BookPage October 2015

AMERICA’S BOOK REVIEW

DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK

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OCT 2015

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64 new reviews inside

JOJO

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More books to fall for

MOYES

With After You, she crafts a winning follow-up to the surprise hit Me Before You

PaperbackPicks Deadline The latest from the #1 New York Times bestselling author.

At the end of a closed schoolboard meeting in Minnesota, remaining members vote on the fate of a local reporter.

And it’s unanimous…

Kill him.

Dark Blood “The erotic, gripping series that has defined an entire genre” (J. R. Ward) continues as the fates of a warrior reborn and a seductive Dragonseeker are irrevocably united by dark blood, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author.

Cold Cold Heart

Blue Warrior

A thrilling novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag, “one of the most intense suspense writers around” (Chicago Tribune).

Mike Maden exploded onto the military action scene with his blistering Drone. Now he returns with another electrifying novel featuring hero Troy Pearce.

Tall, Dark & Wicked

Burned

A wickedly wonderful new romance from the New York Times bestselling author of His Wicked Reputation.

Former CIA officer Valerie Plame and Sarah Lovett, authors of the “tense spy thriller” Blowback, return with a globe-hopping, nerveshattering new novel featuring covert CIA ops officer Vanessa Pierson.

The Shadows The #1 New York Times bestselling author returns to the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood as two brothers bound by more than blood fight to change a brutal destiny.

When Somebody Loves You First in a new series from the New York Times bestselling author of the hugely popular Sweetheart Sisters novels!

Feature

of the

Month

“Wow. Just wow. Beware fellow readers, herein lies adventure that will keep you from food or rest.”

—#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Briggs

NEW IN HARDCOVER #1 New York Times bestselling author, Jim Butcher, conjures up a brand-new series set in a fantastic steampunk world.

Captain Grimm commands the merchant ship, Predator. Fiercely loyal to Spire Albion, he has taken their side in the cold war with Spire Aurora, disrupting the enemy’s shipping lines by attacking their cargo vessels. But when the Predator is severely damaged in combat, he learns that the conflict between the Spires is merely a premonition of things to come. Humanity’s ancient enemy, silent for more than ten thousand years, has begun to stir once more.

And death will follow in its wake.

contents

OCTOBER 2015 B O O K PA G E . C O M

features

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12 EMILY HOLLEMAN Cleopatra’s forgotten sisters

Best-selling British author Jojo Moyes reunites readers with the beloved characters of Me Before You in the touching sequel, After You.

13 JOSEPH FINK & JEFFREY CRANOR Take a journey to Night Vale

16 EMILY FLAKE Meet the author-illustrator of Mama Tried

17 SHORT STORIES Lions, tigers, bears and techno

25 KATE CLIFFORD LARSON The truth about the other Kennedy daughter

27 GARY D. SCHMIDT Growing up too fast

31 THYRA HEDER Meet the author-illustrator of The Bear Report

cover story

Historicals, Contemporaries and a Little Romantic Suspense For Your Bookshelf from Avon Books!

Cover photo by Stine Heilmann

reviews 18 FICTION

t o p p i c k : The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine

by Alex Brunkhorst

also reviewed:

Come Rain or Come Shine by Jan Karon After the Parade by Lori Ostlund The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood The Clasp by Sloane Crosley We That Are Left by Clare Clark The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson Bats of the Republic

by Zachary Thomas Dodson The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks

23 NONFICTION

Carrying Albert Home

by Homer Hickam Gold Fame Citrus

by Claire Vaye Watkins Shriver by Chris Belden God’s Kingdom

by Howard Frank Mosher The Lower Quarter by Elise Blackwell The Scribe by Matthew Guinn The Double Life of Liliane by Lily Tuck

t o p p i c k : Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

also reviewed:

M Train by Patti Smith 1944 by Jay Winik My Year of Running Dangerously

by Tom Foreman Me, My Hair, and I by Elizabeth Benedict Kissinger by Niall Ferguson Rosemary by Kate Clifford Larson

columns 04 05 06 08 09 10 10 11

WELL READ LIBRARY READS WHODUNIT ROMANCE BOOK CLUBS COOKING LIFESTYLES AUDIO

Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson Strangers Drowning

by Larissa MacFarquhar Frank & Ava by John Brady How’s Your Faith? by David Gregory

28 TEEN

30 CHILDREN’S

t o p p i c k : I Crawl Through It

t o p p i c k : Most Dangerous

by A.S. King

by Steve Sheinkin

also reviewed:

Untwine by Edwidge Danticat Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo Symphony for the City of the Dead

by M.T. Anderson The Rest of Us Just Live Here

by Patrick Ness Juniors by Kaui Hart Hemmings The Emperor of Any Place

by Tim Wynne-Jones What We Saw by Aaron Hartzler

also reviewed:

Thank You and Good Night

by Patrick McDonnell Lenny & Lucy by Philip C. Stead The Bamboo Sword by Margi Preus Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate

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

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EDITOR

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MANAGING EDITOR

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

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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

搀 愀 刀攀 爀攀℀ 䴀漀 漀瘀攀爀 ㄀ Ⰰ 爀攀瘀椀攀眀猀

吀栀攀 䈀漀漀欀 䌀愀猀攀 䈀氀漀最

眀攀戀 攀砀挀氀甀猀椀瘀攀猀

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columns

WELL READ

BY ROBERT WEIBEZAHL

A century’s worth of classic short stories Each year since 1915, a volume of Best American Short Stories has been published, offering a selection of the finest short fiction that has appeared in magazines and journals throughout the year. To celebrate the centenary, editors Lorrie Moore and Heidi Pitlor have compiled a best of the best collection, 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories (HMH, $30, 752 pages, ISBN 9780547485850). This substantial anthology offers not only a fascinating retrospective of the changes in the art of story writing over the past decade, but also a snapshot of evolving American cultural attitudes and concerns.

The editors had a daunting task, whittling down their choices to a few dozen from some 2,000 stories that have appeared in the annual collections over the years. Any story chosen for The Best American Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike in 1999, was excluded from consideration. That restriction nonetheless leaves readers with some time-honored favorites: Lardner’s “Haircut,” Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited,” Cheever’s “The Enormous Radio,” Updike’s “Pigeon Feathers,” Roth’s “The Conversion of the Jews,” as well as representative stories by such masters as Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Grace Paley, Raymond Carver and Alice Munro (the only Canadian to fall under the “American” rubric).

Sixteen of the stories are by women, a healthier percentage than might have been included in the past, and the latter part of the book skews toward stories by minority voices that were definitely absent from the early years of the annuals.

These include immigrant writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Akhil Sharma, Jhumpa Lahiri and Junot Díaz, as well as Native American

Sherman Alexie.

No such collection could be all-inclusive, although it is a little jarring, no matter your taste in stories, to notice the absence of Bernard Malamud, Ann Beattie and Mavis Gallant, to name a few (since the selection was limited to stories gleaned from earlier collections, it obviously precluded some fine examples from being included). Quibbles aside, the book offers a trove of great stories in a range of narrative modes that highlights not only the richness and diversity of the American voice, but also the literary styles that have come in and out of fashion through the years.

For the publishing geeks among us, some of the most valuable aspects of the book are Pitlor’s introductory notes to each decade.

We learn the surprisingly colorful history of the series, the brainchild of the “pathologically organized” Edward J. O’Brien, who helmed the project until he died in 1941. It was then taken over by Martha Foley, co-founder of Story magazine, who held a firm grasp on the project until her death in 1977, despite displaying what Pitlor deems her “narrowing tastes and predictable choices.” Subsequent series editors—Shannon Ravenel, Katrina Kenison and Pitlor—have worked with well-known writers as guest editors, who choose their final 20 stories from a narrowed-down list of 120. When the series began, the short story market was robust, with commercial magazines paying writers a decent fee. Today, those markets have all but evaporated, although, as Pitlor points out, the proliferation of online literary magazines has left no shortage of stories.

“Make it interesting and it will be true: this is what story writers live by,” Moore writes in her somewhat free-form, funny introduction. 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories is filled with undeniable truths.

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 October.

#1

CITY ON FIRE by Garth Risk Hallberg Knopf, $30, ISBN 9780385353779

This assured debut novel, set in 1970s New York City, is an imaginative, sprawling epic that features a blackout, the punk scene and a Central Park shooting.

AFTER YOU by Jojo Moyes

Pamela Dorman, $26.95, ISBN 9780525426592 Return to the world of Moyes’ 2012 bestseller, Me Before You, in this accomplished and heartwarming sequel. Read our interview on page 14.

A BANQUET OF CONSEQUENCES by Elizabeth George

Viking, $28.95, ISBN 9780525954330 Country life is looking less than bucolic in the latest Inspector Lynley mystery, which finds the detective and his partner, Barbara Havers, investigating a suspicious suicide in Dorset.

SLADE HOUSE by David Mitchell

Random House, $26, ISBN 9780812998689 The British author’s new work is a creepy, surprising haunted house story that spans decades in just over 200 spine-tingling pages.

THE HEART GOES LAST by Margaret Atwood

Nan A. Talese, $26.95, ISBN 9780385540353 Atwood’s latest is set in a not-so-distant future, where a married couple enters a sinister commune in order to escape their dismal life. Read our review on page 19.

THE SECRET CHORD by Geraldine Brooks

Viking, $27.95, ISBN 9780670025770 The Pulitzer Prize-winning author turns her keen eye for history to a novel about the life of King David, who stands at the confluence of three faiths. Read our review on page 20.

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

Harper Perennial, $19.99, ISBN 9780062351425 The creators of the popular “Welcome to Night Vale” podcast take their talents to the page in this off-kilter story from America’s strangest small town. Read our interview on page 13.

IN BITTER CHILL by Sarah Ward

Minotaur, $25.99, ISBN 9781250069177 A past tragedy bleeds into the present in this chilling debut, which finds an English village torn apart by an investigation into a 30-year-old crime.

THEN COMES MARRIAGE by Roberta Kaplan

Norton, $27.95, ISBN 9780393248678 The lawyer who brought down the Defense of Marriage Act tells the gripping behind-the-scenes story of the case’s journey to the Supreme Court.

WE WERE BROTHERS by Barry Moser

Algonquin, $22, ISBN 9781616204136 Illustrator Moser writes honestly about his lifelong differences with his older brother, Tommy, in a touching meditation on their sibling relationship.

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

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columns

WHODUNIT

BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Caught in the jaws of a power struggle As Qiu Xiaolong’s Shanghai Redemption (Minotaur, $25.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9781250065278) opens, the dogged Chief Inspector Chen Cao has been put out to pasture. He is reasonably philosophical about this: “The system has no place for a cop who puts justice above the interests of the Party.

It’s a miracle that I survived as long as I did.” He’s been neutralized with a “carrot” rather than a “stick”—promoted to a new position with a grand title and no real duties, to serve out the remainder of his career until retirement. It seems there may be some political motivation behind Chen’s sidelining: He was involved in the investigation

of one of China’s Red Princes, a member of the Communist Party elite caught on the wrong side of a power struggle. And with corruption in modern-day China running rampant, inevitably there are secrets that one faction desperately needs to keep and the opposing faction needs to expose. Chen finds

himself in the rather unfortunate position of being privy to some of these secrets—and thus at odds with some powerful people. He begins to have the nagging feeling that someone will rest easier if he’s

FROM THE EDGAR AWARD–NOMINATED AUTHOR OF THE FINAL SILENCE

“IN THE WORLD OF MODERN CRIME FICTION,

STUART NEVILLE IS

A SUPERNOVA.” —DENNIS LEHANE “A great, brawling ache of a novel.

Filled with both prickling suspense and fiercely wrought emotion.”

—MEGAN ABBOTT, author of The Fever

AVAILABLE 9.15.2015

“Neville never forgets the human heart that beats inside the bleakest darkness.”

—VAL MCDERMID, author of The Skeleton Road

TWITTER @STUARTNEVILLE • WWW.SOHOCRIME.COM

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off the playing field entirely.

OVERSTEPPING RANK Military policemen George Sueño and Ernie Bascom return for their 10th adventure together in Martin Limón’s The Ville Rat (Soho Crime, $26.95, 288 pages, ISBN 9781616956080), set in 1970s Korea. The strangling of a young woman dressed in a traditional Korean chima-jeogori would normally be a matter for the Korean National Police, but because of the murder scene’s proximity to a U.S. Army infantry base, the MPs are requested to assist in the investigation. Whoever’s responsible for the murder doesn’t want the investigation to turn up any damning evidence, but also someone—perhaps someone high up in the Army chain of command—is operating a successful black market ring that could be exposed by their examination. A few well-placed phone calls later, Sueño and Bascom find themselves summoned back to their home base in Seoul. Smelling a rat, they continue to probe the homicide on the sly, and they know they’re closing in on the truth when they’re confronted by a wildhaired smuggler, locally known as “the Ville Rat.” It quickly becomes clear that the killer has no compunction about killing again.

SWEET DREAMS Peter May’s latest novel, Entry Island (Quercus, $26.99, 544 pages, ISBN 9781623656638), is set in the Magdalen Islands, a tiny, remote archipelago just over the horizon from the Canadian coastal village where I spend my summers— and where I am, at this moment, writing this review. But murders can take place anywhere, and so Detective Sime Mackenzie steps in.

His new assignment appears pretty straightforward; after all, there are only 130 residents on the island, and the forensic evidence points to the wife of the deceased. But it

all seems a little too pat to Mackenzie, and to complicate matters further, he’s certain he knows the suspect, even though that’s clearly impossible. Mackenzie suffers from insomnia and has semi-waking dreams of a previous life on a distant Scottish island, and he’s convinced that the suspect is the same woman who has figured so prominently in his dreams. And so this strange story unfolds, in which reality and dream state become interwoven, with Mackenzie caught on the horns of a dilemma between his personal feelings and his duty as a sworn officer of the law.

TOP PICK IN MYSTERY Books that transcend the mystery genre, making the jump into “literature,” inevitably draw comparisons to Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. I’d like to nominate a third member to the troika: So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood (HMH, $24, 160 pages, ISBN 9780544635067)

by Patrick Modiano, who won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s been a hot September in Paris, and author Jean Daragane has been a virtual recluse. He almost doesn’t answer the phone, but the incessant ringing finally prompts him to pick up. The caller is in possession of Daragane’s recently misplaced address book and would like to return it to him. They make an arrangement to meet the following day, but the caller has something of an agenda, having recognized one of the names in the address book, and he enlists Daragane’s help in finding this person. Daragane has no real memory of the name, just someone whose path he crossed many years ago, but he begins to remember disturbing details of a murder from decades back. This is an atmospheric and endlessly suspenseful psychological thriller, with lyrical prose that elevates the book to another plane entirely.

Craving suspense and mystery?

Enter the Thrills and Chills sweepstakes to WIN the ultimate fall prize pack featuring a collection of this season’s best new thrillers!

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Entries must be received before Oct 31, 2015 11:59 p.m. EDT. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER.

Purchase or acceptance of a product offer does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes opens 10/1/2015 at 12:01 AM (EDT) and closes 10/31/2015 at 11:59 PM (EDT). Enter online at www.bookpage.com/contests. Open to legal residents of the U.S. who have reached the age of majority or older in their state of residence. Void where prohibited by law. One (1) prize available to be won consisting of a writing journal, a soup tureen, a candle, and one (1) copy of each of nine (9) Harlequin books as determined by the Sponsor (Total ARV approx. $285.00 CDN). Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full details and Official Rules available online at www.bookpage.com/contests. Sponsor: Harlequin Enterprises Limited.

Sponsored by BookClubbish.com

7

Celebrate the magic of Christmas in Haven Point where hope, home and happily-ever-after are as close as your holiday stocking…

columns Dangerous to love An FBI agent teams up with a former Marine to uncover a serial killer in Shadow Fall (Pocket, $7.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9781476779256), the latest book in Laura Griffin’s Tracers series. Special Agent Tara Rushing has been called to East Texas to investigate the scene of a woman’s brutal murder. When

family step in and help out, but it’s Carrie he finds himself turning to time and again for comfort and advice.

As Carrie’s future plans develop, she’s unsure if she can trust Sam, a self-confessed wanderer. Will he truly settle down and become the steady partner she longs for? Readers will root for this couple in another fine kisses-only romance from Woods.

more bodies are discovered, Tara is selected as the head of a task force and begins working with security consultant Liam Wolfe.

He lives and trains in the vicinity of the crimes, and while he seems as eager to discover the killer as Tara, she can’t scratch Liam off the suspect list. As she comes to know the man, however, she can’t help but trust him—and be attracted to him. Their chemistry is combustible, but with the murderer watching their every move, Tara and Liam will have to stay sharp to take down a dangerous enemy.

Great lead characters and a spooky atmosphere make this a spine-­ tingling, standout novel of romantic suspense.

TOP PICK IN ROMANCE

HOMEBOUND HEART

“Thayne’s a true expert at writing contemporary holiday romance.”

—RT Book Reviews

Available in print and ebook.

Pick up your copy today!

www.HQNBooks.com • www.RaeAnneThayne.com

8 15_394_BookPage_Evergreen.indd 1

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

In the latest installment of Sherryl Woods’ Chesapeake Shores series, Willow Brook Road (Mira, $8.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780778317661), Carrie Winters despairs of living up to the success of her family members. It seems that each one of them knows their life’s path, while Carrie continues to wonder where hers will lead. A distraction enters in the form of handsome Sam Winslow, who has suddenly become the guardian of his orphaned nephew. Sam had never considered being a father, but now he’s determined to do right by the boy. The large Winters

2015-08-19 12:56 PM

Suzanne Enoch’s Some Like It Scot (St. Martin’s, $7.99, 368 pages ISBN 9781250041630), the fourth and last book in her Scandalous Highlanders series, is the charming tale of Highlander Munro “Bear” MacLawry and the fiery-haired heroine, Catriona MacColl, who catches Bear’s eye and then steals his heart. As the only unmarried MacLawry sibling, Bear is happy with his single life, and he has successfully ducked all matchmaking overtures. But then he stumbles upon Catriona and her half-sister, Elizabeth, and becomes intrigued by their predicament—and then by the beguiling Cat herself. She tells him she’s hiding Elizabeth from an unwanted wedding, and he’s impressed by how well Cat manages to take care of herself and her sister in a crumbling, abandoned abbey as winter closes in. As he continues to visit with gifts of food and helps with much-needed repairs to their safe haven, the two realize they are kindred souls. But the fighter in each of them understands that they must face the hardest battle yet when Cat’s final secret is revealed, and Bear realizes it might threaten the safety of his family.

Fast-paced, fun and flirtatious, this historical romance will take readers on a delicious and delightful journey to love.

BOOK CLUBS

BY JULIE HALE

Weathering the storm Richard Ford adds an unforgettable new chapter to the life of Frank Bascombe in Let Me Be Frank with You (Ecco, $14.99, 272 pages, ISBN 9780061692079). The protagonist of Ford’s award-winning Sportswriter trilogy, Frank—now 68— takes stock of his life in New Jersey in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Along with the state’s coastline, the storm has forever altered Frank’s psychological landscape, and he struggles to come to terms with loss and change. Once a real estate agent, twice married, he is back in Haddam, the New Jersey ’burb he called home in The Sportswriter. Frank’s story unfolds over the course of four narratives. His first wife, Ann, has Parkinson’s disease and contacts him from the nursing home where she lives, leading Frank to ponder the demise of their marriage. Frank also reconnects with an old friend, who shares a disturbing admission about his past. The many pleasures of Ford’s writing—the wry intelligence and beautifully observed details—are on full display in this compassionate novel.

PAST AND PRESENT In her provocative novel How to Be Both (Anchor, $15.95, 336 pages, ISBN 9780307275257), Ali Smith presents in a single volume a pair of narratives—one set in the present, one in the past—that complement and enfold one another in a magical way. Like the 2014 hardcover, this paperback edition is being published in two versions that arrange the chapters in different ways, and the reader won’t know which narrative he’ll find until he cracks open his copy.

One version opens with the con-

temporary story of George (or Georgia), a teen who is grieving for her mother after a vacation in Italy.

During the trip they saw a painting

by Renaissance artist Francesco del Cossa.

The other version begins with an account of Francesco himself—his adolescence, his work on a fresco in Ferrara and his secret, which is revealed in different ways in the two narratives. Both storylines are mesmerizing. Smith switches skillfully between modern-day speech and a 15th-century idiom. A finalist for the Man Booker Prize, her latest book is a fascinating exploration of gender, history and the nature of storytelling.

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS Marilynne Robinson takes readers back to the town of Gilead, Iowa, in Lila (Picador, $16, 272 pages, ISBN 9781250074843), a stirring, beautifully crafted novel that was nominated for the National Book Award. Lila is a lonely young woman without a home when she meets the elderly Reverend John Ames, whom Robinson introduced in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead. Raised by a vagabond woman named Doll, with whom she lived an itinerant life, Lila is rough around the edges and distrustful of kindness. Yet she warms to Ames and becomes his wife. They share a longing for love, but their views on spiritual matters differ, and the reservations Lila has about the Bible’s teachings make Ames question his own heart. Despite—or perhaps because of—their differences, the love between Lila and Ames blossoms.

Robinson’s many fans won’t be disappointed by this return to Gilead.

Lila is a probing, radiant novel with the makings of a classic.

Fantastic

Book Club Reads for Fall Food Whore

by Jessica Tom

“Food Whore brilliantly navigates New York’s glittering gourmonster scene, with drool-inducing cuisine, hilarious observations, and a clever story that will find its way to your stomach and heart.”

—Jill Kargman, Author and Creator of Bravo’s Odd Mom Out

Everything She Forgot

by Lisa Ballantyne

“Ballantyne’s effortless prose took me across the Atlantic and didn’t let me return until its surprising and satisfying conclusion. A tight story that comes full circle and keeps you reading.”

—Bryan Reardon, author of Finding Jake

The Great Christmas Knit-Off

by Alexandra Brown The perfect seasonal tale of how laughter, friends and wacky Christmas sweaters can mend a broken heart.

The Mystics of Mile End

by Sigal Samuel

“A novel that takes up enormous questions - about the very nature of existence - with both profound intelligence and galloping humor.”

— Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year

@Morrow_PB

@bookclubgirl

William Morrow

Book Club Girl

9

columns

LIFESTYLES

COOKING

BY JOANNA BRICHETTO

BY SYBIL PRATT

Haute vegan cuisine

Embrace the wild world

Though at least one vegan cookbook arrives at my door every week, I’ve never been intrigued enough to review any of them.

Then Crossroads (Artisan, $35, 304 pages, ISBN 9781579656362) arrived, and my vegan-avoidance vanished. Chef and author Tal Ronnen is a classically trained pro who cooks Mediterranean food that’s all plant-based and all ­wonderful —robust, textured and flavorful enough to satisfy the cravings of carnivores and omnivores.

Two landscape design experts have teamed up to write a pragmatic manifesto in Planting in a Post-Wild World (Timber Press, $39.95, 316 pages, ISBN 9781604695533). The book’s subtitle makes the authors’ objective even clearer: Thomas Rainer and Claudia West have their minds set on “Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes.” The key is learning how to utilize the different layers (structural, seasonal, functional) through which

His cooking is not about finding substitutes for meat, but about creating exciting vegetable-centric dishes that will never elicit an exasperated “Where’s the beef?” Ronnen’s recipes are not quick fixes, but they are truly worth the extra time and thought. Some are right for casual weeknights, some for weekend dinner parties. No-hassle Pickled Vegetables are great anytime, while Leek Pâté with Lentil Skillet Bread is a grand starter for a grand dinner. I could eat fabulous Fig Caponata with Polenta Fries every day, not to mention meaty Fried Oyster Mushrooms and herb ricotta (made from almonds) stuffed Cappellacci with vibrant Spinach Cream Sauce. Finish up with a divinely Decadent Dark Chocolate Cake. Viva vegan!

by reminiscences, stories and practical info. This is the food that represents his “culinary heart and soul,” the recipes he has tweaked, improved and played with during his contented, creative years in his own kitchen. More than 200 recipes range over every menu category from Salmon Tos­tadas to Parisian Potage, Sole Vin Blanc, Lamb Breast Navarin, Edamame Ragout, Apple Galette and Chocolate Soufflés. And Pépin encourages you to tinker with his recipes so they’ll reflect your heart and soul.

TOP PICK IN COOKBOOKS

Ruth Reichl had been the editor of Gourmet for 10 years when Condé Nast suddenly pulled the plug in 2009. Life for this eminent, shining star of the food world changed overnight. Miserable, adrift, Reichl did what she’s always done when the going gets tough: She disappeared into the kitchen.

My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life (Random House, $35, 352 pages, ISBN 9781400069989) is the happy result of that unhappy time. It’s a culinary memoir with recipes; instead of the usual header notes, she links recipes with a running, charmingly candid commentary about her mood, the season, the event or non-event that sparked her to THE MASTER’S KITCHEN cook a particular dish. Reichl is a wonderful writer and a passionJacques Pépin, master chef, ate, imaginative cook who revels teacher and cookbook author, turns 80 this year. But this birthday in the physical act of cooking and boy has given us a present: a fabu- in thinking about food. Her joy is lous new cookbook to treasure for infectious: I want to make every single dish, from super-comforting the next 80 years, at least. Jacques Pépin: Heart & Soul in the Kitchen Shirred Eggs with Potato Purée (Rux Martin, $35, 448 pages, ISBN to Salmon with Rhubarb Glaze to 9780544301986) is a big, beautiful, Perfect Pound Cake—“the little leisurely look at what Pépin cooks black dress of the pastry world.” at home for quiet evenings or It’s great to have Reichl back in the larger gatherings, all punctuated kitchen with us.

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a variety of plants can coexist in a space based on your climate. There is a great hopefulness at work in this book, and it shines through in every striking turn of phrase, photo (there are more than 300 ­images), delightfully drawn chart and diagram. The authors inspire optimism in planting design and insist upon developing a deeper understanding of the gap between the natural world and human lives and how it is widening at an alarming rate. This is not your typical how-to book about garden design. Rainer and West have compiled a comprehensive alternative to traditional, fussy horticulture and encourage you to let your garden grow wild.

NO KNITTING REQUIRED I have a friend who runs a popular knitting blog, but I can’t help feeling a little lost when I see photos of her beautiful, complex projects. Thank goodness, then, for Laura McFadden. Her incredibly fun Knitless: 50 No-Knit, Stash-Busting Yarn Projects (Running Press, $18, 160 pages, ISBN 9780762456642) is for experienced knitters and novices alike. Even your cat couldn’t have as much fun with a stray ball of yarn as you’ll have with all of the fabulous projects here. Who knew there were

so many ways those multicolored threads could be put to use without a knitting needle? Inside you’ll find some accessories for the home (rugs, a clock, lampshades) and for your outfits (jewelry, scarves, bags), along with some simple art projects. The last chapter has great gift ideas like embroidered notebook covers, greeting cards and gift wrap.

McFadden clearly lists the materials and instructions for each design, and plenty of photos along with handy design templates ensure any kind of knitter can follow along.

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES “About 40 percent of all food in the United States does not get eaten.” Author Dana Gunders’ disturbing pronouncement sets the scene for Waste Free Kitchen Handbook: A Guide to Eating Well and Saving Money by Wasting Less Food (Chronicle, $18.95, 256 pages, ISBN 9781452133546). Gunders, a scientist and self-described warrior against food waste, details all the places waste can happen from field to fridge, and then shows us how we can make a difference. Her big message can be tackled with small steps that focus on how we shop, cook, store, eat and dispose of food. Tear-out checklists, educational infographics and strategies make a no-waste goal achievable, and Gunders offers options for a range of living circumstances and family sizes in this practical handbook. How, for instance, can you compost scraps when living in a high-rise apartment? Especially handy is her chapter of recipes that repurpose random leftovers (like red wine, tortilla chips or notso-crisp lettuce) in surprisingly delicious ways.

AUDIO

BY SUKEY HOWARD

A standout series Could this really be number 24? It doesn’t seem that long ago (certainly not more than 33 years!) that I was working for Sue Grafton’s publisher and read the manuscript for A Is for Alibi. I knew we had a winner—a fresh voice, a scrappy, smart female P.I. with the right mix of tough and tender, a wry take on life, well-aimed wit, a predilection for social justice and an unusual backstory. Grafton’s alphabet mystery series is now up to X (Random House Audio, $45, 12.5 hours, ISBN

9780385393935) and the audio is read, as always, by the talented Judy Kaye who, over the years, the cases and the ­corpses, has become the very voice and spirit of investigator Kinsey Millhone. I don’t know how Grafton’s done it, but she’s kept the series bright, engaging and filled with truly believable characters and cleverly plotted mysteries. X is for excellent and proves her gifts once again. Disparate deaths, past and present, twist together and point to a suspicious sociopath who may be the serial killer they’re after. Sad to think that there are only two more letters in the alphabet.

SOBERING UP I have to admit to my own addiction to addiction memoirs, which allow me to live through someone else’s often wild, self-destructive behavior, then watch them right themselves. So the arc of Sarah Hepola’s Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget (Hachette Audio, $30, 7.5 hours, ISBN 9781478904762) was a given.

But what I didn’t anticipate was the sting in her writing, her fearless candor, raw humor and willingness to finally come to grips with her deep-seated drinking problem.

Hepola started on her drinking

career early.

At age 7, she snuck sips from open beer cans in the fridge; by 13, aided by wine coolers, she had troubling first-time sex with an older boy.

When she began writing professionally, she couldn’t find her groove without the foamy abandon and last-call bravado that beer, and lots of it, provided. Her blackouts, and the next-day remorse for that oblivion, came on early, too.

She explains how blackouts work and looks at her own drinking in the fascinating context of how alcohol is ingrained in our social fabric. A surprisingly gifted narrator, Hepola reads, making her story even more powerful and immediate.

AUTUMN GLORY _____ from Macmillan Audio _____ READ BY ROBERT PETKOFF WITH BILL O’REILLY

The violent assault that changed a presidency

READ BY THE AUTHOR

“The next Tina Fey has arrived.”

—AudioFile on Let’s Pretend This Never Happened

READ BY CHRISTINA DELAINE

“A taut, smart thriller...

Not to be missed.”

—Library Journal, starred review

TOP PICK IN AUDIO When 9-year-old Laurent, a charming teller of tall tales, careens into the idyllic, off-the-map village of Three Pines claiming to have seen a huge gun with a monster on it in the woods, no one believes him, not even Armand Gamache, the former chief inspector of the Sûreté du Québec. But when Laurent is found murdered, and the gun is found to be real, Gamache calls on Isabelle Lacoste, now in charge of homicide at the Sûreté, for help. As The Nature of the Beast (Macmillan Audio, $39.99, 12.5 hours, ISBN 9781427263865), the 11th book in Louise Penny’s captivating Gamache series, picks up pace, an intriguing whodunit wrapped in much larger moral questions unfolds. That mammoth gun, a weapon of mass destruction in their midst, takes Gamache into the malevolent world of arms dealers, decades-old secrets and real evil. Robert Bathurst has taken over as series narrator and honors Ralph Cosham’s eloquent legacy.

READ BY THE AUTHOR

Ann Romney talks candidly about her journey with Multiple Sclerosis in this heartfelt memoir.

READ BY EUAN MORTON

“Carry On is a triumph.”

—Lev Grossman

READ BY SUSAN BENNETT “This is heartbreaking dramatic suspense that will have listeners hooked.”

—Booklist on The Silent Sister

11

features

BEHIND THE BOOK

A royal life story, told through the eyes of a sidelined little sister

© NINA SUBIN

B Y E M I LY H O L L E M A N

A

large-animal veterinarian, the first female Major League pitcher, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Like many kids, I had a lot of far-flung ideas about what I wanted to be when I grew up. But what I really wanted to be was my older sister.

Three years my senior, Julia was by definition better at everything than I was. She was taller, skinnier and prettier. She had longer hair and neater handwriting. She came up with better stories, funnier Mad Libs. As we passed into our teenage years, I grew jealous of her boyfriends, the effect she had on men.

There was nothing worth doing that Julia hadn’t done better—and first.

And so, when I stumbled upon the name Arsinoe sometime in late 2010, it should come as no surprise that I was immediately drawn to the story of Cleopatra’s forgotten younger sister. An avatar of my childhood and adolescent self, fawning and yearning and aching over her sibling’s successes, she felt deeply familiar. What little can be gleaned about Arsinoe’s life: She metamorphosed from Cleopatra’s close ally (the two fled Alexandria to raise an army against their brother) to the queen’s bitter

CLEOPATRA’S SHADOWS

By Emily Holleman

Little, Brown, $27, 352 pages ISBN 9780316382984, eBook available

DEBUT FICTION

12

enemy (two years later, Arsinoe rebelled against her sister). Before I knew it, I was hooked. I wanted to rewrite the famous ruler’s saga, tracing not Cleopatra’s rise and fall but Arsinoe’s: the sisterly bonds fraying and snapping beneath history’s unyielding heft. I envisioned the first scraping of that fray: the moment of their half-sister Berenice’s coup, when their father, King Ptolemy, fled to Rome A debut with Cleopatra, author leaving Arsinoe to her fate. reveals the When I first personal imagined the inspiration book that became for her Cleopatra’s Shadows, it was historical as a vehicle for series.

Arsinoe’s story, the younger sister’s story. Though the gaps in our experience were vast and obvious— my family, to my great chagrin, has never ruled a dynasty—we shared that acute feeling of abandonment, betrayal. Julia had never left me in a physical or dramatic sense, but by the time I was 8 or 9—Arsinoe’s age when the novel begins—my sister had hit the throes of preteen angst, as keen to shirk familial ties as I was to cling to them. For middle school, for college, for adulthood, younger siblings are by definition always left behind. And so those sentiments came easily, paired with a reimagining of a Hellenistic childhood interrupted, the idyllic days of a princess torn asunder by revolt.

Only later, after the idea for the novel had percolated for some time, did I decide to include a second perspective, that of the eldest sister, the rebel Berenice who seized on local hatred of her

father and plotted her way onto the throne. At first, this alternate narrator emerged as a foil: Every protagonist needs an antagonist.

And yet, the more I wrote, the more I researched—the body of history devoted to Berenice’s rule is slim, but that concerning Arsinoe’s girlhood slimmer still—the more I became fascinated by the elder sister.

A decade before Cleopatra had shunted aside her brothers to rule Egypt on her own, another woman of her family had done the same, sending her own father squalling off to Rome, begging for an army to retake his seat. What brilliant and defiant sort of woman managed that?

I was also intrigued by how family and birth order shaped Berenice’s predicament. Her point of view yielded—for me—a far more alien perspective: the one where life and stability were fragmented by the arrival of babe after squealing babe. As the youngest of four, I was born to my place. No world had ever existed in which I was an only child, no memory where I hadn’t always had a brother and two sisters. Berenice’s identity was rooted in the opposite experience: that of watching her family grow, develop and ultimately collapse. She looked on as her mother’s role was taken by a concubine, as her own was taken by Cleopatra. By the age of 19, Berenice had been dismissed by everyone who mattered at the

Alexandrian court—but she refused to accept obscurity. She flailed and fought against it, seizing power at once owed to and stolen from her.

Rather than a mirror for Arsinoe, a shadow to the younger sister’s sun, she emerged as a hero unto herself.

The early drafts of Cleopatra’s Shadows were fueled by my urge to explore a likeness, the pathos that I felt for poor, abandoned Arsinoe.

And yet the more time I spent in Berenice’s head, the more obsessed I became with her, the other sister, that eldest child I’d never been. I began this novel because I wanted to tell Arsinoe’s story, not Berenice’s. But by the time I’d written the final words, I had come to love both sisters with equal ferocity.

Emily Holleman launches a gripping historical saga with ­Cleopatra’s Shadows, her debut novel. The Tudor court has nothing on the ruthlessness of the Ptolemaic dynasty, built on alliances as shifting as the Egyptian sands. Holleman, a former editor for Salon.com, lives and writes in Brooklyn. She is currently working on a sequel to Cleopatra’s Shadows.

interview

JOSEPH FINK & JEFFREY CRANOR

A weird, wild trip to Night Vale

J

oseph Fink claims he’s calling from a New Jersey beach. I prefer to imagine that his spotty cell reception is actually because he’s calling from a dark bunker in an undisclosed location.

That somehow seems more appropriate for a co-author of Welcome to Night Vale, the new novel based on the wildly popular podcast of the same name.

In case you’re late to the Night Vale party, here’s a quick recap: Fink, along with Jeffrey Cranor, created a podcast called “Welcome to Night Vale” in 2012. A traveling live show based on the podcasts came a couple of years later. Night Vale is, as Cranor describes it, “in the non-specific American southwest desert, where ghosts and government and angels are commonplace and people go about their lives.”

The Night Vale podcasts are presented as a radio show hosted by a guy named Cecil Gershwin Palmer, who shares news about the town in a soothing, friendly and NPRish voice. Slate named the pilot episode as one of the best podcasts ever.

The shows are somewhat in the vein of “A Prairie Home Companion,” only completely weird and surreal. In a recent episode, a sentient patch of haze with a wicked Midwestern accent, Deb, comes on the air with Cecil to bring a message from sponsor

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

By Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor

Harper Perennial, $19.99, 416 pages ISBN 9780062351425, audio, eBook available

FANTASY

Jo-Ann Fabrics. Also, the highway department presents a public service announcement, read by Cecil, in which they remind Night Vale residents to buckle up, then hunker down, then forget everything, remember everything and open their eyes to what is really going on.

“Time doesn’t work in Night Vale,” someone says in the book.

And they’re right. The podcasts are unsettling, funny and deeply addictive, and the novel is a pitch-perfect spin on them.

But back to the phone call with Cranor, calling in to talk with us from New York City, and Fink, calling in from a secret location that we all know was not really on the Jersey shore. Though the two have written together for five years—they wrote and performed a play in the East Village of Manhattan before they started Night Vale—they say co-writing a novel based on a beloved podcast was an exhilarating challenge.

“We just trusted each other,” Fink said. “We would build on what the other person was writing.”

“At the very get-go, it was a completely different medium than the podcasts or live shows, where all our writing goes in someone’s ear,” Cranor says. “Once I recognized that challenge, it was a lot easier.

There is a nice benefit of having built the Night Vale world already.

There is some shorthand. So when [Fink] says, ‘Let’s have a scene take place here,’ I know where that is.

We decided early on how we would explore the town—new and old characters—and give them a life not from Cecil’s point of view.”

In the novel, Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro, who has been 19 as long as she can remember, is handed a piece of paper by a stranger. The paper reads, “KING

CITY.” Jackie has no idea what to do with this paper or what it means, and despite her efforts to wash the paper down the shower, throw it away or burn it, it keeps returning to her hand.

Even after an accident requires Jackie to get a cast on her arm, she knows the paper is still there.

“When this A creepy desert comes off, I’ll be holding a town comes to paper that says life in a novel ‘KING CITY,’ inspired by the and I’ll keep holding it for much-loved centuries, not podcast. growing old, not growing at all, still in Night Vale, like I always have been,” she says in the hospital. “I’m never going to get my life back. I’m never going to get a life.

I’ll be 19-year-old Jackie Fierro, no purpose, one slip of paper, forever.”

Jackie finds herself obsessed with finding out the meaning of the note. At the same time, in the same town, Diane Crayton is a single mom struggling to raise her son Josh, who is a teenager and—of course—also a shape-shifter who likes to become, say, a spider while driving. Josh begins searching for his birth father, and ultimately, Jackie discovers a connection with Josh she never imagined.

Diane was a character who popped up in early podcasts as a throwaway, but Cranor wanted to explore her story more in the novel.

“She just sort of stuck with me,” he said. “I just wanted to think more

© NINA SUBIN

BY AMY SCRIBNER

about Diane. Does she have kids?

She’s definitely on the PTA. She’s a character who would be hard to develop just through Cecil. I gave her more breadth.”

Fink, on the other hand, wanted to explore Jackie. “She has been in my head for quite awhile,” he says. “Originally she was just a very creepy idea.”

Don’t worry; there’s still plenty of Cecil and some of the other characters that podcast fans know and love and obsessively follow. Night Vale’s popularity has spawned many Tumblr sites and volumes of fan fiction, all of which the authors deeply appreciate, and none of which they read.

“I’m super thrilled that it exists,” Cranor says. “As a writer, I just don’t want that in my head. It’s an expression of love to build a fan canon, but it would conflict with my own ideas. I need to make sure I’m not muddying my own ideas.”

The fans of Night Vale are as eclectic as the town itself.

“We have all sorts of fans,” Fink says. “Teens come [to the live shows] with their parents and grandparents, and that’s a really cool thing when they all enjoy it for a different reason.”

Welcome to Night Vale lives up to the podcast hype in every way. It is a singularly inventive visit to an otherworldly town that’s the stuff of nightmares and daydreams.

13

cover story

JOJO MOYES

BY CARLA JEAN WHITLEY

© STINE HEILMANN

Following up a surprise hit with a sequel to savor

S

ometimes a character appears in an author’s imagination fully formed. All the writer needs to do is offer him or her a blank page on which to play.

So it was for British writer Jojo Moyes, who hit the bestseller list in America for the first time with her tear-jerking ninth novel, Me Before You. Will Traynor and Louisa Clark, the central characters in the wordof-mouth hit—which has sold more than 5 million copies since it was published in 2012—came to Moyes fleshed out, ready for action. And as Moyes prepared to revisit Lou in the sequel, After You, that sensation resurfaced. Sometimes, lightning strikes twice.

“It’s the same thing again, where all you have to do is put yourself in a room with a new situation and it’s easy to write,” she says, during a telephone call to her home in London.

This time, the character who hit the ground running is Lily, a teenager who shows up on Lou’s doorstep. Lou has embraced new experiences since Will’s death, including an extended stay in Paris

AFTER YOU

By Jojo Moyes

Pamela Dorman , $26.95, 368 pages ISBN 9780525426592, audio, eBook available

FICTION

14

and purchasing a condo in London. But she’s become stuck, unable or unwilling to move forward.

Lily might provide just the push Lou needs.

“They never left me, those characters. Normally, you move on to something else,” Moyes says.

This is the first time Moyes, the author of a dozen books, has written a sequel. “I’m wary to be seen as writing [this book] because Me Before You had done so well,” she says. “But literally I had one of those moments where I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and sat bolt upright.”

Even with that epiphany and her so-believable-they-seem-real characters, Moyes says she was well aware of the pressures of writing a sequel as compared to a standalone book.

“I felt the weight of expectation.

Everything I did in this book, I almost could hear the readers saying, no, I don’t want that to happen!”

Fear not, readers—Moyes was careful that Lou’s character stayed consistent from the first book to the second. But that means Lou’s decision-making skills remain the same, and she doesn’t always operate in her own best interest.

“Everyone kind of assumed she’d sail off into the sunset and live a new life. But knowing Lou, she’s a sensitive soul. She might do that initially, but what she’d been part of would not be easy to walk away from,” Moyes says.

After You is an immersive experience, inviting readers back into the homes of the characters they fell in love with in Me Before You. They’ll experience the mourning that follows a devastating loss, and the glimmers of hope that propel

the brokenhearted forward. And, like Me Before You, After You is a book that is best leapt into without knowing much about the plot, which explains the slight vagueness Moyes uses when discussing it.

“It’s partly a book about what happens when you’re left in the wake of somebody else’s decision, whether that be a divorce or the decision for someone to take their own life,” Moyes says. “I’m always fascinated by the way people are entitled to follow their own path.”

While Lou remains a central character, readers will again visit the Clark and Traynor families in all their glory. The quirky Clarks serve as a lighthearted counterpoint to the grief-laden Traynors, whose marriage has crumbled after the loss of their son. Will’s death weighs heavy, and his presence permeates After You as his loved ones make decisions informed by his life—or their loss. “[T]he moment you opened the box, let out even a whisper of your sadness, it would mushroom into a cloud that overwhelmed all other

conversation,” Lou thinks as she tries to decide how much to tell a new acquaintance about her past.

From that, readers might draw lessons of their own. Moyes is a believer in the power of fiction to change hearts and minds. “Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from fiction,” she says. “One of the greatest things you learn from fiction is empathy. If you can’t empathize with someone else’s position, it makes a rigid adult.”

She’s not concerned with maintaining appearances with regard to what she reads; recent titles include a thriller by fellow Brit Lee Child and Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton, a collection of photo essays based on the blog of the same name.

Nor is Moyes worried about how her own work is classified. “I’ve never pretended that my books are literary fiction. But what I do believe is you can write commercial fiction that is quality. I know what I put into my books, how hard I work with the language, to make sure everything has a proper

rhythm,” she says.

If sales are anything to go by, Moyes has accomplished that goal.

Though her novels are serious page-turners and cover a wide range of topics and time periods, they all contain memorable characters and resonant themes.

Moyes is a hard worker as well; she’s published almost a novel per year since she first started writing in 2002. Now that After You is out in the world, the author is planning on taking a bit of a writing break.

“I’m not going to think about writing another book until In a satisfying the end of the sequel, Moyes year. I just brings readers don’t have the mental space,” back into the she says. world of ‘Me She’s been busy Before You.’ with movies recently: The film adaptation of Me Before You, which stars Emilia Clark (“Game of Thrones”) as Lou and Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games) as Will, is set to debut next June, and Moyes has a screenwriting credit.

“I’m also moving house. Before I spoke to you, I spent an hour painting a floor. I thought to myself, oh, the glamorous life of an international bestseller,” Moyes adds, laughing.

In the meantime, she’s looking forward to taking her three children along for the After You American book tour.

“American audiences are so demonstrative. English audiences are usually not as demonstrative,” Moyes says. (She has carried observations like these into her work; in After You, Moyes writes of Lou’s reaction to Will’s father: “If he had been anybody else I might have hugged him just then, but we were English and he had once been my boss of sorts, so we simply smiled awkwardly at each other.”)

There’s one more national difference that’s pretty important to a best-selling author like Moyes.

“In the United States, if they ask how many books you’ve sold, you say 5 million copies, and they break into applause. In England, they’re like, oh, stop showing off.”

Do you know

COCO?

On Sale September 2015

A Picture Book About Coco Chanel! “. . . as a picture book, it is utterly endearing.”

—Kirkus Reviews

978-0-7358-4239-7 • $16.95

www.northsouth.com

15

meet EMILY FLAKE

the title of your new book?

Q: What’s

JOHN PASTORE

Celebrating Female Sleuths

Suspenseful & Romantic Reads for the Fall

From Ingram Publisher Services

Q: Describe the book in one sentence.

One Murder More Inkshares

To exonerate her friend a California lobbyist must hone her detective skills to find the true killer behind a slew of stabbings.

“An irresistible political thriller. . .”

—Robert Dugoni, #1 Amazon-and New York Times-bestselling author of My Sister s Grave

was your most irrational fear during pregnancy?

Q: What

Farewell to Dreams

Edgy Reads Fatal Insomnia Book #1—Available 10/13

A cryptic message from a dead nun leads Dr. Angela Rossi on a quest to save a girl and into an unexpected last chance at love.

“A major triumph . . . a remarkable medical thriller equal to . . . Robin Cook or Michael Crichton.” —Douglas Preston, New York Times-bestselling author

Q: What was the worst piece of parenting advice you received?

Q: Why IS my baby crying?

Shroud of Roses Dundurn Press

The Class of 2000 left behind a skeleton in its closet, and 15 years later someone is coming for the rest of the grads, including Bliss Moonbeam Cornwall.

Q: Name the top 3 ways that having a baby changed your life.

“Bliss’s character . . . provides shots of humor as her determination, cunning, and manipulative ways get her into, and out of, trouble.”—Publisher’s Weekly

Beautiful Storm

Hyde Street Press Lightning Strikes Book #1 A murder with no body? After witnessing a crime Alicia Monroe sets off to find the missing woman, only to meet an attractive, but brooding man in a new romantic suspense series.

“Barbara Freethy is a master storyteller . . .”

—Romance Reviews Today

16

MAMA TRIED A cartoonist for The New Yorker since 2008, Emily Flake takes a hilarious look at the joys and horrors of motherhood in Mama Tried: Dispatches from the Seamy Underbelly of Modern Parenting (Grand Central, $24, 192 pages, ISBN 9781455558230), a collection of essays and comics. Flake, pictured above with daughter Tug, lives in Brooklyn.

features

SHORT STORIES

BY MICHAEL MAGRAS

Tales that pack a powerful punch

S

ome people would have you believe that short stories are the literary equivalent of baseball’s minor leagues, a place to hone your skills until you’re ready for a bigger and more prestigious stage. But as masters such as Alice Munro have proven, a great short story is no less of an achievement than a great novel.

These four collections demonstrate that a new generation of authors is happy to experiment with the possibilities of the short form.

The most audacious collection here is Only the Animals (FSG, $25, 256 pages, ISBN 9780374226633) by the South African and Australian writer Ceridwen Dovey. How’s this for a daring conceit: Each story is written from the perspective of an animal killed in a conflict wrought by humans. And an author appears in almost every narrative.

A cat owned by Colette escapes from the author’s car and witnesses horrors on the front lines in France during World War I. Chimpanzees in Germany who are being trained to adopt human characteristics become more refined even as food rationing dehumanizes men and women. A dolphin born into captivity writes to Sylvia Plath, “a human writer who meant something to me,” to explain the circumstances by which the dolphin performed echolocation activities for the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program.

Seeing events through an animal’s eyes gives us an outsider’s perspective on major events in recent history, including atrocities like the rise of Nazi Germany and the wars in the Middle East. In forcing us to do so, Dovey suggests that some animals have a capacity for empathy that humans would do well to emulate.

RUSSIAN JEWELS The Tsar of Love and Techno (Hogarth, $25, 352 pages, ISBN 9780770436438) by Anthony Marra (A Constellation of Vital Phenomena) is an intricately structured and powerful collection. These interconnected stories set in Russia span more than 70 years.

They begin with the tale of Roman Markin, a “correction artist” who works for the Department of Party Propaganda and Agitation. His job is to airbrush images of political dissenters out of photographs and paintings. One of the dissenters is his younger brother, Vaska.

In memory of his brother, Roman draws tiny portraits of Vaska in the pictures he censors,

EVERYDAY PROBLEMS

including a photo of a ballerina who looks like Vaska’s widow and a painting of a dacha in a pasture.

The painting links tales of the ballerina’s granddaughter, a telephone operator at a nickel combine who wins the Miss Siberia pageant and marries the 14th richest man in Russia; a former deputy art director who, after the 1999 bombing of Chechnya, is forced to become head of the Chechen Tourist Bureau; and a soldier who carries a mix tape his brother gave him before his first tour of duty.

This collection showcases Marra’s wit and his gift for unforgettable details, such as when a soldier fires a round into the earth to loosen it before he digs a grave.

Some characters are capable of great brutality, whereas others are capable of declaring that no invention is “more humane, more elegant, more generous” than the wheelchair ramp. The Tsar of Love and Techno is the work of an elegant and generous writer.

ant observations about challenges faced by millennials.

A 20-year-old woman from Los Angeles travels to Acapulco to see her distant mother and to announce that she’s a lesbian. “Mike Anonymous” is a quietly devastating story of a woman who works at a clinic that helps people with sexually transmitted diseases, and of a married Japanese man convinced that he’s HIV positive. And in the title story, a high school senior applies to Princeton and struggles to lose the reputation she earned several times over in 11th grade.

Holmes, whose work has appeared in outlets like Granta and Guernica, has a keen ear for dialogue and a sharp memory for the high school life, as proven in the description of a student who “removed her retainer with her tongue and spit it onto her desk every time she was about to say something in class.” Barbara the Slut contains surprisingly tender depictions of love and family,

Lauren Holmes’ debut, Barbara the Slut and Other People (Riverhead, $27.95, 272 pages, ISBN 9781594633782), is lighter fare than the previous books, but don’t equate light with inconsequential.

Holmes’ deceptively breezy stories focus on women grappling with sexual politics and make import-

which show that you should never judge a book by its title.

HOME TO KANSAS Andrew Malan Milward focuses on the rich history of his home state of Kansas in his second collection, I Was a Revolutionary (Harper, $24.99, 272 pages, ISBN 9780062377319). Milward’s hometown of Lawrence has been the site of significant moments in American history, including pro-slavery guerrillas’ 1863 massacre of abolitionists—the largest act of domestic terrorism until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

He recreates many such historical moments in these stories.

The protagonist of “The Burning of Lawrence,” which chronicles the 1863 killings, is the Confederate guerrilla fighter William Quantrill. “The Americanist,” a modern-day story about a gay couple, invokes John Romulus Brinkley, the “Goat Gland Doctor” of the 1920s who injected goat testicles into men to improve their virility.

“What Is to Be Done?” presents the eccentric sculptor Samuel Perry Dinsmoor, a retired teacher who, in later years, was known to lecture about socialism to a roomful of invisible students.

Milward’s habit of providing excessive historical detail diminishes the tension at times, but when he minimizes background information, as he does in the brilliant title piece, the results are compelling. There are lovely, unexpected touches: A pro-slavery fighter in “The Burning of Lawrence” trashes an abolitionist’s home, but pauses long enough to play the family’s organ with “long-dormant familiarity.”

Throughout the book, Milward makes astute observations about politics, not only about the political climate of past eras but also of our own—a rarity in contemporary American fiction.

Who says short-story writers occupy a low rung on the literary hierarchy? As these collections prove, great short fiction not only is its own major league but also boasts an impressive lineup that any contingent would envy.

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reviews

FICTION

T PI OP CK

extraordinary power of ordinary moments.

—STEPHANIE KIRKLAND

AFTER THE PARADE

THE GILDED LIFE OF MATILDA DUPLAINE

A true Hollywood story REVIEW BY MATTHEW JACKSON

The seedy, soap opera-tinged underbelly of Hollywood is fertile ground for fiction. Los Angeles resident Alex Brunkhorst makes the most of that setting in her second novel, the suspenseful and romantic The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine. It’s the star-crossed story of two lives that are wildly different yet forever intertwined.

Thomas Cleary is a journalist who’s never lived the high life. He comes from the working class, and despite being surrounded by the Hollywood elite, he’s never really mingled with them. That all changes when he’s assigned to write an obituary for a Hollywood mogul, which leads him to Matilda Duplaine. Matilda is beautiful, charming and instantly memorable, but she’s also a mystery, a young woman who has never left the grounds of the estate where she grew up. As Thomas’ fascination with Matilda deepens, he yearns to show her the outside world, even as he comes to discover that her very existence contains a

By Alex Brunkhorst secret that will shake both of their lives.

Mira, $26.99, 320 pages Thomas’ narration lends the story personality, sensitivity and wit.

ISBN 9780778317531, audio, eBook available We see the alien world of Hollywood’s richest through an outsider’s eyes, giving the novel a vicarious appeal. And Brunkhorst, who has POPULAR FICTION worked as a luxury real estate agent in California, knows that glittering world well enough to make it feel real to readers. Matilda is a fascinating character, full of Golden Age Hollywood affectations and eccentricities that stem from her life in exile, but we see her only through Thomas, who first mythologizes her, then strips her down to who she really is, odd upbringing and all. This creates an interesting dual perspective and a sense that we’re watching not one, but two people slowly come to grips with reality. When that reality finally hits, it’s shattering.

The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine is a fascinating, bittersweet journey into the heart of modern-day Hollywood—the perfect treat for readers who love both doomed romances and Tinseltown fables.

COME RAIN OR COME SHINE

By Jan Karon

Putnam $27.95, 304 pages ISBN 9780399167454 Audio, eBook available POPULAR FICTION

Jan Karon, author of the bestselling series of Mitford novels, is back with another that readers won’t want to miss. Come Rain or Come Shine picks up where Karon’s last novel left off—with the upcoming marriage of aspiring veterinarian Dooley Kavanagh and his longtime sweetheart, Lace Harper.

In true Mitford style, Dooley and Lace have decided to get married

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in a barn, on the farm they’ve just purchased for Dooley’s vet practice. They want their wedding to be simple, so they’re doing it potluck-style. Of course, nothing is ever as easy as it seems, and the threat of a torrential downpour and 60-mile-per-hour wind makes for a logistical nightmare, not to mention the already grueling task of shuttling guests to various locations on the 100-acre farm.

But with seemingly inexhaustible help from those they hold most dear, the couple has vowed to savor every minute of it.

This beautiful novel examines a Southern tradition—the do-ityourself, at-home wedding—in all of its intricacies, from the cast of characters who make the big day a reality and the new relationships that form in such intimate set-

tings to the surprises that wedding guests will tell stories about for years to come. In this case, readers encounter two unexpected wedding guests, including the farm’s first bull, Choo-Choo, who nearly crashes the wedding at the most inopportune moment.

Karon has a gift for breathing life into small moments that make readers both laugh and cry. In one moment, just days before the wedding, Dooley and Lace test the lights that they’ve strung up in the trees and exchange a heartfelt set of promises that are built on years of history. In another, the couple’s good friend Harley vaults a fence at a near-sprint to get away from the horns of the almighty Choo-Choo.

Come Rain or Come Shine is about immeasurable love, the inevitability of change and the

By Lori Ostlund

Scribner $25, 352 pages ISBN 9781476790107 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION

The challenge for an author who writes about a lonely character is to make that character interesting—and keep him that way.

Happily, this is what Lori Ostlund has done in After the Parade, her sensitive and realistic tale of the excruciatingly lonely Aaron Eng­ lund. What’s intriguing about him is that he seems not to mind his loneliness. This may seem odd, for the difference between loneliness and solitude is that a person minds the former and doesn’t mind the latter. But Aaron holds his pain like a shield against a world that never had much use for him.

The story alternates between scenes of Aaron’s childhood and his early middle age, at a moment when he is contemplating just how life ended up this way. We start with his parents, who should have listened to Philip Larkin and never reproduced in the first place.

Aaron’s dad was a brute who didn’t even bother to hide his hatred of his sensitive son. Aaron’s mother loved him for a time, but abandoned him when he was a teenager. Aaron, too gentle or maybe too passive to embrace his father’s brutality, learns much from this disastrous woman. When we meet Aaron, he is preparing to leave his partner of 20 years with a cold efficiency. At least Aaron tells him goodbye.

Still, Ostlund—a Flannery O’Connor Award winner who spent 15 years shaping this novel—gives us reason to hope for her troubled protagonist. Aaron is befriended by a detective whose childhood was as rotten as his, and a nice man he meets in a café seems interested

FICTION in him. And he is loved—by his ESL students; by his ex-boyfriend, Walter, in spite of everything; and especially by Walter’s sister, whose support helps him do a hard thing near the book’s end. After the Parade is a sad book, but a hopeful one.

—ARLENE McKANIC

THE HEART GOES LAST

By Margaret Atwood

Nan A. Talese $26.95, 320 pages ISBN 9780385540353 Audio, eBook available DYSTOPIAN FICTION

stories originally published by Byliner, The Heart Goes Last is Atwood’s first standalone novel since 2000 and, in many ways, feels like quintessential Atwood. It examines many of the key issues that she has played with throughout her impressive career—the tug-of-war of power and control between citizens and the state, personal autonomy, and corporate and governmental corruption—with the take-no-prisoners ruthlessness that has become her signature. The Heart Goes Last is a heady blend of speculative fiction with noir undertones that is provocative, powerful and will prompt all readers to reassess which parts of their humanity are for sale.

—STEPHENIE HARRISON

Imagine a world in which the economy has tanked, jobs have dried up, society has crumbled, and people are doing anything and everything they can just to scrape by. For most of us, such a cataclysmic state of affairs is all too easy to envision, which makes Margaret Atwood’s latest dystopian thriller, The Heart Goes Last, all the more unsettling and eerily prophetic.

Stan and Charmaine are overworked and overextended. Ever since losing their jobs and their house, they have been living out of their car, squeaking by on tips from Charmaine’s lousy bartending job and doing their best to steer clear of the roving bands of vandals that now roam America.

They can’t remember the last time they had a good night’s sleep or a proper shower, so when they see the commercial for a compound named Consilience that promises stable jobs and secure homes, they decide that this is their golden parachute. Sure, they have to be monitored 24/7, and every other month they swap their home for a stint in prison, but it’s better than the alternative. Or, at least it is for a little while, until the dark side of paradise begins to rear its ugly head, and the two find themselves grappling with the reality—and the dangers—of signing their lives away and all the unexpected things they’ve sacrificed in the process.

A reworking of a series of short

THE CLASP

By Sloane Crosley FSG $26, 384 pages ISBN 9780374124410 Audio, eBook available

sets out on a journey that takes not only him, but also Kezia and Nathaniel, from Miami to New York to France. All three friends experience a level of self-discovery along the way.

Crosley is an innate storyteller and writes with her signature wit and flair. Each character’s flaw—whether it be Victor’s apathy, Kezia’s need to be needed or Nathaniel’s self-absorption—is relatable, and The Clasp speaks to flaws in humanity and friendships in a charming and realistic way.

This novel entertains even as it provokes internal examination of one’s own relationships.

—KATIE STEWART

WE THAT ARE LEFT

By Clare Clark

HMH $28, 464 pages ISBN 9780544129993 Audio, eBook available HISTORICAL FICTION

DEBUT FICTION

Sloane Crosley is a familiar name to many readers of nonfiction, both for her self-deprecating essay collections and her contributions to the New York Times. Now she lends her insight and sense of humor to the world of fiction in a debut novel, The Clasp.

Kezia, Nathaniel and Victor, three friends from college, are reunited at the extravagant wedding of a mutual friend. Though they have been semi-estranged since graduation, all their college feelings resurface in the present day.

Victor harbors feelings for Kezia; Kezia is infatuated with Nathaniel; and Nathaniel is absorbed with himself. Victor, never at his best in social situations, separates from the reception and wakes up to the groom’s mother slapping him the next morning. Her abrupt wakeup call transitions to the story of a valuable necklace that disappeared during the Nazi occupation of France. Consumed with the idea of finding this necklace, Victor

Clare Clark’s novel of the dislocations that befall an aristocratic English family during and right after World War I is beautifully written and enjoyable, but the reader has to wonder if it would have been published had we not been living in the age of “Downton Abbey.” Of course it might have, as the popular TV show has plenty of collateral ancestors of its own: Think Brideshead Revisited and those nice books by Nancy Mitford.

Still, the full name of one of the characters of We That Are Left includes the name Crawford. It’s not Crawley, but it’s close enough for jazz, as they say.

Other parallels include the noble title and the great old estate that comes with it, both slated to be passed on to a distant cousin—though in this case there are very interesting twists. There’s the feckless head of the family who has, like his fathers before him, mismanaged the place to the point that the death duty taxation will make it unsustainable. There’s the sister who becomes a wartime

nurse and the sister who may be good, but is not at all nice. One nod to Brideshead is that part of the story is seen through the eyes of an outsider. That would be Oskar, an Anglo-German math and science prodigy who’s in love first with one sibling, then the other.

But Clark’s novel does its forebears proud, for We That Are Left is engrossing. As in her acclaimed debut, The Great Stink, the characters are vivid and her feel for place is equally superb; the reader experiences the sourness of a London fog, the chill of English rain, the play of light on hair and skin and stone. Clark also seems to know every inch of Cambridge University as well as the arcana of the British system of higher learning.

Her sense of humor is as dry as the Queen’s gin and tonic: Consider the banter between one of the sisters and her creepy, aging suitor/boss, or disenchanted Oskar’s fixation on the pimple growing on his former crush’s chin during a soirée.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a tale of the British upper crust without tangled, tormented, transgressive love affairs and buried family secrets. Clark joins a long line of writers who show us that the myth of the British stiff upper lip is indeed just that.

—ARLENE McKANIC

THE GAP OF TIME

By Jeanette Winterson

Hogarth $25, 288 pages ISBN 9780804141352 eBook available LITERARY FICTION

For more than 400 years, Shakespeare’s works have been performed throughout the world— retold, reinterpreted and reinvented for each generation. Now, the Hogarth Shakespeare series is giving that opportunity to several of the most acclaimed contemporary novelists of our day. British writer Jeanette Winterson is the first to take on the challenge with The Gap of Time, a refashioning of The

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reviews Winter’s Tale. Winterson’s own experience as an adopted child gives a special meaning to this story of an abandoned daughter.

The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s late plays, tells the story of a king, Leontes, whose jealousy results in the death of his beloved wife and the banishment of his infant daughter, Perdita. Through a series of extraordinary (and coincidental) incidents, the family is reunited—although not before tragic losses lead to hard-won lessons.

Winterson places the action in London of the late 1990s, a city reeling from one financial crisis after another. Leo is a successful corporate tycoon; Hermione, his wife, a popular singer; and Paulina is Leo’s longtime personal assistant and conscience. Xeno, a close friend of Leo since boarding school, is a game designer. He has been staying with the family, and when Leo begins to imagine there is more than friendship between Xeno and Hermione, his jealousy catches fire, and his behavior turns irrational.

Shep and his son Clo are the ones to find the abandoned baby Perdita and raise her as family.

They run a jazz club in an unnamed region that feels like rural Louisiana. When Perdita meets Zel, Xeno’s estranged son, he is working as a mechanic for the wily Autolycus—one of Shakespeare’s most lovable rogues who shows up here as a used car salesman and expert poker player who inadvertently brings the young lovers together.

What makes The Gap of Time (the phrase is chosen from the introduction to Act IV and refers to the time between the abandonment and rediscovery of Perdita) so successful, is that Winterson not only cleverly updates the details of the 1610 original but also remains true to the play’s overarching themes of jealousy and revenge, forgiveness and redemption.

Winterson has explored her own adoption in fiction (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit) as well as memoir (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?). She has called The Winter’s Tale an important, almost talismanic text. The Gap of Time is

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FICTION true to one of Shakespeare’s most profound plays in part because Winterson brings to it her own personal story of loss and discovery.

as he’s about to propose, his boss sends him on a mission to deliver a letter to a storied general in the embattled republic of Texas. If he — L A U R E N B U F F E R D doesn’t get back in time—or at all—his beloved will be forced to Visit BookPage.com to read a marry his awful cousin. Naturally, Q&A with Jeanette Winterson.

Zadock encounters every possible obstacle, including a cave filled with bats that may or may not be BATS OF THE REPUBLIC related to the bats that live in the archive of the future world. Will he

By Zachary make it back home?

Thomas Dodson Doubleday The stories circle around and $27.95, 448 pages fold into each other (in one inISBN 9780385539838 stance, literally) to delightful and eBook available dizzying effect. Dodson is a book designer, and the book is subtitled DEBUT FICTION “an illuminated novel.” The often elaborate design serves the story, underscoring the various narrative As you’d imagine from the title, voices and timelines, as well as bats are a key element in Zachary adding visual texture. It’s a pleasure Thomas Dodson’s intricately conto get lost here, though you might structed and elaborately illustrated be glad the author includes a few debut. But the book’s real spirit maps. animal is the ouroboros: a snake —BECKY OHLSEN eating its own tail. Built as a novel within a novel, with supporting THE SECRET CHORD material in the form of letters and journal pages and drawings (all

By Geraldine reproduced here as if photocopied Brooks Viking from an archive), Bats of the Re$27.95, 320 pages public follows a pair of adventurISBN 9780670025770 ous young men, several generaAudio, eBook available tions apart, on similar missions.

The first of these is Zeke ThomHISTORICAL FICTION as, an heir to a senate seat in the citystate of Texas in the year 2143. The post-disaster world he In novels like Year of Wonders, lives in is strictly controlled, with People of the Book and the Pulitzer communities organized around Prize-winning March, Geraldine “life phases” in order to facilitate Brooks has demonstrated an repopulation. Most historical ability to transform history into documents were lost in whatever compelling, distinctive fiction. disaster befell the planet, so now That talent is undiminished in The there’s a recording-and-archiving system with creepy parallels to the Secret Chord, a vivid re-creation of the life of King David. modern world, a nod to the perils Anyone even passingly familiar of ceding privacy to government in with the Hebrew Bible’s account of exchange for security. Zeke’s trouDavid’s life in the books of Samuel, ble begins with a letter he inherits that was never opened or properly Kings and Chronicles knows the highlights: the slaying of Goliarchived—a criminal offense. Will ath, the unifying of the Israelites he report it? after the death of King Saul and Back in 1843, Zadock Thomas— his adulterous relationship with an ancestor to Zeke—also has a Bathsheba, the mother of King problem caused by a mysterious, Solomon. But the achievement of unopened letter. Zadock works at Brooks’ narrative, channeled prinChicago’s new Museum of Flying cipally through the perceptive eye and is in love with the daughter and voice of the prophet Natan, of the museum’s founder. But just

is to create a David who is much more than the traditional brave warrior, powerful ruler and singer of psalms.

Marked by fratricide, attempted parricide, bloody hand-to-hand combat and ceaseless political intrigue, the energy of Brooks’ novel rarely flags. “Whatever it takes. What was necessary,” was David’s guiding principle as Natan describes it, and that credo is reflected in both the decisiveness and ruthlessness of Brooks’ character. David’s path to power and his rule were notable for In her great achievenew novel, ments and Geraldine great sadness.

Especially Brooks poignant is once again the fourfold demonstrates retribution he her ability endures after Natan, through to transform a parable, forchistory into es him to face compelling, his duplicity distinctive in dispatching Bathsheba’s fiction. husband, Uriah the Hittite, to certain death in battle.

One aspect of Brooks’ novel that likely will spark controversy is her frank claim that the deep affection between David and Jonathan, Saul’s son, was anything but platonic, and was what Natan calls “a love so strong that it flouted ancient rule.” The biblical evidence supporting this view has been vigorously debated, and Brooks’ assertion hardly will resolve those arguments.

But none of this would matter if Brooks were not so adept at deploying the skills of the novelist to explore the traditional concerns of serious fiction, like character and motivation. She does so in language resonant of biblical diction and imagery, while approaching that time with the benefit of modern psychological insight. The Secret Chord may send some readers back to the biblical account of David’s life, and when they return to it, they will see that story with fresh eyes.

—HARVEY FREEDENBERG

FICTION CARRYING ALBERT HOME

By Homer Hickam Morrow $25.99, 432 pages ISBN 9780062325891 Audio, eBook available HISTORICAL FICTION

If James Joyce can devote an entire novel to one day in the life of the people of Dublin, why can’t Homer Hickam devote a novel to the delivery of Albert the alligator to Florida? Especially when that journey treats readers to labor strikes, car chases, hijinks on the high seas, Hollywood movies and a fateful hurricane—not to mention cameo appearances by literary competitors John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. Add to this a rooster perched imperturbably on Albert’s head, and you have the makings of an intentionally improbable, bizarre trip through Southern Americana that is a tall tale blend of fact and fiction.

Homer Hickam Sr., father to the author, is a coal miner from West Virginia. His wife, Elsie, is an aspiring writer and friend to God’s scalier creations. They decide that Albert should be restored to his proper habitat and embark on a journey south. Along the way, they are derailed by the unlikeliest of misadventures, but ones that bring the estranged couple closer together.

Carrying Albert Home is set in the early 20th century, when the coal mines of Appalachia were a focal point of American radicalism, when Mother Jones prowled the hills and mine workers fought pitched battles with the owners of company towns. America’s various Red Scares and concessions by capitalists and governments alike have erased much of this history, but Hickam reminds us that there was once a formidable and violent opposition to capital in the US of A. But that’s about as serious as Hickam gets. The novel is mostly a lark or a farce, an amalgam of fact and an almost Walter Mitty-esque

degree of fancy, evoking (because of the deadly yet indispensable animal) Life of Pi and (because of the trope of life as journey) Huckleberry Finn. Indeed, it might appeal most to younger readers, for whom the recurring joke that nearly every character seems to think Albert is a crocodile, only to be mildly corrected by Homer, will never get old.

The poignant parts for adults, however, will be the interstitial chapters, reminiscent of Hemingway’s In Our Time, when Hickam writes about the real Homer and Elsie, his late parents. In these spare and sad vignettes of two beloved real-life characters, Hickam provides epiphanies that at times approach those of Joyce, that clairvoyant of the dead.

—KENNETH CHAMPEON

GOLD FAME CITRUS

By Claire Vaye Watkins

Riverhead $27.95, 352 pages ISBN 9781594634239 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION

some day be again, gush forth.

For the sake of their family, they decide to brave the ever-encroaching dune sea, a desolate shifting stretch of sand that separates them from a more habitable climate.

But the wasteland they have been led to believe is barren is far from empty and contains untold hazards—some physical, some spiritual, some psychological.

There is no shortage of dystopian literature examining the destruction to the planet that man has wrought and humankind’s tenacious will to survive, but Gold Fame Citrus easily catapults itself into the upper echelon of the genre. Deeply evocative and emotional, Watkins’ writing is hypnotic, drawing readers into a fevered lullaby that feels fantastical and alltoo-real simultaneously. This is the kind of novel that readers will want to consume in great gulps as they race to discover Luz and company’s fate, but Gold Fame Citrus is best read slowly, allowing the words to wash over you.

—STEPHENIE HARRISON

SHRIVER

By Chris Belden

In 2012, Claire Vaye Watkins burst onto the literary landscape with her prize-winning short story collection, Battleborn. In Gold Fame Citrus, Watkins follows through on her literary promise with an excellent novel, set in a drought-ridden California in a future that feels alarmingly near.

Gold Fame Citrus is the story of Luz, a woman born when California was merely on the cusp of collapse but who must make her way in a world where the waters have run dry and the borders into more verdant parts of the country are blocked off to people of her provenance, so-called “Mojavs.” Along with a drifter named Ray, Luz has managed to carve out an existence in the arid remnants of a place that once glittered, and the two have learned to get by however they can.

When they become guardians to an enigmatic slip of a child, however, Luz’s desiccated dreams of what life once was and, perhaps, could

Touchstone $16, 288 pages ISBN 9781501119392 Audio, eBook available SATIRICAL FICTION

A literary conference might not seem like an obvious setting for mayhem and nonsense, but that’s just what’s on the agenda in Chris Belden’s enjoyable Shriver, in which a lonely man gets invited to a university conference thanks to a case of mistaken identity. Shriver—the wrong Shriver—RSVPs, thinking it a good practical joke, until he’s swept up in the sordid, confusing world of egomaniacal writers and those who adore them.

The gathering’s broad theme of “reality-slash-illusion” is one that the novel does great work of confusing—it pretty much blurs the slash right out. Who is Shriver? The writer of a controversial novel—or

the man mistaken for that man?

What makes a writer, anyway?

Literary culture’s penchant for superlatives and hero-worship is enjoyably skewered: The real Shriver is revered for a 20-year-old book most people haven’t even finished.

Shriver is a semi-likable character with more than a couple neuroses, which makes him plausible to the conference-goers as the reclusive author of the same name. He considers himself the furthest thing from a writer; he’s a man of simple pursuits who loves his cat, Mr. Bojangles, and enjoys a one-sided correspondence with a local news anchor. But everyone seems willing to be convinced, especially Professor Simone Cleverly, the university’s conference coordinator, who ironically hates writers; Edsel Nixon, Shriver’s always-there-when-you-need-him handler; and the cowboy academician T. Wätzczesnam (pronounced “whatsisname”) who quotes poetry in every conversation.

The wacky cast of characters, inane situations and a whodunit subplot brings to mind the 1980s cult classic movie Clue. At every turn in the satirical story, someone who could unmask our protagonist lurks. Meanwhile, Shriver juggles the investigation of a missing poet last seen in his hotel room, a bewildering plague of mosquitoes and a shadowy figure in black. Shriver’s fear of being outed as an impostor rings true for any writer—wannabe or bona fide—who’s ever doubted their abilities.

—MELISSA BROWN

GOD’S KINGDOM

By Howard Frank Mosher St. Martin’s $25.99, 240 pages ISBN 9781250069481 eBook available LITERARY FICTION

Howard Frank Mosher’s bailiwick for more than 40 years, and the setting for many of his 12 previous books, both fiction and nonfiction, is Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom—

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reviews called God’s Kingdom by its earliest settlers. This nickname serves as the title for Mosher’s latest novel, which follows the Kinneson family, whose roots in Vermont go back to Charles Kinneson I, who arrived from the Scottish Isle of Skye in the late 18th century. It’s mostly the story of Jim Kinneson, who turned 14 in 1952, and began to write down the family stories gradually passed down to him.

Some stories Jim has already heard, in bits and pieces; some he only learns from his grandfather over the next few years. The interwoven stories Mosher tells about this tightly knit, resilient family are funny and poignant, joyous and sad. The reader hears about Jim’s black friend Gaetan, who moved to the Kinneson farm Mosher brings readers from Montreal when the boys into the were both in beautiful yet high school. A “mathemathardscrabble ical savant” world of who speaks Northeastern little English, Vermont.

Gaetan is tormented by their bigoted Algebra teacher, with tragic results. We accompany Jim on his first and last hunt for deer. A great story about Ty Cobb catching the local team’s baseball while riding through town on the train—and mailing it back later— is followed by a moving tale of a union supporter at the American Furniture Co. who loses his hand in a ripsaw “accident.”

Each story Mosher tells is infused with the weather, rugged landscape and stoic characters for which he has become famous— and brings the reader closer to the beautiful yet hardscrabble world where people like the Kinnesons, escaped slaves fleeing north, French Canadians and Native Americans all fought to survive.

Like Charles Dickens, whose novels Jim loves to read to his mute mother, Jim wants to converse with his readers—to write as if each was his best friend, to whom he could tell “absolutely anything.”

This is how Mosher has written this novel, and his readers are re-

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FICTION warded with splendid storytelling.

—DEBORAH DONOVAN

THE LOWER QUARTER

By Elise Blackwell Unbridled Books $16.95, 368 pages ISBN 9781609531195 LITERARY FICTION

Quarter is a riveting narrative about crime, art, violence and renewal in a city that embodies all four.

—HALEY HERFURTH

THE SCRIBE

By Matthew Guinn Norton $25.95, 304 pages ISBN 9780393239294 Audio, eBook available

By Lily Tuck

Atlantic Monthly $26, 256 pages ISBN 9780802124029 eBook available LITERARY FICTION

Few writers seem to understand the difficult balance between historical detail and suspense better than Edgar Award finalist Matthew Guinn. His second novel, The Scribe, is a master class in historical mystery.

The time is 1881, the place is Atlanta on the eve of the International Cotton Exposition. Post-­ Reconstruction, the city is ready to present itself as the avatar of the new industrial South, but a string of murders puts all that in jeopardy. Thomas Canby, a former detective who left his job in disgrace, might be the city’s only hope. He must team with Atlanta’s first African-American police officer, Cyrus Underwood, to solve the gruesome crimes, both to appease the city’s elite businessmen—known collectively as “The Ring”—and to save a city still filled to bursting with racial tension.

Guinn brushes in the perfect amount of detail, from Canby’s own experiences with the racial turmoil of the city to the Ring’s power-driven view of the new society they’ve helped to create. This is the South in transition: Everyone wants to rise from the ashes, but the powerful still dictate how and when that happens. It’s a city bent on prosperity, but the divisive views still create a particular kind of powder keg.

The Scribe is a powerful, elaborate page-turner, perfect for fans of everything from Caleb Carr’s The Alienist to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

National Book Award winner Lily Tuck has lived a life that often informs her stories. She was born in Paris, has lived in Thailand, Uruguay and Peru, and now resides in New York City and Maine, providing plenty of fodder for her characters and their adventures.

That’s perhaps more evident in her latest book, The Double Life of Liliane, than ever before.

The semi-autobiographical novel follows the introverted, observant Liliane through some of her most formative years. Following her parents’ divorce, the child lives a life divided between her German-born, movie-maker father, Rudy, who lives in Italy, and her artistic mother, Irene, who has places in Paris and New York.

The Double Life overflows with fraught relationships, with Liliane in many ways pulled between her parents. Irene saw Rudy merely as a means of escape. Rudy, on the other hand, loved Irene and continues to question Liliane about her mother’s welfare long after the divorce.

The novel’s structure is atypical, composed of scenes that provide glimpses into the lives of Liliane, Irene, Rudy and their family rather than a straight narrative. Using photos and documents as well as text, Tuck braids together family history that spans multiple continents and generations. Tales of World Wars, immigration and new marriages are intertwined with smaller moments in a girl’s life, such as schoolwork and friends.

Through its sprawling recollections and period photos and documents from Tuck’s personal collection, she creates an intimate portrait of a life that, much like her own, has spanned continents.

—MATTHEW JACKSON

—CARLA JEAN WHITLEY

HISTORICAL FICTION

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans, leaving behind empty streets, ruined art and a skeleton crew of old-guard residents. The discovery of a dead body in a historic hotel couldn’t come at a worse time for the understaffed, struggling New Orleans police force. The murder reopens the investigation into the decades-old theft of a highly valued European painting, which causes the lives of four people to intersect.

Johanna owns a studio in the city’s Lower Quarter, where she restores paintings by both local and notable artists. Work represents reinvention to Johanna, who has a dark past and owes her career to Clay Fontenot, a disreputable, wealthy young man from an old-money New Orleans family.

Bartending pays Marion’s bills, but hiring herself out to men with a taste for BDSM comes in handy when cash is tight. It’s in the second role that she meets Clay. She doesn’t allow herself much time for reflection—except on her love of painting, and how it might factor into her future.

Elizam, who goes by Eli for short, is an art thief, fresh out of prison. His skills landed him a job at an art recovery office, where he is assigned the task of finding a missing painting in New Orleans— the same painting tied to the dead body found in the old hotel. More than Eli’s job is on the line should he not recover the painting: They will send him back to jail if he fails.

The characters are all vivid, but the star of the show is New Orleans itself, which author Elise Blackwell (Hunger) brings forth in all its steamy, noir-ish glory. The Lower

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF LILIANE

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can original and a magical writer, Smith makes the reader believe in the redemptive power of art.

—J U L I E H A L E

1944

Unleashing your creative self

BIG MAGIC

REVIEW BY HEATHER SEGGEL

Years before I read Eat, Pray, Love, I clipped a quote from Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 bestseller that I still have today. “Happiness is the result of personal effort,” she wrote. “You have to participate relentlessly.”

This was not news I wanted to hear at the time, but a life spent waiting for the right bluebird to cross my path wasn’t working out too well, either. I started to put a little more shoulder into my efforts, and did, in fact, find myself enjoying life more. If you’re living a creative life (and news flash—you are), the same rules apply. In her latest book, Big ­Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Gilbert contends that persistence and curiosity are the keys to pushing past your boundaries to live a bigger, happier life.

The writing here is so friendly and funny that Gilbert’s perspective on creative living goes down like lemonade in summer. I howled at her

By Elizabeth Gilbert Riverhead, $24.95, 288 pages description of a childhood so bound by fear that a trip to the shore left ISBN 9781594634710, audio, eBook available her agonized by all the people who insisted on swimming (it hit a little close to home). Pace yourself and pay attention, though, and you’ll find CREATIVITY substantive teaching about the paradoxical nature of creativity: You need to work at it with great consistency but little thought for the end result; rather than expect it to take care of you, financially or otherwise, it’s best to work in order to support your creativity; cultivating a sense of play is often the most direct path to your best and most serious work.

Gilbert tells the story of a novel she almost wrote, which then took a circuitous path away from her and landed with Ann Patchett instead. She weighs the various ways one can respond to such wonders. (Hint: It helps to view them as wonders rather than resentments.) The short story that launched her career after years of work and rejection was only accepted after a series of crucial changes. Agonizing, yes, but, “screw it. Because let’s be honest: It wasn’t the Magna Carta we were talking about here; it was just a short story about a cowgirl and her boyfriend.”

Whatever tune your creativity whistles, Big Magic will renew your love for the dance.

M TRAIN

By Patti Smith

Knopf $25, 272 pages ISBN 9781101875100 Audio, eBook available MEMOIR

In 2010, musician Patti Smith published Just Kids, a radiant memoir about her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and their lives as bohemian babes-in-the-woods in New York City. Set in the 1960s and ’70s, the story of their coming-of-age as artists—Smith’s first full-length work of prose—won the National Book Award.

In her new memoir, M Train, Smith trades the circus atmosphere of the psychedelic era for the here and now, offering readers a remarkably intimate look at her life in New York City. Throughout M Train she bounces between home and her favorite Greenwich Village café, where she writes in her notebook and ponders the past. Memories of her Philadelphia childhood, her extensive travels and her marriage to the late musician Fred “Sonic” Smith provide points of departure for the narrative.

Not as tightly constructed as Just Kids, M Train has a meandering quality that reflects Smith’s inquisitive, exploratory spirit. Music and speaking engagements make her a frequent flyer, and the journeys she recounts in the book are filled with surreal moments. When she falls ill

before giving a talk at Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul, she’s allowed to rest in Diego Rivera’s bed. During an unexpected rendezvous in Iceland, she sings Buddy Holly songs with chess legend Bobby Fischer. Things are equally uncanny on the homefront. Just weeks before Hurricane Sandy strikes, Smith purchases a run-down bungalow (which she fondly names the Alamo) on Rockaway Beach. Somehow the house survives the storm.

Smith turns 66 while writing M Train, but she’s still a bit of a kid. At home, she falls asleep in her clothes, ignores the mail and neglects household chores. Her writing style is at once poetic and direct. Like her trademark attire— boots, cap, coat—her narratives have a plainspoken beauty that transcends the times. An Ameri-

By Jay Winik

Simon & Schuster $35, 656 pages ISBN 9781439114087 eBook available HISTORY

There is nothing so compelling as history well told, whether in print or on film. And viewers who were engrossed by Ken Burns’ recent PBS series on the Roosevelts will find Jay Winik’s new book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History, especially appealing. Winik, who has written about America’s founding (The Great Upheaval) and the Civil War (April 1865), brings his considerable gifts as a storyteller and a talented historian to this new work exploring the pivotal year of Roosevelt’s presidency and of World War II. Winik seamlessly sets FDR the man, beset by physical limitations and increasingly bad health, within the context of the complex, highstakes international challenges he faced. In the spring of 1944, Winik shows us a Roosevelt exhausted and ill, plagued by headaches and a hacking cough—a man who sometimes fell asleep in the midst of dictation.

Yet Roosevelt was also a “resolute and clear-sighted wartime leader,” a leader unwilling to accept defeat when, as it did during that crucial year, the entire history of civilization seemed to hang in the balance. Looking back, the defeat of Hitler and the success of the Normandy invasion may seem inevitable, but at the time this was far from the case. At the same time, Winik explores in detail the implications of the Roosevelt administration’s decision not to launch military strikes against Nazi death camps.

As the 75th anniversary of

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reviews America’s entry into World War II approaches next year, Winik has given us a chance to move beyond simple commemoration to a fuller understanding of the era.

—DEBORAH HOPKINSON

MY YEAR OF RUNNING DANGEROUSLY

By Tom Foreman

Blue Rider $25.95, 288 pages ISBN 9780399175473 Audio, eBook available

NONFICTION support. Together they learn that the goal is to go on challenging yourself, period. Balance comes with the eventual realization that, consequently, life is fuller and each moment richer.

Anyone who runs, has been inspired by their own child or has tried to accomplish something difficult will find plenty worth pondering in the story of Foreman and his family. Life, he concludes, “is worth more than just living.” You just need to go for it.

—PRISCILLA KIPP

MEMOIR

ME, MY HAIR, AND I At 51, his days full of work and travel as an Emmy Award-winning correspondent for CNN, Tom Foreman relaxes in what free time he has. He ignores the added pounds and growing lethargy until the day his 18-year-old daughter asks, “Will you run a marathon with me?”

Foreman is too loving a dad to say no, and way too far past his days as a competitive runner to rise easily to her challenge.

In Foreman’s witty and endearing chronicle, My Year of Running Dangerously, we follow his transformation from self-described couch potato to marathoner, then ultra-marathoner. You don’t have to be a runner to understand—and feel—the blood, sweat and tears Foreman pours into his training and his first marathon with his daughter, the one he ran for her and—she later admits—she ran for him, to get him off that couch.

About halfway through this wellpaced read, you may be asking, as does Foreman himself, why endure such punishment? The marathons and half-marathons keep coming, and then there is the 50-plus mile ultra-marathon he cannot resist giving a try. His brother survives a heart attack. His mother worries he’s next. His wife and daughters adjust, and readjust, to accommodate his all-consuming obsession.

Foreman admits he cannot even manage one night out with his frustrated wife without bringing up his next run. Yet, lucky for him, those closest to Foreman rise to go the distance in offering their

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By Elizabeth Benedict

Algonquin $16.95, 320 pages ISBN 9781616204112 eBook available BEAUTY

“Gorgeous hair is the best revenge,” said Ivana Trump, she of the platinum blonde, sky-high hair.

Hair as tool of revenge, as obsession, as embarrassment, as source of pride: Why does a long string of protein absorb so much of our attention?

In Me, My Hair, and I, authors including Anne Lamott, Adriana Trigiani, Jane Smiley and Hallie Ephron explore women’s unique relationships with their hair. As Elizabeth Benedict, who edits this glowing collection of essays, writes in the introduction, “Hair matters because it’s always around, framing our faces, growing in, falling out, getting frizzy, changing colors—in short, demanding our attention: Comb me! Wash me!

Relax me! Color me! It’s always there, conveying messages about who we are and what we want.

Invite me to the prom! Love me!

Hire me! Sleep with me! Don’t even think about sleeping with me! Take me seriously! Marry me! Mistake me—please!—for a much younger woman.”

The essays range from poignant—Suleika Jaouad writes about losing her hair to chemo at age 22—to hilarious—Alex

Kuczynski explores trends in pubic hairstyling. All of them are illuminating, revealing that for women, hair is inextricably linked to identity, a visual cue to who they are and what matters to them.

“I wanted so badly to be someone I wasn’t, wanted so badly to find a way to be comfortable in my skin,” writes novelist Jane Green in an essay that chronicles how her hair has changed to mirror her life circumstances over the years. “Hair was simply the easiest thing to change, the most obvious aspect of my appearance to alter.”

Thought-provoking and insightful, Me, My Hair, and I is a must-read for anyone who has ever dealt with frizz, gray hair, mothers insisting we get a haircut, fathers insisting we not, hair envy or hair disasters. In short, all of us.

—AMY SCRIBNER

KISSINGER

By Niall Ferguson Penguin Press $39.95, 1,008 pages ISBN 9781594206535 Audio, eBook available BIOGRAPHY

Henry Kissinger is one of the most controversial statesmen in American history. Some regard him as the country’s greatest strategic foreign relations thinker, while others describe him as conspiratorial or as a war criminal. Noted Harvard historian Niall Ferguson tells the first part of Kissinger’s story in great detail in Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist, the first of a projected two-volume biography. His research included access to previously private papers, documents from more than 100 archives and many interviews with his subject’s former colleagues, friends and foes, as well as lengthy sessions with Kissinger himself.

All of this will not end controversy, however, and may even provoke it, since Kissinger suggested to Ferguson that he write the biography.

Kissinger left Germany with his family in 1938. At least 13 mem-

bers of his family were killed in the Holocaust, with the actual number probably closer to 30. Despite this, he has always strongly denied that the Holocaust was crucial to his development. More important was his return to Germany as a private in the U.S. Army. He led a team responsible for historical research and psychology, in an effort to prevent sabotage and to identify ardent Nazis.

Kissinger has said that Fritz Kraemer, a fellow soldier, was “the greatest single influence on my formative years.” Kraemer, also born in Germany, was a highly educated conservative whose training was in international law, and he generated Kissinger’s systematic interest in history. Later, at Harvard, William Elliott encouraged him and demonstrated that a professor could also be a political actor.

Ferguson offers a rich exploration of the interplay among Kissinger’s study, his own writings and his experience. He is often identified as a “realist,” whose primary influences were Metternich, Bismarck and Machiavelli, a label he rejects. Instead, he says the work of the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant has meant the most to him.

Two subjects in Kissinger are most likely to generate strong reactions. The first is that as early as 1965, Kissinger believed that the war in Vietnam could not be won by military means but could be ended only by negotiation. Why then did it take eight more years to reach an agreement? The second is Kissinger’s alleged role in a conspiracy to leak information from the Paris Peace Talks to the 1968 presidential campaign of Richard Nixon. Ferguson points out numerous weaknesses in the arguments that such leaks took place. He does say, however, that Kissinger might have destroyed or failed to record evidence of his activities in Paris.

Whatever one thinks of Kissinger or whether one agrees with Ferguson’s assessments of people and events, this magisterial work should be required reading for anyone interested in one of the major figures of 20th-century history.

—ROGER BISHOP

ROSEMARY

By Kate Clifford Larson

HMH $27, 320 pages ISBN 9780547250250 Audio, eBook available BIOGRAPHY

Most poignantly of all: What if she had been born into a family that was prepared to accept her?

Even as Rosemary ends on a redemptive note for the Kennedys, these are questions that will haunt the reader long after the last page is turned.

—KEITH HERRELL

FURIOUSLY HAPPY Of all the tragedies associated with the Kennedy family, the story of Rosemary Kennedy is among the saddest—and least known. It lasted a lifetime and played out virtually in secret, as opposed to the assassinations and plane crashes that commanded 72-point headlines and seem frozen in time.

Born in 1918, one of Joe and Rose Kennedy’s nine children and their first daughter after sons Joe Jr. and Jack (later President John F. Kennedy), Rosemary was intellectually disabled from birth and experienced mood swings. In 1941, she underwent a frontal lobotomy—arranged by Joe—that went wrong and left her in a drastically reduced mental state. She lived out her years at an institution, dying in 2005.

Kate Clifford Larson’s account of Rosemary’s life, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, uses new sources, including diaries, letters and interviews, and makes for fascinating but heartbreaking reading. It’s clear that the family coping strategy consisted of equal parts secrecy and denial, with Rosemary frequently hidden away or left behind—literally and figuratively.

Larson also skillfully weaves a Kennedy family history into Rosemary, detailing Joe and Rose’s courtship, Joe’s political ambitions for his sons and giving glimpses into the life stories of all nine children.

The reader is left to wonder: How did the beaming young woman on the book’s cover, who was presented at Court to the king and queen of England, become the physically twisted, essentially mute woman institutionalized while still in her 20s? And what if she had been born later, when medical advances could have controlled her mood swings?

By Jenny Lawson

Flatiron $26.99, 352 pages ISBN 9781250077004 Audio, eBook available MEMOIR

Readers familiar with Jenny Lawson, as either The Bloggess or the author of the 2012 bestseller Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, are aware that she has created a tribe of perfectly flawed followers by telling hilarious stories about some of the darkest times in her life. Furiously Happy is similar in focus— you’ll find taxidermy, riotous fights with husband Victor and funny if slightly scary family stories—but Lawson’s latest book is even more open about the challenges posed by illness. It will make you laugh to the point of tears, but it could also help you make it through the toughest stuff life has to offer.

Lawson’s diagnosed illnesses, mental and physical, stack like layers of a wedding cake, and she often finds herself in the midst of a panic attack or rheumatoid arthritis flare-up while facing the public demands of her job. “It’s hard to understand anyone’s being depressed or anxious when they’ve been given a gift it seems anyone would kill for. . . . But still, it happens,” she writes. As a result, she has learned to show up for life even when it’s scary, but also to savor time at home, reach out to folks on Twitter for support on bad days and pay very close attention when things are going well.

This adds up to a kind of mission statement, a commitment to wild joy in the face of adversity. If the downside of being a Bloggess is

q&a

KATE CLIFFORD LARSON

Forgotten daughter

A

new biography offers a heartbreaking look at the life of Rosemary Kennedy, who was lobotomized and hidden away because of her disability.

BY KEITH HERRELL

©© DAVID NICKCARMACK RUSSELL

NONFICTION

Your two previous biographies focused on 19th-century figures. What prompted you to leap ahead 100 years and focus on the Kennedy family?

In January 2005, I saw Rosemary’s obituary in the Boston Globe. I knew who she was, but I felt there was more to know. As I started to explore her story, I became deeply moved by the struggles and obstacles she faced, and how her family dealt with those challenges.

Your publisher touts “major new sources” for the book. Can you elaborate on these sources and how they were useful?

I was fortunate to start research soon after the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston had begun to unseal the private papers of Rosemary’s parents, Joe and Rose Kennedy. The two collections contain many letters to and from Rosemary, as well as scores of documents from Rosemary’s teachers, doctors and caregivers. Unlike other Kennedy biographers, I have used all of Rosemary’s letters in crafting this biography—some of them I have transcribed and are seen here for the first time.

Did you have any contact with the Kennedy family? If so, how cooperative were they? Did you encounter any resistance?

I interviewed Anthony and Timothy Shriver—Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s sons—who recalled many fond memories of Rosemary and her frequent visits to their home. They, like most of their generation of Kennedys, are unclear about what happened to Rosemary.

There is definitely resistance within the family to engage in discussions about Rosemary. The John F. Kennedy Library still restricts access to some documents related to her, per Kennedy family wishes.

Given her vulnerability in life, it is understandable that the family remains protective of her even now.

Joe and Rose Kennedy made multiple mistakes in Rosemary’s upbringing. Which of the two do you hold more culpable in how Rosemary’s life turned out?

I feel that it is impossible to blame one parent more than the other.

They both made decisions that had profoundly negative consequences for Rosemary. They both wanted to consign her care to someone else and send her away from the family. And while Joe may have facilitated Rosemary’s lobotomy, Rose abdicated her responsibility as a mother when she let Rosemary be dropped out of their lives for the next 20 years.

Although it ends on a redemptive note, the book is often heartbreaking to read. Was it difficult to write from an emotional standpoint?

It was very difficult to write. I fell in love with Rosemary as I read her letters and learned more about her. She was an incredibly adorable child, a sweet and loving sister, and a beautiful daughter with her own potential. It is heartbreaking to think about what she endured growing up in such a high profile and competitive family in a society that rejected people with disabilities. Her letters expressing her loneliness and desperate pleas for approval from her parents are so painful. But the scene about the lobotomy was the most challenging to write. It is deeply troubling to know that there was no one to protect Rosemary from such callous doctors and desperate parents.

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reviews tough, the perks include asking the IRS for stuffed armadillo deductions, dressing as a koala to the great confusion of the Australian tourist industry and having the kind of connections needed to get new limbs made for a dead raccoon who suffered a postmortem rollercoaster mishap. Living well may be the best revenge but instead, why not be “furiously happy”?

points out, do-gooders can be drudges.

She lucidly illustrates both the benefits and shortcomings of this ethical position by focusing on the lives of several do-gooders. Aaron Pitkin, for example, searches for a cause to which he can devote himself and discovers it in chickens.

He dedicates every waking hour to reliving the suffering of chickens, — H E A T H E R S E G G E L sacrificing his health, his family and his relationships in an effort to ensure that chickens suffer less.

STRANGERS DROWNING As MacFarquhar observes, Pitkin is not emotionally attached to his

By Larissa position—when he sees horrifying ­MacFarquhar footage of abuse, he thinks “fanPenguin Press tastic, I can use it in my speeches $27.95, 336 pages to organizations”—but serves it ISBN 9781594204333 Audio, eBook available almost blindly out of the obligation he feels toward chickens.

ETHICS Although she neither condemns nor heaps praise on her subjects, MacFarquhar offers readers plenty There’s a famous ethical dilemma of food for thought in understandthat philosophy professors often ing the motivations and compulpose to their students. If three sions of those who sacrifice everypeople are drowning, and one is thing in pursuit of a noble cause.

—HENRY L. CARRIGAN JR. your mother and two are strangers, whom do you save? Clearly some people would be compelled to save FRANK & AVA the person dearest to them, in this case, their mother. Others would

By John Brady feel compelled to do as much good Thomas Dunne as they could in the world and are $26.99, 304 pages not moved by a sense of belongISBN 9781250070913 eBook available ing; these people would save the strangers.

CELEBRITIES New Yorker staff writer Larissa MacFarquhar quite brilliantly focuses on this second group of individuals she calls “do-gooders” in her thoughtful and wide-ranging Forget Ben, Jennifer and the Strangers Drowning: Grappling nanny. Don’t give a second thought with Impossible Idealism, Drastic to Gwen and Gavin. ContempoChoices, and the Overpowering rary Splitsville sagas are dullsville Urge to Help. These altruistic compared to the craziness of people, she observes, “know there Golden Age Hollywood stars Frank are crises everywhere, and seek Sinatra and Ava Gardner. Their four them out; they may be compasdecades-plus romance, detailed in sionate, but compassion is not why John Brady’s juicy and judiciously they do what they do; they have no reported Frank & Ava: In Love and ordinary life; their good deeds are War, was the stuff of both dreams their lives.” and nightmares and makes for a While do-gooders might be doozy of a read.

They met in the 1940s at the congratulated for helping others at their and their family’s expense, trendy Mocambo club on the Sunthey also are less free because they set Strip. Budding actress Gardner was with new husband and MGM believe they have a duty to act in certain ways, and they always have star Mickey Rooney. (Yes, Mickey Rooney.) Frank Sinatra, a family to do their duty. As MacFarquhar

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NONFICTION man who was nonetheless on the prowl, ambled over and said to her, “Hey, why didn’t I meet you before Mickey?”

Rooney and Gardner lasted less than a year. Ditto Gardner’s subsequent marriage to big band leader (and famed Lothario) Artie Shaw.

Inevitably, Sinatra and Gardner married. He called her Angel, she called him Francis. He liked being in charge, she hated being told what to do. His career was at a crossroads. She had become a box office queen.

They both liked booze and drama. They’d fight, she’d threaten to leave, he’d threaten suicide. They once tore into the desert When it comes night—in a to celebrity Caddy—with a bottle and a love affairs, pair of Smith the romance & Wesson .38s. of Frank and They shot out Ava outshines shop windows all the others. in a small burg. The cops got involved.

Sinatra made a phone call and no charges were filed.

Best known previously for his tell-alls about writing (The Craft of Interviewing), former Writer’s Digest editor Brady once worked for Reprise Records, where he met Sinatra and many of his musical chums. The gig obviously resonated. In addition to original interviews, the book makes adroit use of the author’s knowledge of the music scene, Sinatra in particular, along with sourced materials in previous works.

More than a story of a dizzying love affair, Frank & Ava depicts the profound aftershocks of a relationship. For instance, Gardner campaigned for Sinatra to get the role of doomed Angelo Maggio in the screen version of the era’s hot book, From Here to Eternity. He got the part, won an Oscar and saw his movie career skyrocket. Hers, alas, went the way of aging actresses.

The marriage fizzled, too. Divorced, they went their colorful ways. But they kept reconnecting, even talking remarriage. The sequel never happened.

“Anger has always been my adversary, crouching just outside the door.” One might not expect to hear such a confession from a figure like David Gregory, the NBC newsman who moderated “Meet the Press” and served as the White House correspondent during the second Bush administration. But in How’s Your Faith?: An Unlikely Spiritual Journey, a kind of measured honesty keeps Gregory revealing unexpected sides.

The book is classified as a religious memoir, and indeed a spiritual story forms its core: how Gregory grew from a nominally Jewish childhood, married a Christian woman, navigated the spiritual upbringing of his children and ultimately decided to explore his own faith more deeply—both through introspection and, unsurprisingly given his profession, interviewing experts. So How’s Your Faith? is as much about Gregory’s search for the spiritual answers of others as it is about stressing answers of his own.

He listens to evangelical preacher Joel Osteen and to Cardinal Timothy Dolan. He listens to Mohamed Magid at a mosque in Virginia, and he listens to rabbis in his own tradition.

Gregory’s vulnerability in sharing the lessons he learned, as well as the details of his tumultuous departure from NBC in 2014, distinguish this book in the crowded lineup of spiritual-seeking memoirs. Not only does Gregory concede his shortcomings, he also relates how faith and religious practice have enabled him to address them. “We cannot make our adversaries disappear,” he says after acknowledging his struggles with anger. “All we can do is refuse to let them in.”

— PAT H . B R O E S K E

— K E L LY B L E W E T T

HOW’S YOUR FAITH?

By David Gregory

Simon & Schuster $26, 288 pages ISBN 9781451651607 Audio, eBook available RELIGION

teen

GARY D. SCHMIDT

Something like family

G

ary D. Schmidt’s new novel, Orbiting Jupiter, is a moving story about love, family and loyalty. Readers likely will cry here and there; they’ll also laugh from time to time and revel in the book’s pulses of beauty—whether it’s flashes of a striking winter landscape, touching moments of kinship or grace felt after wrenching grief.

The central characters are two boys, brought together when 12-year-old Jack’s parents agree to foster 14-year-old Joseph, who was recently released from a juvenile facility.

Schmidt is a two-time Newbery Honor winner, an English professor, author of 30-plus books and a father of six. When he began writing Orbiting Jupiter, he could hear Jack’s narration quite clearly.

“Every book is different,” Schmidt says during a call from his Michigan home, a farm where he lives with his family. “The big thing is, I have to have the voice of the narrator and have to hear how the book is going to sound. Sometimes it takes so dang long! But with this book, it just came.”

As Schmidt explains, Orbiting Jupiter is “a 12-year-old kiddo telling a very adult story about finding love, having a child and losing both of them—but being desperate to get one of them back.”

ORBITING JUPITER

By Gary D. Schmidt

Clarion, $17.99, 192 pages ISBN 9780544462229, eBook available Ages 12 and up

FICTION

Joseph became a father at 13, after he and a girl named Madeleine fell in love. Joseph’s abusive father was the plumber for her wealthy lawyer-parents, but despite their disparate backgrounds, they found solace in one another. From this love came a baby named Jupiter, plus a series of events that culminated in Joseph joining Jack’s family on their small Maine farm.

Jack is curious and a little wary, but when Rosie the cow lets Joseph milk her on the first try, Jack figures they’ll be fine: “You can tell all you need to know about someone from the way cows are around him.”

Schmidt says, “[Jack]’s a young, naive 12-year-old. Farms are wonderful, but they can be insular.

And Joseph’s a kid a couple of years older who’s lived so much more, who’s very worldly-wise because of what he’s gone through.”

The boys become friends bit by bit, smile by smile, as the weather grows ever colder. Jerk students and a judgmental vice principal ­aren’t welcoming, but a few teachers bond with Joseph, including Coach Swieteck, whom fans may recognize from Schmidt’s 2011 National Book Award finalist, Okay for Now. It’s a hopeful thing, this warmth amid the gloom of Joseph’s life. The bleakness is a bit of a departure for Schmidt, as is the book’s trim length. “I wanted it to be stark, to be close to Ethan Frome or Bleak House. It’s pretty narrow, pretty focused, like a New England winter.”

In fact, he says, “It’s the most New England of all of my books.”

(Maine serves as the backdrop for both the 2005 Newbery Honor book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and 2010’s Trouble.)

“Saying so much with so little, things that can be inferred—shared culture allows you to do that. It’s

also harder for outsiders, because that laconic starkness can seem unfriendly.”

The world of Orbiting Jupiter can seem unkind at times, if not downright cruel. Not all parents are kind, attentive or loving, and kids are too often unfairly judged by those around them.

“I talked to a pediatrician who told me, ‘You “It’s not tragic can’t believe how many kids that a broken come in who world is one have kids,’ ” Schmidt says. that’s also “Also, years good and ago, I read glorious.” about a kid in Arkansas who at age 13 had two children. It obviously stayed with me.”

That processing of an idea over time embodies Schmidt’s considered approach to his writing.

He composes his work on a 1953 gray steel Royal typewriter that lives in a small building on his property. There’s also a wood stove that keeps the author warm as he works—and allows him to start anew as many times as he likes.

“I write 500 words a day,” Schmidt says, and he revises any previous work as he goes. The process might seem painstaking, but that’s what he likes about it. “I use scrap paper, the backs of old galleys . . . and as I write, I burn the previous copy in the wood stove.

It’s so cathartic to see it going up in flames. By the end, I’ve retyped [the book I’m working on] six, eight, 10 times.”

One result of that process is the careful layering of significant

© FLICKR/ALVIN TRUSTY

INTERVIEW BY LINDA M. CASTELLITTO

elements. For example, Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and M.T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing are mentioned in Orbiting Jupiter—but not in a way that requires readers to have read or heard of either book.

However, for Schmidt, “Everything has to be connected.”

Thoreau’s book is “a tremendous bonding story about two brothers who loved each other a great deal.

It’s not necessarily something the reader will get, but for me it makes a lot of difference. . . . That detail reverberates through the story.”

And in Octavian Nothing, “A kid is imprisoned and defined by others. . . . When Joseph reads it, he connects with it.”

As a writer, Schmidt says, “[I have] a lot of stuff going on that never appears in the book, but the book is different for my having thought of it. It’s an emotional kind of connection that starts early.”

Thanks to the deftly drawn characters that inhabit Orbiting Jupiter, that emotional connection continues until the very end, when signs of new beginnings appear like the approaching spring.

“You’d have to be an idiot to deny the pain so often around us,” Schmidt says, “but I also want to say it’s a beautiful and glorious world. Joseph does find love, Maddie as well. . . . It’s not tragic that a broken world is one that’s also good and glorious. It’s worthy of our lives to try and make it better.”

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reviews T PI OP CK

TEEN

I CRAWL THROUGH IT

Coping, bizarrely enough REVIEW BY JILL RATZAN

Every once in a while a book comes along that inspires readers to rethink everything they thought they knew about how fiction works.

Given author A.S. King’s talent for writing boundary-pushing YA lit, it’s no surprise that her latest offering does exactly that.

Gustav is building a red helicopter that the biology-obsessed Stanzi —which isn’t her real name—can only see on Tuesdays. China, a poet, has turned herself inside out. Lansdale’s hair grows every time she tells a lie, which is often. All four teens, hiding their pain behind elaborate defense mechanisms, are desperate to escape a life in which parents tour the sites of school shootings, abusers walk free and daily bomb threats disrupt their classes . . . especially as the time for high-stakes testing looms. And all the while, a strange man who lurks in a bush sells letters (like A, B, C, not the kind with stamps) in return for kisses and other favors.

By A.S. King When Gustav’s helicopter is finished, he and Stanzi fly it to the Little, Brown, $18, 336 pages haunting Place of Arrivals—where, in theory, there are no departures.

ISBN 9780316334099, audio, eBook available But one resident has already departed, and another hopes to be next.

Ages 15 and up References to cultural icons such as “M*A*S*H,” Amadeus and “SesMAGICAL REALISM ame Street” (at least in my interpretation of the letter-selling man) give characters a language to express the inexpressible. Surreal and unsettling but ultimately redemptive, this piece of magical realism—if that indeed is what it is—will speak to fans of Francesca Lia Block and anyone seeking a thoroughly postmodern read.

reward money, even split between six accomplices, is worth the risk.

Six of Crows is narrated by the rotating perspectives of Kaz’s young crew, a relatively diverse group whose personalities are distinct and compelling. Bardugo reveals each character’s backstory in stages, which adds suspense in the early chapters before the action ramps up. The bonds between members of the gang, especially the romantic ones, are sufficiently convincing to carry readers through a few weaker moments.

Beyond the romance, Six of Crows is undeniably exciting. Bardugo cultivates a taut sense of urgency that intensifies as the heist unfolds minute by minute, leading to an unexpected twist in the final moments.

While the adventure and romance are perfect for the provided age range, episodes of extreme violence makes this dark heist novel suitable for older teen readers.

—ANNIE METCALF

SYMPHONY FOR THE CITY OF THE DEAD

By M.T. Anderson

UNTWINE

By Edwidge Danticat

Scholastic $16.99, 320 pages ISBN 9780545423038 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up FICTION

Identical twins Isabelle and Giselle were born holding hands, and 16 years later, Isabelle dies in a car crash while holding her sister’s hand. Giselle survives, along with her parents, and is forced to face the world without her twin, her own appearance a reminder of what she has lost.

Giselle is in a semi-comatose state in the hospital, trying to piece together the accident’s details while the doctors mistake her for her sister. It isn’t until her mother visits that they realize that Isabelle

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has died, while Giselle is still living and steadily recovering. They begin to suspect that what was originally considered an accident might not have been, prompting further investigation by the police.

Narrated by Giselle, who is wise beyond her years, Untwine tells an emotional story full of heartbreak, agony and hope. Written in elegant prose, with each chapter ending in a profound emotional statement, the novel draws readers through the aftermath of unexpected loss.

Author Edwidge Danticat not only exposes the delicate bond that twins share but also beautifully weaves in Haitian culture and family traditions throughout the novel. Mystery and emotions run high in this work, taking readers on a realistic ride through the various stages of grief.

Untwine is recommended for older teens and those dealing with the loss of a loved one.

— E R I N A . H O LT

SIX OF CROWS

By Leigh Bardugo Holt $18.99, 480 pages ISBN 9781627792127 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up FANTASY

Leigh Bardugo’s new series, set in the same universe as her best-selling Grisha trilogy, kicks off with Six of Crows. In this gritty world, gangs battle for control of the streets in the bustling port city of Ketterdam.

One of these gangs is the Dregs, led

by Kaz Brekker, whose youth belies his cunning as a thief and viciousness as a leader. Because of this growing reputation, Kaz is offered a job: liberate a prisoner from the Ice Court, a legendary stronghold in the nation of Fjerda. It’s almost certainly a suicide mission, but the

Candlewick $25.99, 464 pages ISBN 9780763668181 Audio available Ages 14 and up HISTORY

Before Hitler’s Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in September 1941, Stalin was already killing his own people. Foolishly, Stalin allied with Hitler before realizing too late that Russia was another target.

Leningrad was home to composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose works taunted Stalin but were just shy of rebellion. His peers were murdered for being traitors, and he often feared for his life. But art must be created, if only to show that we are human, and while Leningrad lay under siege and its people nearly starved to death, Shostakovich’s seventh symphony became an obsession. For two and a half years, Leningrad residents ate rancid rations, grass, pets and

TEEN resorted to cannibalism. They burned books for warmth along with floorboards, walls and other remains of bombarded buildings.

More than a million people died.

Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony told the story of Stalin’s assaults on his own people, of Hitler’s crushing entrapment of the city, and life amid this torture. The symphony captured the story of Leningrad’s people; it rallied them and encouraged them to survive.

M.T. Anderson (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing) presents a thrilling history of music and the terrible events of World War II. Extensively researched and passionately told, Symphony for the City of the Dead exposes the strengths and weaknesses of humanity through an engrossing tale of war, art and undying creativity.

—HEATHER BRUSH

THE REST OF US JUST LIVE HERE

By Patrick Ness

HarperTeen $17.99, 336 pages ISBN 9780062403162 Audio, eBook available Ages 14 and up FICTION

The indie kids are dying again.

This time it’s not vampires or soul-eating ghosts but the Messenger of the Immortals seeking a Permanent Vessel. As an ordinary teen, Mikey is safe from the romances and battles with supernaturals, but he still has plenty of problems.

Graduation is only weeks away, and he still hasn’t confessed his love to Henna. This uncertainty has increased his obsessive-compulsive disorder, leaving him raw inside and out.

At least Mikey’s not alone as he faces these major life events, as well as the glowing blue lights that hint of death around town. His older sister, Mel, is graduating a year late as she tries to keep her anorexia in check. Henna has to spend the summer before college in a war-torn African country with her missionary parents, and their friend Jared has even bigger secrets

than being the gay son of a goddess of cats.

All this transpires as the dark, humorous mystery of the indie kids runs in the background. No matter that Patrick Ness never fully describes what an indie kid is; readers are sure to have already met one of these uber-emotional teens with enabling parents.

Despite—or perhaps because of— the witty outlandishness, Mikey displays a vulnerability that will resonate with readers. He may not solve the world’s problems, or even those in his own suburb, but he finds resilience to rival any superhero. Ness continues to surprise in this sarcastic yet honest depiction of teen angst.

—ANGELA LEEPER

JUNIORS

By Kaui Hart Hemmings

Putnam $18.99, 320 pages ISBN 9780399173608 Audio, eBook available Ages 14 and up FICTION

Two months after moving to Hawaii in the middle of her junior year, Lea Lane still feels like the new girl. For the most part, she’s OK with that, but when her mother announces that they’ll be moving into the wealthy West family’s guest cottage, Lea is mortified. Embarrassed at feeling like a charity case, she’s more determined than ever to keep her head down and fit in. But soon she can’t help but befriend the West kids. Popular Whitney is a completely different person outside of school, and could it be possible that gorgeous Will is attracted to Lea? Juniors is Kaui Hart Hemmings’ first foray into young adult fiction, and the acclaimed author of The Descendants proves that she’s up to the challenge. Hemmings fully inhabits her teenage characters in their attempts to navigate high school politics and discover their own individual identities. Confusing relationships, false steps and awkward feelings all ring true

to the 17-year-old experience, as do the after-school moments of joy and abandon. The masterfully executed Hawaiian backdrop adds to the book’s charm, imbuing the hyper-realistic story with a hint of fantasy (at least for mainland readers).

Juniors drags in places, as Lea’s uncertainty becomes monotonous here and there, but overall the novel is a dead-on depiction of the high school social scene told in simple, elegant prose.

—SARAH WEBER

THE EMPEROR OF ANY PLACE

By Tim Wynne-Jones

Candlewick $17.99, 336 pages ISBN 9780763669737 Audio available Ages 14 and up FICTION

Evan is grief-stricken after the sudden death of his father, Clifford. His estranged grandfather, the legendary Marine lifer Griff, comes to help “get things in order,” but all Evan knows about Griff is the mutual hate between him and Clifford, culminating in Clifford’s move to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft. But there may be a hidden motivation for Griff’s sudden willingness to care for his grandson. Evan finds a book on Clifford’s desk that chronicles bizarre, fantastical events from the end of World War II. Griff is determined to get his hands on the book, so Evan intends to keep it from him, suspecting that the book implicates his grandfather in some terrible deed.

The book reveals the story of a Japanese soldier who survives a battle against the United States and finds refuge on a deserted Pacific island called Kokoro-Jima, the Heart-Shaped Island. There, mystical ghost children follow him, and zombie-like beings feast on the memories of dead soldiers that wash ashore. This incredible story alternates with—and greatly overshadows—Evan’s present-day interactions with his cold-hearted

grandfather. Like Evan, the reader can scarcely wait for each installment of the tale of Kokoro-Jima.

Literary master Tim ­WynneJones has penned another outstanding book for adventurous readers, combining history and horror to grip the imagination.

—DIANE COLSON

WHAT WE SAW

By Aaron Hartzler HarperTeen $17.99, 336 pages ISBN 9780062338747 eBook available Ages 14 and up FICTION

Despite waking up with the mother of all hangovers, Kate Weston has it pretty good. Ben, the childhood friend who made sure she got home safe from last night’s party, may be ready to take their relationship into new territory. But when a photo from the party turns up online showing one of Ben’s basketball teammates carrying an unconscious and barely clothed girl over one shoulder, all hell breaks loose. The town’s loyalty to their sports teams supersedes their concern for a girl who they quickly write off as “asking for it.” But Kate wants answers. What We Saw shows how close-knit communities are willing to close ranks when their interests are threatened.

Author Aaron Hartzler (Rapture Practice) based this story on the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case, where video footage showed kids watching an assault and egging on the participants. While What We Saw reads like a hybrid of mystery and romantic drama, it also includes a conversation (literally, in the classroom) about rape culture and should spark further discussion among readers. Perhaps most importantly, Hartzler keeps the story from feeling exploitative.

When a crime is committed, trial by social media is not the answer; What We Saw looks unflinchingly at the way the justice system fails victims and perpetrators today.

—HEATHER SEGGEL

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reviews

CHILDREN’S

T PI OP CK

LENNY & LUCY

By Philip C. Stead

Illustrated by Erin E. Stead

MOST DANGEROUS

Disrupting a pattern of lies REVIEW BY KEVIN DELECKI

By Steve Sheinkin

Roaring Brook, $19.99, 384 pages ISBN 9781596439528, audio, eBook available Ages 10 to 14 MIDDLE GRADE

NEW FALL

$16.99 | 9780807580615

$16.99 | 9780807515662

FAVORITES

THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT

By Patrick McDonnell

Little, Brown $15.99, 40 pages ISBN 9780316338011 eBook available Ages 3 to 6 PICTURE BOOK

Kirkus STARRED REVIEW

PW STARRED REVIEW

ALBERT WHITMAN & COMPANY

Publishing award-winning children’s books since 1919

f l & albertwhitman.com

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With one action, Daniel Ellsberg became the most celebrated, most reviled and most dangerous man in America. Most Dangerous, by award-winning author Steve Sheinkin, tells the story of how Ellsberg, an unknown government analyst, compiled and then released 20 years of governmental records, reports and documents about the Vietnam War. These became known as the Pentagon Papers, revealing deception that ran across four presidencies and forever altered the way the American public viewed politicians.

Sheinkin once again offers a story that is compelling and eminently readable, while also being informative and immaculately researched.

Labeled at the time as “the greatest story of the century,” this exposure of the Vietnam War—and the fallout from the release of the Pentagon Papers—has now been relegated to a dry chapter in history books. With themes of patriotism, free speech, honesty and power, Most Dangerous draws readers into this pivotal moment in American history and shows them how one act of bravery, or treason, can change everything.

In this irresistible story, readers fall for Clement the rabbit, Jean the elephant and Alan Alexander the bear, the three tiny friends of a girl named Maggie.

“The sun set, the moon rose,” and Maggie helps Clement get ready for bed. Then, surprise: It’s a pajama party when Jean and Alan show up in PJs. (Alan’s are a bit too big, and in one very funny spread, when the three creatures leap for joy on Maggie’s bed, Alan’s pajama bottoms don’t leap with him.)

Who wants to slip under the covers when there are chicken dances to do, funny faces to make, hide-and-seek to play, balloons to bounce, yoga to practice, snacks to eat and wishes to be made upon shooting stars? The joy and heart of this book fall right here in the en-

PICTURE BOOK

Roaring Brook $17.99, 40 pages ISBN 9781596439320 Ages 3 to 7

Lenny & Lucy, the latest picture book from the award-winning husband and wife team of Philip and Erin Stead, is a quietly captivating story about a boy named Peter who moves with his father and a large dog, Harold, to a new home at the edge of a big forest.

While firmly aimed at a young audience, Philip’s writing is refreshingly sophisticated from the start: “Winding along a bumpy road, through the dark unfriendly woods, Peter said, ‘I think this is a terrible idea.’” To ease his fears, Peter stitches together blankets dearing play of these three friends. and pillows to create a giant guard(Maggie often seems to be on the ian named Lenny. To keep Lenny sidelines, as if she’s the parental company, Peter also creates Lucy, presence.) Either the girl’s imagand the pair bring great comfort to inative revelry with her stuffed the anxious boy working hard to animals is a potent thing, or she overcome his own fears. lives in a world where pajama-clad, Erin’s illustrations have a slightly pint-sized creatures visit to play old-fashioned feel, drawn in the with her each night. No matter. The style of her Caldecott-winning play’s the thing.

A Sick Day for Amos McGee. Each Nearly everything about Thank detailed drawing highlights Peter’s You and Good Night is comfy and loneliness and isolation, and then intimate, including its smaller size. later the comfort he gains from The soft color palette is especialLenny and Lucy, who look like ly inviting; the humor is sweetly bulky, bundled-up snowmen. The goofy; and the compositions are illustrations are in various tones uncluttered. Look closely at the of gray, with muted color accents window where the three creatures given only to the characters, a play with balloons: It seems to be technique that adds a distinctive a tribute to the ultimate bedtime focus to this imaginative tale of book, Margaret Wise Brown’s loneliness and connection, the Goodnight Moon, as it looks almost known and the unknown. precisely like the window in the And sure enough, as Peter grows iconic great green room. There are more comfortable in his new surother nods to beloved children’s roundings, along comes a young books throughout this story. (Could neighbor, Millie, and her mother, Maggie even be a tribute to Brown bringing the promise of new disherself?) The snug ending, an ode coveries and adventures ahead. to gratitude and the joy of children, Lenny & Lucy is a wonderis perfection. fully reassuring book about the Call it a night with this one, the inventive adjustments that are year’s most captivating bedtime sometimes necessary to confront book. intimidating new situations.

—J U L I E D A N I E L S O N

—ALICE CARY

CHILDREN’S THE BAMBOO SWORD

By Margi Preus

Amulet $16.95, 352 pages ISBN 9781419708077 Audio, eBook available Ages 10 to 14 MIDDLE GRADE

Margi Preus has a remarkable ability to create fascinating, page-turning stories that transport young readers to faraway times and places. Whether she’s evoking Norway during World War II or 19th-century Japan, Preus combines impeccable research with strong characterization and plot—the very elements that draw readers into history and spark the curiosity to learn more.

Fans of her Newbery Honor-­ winning Heart of a Samurai will be delighted to discover that Manjiro (based on the historical figure of Nakahama Manjiro) also appears in Preus’ new novel, The Bamboo Sword. The actual Manjiro was rescued from a shipwreck at age 14 by an American whaling ship and spent time in America before returning to Japan. Although initially arrested, he was released shortly before Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo Bay in the summer of 1853, and as the only Japanese with firsthand knowledge of English and Westerners, he was an important figure in the opening of Japan to the West.

In The Bamboo Sword, readers experience the arrival of those first strange ships through the eyes of a fictional 13-year-old servant boy named Yoshi, who harbors the dream of becoming a samurai himself, a path not open to someone of his class. But events conspire to put a sword into Yoshi’s hand and to intertwine his fate with both Manjiro and a young member of the U.S. expedition, Jack Sullivan, inspired loosely by pioneering war correspondent and photographer Timothy O’Sullivan.

With its compelling story, block prints, historical photographs, glossary and substantive author’s

note, The Bamboo Sword is historical fiction at its best.

—DEBORAH HOPKINSON

CRENSHAW

By Katherine Applegate

Feiwel & Friends $16.99, 256 pages ISBN 9781250043238 Audio, eBook available Ages 8 to 12 MIDDLE GRADE

In her previous novel, the Newbery Medal-winning The One and Only Ivan, Katherine Applegate tackled issues of animal welfare while offering readers the opportunity to expand what they typically expect from traditional storytelling. In Crenshaw, Applegate once again tackles big issues with plenty of heart and humor.

Almost-fifth-grader Jackson literally can’t believe his eyes when he sees a giant, smart-alecky cat.

Again. The last time he saw his “imaginary friend” Crenshaw, Jackson was just a little kid, and his family was going through some pretty tough times—so tough that they had to live in their minivan for a while. Now Crenshaw is back— but so are Jackson’s family’s money problems.

As Jackson’s parents try to make ends meet, Jackson struggles to figure out what Crenshaw’s reappearance means and how Jackson can help his family finally tell each other the truth.

Despite the fact that one of its central characters is a giant talking cat, Crenshaw is a surprisingly somber book at times, with a sophisticated narrative structure that shifts back and forth in Jackson’s life story. By adding elements of fantasy and whimsy, however, Applegate is able to address issues such as poverty and food insecurity in a way that kids will respond to, perhaps thinking about their friends and neighbors—or, like Jackson, even themselves—with greater sympathy, generosity and understanding.

—NORAH PIEHL

THE BEAR REPORT A boring homework assignment becomes a magical adventure when young Sophie is whisked away to the Arctic by a polar bear named Olafur in author-illustrator Thyra Heder’s new picture book, The Bear Report (Abrams, $17.95, 48 pages, ISBN 9781419707834, ages 4 to 8).

Brooklyn-based Heder is also an illustrator and storyboard artist for film and advertising.

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WORDNOOK

BY THE EDITORS OF MERRIAM-WEBSTER

IN THE CARDS

Dear Editor: My dictionary says that the word kaput comes originally from French, not German as I always thought. Is that right?

D. P. Ludlow, Vermont French capot made its way into German via a card game. To win all of the tricks in the card game piquet is faire capot, “to make capot” in French, while être capot, “to be capot,” is to have lost all of the tricks in a game. In German capot was borrowed as kaput, and from the sense of having lost a game, kaput developed the meanings “finished” and “broken.” Kaput began to appear in English writing in the late 19th century, generally in contexts where a German word would be appropriate or else printed in italics or glossed to show that it was not yet a fully anglicized word.

However, during and after World

War II kaput became established in English in the senses “utterly finished,” “useless” or “hopelessly outmoded.”

HYMN OF MOURNING

Dear Editor: Can you tell me why a song played at a funeral is called a dirge?

C. W. Hialeah, Florida Dirge traces back to the Latin word dirigere, meaning “to direct.”

Dirge and its earlier form dirige, meaning “a song or hymn of mourning,” come from the first word of a Latin chant used in the church service for the dead: “Dirige, Domine deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam” (Direct, O Lord my God, my way in thy sight).

Hymns and chants were often referred to by their first words.

Another example is magnificat, the canticle of the Virgin Mary in Luke 1:46–55 whose name comes from

the first word of the canticle: “Magnificat anima mea Dominum” (My soul magnifies the Lord). Because it was the first word in the chant used in the service for the dead, dirge became the common word for this chant. Later it was used for a slow, solemn hymn of mourning.

VOTED OUT

Dear Editor: As part of her anti-bullying program at school, my daughter has learned the word ostracize. She thought it was an odd word. Can you tell us where it comes from?

H. M. Midland, Michigan The Greek word osteon, meaning “bone,” and its relatives ostreon, “oyster,” and ostrakon, are names for hard, brittle objects. Ostrakon could refer to a seashell, an earthen vessel or the broken fragment of such a vessel. Such potsherds served ancient Athenians as ballots

in a particular kind of popular vote.

Once a year the male citizens could gather in the agora or marketplace of Athens to decide who, if anyone, should be banished temporarily for the good of the city. Each voter wrote a name on his ostrakon. If at least six thousand votes were cast and if a majority of them named one man, then that man was banished. The verb to describe this banishment, and the source of English ostracize, was ostrakizein, a derivative of ostrakos. When the word ostracism first appeared in English in the 16th century, it was used only in historical reference to the ancient Athenian custom.

Nonhistorical use began early in the 17th century, and nowadays ostracism refers more generally to exclusion from a group by common consent.

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

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

DIFFICULTY: COMPLETION:

TIME:___________

Using the clues below, find and circle the words concealed in the letter grid.

The start of something (noun) Showing a lack of experience or knowledge (adjective) To take or keep in custody by authority of law (verb) A place where two things join (noun) Easily broken, cracked, or snapped (adjective)

SYnonYM UnSCRAMBLe

DIFFICULTY: COMPLETION:

Unscramble the letters below to form pairs of SYNONYMS. Watch out—some words can be unscrambled more than one way!

A V-shaped indentation (noun) A clumsy person (noun) Not acceptable to talk about or do (adjective) To utter with a low, inarticulate voice (verb) A narrow steep-walled canyon (noun) To have a very strong desire for something (verb) workman.com

TIME:___________

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