BookPage March 2015

AMERICA’S BOOK REVIEW

COMPLIMENTS OF YOUR LIBRARY

MARCH 2015

inside

GRETCHEN RUBIN

Hack your habits

DENNIS LEHANE

Tropical crime wave

ERIK LARSON

Down with the ship

CHRISTIAN FICTION

Keeping faith

SUSAN MALLERY

THE GIRLS of

Mischief bay

PaperbackPicks The Collector

Festive in Death

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts comes a novel about a woman who needs nothing, a man who sees everything, and the web of deceit, greed, and danger that brings them together—and could tear them apart.

Eve Dallas deals with a homicide—and the holiday season—in the latest from #1 New York Times bestselling author J. D. Robb.

Immortal

The Bootlegger

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author who has kept readers on the edge of their seats with her phenomenal Fallen Angels novels, comes one of the most heart-stirring and eagerly anticipated events in the acclaimed series.

Detective Isaac Bell is back in an extraordinary new adventure in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.

Stone Cold

Binding Ties

The latest “suspenseful, action-filled” novel in the New York Times bestselling” series (The Denver Post).

They are the Sentinels.

Three races descended from ancient guardians of mankind, each possessing unique abilities in the battle to protect humanity against their eternal foes: the Synestryn. Now a warrior must protect his onetime enemy—without succumbing to his darkest desires.

The Bedding Proposal

His Wicked Reputation

From New York Times bestselling author Tracy Anne Warren, the first in a new trilogy about the most dashingly dangerous men in London, the seductive Rakes of Cavendish Square.

From New York Times bestselling author Madeline Hunter comes the first in a stunning new trilogy about three irresistibly attractive brothers, starting with Gareth, celebrated for his roguish charm and handsome face.

Feature

of the

Month

“Best historical thriller writer in the business!”

—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

NEW IN HARDCOVER The grisly murder of a West Indies slave owner and the reappearance of a dangerous enemy from Sebastian St. Cyr’s past combine to put C. S. Harris’s “troubled but compelling antihero” (Booklist) to the ultimate test in this taut, thrilling mystery.

“Thoroughly enjoyable...moody and atmospheric, exposing the dark underside of Regency London.”

—New York Times bestselling author Deanna Raybourn

contents

MARCH MARCH2015 2015 Spring Brings B O O K PA G E . C O M B O O K PA G E . C O M

features

13

14 GRETCHEN RUBIN

cover story

Best-selling author Susan Mallery launches a new sun-soaked series.

Making habits work for you

16 HANYA YANAGIHARA

New Romance from Avon Books

Dark depths of friendship

18 DENNIS LEHANE

Cover image © Amber V’rai Fritchiof

Meet the author of World Gone By

reviews

18 FANTASY THRILLERS

21 FICTION

Tales of supernatural sleuths

20 CHRISTIAN FICTION

Delicious Foods by James Hannaham

also reviewed:

Stories for reflecting on faith

26 ERIK LARSON Tragedy at sea

28 ANDREW SMITH A multidimensional look at the teenage experience

31 CARSON ELLIS Meet the author-illustrator of Home

I Am Radar by Reif Larsen Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe Dark Rooms by Lili Anolik The Listener by Rachel Basch The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty

by Amanda Filipacchi The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss

25 NONFICTION

top pick:

AUDIO WELL READ LIBRARY READS WHODUNIT BOOK CLUBS LIFESTYLES COOKING ROMANCE

The Half Brother by Holly LeCraw The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro Fiercombe Manor by Kate Riordan Act of God by Jill Ciment

Dead Wake by Erik Larson

also reviewed:

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble

by Zac Bissonnette He Wanted the Moon

by Mimi Baird with Eve Claxton American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus Bettyville by George Hodgman

columns 04 05 05 07 09 10 10 12

top pick:

The Death of Caesar by Barry Strauss The Monopolists by Mary Pilon I Left It on the Mountain

by Kevin Sessums Master Thieves by Stephen Kurkjian

29 TEEN

30 CHILDREN’S

top pick:

top pick:

Mosquitoland

by David Arnold

also reviewed:

Read Between the Lines by Jo Knowles Bone Gap by Laura Ruby Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver

Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan

also reviewed:

Special Delivery by Philip C. Stead My Pen by Christopher Myers Welcome to the Neighborwood

by Shawn Sheehy My Near-Death Adventures

by Alison DeCamp Ms. Rapscott’s Girls

by Elise Primavera

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

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Cat Acree

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Allison Hammond

Elizabeth Grace Herbert

CONTRIBUTOR

ADVERTISING COMMUNICATIONS

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Julia Steele

Lily McLemore

Roger Bishop

EDITOR

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

PRODUCTION MANAGER

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MANAGING EDITOR

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

PRODUCTION INTERN

Trisha Ping

Sukey Howard

Sadie Birchfield

Lynn L. Green

Sada Stipe

MARKETING Mary Claire Zibart

CONTROLLER Sharon Kozy

EDITORIAL POLICY BookPage is a selection guide for new books. Our editors evaluate and select for review the best books published in a variety of categories.

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

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3

columns CAPTIVATING

LISTENING “A fascinating, provocative, and informative entry into the life of Jesus.”

—James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage Read by Peter Larkin ON SALE NOW

Bestselling author, Navy SEAL, and humanitarian Eric Greitens offers a masterpiece of warrior wisdom that will change your life.

Read by the Author ON SALE 2/24 With all the trademark twists and turns that have made Jeffrey Archer one of the world’s most popular authors, the spellbinding story of the Clifton and the Barrington families continues.

Read by Alex Jennings ON SALE NOW “One of the hottest names in spy fiction today.”

—USA Today on The Cairo Affair Read by Ari Fliakos & Juliana Francis Kelly ON SALE 3/10

WWW.MACMILLANAUDIO.COM

4

To vaccinate, or . . .

Eula Biss, a superb essayist, is insatiably curious. Now her curiosity about vaccination has produced On Immunity: An Inoculation (Highbridge, $26.95, 6 hours, ISBN 9781622314973), an extraordinary consideration of the pros, cons, history, language and metaphors of vaccination, the fears surrounding it and much more. Biss’ research is far reaching, and she has an

amazing talent for synthesizing what she’s read and turning it into seamless prose, the kind of narrative nonfiction that makes for compelling, intriguing listening. As a new mother, Biss found herself struggling with decisions about her son’s health. She writes candidly about her own concerns and the concerns of the other mothers she talked to. In sorting out what to do, Biss became aware of our mutuality, that “we are each other’s environment. Immunity is a shared space, a garden we tend together,” and we have a personal role to play in public health. As you listen to Tamara Marston’s gentle voice, you’ll get a strong shot of informed, elegant reasoning.

REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

Five women, each with a shameful secret, each about to find out that she is not alone...

Read by Susan Bennett ON SALE 3/24

AUDIO

BY SUKEY HOWARD

Nina saw “her” in the park near her house in north London on a summer afternoon. It had been years, yet she always knew it would happen. And from then on neither woman’s life would ever be the same again. A haunting, edgy aura of unease and impending crisis casts its shadow over Harriet Lane’s disturbing, totally compelling new “domestic noir” thriller, Her (Hachette Audio, $25.98, 8.5 hours, ISBN 9781478983224). Nina knew Emma (her) when they were teenagers—Emma golden and lovely, Nina small and shy—and for reasons not revealed until much later, she has long waited to serve

her a dish of icy cold revenge. Now in their early 40s, Nina is a successful artist, elegant and urbane; Emma, ground down by the demands of mothering her two young children, is no longer golden. But that in no way stops Nina from subtly stalking Emma, insinuating herself into her life, a menacing presence posing as a beneficent friend. Julie Maisey performs, giving these woman distinct voices as each reveals what happened.

TOP PICK IN AUDIO Euphoria (Blackstone Audio, $29.95, 7 hours, ISBN 9781483010182), Lily King’s glowing, perfectly paced novel, reimagines a few months in 1933 when Margaret Mead, who had recently published Coming of Age in Samoa to great acclaim and profit, and her second husband, Reo Fortune, spent time on the Sepik River in New Guinea with Gregory Bateson, who, in turn, became her third husband. It was my favorite novel of 2014 long before The New York Times named it one of the 10 Best Books of the Year. Now, this audio version read by Simon Vance and Xe Sands may well become my favorite audio of 2015. Though told in retrospect, with passages from journals that Nell (Mead) kept in the field, the narrators make this intense, emotionally charged tale of desire and despair, both physical and intellectual, even more vivid.

The sexual tension among the three main characters is as intense as their need to talk and collaborate. King’s insight into how these three very different ethnologists met the challenge of fieldwork so many years ago and her ability to get into their heads and hearts is amazing, transporting and unusually affecting.

WELL READ

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 March.

BY ROBERT WEIBEZAHL

At home in the garden Unlike her prolific husband, E.B. White, Katharine S. White wrote only one book, yet she left a decisive and enduring mark over the course of her 34 years as an editor at The New Yorker, shaping the distinctive voice of the magazine and shepherding the work of many of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Her one book, Onward and Upward in the Garden (New York Review Books Classics, $17.95, 392 pages, ISBN 9781590178508), was not published until two years after her death in 1977, and is edited and introduced by her husband.

Comprising 14 gardening columns written between 1958 and 1970, it is a charming, idiosyncratic, opinionated, informative and, at times, humorous paean to the amateur pursuit of horticulture. It returns this month in a new edition after a decade out of print.

The columns for The New Yorker began as unlikely book review-like assessments of the newest seed catalogs, which White scrutinized with uncommon ardor, applying the same critical eye that she might have cast on, say, a novel. As the years progressed, she continued to structure the pieces around the latest offerings from a far-flung array of nurseries, but the columns became increasingly personal and thoughtful. As with all of the best articles that the fabled magazine featured in its heyday, it is the controlled discursiveness of the writing that keeps us reading, even if we don’t necessarily care about varieties of roses or the care and breeding of African violets. White reels us in with her enthusiasm and her Yankee directness. When she takes a narrative side trip through the history of the lawn mower or contemplates keeping the ­virus-ridden bulbs of “broken tulips” segregated in her flowerbeds, we find ourselves eagerly reading on—whether we have a lawn

ourselves or give two figs about tulips.

The Whites did their gardening on a farm in Maine, and descriptions of the everyday rhythms of their rural life infuse her clean, poetic prose.

“There is also internecine warfare among the phlox—between the burgeoning clumps of common pink, white and calico phlox and the less well-established stands of the new varieties, whose colors are more interesting,” she writes.

“Nonetheless, I am happy with all this bountiful bloom, and, careless gardener that I am, I comfort myself with the thought that at least I have achieved mass effect, and that the flowers grow in drifts of color. . . . But [Gertrude Jekyll,] that formidable garden genius of the last generation would never, never have condoned my crowded bed or my state of August sloth, which makes me want to say, ‘Oh, let it go. Let the plants fight their own battles.’ ” Lovers of E.B. White’s most Katharine White reels us famous book may hear in with her echoes of enthusiasm Charlotte’s prickly, philoand her sophical proYankee nouncements directness. in passages such as these.

Sadly, Katharine White never wrote what would have been the final chapter in the book—a piece about the gardens of her New England childhood, which, given her perception and appreciation for the past, coupled with a clear-eyed lack of nostalgia, would likely have been among the most engaging parts of an already engaging book.

“Writing for her was an agonizing ordeal,” E.B. White tells us in his introduction, “particularly hard because she was by temperament and by profession an editor, not a writer.” Onward and Upward in the Garden gives the lie to this claim: Katharine White was indeed a delightfully gifted writer.

#1

THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

by Rachel Joyce Random House, $25, ISBN 9780812996678

In this companion to the best-selling The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Queenie embarks on a memorable journey.

DEAD WAKE by Erik Larson

Crown, $28, ISBN 9780307408860 One of our most accomplished narrative nonfiction writers explores the sinking of the Lusitania. BookPage review on page 25.

PRUDENCE by Gail Carriger

Orbit, $20, ISBN 9780316212243 In this new steampunk series from the author of Soulless, a young woman inherits a dirigible and finds adventure—and werewolves!— in India.

THE WITCH OF PAINTED SORROWS by M.J. Rose

Atria, $25, ISBN 9781476778068 In 1890s Paris, an American expat becomes involved in the occult underground, only to find herself battling a witch for her soul.

CAT OUT OF HELL by Lynne Truss

Melville House, $24.95, ISBN 9781612194424 The best-selling author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves puts her irresistible humor to use in a Gothic farce. BookPage review on page 23.

VANISHING GIRLS by Lauren Oliver

HarperCollins, $18.99, ISBN 9780062224101 After a devastating car accident, twin sisters Dara and Nick are no longer best friends. But when Dara goes missing, only Nick can find her. BookPage review on page 29.

DELICIOUS FOODS by James Hannaham

Little, Brown, $26, ISBN 9780316284943 A young boy struggles to rescue his drug-addicted mother from a nefarious farm in this memorable second novel.

BookPage review on page 21.

THE FIFTH GOSPEL by Ian Caldwell

Simon & Schuster, $25.99, ISBN 9781451694147 A Greek Catholic priest is drawn into one of the Vatican’s most dangerous mysteries in this suspenseful story.

BookPage review on page 22.

THE POCKET WIFE by Susan Crawford

Morrow, $25.99, ISBN 9780062362858 In this thrilling debut, a bipolar woman in the midst of a manic episode wonders if she might be responsible for her neighbor’s brutal murder.

WHERE ALL LIGHT TENDS TO GO by David Joy

Putnam, $26.95, ISBN 9780399172779 In rural Cashiers, North Carolina, Jacob McNeely must make a choice between his meth-dealing father and the girl he’s always loved.

LibraryReads is a recommendation program that highlights librarians’ favorite books published this month. For more information, visit libraryreads.org.

5

#1 New York Times bestselling author

Life is richer with friends by your side…

brings you an emotional new story about building a life that once seemed impossible in the small Oregon town of Thunder Point.

Discover the first story in a new series from the New York Times bestselling author of Three Sisters and Evening Stars,

Susan Mallery.

“Carr’s gift for writing lovably flawed heroes and heroines is evident on every page.”

“An engrossing tale of emotional growth and the healing power of friendship.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Homecoming

—Library Journal on Three Sisters

Available now!

Available now everywhere books are sold!

www.MIRABooks.com • www.RobynCarr.com

www.MIRABooks.com • www.SusanMallery.com • www.MischiefBay.com

columns

WHODUNIT YOU COULD

BY BRUCE TIERNEY

The depths of a parent’s worst nightmare Bryan Reardon’s fiction debut, Finding Jake (Morrow, $26.99, 272 pages, ISBN 9780062339485), pushes all the right buttons: a timely, ripped-from-the-headlines premise; grab-you-by-the-collar pacing; and a cast of troubled, finely drawn and sympathetic characters. We have all watched raw

news footage of horrifying events like this too many times in recent years: a mass murder at a Pennsylvania high school, with one alleged gunman dead by his own hand and the other, Jake Connolly, missing.

Stay-at-home dad Simon Connolly cannot believe his son capable of the acts attributed to him by the media and the parents of the slain students, but the evidence is damning: Jake’s “loner” demeanor; violent texts found in his cell phone archive; and worst of all, his blood spatter found at the scene of the carnage. The police appear not the slightest bit interested in finding a “missing teenager”—they want to “apprehend the suspect”— so Simon launches his own search for Jake, hoping against hope that his knowledge of his son will lead him to the boy before the police can run him to ground. Simon recounts this story in the first person, cutting from Jake’s infancy to the modern day, ratcheting up the tension with each successive chapter.

This is an uncommon retelling of an all-too-common contemporary American story.

GRAB A QUICK BITE The year 1950 marked the release of a film noir classic, D.O.A., the strange tale told in flashback of a man investigating his own soonto-be-fatal poisoning by a “luminous toxin” for which there is no antidote. Olen Steinhauer’s modern-day espionage novel, All the

Old Knives (Minotaur, $23.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9781250045423), offers an equally noir story set almost entirely at a trendy bistro in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where two ex-spies/ex-lovers play a lethal game of cat-and-mouse over hors d’oeuvres and Chardonnay. At issue is the botched handling of an airliner hijacking six years before— and a few loose ends that could expose the truth behind the narrative that has been tacitly accepted over the years. At least one of the dining pair has some guilty knowledge— perhaps complicity—of the fallout of the hijacking, which resulted in the deaths of 120-odd passengers and crewmembers. Steinhauer displays an affinity for espionage, closed-room suspense and plot twists, placing him definitively in the first rank of modern mystery writers.

WALK THE LINE The latest installment of James Carlos Blake’s acclaimed Wolfe Family saga, The House of Wolfe (Mysterious Press, $24, 288 pages, ISBN 9780802122469), finds narrator Rudy Wolfe and several members of his outlaw family headed south of the border to rescue a kidnapped cousin, held for ransom along with 10 members of a Mexican high-society wedding party. There are no “good guys” here, although there are some that the reader will root for over others.

The bad guys, on the other hand, are truly bad, including an unscrupulous financier with his hand in every illegal pie to be found in Mexico City, and a truly poisonous interrogator whose fiendish imagination is matched only by his sociopathic tendencies (this fellow, it should be mentioned, is in the employ of the protagonists). Blake’s literary suspense novels are firmly rooted in the hard-edged, morally

ambiguous tradition established

by Elmore Leonard, James Crumley and James Ellroy. Fast-paced, atmospheric, violent and relentlessly cinematic, The House of Wolfe is not to be missed.

TOP PICK IN MYSTERY A handful of contemporary espionage writers can be counted on to deliver complex and unerringly atmospheric historical suspense novels each time they put pen to paper. Philip Kerr, David Downing and Alan Furst jump to mind, but no such list would be complete without Joseph Kanon, whose Leaving Berlin (Atria, $27, 384 pages, ISBN 9781476704647) weaves together a pair of seemingly unconnected but pivotal events of the early post-WWII era: the Berlin airlift of 1948-1949 and the Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era. The glue that binds these events is Jewish writer Alex Meier, who escaped from the Nazis to find asylum in the U.S., only to have the rug pulled out from under him thanks to his Communist leanings in his youth. He manages to broker an eleventh-hour deal to go back to his native Berlin in the employ of the U.S. intelligence service. If he is successful in his espionage efforts, his past will be conveniently expunged, and he will be allowed to remain in the States. As you might imagine with a first-rate spy novel, that will turn out to be a big if, and there is a fair bit of double-crossing (with the inevitable bloodshed in its wake). Interestingly, Kanon introduces real-life characters in the book, such as poet/playwright Bertolt “Bert” Brecht, although Kanon offers the disclaimer that these characters “appear only as I imagine them to have been.” If one were to ask fans today which book Kanon is best known for, the answer would have to be 2001’s The Good German. Pose that same question a year from now, and the answer will be Leaving Berlin.

WIN A TRIP TO

PARIS with

CARA BLACK

Entry forms available inside hardcover and digital copies of

MURDER ON THE CHAMP DE MARS

For full details and official rules, visit:

ParisWithCara.com

7

Fearless, Funny,and Fresh Spring Reading Fearless,Funny, and Fresh Spring Reading “DOWNRIGHT DELIGHTFUL....

“DOWNRIGHT DELIGHTFUL....

“NOVAK IS A GENUINE STORYTELLER “NOVAK IS A GENUINE STORYTELLER

Binchy eloquently exposes Binchy eloquently exposes and explores relationships.” and explores relationships.”

with an observant eye and finely with an observant eye and finely tuned emotional radar.” tuned emotional radar.”

—The Boston Globe —The Boston Globe

—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Everything that makes “Everything that makes Binchy special.”

Binchy special.”

““An funny literary literary An absurdist, absurdist, scathingly scathingly funny collection.” collection.”

—NPR —NPR

—The —The Daily Daily Beast Beast

“VIVID....

“VIVID....STRIKING....

STRIKING....AAringing ringing

paeantotolove loveiningeneral: general:totothe the paean love between man and wife, parent love between man and wife, parent andchild, child,outsider outsiderand andnewcomer, newcomer, and pilgrims and promised land.” pilgrims and promised land.”

“McCall Smith is ENGAGING an ENGAGING “McCall Smith is an A WITTY guide to the goings ANDAND A WITTY guide to the goings on on

—TheWashington WashingtonPost Post —The

fictional 44 Scotland Street.” ...at...at fictional 44 Scotland Street.”

NewYork YorkTimes TimesNotable NotableBook Book A ANew BookPageand andOprah.com Oprah.com A ABookPage Best Book theYear Year Best Book ofofthe

—The Express (London) —The DailyDaily Express (London)

CAPTIVATING.... ““CAPTIVATING....

“WRENCHING....

SUSPENSEFUL....

“WRENCHING....

SUSPENSEFUL....

Lyrically captures captures the Lyrically the time time between childhood between childhood and and adulthood.” adulthood.”

best novel.”

By By farfar herher best novel.”

—The New York Times —The New York Times

—The Washington Post —The Washington Post

“Clear and searing.... Pulls you “Clear and searing.... Pulls you in from the first page.... A book in from the first page.... A book that looks hard at trauma, love, that looks hard at trauma, love, and humanity.” and humanity.”

“Singular and haunting.”

“Singular and haunting.”

—NPR —NPR

An Oprah.com Best Book of the Year An Oprah.com Best Book of the Year

—The Boston Globe —The Boston Globe

A New York Times Notable Book A New York Times Notable Book

“TENSE, SHOCKING, “TENSE, SHOCKING, AND SEDUCTIVELY DARK....

AND SEDUCTIVELY DARK....

A brand-new twist on a

“A TRULY BRILLIANT READ.” “A TRULY BRILLIANT—Marie READ.” Claire —Marie Claire

“A delightful and hilarious memoir.”

“A delightful and hilarious memoir.”

—The Economist —The Economist

VINTAGE VINTAGE

A brand-new twist on a classic story—an urban reinvention classic story—an urban reinvention of a Shakespearean tale.” of a Shakespearean tale.”of —Rebecca Coleman, bestselling author —Rebecca Coleman, bestselling author of The Kingdom of Childhood The Kingdom of Childhood

“An accomplished, mesmerizing debut.”

“An accomplished, mesmerizing debut.”

—Janet Fitch, bestselling author of White Oleander —Janet Fitch, bestselling author of White Oleander

Now in Paperback and eBook

Read excerpts, print reading group read author interviews, and more at ReadingGroupCenter.com Nowguides, in Paperback and eBook

Read excerpts, print reading group guides, read author interviews, and more at ReadingGroupCenter.com

ANCHOR ANCHOR

columns

BOOK CLUBS

BY JULIE HALE

A virtual doppelgänger Joshua Ferris’ dazzling third novel, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (Back Bay, $16, 352 pages, ISBN 9780316033992), is a masterfully crafted work of black humor that will please fans of his acclaimed debut, Then We Came to the End. New York dentist Paul O’Rourke, the novel’s protagonist, is a fullfledged curmudgeon who has

forsworn social media. He isn’t out to win any popularity contests with his patients or anyone else, and so the appearance on the Internet of a site dedicated to his practice comes as a true surprise, as do the Twitter and Facebook accounts in his name that follow. Unsettled and angry, Paul sets out to find the party responsible for establishing his unwanted online presence, a quest that brings him into contact with a bizarre religious group. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in a book that explores the nature of contemporary relationships, the quest for identity and the complexities of communication. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this hilarious, probing, complex book is sure to spur lively conversation among reading groups.

BUFFETED BY WAR Set in World War II-era San Francisco, Lisa See’s China Dolls (Random House, $16, 416 pages, ISBN 9780812982824) traces the lives of three young Asian-American women who embark on careers in an exotic nightclub called the Forbidden City. Each of the women trades a troubled past for a future of glitzy possibility: Grace Lee wants to escape from her violent father; Ruby Tom is chasing dreams of fame; and Helen Fong seeks release from an oppressive home life. The three of them meet with varying

degrees of success as performers at the club.

Though they share similar ambitions and a strong sisterly bond, the three nurse suspicions of one another. When the war begins, their friendship shatters. Ruby, who is of Japanese descent but has been passing as Chinese, is sent to an internment camp.

As the war escalates, the women find they must adapt themselves to a world that will never be the same. See’s portrayal of the dynamics and drama that enliven female relationships makes for compelling reading. This is a captivating work of historical fiction that satisfies on every level.

TOP PICK IN BOOK CLUBS With Redeployment (Penguin, $16, 304 pages, ISBN 9780143126829), which captured the 2014 National Book Award for fiction, Phil Klay offers up 12 powerful stories about the Iraq War. Klay served in the conflict as a Marine Corps public affairs officer, and his work has the sort of immediacy and intensity that can only come from first-hand experience.

Each of these first-person tales has a different narrator; each provides a unique perspective on the experience of war. In the book’s title story, a soldier returns home after a seven-month absence, and the difficulties that ensue as he readjusts to civilian life range from humorous to heartbreaking. “Unless It’s a Sucking Chest Wound” features a disillusioned veteran who makes his way through law school only to ponder a public-service career path after graduation. Klay writes with consistent authority about life at the frontlines and its inescapable repercussions. There’s no romanticism in these searing stores, just honesty, passion and skill—lots of skill.

R New Book Club Choices from Acclaimed Authors Dog Crazy

by Meg Donohue “Even if my daughter hadn’t recently rescued a dog, our first, I would have fallen in love with Meg Donohue’s Dog Crazy.

On these pages you will find love, healing, forgiveness and pure unbridled joy of the human and canine kind.”

—Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of The Shoemaker’s Wife

The Reluctant Midwife

by Patricia Harman

“An entrancing saga of birth and rebirth, of people you come to love as they confront loss and guilt, poverty and fear, silence and doubt.”

—Pamela Schoenewaldt, author of Swimming in the Moon NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The Nazi Officer’s Wife

by Edith H. Beer & Susan Dworkin

“A well-written narrative...Her story is important both as a personal testament and as an inspiring example of example of perseverance in the face of terrible adversity.” —Publishers Weekly INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

The Daughter

by Jane Shemilt

“In The Daughter, what appears to be a simple abduction soon turns into something far more complex and baffling. Jane Shemilt builds layer upon layer of tension in a thriller you won’t be able to put down.”

—Tess Gerritsen, bestselling author of Last to Die

@Morrow_PB

@bookclubgirl

William Morrow Paperbacks

Book Club Girl

9

columns

LIFESTYLES

The seeds of adventure What could be better than your own garden patch of plump, ripe, juicy tomatoes? In Epic Tomatoes (Storey, $19.95, 256 pages, ISBN 9781612122083), expert Craig LeHoullier digs in and shows you how to make this dream a reality.

Did you know there are thousands of varieties of tomatoes? On a beautifully photographed spread,

LeHoullier details more than 200 of his favorites, from the Yellow Brandywine to the jolly-looking Green Giant. This book has indispensable information on planning, planting, pruning and troubleshooting any problems that may arise. And after you celebrate your hard-earned harvest, LeHoullier makes it easy to save seeds and ensure that the next growing season runs smoothly. The mouth-wateringly beautiful pictures, complemented by Mary Kate McDevitt’s cheerful hand-lettering, spur readers to take steps to make these delightful summer fantasies a reality.

TRACING YOUR ROOTS There’s a dramatic boom in our culture for genealogical and geographical family research these days, with many services available for tracking down your family’s history and place of origin. National Geographic has gathered a fabulous company of distinguished authors and journalists to present their personal genealogical quests in Journeys Home ($26, 288 pages, ISBN 9781426213816). Remember Andrew McCarthy from the flicks St. Elmo’s Fire and Pretty in Pink?

Since then, he’s become a distinguished travel writer. He details his own Irish odyssey here—the featured essay in this inspiring book. Twenty-five other writers’ adventures span the entire globe, sometimes even within a single essay (from Angola to Virginia in

10

COOKING

BY JOANNA BRICHETTO

one case, the Philippines to California in another).

Included are well-known novelists Pico Iyer and Diane Johnson, a host of veteran writers for the magazine and National Geographic’s signature trove of spectacular photos.

Looking to begin your own quest?

Head to the section on “Geneology 101” for a step-by-step guide, plus plenty of expert travel tips for popular destinations.

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES Plan a much different journey with 1,000 Foods to Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover’s Life List (Workman, $24.95, 1,008 pages, ISBN 9780761141686). This massive yet compact tome is organized by regional cuisines, beginning with British afternoon tea and trekking across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, Australia and even further afield. Our tour guide is award-winning cookbook author Mimi Sheraton, who not only knows what to eat, but how, when and why along with the best places to find it all. For example, if you fancy a go at a treacle tart—Harry Potter’s dessert of choice—you’ll find a description, local variations, recommended presentation, recipes for a DIY approach and the best London restaurant in which to order it. In addition to specific dishes, Sheraton adds broader categories such as Middle Eastern meze and Italian pasta, along with a section on must-visit foodie hot spots like Billingsgate Market and the food stalls of Marrakesh.

Two specifics I purposely looked for as indicators of thoroughness were indeed included: iron-skillet Southern cornbread and the two main ethnic variations of Passover charoset (Ashkenazic and Sephardic). This is an informative and impressive guide for any adventurous foodie.

BY SYBIL PRATT

Comfort from scratch Aficionados of the popular first cookbook from Savannah bakers Cheryl and Griffith Day knew without a doubt that love was an active ingredient in every single recipe. Their second collection of “scratch-baked” delights, Back in the Day Bakery Made with Love (Artisan, $24.95, 312 pages, ISBN 9781579655563), makes sure that

“love” is front and center in this new array of sweet and savory treats that range from breakfast biscuits, muffins and biscones (a marriage of biscuit and scone) to cakes, cookies, cupcakes, pies, breads, rolls and crackers. Sandwiched in among the more than 100 recipes are the Days’ creative how-tos for making flavored syrups, yogurt parfaits, a tiered Cele­ bration Cake, Ciabatta Rolls and some wild and crazy make-it-yourself projects like a marshmallow chandelier or vintage linen Snack Pockets. One look at the custardy Spoon Bread, Caramel Cake with Salted Caramel Frosting, Sweet Potato Lemon Bread or the Key Lime Short Bread Cookies and it’s desire at first sight, then comforting love at first bite.

SUPERTASTY SIMPLE Lots of cooks and cookbooks promise dishes that are easy, quick and delicious—but not all of them serve up the goods. Lorraine Pascale, #1 best-selling cookbook author in the U.K. and international fashion model, really makes good on what she promises in her third book, Everyday Easy (Ecco, $29.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9780062305794).

Her goal is to offer busy people tasty, quick-to-get-together main courses with sides included, made with accessible ingredients that will impress your family and friends, like Chicken Cacciatore with Harissa over pasta, Salmon

Saltimbocca with Gremolata Potatoes and Butternut and Sweet Potato Lasagne—all on the table in under 35 minutes. She’s added recipes for canapés (try the irresistible Pancetta and Parmesan Puffs), cocktails, snazzy starters, snacks, soups, salads, bread and desserts to round out everyday or festive meals. Pascale’s cooking instructions are detailed and supportive, and almost every recipe is enhanced by a luscious photograph—of the gorgeous food, not her gorgeous face!

TOP PICK IN COOKBOOKS Ruhlman’s How to Braise: Foolproof Techniques and Recipes for the Home Cook (Little, Brown, $25, 160 pages, ISBN 9780316254137), the second in Michael Ruhlman’s single-subject series after How to Roast, is a lyrical (yes, cookbooks can be somewhat lyrical), practical ode that could have been called “Praising Braising.” It’s his favorite of all the fundamental cooking techniques, and he considers it a metamorphosis, a way of truly transforming food. As in all his many cookbooks, Ruhlman’s discussion and instructions, with tips and insider info, are meticulous and inspiring. You get all the braising details you’ll ever need, from the three musts—salting, searing, simmering—to the delicious nuances that variations in seasoning and choice of simmering liquid offer. The recipes are outstanding, beginning with iconic Braised Lamb Shanks with Mint Gremolata and classic WineBraised Beef Short Ribs, then on to Hot and Sour Braised Duck Legs, Osso Buco, a quartet of braised veggies and a marvelous Mexican Pork and Hominy Posole. The photos by Donna Turner Ruhlman are fabulous, step-by-step and the done deal, done to perfection.

“Brilliant plotting “Brilliant plotting “Brilliant plotting “Brilliant plotting and absolutely and absolutely andabsolutely absolutely and

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A duke’s bastard son, well known for his way with women, finds himself fascinated by a penniless spinster in His Wicked Reputation (Jove, $7.99, 432 pages, ISBN 9780515155167), the first book in Madeline Hunter’s Wicked series.

The notorious Gareth Fitzallen claims a dilapidated country property in the hope of finding the

perpetrators of the large-scale art thefts occurring in the area. But he finds a distraction in his neighbor, Eva Russell. Gareth admires the gentlewoman, who is determined to hold on to her family home and give her young sister a better future. Eva can’t help but be charmed by the roguish bachelor when he decides Eva deserves some fun in her life—fun that satisfies her curiosity about sensual pleasures.

They both assure themselves that their relationship will be a temporary affair, but their sizzling, fierce attraction keeps drawing them back together. Complicating matters is Gareth’s investigation and a secret Eva holds close. But are the two connected? Plot and passion come together to make this a sexy, compelling story.

TOGETHER FOREVER An unassuming shopkeeper’s world is turned upside down in The Immortal Who Loved Me (Avon, $7.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780062316004), the newest paranormal romance in Lynsay Sands’ Argeneau Vampire series.

When Sherry Carne helps a teen escape a malevolent band of men, Sherry runs into further trouble in the guise of the Argeneau clan—an extended family of vampires. As if that’s not enough for a normal woman to take in, she also meets Basileios “Basil” Argeneau. As she

delves deeper into this newfound supernatural world, Sherry is shocked to learn that some believe Basil is her “life mate.” Lonely Sherry finds it quite appealing that the very attractive Basil might be the one man in the world for her. But can she trust him and these allegedly immortal people? As the bad guys close in, a man from Sherry’s past returns, revealing a side of herself she never knew. Who is this new Sherry, and is she ready to be turned into a vampire and enter an immortal life with Basil? Sands expertly combines action and humor for a rollicking read.

TOP PICK IN ROMANCE Two brave soldiers find love in Lindsay McKenna’s Taking Fire (HQN, $7.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780373785056). Marine Corps Sergeant Khat Shinwari is on a black ops mission in the rugged, dangerous mountains of Afghanistan when she saves the life of Navy SEAL Mike Tarik, who was injured in a deadly Taliban attack.

As she tends to his wounds, Mike becomes intrigued by the beautiful warrior. When they return to Mike’s base, he is thrilled to find he’s been assigned as her mentor. Propelled by a deep attraction and an alignment of experiences and values, the two fall in love. But a happy ending is elusive, and relationship obstacles abound thanks to their dangerous jobs. Khat feels a deep loyalty to the Afghan people she’s been helping during the war, and she’s not sure a life in America will ever truly suit her. Readers will root for this complex heroine, scarred both inside and out, and hope she finds peace with her steadfast and loving hero. Rife with realistic conflict and spiced with danger, this is a worthy page-turner.

cover story

SUSAN MALLERY

Charting a new course in Mischief Bay

S

usan Mallery is a sparkling conversationalist: She’s funny, smart and easy to talk to about all manner of topics, from her writing career to dog breeds to her favorite eyeshadow brand (it’s Laura Geller).

That accessible quality is reflected in her books: Mallery has a talent for building vivid fictional worlds, creating characters we can relate to and skillfully depicting the highs, lows and occasional weirdness of relationships—whether between friends, lovers, co-workers, family members or even owners and pets.

Her ability to connect with readers has won Mallery legions of fans around the world. She has sold more than 23 million books, with more than 50 of her novels landing a place on bestseller lists for a combined 500 weeks.

Now in the third decade of her career, she has written more than 100 novels, ranging from spicy romances featuring sheiks and cowboys to more recent women’s fiction set in beach communities with dazzling scenery and smalltown intrigue.

Fans of Mallery’s best-selling Blackberry Island books will be excited about her new series, which debuts with The Girls of Mischief Bay, set in a coastal community in Los Angeles County.

Three friends—30ish Nicole, 40ish Shannon and 50ish Pam—find

THE GIRLS OF MISCHIEF BAY

By Susan Mallery

Mira, $14.95, 416 pages ISBN 9780778317746, audio, eBook available

WOMEN’S FICTION

themselves at turning points in their lives, whether they want to be there or not.

Nicole was happy with her husband Eric, young son Tyler and her Pilates business, until Eric quit his job to work on a screenplay without discussing it with her first.

She struggles with resentment and uncertainty, and tries to maintain hope for the future of her marriage.

Meanwhile, Shannon is proud of her successful career in For Mallery, creating both finance, but wishes she romance could meet and women’s a man who’d fiction “keeps appreciate, rather than writing fresh be threatened . . . and fun.” by, her work.

Adam is an excellent prospect: He’s smart, determined to learn from mistakes he made in his first marriage and has two cute kids. But will conflicts about stepparenting derail them?

And then there’s Pam, who wants to shake things up a bit.

She’s happily married to John, has a good relationship with her adult children, and her dog Lulu is an adorable sidekick. But she wants more . . . or different . . . or something. Just when she starts to feel re-energized, something terrible happens—and she has to figure things out all over again.

What these women are dealing with is the stuff of life, and that’s what Mallery likes about writing both women’s fiction and romance —the kinds of relationships she can create, the topics she can tackle and the chance to do new kinds of stories.

“I’m really lucky because I get to do both. It keeps writing fresh for me, and it’s fun. I’m actually plotting the next book right now,” she says during a call to her Seattle home, where she lives with her husband and their three pets (a

toy poodle and two ragdoll cats). “I’ve written three pages, am working on characters—only 547 pages to go! By the time I hit 500 I’ll be desperate to return to Fool’s Gold,” one of her wildly popular romance series, “and so ready for boy meets girl.”

Romantics need not fret; when Mallery writes a women’s fiction book, “one storyline is always straight romance. In The Girls of Mischief Bay, it was Shannon.” And while there’s certainly sex happening in the lives of the Mischief Bay characters, more is left to the imagination in this and Mallery’s other women’s fiction. Overall, though, she says with a laugh, “It’s the real miracle of my career that, even after I’ve done so many books, I still want to write about sex.”

She’s been writing about sex and love in its various guises since 1992, when her first book, Frontier Flame, was published—right after she graduated from college with an accounting degree. She’d been an avid romance reader since her teen years, and when she saw a notice for an adult education course on romance writing a few months before graduation, it called to her. “I was used to doing assignments for college, so I figured I should write a book . . . and then I realized that’s what I wanted to do.”

And do it she has: She publishes four or five books a year, does readings and blog-tour interviews and interacts with fans on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, Mallery says, social media has become integral to the detailed worldbuilding she does for each series.

Visitors to the author’s website, susanmallery.com, will find recipes from the restaurants of Mischief

© ANNIE B/STILLS PHOTOGRAPHY

INTERVIEW BY LINDA M. CASTELLITTO

Bay, along with a map of the town and a list of clever business names, like Chinese restaurant Wok’s Up and the Strung Out Kite Shop.

“All the businesses in Mischief Bay have been named by Facebook fans, and some are hysterically funny,” Mallery says. “I hope it’s a fun little diversion for [readers].

“Facebook, for me, is extraordinarily fun,” she says. “We do surveys or ask questions and get a lot of feedback. . . . Even if it’s not what I want to hear, it’s really nice to know what people are thinking.”

That’s a lot of information to manage and cross-check, whether ensuring consistency in Mischief Bay’s locations and storylines, or in the other books and series Mallery has in play at any given time.

Might her accounting background help with that? “Managing that much work does require a skill set,” she says. “Being organized and breaking a project down really does make a huge difference. I simply couldn’t do the volume I do if I wasn’t able to, in essence, be a project manager.”

And of course, she says, “I enjoy creating relationships and exploring friendship and throwing in an element of life that sends characters down a path they didn’t anticipate.

“It’s interesting to me, and I do get to giggle through my day. I’m very, very lucky. I love what I do.”

13

interviews

GRETCHEN RUBIN

BY AMY SCRIBNER

Overcoming the force of habit

G

retchen Rubin worries that she’s becoming a bit of a happiness bully. “I don’t want to be a bore that everyone runs away from!” she says from her apartment on New York’s Upper East Side.

“It’s very hard for me not to overwhelm everyone with research and suggestions and thoughts. That I find effortless. Not talking about it— that I find hard. I have such strong ideas.”

Indeed, over the course of my conversation with the author of Better Than Before, her intriguing new book about understanding and changing habits, I find myself going from interviewer to subject.

After I mention my weakness for sweets, Rubin, who herself adheres to an extremely low-carb diet, helps me strategize ways to curb my sugar consumption.

“The thing about sweets is the desire for it feeds on itself,” Rubin says, warming to the subject. “If you don’t have the first one, it goes away. If you have just one chocolate-covered almond, you want to have 15. One thing to try would be to say, I just don’t eat that at work.”

Rubin, whose previous books The Happiness Project and Happier at Home both hit the New York Times bestseller list, clearly has a passion for happiness. But as she considered the subject further, she realized that our happiness is inextricably linked with our habits.

As her husband, Jamie, laughingly

BETTER THAN BEFORE

By Gretchen Rubin

Crown, $26, 320 pages, ISBN 9780385348614 Audio, eBook available

SELF-HELP

14

told her when she described her idea for a new book, “With your books about happiness, you were trying to answer the question, ‘How do I become happier?’ And this habits book is ‘No, seriously, how do I become happier?’ ” “When you have the habits that work for you, you’re so much likelier to be happy, healthy and productive,” Rubin says. “When people were talking to me about some happiness challenge, I realized they were almost always talking about a habit. I think everybody realizes the connection between happiness and habits. In my other books, I talked about resolutions, but almost all of them also could’ve been framed as habits. It’s just part of the whole thing, which is: How do you live a life that reflects your values?”

Better Than Before is based on the premise that are four basic personality types (tendencies) that shape how we respond to outer expectations and inner expectations: Upholders, who do what others expect of them; Questioners, who only do things that make sense to them; Obligers, who do things because they don’t want to let others down; and Rebels, who do things their own way and resist direction.

With that foundation, Rubin lays out a whole host of strategies to build and sustain good habits, such as making something inconvenient (for example, putting your cell phone in another room so that you’re not as tempted to play Candy Crush) and creating distractions (for example, giving yourself a manicure to avoid dipping into that bag of chips).

The beauty of Rubin’s advice is that she understands not everyone has the same motivations and weaknesses. Better Than Before

is packed with ideas, not all of which will appeal to everyone.

But that’s the point— there’s something here for everyone, whether you tend to follow rules or break them.

But even Rubin, happiness guru, fails at times. One of the funniest parts of Better Than Before is Rubin’s failed attempt to cultivate the habit of daily meditation (she kept getting distracted, “If you have like when a scene from a Woody Aljust one len movie popped chocolateinto her head mid-breath, and covered she toppled off almond, her pillow more you want to than once). have 15.”

“It just did not work for me,” she says a bit ruefully. “I really tried for several months every single day.

I really hoped that it would work for me, because it sounds like it would be great. I found it to be frustrating, which I don’t think it’s supposed to be.”

Rubin had a more successful habits experiment when she convinced her teenage daughter to get up early one time a weekend and get her homework finished.

“I told her, ‘I will bring you tea, I will bring you toast, I will minister to you while you’re working,’ ” she says. “And it worked!”

Roping her two daughters, Eliza and Eleanor, into her book research is unusual.

“I don’t specifically include them,” she says. “My efforts to keep my energy up, keep my sense of humor up, have time to be silly”—

all endeavors from her books—“a lot of it affects them, but only because it’s an outgrowth of me changing myself.”

Rubin is no stranger to change.

After graduating from Yale Law School and clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, she switched careers when she realized she wanted to be a writer.

And what a prolific writer she is: a website, a blog, a strong social media presence and several books (plus a couple of unpublished novels, which she deems terrible).

“I really love it, so it’s not that it doesn’t feel like work, it’s that it’s what I’d do for fun,” Rubin says. “I think of a friend who put a Post-It note above her computer that said ‘Down with boredom.’ If something’s not interesting to me, I just don’t get into it. So everything’s like an intellectual toy shop.”

Right now, that toy shop’s shelves are stocked solely with habits.

Rubin has no idea what her next book project might be. “I’m still so deep in habits, I just can’t see past it right now,” she says. “It’s just so vast and so fascinating.”

And as for that no-sugar-atwork habit? I’ve stuck with it for three weeks—and have lost three pounds. Maybe happiness bullying isn’t such a bad thing.

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interviews

HANYA YANAGIHARA

BY TRISHA PING

Tracing the ebb and flow of friendship

I

f you think you’ve read the story of four friends trying to make it in New York City already, think again. Hanya Yanagihara’s transcendent second novel is much more than its plot summary suggests. A Little Life may be the best book you read this year; it certainly will be the most heartbreaking.

The Condé Nast Travel editor, who grew up in Honolulu, made her fiction debut in 2013 with the publication of The People in the Trees. She’d been working on that novel—which weighs a scientist’s dubious morals against the good his research has accomplished—“for maybe 16 years,” she says during a call to her office in New York City.

All 700-plus pages of A Little Life, on the other hand, were written in just 18 months, after five years of mental planning. “I worked on it very steadily, three hours a day Monday through Thursday and six hours a day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But I knew where it was going the whole way.”

That’s an advantage the reader of this often-surprising literary tour de force won’t have. As the stories of the four main characters—college roommates Willem, Jude, Malcolm and JB—unfurl over three decades, Yanagihara deftly fills in the separate pasts that have shaped their shared present.

“I was very drawn to the idea

A LITTLE LIFE

By Hanya Yanagihara

Doubleday, $30, 736 pages, ISBN 9780385539258 Audio, eBook available

LITERARY FICTION

16

of a group of friends,” Yanagihara explains. “My very best friend, to whom the book is dedicated, has a large group of friends who I call the herd of cats. They’ve known each other since high school and college, and I’ve always admired their dynamic and how hard they work at staying friends.”

Like any friend group, the foursome faces ups and downs: romantic disappointments, career successes, drug addictions. Two go into professional careers—Jude becomes a lawyer and Malcolm, an architect—while JB and Willem pursue art and acting, respectively. But it soon becomes clear that the biggest conflict in A Little Life is Jude’s struggle with his past demons, which include abandonment and abuse. While his entire history doesn’t become clear until well into the book, readers will realize early on that it’s not something to be easily overcome—giving a story that might otherwise be essentially a domestic one serious emotional heft, as well as a sharper, more dangerous edge.

“One of the themes of the book is this hope that we all live with: that one other person can save us—and the realization that we really can’t be saved, that the idea of being saved itself is sort of a false conceit,” Yanagihara says, citing the “limits of what any one person can do for someone else.”

The reader does indeed feel helpless at times in the face of the cruelties that Jude endured. Yanagihara fully commits to bringing readers all the way into her characters’ lives— the dark spots as well as the bright— with a visceral realism. “A friend of mine called it sort of an emotional horror story in a way, and I guess it is,” she admits. (This interviewer read one scene peeking out between her fingers, which was a first.)

Child abuse is tricky to handle in fiction, but Yanagihara seems

drawn to exploring the subject, which was also an element of The People in the Trees.

“I’m interested in how people compensate for some great harm when they were young,” she explains. “One of the great concerns for fiction in general is the fundamental vulnerability of humans,” adding that children represent the most vulnerable group of all.

But while Jude’s trauma may give the book its drama, at its heart A Little Life is a study of friendship, a relationship that “can never “Men are really be codifriends in fied,” says Yanvery different agihara. “With gay marriage, ways than we are seeing women are a relationship friends.” that has always existed between two men or two women get a legal name. But friendship will never have a legal definition.”

She was particularly interested in male friendship, because “men are friends in very different ways than women are friends. Socially—and not just in our society but almost every society—they’re given a much smaller emotional toolbox to work with. They’re not allowed to name, much less express, the sort of feelings that come very naturally and easily to women.” (Originally, she’d intended to have no women in A Little Life, but decided it was “too contrived-sounding” and scrapped the idea.)

Yanagihara’s grasp of the complexities of friendship is masterful and will spark recognition in any reader, male or female. You might say that this book is to friendship as The Corrections was to family.

“Although we have seen depictions of great friendships in books, I don’t think it’s something that as a society we collectively value as

much as we should,” she says.

The novel is carefully structured—something Yanagihara says “was as important to me as any of the flashier elements”—into seven sections. The first four are each set five years apart, but the final three sections run together, to echo the way that the experience of time changes througout life. “As you get older—I recently turned 40—time seems to shrink and compress, and it becomes something that is lived less by these sort of big epic milestones and simply by moments,” says Yanagihara.

A Little Life takes place somewhere close to the current day, although the exact time is never specified. “I wanted the book to have a sort of fable-like quality to it,” says Yanagihara.

Fable or not, New York City—currently Yanagihara’s home base—is vibrantly depicted here, from crappy post-college apartments in Chinatown to the SoHo lofts that come with adult success. Also very New York: the way that each of the characters is driven to break from the past.

“Everyone here is sort of looking for another family . . . this idealized set of people who will understand them,” she says.

Malcolm, Willem, JB and Jude find that set of people in each other, and readers of A Little Life will feel a part of it. With this epic and moving story, Yanagihara proves that she is a literary force to be reckoned with.

LOOK WHAT’S NEW

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Anna’s Crossing

A young Amish woman fends off the matchmaking efforts of her fellow passengers on the Charming Nancy— the ship that brought the first wave of Amish to America in 1737.

Where Rivers Part When Dr. Juliet Ryan uncovers a corporate scandal, she quickly learns that the success she dreamed of comes with a very high price.

The Crimson Cord The breathtaking story of the prostitute who risked everything to protect two Israelite spies before the battle of Jericho.

Buried Secrets Police chief Lisa Grant and detective Mac McGregor join forces to investigate an unmarked grave, only to discover that someone will stop at nothing to make certain a life-shattering secret stays buried.

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meet DENNIS LEHANE

e have to ask: Did the U.S. government actually make a deal Q: W with the mob during WWII to stop German saboteurs?

personal qualities would you say you share with the Q: What

book’s central character, Joe Coughlin?

your guilty pleasure?

Q: What’s

Q: What’s your greatest fear?

Q: Words to live by?

WORLD GONE BY Dennis Lehane, author of such best-selling thrillers as Gone, Baby, Gone and Mystic River, continues his epic portrait of the Coughlin family with the riveting WWII crime novel World Gone By (Morrow, $27.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9780060004903). In 1942, Tampa gangster Joe Coughlin appears to have left his criminal past behind, but the mob isn’t through with him yet.

Lehane and his family divide their time between Boston and Los Angeles.

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FANTASY B Y E M I LY B A R T L E T T H I N E S

Supernatural sleuths

R

eaders can expect major entertainment in two paranormal thrillers that bridge the gap between mystery and horror, starring a couple of detectives who are in way over their heads.

How do you fight evil when the evil is part of you? That’s the dilemma faced by detective Zach Adams in Andrew Klavan’s Werewolf Cop (Pegasus, $25.95, 336 pages, ISBN 9781605986982). Zach works for the Extraordinary Crimes Unit, a top-secret federal task force dedicated to stopping a shadowy crime syndicate that has caused chaos throughout Europe. To do so, Zach and his partner will have to take down reclusive kingpin Dominic Abend.

But Abend is no ordinary crime boss: He’s hunting down his old connections in search of an ancient dagger said to have otherworldly powers. When Zach travels to Germany to learn more, he gets a terrifying taste of what those powers involve.

Deep in the Black Forest, he’s attacked by an impossibly huge and powerful wolf. He returns home convinced it was all a fever dream—but then the full moon rises.

Coping with a new alter ego is bad enough, but things get even more complicated: A months-ago act of infidelity threatens to destroy Zach’s marriage, and he’s starting to suspect that his trusted partner, Goulart, is taking bribes from bad guys. As Zach closes in on Abend, he struggles to control the appetite of the werewolf inside him—while knowing it may be the only thing that can stop the gangster’s rise to power.

Despite portentous themes of sin and redemption, Werewolf Cop is ultimately a fast-paced page-turner that delivers all the gory thrills its title promises.

Lupine sleuthing may be hard work, but it’s downright glamorous in comparison to the daily grind of Thomas Fool, the beleaguered everyman in Simon Kurt Unsworth’s debut, The Devil’s Detective (Doubleday, $25.95, 304 pages, ISBN 9780385539340).

This hardboiled thriller is set in a “frayed and dirty” hell—think less sulfur and lakes of fire, more Soviet-style bureaucracy. Food is scarce, violence is ubiquitous, and the legions of damned don’t even know what they’re being punished for. Humans exist as a permanent underclass, brutalized by the demons who were hell’s first inhabitants.

Fool is leading an especially uninspiring afterlife: He’s is an Information Man, tasked with solving the underworld’s many demon-on-human murders. But with no resources or training, his three-person crew doesn’t stand a chance.

The status quo starts to shift when a series of bodies turns up stripped of their souls. As Fool’s investigation gathers momentum, his self-doubt is replaced by hope that he could actually serve justice.

He becomes a rather unlikely folk hero, which naturally places him in serious danger.

Unsworth has created a vivid subterranean world, a place where men merge with plants, skinless demons lay claim to dumped bodies, and a delegation of visiting angels is none too pleased with the accommodations. While its relentlessly dark tone may chill some readers, this is a vivid and wildly inventive look at the banality of evil.

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“A TWISTY, ROLLER COASTER RIDE OF A DEBUT.” — L I S A GARDN ER , # 1 NEW YORK TIMES BE S T SELLI NG AUT HOR

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INTROVERT

feature

CHRISTIAN FICTION

BY MELISSA BROWN

Memorable journeys of faith LADIES MAN

HEART BREAKER

This isn’t your typical fairytale.

THE ACCIDENTAL EMPRESS

BY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR ALLISON PATAKI

T

he centuries may differ, but the faith remains the same. From presentday America, to an Atlantic crossing in the 1700s, to a newly established 19th-century Seattle, these three inspirational novels show that while circumstances may vary, the need to trust in God does not.

In Christa Parrish’s fifth novel, Still Life (Thomas Nelson, $15.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9781401689032), photographer Julian Goetz is shooting a magazine story and, while on assignment, meets young Ada Mitchell. Hosea-like, Julian responds to God’s call to marry Ada, the daughter of a militant religious “prophet” and founder of a secluded community.

Soon after their marriage, as Ada is still trying to find her place in the new world, Julian dies in a plane crash. Katherine Walker, unhappy in her own marriage and pursuing an affair to the detriment of those she loves, gave up her seat on that plane for Julian— and now she must face her reasons for doing so.

For Ada, Julian’s loss is both a death and a rebirth. Without him, she must navigate life outside the brownstone they briefly shared.

Her journey to a life of her own is guided by five photographs he took—and brings her into contact with Evan, Katherine’s son.

Christy Award winner Parrish deftly guides the reader through the past and present of all her characters. She has a gift for imagery— for capturing, like a camera, all that a scene can hold. Her writing is poetic as she plumbs the angles and emotions of tragedy. As we witness the pangs of Ada’s indoctrination and wounds made by Katherine’s mistakes, Parrish reminds us that even in a broken world, there is still life worth living. Still Life is a story of starting over with the pieces that are left and building more than there was before—mercifully, by God’s grace.

AMISH AT SEA Persecuted for their beliefs, followers of Jacob Amman in Ger-

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many undertake an arduous sea voyage to a new world aboard the Charming Nancy in 1737 in Anna’s Crossing (Revell, $15.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9780800723194). Though she was reluctant to make the voyage, Anna König was selected because of her ability to speak English.

There are tensions between the Amish and the others on the ship.

Bairn, the ship’s Scottish carpenter, begrudges the presence of these Peculiars, as he calls them. Having them on board stirs up his ire— and something else long buried.

Curious 9-year-old Felix, whom Anna is tasked with watching over, adventurously explores the ship, his exuberance giving the story its energy. The crew, and the Amish and Mennonite passengers, must deal with deprivations, death, storms and a pivotal encounter with a slave ship.

Author Suzanne Woods Fisher is known for evoking the Amish experience, and the hardships and lurking dangers of the Atlantic crossing are brought to life here as well. She draws from historical fact: A ship of the same name set sail with Amish aboard from Rotterdam to Philadelphia in 1737, in what was one of the first significant Amish crossings to America.

Anna’s steadfast trust in God is sorely tested over the months-long journey, yet she still makes strong arguments for trusting Him during those trials. These arguments

slowly begin to reach Bairn, whose resistance to faith in Anna’s God is thoughtfully rendered. The touch of romance and many plot twists in Anna’s Crossing keep Fisher’s story entertaining as well as genuinely interesting.

SPOUSELESS IN SEATTLE Two young women are at the center of best-selling author Tracie Peterson’s quaint story set at a training school for brides in late 19th-century Seattle, Steadfast Heart (Bethany House, $14.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9780764210617).

Abrianna Cunningham and Lenore Fulcher make unlikely friends.

Outspoken Abrianna cares for the city’s poor, while Lenore lives largely in a privileged world whose rules are dictated by society and her parents. Then Kolbein Booth arrives from Chicago to find his runaway sister, Greta, and changes the game for all three young people—as well as that of the matrons who run the Madison School for Brides. It appears that while suitors mingle with potential mates, more insidious affairs are being conducted in the city streets.

Meanwhile, Lenore experiences an awakening, Abrianna suffers a loss and Kolbein finds himself drawn to Lenore. As change swirls about them all, they must remember to find their anchor in God, trusting him for the best outcome.

Steadfast Heart has a sequel coming, and like any good first book in a series, it leaves just enough questions unanswered to make readers eager for the next installment. What this tale may lack in depth, it possesses in earnestness and the author’s desire for her characters to reflect a sincere growth in faith.

reviews

FICTION MAN AT THE HELM

By Nina Stibbe

DELICIOUS FOODS

Discover a vivid voice in fiction

Little, Brown $25, 320 pages ISBN 9780316286671 Audio, eBook available

POPULAR FICTION

REVIEW BY KENNETH CHAMPEON

It is almost impossible to choose the most memorable thing about James Hannaham’s powerful and daring second novel, Delicious Foods (a title suggestive of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”). It might be that one of its narrators is crack cocaine, or that one of its main characters loses his hands. It might be the evocative African-American slang and dialect. Or it might be the way the novel can be read as an extended metaphor for the situation of blacks in America.

Darlene is a young and talented black woman on her way to a comfortable middle-class existence when her husband Nat disappears in Louisiana. No thinking person will be surprised when the investigation into his death proves feeble. This injustice leads the devastated Darlene down the road of addiction, ultimately to the point of abandoning her 11-year-old son, Eddie. Darlene ends up on the “Delicious Foods” farm, where the payment is partially in crack, harvesting, of all things,

By James Hannaham watermelons. The farm resembles a plantation or prison, its owners Little, Brown, $26, 384 pages ISBN 9780316284943, audio, eBook available sadistic and criminal, and Darlene struggles to break her addiction and reunite with Eddie.

LITERARY FICTION Delicious Foods does suffer occasionally from a kind of MFA-itis, in which the subject matter takes a backseat to showcase the writing.

Hannaham’s frequent references to astronomical phenomena suggest that all human suffering is nugatory in the cosmic scale, allowing for less opportunity to lament or even celebrate his characters. These flaws are, however, far outweighed by its virtues. Delicious Foods is fiercely imaginative and passionate. There are echoes here of Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston, even at times of Zola or Kafka. The investigation of Nat’s disappearance is not the only instance of racism in law enforcement; in that respect, the novel is timely, even prophetic. Few novels leap off the page as this one does. Delicious Foods is a cri de coeur from a very talented and engaging writer.

I AM RADAR I AM RADAR

By Reif Larsen

Penguin Press $29.95, 656 pages ISBN 9781594206160 eBook available LITERARY FICTION

Reif Larsen waits 200 pages before betraying his literary lineage by using the phrase “gravity’s rainbow.” For in his sprawling, pyrotechnic second novel, I Am Radar, one is never far from Pynchon’s masterpiece, that once-groundbreaking combination of adolescent hilarity and theoretical physics. The authors share a soaring erudition and ambition—

evidenced by the length and ostentation of their books. But where Pynchon’s main theme might be a paranoiac fear of annihilation and conspiracy, Larsen’s seems to be an affirmation of the pathetic randomness of life. It’s telling that his previous book, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, was made into a film by the director of Amélie, and his new release resembles the joyful, madcap creations of Wes Anderson.

The “Radar” of the title is Radar Radmanovic, an American boy with Serbian roots. He was born with black skin even though his parents are white, and his mother’s desire that Radar be “normal” leads to their entanglement with an odd group of Norwegians who claim the ability to change skin color by electrochemical means. The Norwegians double as performance

Lizzie Vogel has grown up in what she, even at age 9, understands is “a very good situation.”

She has a nice home with a nanny and a chauffeur, two siblings and a dog. Then one day, her mother learns that Lizzie’s father has had an affair. The next thing Lizzie knows, her parents have split and she has been shuffled off to live in the country with her mother, brother and sister.

Things unravel pretty quickly in this village outside of London, where Lizzie’s broken mom pops pills, drinks whiskey and writes bad plays while Lizzie and her sister attempt to keep the household running.

“We went to our mother and asked how she thought we might cope now she was semi-conscious much of the time,” says Lizzie.

“She explained that she herself was temperamentally unsuited to housework and laundry and always had been—even before the pills artists, offering shows in places as had kicked in.” far-flung as Yugoslavia, Cambodia Clearly, there is a need for a man and the Congo, all recently emof the house. Lizzie and her sister broiled in appalling wars. start a list of eligible (or even sort This is maximalism of the of eligible) men in the village who maximum order, so the novel also might make their mother happy includes dissertations on Nikola again. They try—and fail—to conTesla, Morse code, electromagnetic nect their mother with Mr. Lomax pulses and, perhaps inevitably, the handyman; Phil Oliphant, who Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle likes horses; and Reverend Derek, and Schrödinger’s hapless cat. I the vicar. All the while, their mothAm Radar aims for nothing less er sinks deeper into depression. than to encapsulate our “age of Those who have read Love Nina, extremes” in fictional form, and Stibbe’s wonderful 2013 memoir of Larsen rises to the challenge he has nannying in London, will recognize set. His prose is angelic, and while her singularly witty voice here. the effort to touch on everything While Man at the Helm is hilarious threatens to make the book more and heartfelt, it also offers a poinoise than signal, it’s precisely the gnant peek into a not-so-distant noise of modernity that novelists time when women’s choices were like Larsen are determined to con- limited and their dependence on vey. It’s an exhilarating ride. men profound. Based on Stibbe’s — K E N N E T H C H A M P E O N childhood, Man at the Helm is a

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reviews beguiling, often wickedly funny look at an unusual family trying to find its place in a conventional world.

—AMY SCRIBNER

DARK ROOMS

By Lili Anolik

Morrow $25.99, 336 pages ISBN 9780062345868 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION

FICTION eyes. With complex characters and a multilayered narrative, it can be hard at times to know whom to root for; thankfully it’s equally difficult to put this stunning debut down.

—ABBY PLESSER

THE LISTENER

By Rachel Basch Pegasus $24.95, 336 pages ISBN 9781605986883 eBook available

LITERARY FICTION

eccentric, if loving, mother and a Titian-haired friend who’s as conflicted as he is.

Basch is good at plumbing the preoccupations of self-obsessed middle-aged folks and quasi-incestuous New England college towns.

But her take on the emotional dislocations of the millennial, not just Noah and his friends and foes, but Dowd’s somewhat embittered, somewhat spoiled daughters, is wonderfully excruciating. Clearly, this is an author who remembers her own late adolescence all too well. The result is not just writing that’s good, but writing that’s brave.

—ARLENE MCKANIC

When Nica Baker, a gorgeous, popular 16-year-old, is found dead on the campus of her prestigious private high school, her family, friends and community are shocked and devastated. While the case is closed neatly and quickly—an awkward classmate with an unrequited crush and a bad temper—Nica’s older sister Grace has the sick suspicion that the obvious answer is not always the right one. She goes on a quest to find out what really happened to Nica—and ends up discovering far more than she ever wanted to know about her family, her friends and herself.

Lili Anolik’s Dark Rooms is an impressive, haunting debut. Her writing is fast-paced and decisive, her characters rich and nuanced.

And while the bones of her story are familiar—a beautiful girl murdered in a seemingly safe community—its plot twists and turns are anything but. Could Jamie, Nica’s rich and charming on-again, offagain boyfriend, be her killer? Or what about Damon, a troubled student with an unusual connection to Nica? Or maybe it’s someone even closer to home—someone who knows both girls better than anyone. As she gets closer to solving her sister’s murder, Grace gets farther and farther away from the life she thought she knew.

Dark Rooms is at once a crime novel and a high school drama, with shades of both Gillian Flynn and Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s a story of life and death, perception and reality, and how to go on when your world shatters before your

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Halfway through Rachel Basch’s third novel, The Listener, the reader gets the feeling that the title is ironic. Malcolm Dowd is a psychotherapist at the college in his town. His job is to listen; no doubt his skill at listening has saved the sanity or even the lives of the sad people who unburden themselves in his office. But when it comes to his own loved ones, Malcolm Dowd is about as deaf as a stump.

Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the loved ones Dowd listens to the least are the women in his life. These include his daughters Leah and Susannah; Cara, a musician who’s his off-andon lover; and Jane, the betrayed wife of his feckless colleague. In Dowd, Basch seems to be describing the legions of men who feel astonished, annoyed and even betrayed when the women in their lives have problems, anxieties and secrets that don’t involve the men in their lives. Plus, Dowd is certain that he knows what’s best for these females—he’s a man, after all, as well as a shrink.

Fortunately for Dowd, a type of salvation might be found in his new patient, a college kid named Noah. Noah’s problems are more complex than Dowd is used to handling, and this alone is a source of fascination for the older man.

Noah’s troubles force Dowd to truly attend to him. Also, the talented and exquisitely sensitive Noah is a great listener himself, especially to the women in his life: like his

THE UNFORTUNATE IMPORTANCE OF BEAUTY

By Amanda Filipacchi

Norton $25.95, 336 pages ISBN 9780393243871 Audio, eBook available

SATIRICAL FICTION

Amanda Filipacchi’s fourth novel is a matchless satire that manages to make a point or two along with the fun. It follows a memorable cast of characters, led by Barb, a costume designer and world-class beauty with the kindest of hearts.

Convinced of the sheer uselessness and even destructiveness of beauty after a spurned lover kills himself over her, Barb hides her looks under a fat suit.

By contrast, Barb’s best friend, Lily, is ugly but plays the piano like a dream, to the point where she can inspire listeners to see her as incredibly beautiful—as long as her music goes on. And there’s Penelope, whose pottery store is filled with merchandise designed to crack when lifted by a customer.

(This brings in a steady income, thanks to the store’s “you break it, you buy it” policy.) The three are part of an artsy community, the Knights of Creation, where they help each other achieve their various creative goals.

The story is both daunting and haunting, as Lily and Barb face

the deaths of friends (which one of their fellow Knights may be involved in) and the threats of needy fellow members.

Obviously, total realism is not Filipacchi’s specialty, but no reader would want it otherwise. A novel of deliberate contrariness, The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty takes on some thorny issues and speaks to both the mind and heart at the same time. Not to mention the funny bone.

—MAUDE MCDANIEL

THE FIFTH GOSPEL

By Ian Caldwell

Simon & Schuster $25.99, 448 pages ISBN 9781451694147 Audio, eBook available

SUSPENSE

Ten years ago, Ian Caldwell and his co-author, Dustin Thomason, struck gold with The Rule of Four, a page-turning academic mystery with emotional depth. Now, after a decade of research, writing and rewriting, Caldwell is back with a solo effort, a new novel that promises to live up to The Rule of Four.

And The Fifth Gospel delivers, with compelling characters, impeccable pacing and a central enigma that is as intellectually satisfying as it is emotionally harrowing.

The year is 2004, and Pope John Paul II is nearing the end of his time leading the Roman Catholic Church while still working to fulfill a few final wishes. The Vatican is rocked, though, when a curator turns up murdered in Rome just a week before he was set to unveil a powerful new exhibit in the Vatican Museums. When police can’t find a suspect, Greek Catholic priest Alex Andreou—a friend of the curator and expert on the Gospels—takes it upon himself to unravel the mystery, one that concerns a mysterious fifth Gospel manuscript, a legendary relic and a secret that could shake the church to its core.

Caldwell constructs the novel’s central puzzle masterfully, weaving between past and present,

FICTION danger and intrigue, codes and obfuscations at a blistering pace that makes the more than 400page novel breeze by. But the key to The Fifth Gospel’s effectiveness is Alex’s emotional, intense point of view. Caldwell has woven a tale that’s as much about brotherhood, faith, the sins of the past and what it means to atone as it is about the central mystery and its faith-shattering secrets. The Fifth Gospel is rooted in a powerful, very human emotional core.

—MATTHEW JACKSON

CAT OUT OF HELL

By Lynne Truss

Melville House $24.95, 256 pages ISBN 9781612194424 Audio, eBook available

HUMOR

What if your cat was secretly plotting against you? Anyone who’s ever owned a cat has probably asked themselves that question more than once. But Cat Out of Hell takes things further: What if that plot was part of an ancient occult conspiracy, a feline cabal at the beck and call of a dark lord?

Lynne Truss is best known for her humorous defense of English grammar, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, but before that breakthrough, she had published four novels. Her latest work of fiction is a nimble mix of horror, Gothic mystery and dark comedy that will delight fans of authors like Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke, who infuse supernatural stories with British humor.

In a quiet cottage on the English coast, a librarian receives a mysterious collection of files. Through audio recordings, photos and written documents, he relays the story of Will “Wiggy” Caton-Pines and his cat, Roger. But Roger is no ordinary cat. He talks—in a voice that “sounds like Vincent Price,” no less. He reads. He does crossword puzzles. And he may or may not be immortal.

Is it a coincidence that both of the novel’s human protagonists—

Wiggy and the librarian—have recently lost loved ones to death or disappearance? The suspense comes to a boil in the book’s latter half, where Roger proves himself to be one of the funniest villains in recent memory, human or otherwise.

Cat Out of Hell is a brisk, clever, darkly hilarious book that begs to be read in one gut-busting sitting.

—ADAM MORGAN

THE HALF BROTHER

By Holly LeCraw

Doubleday $25.95, 288 pages ISBN 9780385531955 eBook available

POPULAR FICTION

There’s something irresistible about a boarding school novel: the picturesque grounds; the tightknit community of teachers and students and staff; the routine of seminars, lacrosse games and chapel; the inevitable romances that bud in such an insular world.

In The Half Brother, her second novel after 2010’s sensual The Swimming Pool, Holly LeCraw has created an appealing setting in the Abbott School, a campus at the top of a ridge in north Massachusetts where azaleas and cherry blossoms surround the stone and clapboard buildings, and the grass almost shimmers with mist.

After he graduates from Harvard, where he never quite belonged, Charlie Garrett falls under the spell of Abbott. “The only time I felt even slightly proficient at life was when I was holding a book in my hands,” he reflects during his interview to become a teacher. So he is hired to teach English, and one of the true joys of the novel is watching him gain confidence in the classroom. And it is a pleasure to get lost in LeCraw’s prose, which is both graceful and filled with smart observations. (“She nodded like a doctor who was pretending to be solicitous but really was just thinking of her next patient.”) The dramatic plot is less enchanting— though the pages turn quickly

as we move back and forth from Charlie’s childhood to a decade of his life at Abbott.

Contrary to the title, the relationship at the center of the novel is that between Charlie and May Bankhead, the daughter of Abbott’s enigmatic chaplain. As May comes of age and the two seem to circle each other in the classroom and on campus, the romantic tension between them is palpable. But for reasons beyond their control, they cannot be together. In a somewhat inexplicable act of sacrifice (or possibly self-punishment), Charlie encourages his half brother, Nick, a golden child, to pursue May when the three of them eventually find themselves on the faculty at the same time. As this love triangle develops, readers will no doubt balk at certain twists that strain belief. Still, by the end, we’re It is a pleasure invested in the to get lost characters and want to see in LeCraw’s them happy. prose.

And we understand the draw of Abbott, which seems humble yet magnificent—an enclave where people grow up and blossom in the rolling hills and the charming “honeycomb of crisscrossing paths.”

—ELIZA BORNÉ

THE LOST CHILD

By Caryl Phillips FSG $26, 272 pages ISBN 9780374191375 eBook available

LITERARY FICTION

It’s a favorite trick among literary novelists: use a classic work of literature as a launching pad for an investigation into favored themes.

Jean Rhys did it with Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel of sorts to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. J.M. Coetzee has done it twice, first in Foe, in which he reimagined Robinson Crusoe from the perspective of a woman, and then, more daringly, in The

Childhood of Jesus. Now essayist and playwright Caryl Phillips takes the work of a different Brontë— Emily—as the inspiration for his latest novel, The Lost Child.

In 1957, 20-year-old Oxford undergraduate Monica Johnson is set to give up her studies, much to her geography teacher father’s disappointment. She plans to marry Julius Wilson, a divorced grad student 10 years her senior, and follow him to the south coast of England. She does, and he gets a job at a polytechnic and founds a political organization devoted to anti-colonialism in his native West Indies.

Phillips intercuts the story of Monica, her two sons and her ensuing madness with scenes from Emily Brontë’s life. We see Brontë sick in bed, worrying along with the rest of the family about the fate of her brother, Branwell, and retreating into her imagination to work on a novel about a boy on the moors.

Despite the obvious parallels to Wuthering Heights—Monica is clearly meant to suggest a 20th-century Cathy—Phillips is too smart to simply put new clay on the same armature. He goes beyond the tale of Heathcliff and Cathy to create a biting commentary on empire and the vulnerability of family life. This is a devastating novel from one of our best writers.

—MICHAEL MAGRAS

THE BOOKSELLER

By Cynthia Swanson

Harper $25.99, 352 pages ISBN 9780062333001 Audio, eBook available

DEBUT FICTION

Kitty Miller is living the dream.

OK, so maybe her life isn’t picture-perfect according to society’s standards; it’s 1962, and she’s an unmarried woman. But after a failed long-term relationship, Kitty has come to accept that life isn’t always meant to be as we imagine.

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reviews

FICTION

still endearingly in love, Axl and Beatrice have been cast to the margins of their settlement, not even allowed candles for fear that they may do themselves harm. So, they decide to set out for their son’s village, which they believe they can reach with a few days’ travel.

But the landscape abounds with human hostility and ignorance, as well as the shadowy possibility of ogres and other mythical beasts.

The couple, who are Britons and Christians, are joined mid-journey by a young Saxon knight, Wistan, as well as a boy, Edwin, whom the knight has rescued from the hands of superstitious villagers.

Ishiguro’s first This unlikely novel in almost quartet meets an aging Sir 10 years is Gawain, the a haunting last survivor allegory. of Arthur’s round table, in the woods, and makes its way to a fortress-turned-monastery.

Despite the swords and monsters, this is not the sex and violence fictional world of George R.R. Martin. Ishiguro has crafted a haunting allegory, rife with symbols and archetypes. Its deceptively simple narrative unfolds with the — C A R L A J E A N W H I T L E Y ease of a timeless fairy tale, and as with all classic fairy tales it works as a universal parable. Like much THE BURIED GIANT of Ishiguro’s work, The Buried GiBy Kazuo Ishiguro ant is about the clouds of memory, our human imperfections and our Knopf $26.95, 336 pages unresolved pasts. It is a welcome ISBN 9780307271037 return by one of our most subtle, Audio, eBook available thought-provoking novelists.

Instead of being married with kids, she and her best friend, Frieda, own a bookshop in Denver. They’re not rich—in fact, sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet—but the pair is so close they refer to one another as Sister. It’s a good life.

Or is Katharyn Anderson living the dream? Although Katharyn once ran a successful business with Frieda, she has traded the nickname Kitty for the more grown-up Katharyn, and ceded her independence for a suburban home, husband and children. It seems she has it all.

In The Bookseller, debut novelist Cynthia Swanson portrays one character in two distinctive lives.

When she goes to sleep each night, Kitty leaves her world as a bookseller and slides almost seamlessly into her dream life as Katharyn, aka Mrs. Anderson. But the more time Kitty spends in this other life, the clearer its imperfections become. Although she has the love of her life and a beautiful family, she has lost a lot along the way.

“Living,” Swanson writes, “is not made up of details, but rather of highlights.” In The Bookseller, she combines the two to answer the question we so often ask ourselves: What if?

LITERARY FICTION

—ROBERT WEIBEZAHL

FIERCOMBE MANOR Each new book by Booker Prize-winner Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day) is, on the surface at least, vastly different from those that have come before.

The Buried Giant—his first novel in almost 10 years—is no exception. This fable-like narrative, set in England just after the mythic reign of Arthur, chronicles the adventures of an elderly couple as they journey across a wild and rugged landscape. Old and forgetful, but

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By Kate Riordan

Harper $25.99, 416 pages ISBN 9780062332943 eBook available

HISTORICAL FICTION

When 22-year-old Alice becomes pregnant out of wedlock in the early 1930s, both she and her family fear disgrace. Her mother sends

her from London to the Gloucestershire countryside to await the baby’s birth at a place called Fiercombe Manor, after which she will give the baby to an orphanage. Her mother’s old friend, Mrs. Jelphs, is the housekeeper at the empty manor, and she promises to keep watch over Alice, who has concocted a cover story of a recently deceased husband.

The house’s owners, the Stantons, live abroad, so Alice spends the sweltering summer mostly alone, accompanied by a feeling that something is amiss with the manor and its history. She becomes determined to seek out the secrets of the manor’s past and discovers that, 30 years ago, another pregnant woman suffered a tragedy on the estate. As Alice uncovers Elizabeth’s story, she fears that she, too, will share her fate. Weaving together Alice’s and Elizabeth’s stories, Fiercombe Manor ties together two women who, despite their different statuses and eras, are connected in many ways.

British writer and journalist Kate Riordan has worked for the Guardian, and her debut novel, Birdcage Walk, was based on a real-life crime in 1900s London.

Her rich language pulls readers in, giving them a glimpse of the idyllic English countryside, its inhabitants and its secrets. Fiercombe Manor is fierce, imaginative and suspenseful.

—HALEY HERFURTH

ACT OF GOD

By Jill Ciment

Pantheon $24, 192 pages ISBN 9780307911704 Audio, eBook available

LITERARY FICTION

To describe Jill Ciment’s latest novel as the story of a supermold that colonizes a Brooklyn neighborhood and threatens to infest the entire city doesn’t even come close to doing it justice—though it’s factually accurate. Dressed in the guise of a thriller, Act of God

is really a keenly intelligent story about the tangled bonds of sisterly love and the power of repentance and forgiveness.

Sixty-four-year-old twin sisters Edith and Kat Glasser share a rent-controlled apartment in a row house owned by Vida Cebu, an accomplished Shakespearean actress best known for her role in a commercial for a female sexual enhancement pill. When Edith, a retired law firm librarian, tries to enlist her landlord’s help in dealing with the phosphorescent mushroom-like growth that has sprouted in the apartment, her entreaties are ignored. Evacuation is followed by incineration, as the HAZMAT teams rush to contain the outbreak.

As her characters consider the insurance and landlord-tenant issues resulting from a conclusion that the alien growth is an act of God (“When did State Farm become religious?” Vida asks her insurance agent), Ciment orchestrates an increasingly complicated plot with consummate skill. There’s an unemployed Russian nanny who calls herself Ashley and who helps herself to rent-free accommodations in Vida’s building and elsewhere; a rekindled love affair between Kat and Frank, the building superintendent; and the existential crisis of Gladys, the Glasser sisters’ next-door-neighbor, who must figure out where she can relocate with her 17 cats in tow. It’s New York City at its most manic.

But the novel acquires real moral weight when the otherwise feckless Kat demands a penance from Vida that has nothing to do with financial compensation for the injury she’s inflicted on others by her casual indifference. Kat seeks “restorative justice”: nothing less than Vida’s acceptance of responsibility and an apology for her callousness.

Watching Vida wrestle with this deceptively simple request makes us understand how hard it is to say the words, “I’m sorry.”

In fewer than 200 pages, Ciment has pulled off an admirable literary feat, creating a novel that moves at the speed of light, all the while urging us to pause and look inward.

—HARVEY FREEDENBERG

NONFICTION HE WANTED THE MOON

By Mimi Baird with Eve Claxton

DEAD WAKE

The fateful voyage of the Lusitania

MEMOIR

REVIEW BY ALDEN MUDGE

In an interview some years ago, Erik Larson, author of such bestsellers as The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts, called himself “an animator of history” rather than a historian. Indeed, he has always shown a brilliant ability to unearth the telling details of a story and has the narrative chops to bring a historical moment vividly alive.

But in his new book, Larson simply outdoes himself.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania tells in riveting fashion the story of the final voyage of the top-of-the-line British passenger ship, which sailed from New York City on May 1, 1915, and was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland six days later. The magnificent ship went down in only 18 minutes. Of its 1,959 passengers and crew, only 764 survived. Among the dead were 123 Americans, and the sinking of the Lusitania is often cited as the reason President Wilson

By Erik Larson dropped his vow of neutrality and led America into World War I. Crown, $28, 448 pages But the U.S. entry into the war was more complicated. Larson gets at ISBN 9780307408860, audio, eBook available this complexity by presenting a portrait of Wilson in emotional tumult HISTORY after the sudden death of his first wife and the dawn of a romance with the woman who would become his second wife. Also contributing to the complexity of international relations were the ruthless actions of the Germans and the machinations of the British Admiralty, headed by Winston Churchill, which in a top-secret effort had cracked German codes and was tracking the U-boat that ultimately sank the Lusitania, but inexplicably did nothing to prevent it.

These are the realpolitik aspects of the story Larson weaves in alternating chapters. But what is most compelling about Dead Wake is that, through astonishing research, Larson gives us a strong sense of the individuals—passengers and crew—aboard the Lusitania, heightening our sense of anxiety as we realize that some of the people we have come to know will go down with the ship.

A story full of ironies and “what-ifs,” Dead Wake is a tour de force of Read a Q&A with Erik Larson on the next page. narrative history.

Warner comes vividly to life in The Great Beanie Baby Bubble

By Zac Bissonnette through stories from his sister, two ex-girlfriends and dozens of Portfolio former coworkers. Obsessed with $26.95, 272 pages the appearance of his plush cats, ISBN 9781591846024 Warner plucked hairs around their Audio, eBook available eyes before trade shows so they BUSINESS could gaze at guests more persuasively. In fact, it was Warner’s obsession with detail that led to the strategy of “retiring” certain Remember the Beanie Babies?

Beanies. As Warner tinkered with designs, changing a color from royPeanut (a blue elephant), Lovie (a little lamb) and Cubbie (a Chicago al blue to light blue (as in Peanut’s bear) are just three of the beanbag case), Beanie collectors went into animals highlighted in Zac Bisson- a frenzy to achieve a complete set. nette’s strange, compelling book on Readers will meet these collectors, the 1990s fad. Behind the Beanies from the first Chicago moms who was the meticulous, ambitious Ty made a killing, to the late arrivals, Warner, a bizarre combination of like a retired soap opera star who wolf of Wall Street and master elf of blew his children’s college fund on Santa’s toy factory.

Beanie Babies.

THE GREAT BEANIE BABY BUBBLE

Crown $25, 272 pages ISBN 9780804137478 Audio, eBook available

When the market was rising, everyone—from Ty employees to shop owners to consumers—was exhilarated. The company had one of the first direct-to-consumer websites, which would announce upcoming retirees via a Beanie character who spoke in rhyme from the “Ty Nursery.” The secondary market went wild on a new website called eBay. But once the market bubble began to break, it broke hard. Bissonnette’s research into the history of speculative markets helpfully situates the Beanie phenomenon in a larger framework. The story is a Greek tragedy served with a brutal twist of American capitalism.

— K E L LY B L E W E T T

Visit BookPage.com for a Q&A with Zac Bissonnette.

When Mimi Baird was 6 years old, her father, prominent Boston dermatologist Perry Baird, didn’t come home. In that moment, Baird effectively disappeared forever from his daughter’s life, for her mother told her only that he was “away.” Baird saw her father once in the 15 years between his disappearance and his death in 1959.

Although her life fills with marriage, children and a career in healthcare, her yearning to know her father haunts her. In 1991, she tells one of the surgeons at the hospital where she works about her father, and he soon produces a cache of letters between her father and his mentors, copies of which the surgeon retrieved from the Harvard Medical School library. As she reads these letters, her father’s manic-depressive state—and his own quest to understand its causes (Baird was the earliest to suggest that biochemical imbalances might lie at the root of manic depression, though he never got to pursue his research)—unfolds before her, but her journey toward understanding him is just beginning.

Three years later, she receives in the mail the manuscript her father had been writing and which forms the core of this poignant memoir.

At the center of He Wanted the Moon is her father’s book, in which he describes in detail his institutionalization in Westborough State Hospital in 1944, his attempts to understand his own condition, his often brutal treatment by doctors and staff, and his reflections on the state of psychiatry in mid-century America.

Through this moving memoir, Baird slowly brings her father back to life and reveals the sordid history of treating mental illness.

—HENRY L. CARRIGAN JR.

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Tragedy at sea

A

dept at spinning historical events into gripping narratives, Erik Larson couldn’t resist the storytelling potential of the Lusitania.

ERIK LARSON

BY ALDEN MUDGE

© BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER

q&a

You started reading about the Lusitania on a whim. What was the discovery that led you to decide to write a book about its last crossing?

What drew me, really, was not so much any single discovery, but rather my realization that the array of archival materials available on the subject—the palette of narrative elements—would allow me to tell the story in a way it had not yet been told. Telegrams, codebooks, love letters, the submarine commander’s war log, depositions, interrogation reports—all of it. For me it’s like heroin.

You’ve always been a remarkable researcher, finding amazing details to tell a story. What were your biggest research scores for Dead Wake?

The best elements are the telegrams to and from the German U-boat that were intercepted and decoded by the British. It was kind of thrilling to see the actual paper decodes in the National Archives of the U.K. Probably my favorite moment was when one box yielded the immense German codebook that opened the way for the British to begin reading all of Germany’s naval communications, with Germany utterly unaware. This was the actual book—the one that, according to one account, was recovered from the arms of a drowned German sailor.

Do you have a personal favorite among the passengers whose lives you so vividly describe?

Well, I’d have to say I particularly like Dwight Harris. His account, first of all, was very detailed—that’s why I chose him. That’s also why I chose my other central characters; I swoon for detail. But what I loved most was the charm of Harris’ story, which he told in a letter to his mother. He was a young guy, and was clearly tickled to have gone through this nightmare and survived.

In your telling, the Lusitania itself has a kind of personality, “conceived out of hubris and anxiety,” and with a fatal flaw. Are there things you learned about the ship that you found particularly ­compelling?

Everything. At heart I’m still a little boy. But, what I found most compelling was the sheer physical effort needed to power the ship—the volumes of coal, the innumerable furnaces, all fed by men with shovels, 24 hours a day. One of the amazing things about the ship, and the era’s emphasis on speed, was that with all boilers operating it could move at 25 knots, or nearly 30 miles an hour, and cross the Atlantic in five days—faster than a typical crossing on the Queen Mary 2 today.

No wonder its passengers, and captain, believed it to be invulnerable.

Do you believe, as some have suggested, that the British Admiralty’s failure to protect the Lusitania in spite of its secret intelligence of the whereabouts of German U-boats, was a deliberate gamble to bring the U.S. into the war?

There’s no smoking memo or letter or telegram to confirm it. And certainly, at first glance, you’d have to be skeptical that any agency would deliberately allow 2,000 people to be killed. On the other hand, the fact the Lusitania was left to itself, without ­ escort, and with only the most cursory Read an extended version of of warnings, is utterly m ­ ystifying. this Q&A on BookPage.com.

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reviews AMERICAN GHOST

By Hannah Nordhaus

Harper $25.99, 336 pages ISBN 9780062249210 Audio, eBook available HISTORY

If you’re an author with a family ghost, it would seem almost obligatory to write about it. Hannah Nordhaus’ “paternal grandfather’s maternal grandmother,” Julia S ­ taab, haunts La Posada hotel in Santa Fe (or so lots of people believe). In American Ghost, Nordhaus offers a fascinating and nuanced account of her ancestral ghost story and her complicated clan.

The Staabs, German Jews by birth, were among the first American merchants in Santa Fe. Julia married the already successful Abraham in 1865; she died in the house at the age of 52. Seven children survived her.

The ghost story goes like this: Julia never recovered from a baby’s death; her husband abused her; she died violently, perhaps by Abraham’s hand; and she now haunts her old bedroom. Nordhaus establishes that this is romantic fiction, though she remains respectful of those who believe they’ve encountered the ghost.

The Staabs were wealthy businesspeople, but they were also dysfunctional. Nordhaus unearths depression, addiction, suicide and estrangement. She writes of her ancestors’ travails with perception and compassion. Along the way, she employs family history to explore the lives of German Jews (Julia’s much younger sister died at Theresienstadt), the renaissance of Santa Fe and changing attitudes toward illness. It’s a spirited ride.

Perhaps most entertaining are her present-day encounters with psychics, ghost hunters and spiritualists, all eager to help. Her quest culminates in a weird experience in Julia’s room, make of it what you will. She does eventually discover whatever we can now know of the “truth” of Julia’s life, but inevita-

NONFICTION bly, Nordhaus’ journey really is a search for self, and we are privileged to be able to accompany her.

—ANNE BARTLETT

BETTYVILLE

By George Hodgman

Viking $27.95, 288 pages ISBN 9780525427209 eBook available

MEMOIR

George Hodgman had defined himself by his work as an editor in New York City. Newly out of a job, he returns home to small-town Paris, Missouri, and discovers that his mother, Betty, is in need of full-time care. Their affection and shared humor dance around the unspoken; Hodgman is gay, a fact his parents never acknowledged.

In Bettyville, Hodgman writes with wit and empathy about all the loss he’s confronted with. Betty’s poor health is mirrored by the failure of towns like Paris, whose farms and lumberyards are now Walmarts and meth labs. Coming out in the age of AIDS, he lost the people he was close to when he had nowhere else to turn. His commitment to “see someone through. All the way home,” is medicine for his own soul as much as his mother’s.

That doesn’t mean Bettyville is without humor—far from it. Paris eccentrics (one woman shampoos her hair in the soda fountain) compete with Hodgman’s colleagues in the office of Vanity Fair. The stresses of eldercare take their toll as well: “Monitored by graph, my emotions would resemble a chart of a frenetic third world economy.”

This is a portrait of a woman in decline, but still very much alive and committed to getting the lion’s share of mini-Snickers at every opportunity. When things are left unsaid between parents and children, it leaves a hurt that can never be completely repaired, but love and dedication can make those scarred places into works of art. Bettyville is one such masterpiece.

—HEATHER SEGGEL

NONFICTION THE DEATH OF CAESAR

By Barry Strauss

Simon & Schuster $27, 352 pages ISBN 9781451668797 Audio, eBook available HISTORY

The most notable assassination in history, of probably the single most influential man in European history, occurred in 44 B.C. The event changed the world, but not as the assassins had planned. Why and how did it happen? In The Death of Caesar, history and classics professor Barry Strauss offers both excellent historical detective work and riveting prose.

Strauss explains the historical context of Julius Caesar’s assassination and demonstrates how it became, for all practical purposes, the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire.

The three main conspirators— Cassius, Brutus and Decimus— said they acted to preserve the Republic, but the truth was more complicated. Ambition, greed and perhaps envy that Caesar had selected his grandnephew, Octavian, only 18 years old, to succeed him, were also motives. Cassius probably initiated the plot, but it was his brother-in-law, Brutus, who was essential to the murder. He had the authority and a reputation for ethical behavior; if he called Caesar a tyrant, his credibility would convince others and allow fellow conspirators to remain alive. Decimus, the closest to Caesar, served with him in the army for 10 years and played a crucial role in the plot. Caesar had made a decision to stay away from the Senate that day and was tricked by his good friend to go.

The Roman people and the conspirators both wanted peace and compromise. Caesar was dead, but Caesarism—the idea that a general and his legions could conquer the Republic—lived on. What the conspirators needed was a military coup. Instead, they committed murder and made speeches.

Meticulously researched and superbly written, The Death of Caesar is a vivid and readable exploration of a momentous event.

—ROGER BISHOP

THE MONOPOLISTS

By Mary Pilon

Bloomsbury $27, 320 pages ISBN 9781608199631 eBook available

you’ll have a deeper understanding of Monopoly’s enduring popularity.

—KEITH HERRELL

I LEFT IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

By Kevin Sessums St. Martin’s $25.99, 288 pages ISBN 9780312598389 eBook available MEMOIR

—CATHERINE HOLLIS

Visit BookPage.com for a Q&A with Kevin Sessums.

MASTER THIEVES

By Stephen Kurkjian

SOCIAL HISTORY

There it is, right at the beginning of the rules pamphlet included with our family’s well-worn Monopoly game. “In 1934, Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, presented a game called Monopoly to the executives of Parker Brothers.” Sounds simple enough.

But as Mary Pilon shows in The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, the road to fame for Monopoly was circuitous.

For decades, the “inventor” of Monopoly was purported to be Darrow—a Depression-era unemployed salesman who drew up a board representing Atlantic City properties. “There was only one problem,” Pilon writes, with a journalist’s directness: “The story wasn’t exactly true.”

So what was true? Pilon gets to the bottom of the case with the quixotic tale of an economics professor who invented a game he called ­Anti-Monopoly and ended up battling Parker Brothers in court for 10 years. It’s a fascinating history, with featured roles for a group of Quakers and a turn-of-the-century feminist named Lizzie Magie, and side trips to a Delaware utopian community, Parker Brothers’ headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts, and, of course, Atlantic City.

As for the “obsession, fury, and scandal” promised in the subtitle, it sounds like just another night of Monopoly in many households.

But rest assured, there’s plenty of turmoil in this readable book. Read it, and the next time you’re circling the board with your Scottish terrier

Ultimately a story of redemption and grace, I Left It on the Mountain is a spiritual memoir—albeit one with appearances by Courtney Love and Jessica Lange, earthly angels who walk by Sessums’ side.

In St. Augustine’s Confessions (one of the first spiritual memoirs), he famously prayed “Lord, make me good, but not yet.” In his powerful, visceral new memoir, celebrity journalist Kevin Sessums, like a modern St. Augustine, testifies to the life-threatening pull between carnality and spirituality in his own life.

Readers of his best-selling 2007 memoir Mississippi Sissy will recall Sessums’ Southern Gothic origins: growing up gay in the Civil Rights era, the death of both parents by the time he was 9 and molestation by a trusted preacher. Lurking behind that story, however, is the one Sessums documents in I Left It on the Mountain. Even as he interviews celebrities like Hugh Jackman and Daniel Radcliffe, Sessums descends into the hell of crystal meth addiction.

His new memoir chronicles how the twin strands of bodily addiction and spiritual transcendence shape his life. But the path toward healing, both physical and spiritual, is neither smooth nor linear.

He climbs Mt. Kilimanjaro, only to return to New York and the temptations of drugs and anonymous sex.

Desperate to escape his addiction, he turns to a spiritual pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.

His descriptions of the angels and devils he encounters on the Camino are transporting and hallucinogenic, as mystic visions must be. But even with powerful goodness surrounding him, Sessums boomerangs from the visionary to the squalid as he hits bottom with drug use and its consequences.

PublicAffairs $25.99, 272 pages ISBN 9781610394239 eBook available

TRUE CRIME

The buzzer blared from the door of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The night watchman peered into the grainy video monitor and saw two men in police uniforms. The men persuaded the watchman to open the door.

Once inside, the men bound and gagged the watchman and a fellow security guard and made off with $500 million in stolen art. Among the 13 masterpieces taken in the March 18, 1990, heist were Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee and Vermeer’s The Concert.

Thus begins Stephen Kurkjian’s Master Thieves, a tale of one of the most brazen and expensive art thefts in history, still unsolved.

Kurkjian, an investigative reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, pens the book like a mystery novel, examining the scenarios that the FBI has considered over the years. Was the Gardner Museum heist the work of organized crime or low-level thugs? Was it an inside job? Why was security so lax? Is the stolen art hidden in a backwater warehouse or a shed in the woods? Kurkjian explores all the possibilities and comes up with a plausible new theory of his own.

Master Thieves is a fast-paced book that will appeal to all those who enjoy art, mysteries and true crime. It’s a story that proves the adage: Truth is stranger than fiction.

—J O H N T. S L A N I A

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teen

ANDREW SMITH INTERVIEW BY JILL RATZAN

© SONYA SONES

The big bad teen (boy) brain

A

ndrew Smith almost gave up writing for teens in 2011, when an article in The Wall Street Journal blasted his work as being too dark for teen readers. But fans of his previous novels (including the 2015 Printz Honor-winning Grasshopper Jungle)—and those who pick up his latest offering, The Alex Crow—will be glad that he stuck to his craft.

And “craft” is the right word here, because all of Smith’s books, especially the four intersecting narratives of The Alex Crow, grow out of a unique and detailed writing process. “I write differently from anyone else I know,” Smith tells BookPage from his home in Washington, D.C. “I don’t outline.

I wanted to start in all of these different places that seemingly were absolutely disjointed and impossible to connect, and have them all come together into a really small point at the end. It’s kind of like solving a puzzle, kind of working my way out of a maze.”

Speaking of mazes, The Alex Crow opens with a violent scene in which teenager Ariel survives a terrorist attack in an unspecified war zone. Ariel’s narrative then breaks into two pieces—one in the present as he and his adoptive brother Max laugh their way through a technology-detox summer camp for boys, and one in the recent past, describing how Ariel came to be adopted by Max’s family. Both

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narratives are interrupted by two additional tales: An increasingly insane trucker makes what may be the world’s strangest road trip, and a stranded 19th-century sailor records some startling discoveries in his journals. These four threads gradually knot their way into one larger story in a strange way that only Smith could weave.

Scenes in The Alex Crow are a mix of profound, grotesque, violent and hilarious, with some moments following directly on the heels of another. “That’s kind of how I see the world,” Smith says. “One minute you can be completely horrified by something that’s taking place in front of you, and then within a few moments or so you’re laughing at something that’s just absolutely absurd.”

The multidimensional plot may be the most notable aspect of The Alex Crow, but arguably the most interesting elements are its characters, especially 14-year-old Ariel. Smith aims to write characters that stand out as individuals rather than relying on archetypical characters and cookie-cutter expectations of adolescence. “To lump all 14-year-old boys into this narrowly defined expectation of what they’re capable of doing and what they’re capable of expressing, feeling and thinking about, is exactly the problem.”

With characters that are so intensely relatable, a further issue bubbles to the surface: Smith has been called sexist or worse for articulating the thoughts of a 14-year-old boy. But as Smith points out, no one would accuse Thomas Harris, author of The Silence of the Lambs, of being a cannibal.

“The emotional distance that readers feel when they’re reading young adult [literature] is so, so narrow compared to the emotion-

al distance that readers feel when they’re reading what would be called ‘adult literary fiction,’ ” Smith explains. “They sometimes kind of blur the line between the author and the characters in the story. . . . But a young adult author is very often targeted or accredited with the actions and the attitudes of what are, generally speaking, pretty immature and impulsive characters.”

For all these characters’ flaws, they’ll resonate with boy readers, but will The Alex Crow appeal to girls? “I’m definitely very strongly outspoken against the idea of genderizing books,” Smith says. “I don’t believe there are such things as ‘girl’ books and ‘boy’ books.”

Teenage girls are just as mystified by teenage boys as boys are by girls, so reading Smith’s books— even as an adult—gives female readers a glance into the minds of these foreign-seeming creatures.

Smith’s books have been described as boundary-pushing, and his thoughts on this label extend to YA lit in general. YA, says Smith, isn’t limited to 12- to 18-year-old readers. Instead, “it’s a genre that deals with essential adolescent experiences, which I think is the most significant period in a human being’s life.”

For this reason, adult readers can appreciate YA on a different level. “When we get beyond that period in our lives, and we can distance ourselves emotionally from the immediacy of the turmoil of adolescence, the ability to go back and read something that examines those sorts of pressures and issues and problems . . . helps to clarify that experience.”

Smith goes on, “We’re definitely seeing a big change in young

adult. . . . I think that publishers are more eager to take risks and to break away from the rut [that] YA has been in the last 20 years. And so we’re seeing a lot of delightful new offerings that break the mold, getting out of the constraints of what has been a preconceived, very formulaic category of fiction.”

In the end, Smith’s writing goals are as simple as they are profound.

“I just try to put as much honesty as I can, and entertainment, on the pages, and by doing that maybe give somebody a glimpse into some perspective that they hadn’t been that accustomed to seeing.”

THE ALEX CROW

By Andrew Smith

Dutton, $18.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9780525426530 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up

FICTION

reviews MOSQUITOLAND

TEEN

Northbound and a little crazy REVIEW BY JENNIFER BRUER KITCHEL

It takes a special talent for an author to tap into the mind of a character who is radically different from himself, and first-time novelist David Arnold has uncannily captured the voice of a 16-year-old girl with beauty and style in Mosquitoland.

Mary Iris Malone (or, as she prefers, “Mim”) is an unhappy teenager for many reasons: divorced parents, new stepmother Kathy, no friends at her new school. She is angry with her father for leaving her mother, for making her move from Ohio to Mississippi and for marrying a woman Mim finds ridiculous. When she overhears a conversation about how her mother isn’t feeling well, Mim decides that she needs to go back to Cleveland and see her mom. Without telling anyone, she hops on a Greyhound bus. Although her stepmother keeps calling her, Mim is sure that Kathy is the reason she hasn’t heard from her mom and so she refuses to answer. Mim’s journey is fraught with peril and

By David Arnold rife with self-discovery as she questions her own sanity and the trustViking, $17.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9780451470775 worthiness of everyone she meets.

Audio, eBook available, ages 12 and up Arnold’s prose is delicious as he peels back each of Mim’s layers on FICTION her long ride. The characters she encounters along the way and her internal thoughts about life, love, friendships and survival are pitch perfect. As with any teenager, Mim struggles with personal angst, but she is as open to possibilities as she is to the open road.

READ BETWEEN THE LINES

By Jo Knowles

Candlewick $16.99, 336 pages ISBN 9780763663872 Ages 14 and up FICTION

Jo Knowles’ new novel was apparently inspired by a real-life incident in which the author and her family were given the finger by another driver, even though he was in the wrong. This episode prompted her to think about the aggression, power and even hatred implied by this small gesture.

Read Between the Lines is a series of linked short stories set over the course of a single day. Each chapter focuses on the private life of a student—from cheerleaders and bullies to those they overlook or prey upon—and includes “the finger” in some way. Each can be

read and appreciated in isolation, but readers will enjoy piecing together the stories and the accompanying relationships.

The novel’s most profound revelations belong to the final chapter, when one of their teachers shares her own secret stories: “Just like there is more to her than what they see, there is more inside each one of them.” It’s a message that may inspire readers to consider the lives of strangers before rushing to pass judgment—or flipping the bird.

—NORAH PIEHL

BONE GAP

By Laura Ruby

Balzer + Bray $17.99, 368 pages ISBN 9780062317605 Audio, eBook available Ages 14 and up

FICTION

Set in the secretive and mysteri-

ous Midwestern town of Bone Gap, author and professor Laura Ruby’s eighth novel captures the darkness and light of a small town where seemingly magical occurrences ensnare its citizens.

Bone Gap creates a world unto itself, in which readers slowly unpeel the disparate but simultaneously interconnected stories of the townsfolk who call it home.

We hear from such voices as weird high-school senior Finn O’Sullivan—better known as “Moonface” by the townies for his tendency to space out—who is able to read people and offer intimate, uncanny insights into their quiet lives. Sean, Finn’s paramedic older brother and town heartthrob, is loved by nearly all of Bone Gap, even if they choose to acknowledge only part of his story. The brothers live in a sort of hovering stasis with the rest of Bone Gap until the gorgeous, damaged and strong-willed Roza wanders into town and changes everything. But when she is suddenly abducted by an unknown

man, and Finn, the only witness, is unable to identify her abductor, all the cracks in Bone Gap start to widen, revealing the truths behind this idyllic small-town life.

Ruby flexes her narrative muscles with Bone Gap, blending mystery, romance and magical realism.

Her mixing of styles mirrors the lives of her characters, with parts and pieces of different experiences making up only part of the story’s whole.

—J U S T I N B A R I S I C H

VANISHING GIRLS

By Lauren Oliver HarperCollins $18.99, 368 pages ISBN 9780062224101 Audio, eBook available Ages 14 and up

FICTION

Nick was driving the car with her sister, Dara, when they crashed.

Months later, Nick (short for Nicole) cannot remember how it happened. All she knows is that the accident irreparably severed their once-close sisterly bond.

Nick’s best guy friend, Parker, has also been unreachable. But when Nick starts working at the local semi-decrepit amusement park called FanLand, she discovers that Parker also works there. Gradually, their friendship starts to seem normal. At the same time, a local girl, Madeline Snow, goes missing.

This adds a spooky element to an already uneasy story, as Nick discovers clues that may link Dara with Madeline’s fate.

Readers unfamiliar with author Lauren Oliver’s deft hand may feel there is too much going on: Both Nick and Dara narrate sections before and after the accident, with a jumbled timeline often clarified only by date. At the same time, an “online” commentary traces the investigation of Madeline’s disappearance. However, a patient reading is rewarded with a big twist at the end. This is recommended for fans of the psychological intrigue in E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars.

—DIANE COLSON

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reviews ECHO

CHILDREN’S

The timeless power of music REVIEW BY ALICE CARY

The latest novel by award-winning author Pam Muñoz Ryan is a hefty yet riveting page-turner containing four interwoven stories.

The first is a fairy tale about a boy named Otto who becomes lost in a German forest. He is rescued by three mysterious maidens who happen to be characters in a book that he has just bought from a gypsy.

This gypsy also gives Otto a unique harmonica that has special powers.

“When you play it,” the maidens explain, “you breathe in and out, just as you would to keep your body alive. Have you ever considered that one person might play the mouth harp and pass along her strength and vision and knowledge?” Indeed, this instrument has amazing “pay it forward” abilities.

The fairy tale is followed by three novella-length stories of historical fiction, each connected by Otto’s magic harmonica. It first appears in

By Pam Muñoz Ryan Trossingen, Germany, in 1933, where a boy named Friedrich yearns Scholastic, $19.95, 592 pages to become a conductor. He’s tormented, however, by his disfiguring ISBN 9780439874021, audio, eBook available facial birthmark, and his safety is threatened by a Nazi law requiring Ages 10 to 14 sterilization of those with deformities. The harmonica’s next owner MIDDLE GRADE is an orphaned boy in 1935 Pennsylvania who fears being separated from his younger brother and loves playing the piano. And finally the harmonica turns up in Southern California in 1942 in the hands of Ivy Maria Lopez, a young Mexican-American girl whose family’s fortune changes after a Japanese family is sent to an internment camp. These interwoven tales unite in a majestic scene in 1951 New York, along with a short epilogue explaining how Otto passed along his magic harmonica to begin its magical journey.

These fast-paced stories are woven together to give young readers a wealth of historical information in an incredibly gripping way. In a novel filled with real-life examples of prejudice and injustice, Ryan repeatedly illustrates an important message uttered by Friedrich’s father: “Music is a universal language. A universal religion of sorts. Certainly it’s my religion. Music surpasses all distinctions between people.”

are rich and famous people in the world who sometimes make him feel “small.” When their words are plastered everywhere, he feels insignificant, momentarily forgetting that he has his own voice: his pen.

We know we’re in for the honest and vulnerable musings of a child.

On the very next spread, the boy notes, “My pen makes giants of old men who have seen better days.” Here is a drawing of a man who looks remarkably like Walter Dean Myers, the author’s father, a legend in children’s literature who passed away last year. If, like me, you’re still trying to get used to his absence, this spread will take your breath away.

The boy goes on to show where his sketchbook can take him: He can tap-dance on the sky, hide elephants in teacups and wear “satellite sneakers with computer laces.” His pen might worry about wars, but it exudes love. It might be simple, but it’s capable of grand adventures. It can even bolster the boy’s identity. “It draws me a new face every morning,” he writes.

Myers’ graceful pen-and-ink drawings are eloquent and expressive. The absence of color is a smart choice; it’s as if Myers leaves abundant room for young readers to fill in his or her own spaces.

This is a lively tribute to the wonders of expression.

—J U L I E D A N I E L S O N

SPECIAL DELIVERY

By Philip C. Stead

Illustrated by Matthew Cordell Roaring Brook $17.99, 40 pages ISBN 9781596439313 Ages 3 to 7

PICTURE BOOK

Have you ever bemoaned the price of stamps as you hauled a large package to the post office?

Maybe it’s time to consider alternative methods of conveyance. Special Delivery has some exciting—if slightly unusual—suggestions.

A hefty mailing fee launches spirited Sadie on an adventure to surprise her lonely Great-Aunt Josephine with an elephant. Luckily,

30

Sadie has an aviator’s helmet full of courage and creativity, and her elephant is equally bold. They hastily hop an ill-equipped airplane and follow an alligator tour guide.

They tempt fate on a monkey-bandit-infested train, and an ice cream truck takes them the last leg of their journey.

Written by Caldecott-winning Philip C. Stead, Special Delivery will win the approval of little readers who wish for an outlandish story. Sadie’s voice provides most of the dialogue, and young adventurers will identify with her unruffled single-mindedness. Energetic illustrations by Matthew Cordell fill in the rest of the story and take the lead for a few full-color spreads.

With animal antics and lighthearted danger, Special Delivery is

almost as much fun as, say, getting an elephant in the mail.

—J I L L L O R E N Z I N I

MY PEN

By Christopher Myers

Disney-Hyperion $16.99, 32 pages ISBN 9781423103714 Ages 3 to 5

PICTURE BOOK

A simple pen can do a lot. Christopher Myers shows us just that in his new book, a tribute to the imagination of children and the immense power of creativity.

A young boy sets the tone in the opening pages: He says that there

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORWOOD

By Shawn Sheehy Candlewick $29.99, 18 pages ISBN 9780763665944 Ages 4 to 8

POP-UP BOOK

Welcome to the Neighborwood by master paper craftsman Shawn Sheehy is at once a breathtaking work of interactive art and a factfilled exploration of the great outdoors. Young readers learn about the habits and survival skills of seven different creatures through pop-up models of the places they call home. Each burrow and nest bursts from the page in 3-D form, and Sheehy complements these vi-

CHILDREN’S sual astonishments with information about each animal. In easy-toabsorb prose, he explains the ways in which they adapt to the wild, construct homes and flourish.

In magical, surprising spreads, a garden spider hangs from a leaf, its web a delicate backdrop, and a honeybee surveys its complex comb. Tucked in the branches of a leafy tree, a hummingbird’s nest opens wide to reveal its winged inhabitant. Filled with color and detail, these pages truly pop, a testament to paper’s remarkable potential as a creative medium.

A former science teacher, Sheehy has said that his goal as an author is to create an awareness of and respect for the environment in young readers. Providing an intriguing peek inside an ecosystem, this book enchants even as it instructs.

—J U L I E H A L E

chicken and sewing supplies) make My Near-Death Adventures a laugh-out-loud book. But what truly stands out are the black-andwhite images of vintage magazine ads, postcards and other documents that Stanley pastes into his scrapbook and annotates with amusing, perceptive comments.

This is a rare combination of historical fiction, collage illustration and, in the end, depth of character.

—J I L L R A T Z A N

Crown $16.99, 256 pages ISBN 9780385390446 Audio, eBook available Ages 8 to 12

MIDDLE GRADE

In 1895, 11-year-old Stanley Slater and his mother must move to a logging camp for her job. Now he has to live with his grandmother— who is 99.9 percent evil—and put up with his cousin Geri.

In between braving Geri’s diagnoses (she wants to be a doctor), speculating on the speckled past of a logger named Stinky Pete and begging to accompany the lumberjacks on a dangerous river drive, Stanley composes imaginary letters from his missing father, detailing the crazy adventures that keep him from his son. Stanley’s convinced that if he can just be manly enough, he can find his father and preserve his family. But being manly turns out to be harder than it looks.

The hilarious antics that Stanley describes (one memorable incident involves Geri, an uncooked

the title of your Q: What’s

new book?

would you describe Q: How

the book?

has been the biggest influence on your work?

Q: Who

MS. RAPSCOTT’S GIRLS

By Elise Primavera Dial $16.99, 272 pages ISBN 9780803738225 Audio, eBook available Ages 8 to 12

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

MIDDLE GRADE

MY NEAR-DEATH ADVENTURES

By Alison DeCamp

meet CARSON ELLIS

Move over, Mary Poppins, and make way for Ms. Rapscott, Headmistress of the Great Rapscott School for Girls of Busy Parents.

Elise Primavera, creator of the popular Auntie Claus books, offers a whimsical tale of a most unusual teacher and her school for girls whose parents are much too busy to be, well, parents. In fact, there’s no need for moms or dads to even bother bringing the girls to school, as the admissions materials include a self-addressed box for safely mailing daughters to campus.

And that’s how five lucky girls find themselves hurtling through the air to land on the observation deck of a lighthouse, home of Ms. Rapscott’s unique establishment, where the school motto echoes Amelia Earhart’s words: “Adventure is worthwhile in itself!” They embark on magical excusions, including a visit to the Mount Everbest School for Boys, as Ms. Rapscott imparts essential lessons such as, “Life is like trying to bake your own birthday cake without a recipe.”

Accompanied by Primavera’s delightful artwork, these adventures will entice young readers to take Ms. Rapscott’s advice and get “lost on purpose” in a great story.

—DEBORAH HOPKINSON

Q: Who was your childhood hero? books did you enjoy as a child?

Q: What

one thing would you like to learn to do?

Q: What

message would you like to send to young readers?

Q: What

HOME Carson Ellis is the co-creator (with husband Colin Meloy) of the best-selling Wildwood series. In her picture book debut, Home (Candlewick, $16.99, 40 pages, ISBN 9780763665296, ages 4 to 8), Ellis takes readers around the world and to the furthest reaches of the imagination as she explores different types of homes.

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WORDNOOK

BY THE EDITORS OF MERRIAM-WEBSTER

HAT TIP Dear Editor: Can you tell me if the fedora is named after a person?

M. C. Tampa, Florida The hat known as a fedora is thought to have some connection with Fédora, a melodrama by the French playwright Victorien Sardou, though the nature of the connection is unknown. Sardou, a popular dramatist in the 19th century, though now nearly forgotten, premiered Fédora in 1882, with the celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Fédora Romanoff, a Russian princess. Some evidence suggests that the long plume worn

by Bernhardt in the play made an impression on Parisian fashion, but the word fedora, if it was used for the plume in French, did not survive. Sardou’s play ran successfully in New York in 1883 starring the American actress Fanny Davenport. Sometime afterward,

fedora found its way into American English as a name for a man’s soft felt hat, with no obvious link to the headgear of either actress. By 1895 the word appeared in a Montgomery Ward catalog—clearly a sign that the hat style had entered mainstream American fashion.

NUTS & BOLTS Dear Editor: Why do we call someone who is crazy or crazy about something nuts?

A. P. Fort Smith, Arkansas Nuts, meaning “enthusiastic” or “crazy,” takes us to an odd corner of English word derivation.

It appears to be the plural of nut, though it is not apparent why that should make it an adjective.

The “enthusiastic” sense is likely based on the idiom nuts to, meaning “a source of pleasure to.”

The “crazy” sense is probably based on the expression off one’s nut, in

which nut means “head.” Synonyms of nuts, perhaps following its pattern, are bonkers, crackers and bananas, though these words are harder to account for semantically.

(The element -ers in bonkers and crackers resembles British colloquialisms like preggers for “pregnant” and starkers for “naked.”) These adjectives are also distinctive in that they cannot be used attributively; we would refer to a nutty driver rather than a nuts driver.

DEAD ISSUE Dear Editor: With zombies ubiquitous in popular culture, can you tell me where the word zombie comes from?

W. B. Taylor, Michigan The word zombie or zombi is associated with the walking dead of Haitian folk belief, though its first attestation in English has no connection with Haiti. In a collection of Americanisms published in

1871, the philologist Maximilian Schele de Vere claims that zombi, “a phantom or ghost,” is “not infrequently heard in the Southern States in nurseries and among the servants.”

The source of the word in the American South is the French Creole spoken by African slaves and their descendants in Louisiana—a language akin to Haitian Creole.

Zombie comes from zobi, the ultimate source of which is most likely Kimbundu nzumbe, “departed spirit.” Zombi as an English loan from Haitian Creole was first noted in an 1884 book by Spencer St. John, British consul in Port-auPrince. St. John’s book contained other sensational depictions of Haitian life, which did much to increase the currency of zombie in American 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 GRID LOGIC

PUZZLE TYPE: NUMBER COMPLETION:

DIFFICULTY: TIME:

PUT the numbers in the boxes so every row, column, and main diagonal adds up to the same number.

PERFECT MATCH

PUZZLE TYPE: VISUAL COMPLETION:

DIFFICULTY: TIME:

WHICH TWO figures match perfectly?

HINT: Neither figure 4 nor figure 5 is part of the perfect match.

HINT: The center number is 5.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

ANSWER: Figures 2 and 8 match perfectly.

ANSWER:

GO FIGURE

PUZZLE TYPE: NUMBER COMPLETION:

DIFFICULTY: TIME:

ZANE IS OLDER than Mabel, and both have two-digit ages. Zane’s age is the same as Mabel’s age backward, and Mabel’s age doubled is within a year of Zane’s age.

How old is Zane?

ANSWER: Zane is 73 and Mabel is 37. Twice 37 is 74, which is just one more than 73.

HINT: For instance, if Zane is 21, then Mabel is 12.

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