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DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK
SAVING WINSLOW
An uplifting tale of love from Newbery winner Sharon Creech
HOW DO WE LOOK
Classicist Mary Beard on humanity and the divine
INSPIRATIONAL FICTION
New novels celebrating family and faith
The Mermaid and Mrs. H ancock
A provocative historical fiction debut on gender and power from Imogen Hermes Gowar
SEPT 2018
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NOTEWORTHY NEW BOOKS featuring
GARY SHTEYNGART PAT BARKER PATRICK DEWITT VIOLA DAVIS
Jacqueline Woodson Bragg Lorrie Moore The Honorable P.C. Jacqueline Woodson Rick Rick Bragg Lorrie Moore The Honorable P.C.Cast Cast Edward L. Ayers Luis Alberto Urrea Ben Fountain Sonia Sotomayor Nell Irvin Edward L. Ayers Luis Alberto Urrea Ben Fountain Sonia Sotomayor Nell IrvinPainter Painter Alexander Chee Celeste NgNg Rachel Hawkins David Gold Tayari Alexander Chee Celeste Rachel Hawkins Glen Glen David Gold TayariJones Jones Bridget KurtKurt Bridget Rebecca Makkai Rebecca Makkai Deborah G. Plant Deborah G. Plant Kevin Powers Kevin Powers Ketch Secor Ketch Secor B.A.B.A. Shapiro Shapiro Deborah Wiles Deborah Wiles Jesse Graves Jesse Graves William Wright William Wright LeeLee Conell Conell David Arnold David Arnold Patti Kim Patti Kim Marc Hetherington Marc Hetherington Silas House Silas House Monica Hesse Monica Hesse Inman Majors Inman Majors Steve Haruch Steve Haruch Joseph Crespino Joseph Crespino Abigail DeWitt Abigail DeWitt Sandy Coomer Sandy Coomer Andy Plattner Andy Plattner Michael Osborn Michael Osborn Dawn Schluckebier Dawn Schluckebier Clay Risen Clay Risen Beth Bachmann Beth Bachmann Blas Falconer Blas Falconer Tiana Clark Tiana Clark Elliott Gorn Elliott Gorn Jennifer Brule Jennifer Brule Adib Khorram Adib Khorram Meg Leder Meg Leder Tammi Sauer Tammi Sauer Rae Paris Rae Paris Shea BobBob Shea Brantley Hargrove Brantley Hargrove Harry L. Moore Harry L. Moore Farrah Penn Farrah Penn Bob Spitz Bob Spitz Jessica Young Jessica Young James Miller James Miller Helene Dunbar Helene Dunbar Don Cusic Don Cusic Anne Byrn Anne Byrn Deborah Gold Deborah Gold Lou Berney Lou Berney Phyllis Gobbell Rebecca Morgan Frank Marjorie Herrera Lewis Douglas Reichert Powell Phyllis Gobbell Reichert Powell Frank Marjorie Herrera Lewis Amy Ignatow Douglas Alice Morgan Faye Duncan James Hudnut-Beumler Britteney Black Rose KapriRebecca AmyRyan Ignatow Britteney Black Rose Kapri Alice Faye Duncan James Hudnut-Beumler Guth Sanya Whittaker Gragg Dana Chamblee Carpenter Sandra Gail Lambert Ryan Guth Sandra Gail Lambert Sanya Whittaker Gragg Dana Chamblee Carpenter
Craig CraigJohnson Johnson Rochelle RochelleRiley Riley Karida KaridaL.L.Brown Brown Kevin KevinWilson Wilson Alice AliceBolin Bolin Kumiko KumikoMakihara Makihara Jeff JeffJackson Jackson Eve EveHoffman Hoffman Bernice BerniceL.L.McFadden McFadden Jamie JamieQuatro Quatro Wayétu WayétuMoore Moore Finn FinnMurphy Murphy Radley RadleyBalko Balko Joanne JoanneFreeman Freeman Lou LouBerney Berney Ed EdLin Lin Laura LauraSebastian Sebastian Kim KimBrooks Brooks EricBarnes Barnes Eric MalcolmGlass Glass Malcolm SusanCushman Cushman Susan ChristopherSchmidt Schmidt Christopher EmilyRosko Rosko Emily KerriManiscalco Maniscalco Kerri Cal Turner Cal Turner Ellen Wittlinger Ellen Wittlinger ScottReintgen Reintgen Scott José Olivarez José Olivarez Rachael Allen Rachael Allen J.T. Ellison J.T. Ellison VirginiaGilbert Gilbert Virginia KevinBrown Brown Kevin John Hendrix John Hendrix KimHooper Hooper Kim Jennifer Kavanagh Jennifer Kavanagh Kevin Powers Kevin Powers Marc Perrusquia Marc Perrusquia BryannaLicciardi Licciardi Bryanna Terry Klefstad Terry Klefstad Ellen Potter Ellen Potter Kelly Oliver Kelly Oliver Niles M. Reddick Niles M. Reddick L.L. McKinney L.L. McKinney Tucker Carrington Tucker Carrington Lyndsay Ely Lyndsay Ely Chanda Feldman Chanda Feldman Michael D. Doubler Michael D. Doubler Higgins Bond Higgins Bond Marla Frazee Marla Frazee Mariah Cole Mariah Cole AND MORE! AND MORE!
SEPTEMBER 2018
DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK
12 features
book reviews
11
17 FICTION
POLITICS Cutting through the noise of our current moment
11
DAVID SMALL Meet the author-illustrator of Home After Dark
12
t o p p i c k : She Would Be King
by Wayétu Moore
23 NONFICTION
t o p p i c k : 21 Lessons for the 21st
IMOGEN HERMES GOWAR
Century by Yuval Noah Harari
Love and mermaids in Georgian England
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26 TEEN
t o p p i c k : Sadie
by Courtney Summers
29 CHILDREN’S
t o p p i c k : A Big Mooncake for
Little Star by Grace Lin
MARY BEARD Art and ancient history
14
INSPIRATIONAL FICTION Four heroines stake their claims
16
LEA CARPENTER
13
A modern-day spy story
19
FRANCES DE PONTES PEEBLES A torch song for a complicated friendship
25
MAXWELL KING
14
The legacy of Mr. Rogers
28
SHARON CREECH Home-grown inspiration
31
MIKE TWOHY
24
Meet the author-illustrator of Stop, Go, Yes, No!
columns 4 5 5 6 6
WHODUNIT THE HOLD LIST SCI-FI & FANTASY LIFESTYLES COOKING
7 8 8 10
BOOK CLUBS WELL READ AUDIO ROMANCE
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Cover image by Ollie Grove
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B O O K PA G E · 2143 B E LC O U R T AV E N U E · N A S H V I L L E , T N 37212
B O O K PA G E . C O M
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columns
WHODUNIT BY BRUCE TIERNEY
A lethal little village, miles from nowhere Two war mysteries head up this month’s selections. First up is Charles Todd’s A Forgotten Place (Morrow, $27.99, 368 pages, ISBN 9780062678829), 10th in the popular series featuring Nurse Bess Crawford. When Bess first meets Captain Hugh Williams, the officer is in the hospital, recovering from the amputation of his leg.
the Welsh mines where they had earned their livings before the war. Some time later, Bess receives a letter from Hugh requesting her help for his men, a number of whom he is afraid are on the verge of suicide. There is little that the Army can (or will) do for them, so Bess takes it upon herself to go to Wales and have a look into the situation.
His depression is overwhelming, and it takes a lot of persuasion on the part of the plucky nurse to encourage him to find his inner strength and serve as an example for the wounded enlisted men who are facing uncertain futures, as they are now unable to work in
But the small coastal town of Caudle is in no way eager to share its secrets with strangers, and when inexplicable deaths start taking place, Bess begins to realize her life may be in danger. A Forgotten Place is atmospheric to the max, with all the immediacy, fear and
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emotion that come with first-person narration.
like the unconscious man lying in HANNAY’S HOMECOMING the marsh, The second of the two war his pockets mysteries could scarcely be more filled with different from the first. Robert J. gold, just Harris’ The Thirty-One Kings like the sacrifices in days of yore. (Pegasus, $25.95, 256 pages, ISBN In a parallel storyline, canny crime 9781681778549) reintroduces scene photographer Maya Linde Richard Hannay to the world. happens upon another body, again Hannay was the creation of author with pockets filled with gold, but John Buchan for his seminal novel this time the victim is quite dead. The 39 Steps. It is always a bit of a There is more here than meets the crapshoot to resurrect a beloved eye, however, as Nathalie grapples character after the original author with her grim connection to this has gone to the Great Bookshop mysterious place, where she lost in the Sky, but Harris pulls it off her parents in an apparent murpretty well. He flawlessly echoes der-suicide when she was a child. the tongue-in-cheek dialogue of his Can these two highly motivated predecessor, and the characterizawomen persuade the bog to give tions are spot-on. As in the original, up its secrets, or will the bog suck everything is a bit larger than life; them down into the mire as it has for example, at the outset of the done to countless others before? book, Hannay is on walkabout with TOP PICK IN MYSTERY his wife in the Scottish lowlands when a biplane crashes nearby, and Michael Hudson gets lucky in the pilot uses his dying breaths to George Pelecanos’ latest novel, inform Hannay of his new mission. The Man Who Came Uptown With the fate of World War II-era (Mulholland, $27, 272 pages, ISBN Europe hanging in the balance, 9780316479820). After facing an Hannay must find an agent codeanticipated five-year sentence named “Roland,” the only one who for driving the getaway car in an knows the secret of the 31 kings. armed robbery, he is released after The Thirty-One Kings is a little the key witness refuses to testify bit of James Bond, a smattering of against him. In prison vernacuIndiana Jones and perhaps even lar, Hudson is “moving uptown.” Hudson’s release is no accident, a bit of Buckaroo Banzai—clever, but rather some expert and illegal well-plotted and big fun. witness tampering on the part of EVIL IN THE MARSH opportunistic private investigator What is creepier and more forePhil Ornazian, who foresaw some boding than a mist-enshrouded benefit in having a skilled wheelman for a future crime. Hudson has bog, far off the beaten track? In The Forbidden Place (Grand every intention of going straight, but Ornazian has done him a solid, Central, $26, 352 pages, ISBN 9781538713051), author Susanne so Hudson reluctantly agrees to Jansson’s atmospheric first novel, pilot the hot-rodded Impala SS for the purpose of relieving a notorious Nathalie Ström, a young woman sex trafficker of a portion of his doing her doctoral thesis on climate change, has just arrived in the ill-gotten gains. The moral conflict inherent in Hudson’s decision will remote Mossmarken wetlands in northern Sweden. She has rented a color his life in ways he could not small cottage at the edge of the peat predict. Character-driven, rich, bog, which is reputed to be the site complex and laden with the Washof sacrifices—sometimes human ington, D.C., lore for which Pelecasacrifices—to the gods. And even nos is deservedly famous, The Man though she works at the cutting Who Came Uptown is a worthy edge of science, there are things addition to the oeuvre of one of the going on that she cannot explain, best mystery writers working today.
SCI-FI & FANTASY
THE HOLD LIST Each month, BookPage editors share special reading lists—our personal favorites, old and new.
What to read in public What does your reading list say about you? Sometimes the better question is, what do you want to say to the world through your reading list? Make your point loud and clear with these five books.
To make a new best friend: LESS by Andrew Sean Greer
BY CHRIS PICKENS
Object permanence Robert Jackson Bennett’s Foundryside (Crown, $27, 512 pages, ISBN 9781524760366) is a vivid and lively romp through a fantasy world marked by lavish wealth and extreme poverty. In the city of Tevanne, four powerful merchant houses reign supreme. Ensconced behind massive walls, they vie for control over the city, its wealth
This is an easy one. Having just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it’s likely at the top of everyone’s reading list, but once you’ve cracked the spine, you’ll discover just how worthy it is of the honor. “Bittersweet” doesn’t quite capture the story of Arthur Less, the gay author who goes on a round-the-world literary tour to avoid the wedding of his longtime lover, so you can search for the perfectly wistful word with anyone who stops to talk with you about it.
To impress: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami To properly impress someone with your taste, one cannot simply reach for a Tolstoy or a Woolf. You, dear reader, are more cosmopolitan, more contemporary than that. Murakami’s 1Q84 is an incredibly ambitious speculative thriller, with a super cool cover that limns the storytelling gifts within. Open this one up and watch lit bros slink away, dejected and defeated, as they realize they cannot instruct you in what you should be reading.
To frighten: TAMPA by Alissa Nutting Tampa doesn’t look all that frightening based on its jacket, which will still undoubtedly cause some double takes. But trust us, the readers who know what Nutting’s daring, brilliant debut novel is about will stay far away from you if you dare to read this in public. And those who don’t will probably shy away quite quickly once you answer their queries with, “Oh, it’s about a female sexual predator who works as a middle-school teacher.”
To make someone laugh: GULP by Mary Roach With her irreverent science books, Roach asks the questions you never knew you wanted to ask, and then delivers her findings in the funniest, strangest way possible. Her curiosity leads her to that which is most taboo, and with Gulp, her exploration of the digestive system, you’ll be laughing so much that when a fellow reader can’t help but ask what you’re reading, you can proudly inform them that you’re learning about saliva, or what actually would’ve happened to Jonah in the belly of that whale.
To flirt: LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA by Gabriel García Márquez Tracking a pair of star-crossed lovers in an unnamed South American city, Love in the Time of Cholera interrogates cultural assumptions about relationships while also telling one of the greatest literary love stories of all time. It’s dizzyingly romantic, effortlessly intelligent and doesn’t end in murder or death by dramatic illness. (Which, come to think of it, are all good things to broadcast to a potential love interest.)
and each other’s scriving designs, which are magical blueprints that give sentience to everyday objects. Troubled thief Sancia Grado finds herself caught smack in the middle of the warring houses’ feud when she pilfers a living object that’s powerful enough to shift the balance. With the help of some unexpected allies and her friends from the city’s underbelly, she races to understand the object while trying to stay one step ahead of the forces bent on taking it for themselves. Bennett’s inventive system of magic is surrounded by a lush, Mediterranean-inspired city that’s as fun to read about as the lives of its inhabitants. Readers seeking a fantasy with fewer bodies strewn about would do well to pick this one up.
MIND OVER MATTER Named for a near-future Nigerian city that surrounds a massive alien biodome, Tade Thompson’s thought-provoking and deftly structured Rosewater (Orbit, $15.99, 432 pages, ISBN 9780316449052) blends science fiction, philosophy and mystery. Someone has been killing off government agent Kaaro’s fellow sensitives, individuals who can tap into the mental energies of other people. Guided by visions and memories of his past, Kaaro must
choose whether to follow the rules or break free to unravel a mystery and prevent a terrifying future. The dark haze of Thompson’s alternate world is an entertaining backdrop to this sci-fi noir, but it’s the open-ended questions posed by Rosewater that stick with the reader. Perfect for fans of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, this twisty, captivating page-turner explores the fragility of the mind and how memory constructs identity.
TOP PICK IN SCI-FI & FANTASY Bloody Rose (Orbit, $15.99, 560 pages, ISBN 9780316362535), Nicholas Eames’ follow-up to Kings of the Wyld, is a power-chord fantasy overflowing with attitude. When Tam is accepted into Fable, the most famous mercenary crew in the world, she thinks her dreams have come true. Now part of a gladiatorial squad hired to entertain the masses by slaughtering magical beasts, Fable plays to sold-out arenas in every town across the land of Grandual. When creatures from the north threaten to invade, Tam wonders if she and her crew should be fighting for more than just money and glory. This is fantasy written in tattoo ink and stale beer, raucously carousing with confidence and swagger. Pure entertainment isn’t the only strong suit of Bloody Rose—it also poses questions about celebrity and the effect of violence within fantasy. But it’s the backstage rock-show aesthetic that drives this adventure. Anyone looking for fantasy amplified (the book’s launch is accompanied by a Spotify playlist filled to the brim with classic ’80s tunes) will have a ball.
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LIFESTYLES
COOKING
B Y S U S A N N A H F E LT S
BY SYBIL PRATT
Persian pleasures
Get skivvy savvy “For many of us, lingerie can feel like a fancy party we weren’t invited to,” writes lingerie blogger Cora Harrington in the introduction to her book, In Intimate Detail: How to Choose, Wear, and Love Lingerie (Ten Speed, $25, 152 pages, ISBN 9780399580635). Not so, she insists. “Lingerie is about self-expression, identity, art, and joy.” And it’s not just the sexy, special-occasion stuff, either: Pajamas, nightgowns
Alexandra’s cautionary tale about expensive but ineffective “adventure pants,” which she bought and then ditched three weeks into their travels. There’s a nearly 50-50 ratio of narrative to advice in A Year Off, and the final section covers something that is often overlooked: the awkward re-acclimation period that can follow a lengthy journey far from home.
The fabulous cuisine of Persia is not well enough known here in America. But Naz Deravian is doing her talented best to bring its gustatory glories to American home cooks who want to add some sparkle to dinners and weekend get-togethers. Deravian left Iran with her family when she was 8 years old, grew up in Rome and Vancouver and finally settled in Los Angeles with an acting ca-
and robes all fall under the lingerie umbrella. That sheer caftan you rocked all summer? Yep, officially lingerie. Harrington covers the history, construction and types of bras before moving on to sizing and cost, and subsequent chapters on underwear, shapewear and hosiery follow a similar pattern. She also includes a section on bra fitting that includes a discussion of nonbinary individuals, mastectomies, nursing and fibromyalgia, along with several appendices, including sample lingerie wardrobes.
TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES
reer and family of her own. Her debut cookbook, Bottom of the Pot: Persian Recipes and Stories (Flatiron, $37.50, 384 pages, ISBN 9781250134417), named for her award-winning food blog, whisks you away to her table and its delights, with doable directions for making over 100 recipes in your own kitchen—such as irresistible saffron-infused Steamed Persian Rice, elegant chicken simmered in a lush sauce of ground walnuts and pomegranate molasses, stuffed eggplant and a simple bowl of cucumber mixed with yogurt and a bit of mint. Deravian writes as well as she cooks, and her recipes are cradled in charming reminiscences of Iranian tradition and family life.
TRAVEL WISELY In A Year Off: A Story About Traveling the World—and How to Make It Happen for You (Chronicle, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 9781452164656), married couple Alexandra and David Brown chronicle a trip around the world and provide advice for travelers who may want to follow in their footsteps. Filled with personal stories, useful takeaways, beautiful photos and great design, chapters like “Identity Crisis” and “Financial Freak-outs” make it clear that the Browns haven’t airbrushed their story. Route prepping and budget planning are covered with attention to down-to-the-dollarand-brand specifics and a refreshing level of frankness, such as
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Christina Coop and Aimee Lagos have been friends and co-conspirators their entire lives, despite both women moving all around the U.S. over the years. That’s a sweet enough story on its own, but it gets much better. After both of them departed the law-firm life, they joined forces and formed their own wallpaper design company, Hygge & West, aiming to bring “an Americanized twist to the concept of hygge.” In Hygge & West Home: Design for a Cozy Life (Chronicle, $35, 240 pages, ISBN 9781452164328), Coop and Lagos showcase interiors by some of the crazy-creative folks they’ve brought into their orbit, focusing on how each individual gives visual voice to the concept of hygge. Among the interviewees are illustrator Julia Rothman and actor and comedian Ana Gasteyer. The homes featured here put the brand’s wallpaper to use in brilliant ways, but there is a wealth of inspiration to glean from if hygge is your thing. The sections are broken down by themes—nature, small spaces, family and charm— and each design boasts luscious splashes of color, texture and personal artifacts that are combined in a dazzling array.
CAN-DO ATTITUDE There’s a special joy to home canning, to feeling a connection with past generations who lived without supermarkets, Amazon or freezers. With canning, you’re able to preserve Mother Nature’s bounty without chemical additives, and you decide how much sugar, salt or spice to use. You might think of it as seasonality sealed in a jar. Now’s the time to put up those luscious local pears, that sweet end-of-season corn and the glorious farmers market tomatoes. Jamie DeMent’s thorough, thoughtful Canning in
the Modern Kitchen: More Than 100 Recipes for Canning and Cooking Fruits, Vegetables, and Meats (Rodale, $24.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9781635652031) is the perfect guide to creating sweet and savory canning classics, from a simple jar of peaches or rich Fig Chutney to complex ratatouille or ginger-tanged Asian Pickled Carrots, and it includes all the vital step-by-step information on safe processing for both water-bath and pressure canning.
TOP PICK IN COOKBOOKS Daniel Olivella, chef and owner of Barlata in Austin, Texas, was born and raised in Catalonia, a small region in the northeast corner of Spain that is fabled for its fabulous food. Though he’s spent more than half his life in the States and honed his skills in renowned San Francisco restaurants, he’s fiercely proud of his Catalan spirit, culture and cuisine. That pride shines in Catalan Food: Culture and Flavors from the Mediterranean (Clarkson Potter, $30, 272 pages, ISBN 9780451495884), his culinary love song to the food his mama cooked and to gathering the finest ingredients and “infusing them with Catalan attitude.” The recipes, enhanced with anecdotes, range from Pica-Pica, the savory little bites that can make a meal or happily accompany rounds of drinks, to classics like Pork Meatballs with Cuttlefish and Catalan Vegetable Ragout and generous pans of paella and fidueà (short toasted noodles) arrayed with seafood. Notes within the recipes help you cook like un autèntic catalanista.
BOOK CLUBS BY JULIE HALE
New in paperback Jason Fagone’s The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies (Dey Street, $16.99, 464 pages, ISBN 9780062430519) documents the remarkable life of Elizebeth Smith, a Shakespearean scholar who was instrumental in the development of cryptology and, later, its use during World War II. In the Prohibition era,
Smith employed her expertise to nab bootleggers, but with the arrival of the war, Smith and her husband, cryptologist William Friedman, employed the science to decipher codes used by the Germans and the Japanese. Fagone does a wonderful job of explaining the fundamentals of cryptology, and he captures the tension that Smith and Friedman experienced as they took on the demands of covert assignments. Spanning both world wars as it traces the course of Smith’s amazing career and the development of her work, Fagone’s fascinating book will beguile history buffs and suspense fans as both an intriguing tale of espionage and a compassionate chronicle of a marriage.
A CLOISTERED LIFE A poignant story of the power of family and the resilience of the human spirit, Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour (Picador, $17, 256 pages, ISBN 9781250192745) takes place in Brooklyn in the early 1900s. Pregnant and alone, Annie, an Irish immigrant whose husband has committed suicide, goes to work in the laundry at the convent of the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor. When Annie gives birth to a daughter, Sally, the nuns assist her with the upbringing of the
child. Following Sally through her teenage years and beyond, as she joins the church and helps the sisters tend to the needy, the novel offers an unforgettable look at the lives of the city’s struggling residents and the nature of faith. This is the eighth book from National Book Award winner McDermott, and as always, her prose is luminous, and her ability to convincingly portray a wide cast of characters brings a wonderful authenticity to the book. Chosen by Time as one of their “Top 10 Novels of 2017,” this is a moving work from one of the nation’s most important writers.
TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS With In the Midst of Winter (Atria, $17, 352 pages, ISBN 9781501178146), Isabel Allende delivers a searing novel about the unexpected bond that arises between three unlikely companions after they become embroiled in a murder. During a blizzard that pummels Brooklyn, university professor Richard Bowmaster is involved in a car crash with Evelyn Ortega, an undocumented Guatemalan woman working as a nanny. The collision has serious repercussions (involving a dead body) for Evelyn, who soon arrives, terrified, at Richard’s apartment. For help in dealing with the desperate woman, Richard enlists Lucia Maraz, a fellow academic from Chile. When they learn about Evelyn’s past and the violence that tore her family apart, they take steps to assist her. Their remarkable plan makes the book something of a thriller—one that’s marked by hints of romance and Allende’s wise insights into the human heart. This compelling and timely novel—Allende’s 21st—finds the author at the top of her game.
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WELL READ
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BY SUKEY HOWARD
A mother’s love
Carving a path While it may seem a given that an accomplished literary biographer would write an equally accomplished autobiography, the requisite skills for each do not necessarily intersect. Biography requires research and a critical eye, whereas memoir demands recall, self-reflection and personal candor. Happily, Claire Tomalin, the former literary editor of two of London’s most esteemed newspapers and the highly decorated author of biographies on Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens and other literary giants, proves herself as adept at self-chronicling as she is at plumbing the literary past. Her cleverly titled memoir, A Life of My Own (Penguin Press $27, 352 pages, ISBN 9780399562914), provides an arresting look at a professional life inextricably entwined with the lifelong personal concerns of a woman who is also a wife, daughter and mother. Now 85, Tomalin is part of the generation that grew up during World War II and came of age in the years of postwar promise. Her story, which follows a pattern traced by other educated, intelligent women of her generation, has striking detours that set it apart. Her French father and English mother divorced—a rare event at the time—and Tomalin was educated at progressive schools and at Cambridge, where she made lifelong friendships with others who would become leading lights of British culture. Chief among these was the charming Nicholas Tomalin. As was typical in the 1950s, the couple married young and immediately started a family. In relatively short order, Tomalin gave birth to five children—one of whom died a few days after birth—and her primary role as wife and mother was sealed. While it was not a role she regret-
AUDIO
BY ROBERT WEIBEZAHL
ted taking on, she wanted to achieve more, and she juggled part-time work in publishing with her domestic duties. The Tomalin marriage was a tempestuous one, with Nick’s frequent affairs leading to long disappearances. Tomalin put up with these infidelities for a time, but she also dealt with violent anger from her husband when she dared to turn the tables. Tomalin took him back for the sake of the children, and they continued to navigate through marital discontent as Nick rose to the top of his profession as a journalist. Then, Nick’s horrific death in Israel while reporting the Yom Kippur War forever changed the trajectory of Tomalin’s life. As a single mother, she accepted a job as literary editor of the New Statesman and quickly immersed herself deeper into London’s cultural scene. But as she made her mark as an editor and a biographer, personal struggles continued. She raised a son born with spina bifida A quiet book, and weathered beautifully the suicide told with both of one of her daughters. restraint and Tomalin’s generosity of well-examined spirit. life reflects the struggles that many women of her generation— and generations since—encountered as they attempted to juggle the domestic with the professional, hoping to find the balance between a desire to nurture and their own needs and ambitions. Her memoir also offers an intimate, fascinating glimpse into a bygone era in London literary circles—a closeknit, insular world where everyone knew everyone, and careers often were made not only through good work but also at dinner parties with neighbors. However, for all its underlying drama, A Life of My Own is a quiet book, beautifully told with both restraint and generosity of spirit.
The “other woman” is usually a mistress, a lover or an old, still-burning flame. Not so in Sandie Jones’ diabolically devious debut domestic thriller, The Other Woman (Macmillan Audio, 10 hours), engagingly performed by Clare Corbett, who captures the essence of each character. It all starts when the attractive, feisty and successful Emily sees Adam across the proverbial crowded room and feels the jolt that signals something
big. Things go well, and soon Adam wants her to meet his beloved, widowed mother. But when she does meet sweet, oh-so-loving Pammie, Emily’s world is turned upside down. The tension begins to build, incident by incident, as Adam, Emily and Pammie’s relationship evolves into a treacherous triangle. To Adam, Pammie can do no wrong; to Pammie, Emily can do no right; and Emily is caught in a web of Pammie’s manipulation that starts with thinly veiled nastiness and escalates to evil. As the pace picks up and Emily fights to save her relationship with Adam, you won’t see the final twist coming—it’s a wild take on what a mother will do for her child.
WHEN EDDIE MET SARAH “The course of true love never did run smooth.” The Bard’s words remain accurate—especially for Sarah and Eddie. It’s been 19 years, but Sarah comes home to Gloucestershire, England, every year on the anniversary of her younger sister’s tragic accident. In the accident’s unbearable aftermath, Sarah fled to Los Angeles, eventually creating a fulfilling life. But this year, as she walks through her charming home village, she runs into an even more charming man who’s chatting with a lost sheep. They talk, laugh, and within a few hours they’ve fallen
madly in love. Their romantic idyll lasts for a week, and then he’s off for a short vacation; Sarah promises to meet his return flight. But then there’s total silence for weeks: She’s been ghosted. And Ghosted (Penguin Audio, 9.5 hours) is the title of Rosie Walsh’s moving debut novel, warmly narrated by Katherine Press. Will Sarah and Eddie be strong enough to tell their truths and accept them? Keep the Kleenex nearby; you’ll be rooting for them to avoid a starcrossed ending.
TOP PICK IN AUDIO Bestselling author Megan Abbott yet again takes her literary scalpel to a toxic female friendship and dissects it with intense and intimate understanding in Give Me Your Hand (Hachette Audio, 11 hours), read by Chloe Cannon. When contained, cool, super-achieving Diane turned up in Kit’s high school chemistry class, she became Kit’s motivating force. Together they studied hard and went after a science scholarship offered by the famed Dr. Lena Severin, a pioneering researcher in premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a debilitating hormonal condition. But when Diane told Kit her darkest, most dreadful secret, Kit snapped under the burden, and their tight teenage allegiance shattered. That was then. Now, 10 years and a few B.A.s and Ph.D.s later, Kit is the most diligent worker in Dr. Severin’s lab, sure of a spot on the team that’s to be funded by a new grant. But suddenly, Diane appears again as Severin’s big poach from Harvard, and inevitably, the former friends’ past plays out in a tangled, dangerous way that may take them both down.
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Maisey Yates brings you a cowboy for every mood!
columns
Sexy as sin with a devil-may-care attitude!
Alexa Martin’s Intercepted (Berkley, $15, 320 pages, ISBN 9780451491954) features a relatable heroine and a hero who might be perfect for her, all set against the high-stakes backdrop of the NFL. Readers get a look at professional football from the perspective of the athletes’ wives
COLLISION COURSE The Tortured Hero Strong, secretive and simply unforgettable!
HQNBooks.com MaiseyYates.com
The Billionaire Boss Rich, powerful and he always gets what he wants!
Pick up your copies today!
A heroine goes home again in Enticed by You (Dafina, $7.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9781496716026) by Elle Wright. With her divorce finally behind her, Kennedi Robinson heads to small-town Michigan to visit her beloved aunt and the family business. On her way, she crashes into trouble, literally, when she gets into a fender bender with wealthy resident Parker Wells Jr. He’s handsome and appealing, but Kennedi has immediate second thoughts when she realizes that
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B Y C H R I S T I E R I D G WAY
A Hail Mary pass
and girlfriends, offering a full view of the hierarchies and jealousies, as well as the pressure from the press and public. Narrated in an irreverent first-person voice, this story about a betrayed woman who finds the courage to once again seek love is a cut above the usual sports-themed romance. Marlee Harper loves football, hashtags and maybe even her boyfriend, but is less than surprised when he cheats on her—again. She decides to leave him and walk away from athletes altogether, but the team’s new quarterback, Gavin Pope, isn’t going to concede this game. He understands Marlee’s wariness, but their attraction is one for the record books. Marlee can’t resist Gavin, but that doesn’t mean she can commit. Martin’s debut is fastpaced, fun and promising.
The Bad Boy
ROMANCE
7/18/18 2:28 PM
Parker’s company wants to buy her family’s property. Parker is swamped by his new responsibilities as a CEO, but that doesn’t stop him from pursuing Kennedi. Wright’s characters are smart and thoughtful while trying to address their issues in a mature fashion, but their pasts—along with the various, conflicting interests of relatives on both sides—add to the turmoil. Enticed by You is an engrossing family drama spiced with fiery love scenes and characters that deserve a happy ending.
TOP PICK IN ROMANCE Romance doesn’t get more delightful than Tessa Dare’s The Governess Game (Avon, $7.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780062672124). Heir to a dukedom, ladies’ man and all-around rascal Chase Reynaud has had responsibility thrust upon him—the guardianship of two orphaned girls who enjoy chasing away governesses. He’s desperate for another woman to fill the position, and when Alexandra Mountbatten shows up on his doorstep, she soon finds herself a member of the duke’s household. Little does Chase know that he and his new governess have met before, during a brief encounter in a bookstore, after which Alex developed an embarrassingly fervent crush. What follows is pure genre gold, as Alex and Chase dance around each other and their searing attraction— while still staying a step ahead of the children. Clever wordplay and physical comedy, as well as the escapades of the surprisingly morbid and very clever girls, make The Governess Game a standout romance that readers won’t want to end.
features
POLITICS B Y L I LY M c L E M O R E
A broad view of politics With midterm elections coming up in November and one of the most contentious presidential elections in memory in the rearview mirror, it’s no surprise that the number of political books hitting the shelves has skyrocketed. If you’re looking to stay informed or to brush up on your political knowledge, this selection of some of the fall’s best and most anticipated political nonfiction titles can help.
meet DAVID SMALL
the title of your new book? Q: What’s
Q: Describe the book in one sentence.
IDENTITY by Francis Fukuyama FSG, $26, 240 pages, ISBN 9780374129293
In this thoughtful examination of the history and present iteration of identity politics, political scientist Fukuyama attempts to define Americans’ concept of identity and to understand the growing desire within all public facets to be recognized.
has been the biggest influence on your work? Q: What
AMERICA: THE FAREWELL TOUR by Chris Hedges Simon & Schuster, $27, 400 pages, ISBN 9781501152672
Pulitzer Prize-winner Hedges believes that America is on its way out. He writes that Americans today are xenophobic, addicted to drugs or simply miserable. In this screed against society’s ills, Hedges begs America to wake up.
is the most difficult part of adolescence? Q: What
HOW FASCISM WORKS by Jason Stanley
Q: Do you have a favorite illustration in Home After Dark?
Random House, $26, 240 pages, ISBN 9780525511830
Yale philosophy professor Stanley (How Propaganda Works) is the son of European World War II refugees, and the fear of fascism is in his blood. Here, he identifies the 10 pillars of fascist politics and reminds readers that fascist ideology and tactics can lurk within democracy.
CAN DEMOCRACY WORK? by James Miller FSG, $27, 320 pages, ISBN 9780374137649
Miller gets back to the basics in this provocatively titled world history. In America, we tend to see democracy as the obvious and best form of government, yet this ancient ideal has a history of failure. Miller tracks the progress of democracy from its inception in ancient Greece to its current reality. On sale September 18.
THE OATH AND THE OFFICE by Corey Brettschneider Norton, $22.95, 224 pages, ISBN 9780393652123
So what exactly can—and perhaps more importantly, can’t—a president do? Brettschneider offers a refresher course on the powers of the president as granted by the Constitution for those who may have slept through their high school government class. On sale September 18.
BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY BURN AGAIN by Ben Fountain Ecco, $27.99, 448 pages, ISBN 9780062688842
The award-winning journalist and author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk looks to the past to understand our future in this collection of essays. Fountain believes that the 2016 election was a pivotal moment that has led to an identity crisis tantamount to the ones prior to the Civil War and the Great Depression. On sale September 25. Visit BookPage.com to read about more of the season’s biggest political books.
books did you enjoy as a teenager? Q: What
to live by? Q: Words
HOME AFTER DARK Thirteen-year-old Russell Pruitt struggles to survive after he is abandoned by his parents in David Small’s literary graphic novel, Home After Dark (Liveright, $27.95, 416 pages, ISBN 9780871403155). In mid-20th-century California, Russell is taken in by a Chinese immigrant couple but is not spared a brutal and heart-wrenching adolescence. Small is the author of the bestselling memoir Stitches and lives in Michigan with his wife, author Sarah Stewart.
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cover story
IMOGEN HERMES GOWAR
Mermaids and mistresses
I
mogen Hermes Gowar was once a gallery assistant in the British Museum in London. “It was a very gothic job,” she says, “with lots of standing around.” To pass the time, she made up stories about the artifacts on display—ancient Roman vases, medieval chess sets, Renaissance table settings.
“Who had these things belonged to?” Gowar would ask herself. “What rooms had they been in?” It was also a difficult time in Gowar’s personal life. Right after Gowar graduated from the University of East Anglia with a degree in archaeology, anthropology and art history, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Gowar moved back home and took the museum job. In the evenings, she wrote short stories based on her favorite objects in the museum. Eventually, she became obsessed with one artifact in particular—an 18th-century “mermaid” from Japan, constructed from the mummified corpses of a monkey and a fish. Over the next few years, Gowar slowly turned her mermaid story into a novel, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, a historical fantasy in the vein of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. “I really had no life,” she says of her writing process at the time. “I couldn’t afford to leave the house, so I was writing a thousand words a
THE MERMAID AND MRS. HANCOCK
By Imogen Hermes Gowar
Harper, $28.99, 496 pages ISBN 9780062859952, audio, eBook available
HISTORICAL FICTION
12
day . . . sometimes to the exclusion of everything else—no sleeping, no dressing, no washing.” Set in London during the height of the Georgian era in 1785, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock is the story of a widowed shipping merchant, Jonah Hancock, and the city’s most fascinating courtesan, Angelica Neal. When Jonah procures an alleged mermaid corpse from overseas, he makes a small fortune exhibiting it all over town. Meanwhile, Angelica woos him at the behest of her former madam, who wants to display the curiosity at her brothel. The eventual romance between Jonah and Angelica gets complicated when one of Jonah’s ships catches a real mermaid off the coast of Scotland and brings it home. Gowar says she set the book in the late 18th century because the era hasn’t been written about as much as the Regency and Victorian years that followed. And while she did rely on the biographies of courtesans to develop the voice of Angelica, most of her research for the novel was tactile. “My whole degree was [in] asking what you can learn about people from the objects that belonged to them,” Gowar says. “Historians look at written records first, but they seem to be learning from archaeologists that there is so much you can find out that’s not written.” Gowar’s attention to physical details is deeply impressive. To ground her fiction in historical reality, she adopted a “method acting” approach and immersed herself in the objects of the era. “I cooked quite a few things from 18th-century cookbooks,” she says, “which was interesting because they don’t start with a list of ingredients, and nothing is in a specific weight.” The characters of Jonah and
Angelica were inspired by historical objects, as well. “With Jonah, it was buildings and houses,” she says. “I was interested in the history of [the London district of] Deptford, because the architecture is very tied to shipbuilding.” In fact, Jonah first appears in the novel in his Deptford dockyard-adjacent office, which Gowar describes as “coffered like a ship’s cabin.” Gowar recalls spending a lot of time walking the streets of South London to get a better understand“Historians ing of Jonah’s look at written world. “A lot records first, of the houses were built with but they wood that was seem to be cut for ships learning from by world-class archaeologists woodcarvers,” that there is so she says. “Peomuch you can ple who were supposed to be find out that’s making capnot written.” tain’s cabins were doing the moldings on what were otherwise very humble houses.” For the extravagant Angelica, Gowar got even more physical with her research. “It was mainly clothes,” Gowar says. “I sewed a dress called a chemise à la reine, a white poofy dress like Marie Antoinette would wear. It made me understand how radical it would feel to wear this flimsy muslin thing instead of a jacket with stays and pins holding everything together.” Of course, there is a glaringly ahistorical element at the heart of the novel—a true mermaid. It seems an odd choice for a writer so devoted to capturing realistic
© MANDY LEE JANDRELL
INTERVIEW BY ADAM MORGAN
details from the past, but according to Gowar, 18th-century mermaid folklore tells us a lot about British society and culture at the time. “The stories of mermaids and mistresses run really close together,” she says. “They’re often portrayed in the same way—a sexually powerful woman who can be quite dangerous. She lures men to her, so in a way, it’s not the men’s fault. It’s a way of making it more palatable when your husband goes off and has a woman in another port. Making it supernatural puts the danger outside the realm of humanity rather than within it.” After publishing this January in the U.K. to rave reviews, Gowar’s novel was optioned for film and television by the same production company that adapted Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall for the BBC. Today, Gowar is already working on another historical novel, but she can’t reveal much about it. “It’s very different—still set in London, but during the 20th century.” The success of The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock has allowed Gowar to start writing full-time from her new home in Bristol. “Nothing in my day-to-day life has really changed, but it means I can live with my partner,” Gowar says. “It’s a gift. It feels like I have a lot more options now—like I have a job that I love.”
features
MARY BEARD
In the eye of the beholder
M
ary Beard has an extraordinary knack for making art history palatable. She has been called “Britain’s most beloved intellectual,” and this summer Queen Elizabeth II honored her many achievements by naming her a dame. She is a classics professor at the University of Cambridge, but her scholarly journey seems to have started with a piece of cake. As a 5-year-old in 1960, she visited the British Museum, where she desperately wanted a better look at a 3,000-year-old carbonized piece of cake from ancient Egypt. That’s when a curator did something she’ll never forget: He reached for his keys, opened up the case and put that piece of cake right in front of the wide-eyed little girl. Speaking by phone from her home in Cambridge, England, Beard acknowledges, “The idea that some old guy, or so he seemed to me, sees a kid trying to look, and what he does is open the door for you—that’s a moving moment.” Opening up doors to history is exactly what Beard has been doing in her long career as a professor, television host and author, including in her bestselling revisionist history of ancient Rome, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. This spring, she was featured in a new BBC series, “Civilizations,” which is
HOW DO WE LOOK
By Mary Beard
Liveright, $24.95, 240 pages ISBN 9781631494406, audio, eBook available
ART
now available on PBS. In highly readable prose accompanied by a wealth of pictures, her companion book to the series, How Do We Look: The Body, the Divine, and the Question of Civilization explores both the depiction and reception of ancient art. She examines images of the human body, and also of God or gods. In doing so, she travels the globe and gallops through histo“You start to ry, witnessing see how these a sunrise in Cambodia at things are Angkor Wat, incorporated visiting artinto our own filled caves in lives and the India, traipslives of people ing through the Mexican of the past.” jungle to see Olmec heads, wandering through the ranks of China’s terra-cotta warriors and admiring a modern Turkish mosque in Istanbul. She’s a plain-spoken, down-toearth guide, from the top of her long, flowing gray hair down to her fashionable sneakers, which allow her to get up close and personal with a cavalcade of art masterpieces. Her enthusiasm is contagious as she clambers alongside a 65-foot-high Roman statue, the Colossi of Memnon, saying, “I’ve waited half my life to be here!” “Blimey!” Beard recalls. “That’s when you realize it’s vast. I’m sitting on his foot, and that’s big, and there’s a whole statue there.” Later in our conversation she circles back to how affected she was by these encounters: “If I look impressed and a bit moved, it’s because I was. It’s kind of exciting and slightly terrifying in a way, to be so up close to those things. I’ll never forget it.” Unlike many art historians, Beard doesn’t simply focus on
the lives and methods of artists, whom she describes as “one damn genius after the next.” Those stories interest her, but she points out that there’s much more to contemplate. “I think that just as— or more—interesting is what people made of [the art], how they saw it and what they did with it,” she says. “Simply to concentrate on that one moment in which this work of art was created—usually by a male creative genius—is not to see enormous amounts about the history of the object: [not only] what it was for at the time—how people understood it then, how radical it was then—but also what happened to it over 2,000 years and how people have used it differently and thought about it.” She notes, “We’re in the picture, too. That all has to be part of the discussion. It’s widening the sense of what the history of art is. As I say, ‘putting us back in the picture.’” Take nudes, for instance. Today’s art viewers take them for granted, or as Beard phrases it, “not just one damn genius after another, but one damn Venus after another.” But the idea of displaying the naked female body was once really “in your face,” as first evidenced by the Aphrodite of Knidos, carved by Greek sculptor Praxiteles around 330 BCE. Nudes have now become “part of the stereotype of the greatest hits of world art,” Beard says, then offers a counter perspective: “It’s quite important to think about why something that we now think of as very much part of the standard tradition was, once upon a time, so difficult, awkward and upsetting, actually.” While affirming that she’s a
© ROBIN CORMACK
INTERVIEW BY ALICE CARY
great admirer of museums, Beard cautions that they “encourage you to look at objects in kind of standardized ways.” In contrast, she loved seeing artworks that were “either somehow in their original setting in churches or were kind of out there, just in the world.” One high point was a visit to an unfinished sculpture still in its quarry in Naxos, Greece, which offered a very comfortable place to sit. “This sculpture has been in the world of this village for two and a half thousand years now,” she notes. “You start to see how these things are incorporated into our own lives and the lives of people of the past.” Beard hopes that both the book and television series will give museum-goers more ownership of what they see. “I hope they’ll feel closer to [the art] and have a sense of a right to speak about it.” She also offers this important advice for museum visits: “Don’t spend too long. Spend an hour there, look at three things, and then go away. Actually go and really get to know something. There’s nothing worse than watching people being somehow herded through museums.” “Maybe it’s because I’m getting old,” Beard says, “but I find I get terrible museum legs after about an hour and a half.”
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features
INSPIRATIONAL FICTION BY LONNA UPTON
Seekers of the spirit
F
our works of inspirational fiction propel readers into the stories of four remarkable women. Each heroine is a pioneer of sorts, finding her divine purpose while also claiming ownership over her own life.
Melanie Dobson weaves a mysterious time-slip tale in Hidden Among the Stars (Tyndale, $15.99, 416 pages, ISBN 9781496417329), entwining the evil of the 1938 Nazi invasion of Austria with the quiet life of a modern-day bookseller. Max Dornbach, a wealthy Austrian who refuses to accept the Nazi assertion that Jews are not human, helps his Jewish friends by hiding their valuable possessions on his family’s estate. He trusts only one person to help—the caretaker’s daughter, Annika, whose unrequited love for Max has blossomed since her childhood. When Max brings Luzia, the Jewish woman he loves, to hide on the estate, Annika’s devotion to her friend is tested. Her faith guides her to make decisions that will have repercussions 80 years later. Four decades later in America, Callie Randall, blogger and bookstore owner, finds her world disrupted when a mysterious copy of Bambi, filled with handwritten lists, appears in the store. When Callie finds a connection between the copy of Bambi and an old friend’s past, curiosity leads her into research, genealogies and treasure hunting in Austria. While unraveling history, Callie reaches a deep understanding of how God’s love can conquer evil through the sacrifices that individuals make for each other.
HEALING WATERS Bestselling author Cindy Woodsmall teams up with her
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daughter-in-law, Erin Woodsmall, for As the Tide Comes In (WaterBrook, $14.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9780735291010), a story of characters moving from loss to hope while struggling with why bad things happen to good people. Tara Abbott’s childhood was spent in foster care, but she now handles the responsibility of caring
From rappelling in the mountains to watching the tides ebb and flow on sandy beaches, Tara covers miles while undergoing heartache and healing in this tender novel.
for her two half-brothers with grace and grit. After a devastating storm rips through their North Carolina cabin, leaving Tara with a traumatic brain injury, a trip to the Georgia coast seems to be an ideal respite. In the midst of tragic circumstances, the Glynn Girls, a group of older women with all the charm of biscuit-making, casserole-cooking Southern moms, provide comic relief. Along with a handsome fireman, these women offer Tara a chance to see the truth of her past and her future. Although Tara’s injury causes her to move back and forth between being a confused damsel in distress and an independent woman with flashes of stubbornness as salty as the sea, she finds her faith renewed in this story brimming with the kindness and prayers of strangers.
Jane Kirkpatrick expertly captures the indomitable spirit of a woman who is just as comfortable reveling in her pioneering adventures as she is maintaining the composure of a Victorian lady. Based on Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, a memoir written by Carrie Adell Strahorn in 1911, Everything She Didn’t Say is a fictionalized look at how Carrie might have dealt with the realities of 25 years spent trailblazing and traveling with her husband, investor and railroad promoter Robert Strahorn. Carrie’s struggles as a married woman in the untamed West are not tied to a time and place. Her desire for a permanent home and her longing for children are lifelong needs that go unmet. The lack of respect she receives from men along the way, including her hus-
WESTERN REDEMPTION In Everything She Didn’t Say (Revell, $15.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9780800727017), bestselling author
band on occasion, is a persistent hurdle. Carrie realizes that being a good wife to a husband who often slants the truth should not prevent her from being true to her own values. Although her boldness and bravery may not be what society considered befitting of a turn-of-the-century lady, Carrie’s faith keeps her grounded while she seeks fulfillment in a life that does not follow the path she had imagined.
WORTH FIGHTING FOR England’s preparation for World War I provides an intriguing backdrop for mystery and romance in An Hour Unspent (Bethany House, $15.99, 416 pages, ISBN 9780764219283). Although the novel concludes Roseanna M. White’s Shadows Over England series, the story is a page-turner in its own right. White deftly synchronizes the lives of the hero, Barclay Pearce, and the heroine, Evelina Manning. Barclay, previously a top-notch thief in London, is now a skilled assistant to a high-ranking official in the Royal Navy. He is also learning about the power of prayer. Evelina, an independent suffragette, is shocked when her wealthy British fiancé ends their engagement, but her new circumstances allow her time to contemplate her future. With perfect timing, Barclay becomes a friend to Evelina after he saves her from a possible mugging and begins working with her father, a clockmaker who has developed a device that could prove to be a military advantage for England. Unfortunately, Germany knows the clockmaker’s secret and will stop at nothing to obtain both the plans and their creator. Evelina finds herself falling for Barclay, a man outside her social class, but she also finds herself in a role that’s far tougher than suffragette. In an attempt to rescue her father from behind enemy lines, she goes undercover with Barclay—but they both realize that they will need the help of the Divine Clockmaker.
Riveting Fall Reads to
Cozy Up With
Three bestselling Christian romantic suspense authors team up in this intense novella collection brimming with romance, murder, and deadly betrayal. The Cost of Betrayal by Dee Henderson, Dani Pettrey, and Lynette Eason
In the summer of 1951, Amishwoman Maggie Esh is struggling with a debilitating illness and few future prospects. When tent revival meetings come to the area, the words of the evangelist begin to stir something deep inside her. The First Love by Beverly Lewis
After her village is destroyed by marauders, Sofea seeks solace in a Levitical city of refuge where she meets Eitan. As threats from outside the walls loom, will they be able to save their lives and the lives of those they love? Shelter of the Most High by Connilyn Cossette Cities of Refuge #2
When socialite Anna Nicholson’s past continues to haunt her and unflattering stories threaten her reputation and engagement, she discovers that God’s purpose for her life isn’t as simple as she had hoped. Legacy of Mercy by Lynn Austin
A Division of Baker Publishing Group • bethanyhouse.com Available at your bookstore or by calling 1-866-241-6733
features
BEHIND THE BOOK BY LEA CARPENTER
© MICHAEL LIONSTAR
A shiny thing
W
hen I was five months pregnant with my second son, I spent most of my days interviewing special operations officers. It was fall 2011, a Navy SEAL team had killed Osama bin Laden that May, and in August a helicopter crash had resulted in the greatest loss of life in special operations forces history.
I was writing a novel about a mother whose son goes missing in Afghanistan, and while a lot of people far more knowledgeable than I were also trying to understand what had happened in May and in August—whether May was linked to August, would this “forever war” ever end—I was interested in something different. I wanted to know what it felt like inside the mind of a special operator. When I met members of the community, I didn’t ask about the bin Laden raid, or any raid. I asked about how their bonds with mothers and children and spouses survived under the radical pressures of multiple deployments. I tried to understand the concept of risking your life to save someone. And then I remember thinking that if you ask any mother whether there is someone she’s willing to die for, of course she’ll say yes. Two months after that book, Eleven Days, was published, I was at the beach with a former CIA case officer, a family
RED, WHITE, BLUE
By Lea Carpenter
Knopf, $26.95, 320 pages ISBN 9781524732141, eBook available
THRILLER
16
friend who had read the novel and asked me to lunch to talk about it. I remember he used the phrase “shiny things” that day. He said something like, “Everyone in Washington is chasing shiny things.” He explained how in the context of the Agency, a “shiny thing” is a plum recruit. He explained this with a level of cynicism, implying (I thought) that in a way a shiny thing is a chimera. I had the sense that while his own experiences had been broad and exceptional, there was something else, something existential, in his view of life in that line of work. Maybe he was getting at the idea that hunting shiny things could wear a person down. It was our talk that convinced me to try and write about the CIA. Of course the intelligence world, like the world of special operations, is defined by an ethos of discretion. If you meet someone from these worlds who wants to tell you all their stories, chances are, they’re not going to have the best stories. Chances are, the people with the finest stories are the people you will never meet. But I tried. As I did with Eleven Days, I started by placing a woman at the center of my narrative. In Red, White, Blue, my main character is not a mother who has lost her son but a daughter who has lost her father. As I talked to more and more people currently or formerly in the intelligence world, it struck me that the fundamental skill required isn’t firing fancy weapons or jumping out of airplanes or mastering the art of surveillance. It’s far more human and complex. It’s empathy. You can teach someone how to load an M4 far easier than you can teach them to be empathetic. Empathy is the ability to look at another person and understand why they do what they do. Sometimes the other person is an asset
you want to recruit. Sometimes it’s a foreign officer who wants to recruit you. And sometimes it’s someone about to commit an unimaginable crime. The radical end of empathy, I came to believe, is understanding why someone would do that. And then perhaps convincing them not to. The training, the Farm, the art of recruitment, dead drops, brush passes, spotting and assessing Chances are, and developthe people ing an asset—I with the finest learned all stories are the these things. Anyone can. people you Only then I will never concluded that, while meet. But I not exactly tried. dull, these things are not exactly new either. I concluded that telling a reader how to recruit as asset was far less compelling than trying to make a metaphor of things spies do and then, as John le Carré put it, “mirror the big world in the little world of spies.” As I did with special operators, I set out to understand the emotional makeup of someone willing to assume not one but several new identities, in doing so risking the loss of whomever they were underneath it all. Someone I interviewed told me about lining up mobile phones on a table, each one linked to a distinct, separate identity he inhabited at the time. I thought, a tableful of phones is not a life. I wrote that line into the novel. What is and is not a life is, I think, what my family friend was
really trying to describe that day at the beach. I think he was, if gently, even without meaning to, cautioning me away from glamorizing “tradecraft,” away from the typical tropes of the genre. He was trying to encourage me to look at the people, as he felt I had done with the prior novel. Maybe he thought I could illuminate another community that had endured unimaginable loss over more than almost two decades of perpetual combat. After he read a galley of Red, White, Blue, he wrote me a note. Its simplicity made me smile, as I now know spies rarely write anything down. “You did it,” he said. Screenwriter and author Lea Carpenter was a founding editor of Zoetrope magazine and is currently a contributing editor for Esquire. Her first novel, Eleven Days (2013), is an affecting portrayal of maternal love during a time of war and was inspired by her father’s career in Army intelligence during World War II. Her latest novel, Red, White, Blue, is a haunting modern-day spy story that plumbs the depths of American espionage through the story of a daughter grappling with the truth of her late father’s secret life. Carpenter lives in New York City with her husband and two sons. Visit BookPage.com to read a review of Red, White, Blue.
reviews
FICTION
T PI OP CK
children, sexual violence—and assures us that women’s voices will be silent no longer. —LAUREN BUFFERD
SHE WOULD BE KING
Strange powers in a new nation REVIEW BY MARI CARLSON
“Fengbe, keh kamba beh. Fengbe, kemu beh. . . . We have nothing but we have God. We have nothing but we have each other.” This is the refrain of She Would Be King. Wayétu Moore’s debut novel is more than an imagining of Liberia’s mid-1800s beginnings; it is a magical account of ongoing, individual and collective independence from oppressive forces. She Would Be King begins with distinct storylines about three cursed characters: Gbessa in Africa, June in Virginia and Norman in Jamaica. When she comes of age in the village of Lai, Gbessa is sent into the forest, where she’s expected to die from a snakebite but instead discovers her power of resurrection. Abandoned at birth, June is called “Moses” By Wayétu Moore by his adoptive mother, a slave. Defending her against the plantation Graywolf, $26, 312 pages owner’s wife, June discovers his superhuman strength for which he is ISBN 9781555978174, audio available then banished. Norman is the son of a Maroon “witch” who can become invisible at will, and his British father wants to take advantage of DEBUT FICTION this special power shared by mother and child. Gbessa, June and Norman meet in Monrovia, Liberia, where the curses that have made them pariahs become the gifts that help them defend freed slaves and Africans from invading French traders. Ascending over the isolated stories is a comforting voice to both the characters and the reader. “Take care, my darling . . . my friend,” says the first-person narrator who ties these stories together in mysticism and eloquence. The pain that this narrator and the three main characters have in common becomes their shared language, focusing and sharpening their gifts. Moore’s insightful, emotional descriptions graft these stories right onto readers’ hearts. A celebration of freedom and justice that compassionately tells the stories of exceptional people, Moore’s debut is about every fight against death and bondage.
THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS By Pat Barker
Doubleday $27.95, 304 pages ISBN 9780385544214 Audio, eBook available LITERARY FICTION
The classics are experiencing a feminist revolution. Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey— the first to be written by a woman—was published to great acclaim at the end of 2016. Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, a contemporary reworking of Antigone, won the 2017 Women’s Prize. And American author Madeline Miller has just published Circe, her second novel based on classical characters. Joining this group is the award-winning
British novelist Pat Barker (The Regeneration Trilogy, Toby’s Room), whose 14th novel, The Silence of the Girls, is a reimagining of one of the key episodes in the Iliad, told from the perspective of a captured queen living in the Greek army camp during the final weeks of the Trojan War. Briseis was the queen of one of Troy’s neighboring kingdoms when her city was sacked and her husband and brothers were killed. A prize of battle, she becomes the property of Achilles, and she lives in the women’s quarters but is available to him as his concubine and slave. When King Agamemnon demands Briseis for his own, Achilles relinquishes her but, as a show of resistance, refuses to fight the Trojans any longer. In Barker’s retelling, Briseis finds herself torn between the two men, helpless
but also uniquely positioned to observe the power struggle whose outcome will decide the fate of the ancient world. The Iliad concerns a war fought over a woman, and women play a major role in the epic poem as nurses, wives and, of course, unwilling sex slaves. Yet the lack of women’s voices in the original text is deafening. In The Silence of the Girls, Briseis is the master of the narrative, telling her story in counterpoint to Achilles, becoming her own subject rather than his object. Her voice is wryly observant and wholly cognizant of the cost that she and other women have paid for the violence and abuses of war perpetrated by men. Barker’s retelling of some of the most famous events of the Iliad feels strangely relevant to today—displaced peoples, war refugees, abandoned women and
JOHN WOMAN By Walter Mosley
Atlantic Monthly $26, 320 pages ISBN 9780802128416 Audio, eBook available COMING OF AGE
To start a Walter Mosley novel is like sitting down to a feast. In this case, the tastiest dish is not the protagonist who gives the book its name, but his mother. Lucia Napoli-Jones is such a vivid, vibrant presence in John Woman that when she leaves early in the book, the reader may spend the rest of it, like her son, longing for her return. Earthy, deeply imperfect, possessed of a rollicking Lower East Side way of speaking and living, she is easily Mosley’s best secondary character since Mouse Alexander. But enough about flamboyant Lucia. John Woman is all about history: its slipperiness, its unknowability and maybe even its ultimate uselessness. John Woman’s autodidactic father teaches him about this, which John in turn teaches to his students after he becomes a college professor. This is all ironic, for John is trying to outrun his history. First, there’s the uneasy relationship between his parents, both of whom he loves with the helpless passion of a young child even into his 30s. John’s real childhood ended abruptly when he was forced to kill someone in defense of himself and his father. Soon after, he’s raped. He then flees, changing identities until he settles on his unusual moniker, which is in part a reference to his rapist. As usual, Mosley’s superpower lies in his slantwise take on the world and his characters, of whom there are dozens, and every one is memorable, even if they speak only a line or two. They include John’s bright but fractious stu-
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reviews dents, the weird faculty members of the university where John teaches, a slew of detectives and lawyers and a hooker with a heart of gold. (The trauma of John’s defloration challenges his ability to engage in conventional relationships and kinkless sex.) All the while, the reader, like John, looks for signs of Lucia. Will we ever see her again? This reviewer won’t tell. I will tell you that this fantastic, surprising, humane and somewhat perverse book is one of Mosley’s best. —ARLENE MCKANIC
THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ By Heather Morris Harper $16.99, 272 pages ISBN 9780062797155 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION
Perhaps the three scariest words in the history of human imagination were cast in iron atop a gate leading directly into the closest approximation of hell ever erected on earth: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. “Work sets you free.” The banal words that were nothing more than a cruel and tragic joke for thousands turned out to have a deeper meaning for Lale Sokolov, an Auschwitz survivor and the real-life hero of Heather Morris’ extraordinary debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Like the Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel’s Night, Morris’ work takes us inside the day-today workings of the most notorious German death camp. Over the course of three years, Morris interviewed Lale, teasing out his memories and weaving them into her heart-rending narrative of a Jew whose unlikely forced occupation as a tattooist put him in a position to act with kindness and humanity in a place where both were nearly extinct. While Lale’s story is told at one remove—he held his recollections inside for more than half a century, fearing he might be branded as a collaborator—it is no less moving, no less
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FICTION horrifying, no less true. Just as a flower can grow through a sidewalk’s crack, so too can love spring and flourish in the midst of unspeakable horror, and so it is that Lale meets his lifelong love, Gita, when he inscribes the number 34902 on her arm. With the same level of inventiveness, dedication and adoration displayed by Roberto Benigni in Life Is Beautiful, Lale endeavors to preserve their love (and safety) amid the horrors. Make no mistake—horrors abound. At one point, Lale is called to identify two corpses seemingly marked with the same number, which is anathema to the camp’s meticulous record keepers. Upon emerging from the crematorium, Lale is greeted by his Nazi handler, Baretski: “You know something, Tätowierer? I bet you are the only Jew who ever walked into an oven and then walked back out of it.” For decade upon decade, Lale’s story was one that desperately needed to be told. And now, as the number of those who witnessed the terror that was Nazi Germany dwindles, it is a story that desperately needs to be read. The disgraceful words that once stood over Auschwitz must be replaced with others: Never forget. Never again. —T H A N E T I E R N E Y
ORDINARY PEOPLE By Diana Evans
Liveright $26.95, 320 pages ISBN 9781631494819 eBook available FAMILY DRAMA
later, Ordinary People (named for a John Legend song) follows the lives of two couples—Melissa and Michael, Stephanie and Damian— as they navigate the tightrope of children, work and the infinitely complex task of engaging with each other as romantic partners. Together for 13 years, though unmarried, Melissa and Michael have just purchased a home at the ironically named 13 Paradise Row in South London, where they live with their daughter and newborn son. Stephanie, Damian and their three children live in a small town in Surrey. Whether it’s Melissa’s fretfulness over the challenges of new motherhood and her shift from full-time employment with a fashion magazine to freelancing, or Damian’s thwarted dreams of a writing career and his unacknowledged depression after the death of his political activist father, Evans expertly pokes at the tender spots in relationships and examines how partners can behave in ways that, over time, make them strangers to each other. Both couples are at the stage when the initial bloom of lust has long ago faded, but there’s yet sufficient memory of it to make dissatisfaction an unwelcome visitor in every encounter, leaving Damian with a “sense that his life was wrong” and Michael feeling like “he and Melissa were nothing more than flatmates.” Through all this, Evans is no purveyor of false optimism about the prospects of success for these troubled pairings. Instead, we’re left to ponder and admire the qualities that enable any long-term union to thrive. —HARVEY FREEDENBERG
FOE In her third novel, Ordinary People, British novelist Diana Evans pays an extended visit to the country of midlife relationships and proves to be a knowledgeable anthropologist in her perceptive study of four of its inhabitants. Set in and around London in the period between Barack Obama’s first election and the death of Michael Jackson some eight months
By Iain Reid
Scout $25.99, 272 pages ISBN 9781501127427 Audio, eBook available SPECULATIVE FICTION
Iain Reid’s philosophical sci-fi novel Foe tells the story of Junior
and Henrietta, a married couple living on a farm in an undisclosed location sometime in the near future. They live a relatively isolated and quiet life that is structured around monotonous routine. Their domestic doldrums are upended by the arrival of Terrance, a mysterious figure who claims to work for a scientific outfit called OuterMore. He has come to tell the couple that Junior has been tapped to potentially participate in the Installation, a human settlement in outer space. Informed by Terrance that Junior’s involvement won’t be finalized for another few years, the couple returns to their normal existence. Two years later, Terrance returns with news that Junior has indeed been selected to participate in the Installation program. The mission will require him to live very far away from the farm for several years. Stunned and confused, Junior is concerned about leaving Henrietta alone on their remote homestead. But Henrietta will not be alone, as OuterMore plans to replace Junior with a duplicate version of himself. Furthermore, Terrance moves into the household to conduct interviews and collect observational data for the replacement. This new and bizarre domestic situation, as well as Henrietta’s mysteriously apathetic response to it all, perplexes Junior. The reader then follows Junior on an unsettling yet thrilling search for answers that ultimately culminates in a shocking final twist. Foe is a philosophically bewildering and psychologically triggering novel. Reid’s depiction of Junior’s and Henrietta’s existential crises forces the reader to engage with questions of romantic relationships, identity, technology and the nature of humanity. Such an ambitious work risks being muddied. Reid, however, brilliantly executes his vision through short chapters filled with well-crafted internal and external dialogue. With Foe, Reid has written a page-turning novel that will entertain you and have you questioning the very foundation of your existence at the exact same time. —LANGSTON COLLIN WILKINS
THE AIR YOU BREATHE By Frances de Pontes Peebles
Riverhead $26, 464 pages ISBN 9780735210998 Audio, eBook available HISTORICAL FICTION
It’s hardly surprising that Frances de Pontes Peebles’ award-winning debut novel, The Seamstress, was published a decade ago, as her follow-up, a sweeping, cinematic and thoroughly engrossing tale about an enduring friendship and the story of samba, is a mighty accomplishment—the kind of novel that demands ample time to write. Two girls—beautiful and privileged Graça, who has a captivating singing voice, and orphan Dores, nicknamed “Jega,” which means “donkey” in Portuguese—grow up in the early 20th century on the same sugar plantation in Brazil, which Graça’s family owns. Dores is the more levelheaded and intelligent of the two, and Graça is an impetuous risk-taker. When they first hear music on the radio, their lives are forever changed. As teens, Graça’s rebellious nature wins over her friend, who harbors an unrequited love for her, and they escape via a boarding school trip to Rio de Janeiro’s gritty Lapa neighborhood, with the aim of pursuing their dreams. Though the girls are originally a musical duo, it’s clear that Graça is the star. She is renamed Sofia Salvador after finding success in a nightclub owned by a local gangster, and Dores cedes the spotlight to write her friend’s songs. Amid a colorful canvas of sex, corruption, drugs and violence, the history of samba unfolds. The young women’s relationship is often strained, but they remain united through ambition. When Hollywood calls, Sofia Salvador becomes an international star during World War II, a pin-up for the troops à la Carmen Miranda. But there is a price to pay. The Air You Breathe unfolds from Dores’ first-person perspective as she reflects on her life and
losses. A sense of melancholy imbues the tale, but Dores has a compelling and fascinating voice. She is unashamed of her sexuality and confident in her ability to write songs in a male-dominated arena, and her strength and singularity propel this unforgettable novel. —J E F F V A S I S H T A
FRENCH EXIT By Patrick deWitt Ecco $25.99, 256 pages ISBN 9780062846921 Audio, eBook available COMIC FICTION
Whatever you do, don’t mess with Frances Price. If you’re a waiter, and the “moneyed, striking woman of sixty-five” who is the protagonist of French Exit enters your restaurant, make sure you’re polite to her, or she just might take out her perfume, spritz the centerpiece and set it on fire. She has nice qualities, too—she gives money to charities and the homeless—but she’s also likely to leave for a ski holiday in Vail rather than contact the authorities when she discovers that her husband, a ruthless litigator, has died of cardiac arrest. The tabloid scandal caused by her indifference hasn’t stopped her from living an extravagant Manhattan lifestyle since her husband’s death 20 years ago. But enforced austerity is about to begin. Her financial adviser tells her that the money she inherited has run out. Sell everything that isn’t nailed down, he tells her, and begin again. When an old friend offers her the use of a Paris apartment, Frances reluctantly accepts. Soon, she’s sailing across the Atlantic with Malcolm, her 32-year-old kleptomaniacal “lugubrious toddler” of a son, and Small Frank, an elderly cat she is convinced houses the spirit of her late husband. Patrick deWitt has great fun with this premise. He populates the story with such characters as Susan, the fiancée Malcolm leaves behind in New York; Madeleine, a
q&a
FRANCES DE PONTES PEEBLES BY JEFF VASISHTA
Path to stardom
T
en years after the publication of her first novel, Frances de Pontes Peebles returns with The Air You Breathe. Set in 1920s Brazil, it’s a captivating tale of female friendship, music, love and ambition.
© ELAINE MELKO
FICTION
You were born in Brazil, grew up in Miami and now live in Chicago. Where are you most at home? I’m most at home around the people I love, and who love me. I have this in all three places, so they are all my homes. The Air You Breathe started as a fictional account of Carmen Miranda’s life, but then you decided to create your own Brazilian star, Sofia Salvador. Why? Carmen Miranda’s story is compelling, but ultimately I felt hemmed in by having to faithfully follow the trajectory of her life. It felt like a story about a Hollywood star that has already been told many times. . . . My instincts told me that my novel wasn’t about an actual Hollywood star but about music, friendship, loss and memory. I had to be true to my original impulse, so I re-envisioned the novel and started over. Your research for this must have been extensive. Is that part of the reason it has been a decade since The Seamstress? I did a lot of research, which I really enjoy. But research wasn’t the reason for the extended timeline between books. My husband and I moved back to Brazil and managed my family’s farm, building a business there. Farming is a 24/7 endeavor. While on the farm I gave birth to my daughter, which was wonderful, but I also went through postpartum depression, which wasn’t. After I had a child, my brain worked differently. I had less writing time and had to adjust to this new reality. I’d write while my daughter napped. When I had childcare, I’d write a few days a week. As she got older and went to preschool, I gained more time. Like many women who are mothers and do creative work, I felt like I had to fight for my time and my ideas. But the beautiful thing was that this book, this idea, also fought for me. It stayed with me all those years and through all those life changes. It was stubborn. It said, I’ll be here when you’re ready. It was my duty to learn how to be the writer that this particular book needed. I’m not sure I could have written Dores’ character—her wise, wry voice full of love and regrets—without having experienced my own decade of heartache and love and transformation. As Mary Oliver says, “Things take the time they take. Don’t worry.” You based Dores on singer/songwriter Chavela Vargas, who was very open about her sexuality and one of the few women in a male-dominated music scene. What were the challenges in writing the story from Dores’ perspective? Whenever you have a first-person narrator with secrets and flaws, the challenge is how to be in their heads for the entire span of a book and not feel suffocated. Dores speaks to the reader as if addressing a longlost friend. The challenge was how to build this relationship over the course of the book—how to have Dores slowly reveal her regrets and misdeeds, and how, in spite of these revelations, the reader (hopefully) grows to understand Visit BookPage.com to read more of our Dores and empathize with Q&A with Frances de Pontes Peebles. her.
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reviews medium who can tell when someone is about to die because they look green; and Madame Reynard, an American widow who befriends the Prices because of her fascination with the tabloid scandal. If French Exit doesn’t always reach the zany heights it strives for, it’s still an entertaining portrait of people who are obsessed with the looming specter of death and who don’t quite feel part of the time they were born into. —MICHAEL MAGRAS
STILL LIFE WITH MONKEY By Katharine Weber
Paul Dry $16.95, 275 pages ISBN 9781589881297 eBook available FAMILY DRAMA
The “still life” in Katharine Weber’s new novel is Duncan Wheeler, a 37-year-old successful Connecticut-based architect who receives life’s worst surprise when a car crash leaves him mostly paralyzed with a C6 spinal cord injury. The “monkey” is Ottoline, a female tufted capuchin monkey, close to 25 years old, who arrives from the Primate Institute of New England to help Duncan get used to his new reality. Connecting the two is Laura Wheeler, Duncan’s wife, whose profession as an art restorer at Yale University has made her the perfect person to also delicately restore her husband’s will to carry on. The idea of a helper monkey at first seems ridiculous to Duncan (and even to Laura), like something made up for a Hollywood movie. But Ottoline proves them wrong almost instantly. Her ability to follow Duncan’s commands brings back some amount of solitude and privacy that he had sorely missed since his accident. Soon the Wheelers also realize that Ottoline’s mischievous nature is somewhat filling the gaping hole left by the child they never had. But a still life with a helpful and loving monkey is still just that, and Weber expertly weaves Duncan’s
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FICTION internal conflict throughout the novel, constantly making the reader wonder if he will find the strength to continue living in his new circumstances and carry on with a will to make new legacies. Most importantly, Still Life with Monkey begs the question, “What would I do in this situation?” It’s a question that lingers long after the book ends. —CHIKA GUJARATHI
THE LOST QUEEN By Signe Pike
Touchstone $27.99, 544 pages ISBN 9781501191411 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION
Great historical novels make you feel that you’re immersed in the periods they’re set in. The best ones can make you see it, smell it and feel it on your skin. That’s a difficult trick to pull off, which is why so many historical novels have such a narrow but intense focus. The Lost Queen, Signe Pike’s debut novel set in sixth-century Scotland, is the rare historical epic that manages to be truly sweeping and yet always intense and personal—at once a romance, a story of faith, a story of war and a story of family without ever sacrificing one element to focus on another. The romance does not cancel out the palace intrigue, the faith does not cancel out the magic, and the war does not cancel out the intimate moments of discovery and history. It’s all there at once, each element as rich as any other. The titular lost queen is Languoreth, the twin sister of the man believed to have inspired the legend of Merlin. Beginning with Languoreth as a girl shortly after the death of her mother, the novel follows her—with a beautifully crafted first-person voice—through early womanhood, into motherhood and across a legendary era caught between the old ways and the new. Languoreth’s narration, coupled with the sense that we get to discover the intrigues and myster-
ies of her world along with her as she ages, is the key to the novel’s success. Pike strikes the right balance of immersive historical detail and sincere emotional resonance, and it never falters throughout the book. By the end, you feel happily lost in this mist-shrouded place in history, and you only wish you could stay there longer. Moving, thrilling and ultimately spellbinding, The Lost Queen is perfect for readers of historical fiction like Jean M. Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear and Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, and for lovers of fantasy like Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. —MATTHEW JACKSON
WHISKEY WHEN WE’RE DRY By John Larison
Viking $26, 400 pages ISBN 9780735220447 Audio, eBook available WESTERN
cutting her hair short and binding her chest, Jess sets off on her faithful mare, Ingrid, with a meager supply of rations, her pa’s fiddle and the deed to the Harney land. “I was a Harney, dammit, and my destiny was to find my brother and bring him home and thereby save our family land.” Carrying out the feat is easier said than done. Noah, for starters, has become the outlaw leader of a wild gang with a $10,000 bounty on his head, while Jess, who takes on the manlier moniker of Jesse Montclair, discovers the harsh brutality of life in the West. Even after she is beaten and robbed, Jess’ determination—and skill as a sharpshooter—pushes her onward. Like Philipp Meyer’s The Son or Robert Olmstead’s Savage Country, Whiskey When We’re Dry draws on Larison’s own experiences with the “cowboy arts” to paint a vivid portrait of the American West as witnessed by an unforgettable character. —G. ROBERT FRAZIER
WE THAT ARE YOUNG Western novels are cool again, and Whiskey When We’re Dry by John Larison is a perfect example of why. Set in 1885 in the heart of the Midwest, the novel shirks the traditional white-hat-versus-blackhat shtick for a more grounded, emotional view of life on the range. In this instance, we experience the wild country’s hardships through the eyes of 17-year-old Jessilyn Harney as she wrestles to find her place in a man’s world. The only woman in the Harney household after her mother dies while giving birth to her, Jess does “the woman work” of “washings and stewings and mendings and tendings,” while Pa and her older brother, Noah, labor in the fields. Pa’s overbearing demeanor ultimately drives Noah away, leaving Jess to care for her father as the farm suffers. After her father is killed in a fall from his horse, Jess attempts to carry on by herself before ultimately realizing she needs help; she needs Noah. Disguising herself as a man by
By Preti Taneja
Knopf $27.95, 496 pages ISBN 9780525521525 Audio, eBook available DEBUT FICTION
Take Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, King Lear, “The Jewel in the Crown,” “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Wounded Civilization; pass them along to DJ Danger Mouse for a bit of a mashup; and you’d have a sense of the shape and scope of Preti Taneja’s debut novel, We That Are Young. Impressive in its heft (literally, as it clocks in at nearly 500 pages, and figuratively, as it won the 2018 Desmond Elliott Prize for first-time novelists), We That Are Young chronicles the changing of the guard within a family-owned multinational conglomerate, set against the backdrop of the Indian anti-corruption riots of 2011-12. Much like some of the most thrilling novels of the past decade,
FICTION We That Are Young relies on individual narratives that are self-serving and suspect. One central element is clear: Its patriarch, Devraj Bapuji, a former prince and founder of the largest business empire in India, is an unsympathetic lunatic. All the central characters—Devraj’s three daughters who stand to be potential heirs (Sita, Radha and Gargi), plus his right-hand man’s two sons (Jeet and Jivan)—are deeply flawed, so it’s a bit difficult to pick a side. Factor in the casual and untranslated bits of Hindi, and this epic novel announces itself from the outset as no beach read or airplane book; it demands (and rewards) one’s full attention. Like India itself, the novel is beset with contradictions, as impossible wealth and crushing poverty huddle with one another in an uneasy embrace. And while the setting is uniquely Indian, hints of the rising tide of global income inequality are impossible to ignore. As F. Scott Fitzgerald noted of the rich nearly a hundred years ago, “Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.” And yet, when the rich are turned loose against one another as they are in We That Are Young, they are still beleaguered by, and often powerless against, the same forces of human nature that bring out our best and basest selves. —T H A N E T I E R N E Y
THE WILDLANDS By Abby Geni
Counterpoint $26, 368 pages ISBN 9781619022348 Audio, eBook available FAMILY DRAMA
cramped, government-issued trailer on the outskirts of town. The family is barely scraping by when Tucker vanishes after a vicious fight with Darlene. “Tucker simply disappeared,” author Abby Geni writes. “He tumbled into the blue like a pebble dropped into a pond—out of sight, the ripples stilling, the surface of the water growing opaque.” He resurfaces three years later to reclaim 9-year-old Cora. The two take off on an interstate journey that turns into a crime spree as Tucker transforms into an increasingly unhinged ecoterrorist. Darlene, meanwhile, starts a tentative relationship with the policeman assigned to her brother’s case as they track crimes throughout Oklahoma and Texas that could be Tucker’s work: arson at a taxidermy shop, the shooting of the owner of a poultry processing company, and finally, a crime in California so catastrophic that it threatens Cora’s— and Tucker’s—very existence. Geni, author of the critically acclaimed The Lightkeepers, is an astonishing storyteller who brings the sun-baked plains of Oklahoma to life on every page. The narrative toggles seamlessly between Darlene, a girl forced to grow up overnight, and Cora, a girl torn between her adulation for her long-absent older brother and her increasing awareness of his danger to her. The Wildlands is perfectly of its time, when humans are more alert than ever to our impact on the world around us. —AMY SCRIBNER
Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Abby Geni.
THE WINTER SOLDIER By Daniel Mason
Reporters dub the McClouds “the saddest family in Mercy, Oklahoma,” after a tornado ravages the town, leaving the four McCloud kids orphaned. The oldest, Darlene, sets aside her college plans to take care of her younger sisters, Cora and Jane, and brother Tucker, and they settle into a dismal,
Little, Brown $28, 336 pages ISBN 9780316477604 Audio, eBook available HISTORICAL FICTION
Time marches on, taking with it alliances and allegiances both
political and personal. With a physician’s precision and an artist’s eye, author Daniel Mason (The Piano Tuner) captures the emotional and physical upheaval wrought by war. Right from the start, his new novel, The Winter Soldier, thrums with tension, whisking the reader into the fray. Amid the disorientation and displacement of World War I, Lucius, a barely trained young medical student, reports to a remote church requisitioned as a field hospital in the Carpathian Mountains. There, he meets the enigmatic Sister Margarete, a nurse who has been the main medical provider with a few orderlies since the previous doctors deserted or died along with her fellow sisters. Quick, witty and knowledgeable, Margarete becomes Lucius’ teacher, while a more than collegial relationship stirs beneath the surface. As the front advances around them, churning out the wounded, Lucius and Margarete toil side by side in their “patch and send” hospital. Amputations, nervous shock, skulls caved in, typhus, rats and lice—it’s exhausting to imagine the onslaught of it all, but Mason deftly renders every scene in vivid detail. Winter’s inevitable descent looms over them constantly, ready to take the lives they struggle to save. Yet even in winter, to paraphrase Camus, an invincible summer lies within. Hope, love, desire, laughter, even beauty exist alongside the blood and mayhem. The arrival of a wrecked shell of a soldier, trapped in both body and mind, brings a reckoning. Choices made by both nurse and doctor shape the young soldier’s life for good and for ill, reverberating until the novel’s final page. Through Vienna, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Galicia, The Winter Soldier roams from battlefields and hospitals to villages and ballrooms, never losing the thread between Lucius and Margarete. With striking prose and an unencumbered pace, The Winter Soldier makes for a uniquely compelling read.
Uneven and slightly indulgent, Gary Shteyngart’s fourth novel, Lake Success, nevertheless charms thanks to the author’s trademark warm-hearted humor and practiced satirical eye. Hedge fund manager Barry Cohen hasn’t been a success in work or family life. Though the fund he manages has hit the $2 billion mark, he’s being questioned about insider trading; his younger wife, Seema, is growing less interested in him by the day; and his 3-year-old son, Shiva, is autistic. There’s only one thing for Barry to do: run away. So he does, tossing his smartphone and black AmEx to the wayside and boarding a Greyhound in his Citibank vest. Maybe, Barry thinks, reuniting with his college girlfriend is the answer to his problems. Juxtaposed with Barry’s picaresque journey is Seema’s more mundane—if life in a luxurious Manhattan apartment can be said to be mundane—set of challenges as she tries to accept Shiva’s limitations and embarks on an affair with a neighbor. Caught up in the chaos of the 2016 presidential campaign, the fractured country reflects the fractures in Barry’s soul, and as ever, Shteyngart reveals America’s frailties with darkly mocking humor that never swerves into nihilism. He is likewise forgiving of his characters’ many failings. In the case of Barry, that indulgence is occasionally frustrating: Given his many privileges and avoidance of responsibility, the self-pity and lack of self-awareness Barry demonstrates for nearly the entire novel becomes tiring. Nevertheless, the verve of Shteyngart’s writing keeps the pages turning and makes Lake Success an overall winner for readers.
—MELISSA BROWN
—T R I S H A P I N G
LAKE SUCCESS By Gary Shteyngart Random House $28, 352 pages ISBN 9780812997415 Audio, eBook available SATIRICAL FICTION
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Time for
Great Fall Reading Winner of the Golden Man Booker Prize— A special prize awarded to the best work of fiction in the 50-year history of the Man Booker Prize
A Best Book of the Year USA Today, NPR
“Accomplished
and delightful.... Terrific.”
“ Rare and spellbinding.”
—USA Today
—Time
A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon
“[A] bold, compassionate, genre-hopping novel.”
“Titillating…. Evidence of Grann’s abundant talent as a writer.”
—The New York Times Book Review
—Providence Journal
“[Isabel] is by
turns fearless, vulnerable, headstrong, and insecure, but always delightful.” —Chicago Tribune
VINTAGE
The best short stories of the year, by a diverse and international mix of writers, with essays by jurors Fiona McFarlane, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Elizabeth Tallent
N E W I N PA P E R B A C K A N D E B O O K Read excerpts, print reading group guides, find original essays and more at ReadingGroupCenter.com
ANCHOR
reviews
NONFICTION
T PI OP CK
THE IMPOSTOR By Javier Cercas Translated by Frank Wynne
21 LESSONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
What is there to learn? REVIEW BY HARVEY FREEDENBERG
If there were such a thing as a required instruction manual for politicians and thought leaders, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century would deserve serious consideration. In this collection of provocative essays, Harari, author of the critically praised Sapiens and Homo Deus, tackles a daunting array of issues, endeavoring to answer a persistent question: “What is happening in the world today, and what is the deep meaning of these events?” For all the breadth of his concerns, Harari is able to distill the most pressing challenges facing our world down to three: nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological disruption, all of which together “add up to an unprecedented existential crisis.” He explains, for example, how this century will see the development of evermore sophisticated algorithms that will alter everything from the way we work (or don’t, By Yuval Noah Harari in complex future economies that won’t require many people’s labor) to Spiegel & Grau, $28, 400 pages the way we organize and conduct our political lives. ISBN 9780525512172, audio, eBook available These trends will unfold in a world that clings to what are, in Harari’s opinion, already outdated notions of nationalism and religious belief, CULTURE which will inevitably create tension and conflict. But Harari doesn’t ignore our current controversies. His concise essays on terrorism and immigration are examples of the fresh thinking he brings to any subject. Harari makes a passionate argument for reshaping our educational systems and replacing our current emphasis on quickly outdated substantive knowledge with the “four Cs”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. In the book’s final piece, Harari argues that the practice of meditation, something he does for two hours daily, offers a productive tool for understanding the human mind. Meditator or not, thoughtful readers will find 21 Lessons for the 21st Century to be a mind-expanding experience.
BURNING DOWN THE HAUS By Tim Mohr
Algonquin $28.95, 384 pages ISBN 9781616208431 Audio, eBook available HISTORY
In the early 1980s, hardcore punk offered alienated American teenagers a chance to find each other through its network of scenes, shows and zines. It offered a crucial lifeline for kids who were coming out of abusive homes, suffering bullying at schools or simply resisting Reagan-era conservatism. But Americans had nothing on the East German punks, as Tim Mohr brilliantly documents in his
incendiary Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. As early as 1977, kids throughout East Germany heard the siren call of the Sex Pistols by tuning into banned West German radio stations. By 1981, a nascent punk scene began forming in church basements and town squares. But the consequences of looking like a punk or forming a band were dangerous. Getting hauled in by the Stasi—the East German secret police—for brutal interrogations became a daily or weekly occurrence for punks. Studios and squats were routinely searched, and being surveilled by informers was a fact of life. By 1983—the “Summer of Punk”—many of the original punks were serving prison sentences. But the flame was lit, and the torch was carried on by
Knopf $28.95, 384 pages ISBN 9781524732813 eBook available BIOGRAPHY
How do you tell the truth about a liar? You might discount everything the liar says, hoping that the truth is the exact opposite, but what if you are dealing with a skilled liar, one who knows that the most enduring lies have a dash of truth? How do you know if you are following a clue or falling down a rabbit hole? This is the problem Javier Cercas set for himself in writing The Impostor. Cercas’ biography recounts his efforts to find the truth about the life of a man named Enric Marco. At one point, Marco was, in Cercas’ words, a “rock star” on the political stage of Spain. An anti-Franco freedom fighter during the Spanish Civil War and a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp at Flossenbürg, Marco rose to prominence as a union organizer, an education leader and a spokesman on behalf of the Spaniards sent to concentration camps by hundreds of kids who formed Franco. bands, squatted buildings and All this crumbled, however, spoke out against the state. when a diligent historian discovCompulsively readable and ered that Marco had never been beautifully researched, Burning deported and had never been in Down the Haus records the critical a concentration camp. But even role that punks played in the Gerafter the disclosure of his decepman resistance movements of the tions, crucial questions remained: 1980s, up to and beyond the fall of Was any part of his story true? And the Berlin Wall in 1989. As a DJ in more critically, why ? Was Marco Berlin in the early 1990s, Mohr met simply a narcissist whose entire and became friends with many of sense of self demanded a more the individuals portrayed in this grandiose, heroic past than his book, thus giving him access to the actual biography could provide? photos, diaries and oral histories Or, as Marco would have it, was he that give the book such rich, cinetelling a “noble lie” in order to force matic detail. Spaniards to face their history? “We could do things differently Cercas, an author of both fiction here,” East German punks said, and nonfiction, including the and it was a pronouncement they acclaimed novel The Soldiers of Saacted on. Their story of resistance lamis, struggles to disentangle the to dictatorship is an inspiring lesstrands of truth from Marco’s web son for today. of lies. But Marco is such an artful — C A T H E R I N E H O L L I S spinner of tales that Cercas can
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reviews never be sure if he is being used by Marco, somehow rescuing Marco or exploiting Marco for his own gain. Trying to understand Marco is like looking for a phantom in a house of mirrors, but Cercas’ attempt is an important investigation of the role of the writer, the nature of truth and the battle between memory and history. —DEBORAH MASON
NONFICTION employment tests, and it may have influenced the beginning of the arms race in the 1950s. Indeed, type theory has never gone out of fashion and is still incredibly popular today, fueling a multibillion-dollar industry. Emre engagingly follows all of these paths to illustrate the deep and broad impact one test has had on people the world over. —SHEILA M. TRASK
THE PERSONALITY BROKERS By Merve Emre
Doubleday $27.95, 336 pages ISBN 9780385541909 Audio, eBook available PSYCHOLOGY
People love personality tests, and they tend to believe the results, even if the tests are seldom reliable or even backed up by any scientific research. If you know your Myers-Briggs type—are you an ENFJ, or maybe an ISTP?—you know the appeal. In this fascinating survey of the popular Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) and its passionate originators Katharine Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, Merve Emre delves deeply into these women’s personalities and those of the many others who spread their ideas far and wide over the course of nearly a century. Relying on meticulous research, Emre reveals the vulnerable mindset of young housewife Briggs when she happened upon Carl Jung’s psychological theories in the 1920s. Inspired by Jung’s theories— but with no real psychological credentials and a background in fiction writing—Briggs and her daughter obsessively attempted to sort everyone in their lives into categories using a multiple-choice questionnaire they created. It was truly an obsession, Emre shows, and one that didn’t stop with the Myers-Briggs family. On the contrary, the Myers-Briggs type theory was used to analyze everything from the dire economic situation of the 1930s to Hilter’s personality. It informed the first
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MEG, JO, BETH, AMY By Anne Boyd Rioux
for stage and film and has influenced children’s literature and produced literary heroines who follow in Jo March’s footsteps (Katniss Everdeen, anyone?). Little Women’s feminist undertones also continue to encourage readers to reimagine expectations for women and girls. Rioux’s extensive research invites lifelong Little Women fans and new readers alike to dive deeply into the worlds of Alcott and the Marches. Along the way, they’ll uncover the novel’s inspiration and influence and grow to appreciate its ongoing significance, even 150 years later. —CARLA JEAN WHITLEY
Norton $27.95, 288 pages ISBN 9780393254730 Audio, eBook available
Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Anne Boyd Rioux.
LITERATURE
BETTY FORD By Lisa McCubbin
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, first published in 1868, was an almost instantaneous success. Today it’s often considered a book for young girls, but in the years following its publication, men, women and children alike embraced the tale of the four March sisters. The girls’ roles in their family and paths to adulthood in many ways resembled the experiences of Alcott and her own three sisters. It’s a relatable story that continues to captivate modern audiences and writers like Jane Smiley, Anna Quindlen and Simone de Beauvoir. As Little Women marks its 150th anniversary, author and scholar Anne Boyd Rioux, a professor at the University of New Orleans and scholar of 19th-century literature, looks back at its inception and influence in Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters. A passionate and serious writer, Alcott dreamed of literary success, but she didn’t imagine she would attain it with a children’s book. She wasn’t above writing for the sake of money, though, and so Alcott accepted her publisher’s request that she write a book for girls. This project would eventually become Little Women. In the generations since its release, the book has been adapted
Gallery $28, 400 pages ISBN 9781501164682 Audio, eBook available BIOGRAPHY
star quarterback at the University of Michigan. Thus began a deep, lifelong romance that carried them through the exhilaration of raising a family and the sorrows of Kennedy’s assassination and Watergate. When Jerry took the presidential oath of office in one of the darkest times in American history, Betty quickly became a beloved and admired figure. She was an outspoken and slyly funny woman who spoke openly of her battle with breast cancer, her views on parenting and, later, her own alcoholism and addiction to pills. “While being First Lady was certainly not a position Betty Ford had ever aspired to, let alone imagined she might become, as it turned out, she was exactly what America needed,” McCubbin writes. A journalist and co-author of several bestselling memoirs from Secret Service agents, McCubbin has deftly unearthed stories from those close to Betty Ford: her children, friends and former employees. The result is a vivid picture of a singularly influential woman. —AMY SCRIBNER
Betty Ford has become so closely tied with her eponymous addiction treatment center that it’s easy to forget that she was an extraordinary woman for many other reasons. Lisa McCubbin’s insightful portrait is admiring without being fawning, candid without a whiff of tabloid salaciousness. Ford grew up in the Midwest as Betty Bloomer. An aspiring modern dancer, she was a beauty who had her eyes set on New York City and the studio of Martha Graham. But her adolescence was not idyllic: Betty’s father struggled to hold down a job, and he committed suicide when she was in her teens. Pressured by her mother to return home to Grand Rapids after a brief stint in Manhattan, Betty found herself in an unhappy—and likely abusive—marriage. Although divorces were rare in the 1940s, Betty put an end to what she called “the five-year misunderstanding.” Mutual friends introduced Betty to Gerald “Jerry” Ford, a handsome local lawyer and former
THE LAST PALACE By Norman Eisen
Crown $28, 416 pages ISBN 9780451495785 Audio, eBook available HISTORY
In a sense, The Last Palace was conceived when Norman Eisen, U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic under Barack Obama, was lying under a table. Eisen had just had a thought-provoking phone conversation with his mother, Frieda, a Jewish Czech-American and Holocaust survivor who was reluctant to visit him at his gorgeous ambassador’s “palace” in Prague because of her harrowing memories of the Nazi and Communist years. A table in his new palatial home had an inventory label underneath it signifying that it had been used by the Nazis, and Eisen wanted a closer look. As he peered
up, he realized that it also had marks affixed by the wealthy Jewish family that built the mansion and, more recently, by the U.S. government. There it was, on a piece of furniture: the Czech experience of the 20th century. Eisen, ambassador from 2011 to 2014, has written a genuinely exciting history of the era, seen through the lives of Frieda and four people who lived in the mansion: Otto Petschek, the Jewish magnate who built it; Rudolf Toussaint, the general in charge of German troops in Nazi-occupied Prague; Laurence Steinhardt, the first postwar U.S. ambassador; and Shirley Temple Black, child superstar-turned-ambassador, stationed there during the Velvet Revolution. Based on voluminous research, the book offers a detailed, novelistic view of stirring times and impressive characters. For all his riches, Petschek is ultimately a sad figure, unable to understand the fragility of his world. Even the conflicted Toussaint evokes some modest sympathy, as he loathed the Nazis. Steinhardt and Black, however, were inarguably heroic. Steinhardt fought to preserve democracy; when he lost, he helped endangered friends escape. With impeccable timing, Black publicly supported the dissidents who overthrew the Communists. And through it all, we follow the indomitable Frieda, who survives the Holocaust to raise the American son whose success completes her family’s journey from persecution to prominence. —ANNE BARTLETT
THE GOOD NEIGHBOR By Maxwell King
Abrams $30, 416 pages ISBN 9781419727726 Audio, eBook available BIOGRAPHY
Not only is 2018 the 50th anniversary of the national premiere of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,”
but—as two feature films and this full-length biography attest—it is also a moment when our culture is feeling particularly nostalgic for the Presbyterian minister in his cardigan sweater and sneakers. Maxwell King, former director of the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media, prepared to write this biography of Fred Rogers by interviewing many people who knew Rogers best—from Rogers’ wife, Joanne, to the attendant who saw him every morning at the gym before his swim and Rogers’ many friends and co-workers. King offers a comprehensive look at Rogers’ life in The Good Neighbor, from his privileged childhood in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, through his difficult college experiences (dropping out of Dartmouth College to pursue a music degree from Rollins College) to his early days in broadcasting and his meticulous work on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” The show was unique in the landscape of children’s television, and Rogers’ fingerprints were on every element. The opening credits feature his hometown of Latrobe; the songs, which he wrote, reflect his deep commitment to social and emotional education; and the puppets embodied characters Rogers first imagined when he was a child. Rogers emerges from this biography much like I imagine he did every morning from his swim: fresh and glowing with health, secure in his identity, calm and creatively focused. His passions for puppetry, childhood development, faith and music come through clearly. It is undeniably heartening to read about someone who cared so deeply for children and childhood. Rogers’ ideas will make readers want to cheer. “There are many people in the world who want to make children into performing seals,” he once said. “And as long as children can perform well, those adults will applaud. But I would much rather help a child to be able to say who he or she is.” In a time when antagonism seems to divide us, Rogers’ messages of authenticity, respect and neighborliness continue to refresh. — K E L LY B L E W E T T
q&a
MAXWELL KING B Y K E L LY B L E W E T T
It’s you I like
M
axwell King’s The Good Neighbor explores the life and enormously influential work of Fred Rogers, the creator and star of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
© JOSHUA FRANZOS FOR THE PITTSBURGH FOUNDATION
NONFICTION
What made Rogers such a genius at working with children? Two things: authenticity and high standards. Children can tell a phony a mile away, and Fred Rogers was the opposite: an utterly genuine person. Rogers’ training under Dr. Margaret McFarland at the University of Pittsburgh gave him the background in child development and early childhood education to set the very highest standards for his programming. And his fierce commitment to excellence enabled him to sustain those standards for decades. What did your research reveal about how Rogers conducted himself as a friend? Rogers was always concerned about treating everyone with great respect and being a good friend to whomever he was dealing with. In fact, he got up in the early morning each day to pray that he would be as good to the people he would encounter that day as he possibly could. And he readily gave his respect and kindness to everyone, whether they were homeless or the president of a large bank. Why were puppets a part of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”? When did Rogers start developing those characters? Rogers began developing his puppet characters as a little boy, performing his puppet theater in the attic of his parents’ home in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. And it was pure serendipity that led to his use of the puppets much later when he began producing children’s television. The night before his first program—”The Children’s Corner”—started on WQED in Pittsburgh, the station manager, Dorothy Daniels, gave Fred a small puppet as a gift. That puppet got used on the spur of the moment on the first program and then became Daniel Tiger, the first of many puppets Rogers would use on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” How did Rogers’ childhood in Latrobe shape his television program? Everything on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”—the trolleys, the streets, the houses, the shops, the companies—all sprang from Rogers’ recollections of his childhood in Latrobe. What did the number 143 mean to Fred Rogers? Two things: his weight, all his life, and the expression “I love you.” In what ways did Rogers’ faith inform his television program? Rogers was always guided by his Christianity, and his strong values— human kindness, respect, caring, integrity, duty—all derived from his faith. But he was very careful, while emphasizing those values, never to preach or proselytize on the children’s program. And he became, as an adult, a great student of many of the world’s religions and philosophies. He was very happy to find that the same humanistic values showed up in all faiths. What do you think Rogers would want to communicate to children today? Be yourself, be full of love, and be full of the joy of life and learning.
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PICKS
reviews
TEEN
T PI OP CK
YA CAN’T MISS
OF THE
MONTH
A surefire crossover hit
SADIE
REVIEW BY SARAH WEBER
By Courtney Summers
Wednesday, $17.99, 320 pages ISBN 9781250105714, audio, eBook available Ages 13 and up
“A fun read.” —Kirkus Reviews
THRILLER
When Sadie was 6 years old, her sister Mattie’s arrival provided her life with purpose. So when Mattie is found dead 13 years later, Sadie is destroyed—and determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice, no matter the cost. Sadie’s car is soon found abandoned, and her surrogate grandmother, having given up on the authorities, begs investigative radio reporter West McCray to look into her granddaughter’s case. While West is reluctant to get involved with Sadie’s story (“Girls go missing all the time,” he says), he soon becomes obsessed with finding the 19-year-old and wants to help bring her home before it’s too late. In the highly anticipated Sadie, Courtney Summers delivers a hard-hitting look at the depth of a sister’s love. Summers confronts drug abuse, abandonment and child sexual abuse head-on as she tells the dark story of Sadie’s desperate attempt to avenge her sister and West’s desperate attempt to find her. Summers’ narrative alternates between Sadie’s first-person perspective of her journey and the script of West’s “Serial”-like podcast as he traces her steps, and both are riveting. Summers’ sharp prose—filled with raw emotion, gritty detail and almost-tangible suspense—will break readers’ hearts over and over for Sadie and just about everyone
she encounters on her mission. Sadie is a gripping, visceral thriller that is at once difficult to fathom and impossible to put down.
DARIUS THE GREAT IS NOT OKAY By Adib Khorram
Dial $17.99, 320 pages ISBN 9780525552963 eBook available Ages 12 and up FICTION
“Unlike anything I’ve read before in YA.” —Sara Zarr,
National Book Award finalist, author of Gem & Dixie
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With his brilliant debut, Darius the Great Is Not Okay, Adib Khorram has given us one of the most compelling and humorous teen narrators in recent memory. Darius Kellner is half Persian, half white and constantly out of his depth. With no friends, a penchant for “dietary indiscretions” and a titanic sense of insufficiency, Darius is not OK. When his Iranian grandfather gets sick, the family jumps aboard a plane to Iran, and Darius finds a whole new world waiting for him—along with all his same old
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problems. With more knowledge of Klingon than Farsi, Darius once again finds himself on the outside looking in. But after a lifetime of playing the odd man out, Darius finds his first true friend—and perhaps his first true love—and begins to accept that not being OK might be OK after all. With a host of perfectly imperfect characters and more “Star Trek” and J.R.R. Tolkien references than you’ll likely find outside of a Comic-Con, Khorram takes on a host of weighty topics with uncanny lightness and care. Whether depicting Darius’ depression, his budding romance or his struggle to unravel his cultural, familial and sexual identities, Khorram approaches his narrative with a rare mix of humor, respect and deep sympathy. Equally entertaining and endearing, Darius the Great Is Not Okay is a must-read if you’ve ever felt out of place or insufficient. —J O N L I T T L E
MIRAGE By Somaiya Daud
Flatiron $18.99, 320 pages ISBN 9781250126429 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up FANTASY
With a mix of Moroccan-tinged fantasy and interstellar sci-fi, Somaiya Daud’s Mirage fits squarely in the new class of genre-melding, diverse young adult literature. Amani’s family lives under the rule of the Vathek empire, which conquered their planet and its moons a generation ago. Amani is delighted to be among family and friends on her majority night, the ceremony in which she comes of age and receives her daan, the traditional family markings on her face. But the Vath interrupt the ceremony and take Amani to the old
TEEN imperial palace they now occupy. As soon as Amani sees the halfVathek princess Maram inside, she understands why she was taken: The two girls are identical, and the unpopular princess needs a body double. Maram’s life is in danger whenever she appears in public, so Amani will take her place. As Amani perfects her impression of Maram, she gets closer to the princess, whose cruelty stems from being raised between two enemy cultures. Amani also finds companionship with Idris, Maram’s fiancé. Her feelings for Idris grow stronger as she learns more about their shared Kushaila culture and religion, but will she be able to fight for her people and protect Princess Maram at the same time? Amani is an admirable heroine, always striving to do right, though the world building and background of the Kushaila and Vathek cultures could be stronger. But with Daud’s emotional plot and cliffhanger ending, readers of romantic, tense and slow-burning fantasy will be enthralled. —ANNIE METCALF
SUMMER BIRD BLUE By Akemi Dawn Bowman
Simon Pulse $18.99, 384 pages ISBN 9781481487757 Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up
even though she doesn’t have any desire to touch or kiss him? And how can she ever write, perform or even hear music again, when she’ll always have to experience it without her sister? Akemi Dawn Bowman’s Summer Bird Blue is a story of healing. As Kai gradually coaxes Rumi back into a world of friends, summer jobs and days at the beach, Aunty Ani’s other neighbor, the grumpy Mr. Watanabe, provides an unexpected haven. Hawaii’s geography, food and language (Hawaiian Pidgin) are authentically researched and lovingly portrayed. Bowman, author of the William C. Morris YA Debut Award finalist Starfish, once again offers a diverse, sensitive and hopeful portrayal of a teen simultaneously struggling with questions of personal identity and difficult external circumstances. —J I L L R A T Z A N
WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU By Ariel Kaplan
Knopf $17.99, 352 pages ISBN 9781524773700 eBook available Ages 12 and up FICTION
Ariel Kaplan’s We Regret to Inform You is a compelling novel about every highly motivated college applicant’s worst nightFICTION mare. High school senior Mischa Abramavicius should have had Sisters Rumi and Lea are going it made. She goes to a tony prep to make music together forever. school on scholarship where she’s Rumi plays piano, Lea plays guitar, a star student. But when college and together they write lyrics. That acceptances start rolling in and her is, until Lea dies in a car crash and classmates are accepted to places like Harvard and Princeton, Mischa Rumi is sent to live with her Aunty gets nothing but rejections. She Ani in Hawaii. Rumi spends the first few weeks doesn’t even get into her safety of her summer pondering impossi- school, Paul Revere University. ble questions: Why did her mother Shocked and ashamed to tell her single mother, Mischa visits abandon her with a relative she hardly knows? Is Rumi just like her Revere’s admissions office and discovers that her transcript has been absent father, scared of commitment and bound to abandon altered. But her original transcript everyone she loves? Why does is in order, leading Mischa to realshe feel so physically attracted to ize that something fishy is going on. With help from her best friend, Aunty Ani’s teenage neighbor, Kai,
Nate, and a group of hacker girls who call themselves the Ophelia Syndicate, Mischa begins to dig deeper. As unlikely as this all sounds, Kaplan makes everything seem believable with the help of her wisecracking yet thoughtful narrator. Without any college acceptances, Mischa begins to question her very identity. But as she gets to the bottom of her application disaster, she also re-examines her dreams, goals and all-consuming pursuit of success. We Regret to Inform You is an entertaining look at the college admissions rat race that includes crime, a cover-up and plenty of heart and soul. —ALICE CARY
AND THE OCEAN WAS OUR SKY By Patrick Ness
Illustrated by Rovina Cai HarperTeen $19.99, 160 pages ISBN 9780062860729 Audio, eBook available Ages 13 and up FANTASY
Drawing heavily from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Patrick Ness has given a famous antagonist a voice through this retelling that transports readers into a foreboding underwater realm where whales hunt seafaring humans. These whales have formed their own civilization with hierarchies that mirror the human social structures above the surface. The most fearsome hunter whale, Captain Alexandra, obsessively pursues the devilish, deadly human of lore known as Toby Wick. As Alexandra and her apprentice, Bathsheba, search for Wick, they come across an abandoned human ship with a sole survivor whom they take captive. As Bathsheba and the captive human discover their similarities, they learn how their fears have set their species against one another. Touching on themes of faith, prophecy and destiny, And the Ocean Was Our Sky is an otherworldly myth—beautifully illus-
trated by Rovina Cai—that feels eerily real. —J U S T I N B A R I S I C H
PRIDE By Ibi Zoboi
Balzer + Bray $17.99, 304 pages ISBN 9780062564047 Audio, eBook available Ages 13 and up FICTION
There’s no shortage of Jane Austen retellings. But it’s safe to say that none of them are quite like Ibi Zoboi’s modern-day reimagining of Pride and Prejudice. Zoboi, whose prior novel, American Street, was a finalist for the National Book Award, continues her exploration of the complexities of American neighborhoods through a love story worthy of the legacy of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Zoboi’s novel is set in Bushwick, a Brooklyn neighborhood whose residents—like narrator Zuri Benitez and her family—are largely working-class African-Americans and Latinos who have lived there for decades. But Bushwick appears next in line for gentrification, and Zuri’s not sure she likes the changes. Her concerns come to a head when the Darcys, a wealthy black family, move across the street, completely changing her street’s culture. Zuri can’t deny that the younger Darcy brother, Darius, is fine—but she can’t get over her resentment of what the Darcys stand for, nor can she forgive Darius’ own prejudices about the Benitez family’s very different lifestyle. Pride is not a connect-the-dots retelling, and that’s what makes it so compelling. Zoboi utilizes Pride and Prejudice’s dramatic potential to set the stage, but Zuri and Darius’ story stands on its own. Likewise, Zoboi’s treatment of race, class and gentrification will effectively open some readers’ eyes while also resonating deeply with those who see these issues playing out in their own lives. —NORAH PIEHL
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children’s
SHARON CREECH INTERVIEW BY ALICE CARY
Pastoral inspirations
W
hen Newbery Medal-winning author Sharon Creech and her husband moved to coastal Maine six years ago, they knew the change would be good for their family. Several books later, it seems the move has also been a boon to Creech’s writing.
Creech’s adult daughter, her husband and their two children also settled in Maine, and Creech’s 2016 novel, Moo, dramatized her granddaughter’s experience of helping raise a cow with their new hometown’s 4-H Club. After that, Creech’s granddaughter and grandson cared for rescued lambs, which inspired Creech’s new middle grade novel, Saving Winslow―although this time the writing involved some negotiations. “They’re so cute,” Creech says, speaking by phone from Maine. “The grandchildren would be sitting in chairs, holding a little lamb, trying to get the bottle in their mouth, and the looks on the children’s faces were just like you see with a mother and a newborn. Just witnessing that simple, pure kind of transaction has made it all worth our while to move to Maine, to be close to them and to witness this.” When Creech mentioned to her daughter and granddaughter that she wanted to write about the
SAVING WINSLOW
By Sharon Creech
HarperCollins, $16.99, 176 pages ISBN 9780062570703, audio, eBook available Ages 8 to 12
MIDDLE GRADE
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lambs, they both said no—they wanted to write that story themselves. “They’re both really good writers, so I think they will do it one day,” she says. Creech decided to draw on their experiences but to write about another animal instead. When family members sent her a video of a miniature donkey swinging in a hammock, she was hooked. However, Creech was still thinking about her granddaughter’s first rescue lamb named Winslow, so she countered with, “Can I at least use the name?” This time “I try to get the answer was in this very yes. With all tranquil place the makings of an instant in my mind.” classic, Saving Winslow is one of those seemingly simple animal stories that is beautifully understated yet emotionally complex, bringing to mind the beloved tales of E.B. White and Kate DiCamillo. Told in exceedingly short, riveting chapters, it’s the story of a young boy named Louie who cares for a struggling baby mini donkey. Louie is also learning to navigate life without his beloved older brother, Gus, who is serving overseas in the army. Louie meets a girl named Nora, who’s dealing with her own family tragedy. “Somehow Louie felt that saving Winslow would also save and protect Gus, like the two were connected somehow,” Creech writes. “I constantly return to themes of grief or letting go,” Creech says, noting that she wrote her first book the year after her father died. A stroke six years before had robbed her father of his speech. “So it felt like my obligation to use all those words that I could see that he wanted to say but couldn’t. I’m probably always going to be touching on these kinds of themes, all of
those things that are crucial elements of life.” Creech concludes that writing about a donkey instead of a lamb ended up being for the best, making the novel “almost funnier” and “less likely to get treacly.” Creech adeptly avoids sappy pitfalls, describing, for instance, a baby boy who lives next door to Louie as having “a tangled curly blob of black hair that looked like a burnt cauliflower had exploded there.” Small details like these, combined with the novel’s structure as a whole, make Saving Winslow a master class in superb writing. Over the years, working in both poetry and prose, Creech acknowledges that her writing process has become increasingly succinct, partly to allow her time to pursue family obligations and other interests. She now usually writes for about three hours in the morning, having fine-tuned her routine. “I try to get in this very tranquil place in my mind,” the author explains. “I think that comes from writing almost every day for 20 years. You have your cup of tea. You have your little chocolates. You tell your husband that you are going to be incommunicado for a couple hours. You put the phone away. And then I just sort of sit there, and I’m relaxed. I look at what I did the day before, and then I just go.” Creech is currently having what she calls “an interesting relationship” with a new project that’s “driving [her] crazy.” So far, it’s written in prose, and it doesn’t feature animals, although “there’s a character who thinks about animals.” Should she need a diversion
from writing, she has a steady stream of fan letters that arrive frequently. She keeps some favorites nearby, such as a note from a boy who recently informed her, “If I had time, I still would not read, but I might write poems or something. I would hopefully have something better to do than read, but I might read. But if I liked to read, I would probably read your books.” “There’s something in his voice,” Creech says of the backhanded compliment, chuckling. “I want to write his story.” Such honest letters are refreshing, she admits, “particularly when you’ve waded through 50 or 100 or so from the more rote ones, where they’re being very correct and polite. It’s a relief―like a real person.” Meanwhile, life beckons outside of her office door. “We’re very, very glad we made the move here,” she says. “We’re loving Maine so much.” Coastal Maine has been home to many authors and illustrators, including none other than the late E.B. White, who lived and wrote from his home in Brooklin, Maine. Creech, a longtime fan, says she’s become re-immersed in his writing. “You know,” she says, “now I really understand where all that was coming from, his affiliation with animals and his understanding of them.”
reviews
CHILDREN’S
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ow Available N
A BIG MOONCAKE FOR LITTLE STAR
Taking a bite out of the night sky REVIEW BY ANGELA LEEPER
Grace Lin fans know that the moon is a common subject in her work. The Newbery Honor-winning author and illustrator pays tribute to this celestial sphere once again in her latest picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star. In this modern folktale, wordless endpapers depict a mother and her daughter, Little Star, baking a giant mooncake—a Chinese treat usually made for the Mid-Autumn Festival. As the story opens, Mama places the Big Mooncake up into the night sky to cool and reminds her daughter not to touch it. Little Star heeds her mother and gets ready for bed, but when she wakes in the middle of the night, she only remembers the delicious Big Mooncake in the By Grace Lin sky and not her mother’s words. Who wouldn’t want a nibble? Night Little, Brown, $17.99, 40 pages after night, Little Star sneaks tiny bites, and the cake slowly disappears ISBN 9780316404488, eBook available to mirror the phases of the moon. When Mama notices that there’s Ages 4 to 8 nothing left but “a trail of twinkling crumbs,” she leads Little Star into the kitchen to bake another cake. PICTURE BOOK Lin’s vibrant gouache paintings are a stellar fit for this story. The luminous mooncake and the stars from the girl and her mother’s matching star pajamas glow against the book’s black background. As in many of her previous picture books, Lin offers clever visual treats: a clock adorned with small phases of the moon; a tipped bottle of milk spilling its contents in a spiral pattern; and Little Star’s bedtime book, which readers will recognize as one of Lin’s previous folktale retellings. Whether you’re celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival or putting little ones to bed, this is a gentle, beautiful book for all. Illustration © 2018 Grace Lin. Reproduced by permission of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
CORDUROY TAKES A BOW By Viola Davis Illustrated by Jody Wheeler Viking $17.99, 32 pages ISBN 9780425291474 Audio available Ages 3 to 5
Great news for Corduroy fans: In honor of the 50th anniversary of Don Freeman’s classic 1968 picture book, the adventurous bear stars in a new adventure, Corduroy Takes a Bow, written by legendary stage and screen actress Viola Davis. In this new story, Corduroy heads to a Broadway show (“Mother Goose Live”) with his owner, Lisa, and her mother, and his quest to get a better view leads to an exciting on-stage conclusion. The book is a fitting tribute to Corduroy’s creator, as Freeman was a
Broadway aficionado, often hanging out backstage and sketching actors. Davis was eager to take on the project because Freeman’s book meant so much to her as a child: She remembers Corduroy as one of the few books that featured an African-American heroine. “To be able to introduce a new generation, including my daughter, to this character that was so special to me in my childhood is an incredible honor,” Davis said in a recent interview with People. Corduroy Takes a Bow stays very much in the spirit of the original book’s prose and illustrations. Jodi Wheeler works in Freeman’s distinctive art style, filling Davis’ story with pastel-toned, old-fashioned yet lively illustrations. This new Corduroy adventure will encourage a whole new generation of young readers to fall in love with this very special bear. —ALICE CARY
9-884-3 978-1-5808
978-158089 -836-
2
ober 16
Oct On-sale
THE STUFF OF STARS By Marion Dane Bauer Illustrated by Ekua Holmes
-926-0 58089 978-1-
Candlewick $17.99, 40 pages ISBN 9780763678838 Ages 4 to 8
In this wondrous meditation on the origins of life, readers see matter expand and time and space blossom. In spare free verse, Newbery Medal-winning author Marion Dane Bauer kicks off The Stuff of Stars with the “deep, deep dark.” There is only a speck in the vast blackness. But once our universe is born, the pages explode with vivid oranges, reds and blues. Caldecott Honor winner Ekua Holmes’ dazzling collage illustrations—rendered on handmade marbleized paper—feature deep, rich colors and remarkably kinetic lines.
978-1-580 89-927-7
Little books about big ideas! Board books at $8.99 www.charlesbridge.com
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reviews Holmes takes highly abstract concepts and makes them sing, swirl and spin on the pages. Bauer fills the text with animated, bustling verbs: After all, the creation of life itself takes great colliding, stretching, expanding and exploding. Three spreads are devoted to the formation of Earth—a planet with “just the right tilt” to support life—where animals, including humans, eventually begin to thrive. Bauer then seamlessly weaves in the birth of a child, who also begins as a speck in the darkness. Here, the story’s second-person narration works to great effect, directly addressing the young reader: “You cried tears / that were once salty seas.” The Stuff of Stars is out of this world. —J U L I E D A N I E L S O N
THE DAM By David Almond Illustrated by Levi Pinfold Candlewick $17.99, 32 pages ISBN 9780763695972 Ages 5 to 9
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Award-winning author David Arnold’s evocative and expressive new picture book, The Dam, tells the story of a father and daughter’s last visit to their valley community before the arrival of the newly constructed dam’s rising waters. The duo brings forth twirling, ghostly images from the past—supplied by Levi Pinfold—as they play violin and sing in each abandoned house. As remembered souls and memories drift away, the pair leaves the houses ringing with song. Almond sets the mood with short, almost curt sentences, creating austere poetry rife with repetition. He doesn’t linger on descriptions, instead allowing the illustrations and the reader’s imagination to flesh out the story. Pinfold poignantly illustrates this true story of England’s Kielder Dam valley and creates his own visual opus with broad, sweeping hills and hovering fog—rendered in muted colors—that foreshadow the coming loss. With incredible detail,
Pinfold also gives young readers an intimate portrayal of the various creatures that made their homes in the valley with his sepia-toned portraits. Perhaps the most extraordinarily lovely and melancholy picture book published this year, The Dam will linger in readers’ minds. But what sticks with you after the book is closed is not desolation and defeat; it’s blue water and open skies, exuberant children, dancing stars and, of course, music. —J I L L L O R E N Z I N I
24 HOURS IN NOWHERE By Dusti Bowling
Sterling $14.95, 272 pages ISBN 9781454929246 eBook available Ages 8 to 12 MIDDLE GRADE
A lot can happen in 24 hours— unless you live in Nowhere, Arizona, the least-livable town in the United States, where nothing ever happens. However, the town’s reputation changes one summer evening when young Gus is rescued by Rossi Scott, just as the bully Bo Taylor is about to make him eat a jumping cholla—a very spiny cactus. In Dusti Bowling’s 24 Hours in Nowhere, this one small act sets off a chain reaction of events that will keep Gus, Rossi and Bo very busy—at least for the next 24 hours. Rossi was able to rescue Gus, but he pulled it off at the expense of Loretta, her prized dirt bike. Resolute, Gus confronts Bo and learns that to get Loretta back, he’ll have to trade one piece of gold from Dead Frenchman’s Mine. Gus is determined to find the gold and get Rossi’s bike back before her big race the next day, and so he gathers up some new friends, and the four venture into the mine. What they find there is more than they ever could have imagined. 24 Hours in Nowhere is fastpaced and filled with adventure, excitement and humor. Each character contributes to the main plot while also carrying a story of
CHILDREN’S their own. This is a perfect pick for young readers who love a well-developed story with twists and turns all the way to the very end.
ventures for Cassidy and Jacob in store, as readers will be clamoring for a sequel.
By Victoria Schwab Scholastic $17.99, 304 pages ISBN 9781338111002 Audio, eBook available Ages 9 to 12
NO FIXED ADDRESS By Susin Nielsen
would you describe Q: How the book?
Wendy Lamb $16.99, 288 pages ISBN 9781524768348 eBook available Ages 10 and up MIDDLE GRADE
MIDDLE GRADE
Twelve-year-old Cassidy Blake is an unusual girl. A book nerd and a bit of a loner, she nearly drowned when she was younger, only to be rescued at the last minute by a boy her age named Jacob. Only Jacob isn’t a typical boy: He’s a ghost, and Cassidy’s near-death experience has given her the ability to cross the Veil and enter a world where she can see and speak to the dead. When Cassidy’s parents, a team of historical and supernatural researchers, take a summer job in Edinburgh, Scotland, Cassidy and Jacob tag along. But Edinburgh is a city full of creepy graveyards, haunted castles and the Raven—a malicious ghost who lures children to their deaths. Cassidy cannot ignore the pull of the Veil or the Raven, and when she meets another girl who can also see the dead, Cassidy discovers that she’s supposed to send the ghosts away. But what does that mean for Jacob? And when the Raven comes after Cassidy, will she have the strength to fight back, or will she become a spirit herself? Although City of Ghosts is Victoria Schwab’s first foray into middle grade fiction, the bestselling author of adult fiction and young adult titles like Vicious is squarely in her wheelhouse. The Scottish setting is authentic and chilling, likely drawn from Schwab’s experience attending graduate school in Edinburgh. Schwab cleverly balances the book’s macabre elements with humor. Jacob is a charming sidekick, and as a ghost, he is the bright light of this tale. Hopefully, there are more ad-
the title of your Q: What’s new book?
— K I M B E R LY G I A R R A T A N O
—KEVIN DELECKI
CITY OF GHOSTS
meet MIKE TWOHY
Felix Knutsson has a lot to worry about. His mother, Astrid, can’t find or keep a job, and the duo have been living in a van for months after being evicted from their Vancouver apartment. It’s a tough life for young Felix, especially since he doesn’t feel like he can share his dire situation with any of his friends from school. Still, life with no fixed address isn’t all bad. While Astrid struggles with occasional bouts of depression referred to as “slumps,” she is a loving mother who is trying her best to provide for her son. Felix has a beloved pet gerbil and a good-luck troll, does well in school, makes good friends and has a huge interest in trivia. He even manages to win a slot on the junior edition of his favorite game show, “Who What Where When.” At almost every turn, however, the state of Felix’s “residence” comes into question by the Canadian Ministry of Children and Family Development. Felix’s luck soars after he wins the game show’s substantial cash prize, but his world soon threatens to implode when he finds himself in the police station with his mother shortly after. The good and bad intermingle at the end, leaving Felix to learn the true meaning of kindness and to discover that homelessness doesn’t have to mean hopelessness. Author Susin Nielsen weaves humor and heart into No Fixed Address while highlighting struggles that are often swept under the rug. Through Felix, Nielsen shows readers what it takes to carry on. —SHARON VERBETEN
has been the biggest influence on your work? Q: Who
was your favorite subject in school? Why? Q: What
was your childhood hero? Q: Who
books did you enjoy as a child? Q: What
one thing would you like to learn to do? Q: What
Q: What message would you like to send to young readers?
STOP, GO, YES, NO! A game of chase between an energetic dog and a less than enthusiastic cat tells a charming story of opposites in Stop, Go, Yes, No! (Balzer + Bray, $17.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780062469335, ages 4 to 8). Geisel Honor winner and New Yorker cartoonist Mike Twohy’s timeless illustrations make learning fun. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife.
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