properly marry him and Annie. When he and Madge meet in Chicago, he can’t give into her blandishments because he is a married man, even though he doesn’t know if Annie is alive. Perkins-Valdez, author of the acclaimed 2010 novel Wench, has a genius for placing the reader in the postwar welter of a city and the quieter but no less troubled farms of the South. The reader wants the best for these wounded characters, and whatever happiness they find in the end is hard won. Balm doesn’t just apply to Madge’s potions, but to the comfort that comes from human connection. —ARLENE McKANIC
THE SHORE By Sara Taylor
Hogarth $25, 320 pages ISBN 9780553417739 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION
The setting of Sara Taylor’s ambitious and unique debut novel is The Shore—three islands off the coast of Virginia, just south of Maryland, “trailing out into the Atlantic Ocean like someone’s dripped paint.” Parksley Island is the biggest, with two bridges to the mainland and little villages all up its length. Off Parksley’s northeast coast is Chincoteague Island, where “the people with money” have summer homes; further east is Assateague Island, now a national park and home of the wild ponies. In this atmospheric novel, each character is steeped in these islands and their lore—some leaving briefly, but all eventually returning, if only in their minds and memories. Taylor’s saga moves back and forth in time, highlighting characters at different moments in their lives, gradually revealing how their stories overlap and come together, like a slowly assembled jigsaw puzzle. The earliest inhabitant portrayed by the author is Medora, a mixed-race Shawnee woman who comes to the islands from Kentucky with her husband in 1876. Four generations later, we meet twins Sally and Mitch—Sally inheriting from Medora’s grandson “the gift” of bringing rain on command when the crops are dry. Out-of-wedlock pregnancies, rape, drug addiction and murder are all part of Taylor’s story, with the isolation of the islands undoubtedly playing its own pivotal role in her characters’ decisions. Events on the mainland take their toll as well, as we learn of the slow demise of Assateague in the early 20th century: the closing of the school, kids “skiffing across the channel” to Chincoteague for
classes, or not going at all. By the early 21st century, “the old families are dying out” and kids leave as soon as they can, few wanting to work in the chicken plants that are the only viable sources of jobs. The Shore will appeal to readers who enjoy family sagas and like to lose themselves in an atmospheric setting—think Pat Conroy combined with Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. —DEBORAH DONOVAN
UPROOTED By Naomi Novik
Del Rey $25, 448 pages ISBN 9780804179034 eBook available FANTASY
With the blockbuster success of the Lord of the Rings series, the Wheel of Time saga and, most recently, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, the fantasy genre has been steadily gaining in popularity for nearly a century. Are you ready to dive into a world of magic and adventure, but a bit hesitant to pick up an 800-page doorstopper with a hefty roster of characters? Then Naomi Novik, author of the best-selling Temeraire series, has the perfect summer fantasy for you in the spellbinding Uprooted. Agnieszka is a bullheaded and accident-prone 17-year-old from a sleepy, vaguely Eastern European village that lies in the shadow of the mysterious and malevolent Wood. Grotesque creatures and horrors of all kinds creep from its depths to terrorize the villagers. Their sole protector is the Dragon—the realm’s most powerful sorcerer, who keeps the enchanted Wood at bay. All the Dragon asks in return is a harvest of sorts—a village girl to live in his tower for 10 years at a time. Usually, he chooses the most exceptional girl, but shockingly it is Agnieszka who draws the Dragon’s attention. Although at first desperate to escape the gruff wizard, Agnieszka discovers a latent gift for spell
casting, and when her improvised, earthy style of magic sparks the Dragon’s curiosity, an ember of friendship (or maybe something more?) begins to glow. Soon the two are sent on a deadly journey into the heart of the Wood itself in order to make their final stand. With a foothold firmly in the fairy-tale tradition, Novik spins an enthralling story of the classic good-versus-evil variety, where magic, monsters and romance abound. Truly beautiful prose, inventive twists and a capable, tenacious heroine make this charmingly accessible fantasy shine. —HILLI LEVIN
THE SUNLIT NIGHT By Rebecca Dinerstein
Bloomsbury $26, 272 pages ISBN 9781632861122 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION
If there’s a life before this one where people are allowed to pick their parents, the two young protagonists of Rebecca Dinerstein’s debut novel came up snake eyes, or nearly so. Three out of four of the parental units are nutcases; monstrously self-absorbed and melodramatic in ways that would suck the air out of the hangar of a jumbo jet. The one good parent, the Russian immigrant baker and father of Yasha, can do nothing against the energies of his estranged wife, even though he hasn’t seen her for 10 years. The parents of Frances are a tag-team of lunacy, made all the more unbearable by the fact that they all live in a New York apartment so tiny there’s hardly room for the fold-out bed in the living room. What can Frances do but escape to the back of beyond? In her case, this is Norway’s slice of the Arctic Circle, a place where the sun never sets during the height of summer. Actually, Frances does have a reason to be in Norway. She has fled to an artist’s colony where she and this odd chap named Nils are
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reviews the only artists. Their task is to paint a barn. Yasha also has reason to be in Norway, and that’s to bury his beloved father, who wanted to be interred at the top of the world. He is accompanied by his uncle and, alas, his mother, Olyana, who is incapable of toning down her self-obsession even a little bit. Lots of writers have a place, real or imagined that simply possesses them. For Dinerstein, at least at this point in her young career, it’s northern Norway. She has already published a collection of bilingual poems set there, and she’s clearly enraptured by its austere beauty. It is a place of peace that encourages forbearance, if not forgiveness. The Norwegians are accepting, if a bit strange for living in a place of perpetual daylight. And Yasha and Frances are drawn together by the screwiness of it all. It seems that for Dinerstein’s characters, the sun does still shine in the darkest night after all. —ARLENE McKANIC
LANGUAGE ARTS By Stephanie Kallos
HMH $27, 416 pages ISBN 9780547939742 eBook available LITERARY FICTION
There is a scene in Stephanie Kallos’ new novel in which protagonist Charles Marlow is describing all the clichés associated with an archetypal film on autism. It feels like a wink at the reader, as this book contains many of these same clichés. Yet Language Arts takes enough of a fresh approach to its subject to make it a riveting read. As the title suggests, Marlow is a language arts teacher: He has taught for more than 20 years at a private sixth- through 12th-grade school in the Seattle area. He’s a respected educator who has a strong relationship with his students. He is also the recently divorced father of a severely autistic institutionalized son and has just sent his beloved daughter off to college in
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FICTION New York. As he suffers through the malaise of empty-nest syndrome, he polishes off multiple bottles of wine while digging through a pile of dusty items that track his daughter’s childhood. But old report cards and tea sets aren’t the only vestiges of the past Marlow finds himself facing. An article in his local paper quickly brings him back to another language arts classroom, where, as a misfit fourth-grader, he endured a traumatic experience that colored his life for years to come. Kallos moves back and forth in time, and among characters, in a story that deftly mixes family drama, neuroscience, mystery and an exploration of the dying art of handwriting that is far more intriguing than it might sound. Along with becoming intimately acquainted with Marlow, readers will find themselves inside the minds of his unreachable son; his daughter, whom he enjoys writing long handwritten letters to; and even a dementia patient in his son’s art program. A twist toward the end of the novel could have varying effects on the reading audience; some may find it fascinating while others may feel manipulated. However, Kallos—whose 2004 debut, Broken for You, became a hit with book clubs—has enough skill as a storyteller to pull it off. And you’re likely to find yourself rereading it at least once to fully absorb what you may have missed the first time around. —REBECCA STROPOLI
THE JEZEBEL REMEDY By Martin Clark
Knopf $27.95, 400 pages ISBN 9780385353595 eBook available COMIC FICTION
Every professional thrown in contact with the public has at least one client who’s, to put it charitably, challenging. But the husband-and-wife attorney team of Joe and Lisa Stone have managed,
in “Petty Lettie” VanSandt, to have landed an international gold medal champion. Irascible, tattooed, litigious, paranoid, antisocial and capricious—and it goes downhill from there. Fortunately, Joe has a patient mien, which turns out to be both the source of affection and affliction in The Jezebel Remedy, the fourth novel from Virginia Circuit Court Judge Martin Clark. As proven in his New York Times Notable debut, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, Clark has a practiced ear for the subtlety and nuance of everyday existence. While the lawyer couple clearly have affection for one another, Joe’s wife is getting twitchy after 20 years of “community center Zumba classes, flannel, mismatched silver, lukewarm champagne and box steps every December 31, matted fleece bedroom slippers and sex so mission control she could count down the seconds between her husband biting her neck and squeezing her breast.” When the Stones’ cantankerous client turns up dead just days after amending her will for the umpteenth time, both Joe’s unflappable demeanor and Lisa’s near occasion of adultery set the stage for a series of events that could find them disbarred, bankrupted or worse. It appears that a seemingly useless formula for a compound called “Wound Velvet,” left among the deceased woman’s estate, has more value than her executor (Joe) could possibly have known, to the degree that a multinational corporation is willing to do whatever it takes to secure the patent . . . even if they have to crush the Stones to do it. Unlike many legal thrillers, The Jezebel Remedy doesn’t turn on high-tension courtroom theatrics to make its impact, though it’s plenty clear from the legal proceedings documented in its pages that Clark knows his way around the bench. Instead, he crafts a portrait of fine but flawed humans who find themselves unexpectedly thrust into the deep end of a system where the law can be either a life raft or a dead weight, depending on who gets to make the final judgment call.
No book will ever make you thirstier than The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi’s (The Windup Girl) action-packed return to hard science fiction, in which the American Southwest is ravaged by drought. In the not-too-distant future, climate change has turned the Colorado River Basin into a dust bowl. California, Nevada and Arizona wage hot and cold war over aquifers, dams and water rights. The wealthiest 1 percent live in lush, self-sustaining “arcologies” (architecture + ecology), while the cities and suburbs of old are riddled with crime and desperation. California has the upper hand thanks to foreign water corporations, and Arizona is a militarized backwater. But the most powerful woman in Las Vegas—Catherine Case—has a secret weapon named Angel Velasquez. He’s one of her “water knives,” soldiers trained to secure fresh water resources by any means necessary. Angel is sent to investigate a potentially game-changing source of water in the most unlikely of places: Phoenix. There, his fate becomes entwined with those of a determined journalist and a teenage refugee from Texas. Together, they follow the trail of a near-mythical artifact that could shift the balance of power in the war for water. Bacigalupi’s nightmarish vision of a dystopian America ruined by greed, bureaucracy and environmental disaster is both horrifying and prescient. It takes a few chapters to gather momentum and orient the reader, but once the story finds its stride, the pages turn themselves. The Water Knife is a thoughtful, frightening, all-toolikely vision of the future.
—T H A N E T I E R N E Y
—ADAM MORGAN
THE WATER KNIFE By Paolo Bacigalupi
Knopf $25.95, 384 pages ISBN 9780385352871 Audio, eBook available SCIENCE FICTION
NONFICTION BAD KID By David Crabb
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY
Shuttering the schoolhouse door
Harper Perennial $14.99, 352 pages ISBN 9780062371287 eBook available MEMOIR
REVIEW BY ALICE CARY
Kristen Green was born to write this book. Growing up in the 1970s in Farmville, Virginia, she attended an all-white academy founded in 1959 by her beloved grandparents and others when white town leaders closed the public schools rather than comply with federal desegregation orders. Farmville’s schools remained shut for five years, depriving 1,700 black children (and some white children) of an education. “During my childhood,” Green writes, “my family rarely discussed what had happened, and only in broad strokes.” After leaving Farmville, she became a reporter and married a man of Native-American descent, with whom she has two daughters (one named Selma). When her young family finally settled in Richmond, Virginia, Green began researching Farmville’s troubled past. The result of her investigation, Something Must Be Done About By Kristen Green Prince Edward County, deftly interweaves the personal and the historHarper, $25.99, 336 pages ical into a compelling narrative that leaves no stone unturned. Green ISBN 9780062268679, eBook available writes as only an insider can, with the added benefit of being a skilled journalist and the mother of multiracial children. HISTORY Her account is not only fascinating but cinematic, with scenes such as the day in 1951 when 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns organized her classmates to strike in protest of dismal conditions in Farmville’s black high school. Their dissent resulted in a lawsuit that later went to the U.S. Supreme Court as part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. Green also writes about her family’s adored housekeeper, Elsie, who sent her only child to be educated in Massachusetts after the Farmville schools closed. Although Elsie’s daughter refused to be interviewed, Green concludes with her own apology to Elsie for wounds of the past. This is an award-worthy book and an eye-opening companion to other accounts of past injustices like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It’s hard to imagine how events like these transpired not so long ago. Nonetheless, tremendous racial problems continue to plague us, and Green’s powerful book can help to promote much-needed dialogue, remembrance and understanding.
A LUCKY LIFE INTERRUPTED By Tom Brokaw
Random House $27, 240 pages ISBN 9781400069699 Audio, eBook available MEMOIR
From a bicycle trip through Chile and Argentina to a South African journey to report on Nelson Mandela’s final days, former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw had no intention of slowing down as he celebrated his 73rd birthday in February 2013. What he didn’t count on was a cancer diagnosis a few months later
that would transform the next 16 months of his life into one in which cancer became “the scrim through which all of life is viewed.” Brokaw suffers from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow’s plasma cells that is treatable, but not curable. A Lucky Life Interrupted is the product of the journal Brokaw, ever the reporter, kept to document his experience. He frankly describes cancer’s physical and emotional toll as his treatment proceeded, but he leavens that often sobering account with vivid reminiscences from a career that helped earn him a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. With a loving family that includes an emergency room physician daughter as well as access to
There’s probably no place that’s ideal for a teenage boy to realize he’s gay, but among the truly suboptimal locations consider San Antonio, Texas. The heat melts all the product out of your hair, and there’s a good chance your classmates know your secret before you do and are prepared to start torturing you well in advance of your coming out. So it was for David Crabb. When a classmate knocked him cold with a pair of encyclopedias, he vowed to tone down his natural exuberance, ultimately toning it down so far he became a goth, a virtual garbage disposal for narcotics, and something of a Bad Kid. Crabb, a favorite on the Moth storytelling circuit, delivers an account that’s shot through with sadness—abusive friendships, beatdowns from skinheads and his father’s struggle to accept him are just a few of the tough spots—yet Bad Kid is often laugh-out-loud hilarious. When he’s forced to move to his mother’s new home in world-class specialists at leading Seguin, a conservative cow town, hospitals, Brokaw realizes that his Crabb tries once again to cultivate good fortune in health didn’t desert an anonymous, button-down look him in sickness. But even with for school. “By midweek I had the those advantages, he takes some nickname ‘RuPaul,’ . . . Seguin kids pointed shots at a health care syswere so taken aback by me that tem in which the efforts of his team their nearest cultural reference of doctors were poorly coordinated point was a seven-foot-tall, black at times and where a single chemo- drag queen.” therapy pill cost $500. After venturing out on his own, “I’ve had a life rich in personal Crabb begins to find confidence and professional rewards beyond and a more grounded place in what should be anyone’s even his relationships. That’s a lot of exaggerated expectations,” Brokaw personal growth in a book that will writes. He’s clear-eyed about the change the way you look at both challenges that lie ahead, but pickles and litter boxes for entirely no doubt he’ll face them with a freaky reasons. If Crabb was truly renewed appreciation for his good a Bad Kid, at least he grew into a life and a determination to live man with the chops to tell the tale, whatever remains of it to the fullest. and it’s one we’re lucky to have. —HARVEY FREEDENBERG
—HEATHER SEGGEL
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reviews ON THE BURNING EDGE By Kyle Dickman
Ballantine $26, 304 pages ISBN 9780553392128 Audio, eBook available NATURE
NONFICTION Left unanswered, Dickman acknowledges, is the haunting question of why the 19 men left a zone of relative safety to descend into the cauldron that took their lives. —EDWARD MORRIS
UNDER THE SAME SKY By Joseph Kim
Few forces of nature are as terrifying and unpredictable as forest fires, particularly those in America’s arid West and Southwest. Depending on size, such a fire can create its own shifting weather patterns, each posing a new danger, a different path of destruction. That’s what happened in Yarnell, Arizona, on June 30, 2013, when 19 of the 20 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots firefighting team were burned to death in a blaze sparked by lightning. A former firefighter himself, Kyle Dickman first focuses on the history of the Granite Mountain unit and then delves into the background and personalities of its individual members, each of whom had to undergo grueling physical training and considerable hazing to win a place on the team. Most of the men were in their 20s, often at loose ends professionally but caught up in the gung-ho spirit of their jobs. Dickman recounts in such detail their love affairs, marriages, divorces, children, aspirations and resentments that by the time they die, the reader is quite likely to feel a sense of personal loss. Dickman varies his account by quoting many of the text messages the doomed Hotshots sent to and received from their loved ones during the final hours. The most vivid parts of his reporting, however, are his close-ups of the fire as it invades the town of Yarnell. “Bob [a 94-year-old resident fleeing with his 89-yearold wife] couldn’t see through the smoke. He kept bumping into the trees and brush on the sides of their driveway. Then he put the truck’s right wheel into a ditch. The tire exploded. Around them, dozens of propane tanks sent columns of flames shooting into the air like fires off an oil derrick.”
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HMH $28, 288 pages ISBN 9780544373174 eBook available MEMOIR
a gang and developing a talent for thievery, while at the same time struggling to maintain some element of his humanity. Finally at 15, Kim makes the desperate decision to cross a frozen river into China. It is an act of madness that somehow works. Now in his mid-20s living in New York City, Kim is building a new life. It’s the life of a survivor, filled with determination and deep regret. —ALDEN MUDGE
PRIMATES OF PARK AVENUE By Wednesday Martin
Many of us think of North Korea as a nation of automatons, blindly following Dear Leader over the cliff. If nothing else, Joseph Kim’s memoir of his harrowing childhood during the famine that devastated North Korea in the 1990s will complicate that view. The Great Famine killed as much as 10 percent of the country’s population. Undoubtedly the central government owns responsibility for this. But instead of “an oppressive, invasive government,” Kim, a young boy living in a small city far from Pyongyang, experienced “something more frightening to a child: a complete absence of authority of any kind.” In this far-flung, slow-moving chaos, Kim sees his immediate family split asunder and his extended family collapse. “Kinship melted away in the face of hunger,” he writes. And from the fields bordering their home, Kim observes that first the frogs, then the grasshoppers and finally the grass itself begins to disappear. This is a devastating chronicle of the grinding progress of starvation. But what makes Under the Same Sky so poignant is that the family’s decline is not a straight slide to hell. At one point Kim’s father rallies, finds work, and the family gets a television, which gives them social power. Of course, this upturn in fortune does not last. The family falls further into poverty and disarray. Essentially orphaned and now a feral child, Kim survives by joining
Simon & Schuster $26, 256 pages ISBN 9781476762623 eBook available FAMILY
Any population is fair game for anthropological research, so why not the super-rich, super-thin and oh-so-well-dressed mothers of New York’s Upper East Side? That’s the reasoning of author Wednesday Martin, and she puts it to the test in Primates of Park Avenue, her account of six years as a wife and mother in Manhattan’s toniest neighborhood. Sorry, make that Wednesday Martin, Ph.D.: Martin does have a doctorate in cultural studies. So she brings some gravitas to the project, and she’s not shy about rolling it out. But not to worry— there are plenty of laugh lines and arch observations as Martin surveys the scene of exclusive preschools, lavish fundraisers and second homes in the Hamptons. The result is illuminating and fun to read. Martin is not exactly parachuting in from grad school at Berkeley, brushing granola crumbs off her work shirt. It’s obvious that her husband makes plenty of money, and they move from Greenwich Village to the East Side by choice (family reasons, you know). So in a way she fits in, and in a way she doesn’t, and that contributes to the book’s dynamics. She pushes back, for example,
against some of the tribe’s most established customs, such as signing infants up for nursery school (she “totally forgot” this step in the path to Harvard). But she also goes native, deciding that she absolutely must have a Hermès Birkin bag. Primates of Park Avenue isn’t all snide comments and wry asides. Martin experiences a personal tragedy, bringing her closer to the neighborhood’s team of rivals. And finally, a simple declaration: “We moved across town” to the West Side (family reasons again). Given Martin’s skills in observation, we can hope to look forward to Primates of Columbus Avenue. —KEITH HERRELL
PLAYING SCARED By Sara Solovitch Bloomsbury $26, 288 pages ISBN 9781620400913 eBook available SELF-HELP
In her new book about stage fright, journalist Sara Solovitch describes her earliest memories of the affliction in physical terms. “Pushing myself out of my chair, I felt my thighs cling to the wood. I . . . tried to smile, but my mouth was dry. And now, I realized, my hands were sopping wet. When I sat on the piano bench, I became aware that my knees were knocking and my feet were shaking.” Like many people who struggle with similar fears, she felt that her mind and body betrayed her every time she took the stage to perform her piano pieces, no matter how arduously she practiced. Even playing for a few friends in her own home was traumatic. Approaching 60, Solovitch decided to try to overcome her stage fright. She challenged herself to play a public concert for a crowd, giving herself a year to conquer her fear. Playing Scared is a compelling account of her journey, from the first awkward piano recitals, to playing in airport lounges for strangers, to booking the hall for
NONFICTION her final test. Along the way, she introduces readers to an array of teachers, coaches and experts who help her understand stage fright from all angles and suggest a variety of techniques to improve her performance. As a result, Solovitch’s book is not just a memoir, but a practical guide for the multitudes who share her public-speaking or performing fears. One of the unexpected pleasures of the book is Solovitch’s description of playing the piano. Despite her struggles to play for the public, her dedication to her craft and the joy she experiences as she immerses herself in the music are the closest I have ever come to imagining life as a professional musician. —MARIANNE PETERS
ONCE UPON A TIME IN RUSSIA By Ben Mezrich
Atria $28, 288 pages ISBN 9781476771892 eBook available HISTORY
more dangerous than Silicon Valley. He explores the evolution of post-Soviet Russia through the improbable stories of Berezovsky and his cohorts, primarily protégéturned-rival Roman Abramovich (engineering school dropout to aluminium titan) and Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB man who died in a bizarre polonium poisoning in 2006. Using what he calls “re-created dialogue” based on interviews and court documents, Mezrich unfolds the drama in cinematic vignettes. Among them: Berezovsky survives a car bombing; Putin lays down the law to the oligarchs in Stalin’s old dacha; Abramovich lands by helicopter at an Alpine resort and agrees to pay $1.3 billion to Berezovsky to dissolve their partnership; Berezovsky chases Abramovich into a Hermès store in London to serve him a subpoena as he sues him for $5.6 billion. Surreal as it seems, it was all quite real. It’s Wolf Hall on the Moskva: Litvinenko was murdered. Berezovsky died a broken man. Abramovich is worth an estimated $9 billion and owns England’s Chelsea Football Club. And Putin still runs Russia. — ANNE BARTLETT
Hard as it might be to imagine, readers of Ben Mezrich’s Once Upon a Time in Russia could find themselves feeling a certain sympathy for Vladimir Putin. Sure, the new Russian president was trying to seize control of the news media in 2000 when he forced television magnate Boris Berezovsky to sell his business. But Berezovsky was, to put it mildly, a handful. In the gunslinger-capitalism years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, he had risen from mathematician to software guy to billionaire TV tycoon by running down everyone in his path. He and his oligarch buddies essentially bought the 1996 presidential election for Boris Yeltsin, and he was instrumental in the choice of Putin as Yeltsin’s successor. But he badly underestimated Putin and ended up in bitter exile. Mezrich, best-selling author of The Accidental Billionaires, which depicted the rise of Facebook, is now writing about a world far
GETTING REAL By Gretchen Carlson
Viking $28.95, 272 pages ISBN 9780525427452 Audio, eBook available MEMOIR
Blonde, svelte, former Miss America, musical prodigy, successful news anchor on national network with a hot husband: I was, quite honestly, prepared to hate (or at least strongly resent) Gretchen Carlson. But darn it if she didn’t charm me from the first page of Getting Real, her memoir of growing up wholesome in Minnesota. Carlson, who hosts her own show on Fox News called “The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson,” grew up in a loving, devout Lutheran family. She emerges as
a violin virtuoso by the time she’s 7, paving the way for a lifetime of larger-than-life achievements. She attended Stanford University before taking time away to train for, compete in—and win—the Miss America pageant at 21. But Carlson’s saving grace is that she isn’t perfect, and she hits bumps in her road. Overweight throughout junior high and high school, she recalls being mortified when a sales lady called out that she needed a bigger size “for the chubby girl in the dressing room.” As she launches her reporting career, she loses broadcasting jobs and is the victim of sexual intimidation by men in power. Carlson is frank and open about her struggles (“I was so confused about who I was and what I would face as I moved forward in what appeared to be a really scary world,” she writes about a top television exec trying to force himself on her in the back of a car). But mostly, she conveys a steely determination and clear-headed sense of self-worth that is inspiring and refreshing. She is unapologetic about her drive for success, pursuing ever bigger career goals while raising two small children. She even displays an intriguing feminist streak. Carlson may have pageant looks and a megawatt career, but in this memoir, she does indeed get real. —AMY SCRIBNER
JACKSONLAND By Steve Inskeep
Penguin Press $29.95, 448 pages ISBN 9781594205569 Audio, eBook available HISTORY
Andrew Jackson, acting as both a government employee and a private citizen, was more responsible than any other single person for creating the region we call the Deep South. As president, his first significant initiative was a proposal to remove all Indians from the area. But, long before, while serv-
ing as a major general, he wrote, “The object of the government is to bring into market this land and have it populated.” Native Americans were removed by armies, acts, treaties and laws. At the same time, Jackson was also deeply involved in real estate transactions on land that he had captured as a general. While on the military payroll, he bought and operated slave plantations and, in collaboration with friends, relatives and business associates, opened land to white settlers. The names of Jackson and others close to him appear on the purchase records for at least 45,000 acres sold in the Tennessee Valley from 1818 onward. The evidence indicates that Jackson was able to align the nation’s national security affairs with his own interest in land development. The Cherokee Nation, led by the extraordinary John Ross, used every approach available to remain on their land. Ross’ father was a descendant of Scots-Irish traders and his mother was one-fourth Cherokee. He could have passed as white, but something drew him closer to his Native American identity. The epic struggle between these two strong personalities and their cultures is at the heart of Steve Inskeep’s fast-paced Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab. Inskeep, co-host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” details the increasingly strained relations between the two sides. Ross was a keen strategist while Jackson was a frontier leader who made his own rules and was always governed by the will to win. Jackson left office in 1837, but his political influence remained for another generation. Ross moved to the West with the last group of Cherokees in 1838. At his death in 1866, Cherokees were negotiating another treaty that required them to give up more of the land that was to have been theirs forever. Inskeep’s superb storytelling skills guide us through a critical period of transition that meant heartbreak for thousands but continued expansion of the country for many others. —ROGER BISHOP
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reviews KISSING IN AMERICA
TEEN
Lost hearts make a break for it REVIEW BY JILL RATZAN
Ever since her father died in a plane crash two years ago, Eva’s ability to write poetry has dried up, and much to her feminist mother’s frustration, she’s begun gobbling up poorly written romance novels. So when real romance comes into her life, in the form of the enigmatic senior Will, Eva’s more than ready for the happiness that comes from mooning looks and stolen kisses. When Will suddenly moves across the country, Eva concocts a plan to follow him. She and her best friend, Annie, enter a teen game show, and with the hesitant approval of Eva’s fearful mother, Annie and Eva travel by bus from New York City to Los Angeles, where the show will be—and where Will now resides. In between drilling with flash cards and admiring the scenery, Annie and Eva stop at various friends’ and relatives’ houses, where Eva learns about her mostly forgotten Jewish heritage. Both experience Texan By Margo Rabb pride, meet attractive cowboys and marvel at the oddities for sale at HarperCollins, $17.99, 400 pages roadside convenience stores. When the travelers finally arrive in LA, Eva ISBN 9780062322371, audio, eBook available can’t wait to be with Will again. But can reality live up to her romance Ages 14 and up novel-inspired expectations? FICTION Award-winning author Margo Rabb delivers a poignant yet funny road-trip novel about chasing someone else and finding yourself in the process. Kissing in America is perfect for fans of John Green and Gayle Visit BookPage.com for Forman, or anyone who seeks the highest quality in young adult literature.
a Q&A with Margo Rabb.
FINDING AUDREY By Sophie Kinsella Delacorte $18.99, 304 pages ISBN 9780553536515 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up FICTION
Shopaholic series author Sophie Kinsella bursts onto the YA scene with an adorable, heartwarming story, and it’s a perfect blend of her well-loved British charm, comedy and, just for teens, first love. Kinsella holds nothing back, starting off on a laugh-out-loud note and quickly and articulately pulling the reader into the depth of the story. Audrey suffers from an anxiety disorder and depression, the combination causing her to wear dark glasses, hole up in a dark den and avoid contact with new people.
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Then she meets Linus, one of the members of her brother Frank’s gaming team. After Audrey suffers an anxiety attack during their first meeting, Frank brings Linus up to speed on her condition. Linus then enters Audrey’s world with a sweet, uncommon tenderness: He has conversations via notes while sitting next to her; they touch shoes before holding hands and eventually make actual eye contact. Linus has a soft, sensitive way of pulling Audrey out of the shadows that will leave readers sighing with delight as this sweet story unfolds. Kinsella is spot-on in her descriptions of anxiety, providing an honest look at the disorder through Audrey’s therapies and recovery. The author nails the teen voice— complete with parent-induced embarrassment, accurate inner monologues and foul language— making a seamless transition from adult to YA fiction. — E R I N A . H O LT
THE NOTORIOUS PAGAN JONES By Nina Berry
Harlequin Teen $17.99, 400 pages ISBN 9780373211432 eBook available Ages 12 and up
HISTORICAL FICTION
It’s a long tumble from Hollywood darling to inmate, but Pagan Jones has done a terrible thing. While drunk, she drove her vehicle off the edge of Mulholland Drive, killing both her passengers—her father and her little sister. The year is 1951, and America is enjoying a postwar boom. Pagan receives a too-good-to-be-true movie offer that frees her from imprisonment and takes her across the world to the eerie streets of Berlin. But Pagan has no idea of the post-World War II divisions
of the city, or the rumors of a wall that will be built around the Soviet sector. The tension builds as Pagan’s “guardian,” 19-year-old Devin Black, keeps an abnormally close watch on his charge. International intrigue unfolds as the complexity of a city divided into four parts, each ruled by a separate nation, becomes increasingly dangerous. The taut plotting and historical details will appeal to fans of Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity and Beth Kephart’s Going Over. —DIANE COLSON
THE PORCUPINE OF TRUTH By Bill Konigsberg Arthur A. Levine $17.99, 336 pages ISBN 9780545648936 eBook available Ages 14 and up FICTION
New Yorker Carson Smith and his mother are spending the summer in Montana, caring for Carson’s estranged and dying father. Quirky Carson felt like an outsider in New York, but quiet Montana feels downright lonely—until he meets Aisha Stinson. Aisha is beautiful, funny and homeless, kicked out by her religious father when she told him she’s gay. Carson and Aisha quickly become best friends when he invites her to live with him and his dysfunctional parents. Carson’s father is still reeling from his own father’s abandonment, so Carson and Aisha embark on a journey to locate Carson’s grandfather, in hopes that solving the mystery will heal years of pain. But their adventure proves to be more emotionally difficult—and hilarious—than they thought possible. Award-winning author Bill Konigsberg explores heavy themes of sexuality, religion and prejudice with humor and honesty. As heartwrenching as it is heartwarming, Carson and Aisha’s journey isn’t so much about finding Carson’s grandfather as it is about finding peace within themselves and forgiving the mistakes of others. — K I M B E R LY G I A R R A T A N O
children’s
CASSIE BEASLEY
Magic on the tip of a debut author’s tongue
W
hen we reach author Cassie Beasley at her family’s home in rural Georgia, it’s 50 days until the release of her debut, Circus Mirandus . . . not that she’s counting.
Oh, let’s not be silly—of course she’s counting! On a huge calendar hanging on the wall: “I mark off the days and get more and more excited until I feel like I’m about to burst!” Beasley says. Too late: Beasley has already burst onto the children’s publishing scene. Her magical tale for middle grade readers sold to Dial after a five-publisher bidding war, and a Hollywood production company has pre-emptively purchased film and TV rights. “It’s been a whirlwind, and so much fun—everything that happens is a revelation!” Beasley says. It’s also the culmination of steady progress along a path to authordom that began in childhood. “I loved books from a very early age and read everything I could get my hands on,” Beasley says. “But it took me a while to make the connection that I didn’t have to just read books, I could also write books.” Beasley figured this out in high school, which led to her choosing an undergraduate writing program at nearby Georgia Southern
CIRCUS MIRANDUS
By Cassie Beasley
Dial, $17.99, 304 pages ISBN 9780525428435, audio, eBook available Ages 9 to 12
MIDDLE GRADE
University, followed by getting her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she wrote the first draft of Circus Mirandus. “Writing that first draft was very exciting and fun and all so new. . . . I loved it, loved it, loved it,” she says. “Then came the years of revision! That’s where the work comes in. But it can be really exciting, too, seeing it getting better as you progress. It’s so rewarding, now that it’s done, to see how far it’s come.” All that work was certainly worth it. Circus Mirandus is an engaging, innovative tale that balances fantastical goings-on with an exploration of love, loss, friendship and the value of being open to the unexplainable. The latter has been part of Beasley’s mental makeup from an early age. “I always gravitated toward fantasy novels,” she explains. “It’s probably my parents’ fault—they had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with fantasy books, so I was always imagining I could go to Narnia or Hogwarts. Even when I try to write contemporary books, there’s always some magic because I can’t help myself.” Ten-year-old Micah Tuttle is wide open to magical thinking, thanks to the stories Grandpa Ephraim (who has cared for Micah since his parents died) tells him stories about the amazing, magical Circus Mirandus. There are talking animals, invisible tigers and otherworldly performers—not least The Man Who Bends Light, a magician who transports his audiences to places and times they can only dream or imagine. When Grandpa falls ill and his sister, the awful Great-Aunt Gertrudis, comes to stay, she won’t allow them to talk about the Circus . . . or spend much time together at all. But Micah sneaks in to see Grandpa, and that’s when he learns something astonishing: Circus
Mirandus is real! And Grandpa has written a letter to the Lightbender, because the magician owes him a miracle. As if finding out magic is real and having a sick grandpa and a mean great-aunt isn’t stressful enough, Micah also has an important project due at school— and his partner, the super-smart Jenny Mendoza, is not going to be pleased when she finds out he hasn’t finished his part yet. Micah wracks his brain to come up with an idea and decides to make an Incan quipu, a series of intricate knots that represent numbers, words and other information. It’s somewhat of a natural choice for Micah: “Grandpa Ephraim liked to say that Tuttles and knots went together like toast and cheese.” It’s also a somewhat unusual story choice, in that knot tying is a bit of a lost art (and skill). Beasley was fascinated to learn about quipus in sixth grade, and the idea resurfaced as she wrote Circus Mirandus. “I like that knot tying’s a physical thing and not a super-powerful talent, so it’s subtle, in a way.” And it’s a recurring element that showcases Beasley’s gift for conveying detail and sentiment in unexpected ways, whether Micah is contemplating a classmate (“A Nathan Borgle knot would be big and sturdy and not too good-looking”) or creating a harness for an airborne adventure. That adventure is just one of many as Micah and Jenny team up to find the Circus and convince the Lightbender to give Grandpa his miracle— all while attempting to keep the grown-ups none the wiser (and to get their schoolwork done on time). Circus Mirandus is an exciting and entertaining read, rife with inventive
CINDY BEASLEY
INTERVIEW BY LINDA M. CASTELLITTO
surprises, stories from the past and shiny hopes for the future, feats of derring-do and much more. There’s plenty of humor, too— from science-loving Jenny’s initial resistance to the Circus (“You must have a wonderful team of geneticists working with you to create bioluminescent bush babies”) to a wallaby who burps the Greek alphabet to nearly everything done or uttered by Chintzy the tarttongued messenger-parrot. It’s also an excellent testament to the upside of believing in magic. After all, as Grandpa Ephraim tells Micah, “Once in a while, it’s good to be ridiculous and amazing.” Words to live by. And—especially if you’re Beasley, who will soon be on the road sharing the Circus Mirandus magic—it’s probably a good idea to practice your half hitches and your square knots, too.
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reviews LOST IN THE SUN
CHILDREN’S
Fresh start after tragedy REVIEW BY JENNIFER BRUER KITCHEL
Lisa Graff’s latest novel is a feast for all kinds of readers. She writes convincingly in the voice of a middle school student, and young readers will relate easily to the main character, Trent. Graff’s stories always foster a better understanding of young people in parents and teachers, but never more so than in Lost in the Sun. Less than a year before the story begins, an event in Trent’s life significantly alters the way he sees himself and his potential. During a pick-up game of hockey, Trent accidentally hits the puck into a friend’s chest, causing a seemingly benign injury. When a previously unknown heart condition causes the friend to die a few days later, Trent blames himself. No one seems to realize that Trent is still carrying that burden many months later, and it is a weight that slowly begins to unravel him as he begins sixth grade. By Lisa Graff Without the years and experiences to acquire coping skills, children Philomel, $16.99, 304 pages cannot easily handle emotional trauma, and the stress from a major ISBN 9780399164064, audio, eBook available event—death, divorce, abuse, neglect—is often internalized and comes Ages 10 and up out “sideways.” Trent decides that he’s a screw-up because of the accident and assumes everyone else thinks the same. It doesn’t help that MIDDLE GRADE his parents are divorced and he feels unloved and misunderstood by his dad. When Trent discovers that serving detention gives him an excuse to avoid forced dinners with his father, it makes being bad that much easier. As a teacher, I have experienced firsthand the frustrations of dealing with that one kid who seems to want to push acceptable boundaries, and Lost in the Sun is a heartwrenching reminder to be more aware of what a child might really need from the people in his or her life. The book’s title is a reference to trying catch a fly ball when it’s lost in the sun—if you don’t change your perspective, you’ll miss it. If Trent wants to be happy, he’ll have to change his position and see things differently. Graff gives every character in Lost in the Sun all the highs and lows of being human, and by doing so, she gives us the chance find a fresh perspective as well.
the seasons of one year. “Water is water unless . . .” Paul begins. It’s liquid unless “it heats up” and becomes steam. Steam is steam unless “it cools high,” and then it’s a cloud. Thus Paul shapes the text, adding poetic touches on each spread: The steam whirls and swirls. The clouds could be dragons, even dragons in wagons. Her spare, inviting text uses meaty, descriptive verbs, altogether reading like a lovingly constructed poem. She even brings readers a few surprises—that is, stops not normally visited during a water-cycle discussion. For instance, we read about apples, which can be pressed for the water inside to create delicious cider. Chin’s watercolor-and-gouache illustrations are beautifully crafted. His autumn spreads nearly glow with many shades of orange; his summer spreads are filled with luxuriant greens; and his winter spreads are dotted with the colorful winter wear of the children against a stark, white background. Pair this excellent book with George Ella Lyon’s All the Water in the World, illustrated by Katherine Tillotson, and watch children get swept away by wonder. —J U L I E D A N I E L S O N
NOOKS & CRANNIES By Jessica Lawson
playmate—truly a big sis. LITTLE MISS, BIG SIS With numerous best-selling titles to both of their names, Amy By Amy Krouse Krouse Rosenthal and Peter H. Rosenthal Reynolds have complementary Illustrated by Peter styles that make their books stand H. Reynolds out on the shelf—and in readHarperCollins ers’ hearts. Rosenthal (Little Pea) $17.99, 40 pages ISBN 9780062302038 makes the most of every word; her precise rhyming language imitates eBook available PICTURE BOOK a young child’s speech pattern and Ages 4 to 8 keeps the message focused. Reynolds (Ish) is the master of charmWhether your younger sibling is on the way or is 30 years old, it’s ing, colorful sketches that entice never too early or too late for Little the eye. While having a new baby in the house can be overwhelmMiss, Big Sis. Little Miss is ready to be a fantas- ing, Reynolds’ skilled, kid-friendly tic big sis. She tackles the diapers illustrations present big changes in and drool with enthusiasm, dinner a cozy and approachable manner. and mini-disasters with panache. Little Miss, Big Sis is an excellent “big sibling” book for its simplicity She becomes baby’s best cheerleader, fort-builder, tear-drier, and adorable, non-gushy senti-
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ment. Being a big sis brings all kinds of excitement and adventure; it should also come with this book. —J I L L L O R E N Z I N I
WATER IS WATER
Simon & Schuster $16.99, 336 pages ISBN 9781481419215 Audio, eBook available Ages 8 to 12 MIDDLE GRADE
By Miranda Paul Illustrated by Jason Chin
Roaring Brook $17.99, 40 pages ISBN 9781596439849 Ages 6 to 10 PICTURE BOOK
In this lyrical look at the water cycle, Miranda Paul explores the many forms water can take. Jason Chin’s lush illustrations frame the story around a brother and sister, their family and friends through all
After six children receive invitations from an eccentric countess, they encounter mysterious keys, things that go bump in the night and secret passages during the weekend visit of a lifetime. The children unknowingly share a connection, but rather than bringing them together, this bond nearly destroys them. As in Jessica Lawson’s previous novel, The Actual & Truthful Adventures of Becky Thatcher, Nooks & Crannies features a
plucky young girl. Tabitha Crum’s only friend is a special mouse, but she still manages a super-positive outlook on life. Things are looking pretty grim at the mansion, so Tabitha and her trusty mouse use their sleuthing skills—picked up from reading so many mystery novels—to solve the secrets of old Hollingsworth Hall. Readers will delight in the unexpected twists and turns at every junction. In true Sherlock Holmes style, Tabitha logically and fearlessly pursues the truth. Not only does she solve the mystery, but she makes some new friendships—the real treasure of the weekend. —LORI K. JOYCE
A HANDFUL OF STARS By Cynthia Lord
Scholastic $16.99, 192 pages ISBN 9780545700276 eBook available Ages 8 to 12 MIDDLE GRADE
Twelve-year-old Lily is thoughtful and bright but needs an extra push to unleash her imagination and individuality. That push is Salma Santiago, a migrant worker whose family is in Maine for the blueberry harvest. The two girls connect when Salma helps catch Lily’s blind dog, Lucky, when he runs off through the blueberry barrens. Lily shares her plan to raise money for an operation to restore Lucky’s sight, and soon Salma is adding her artistic flair to Lily’s hand-painted bee-house business. When Salma learns that the winner of the annual Blueberry Queen pageant receives a large savings bond, which she needs to start a college fund, Lily vows to help Salma win the pageant. But a migrant worker has never before entered the competition, and Lily’s friend Hannah is also a contestant. Though the story acknowledges tensions that arise between friends, Lily and Salma exhibit a mutually supportive friendship that is often missing from stories
about girls. Young readers will appreciate Lily’s concerns about growing up and the confidence she finds in a new friendship. Newbery Honor winner Cynthia Lord delivers a sweet story about letting go creatively and emotionally while holding onto friendship.
meet PETER SÍS the title of your Q: What’s new book?
© ABOSCH
CHILDREN’S
would you describe Q: How the book?
—ANNIE METCALF
BOOK SCAVENGER By Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
Holt $16.99, 368 pages ISBN 9781627791151 eBook available Ages 9 to 14 MIDDLE GRADE
Eccentric mastermind Garrison Griswold, founder of the popular Book Scavenger website, is about to launch an elaborate new game when his plans are violently interrupted. The only clue he leaves behind is a specially printed copy of an Edgar Allan Poe short story, “The Gold-Bug.” Enter 12-year-old Emily, an avid Book Scavenger player whose family has just arrived in Griswold’s hometown of San Francisco. Between her parents’ constant moves (their goal is to live in all 50 states) and her older brother’s obsession with his favorite band, Emily’s accustomed to solving riddles and searching for hidden books on her own. So when her neighbor James turns out to be as much a puzzle fan as she is, she unexpectedly finds herself with a code-breaking partner . . . and a new friend. A puzzle-mystery in the spirit of The Westing Game, Book Scavenger challenges readers to play along. The codes and puzzles are pitched at the perfect level for tween sleuths, and the literary references—from Poe to contemporary middle grade lit—will pique readers’ interests in doing some book scavenging of their own. Part friendship story, part travel adventure and part cryptography manual, Jennifer Chambliss Bertman’s debut is a book lover’s delight. —J I L L R A T Z A N
has been the biggest influence on your work? Q: Who
was your favorite subject in school? Why? Q: What
was your childhood hero? Q: Who
books did you enjoy as a child? Q: What
one thing would you like to learn to do? Q: What
message would you like to send to young readers? Q: What
ICE CREAM SUMMER Czech-born author-illustrator Peter Sís is a Hans Christian Andersen Award winner, a three-time Caldecott Honoree, a Sibert Award winner and a MacArthur Fellow. His new picture book, Ice Cream Summer (Scholastic, $17.99, 40 pages, ISBN 9780545731614, ages 4 to 8), proves that everything is more fun with a scoop of ice cream. Sís lives in the New York City area with his wife and children.
31
WORDNOOK
BY THE EDITORS OF MERRIAM-WEBSTER
ONE DIRECTION
Dear Editor: My son just started playing baseball and asked why the pitcher on his team is called a southpaw because he is left-handed. Why is that? R. A. Nampa, Idaho The hypothesis probably repeated most often for why southpaw refers to a left-handed pitcher in baseball is that baseball diamonds were traditionally laid out with home plate to the west, to keep the sun out of the pitcher’s eyes in the late afternoon. Hence a left-handed pitcher facing the batter stood with the pitching arm to the south, inspiring the sobriquet southpaw. Whether or not fields were actually so oriented, however, the origin of southpaw certainly lies outside of baseball. When the word first surfaced in American English in the mid-1800s, it referred to a left-handed blow, with no allusion whatsoever to baseball, a game
then in its early stages. Moreover, the adjective south-pawed in the sense “left-handed” has been recorded in the rural dialects of Northern England and Ulster, where baseball is not a traditional game. Most likely the word was brought to America by immigrants from these areas in the 18th or early 19th centuries.
IN NAME ONLY
Dear Editor: Why is the word Cartesian used when referring to the philosophy of Descartes? Why isn’t it Decartesian? P. B. Bloomington, Indiana That the derivative adjective for the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes should be Cartesian might seem puzzling at first. The explanation lies in the fact that Descartes lived in the 17th century, when Latin was the international language of science and letters. Descartes’ name was
Latinized as Renatus Cartesius, and so Cartesian became the word for things relating to his work. A similar example of a Latinized name is found in one of Descartes’ proponents, the Dutch philosopher Henricus Regius, whose birth name was Hendrik de Roy.
ERUPTIONS
Dear Editor: While planning a trip to Italy I learned that there is a volcanic island called Vulcano. Are all volcanoes named after Vulcano? M. L. Grafton, Massachusetts Medieval Europe knew only the handful of active volcanoes long familiar to mariners in the Mediterranean—Italy’s Vesuvius, Sicily’s Etna and the peaks of Stromboli and Vulcano among the Lipari Islands. Apparently no need was felt for a generic word to describe a mountain that emitted fire. This changed in the 16th century, when
Spanish conquistadores came upon the great volcanic peaks of Mexico, Central America and the Andes. The chroniclers of the conquistadores applied to these mountains the word volcan, whose roots lie in classical antiquity. Vulcanus, the Roman god of fire, was particularly associated with the Lipari Islands, and this association is perpetuated today in Vulcano, the modern Italian name of the southernmost island. Medieval Islamic authors applied burkan, an arabicized form of Vulcanus, to either Etna or the Lipari Island volcanoes, and this word appears retransformed into the Latinized vulcan in a 13th-century Spanish translation from Arabic. The word later found its way into Italian, French and English. 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 Mind Benders puzzle Type: Number compleTIoN:
letter PArtS
DIffIculTy: TIme: ___________
Here are two different ways to fit six pieces into a black box. What is the total number of ways to fit these six pieces into the box?
puzzle Type: worD compleTIoN:
DIffIculTy: TIme: ___________
mAtcH eAcH detAil with a different letter. For instance, detail 6 is from the T. All details are right side up and magnified the same amount.
ANswer: There are eight ways to fit the pieces into the box, as shown below. There is one solution with zero vertical pieces, three with two vertical pieces, three with four vertical pieces, and one with six vertical pieces.
HINT: Each piece is two squares long. Every solution has 2 squares made of 2 pieces.
Secret Word
puzzle Type: spATIAl compleTIoN:
ANswer:
ASSemblieS
DIffIculTy: TIme: ___________
deduce the secret five-letter word from the clues. For instance, the word WRITE shares three letter tiles with the word RIGHT.
HINT: Detail 1 is from the L.
ANswer: ACUTE
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HINT: The secret word starts with the letter A.