BookPage January 2010

Jan. 2010

America’s BoOK Review

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70

new book reviews

Must-REads for a happier you pg. 16

art of the matter Stunning second act from the author of ‘The Historian’ pg. 19

first comes 'eat, pray, love' Then comes marriage pg. 7

pure imagination

3 novels with a magic touch

pg. 12

® ® ® ®

America’s America’s BoOK BoOK Review Review TTH HEE BBEESSTT IIN N N NEEW W BBO OO OKKSS Publisher Michael A. Zibart Publisher Associate Michael A.publisher Zibart Julia Steele Associate publisher Editor Julia Steele Lynn L. Green Editor fiction Editor Lynn L. Green Abby Plesser fiction Editor NONfiction Editor Abby Plesser Kate Pritchard web Editor web TrishaEditor Ping Trisha Ping Contributing Editor Assistant web Editor Sukey Howard Eliza Borné Contributor Contributing Editor Roger Bishop Sukey Howard Children’s books Contributor Allison Hammond Roger Bishop Advertising Sales Children’s books Julia Steele Allison J.Hammond Angela Bowman Advertising Sales Production Manager JuliaChildress Steele Penny Angela J. Bowman Production Designer Production Manager Karen Trotter Elley Penny Childress SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER Production Designer Elizabeth Grace Herbert Karen Trotter Elley Customer Service SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER Alice Fitzgibbon Elizabeth Grace Herbert ONLINE SERVICES manager Customer Service Scott Grissom Alice Fitzgibbon ONLINE SERVICES manager Scott Grissom

R E V I E W S

Our editors evaluate and select for review the best new books published each month. Only books we highly Our editors evaluate and select for review the recommend are featured. BookPage is editobest new books published each month. Only rially independent and never accepts payment books we highly recommend are featured. for editorial coverage.

BookPage is editorially independent and never accepts payment for editorial coverage.

R E V I E W S

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

S U B S C R I B E S U B SandC bookstores R I B Emay Public libraries

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CONTENTS

january 2010

Elizabeth gilbert

INTERVIEWS 19 Elizabeth Kostova From The Historian to an

artistic exploration

20 Leila Meacham Texas author weaves a rich

family tapestry

FEATURES 6 Well Read A bird’s eye view of the privileged life 10 Robert Crais Meet the author of The First Rule 12 Fantastic Fiction Three magical novels to help beat

the winter blues

14 Behind the Book Amy Greene on the inspiration

16 New You Our guide to tackling every resolution 22 Women & Money Facing your finances without

23 Personal Finance Taking control after a rough

financial year

Children’s Books 26 Taeeun Yoo Meet the illustrator of So Many Days 27 James Patterson Talking with the best-selling

author about his new teen series

REVIEWS 4

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

4

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

6

Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler

10

Ghosts & Lightning by Trevor Byrne

growing up russian

RREEA AD DA ALLLL O OU URR RREEVVIIEEW WSS AT AT

B O O K PA GE.COM

True Confections by Katharine Weber

14

The Listener by Shira Nayman

14

Summertime by J.M. Coetzee

18

Thereby Hangs a Tail by Spencer Quinn

18

Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom

19

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

24

Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin

8 Marriage and Other Acts of Charity

by Kate Braestrup 8 Happy by Alex Lemon

15

Little Boy Blues by Malcolm Jones

15 Daring Young Men by Richard Reeves 25 The First Star by Lars Anderson 25

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

31

Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters

DEPARTMENTS

A A D D V V EE RR TT II SS EE

All All material material © © copyright copyright 2009 2010 by

by ProMotion, ProMotion, inc. inc.

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Nonfiction

Fiction

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Saying “I do” to the institution of marriage

for her debut novel, Bloodroot

Elena Gorokhova (second from right) recalls her Soviet childhood

3 4 7 8 11 21 22 25 31

Buzz Girl The Author Enablers Bestseller Watch Lifestyles Whodunit?

Romance Book Clubs Audio Cooking

page 13 Cover photo ©iStockphoto.com/quavondo

buzz girl ➥ Our publishing

insider gets the skinny on tomorrow’s bestsellers From big-buzz debuts to releases from favorites new and old, the months ahead promise to be an exciting time for book lovers.

➥ tiger’s tale With his Booker Prize-winning debut, The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga joined a fresh crop of Indian writers who portray their complex, changing country as they see it. With a successful follow up, Between the Assassinations, under his belt, Adiga is poised to publish a third book. Last Man in the Tower (Grove Atlantic) is ARAVIND ADIGA set in Mumbai, and explores the conflict between a high-powered real estate developer and one man who won’t sell out.

Adiga’s Indian publisher, HarperCollins India, calls the book “a sweeping novel about contemporary India, more particularly Mumbai. Adiga’s characters are unforgettable, his prose riveting.” Fans can look for the novel sometime in 2011.

➥ first book buzz

cal thrillers” for teens).

Since the days of big advances for the heck of it (or for the publicity) seem to have disappeared with the recession, this signals that Bantam Dell expects a Rowling-sized payout once the books are published.

But what’s the book about? It’s the story of the friendship of two girls. One has lost her sister in a horrible murder; the other is a chilling and charming party girl. The series has been described as Twilight without the vampires—and with the sex.

Kate Miciak, editorial director of Bantam Books, who won U.S. rights, said, “You had only to read the opening sentence — ‘I did not go to Alice’s funeral’ — to know that you had instantly fallen under the thrall of a strong narrative voice.”

Currently, the book is scheduled for a September 2010 publication in the U.S.

➥ weird science Writer Elizabeth Kolbert has written a book based on a series of New Yorker articles about the next great cataclysm— and Henry Holt won the rights to publish the book, The Sixth Extinction, in a big auction.

Most scientists agree that there have been five mass extinctions in Earth’s history. Kolbert, a respected environmental journalist, believes we’re on the verge of number six, the first since the dinosaurs were wiped out more than 50 million years ago. What does this mean for the planet? We’ll find out when The Sixth Extinction appears sometime next year.

➥

➥

➥ king tv Speaking of Stephen King, Under the Dome has been optioned by DreamWorks TV as an “event series.” No word yet on when the series will air, but we have our fingers crossed for a stellar adapation.

➥ more snicket Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, has signed a new five-book deal with Little, Brown, leaving HarperCollins to follow editor Susan Rich.

The deal includes a new four-book series from Snicket (the first book is due out in 2012), and a separate YA novel— written under the name Handler—due out in 2011.

➥ trigiani tales The talented Adriana Trigiani will continue her series starring Valentine Roncalli this February in Brava, Valentine.

Her Italian-American heroine, who runs her own custom shoe design boutique in Greenwich Village, is still struggling to bal- adriana trigiani ance love, a career and her well-meaning but nosy family.

LAUREN WILLIG

THE TEMPTATION OF THE NIGHT JASMINE After years abroad, Robert, Duke of Dovedale, has returned to England to avenge the murder of his mentor. But the Duke has no idea that an even more difficult challenge awaits him— in the person of Charlotte Lansdowne.

NOW IN PAPERBACK

➥ internet envy Like being in the know when it comes to book news? All these tantalizing tidbits first appeared on our blog, The Book Case. So if you don’t want to wait a month for the latest book news, visit BookPage.com. 

A Member of Penguin Group (USA) penguin.com

$15/9780451228987

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Australian mother and small-business owner Rebecca James has sold world rights to her first two young adult novels for major bucks, going from mom to millionaire overnight after her manuscript was pulled out of the slush pile by a U.K. agent.

The rights to Beautiful Malice and its sequel sold for $600,000 in the U.S. alone, according to the Wall Street Journal, who REBECCA JAMES calls James the next J.K. Rowling (because of her success true crime story, not the subject matter of her books, Though she made her name with the which are described as “sexy, psychologihistorical Slammerkin, Irish-Canadian novelist Emma Donoghue is also known for her contemporary fiction.

After last year’s historical novel, The INTRODUCING Sealed Letter, Donoghue has plans to publish a ripped-from-the-headlines Hearth & home story with Little, Brown. As she describes it on her site, Room is a “dark Joanna This month marks the contemporary novel in the voice of a Brichetto premiere of our new five-year-old boy,” who happens to Lifestyles column. This have been held captive in a garden shed (with his mother) most of his periodic feature will highlight the life. Shades of Jaycee Dugard, but latest and greatest books on garDonoghue tells us it was Austria’s dening, crafts, style and more— Fritzl case, which broke in April 2008, that inspired the story. reviewed with panache by longtime BookPage contributor Joanna son of king Brichetto. Check it out on page 8!  While the praise continues for Stephen King’s Under the Dome, buzz is

building for the latest project from his son, who writes as Joe Hill. Hill’s first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, was an übercreepy tale of a haunted rock star that demonstrated that a talent for tapping into the dark side of human nature just might be genetic.

In February, Morrow will publish Hill’s second novel, Horns, a book the author describes as “another heart-warmer.” It’s already joe hill been optioned for film by Mandalay Entertainment. The premise: a man wakes up after a wild night to find horns growing out of his head—and like Pinocchio’s nose, they keep growing every day. Turns out his girlfriend’s murder might have something to do with his strange condition.

National bestselling author

3

HISTORICAL FICTION

Rediscovering the past Review by Jessica Inman Girl with a Pearl Earring made Tracy Chevalier a household name in the historical fiction world. And now, with the dazzling Remarkable Creatures, Chevalier gives us another intriguing celebration of women and friendship.

Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster, has just moved to Lyme Regis, a town on the southern coast of England, with her sisters. She falls in love with scouring the beaches for fossils, and meets a young girl and fellow fossil-hunter, Mary Anning. As Mary grows up and the two follow their shared passion, they find themselves making discoveries that cause a stir in the scientific community and hold implications for science and religion that they could never have foreseen.

The novel weaves together many fascinating elements, not the least of which are the fossils themselves. Chevalier captures their beauty and mystery perfectly and allows readers to feel her subjects’ obsession with them. As Mary and Elizabeth diligently and excitedly uncover these messages from another era, the reader sees how little was initially known about fossils and how they affected the way we view the world.

Of course, the fossils are not the only stars of the nov- Remarkable el—Mary and Elizabeth, based on real historical figures, Creatures will fascinate readers as well. At age 11, the real-life Mary By Tracy Chevalier Anning discovered the first ichthyosaurus skeleton ever Dutton found. Despite little education and even smaller means, $26.95, 320 pages she somehow managed to engage middle-class men of sci- ISBN 9780525951452 ence in her pursuit of fossils and helped pave the way for Also available on audio Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Less is known about the real Elizabeth Philpot, only that she was an avid collector of fossil fish—one species is even named after her—and, given their differences in age and class, a somewhat unlikely friend of Mary’s. But Chevalier brings her to life. Both women will enthrall readers with their aspirations, fears and obstacles and, above all, their admirable determination.

The story unfolds gracefully and will keep you eagerly turning pages until the novel’s close. There’s humor, romance and a down-to-earth kind of suspense. But most of all, there are the believable and well-crafted personal triumphs and tragedies of two women who defied convention and changed their corner of the world. Indeed, Mary and Elizabeth are remarkable creatures. o Jessica Inman writes and edits in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

WOMEN’S FICTION

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Salvation in Savannah

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Review by Trisha Ping At the beginning of Beth Hoffman’s charming debut novel, young CeeCee Honeycutt has serious problems. Virtually abandoned by her salesman father, the young girl is left with her mentally ill mother, who lives mostly in her beauty pageant-winning past. Scorned by her classmates, who know about her awkward family situation, CeeCee finds solace in books and a kindly elderly neighbor, until her mother’s death changes everything.

Luckily, that’s when her whirlwind of a great-aunt swoops in. Eccentric, warm-hearted Tootie totes CeeCee to Savannah, Georgia, in her sleek automobile, and she is just the first of many remarkable women CeeCee will meet in her new hometown. Together they give the 12-year-old a taste of stability for the first time in her life, helping her to understand, and eventually forgive, her mother, her father and herself.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is a gem of a story, lovingly told. The 1960s Southern setting and coming-of-age angle may remind readers of favorites like The Secret Life of Saving CeeCee Bees—not surprising, since it was bought by the same edi- Honeycutt tor—but the episodic narrative style and bookish heroine By Beth Hoffman will also bring to mind classics like Anne of Green Gables. Pamela Dorman/Viking In fact, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt could easily be a cross- $25.95, 320 pages over hit with teens. Readers who savor books with memo- ISBN 9780670021390 rable characters and Southern settings will consider this a Also available on audio novel to treasure. o WEB EXCLUSIVE: Visit BookPage.com for an interview with Beth Hoffman

THE AUTHOR ENABLERS An early start on a writing career Dear Author Enablers, I am a 15-year-old freshman and an aspiring writer beginning to work on my first book. I’ve written a short story and worked on my school’s yearbook last year. I even talked about being a teen writer! But I have no idea where to start!

I want to get my short story published, and I would be elated if I ever got a literary agent! I know I am young but I want to be prepared. Where should I start?

Hannah Fraser San Jose, California The best possible thing you can do to prepare for a career as a writer is to concentrate on developing your craft.

Take every creative writing class you can fit into your schedule, but don’t neglect

BY SAM BARRY & your other studies or passions—you’ll need those for material. It’s also helpful KATHI KAMEN GOLDMARK to spend some time working with others.

Your yearbook experience, your school’s literary journal (start one if there isn’t one already) and other collective pursuits will help you learn how to work with editors and agents later on.

Remember that writing is a craft and a discipline. Make time to write every day— blogging and journal-writing count—but if you miss a day or two, don’t beat yourself up about it. Just get back onto a regular writing schedule as soon as you can.

Dear Author Enablers, I have taken writing workshops and attended a few conferences and they always talk about “sense of place” being important in fiction writing, but no one ever says exactly what that is or how you get it. For example, I am writing a story set in a small town a few hours away from my home. How do I avoid mistakes that will make me seem ignorant to readers?

Emily Johnson Stillwater, Oklahoma Congratulations on knowing exactly where your story is set; that’s the first step to a vivid sense of place in fiction writing. You don’t need to go overboard—we don’t think we’re the only ones who skip over six-page descriptions of sunsets, bus depots, intergalactic space stations or conveyor belts—but you do need to get your facts right. One writer who did this superbly was the late Dominick Dunne; you might want to pick up one of his novels to experience a master providing just enough information to make those who have been there smile and nod their heads, while giving other readers the lay of the land.

It’s very important to understand physical and geographical details. In other words, make sure you know if an important bridge is north or south of town, and where it leads, and don’t have your character murdered on a midnight train if the last locomotive really pulls out at 5 p.m. Maps and timetables are great, but driving around the area is better.

I [Kathi, shoving Sam away from the keyboard for a moment] have a top-secret trick I used when writing my first novel, set in a small town a few hours from my home. I planned writing retreats there as often as I could, renting a motel room in the middle of the two-block main drag. I’d hit town and immediately schedule an appointment for “the works” at the nearest beauty salon. A wash and set, manipedicure and facial aren’t expensive in most small towns, but they offer a ringside seat for hours, providing a chance to eavesdrop on all the local gossip. It’s more fun (and far more informative if you’re writing contemporary fiction) than online research; you’ll get a sense of what is immediate and important to folks as well as speech patterns, accent and dialogue; and you’ll end up looking swell as a bonus.

Sam suggests that guys can do this too, at a barbershop, sports bar or coffee shop— which is where he is going now, to protest losing access to the computer.

If you can’t get there in person, we recommend subscribing to the local newspaper and/or cultivating a relationship with someone who lives in the town you’re writing about. Become friends or offer to trade a service, and send excerpts for fact-checking. (It doesn’t have to be the whole manuscript; you can copy/paste appropriate bits into emails.) While it’s crucial to get your facts straight, it doesn’t take pages of description to convince your readers you know whereof you speak—and getting there can be at least half the fun. o With more than 25 years of experience, Kathi Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry have the inside scoop on writing and publishing; their new book on the subject is scheduled for release later this year. Aspiring authors can email questions (along with their name and hometown) to authorenabler@aol.com or visit the Author Enablers blog at BookPage.com.

INTRIGUING NEW NOVELS Book 2 in the Defiance Texas Trilogy

by Mary E. DeMuth

A Slow Burn “Beautifully and sensitively written, her characters are realistic and well-developed.

Mary DeMuth has a true gift for showing how God’s light can penetrate even the darkest of situations.” – Chuck Colson Emory Chance needs to find who killed her daughter Daisy and unravel the mystery behind a sickening premonition—a man with a snake tattoo. The second book in the Defiance Texas Trilogy, A Slow Burn, is a suspenseful story about courageous love, the power of forgiveness, and the bonds that never break.

Available Now!

Book 3 in the Russian Trilogy

by Noel Hynd

Countdown in Cairo “Ingenious…Suspense fiction that stands out!”

– The New York Times Book Review Alexandra LaDuca is smart, tough, and cool under fire.

But when she travels to Cairo to investigate a former mentor who was believed to be dead, Alex is caught in a bizarre game of double cross, and her life is more perilously on the line than ever.

Available Now!

MaryDeMuth.com NoelHynd.com

FICTION

Making a change in midlife Review by Deborah Donovan Anne Tyler is known and loved for her character studies—delicate and perceptive probings into imperfect, achingly familiar lives. Noah’s Compass, her 18th novel, is the latest in a long line of these profiles of a character exploring, within the boundaries of family obligations, the possibilities of stepping outside an otherwise uneventful existence.

When Liam Pennywell is nearly 61, he loses his job teaching fifth grade at St. Dyfrig, a “second-rate” boys’ school in Baltimore. He’s been downsized, not fired, he’s quick to point out to inquisitive family members, and he never really liked being a teacher anyway—“those interminable after-school meetings and the reams of niggling paperwork.” Liam’s degree and lifelong interest was in philosophy, but “things seemed to have taken a downward turn a long, long time ago.”

Within the week, Liam moves to a one-bedroom apartment near the Baltimore Beltway and begins his own systematic downsizing, tossing out magazines, never-used dissertation note cards and furniture until he can fit all of his possessions into a 14-foot U-Haul truck. The first night in his sparse new home Liam is attacked by an intruder—an event he can’t remember when he wakes up the next day in the hospital, bandaged and bruised.

Noah’s Compass And so unfolds the next stage in Liam’s quiet life, in which he reopens himself to the possibility of love, while finally By Anne Tyler accepting the fact that his relationships with his father and Knopf 288 pages daughters are fixed, whatever their flaws may be. Tyler’s $25.95, ISBN 9780307272409 acutely perceptive observations of family interactions are Also available on audio dead on, like when Liam realizes that he and his father have virtually nothing to say to one another. “Why,” she writes, “did Liam have to learn this all over again on every visit?” She gradually paints her portrait of this ordinary, uncomplicated man, spending Christmas alone, but with “an okay place to live, a good enough job. A book to read. A chicken in the oven . . . solvent, if not rich, and healthy.” Like Noah without a compass, bobbing up and down with nowhere to go, Liam leaves us wondering about our own later years, and what will bring us peace, or regrets. o Deborah Donovan writes from La Veta, Colorado.

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Well Read Lifestyles of the rich “Let me tell you about the very rich,” Fitzgerald wrote. “They are different from you and me.” This maxim, whether or not it is true, has been the guiding principle behind everything from Edith Wharton’s society novels to much of Aaron Spelling’s television opus, and it is also at the heart of Jonathan Dee’s new novel, The Privileges. Adam and Cynthia Morey, the self-made couple whose story Dee tells from their wedding day onward, are filthy rich beyond most of our imaginings. They live in an insular world of their own careful construction, but for all their success, lack one essential possession: a moral compass.

Adam and Cynthia are perfectly matched. Attractive, charismatic, ambitious and smart, they have gravitated to each other with a Darwinian inevitability. As the novel opens at their elaborately staged—not to say excessive— wedding in Pittsburgh, we see them already closing ranks against their dysfunctional extended families. Settled on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Moreys have their

BY ROBERT children young—a daughter, April, and son, Jonas—a WEIBEZAHL fact that casts Cynthia in the reluctant role of stay-athome mother while Adam climbs the Wall Street ladder.

Discontent at Morgan Stanley, Adam takes a job at a private equity firm, an ideal fit for his talents. Soon, he is the favorite of the firm’s founding partner.

But the considerable remuneration and perks at Perini Capital—one year, he gets a $250,000 bonus—are not enough for Adam, who seizes an opportunity to indulge in insider trading on a grand scale. He grows fabulously wealthy, stashing millions in offshore accounts. The money affords Cynthia, who for all her intelligence never questions its source, the chance to move to larger and larger apartments and second homes. She indulges the children’s every whim, and by the time they are in high school Cynthia has become the “cool mom,” lording a misguided sense of righteousness over the older, more staid parents.

Jonathan Dee lifts the veil on the practices of the wealthy in his latest novel.

The Privileges is not your standard cautionary tale The Privileges about the evils of ill-gotten gains. Indeed, when it looks as if Adam might get caught and the Moreys’ world By Jonathan Dee might come crashing down, he and Cynthia rise from Random House 272 pages the ashes like the phoenix and set up a charitable foun- $25, ISBN 9781400068678 dation that allows them, particularly Cynthia, to bask in public adulation. Their children, now young adults, take two diverging paths. April becomes the vacuous party girl, convinced of her own superiority despite the lack of evidence to support that claim. Jonas, however, forges into new territory, studying art history at the University of Chicago and trying to distance himself from his family wealth as much as possible. Searching for “authenticity,” he is enthralled by “outsider art,” but takes his obsession too far, placing himself at grave risk.

We are told again and again in The Privileges that Cynthia and Adam have remained deliriously in love over the years and that they have created their family from whole cloth as some grand ideal. Yet, with the possible exception of Jonas, they all seem incredibly lonely, locked in their little boxes of condescension.

Neither Adam nor Cynthia has any true, lasting friendships, and they long ago discarded their parents and siblings. Their lives have been about money and money alone, and these very smart and sophisticated people remain clueless about the cause of their discontent. Sadly, even the moderately socially conscious Jonas seems anxious to return to the sheltered fold when, at novel’s end, his single venture into the real world turns ugly.

Jonathan Dee’s achievement in The Privileges is the way he adeptly penetrates the mindset of these relentlessly narcissistic characters, giving us insight into what drives them in their need to acquire and dominate. It’s hard to imagine anyone liking, or even sympathizing with, Adam and Cynthia, and yet Dee’s discerning portrayal of their inner lives keeps the pages turning. As a chronicler of this world of wealth and advantage, Dee is a dispassionate observer, neither condemning nor exalting the Moreys. This is both the novel’s strength and its weakness: we ought to hate these people, but somehow we do not. o

INTERVIEW

Making peace with marriage

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

works her magic again.

Gilbert explores the history of a remarkable institution

By Rebecca Bain uring the three years since the publication of Elizabeth she believes, have nothing to do with true commitment.

Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love, more than six milIt’s important that “we know the difference between the desire lion readers around the world have found resonance to get married and the desire to have a really great party,” she says in her chronicle of personal discovery. This intensely driven with a laugh. “Especially when we are young, those two things writer learned to live in the moment in Italy (Eat), explored her can blur and you spend a great deal more time planning the party spiritual self in India (Pray) and found her soul mate in Felipe, than you do planning the marriage.” a Brazilian living in Bali (Love). The two planned to spend the She contrasts this with a couple she knew growing up, the rest of their lives together, but previous Websters, who married because he, as bad marriages made them determined a farmer, needed a wife and she, as a to skip actual matrimony. Fate is capriwoman, needed a provider. Love, pascious, however, and it intervened in sionate or otherwise, had nothing to do 2006; because Felipe’s visits to the U.S. with the decision. For years they worked had been too frequent, he was banned their farm, raised their family, shared from entering the country. If Felipe good times and bad. When her health was ever to return, it could only be declined, Mr. Webster took over care of as Gilbert’s husband. This unexpected his wife, bathing her, feeding her, seeing turn of events was the impetus for to her needs until her death—not the Gilbert’s new memoir, Committed. actions of a person devoid of love for “I was working on a novel about his spouse. the Amazons,” says Gilbert, who was “We, having elevated the idea of roshocked by the sudden urgency of mance and infatuation to such a high marriage. “I was well into its research state, feel like the happiest day of your and didn’t have any intention of writlife should be the day you get married. ing another memoir. But when this That in itself should be the pinnacle. came up, my spirits were so viral. I did What the Websters probably knew, elizabeth Gilbert not want to enter this union feeling even to such an extent that they cerabout [marriage] the way I felt about tainly never defined it, never even had it. I loved this guy way too much to ensay it, because they just knew it, was “I left with a new respect for to ter into something so serious with such that where a marriage begins is not a profound sense of dread. Really, the nearly as important as where it ends marriage, simply for no most efficient way that I know to work up. You can begin from a place of great through something is to write about it. pragmatism and then over the years And then, pretty quickly, as soon as the grow into a very deep, wordless affecother reason than for its idea came to me, I realized this is a very tion and loyalty, which I found very interesting topic.” to remember.” almost Darwinian survival.” moving Which is why Committed is not Thinking about the Websters, Gilbert only a memoir, it’s also a history of adds, “Felipe has this very specific word marriage through the ages and a social called bate pape that means ‘chit chat.’ commentary on the institution. Gilbert It’s his favorite word for what the whole even harks back to Plato’s Symposium and its discussion of soul purpose of intimacy is. He said when he was a kid, his favorite mates: “Once upon a time . . . we humans did not look the way we memories of childhood were lying in bed, listening to his parents look today. Instead, we each had two heads and four legs and four chit chat, make bate pape. And that’s where their intimacy was arms—a perfect melding, in other words, of two people joined based. It wasn’t necessarily in high-flung sexual passion, although together, seamlessly united into one being. . . . Since we each had it might have been at one time. It was just about having someone the perfect partner sewn into the very fabric of our being, we to sit with at the breakfast table and have a cup of coffee with were all happy.” and talk about nothing and everything. And that’s a stubborn, But in our happiness we neglected the gods, so Zeus punished consistent human need.” mankind by tearing us apart, forcing us to spend the rest of our Gilbert’s venture into the historical and social implications lives looking for the vanished half, our other soul. “This is the of marriage in Committed, especially as it pertains to women, singular fantasy of human intimacy: that one plus one will someranges far and wide, from the 11th century, when ideas about how, someday, equal one,” Gilbert writes. marriage were more liberal than today, to modern Europe, where Speaking from the home she and Felipe now share in Frenchthere is far less emphasis on matrimony than in America. It all town, New Jersey (dishes clattering in the sink and her dog barkmakes for interesting and informative reading. ing occasionally), Gilbert elaborates on Plato’s concept.

Readers who are hoping for more memoir, less research, “It is the most beautifully put metaphor. That along with might be disappointed in this new book. But it accomplishes Schopenhauer’s porcupine tells you pretty much all you need what Gilbert set out to do—to bring peace to her decision to to know about intimacy. You just put those two things together, marry Felipe. the urge to merge combined with the reality of how prickly it “I certainly went in with a great deal of aversion and hostility almost always is, negotiating your to this institution and I left with a new respect for marriage, simspace versus somebody else’s space.” ply for no other reason than for its almost Darwinian survival— Gilbert muses on the reasons people the fact that this thing endures. Anything that lasts that long, inmarry, many of which in this country, cluding cockroaches and crocodiles, you have to admire. There’s something kind of remarkable about that. What could be called a kind of fusty, decrepit old institution continues to reinvent itself and re-evolve with every century, every generation,” Gilbert says.

Committed “So instead of feeling like I’m being stamped into this form

By Elizabeth Gilbert that doesn’t suit me, I can feel like I’m part of a very long story Viking that’s always being rewritten. And now I have the rewriting of $26.95, 304 pages that tale.” o ISBN 9780670021659 Rebecca Bain is a freelance writer and editor in Nashville.

Also available on audio

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$7.99 978-006-135151-8

© SHEA HEMBREY

Two enemies are working without a script in a town where the spotlight shines bright . . . and where the strongest emotions can wear startling disguises. www.avonbooks.com See the trailer at www.susanelizabethphillips.com

BESTSELLER WATCH Release dates for some of the guaranteed blockbusters hitting shelves in January:

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The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

By Lauren Willig Dutton, $25.95, ISBN 9780525951506

The sixth book in Willig’s Pink Carnation series takes our heroine, Miss Penelope Deveraux, to exotic India.

19

Kisser

By Stuart Woods The object of Stone Barrington’s affection has a dark and mysterious past in Woods’ new thriller.

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The Brightest Star in the Sky

By Marian Keyes Viking, $26.95, ISBN 9780670021406

Seven neighbors’ lives will be drastically changed after a visit from a sassy spirit in the bestselling Irish author’s latest romp.

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Blood Ties

By Kay Hooper Bantam, $26, ISBN 9780553804867

Led by Noah Bishop, the Special Crimes Unit tracks a serial killer to a small Tennessee town in Hooper’s pulse-pounding thriller.

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Putnam, $25.95, ISBN 9780399156113

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RELATIONSHIPS

Giving it all you’ve got Review by Linda Stankard In her previous memoir, the award-winning Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup established herself as a warm, witty and deeply moving writer, revealing how the devastating loss of her husband led her to open her heart in new directions. Following his unfulfilled dream, she threw herself into ministerial training and became a member of the clergy—and a living example of the advice she gives in her new book: “If your heart breaks, let it break open. Love more.”

Fans of her richly enlightening first-person narrative will surely love Marriage and Other Acts of Charity, which continues the story of her life as the backdrop for her observations and meditations as a wife, mother and woman of the cloth. And what a story it is! Braestrup’s memoir reads like a work of fiction: at 17 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, only to find out after two emotionally torturous years that she didn’t have the disease; in fact, she wasn’t sick at all. And the tales of her ministry with the men who work outdoors in the Maine Warden Service, often in grim circumstances—such as searching for the bodies of a pilot and his 14-year-old daughter—are full of Marriage and understated pathos.

Other Acts of As Braestrup navigates the uncharted waters of a later- Charity in-life romance and a new marriage, she is also witness to the heartbreak and turmoil that love brings to the frag- By Kate Braestrup ile human heart, especially when so many “happily-ever- Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown 224 pages, afters” end prematurely in divorce. And, as chaplain, she $24.99, ISBN 9780316031912 must also comfort those who are suffering the anguish of Also available on audio irrevocable loss—when death takes a loved one. “Life is short,” she recognizes, “and pain engraves its memories in your flesh.” Still, she believes that “every soul is called to love and serve,” and her advice remains straightforward and simple—love more. “Start with your siblings, or your spouse, or your parents, but don’t stop there. Love whoever needs what you have; love the ones who have been placed in your path.” In Marriage and Other Acts of Charity, with grace and style, Braestrup leads the way. o Linda Stankard is a Realtor in Rockland County, New York.

MEMOIR

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

A poet’s tale of sickness and strength

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Review by Eliza McGraw “Happy” earned his nickname. He was a fun-loving baseball player with a pretty girlfriend and hilarious buddies, the catcher on the Macalester College team who liked to joke with his worried mom. As Alex Lemon writes in this by turns harrowing and hopeful memoir, “I’ve always been an all-star.”

Written in the present tense, Happy takes readers rushing along as its narrator realizes that his headaches and vision problems are not just the classic signs of over-indulgence in college partying, but an actual medical condition. Alex goes from being another student enjoying the rare spring sunshine to another patient in the hospital undergoing tests from MRIs to neurological exams. When told that he has undergone a stroke, Lemon and his family are predictably unbelieving at first, but then begin the journey to diagnosing and controlling his multiple health crises. His divorced parents and step-parents all weigh in and attempt to find their own ways to offer support, which range from an enforced rest in North Carolina to a prolonged visit from his mother.

A road trip, a priest and Hurricane Floyd all make appearances in this headlong and compelling memoir, along with alcohol and drug abuse. Yet even with its fascinating story of a young man battling outsized enemies, it is Happy’s language Happy that truly sets it apart. Lemon is a poet, and every paragraph By Alex Lemon shows it, from a description of walls that “smell like melting Scribner gumballs and kerosene” to an unforgettable image of a son’s $25, 304 pages beloved mother: “Ma turns to me and smiles and my blood ISBN 9781416550235 gathers and swells.”

Lemon shies from nothing, which can make for grueling (and graphic) reading, especially given the gravity of his subject matter. But he never uses his difficult topic for shock value; instead, thanks to his considerable poetic gifts, it becomes an avenue for exploring the human experience at its most dire. o Eliza McGraw is a writer living in Washington, D.C.

LIFESTYLES Good manners and common sense Our new Lifestyles column begins with three smart writers. Whether advising readers on how to save money, how to grow memories with grandkids or how to plan a sane wedding, all aim to increase quality of life—not a bad way to start a year.

Think big, save big Elisabeth Leamy, consumer correspondent for “Good Morning America,” advises a radical shift in how we think about saving money. To save in a big way, we have to look beyond traditional strategies that aim small. Save BIG: Cut Your Top 5 Costs and Save Thousands! (Wiley, $24.95, 352 pages, ISBN 9780470554210) identifies where we spend the most to find out where we can save the most: housing, cars, credit, groceries and healthcare.

BY JOANNA Each tip promises a minimum BRICHETTO savings of $1,000. Advice is practical, clearly explained and, best of all, does not require daily maintenance or routine deprivation. Keep the morning latte, just as long as you buy the right house, negotiate the mortgage, pay it down early and keep an eye on property taxes. These daunting tasks are laid out in commonsense, bottom-line style, accessible even to newbies. Leamy also explains why buying a new car is never, ever a sound investment, how to shrink credit card debt and how to interpret and improve credit reports. Even if readers choose only one or two tips from the hundreds offered, Save BIG should live up to its tantalizing title—and you can read it over your latte.

Making memories When Sharon Lovejoy says her gardening books are for children of all ages, she means all ages, including grandparents. Her magical activities, projects and ideas prove it is never too late to have a happy childhood. The newest bag of tricks, Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars (Workman, $14.95, 272 pages, ISBN 9780761150435), is ostensibly written for grandmothers, but parents and teachers can employ the same ideas as well. What grownup or child would not succumb to the simple joys of leaf-rubbings, bird calls, faerie furniture, mud pies and firefly lanterns? City-dwellers are included too: a container garden and nearby park can supply enough “natural world” to host outside activities. Indoors, readers discover how easy and fun it can be to grow plants from kitchen garbage, to “coax life from the most unlikely scraps.” Rainy days become the perfect excuse to stay inside and make musical instruments, toys, paper, games, puppets, artwork galore and a nifty worm motel. Detailed supply lists and instructions make every project a possibility, and the author’s charming watercolor illustrations make every page a pleasure.

Miss Manners vs. Bridezilla Ten years ago, the wedding of Miss Manners’ son prompted a book in which the etiquette expert defended good sense and propriety against a wedding industry gone berserk. This might have been the last word in wedding etiquette, but the industry has now morphed into a far larger menace (the average American wedding costs $30,000). Plus, the kinds of questions lately posed by baffled brides, parents, attendants and guests indicated an urgent need for fresh instruction by a supreme authority. Thus, when Miss Manners’ daughter recently married, the time seemed right for the last last word. Miss Manners’ Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding (Norton, $24.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9780393069143) is an antidote to the overblown, exploitative and utterly out-of-control wedding. Miss Manners and daughter Jacobina offer a calm compromise between throwing a garish extravaganza in which guests are asked to contribute to the honeymoon by cash, check or PayPal (this really happens) and simply eloping. Questions about budget, venues, “destination weddings,” gifts, showers, same-sex ceremonies and the ever-problematic bridesmaid dress are answered in typical Miss Manners style: dry, direct and didactically sound. With this gem as a guide, it is possible to plan a wedding that does not beggar the parents, spoil the bride, alienate the groom or abuse the guests. In other words, instead of a nightmare, you get a real dream wedding. o Joanna Brichetto lives in Nashville, where her lifestyle includes the pleasures of reading and writing about new books.

The one resource no parent-to-be should be without Covering each day of pregnancy in detail, as well as labor, birth, and life with a new baby, Pregnancy Day by Day is an unparalleled and comprehensive guide to pregnancy and birth, written by a team of professionals who spend their lives caring for women during this extraordinary time.

The BookPage DK Pregnancy Day by Day Sweepstakes Enter for a Chance to Win 1. One (1) Grand Prize winner will receive a $300 Babies”R”Us gift card and a DK Parenting Library (Total Approximate Retail Value (“ARV”) = $210.00).

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Go to www.bookpage.com for complete details and Official Rules.

INTERNATIONAL FICTION

Down, but not out, in Dublin

MEET

Robert Crais

Review by Harvey Freedenberg When 26-year-old Denny Cullen’s mother dies suddenly, he returns from Wales to his Dublin home to help bury her and mourn her loss. That trip launches first-time novelist Trevor Byrne’s energetic and winning tale.

To say that Denny is down on his luck is an understatement. He’s living in the family home with his lesbian sister and her lover, but his brother, who owns the house, is about to evict them. Unemployed and forced to live on the dole, he’s barely able to scrape together 200 euros to buy a car from another brother who’s been using it as a chicken coop. Denny hangs out with mates like Maggit, who steals a PlayStation for his son’s sixth birthday present, and Pajo, who’s abandoned Catholicism to explore Buddhist practice and conducts a hilarious séance that’s interrupted by the voice of Simon Cowell blaring from the television in another room.

Despite their scruffy existence, there’s a sense in which Denny and his friends feel like searchers, not slackers. Most are teetering on a precipice of self-destruction, and despite their more than occasional stumbles, Byrne makes us feel they’re doing their best to resist that fatal pull. Like a skilled Irish bard (and to leaven the grimness of his characters’ Ghosts & impoverished circumstances), Byrne summons up gypsies, Lightning ghosts and banshees who add mystery and a whiff of tran- By Trevor Byrne scendence to his raucous, heartfelt story.

Doubleday For readers offended by profanity and drug use, fair $24.95, 336 pages warning that both are plentiful in this novel. Yet to soften ISBN 9780385531276 those elements would have been to deal falsely with the tribe of puzzling and sometimes infuriating characters who swirl in a giddy dance through Denny’s days. Byrne admirably captures their ethos and the language they use to express it, and if their actions aren’t always praiseworthy, there’s a truth in the telling that makes Ghosts & Lightning both engaging and memorable. For all their flaws, it’s likely you’ll find yourself rooting for Denny and his pals to find their footing, despairing all the while that they’ll do so anytime soon. o Harvey Freedenberg writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

FICTION

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

No candy-coated tell-all

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Review by Eliza Borné When Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky takes a job at Zip’s Candy Factory, she sets in motion the events that will dominate the rest of her life: her leadership in a dysfunctional family business; her defense of accidental chocolate-provoked racism; her husband’s liaisons in Madagascar. Who ever knew that candy could cause so much drama?

True Confections is told in the form of an affidavit, and there is no shortage of scandal in this darkly funny novel.

When we meet Alice, the affidavit’s author, she is deep in the middle of a family feud. Her father-in-law, the CEO of Zip’s Candies, has left her a considerable share in the business, and the family isn’t happy about it. To defend her stake in Zip’s, Alice writes a history of the company, emphasizing her devotion to its success.

Alice’s account is filled with absurdities. Zip’s founder, Hungarian immigrant Eli Czaplinsky, calls his candies “Little Sammies,” “Tigermelts” and “Mumbo Jumbos”—all references to characters from Little Black Sambo, the racially charged children’s book. After Alice joins the company, she helps create the ill-fated “Bereavemint” line, which is marketed to funeral homes. Later, an employee spots the Virgin Mary in a chocolate sculpture created from drips off of a True Confections production nozzle, and Zip’s makes local headlines. If these

By Katharine Weber scenes sound bizarre . . . well, they are. They’re also compulAreheart Books sively readable, punctuated by Alice’s wry commentary and Shaye $22, 288 pages behind-the-scenes details of the candy industry.

ISBN 9780307395863 In past novels, Katharine Weber’s narrators have communicated through a letter and a diary; in True Confections, Alice speaks through a first-person legal document. It’s an unusual medium, but one that succeeds—we like and trust Alice, our guide, but we suspect that her tale is a little tall. By the end of the novel, it doesn’t really matter whether Alice is telling the truth; her storytelling ability trumps our disbelief. Plus, “Candy makes people happy,” as her father-in-law would often say. It turns out that books about candy do, too. o WEB EXCLUSIVE: Visit BookPage.com for an interview with Katharine Weber

A Louisiana native who grew up in a blue-collar family of oil refinery workers and police officers, Robert Crais moved to Hollywood in the 1970s and achieved success as a screenwriter before becoming a novelist.

His 16th novel, The First Rule (Putnam, $26.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9780399156137), will be published on January 12. Crais and his wife live in Los Angeles.

WHODUNIT? Hunting for clues

Mystery of the month

Prolific author John Lescroart is best known for his series featuring criminal defense attorney Dismas Hardy. Once a clever supporting character in the Hardy novels, P.I. Wyatt Hunt has at last come into his own in Treasure Hunt (Dutton, $26.95, 368 pages, ISBN 9780525951445). If history is any indication, though, Hunt will not be the solo star player for long, as his protégé Mickey Dade seems well-poised to take his turn in the limelight. Case in point: credit Dade with the idea for dragging The Hunt Club, Wyatt Hunt’s investigative firm, back into the land of the working after a protracted dry spell. Following the murder of prominent San Francisco activist Dominic Como, Dade persuades his boss to serve as the liaison between the police and the scores of applicants for

BY BRUCE TIERNEY the reward offered by Como’s heirs and business associates.

What first seems like an administrative gig quickly turns into something much deadlier, and Mickey Dade and his comely client/sweetheart are forced to take it on the lam from both the as-yet-unidentified murderer and the law.

Hunt, Dade and company sift through clues, together in purpose even if at times their methodologies seem distinctly at cross purposes. Not to worry, though: the denouement offers up a classic closed-room debriefing scenario in which all the suspects (and of course all the good guys too) are gathered together for a final showdown, but with a last-minute twist or two guaranteed to keep readers guessing.

I pity any Mystery of the Month contender who has to go up against John Burdett; it is almost as if they should consider releasing their books in a different month. That’s not really the case, of course, but Burdett has both the chops and the history to be a strong contender every time he turns out a new book, and The Godfather of Kathmandu (Knopf, $25.95, 320 pages, ISBN 9780307263193) is no exception. Thai policeman Sonchai Jitpleecheep is back—this time in a tale of murder, police corruption and wholesale drug transport, with all of South Asia as the backdrop. It seems that Frank Charles, a onetime wunderkind of Hollywood, has suffered a particularly ignominious death: someone has disemboweled him, sawed off the top of his skull, and made a light lunch of his frontal lobes. Even by the creatively macabre Thai murder standards related

by Jitpleecheep in his earlier adventures, this falls well beyond the pale. Charles’ passport contains an inordinate number of visas for Nepal, which raises eyebrows at police headquarters, since much of the drug trade is funneled through Kathmandu en route to Southeast Asia and then the West. This is a fact not lost on corrupt Colonel Vikorn, Jitpleecheep’s boss, who has made himself a millionaire many times over thanks to the insatiable Western appetite for opiates of every stripe. Three new characters introduce an exotic spiciness to the mix: Norbu Tietsin, an exiled Tibetan lama with a couple of very non-lamalike habits; “Mad” Doctor Moi, an aristocratic Thai woman with a troika of departed husbands, all of whom met with questionable fates; and Tara, a Tantric nun schooled in the art of, um, transcendent earthly delights, which she is only too eager to demonstrate to Comrade Jitpleecheep. There is way too much going on to give you even a broad-strokes idea in 300 words, so let me just say: pick up The Godfather of Kathmandu the day it hits the stands, and block out several hours to read it in one sitting. Once you start, you won’t get anything else done until you finish it. o —BRUCE TIERNEY

A grisly snow scene One of my favorite parts of being a reviewer is the opportunity to introduce readers to a major new talent. This month, I have the pleasure of reviewing not one, but two fine debut novels—both from Europe, as it happens. The first, James Thompson’s Snow Angels (Putnam, $24.95, 272 pages, ISBN 9780399156175), takes place in rural Finland in the depths of the Arctic winter. Thompson’s protagonist, police inspector Kari Vaara, is in some ways the author’s doppelgänger: Vaara, a Finn, is married to an American woman; Thompson, an American, is married to a Finnish woman. Snow Angels opens with a shocking murder: Sufia Elmi was nothing if not a walking contradiction—by some accounts a virginal starlet, by others a drug-abusing sexual deviate. Now she lies dead, and in an exceptionally grisly manner, her death-throes painting an obscene crimson snow angel in a remote Finnish field. Sufia’s father, a Somali refugee who has prospered in Scandinavia, demands Koranic justice (an eye for an eye, a life for a life), and he holds Vaara personally responsible for meting out said punishment. There is one bright note, though: the primary suspect is none other than the shady character responsible for the breakup of Vaara’s first marriage, an irony lost on nobody involved. If you like Scandinavian mysteries (Henning Mankell, Arnaldur Indridason, et al.) and the first-person narratives of American detective fiction, Snow Angels should be right up your alley. Thompson is hard at work on the sequel, and I will be among the first in line to read it.

Our second debut, Belinda Bauer’s Blacklands (Simon & Schuster, $23, 240 pages, ISBN 9781439149447), has generated more pre-release industry-insider buzz than any mystery in recent memory. Happily, it is well-deserved. Serious 12-year-old Steven Lamb never knew his uncle Billy, who disappeared before Steven was born. No trace of him has ever been found, although conventional wisdom has it that he was murdered by pedophile serial killer Arnold Avery, who is now serving time for six related murders, but who has never confessed to Billy’s killing. While other schoolboys his age are playing video games and trading sports cards, Steven is engaged in a secret mission: he wants to find his uncle’s grave site, somewhere in the broad reaches of England’s Exmoor. One afternoon Steven has a flash of inspiration, at once sublimely clever and exceedingly perilous: he will write an anonymous letter to Arnold Avery in prison, inquiring after the whereabouts of the body of one “W.P.”—William “Billy” Peters. A riddle-laden correspondence ensues, with each trying to keep the game going while still holding tight to their own secrets. But when Avery breaks out of prison, all bets are off, and Steven finds himself in more danger than any 12-year-old should ever have to face. Great pacing, strong characters and palpable tension: Blacklands has it all; this is a stunning debut from a promising new author. o

Four lives.

Two great loves.

Every expectation…

Shattered A tale of forbidden love and deadly secrets.

On sale December 29!

www.MIRABooks.com www.JoanJohnston.com

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

A dangerous pen pal

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author

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FICTION SPOTLIGHT

Winter fiction takes a magical turn FEATURE by Julie Hale At BookPage, we know there’s no better solution to beating the winter blues than escaping into the pages of a magical piece of fiction. So this month we’re spotlighting works by three visionary writers who take experimental approaches to storytelling. Employing elements of fairy tale and fantasy, these authors dispense with the principles of science, turn history on its head and redefine reality—and they make it all seem believable. So suspend your skepticism, dear reader, and get set for an adventure. A little old-fashioned enchantment is the perfect way to keep January’s chill at bay.

Now in Paperback!

Alice, out of wonderland Although it’s been a almost a century and a half since her first appearance in print, Alice Liddell, the adventuresome girl who provided Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) with the inspiration to write Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, remains a source of fascination for many a bibliophile. Melanie Benjamin uses her true story as a springboard in Alice I Have Been (Delacorte, $24, 368 pages, ISBN 9780385344135), her beguiling new novel. Fleshing out historical facts with fictional details to create a full-bodied portrait of Carroll’s heroine, Benjamin traces the arc of Alice’s life, portraying with authority her evolution from a high-strung youngster into a refined wife and mother.

In her 80s when the novel begins, Alice looks back on her past and serves as a lively, wry narrator. Among her memories are the days the Liddell family spent with Dodgson, the picnics and explorations they shared, and the eventual—and controversial—distance that developed between them. The novel passes effortlessly through various eras, moving from the 1930s to Victorian times and back again, and it’s during her mature years that Alice discloses her impatience with fame. The recognition brought to her as a literary character has proven burdensome, and in the end, she feels confined by the role that will ultimately immortalize her. This is an ingenious expansion of Alice’s story, convincingly conceived and meticulously crafted, a delightful bit of literary sleight of hand by Benjamin.

Adventures in time travel Blending fantasy, history and mystery, Matthew Flaming offers an intoxicating mix of genres in The Kingdom of Ohio (Amy Einhorn/Putnam, $24.95, 336 pages, ISBN 9780399155604), his bold and inventive debut. The novel’s protagonist, a silver miner from Idaho named Peter Force, arrives in New York in 1901 and takes a job excavating tunnels for the city’s incipient subways. Not long after his arrival in Manhattan, he meets the mysterious Cheri-Anne Toledo, who tells him about a forgotten place called the Kingdom of Ohio and insists that she’s the daughter of its monarch. In Ohio, Cheri-Anne claims, she collaborated with the engineer Nikola Tesla on an apparatus that has, in a cosmic accident, carried her into the future and deposited her in New York. Peter doesn’t believe her at first, but when he and Cheri-Anne get caught up in a scheme that’s linked to Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan, he realizes that she may indeed come from another realm—and possess knowledge that could change the course of history. Flaming examines big issues in this book—questions about the nature of reality and the ways in which technology has altered daily life—and his explorations give the narrative a rich thematic foundation. A spirited tale that channels the energy and verve of old New York, Flaming’s novel is fresh, artful and full of surprises.

Rural Wisconsin, 1907. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt stands alone on the train platform anxiously awaiting the arrival of a visitor. The woman who arrives is not the one he expects. This woman, this reliable wife, will decide whether Ralph Truitt lives or dies.

“A KILLER DEBUT NOVEL.” —USA Today

“A REAL PAGE-TURNER.” —Today show

“ENGROSSING AND ADDICTIVE.” JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

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A frosty fairy tale

—NPR’s Morning Edition

“MESMERIZING.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“INTOXICATING.” —The Washington Post

“A ROUSING HISTORICAL POTBOILER.” —The Boston Globe

Read the First Chapter at www.reliablewife.net

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Ali Shaw brings an uncommon world into being with his debut The Girl with Glass Feet (Holt, $24, 304 pages, ISBN 9780805091144). Set on a wintry archipelago called St. Hauda’s Land, a distant group of islands where albino beasts inhabit frost-encrusted forests and nature asserts itself in strange ways, the narrative focuses on delicate, melancholy Ida Maclaird. After visiting the archipelago, Ida finds that her body—feet first—is turning gradually into glass. Searching for a way to end this awful metamorphosis, she leaves her home on the mainland and returns to the islands, where she meets an introverted native named Midas Crook. Crook works in a florist shop and takes photographs, and he has a cold, hard exterior of his own. But after he meets Ida, he softens, and the quest to arrest her terrible transformation soon consumes him.

Ida’s salvation rests in the hands of the reclusive Henry Fuwa, who knows secrets about St. Hauda’s Land. As Midas and Ida search for Henry—and as Ida’s mutation continues—the two find themselves in a race against time.

Written in the tradition of magical realists like Haruki Murakami and Gabriel García Márquez, The Girl with Glass Feet is a singular, slippery narrative that defies easy categorization. Shaw writes finely honed prose and knows how to wring maximum suspense out of a tightly woven plot. His is an accomplished first novel—a hypnotic book with an atmosphere all its own. o

INTERVIEW

From Russia, with love

An emotionally rich portrait of a Soviet coming-of-age

© LAUREN PERLSTEIN

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Interview by Alden Mudge lena Gorokhova’s transformative moment as a writer English as a second language since 1981. “What it doesn’t have came in 2004 when she enrolled in Frank McCourt’s is the kind of schizophrenic slicing of your soul in half that we memoir class at the Southampton Writers Conference. had in the Soviet Union. There were things that I could say and For the previous 10 or 15 years she had occasionally writthat I could show to my family and friends. Then I would go outten—and published—fictionalized bits and pieces about her side, like everyone else, and I knew I couldn’t say or show that childhood and youth in Leningrad to people I went to school with or during the Brezhnev era. Writing worked with, and especially not was a pleasure, even a necessity, but to any officials. It was the postmore tangible concerns—her teachStalin era, so they were not going ing responsibilities, raising a child, to throw us into Siberia for a joke cooking dinner—kept her from tak[during Stalin’s rule, Gorokhova’s ing it seriously. uncle had disappeared in the Gulag Then came Frank McCourt, auafter telling a joke to a foreigner]. thor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning But we had to be careful, we had memoir Angela’s Ashes. “He was a to pretend everything was all right. brilliant storyteller, but also just as The essence was that the governbrilliant a teacher,” Gorokhova rement lied to us and we knew they members during a call to her home were lying. They knew we knew in Ridgewood, New Jersey, where they were lying. But they kept lying she lives with her second husband, anyway. And we kept pretending their daughter and her 95-year-old to believe them. It was this duality, mother, a figure who looms large in this divide, that ruled life there.”

Gorokhova’s enthralling memoir, A For much of the narrative, Mountain of Crumbs.

Gorokhova associates that duality McCourt’s classroom included 11 with her overprotective mother and Elena GoroKhova other students and two celebrities an equally overprotective motherwho were auditing the class—actors land. A somewhat more forgiving Alan Alda and Anne Bancroft. “The Gorokhova now says, “My mother synergy of these three enormously was born three years before the “We had to pretend everything talented people provided this incredRevolution. She went through ible, electric atmosphere. Magic hapfamine and through two wars. She pened every day in that classroom!” was a surgeon in World War II at was all right. The essence was Gorokhova says. “From that mothe front. Her first two husbands ment, from that seminar, A Moundidn’t last long and my father died that the government lied to us tain of Crumbs all came together.” when I was 10. She was very strong, One thing Gorokhova learned obviously, and very controlling. Of and we knew they were lying.” from McCourt was to focus on the course she loved us and was very “hot spots,” those defining moments protective of us but she didn’t show in life when something significant the warm side. She stifled. It occhanges. “He compared it to walking curred to me she was just like the on the beach. ‘You can just look at the surface of things,’ he said, country. What was the intention of the Soviet state? To have a just ‘or you can go with a metal detector and go for the gold that’s and equal society, to take care of the people. In the Soviet Union deep inside.’ ” no one starved. No one was out of work. We all got our miserable Gorokhova has clearly gone for the gold. The 20 episodes in wages for sitting at a desk for eight hours and doing crossword A Mountain of Crumbs are extraordinarily rich in sensory and puzzles. The money was little, the food was scarce, but we were all emotional detail and offer an engrossing portrait of a very lively, in the same situation. There was this control and smothering on intelligent girl coming of emotional and intellectual age in the one side and this protective quality on the other.” post-Stalinist Soviet Union. Beginning with Gorokhova’s mothGorokhova’s path away from the stifling system toward indeer’s brutal experiences after the Russian Revolution and in World pendence opened when a grade school friend played a recording War II as a doctor, the narrative follows Gorokhova through inof a basic English lesson. “It was so mesmerizing,” Gorokhova teractions with her friends and family members, her early educasays, “an English male voice speaking English. It was captivating.” tion—in school and in the Soviet system—her intellectual and Gorokhova begged her mother to pay for English lessons, and sexual awakenings and her growing disillusionment with the her mother finally agreed. Her knowledge of English afforded Communist government, until in 1980, at age 24, she meets and Gorokhova the opportunity to encounter Western visitors in marries a brilliant American physics student and leaves Russia for Leningrad and to catch glimpses of a different sort of life in Enggood. Along the way, the wryly ironic Gorokhova illuminates the lish-language books and movies. “It was putting these little bits ludicrous tensions that existed between public and private life in and pieces together that told me that all this about capitalism rotthe Soviet Union and tweaks the noses ting and crumbling and socialism succeeding and thriving was of authorities, including her mother. nonsense,” she says.

“The United States is a different “And when I came here, I started writing in English,” Gorokhocountry and has different tensions va continues. “I never tried to write anything in Russian when I and different kinds of stresses,” says lived in Russia. But when I came to this country, I felt the neGorokhova, a linguist who has taught cessity and I allowed myself to write—in English. It took me a few years to learn the English rhetoric. Then in 2004 I saw that the legendary Frank McCourt was teaching his memoir class. I thought, this is ridiculous. Who is going to accept me into Frank A Mountain of Crumbs McCourt’s class? But then I thought, why not? I submitted an apBy Elena Gorokhova plication, and I got accepted. I was stunned. I was stunned.”

Simon & Schuster And from this beginning, an American writer was born. o $26, 320 pages ISBN 9781439125670 Alden Mudge writes from Berkeley, California.

Beat the

13

BEHIND THE BOOK

A new Southern classic Debut author finds inspiration close to home

By Amy Greene n the way to my sister’s, there is an abandoned house. It sits on a rocky hill with teenage Johnny returning to his empty childhood home after six years in foster care. trees crowded close, overlooking a creek that parts a briar thicket. The windows It took a year to write the first draft of Bloodroot. In the process, I found the woman are broken and the front door is gone, the tin roof rusted and the chimney with wild blue eyes and named her Myra Lamb. I wrote about how she was raised by her stones tumbled down in a heap. I’m not sure when I first noticed the house, but now grandmother in that house on Bloodroot Mountain, a free spirit born with “the touch,” I look up there each time I pass. Sometimes cows are grazing in the shade of the yard. an inherited gift for communing with nature. I learned what made her a destructive force Sometimes there are cords of firewood stacked against its sooty clapin the lives of the other characters, her tortured relationship with a board. Once I saw a man riding a tractor on the hillside. I can underman named John Odom that affected all of them. I wanted to explore stand why he lets the house stand empty. There’s a sadness about it. whether a love like theirs was destined for a tragic end or if they could One evening three summers ago, I happened to be passing with my have resisted their dark passion, and whether or not a person’s blood camera in the car and stopped to take pictures. I stood in the weeds bedictates how they turn out. Getting to know Myra in that very first side the road as the sun was going down, the woods quiet and still bedraft, but also in the subsequent drafts I wrote over the next 18 months, side the rustling creek water. The abandoned house had never looked I realized that while my characters might be products of their upbringmore haunted. I remember the lonesomeness that came over me, and ing, they have a choice: they don’t have to let their fates be determined the sense of a story attached to the place. Whatever happened under by where they come from or who their parents are. This was something that roof had cast a pall. Then a car rounded the curve and the moI didn’t know before I started writing, something the characters had to ment was gone. But the feeling stayed with me. tell me.

A week or so later, I was folding clothes when it came to me who beThe last time I passed the house on the way to my sister’s, one side of longed in that house. I saw a black-haired woman with wild blue eyes it was stripped to the studs and there was rubble piled in the yard. The and her two hungry-looking children. The children were twins, a boy man on the tractor must have decided to demolish it. He doesn’t know and a girl. There was something mysterious about the three of them, that his place has meant something to a stranger. I might glance up amy greene especially the woman, and I needed to figure out what it was. I picthere from time to time and be sad to see it gone. But I won’t ever fortured her and the twins living in isolation on that hill in the mountain get how it looked from the road that day three woods, maybe hiding from some kind of danger. I don’t know where years ago. Whatever the true story is of that house on the hill, in the image came from, but I was captured by it. my eyes it will always be where Myra lives with her twins, where When I sat down with my notebook, I didn’t start with the woman, even though I knew she was raised by her grandmother and where she ran home afshe was the heart of the story. I saved her for last, discovering her through the eyes of the ter escaping her cruel husband. Myra Lamb may be the heart of characters whose lives she turned upside down. I wrote about her son, Johnny Odom, first. the story, but she didn’t give birth to it. For me, that abandoned Somehow I identified with him the most, in spite of his violent streak. Almost from the house will always be where Bloodroot was born.  beginning, I saw Johnny as a poet. His evolution into a writer felt beyond my control. It was the part of me that seeped into the narrative, my understanding of the power of words Bloodroot (Knopf, $24.95, 304 pages ISBN 9780307269867) is and of books. Perhaps because I felt a kinship with Johnny, he’s the character I imagined Amy Greene’s first novel. She was born and raised in the foothills standing as I did in the roadside weeds looking up at the abandoned house. That lone- of East Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, where she lives with her some moment I had one summer dusk became the first scene I wrote for Bloodroot, of husband and two children. © AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS

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FICTION

FICTION

Wrestling with our demons

Separating truth from fiction

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Review by Jillian Quint On the last page of Shira Nayman’s dark and probing psychological thriller, Dr. Henry Harrison awakens from a deep sleep to one startling thought: “Doctor, heal thyself.” The reader has sensed this all along; the doctor is not well, his sanity and madness inextricably connected. It’s a testament to Nayman’s skill that Harrison’s final realization affects us anew.

Set in a New York state post-World War II asylum, The Listener tells the story of a highly esteemed psychiatrist studying the effects of war neurosis while pointedly ignoring his own demons of the emotional, sexual and chemical varieties. In the halls of Shadowbrook, we find men who have seen things no person ought to have seen. There are the crazies, the merely “fatigued” and the staff who so badly want to help them. Yet it is one particular patient, the brilliant (if paranoid) Bertram Reiner, who obsesses Harrison.

Are Reiner’s claims that his own brother seeks to kill him honest fears or psychotic metaphors? Are his tirades against American complicity in the war an indication of reason or delusion? And is his developing relationship with the head The Listener nurse—Harrison’s own object of desire—all in the doctor’s head or physical proof of the messy intersection between the By Shira Nayman “sick” and the “well”? Harrison tries to help his patient an- Scribner swer these questions. This is not, however, easily done, and $27, 320 pages ISBN 9780743292825 as he delves deeper into Reiner’s troubled and often unreliable subconscious, he finds himself unwittingly confronting his own.

The Listener is, at its core, a story of listening, of narration—the lies we tell, the plots and characters we invent. But it is also an honest look at the way trauma and violence afflict an entire generation’s psyche, the way war is a disease that lasts well after the weapons have been laid down. This intelligent and unexpected novel is set in the 1940s, but its message is just as true today.  14 Jillian Quint is an assistant editor at the Random House Publishing Group.

Review by Rebecca Shapiro J.M. Coetzee’s magnificent Summertime is a work of fiction. Never, though, has a genre seemed more ambiguous, more masterfully and provocatively tampered with than in this incredible novel.

A biographer is writing about a novelist named John Coetzee in Summertime, interviewing five people who touched Coetzee’s life as a young man living in Cape Town.

With the biographer’s—and of course Coetzee’s—coaxing, characters that might otherwise feel peripheral come alive.

A cousin speaks about a night she spent stranded with him, a Brazilian ballet dancer muses on his unreturned love letters and a married lover recalls with mild indifference the nights that they spent together. Remarkably, and seemingly intentionally, the interviewees all become more interesting as characters than Coetzee himself.

The portrait of Coetzee is often unflattering—he appears distant, emotionally incapable and painfully socially awkward. In this sense, the book feels tremendously honest, an almost cathartic exercise in which the author has striven toward extreme self-evaluation. The problem with Summertime this reading, though, is the presupposition of truth, which By J.M. Coetzee Coetzee has robbed from his reader. As one of his inter- Viking view subjects tells his biographer, “It would be very, very $25.95, 256 pages naive to conclude that because the theme was present in ISBN 9780670021383 his writing it had to be present in his life.”

It is ruthlessly tempting, of course, to try to separate fact from fiction, and Coetzee seems almost to be taunting his readers with clues, particularly in relation to the indisputable facts of his publishing history—indicating, for example, that the dancer was the inspiration behind his much lauded novel Foe. But the frustration that comes with the reading experience is what, in turn, makes it so genius. Truth, Coetzee seems to argue, is irrelevant, and the reader’s reliance on it is dangerous.  Rebecca Shapiro is an assistant editor at the Random House Publishing Group.

MEMOIR

HISTORY

The son his mother wanted

Untold story of a Cold War triumph

Review by Edward Morris Southern literature is awash in stories about sensitive young boys with domineering mothers, dissolute fathers and quirky extended families. Malcolm Jones’ Little Boy Blues partakes of all these elements, but he doesn’t turn any of them into the usual cut-andpaste stereotypes.

Now a cultural critic for Newsweek, Jones writes of his early boyhood years in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and of the emotional pain and confusion his schoolteacher mother and alcoholic father incidentally inflicted on him.

Jones was born in 1952, 10 years after his parents married.

By the time he came along—he would be an only child—his father was already drinking heavily, unable to keep a job and often absent for long and unexplained periods. When Jones was 11, his parents divorced. His mother made the most of her “martyrdom,” always letting her “brave little man” know how much she depended on him to reflect well on her. Consequently, he grew up pretty much a loner. If there were best friends or wise teachers in whom Jones confided or found ongoing solace, he fails to mention them.

Instead, Jones turned to music, movies and television for Little Boy Blues comfort. He recalls being enraptured by an ancient Chris By Malcolm Jones Bouchillon phonograph record he found at his grandmoth- Pantheon er’s house when he was five. Then there was the summer he $24.95, 240 pages spent with his father, during which they would sit together ISBN 9780307377722 in the evening and watch the Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs TV show. Often he and his mother attended movies together, after which they would discuss them. But even here, her discontent and self-absorption always tainted the experience.

Jones writes with a curiously detached tone, almost as if he’s describing someone else, and he offers no happy ending, no moments of lightheartedness. Although he remained a dutiful son, the tension between who he was and who his mother wanted him to be never abated. She died in 2004, when she was 90. “My mother hated change, especially in me,” he concludes. “But that took years to figure out.”  Edward Morris reviews from Nashville.

Review by Roger Bishop In 1948, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ordered a blockade of Berlin to pressure the Western Allies into leaving the city or giving up the establishment of a state of West Germany. In response, President Truman, against the advice of his top defense and diplomatic advisors, declared that the United States was in the city to stay. For the next 11 months, under difficult and dangerous conditions, Allied planes delivered such necessities as food, mail, medicine and coal to the beleaguered residents of Berlin—whom those same planes had bombed only three years earlier. Richard Reeves, author of acclaimed biographies of Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan, tells this story in his riveting new book, Daring Young Men. Reeves’ splendid narrative gives us various perspectives of the airlift, or “Operation Vittles,” as it was originally called.

He quotes generously from Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Berlin’s most famous diarist of the period, who vividly described the bleakness of the city and was hopeful, but skeptical, that the Allies would help. Reeves also focuses on the 60,000 individuals who made the airlift work, including pilots such as Gail Halvorsen, who had volunteered for service in the airlift and Daring Young thought he would return home in a few weeks. Instead, he Men became the famous “Candy Bomber” who dropped improBy Richard Reeves vised parachutes filled with sweets for Berlin’s children. & Schuster From the beginning, the airlift faced many obstacles, not Simon $28, 336 pages least that pilots were restricted to using carefully defined air ISBN 9781416541196 corridors, and deviation from these meant attack by So- Also available on audio viet aircraft. An extraordinary leap in production occurred when Major General William Tunner was put in charge of the operation. An arrogant, cantankerous and incredibly imaginative man, Tunner had directed the first successful airlift in history, flying supplies over the Himalayas to Nationalist Chinese troops fighting the Japanese during World War II. Reeves masterfully relates this story of a crucial mission that even American military officials considered nearly impossible—a pivotal chapter in the Cold War that had a profound effect on the course of European and American history. 

An exciting new voice in fiction…

At the helm of must-read Snap magazine, veteran style guru Sara B.’s job—and joy—for the past fifteen years has been eviscerating fashion victims in her legendary “DOs and DON’Ts” photo spread.

But what happens when the It girl loses it?

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

“Klaffke’s debut is a delicious guilty pleasure full of hilarious, irreverent moments.”

—Publishers Weekly www.MIRABooks.com www.PamelaKlaffke.com

On sale now!

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11/19/09 11:36:23 AM

HAPPY New Year Have you decided on your New Year’s resolutions yet? You know, the ones you follow with zeal in January, limp along with through February and abandon sheepishly sometime before the first crocuses bloom? If you’ve ever found it tough to stick with your well-intentioned efforts to change, these books will offer a fresh take on what it means to be happy and healthy and how to really transform your life—for good.

LIFE SKILLS Review by Amy Scribner Growing up as a “fortunate son” in New York (his father was the storied New Yorker writer Brendan Gill), Michael Gates Gill expected the world and, for the most part, he got it: a charmed childhood, a Yale education, a high-powered career. His best-selling memoir, How Starbucks Saved My Life, detailed how in one year, Gill lost his job as an advertising executive, got divorced, was diagnosed with a brain tumor and took a job as a Starbucks barista. In this poignant follow-up, How to Save Your Own Life (Gotham, $20, 208 pages, ISBN 9781592405213), Gill—who still serves coffee at a New York Starbucks—examines what exactly he learned during that year. His 15 truisms on how to savor ordinary moments are simple yet powerful reminders to respect one another, learn from those around you and really listen. One of his lessons, “Lose your watch (and cell phone and PDA),” is particularly noteworthy in our tech-obsessed world. “You can’t return a call or take a photo without seeing precisely what time it is,” writes Gill. “In many ways we have become mental and emotional slaves to the constant, finite calculations and it is hard to resist such an anxious focus on every ticking second.”

Whether or not you agree with his less-is-more premise, it’s hard not to be drawn to Gill and his message—he writes plainly and gracefully, and is filled with a grateful, almost childlike wonder at how much he loves his simpler life. 

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

HAPPINESS

16

Review by Amy Scribner Sitting in traffic one afternoon, author Ariel Gore heard a report that the most popular class at Harvard is Positive Psychology: essentially, Happiness 101. Inspired, Gore downloaded the syllabus. Imagine her dismay when she dove into the research on women and happiness—only to find that it pointed to traditional values and marriage as keys to lasting fulfillment.

These findings didn’t match up very well with Gore herself or the women she knew. So she embarked on her own investigation into what makes women happy.

In Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness (Farrar, Straus, $24, 208 pages, ISBN 9780374114893), she interviews 100 women about their happiness, retraces her own unusual life choices (single mom at 20, second child nearly two decades later) and calls on the words of Virginia Woolf, Alice Walker, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Harriet Beecher Stowe, among other famously strong women.

Gore posits that women try to trick themselves into “lives we don’t really want.

Still, there are plenty of doctors, psychologists, acquaintances, and relatives who are more than eager to help us deny our truths and do what’s expected of us—to stay with the husband and have the baby, to take the fancy job in the cold city, to never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as we live. We are told what will make us happy as if we were all the same woman, as if we all share a single heart.”

Bold and whip-smart, Bluebird offers a striking, often defiant take on how modern women find joy. 

Stick with your resolutions NUTRITION Review by Lacey Galbraith Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (Penguin, $11, 112 pages, ISBN 9780143116387) offers a “choral voice of popular food wisdom.” The author of the New York Times bestsellers In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan consulted a wide range of experts—including doctors, anthropologists and “large numbers of mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers”—to arrive at this collection of 64 straightforward and simple “personal policies” for eating.

Whether it’s a practical reminder to “Eat slowly,” a common-sense adage like “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead,” or a whimsically spot-on observation such as “Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk,” these guidelines are all centered around the most basic of advice: “Eat food. Not too much.

Mostly plants.”

With Food Rules, Pollan hopes to make “everyday decision-making easier and swifter.” As he wryly notes, “It is entirely possible to eat healthily without knowing what an antioxidant is.” 

HEALTHY COOKING Review by Lacey Galbraith Bethenny Frankel offers down-to-earth eating advice in The Skinnygirl Dish: Easy Recipes for Your Naturally Thin Life (Fireside, $16, 320 pages, ISBN 9781416597995), telling readers, “Listen to your inner chef.” A proponent of “fast, practical and economical” recipes, Frankel (who is one of the reality stars of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of New York City”) specializes in making meals that are both healthy and delicious.

Following on the success of her previous book, Naturally Thin, Frankel aims to ease the anxiety over “what and how to eat when you have to cook for yourself and your family.” Though she provides a range of recipes— everything from breakfast, lunch and dinner to simple snacks, cocktails and “desserts to die for”—Frankel doesn’t believe in telling her readers what to eat. For her, cooking is about improvisation and using what’s already on hand in the pantry. “I want to give you the tools to cook fearlessly for yourself,” she says, “taking risks, being creative, thinking for yourself and never stressing out again about how to make dinner.” 

SELF-IMPROVEMENT Review by Amy Scribner If you had 365 days to improve your happiness, what would you do? In The Happiness Project (Harper, $25.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9780061583254), author Gretchen Rubin launched her happiness project on January 1st with a year’s worth of resolutions: clean her cluttered closets, spend more time being silly with her kids, make three new friends, keep a food journal and quit nagging, to name just a few. She tracks her progress via a blog, and learns a thing or two about happiness in the process.

To be sure, it sounds supremely self-involved, and Rubin even pre-empts wouldbe critics with a list of all the possible snipes for her happiness project: She wasn’t depressed, hungry, going through a divorce or battling an addiction. Why did she need to spend an entire year focusing on her own happiness when so many others have it so much worse? The answer, Rubin confidently asserts throughout this lovely, thought-provoking book, is that we all could stand to examine our happiness, no matter how good we have it.

Packed with fascinating facts about the science of happiness and rich examples of how she improves her life through changes small and big, The Happiness Project made me happier just by reading it. 

for a healthier, happier you HEALTHY LIVING Review by Lacey Galbraith Written by one of the oldest living survivors of heart bypass surgery, Joseph C. Piscatella’s Positive Mind, Healthy Heart (Workman, $10.95, 328 pages, ISBN 9780761154570) is a great place to look for healthy inspiration. Piscatella was just 32 when he underwent his life-changing surgery, and in 1977, doctors had little in the way of post-operative advice to offer him. With the help of his wife, Piscatella set about devising an exercise and eating plan of his own.

Decades and several books later (Don’t Eat Your Heart Out Cookbook, The Healthy Heart Cookbook), Piscatella says he’s “in better health than he was in 1977.” In Positive Mind, Healthy Heart, he shows the “power of small changes.” Piscatella’s “six principals for success” and 365 daily doses of motivational stories, anecdotes, quotes and health tips offer a wealth of wisdom and encouragement. As he reminds his readers, “This isn’t a race; it’s about how you want to live the rest of your life.” 

MIND & BODY

PERSONAL GROWTH Review by Deanna Larson Got a minute? Use it to lose weight, lower your blood pressure, improve your mood and memory, be happier, help your children stay healthy and have the career you’ve always wanted. No, it’s not the latest infomercial product but the power of the “rapid change” strategies in 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot (Knopf, $24, 336 pages, ISBN 9780307273406). Psychologist and author Richard Wiseman (The Luck Factor, Quirkology) isn’t content with spouting simplistic self-help methods for improving your life—in fact, he believes that self-improvement advice often has the opposite effect. Digging deep into psychological and scientific studies, Wiseman debunks behavioral myths and presents counterintuitive but effective methods for solving persistent problems that plague many people in areas as diverse as happiness, motivation, creativity, attraction, relationships, decision-making and parenting.

Want to forget a traumatic experience? Don’t talk about it—studies show that writing feelings down is more effective than sharing out loud in coping with negative emotional experiences. Want to feel happier? Sit up straight in your desk chair, swing your arms

as you walk or force your lips into a smile for 15-20 seconds (try it). Sidebars, charts, quizzes, worksheets and tips on how to use these findings in your own life complete each section, and extensive citation notes are also included. There isn’t a person on the planet who couldn’t learn something new about themselves with this book, making it a must for any resolution list. 

FITNESS Review by Lacey Galbraith Denise Austin has been helping Americans get (and stay) fit for almost 30 years, most recently on two Lifetime TV shows, “Denise Austin’s Daily Workout” and “Fit & Lite.” In Denise’s Daily Dozen (Center Street, $16.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9781599952444), she reveals her short and sweet secrets for a more active lifestyle.

What counts, she says, is “quality not quantity,” and a mere 12 minutes of exercise a day is the answer.

There’s no need for pricy equipment; all that’s required are “two sets of weights . . . a pair of supportive sneakers, and a mat or towel to do floor work on.”

And forget the costly gym membership: “Turn idle time into toning time,” she says. Exercise anywhere— in the kitchen, on the living room couch, even while on the phone.

Austin’s enthusiasm is infectious, and the Daily Dozen is her latest offering of simple yet well-balanced exercise plans, practical recipes and endless encouragement. 

EATING NATURALLY Review by Lacey Galbraith In Rod Rotondi’s Raw Food for Real People (New World Library, $24.95, 185 pages, ISBN 9781577316732), the founder of Leaf Organics—Los Angeles’ first certified organic restaurant—proves that eating healthy doesn’t have to mean carrot sticks and veggie burgers alone. “The whole idea of the raw-food movement is getting back to a simple and natural diet,” he says. It’s about “rediscovering the natural way for humans to eat.” For him, this means very berry fruit smoothies, “rawsagna” and really raw apple pie.

Fans of gluten-free and vegan-friendly recipes will be especially happy with these wonderful recipes, but Rotondi hopes to show that everyone can find something to love—and learn from—in Raw Food for Real People.

The best way to approach the raw-food lifestyle, he says, is to think “in terms of what you do eat, as opposed to what you don’t.” Rotondi’s best advice, however, is as simple as his delightful and delicious recipes: “Love your food, love your world, love yourself.” 

QUITTING SMOKING

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Review by Deanna Larson The Program: The Brain-Smart Approach to the Healthiest You (Atria, $27.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9781439109984) explores how physical and emotional health can be improved by fooling the changeresistant brain to take one small step at a time. Starting with the usual topics of sound nutrition, fitness, de-stressing and weight loss, the book hits its stride as it presents its central thesis: that lifestyle behavior accounts for 50 percent of a person’s health, and that changing thinking is central to changing habits. Cowritten by Kelly Traver, M.D., global medical director for Google, Worldwide, and Betty Kelly Sargent, the book’s 12-week program helps you to utilize brain power rather than willpower to develop the important building blocks to better health while conquering addictions, aging gracefully and avoiding the most prevalent diseases afflicting Americans. The system starts with basic nutrition and fitness information, including developing a personal eating and exercise plan, then moves into more specific advice designed to help avoid or handle heart disease, diabetes and cancer, and to solve challenges including obesity and lack of sleep.

Combining fitness, food and holistic health advice in one neat package, this clear, breezy and informative book makes a terrific starter title for those looking to make global changes to their health outlook. 

HAPPY New Year

Review by Kate Pritchard After his well-received appearance on “Oprah” in 2008, Dr. Daniel Seidman decided to write Smoke-Free in 30 Days (Fireside, $14.99, 240 pages, ISBN 9781439101117) to share the wisdom he has gained from 20 years of research and work with smokingcessation clinics. His advice is clear and easy to understand, and he is careful to discuss a wide range of smoking habits, triggers, withdrawal symptoms and coping mechanisms.

Seidman is a proponent of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), and his advice tends to lean heavily on this particular tool; those who don’t want to use NRT may find this book of limited use. However, for those who decide to follow Seidman’s program, his 30-day schedule for quitting smoking—which comprises the second half of the book— will provide them with specific and manageable step-by-step tasks and strategies to help them accomplish the goal of going permanently smoke-free.  17

FICTION

STORIES

A dog’s eye view

The heart of the matter

Review by Rusty McDaniel Call me Rusty.

BookPage (or rather, a certain BookPage writer) asked me to review the second in Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie mystery series. I’d rather be a pirate (B’arrrrrrrgh!), but the book was written by Chet, a dog, and deserves the attention of the author’s peers. So, being “one of my guys,” as Chet puts it, I’m happy to lend a paw.

To begin with, this book looks good and smells good.

(Chews well, too, though a little pulpy in the middle.) Chet, Thereby Hangs a dog of an unrecognizable breed, works alongside his godlike human, Bernie Little, Private Investigator. They check a Tail out a mysterious case of dognapping, involving a “tiny fluff- By Spencer Quinn ball” named Princess. Princess came to town for the Great Atria Western Dog Show and disappeared somewhere into the $25, 320 pages dry gulches and canyons—along with her ill-fated owner, an ISBN 9781416585855 Italian contessa, and Suzie, Bernie’s girlfriend.

Details are sometimes hazy, but Chet is more observant than your average dog. (Present company excluded.) His soliloquies often involve taking human metaphors literally, as in pondering the connection of poles to Polish sausage.

Life is always great for Chet, as for all of us dogs, so don’t expect any noir here. But he is not unphilosophical—“whatever that is,” as he often says modestly. Dogito ergo sum (“I am a dog, therefore I am”) appears to be his ruling concept, though not in so many words, of course. I did notice that he can’t seem to bark Latin. So few dogs, ahem, can.

Any reader with a nose for nastiness may sniff out the perp early on, but the real fun is in Chet’s take on humans and their world. He’s not above expressing his amazement at the many ways in which dogs are superior (hearing, smelling, etc.). Still, he retains an unqualified love for his human, and he expresses universal truths eloquently—like the superiority of bacon chew strips over other forms of entertainment.

Great job. Good Spencer.  Rusty lives with his owner, Maude McDaniel, in Cumberland, Maryland.

Review by Becky Ohlsen Amy Bloom has what I might have thought were magical powers if I hadn’t learned that she’s spent time as a psychotherapist. She can jump from one character’s perspective to another’s in the space of a paragraph, fully inhabiting each, as smoothly and unmistakably as if she were doing impressions of famous people onstage. In two lines she can telegraph the essence of a character’s personality, the sum of his years, the battles he’s won and lost and the ones that still rage. And she seems to be able to do this for anyone: the gout-ridden aging Where the God of Englishman, the mixed-race teenage girl, the gay neighbor, the adulterous earth mother. The stories she tells in her new Love Hangs Out collection, Where the God of Love Hangs Out, vary widely, By Amy Bloom but she never overreaches or missteps.

Random House That might be because Bloom has one primary concern, $25, 224 pages and that is the way people act toward and react to one an- ISBN 9781400063574 other. Her stories have an almost theatrical quality: she puts Also available on audio several people with complex relationships in a room and lets them have it out—sometimes in dialogue, but mostly through those perfectly tuned inner voices.

Most of the stories are linked, centering on two couples: Clare and William, old friends whose spouses are also friends but who begin a love affair; and Lionel and Julia, a stepson and stepmother who share a secret that eats away at both of them. Some of the Lionel and Julia stories were included in Bloom’s previous collections, but reading them all at once enriches the experience of each; the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts that the book actually feels as weighty as a couple of novels. If there’s a weak spot, it’s “Byand-By,” narrated by a girl whose roommate has been murdered by a serial killer; here the narrative focuses on external details rather than penetrating the psyches of everyone involved. But otherwise, each character’s reaction in every story rings true, because Bloom has taken you deep inside their heads. Maybe she does have magic powers, after all.  Becky Ohlsen writes from Portland, Oregon.

The Swan Thieves Elizabeth Kostova Sweeping historical intrigue spanning centuries and continents, with a beautiful woman, a mysterious painting and an ancient secret at its heart—from the author of The Historian, read by a brilliant cast for Hachette Audio.

This month’s top publisher picks

Hachette Audio CD 9781600247453 $39.98

The Queen’s Dollmaker

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The Forever Girl: Brandon’s Inferno

18

Christine Trent

Chris O’Grady Jim Brandon stumbles on a badly beaten man near the Las Vegas Strip and reports it, but the guy disappears and starts killing people. That’s when Jim’s trouble begins.

Eloquent Books www.eloquentbooks.com

PB 9780758238573 $15

The Guardians:

HC 9781577316473 $23.95

The Coupon Mom’s Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half

Richard Williams

AuthorHouse

Brace for Impact

One year later—What is the real impact, not of a disaster, but of the gift of a new life?

Take a look inside the hearts and souls of passengers and first responders from Flight 1549.

A book that pays for itself! The creator of couponmom.com, with 2 million subscribers and counting, shares her strategic money-saving techniques for saving big while living well. http://www.couponmom.com/ coupon-moms-new-book-453 PB 9781434376633 $12.99

Avery

An inside look into the world of horse racing, complete with colorful horses, jockeys and trainers, depicting the insights horses can offer when we reevaluate our relationship with them.

New World Library

Dorothy Firman and Kevin Quirk

Stephanie Nelson

Imagine a world where special dogs lead their masters back to the path of God’s love. The Guardians is such a story; it tells of two shelties who have the ability to speak, but their unusual talent is a closely guarded secret. Visit www.lovingeyesarewatching.com

Lynn Reardon

Friendship with France’s most despised woman has grim consequences. For a dollmaker devoted to her patron, Marie Antoinette, this bond will mean facing her ultimate test. And the price of loyalty could be her life...

Kensington

HC 9781606939932 $26.50

Loving Eyes are Watching

Beyond the Homestretch

HCI PB 9781583333686 $15

PB 9780757313578 $14.95

INTERVIEW

Portrait of the artist Genius and obsession collide in Kostova’s latest

Interview by Katherine Wyrick lizabeth Kostova’s gripping debut novel, The Historian (2005), explored the legend lections. “I had memories of the way oil paint smells and the way you rework a canvas. of Dracula, undoubtedly contributing to the cultural craze that has now evolved More importantly, I have several close friends and family members who are very gifted into full-blown vampire mania. Her second novel, The Swan Thieves, focuses on visual artists, and they let me pick their brains and watch them paint and go to their French Impressionism, which raises the question: should readers brace themselves for studio classes.”

To help craft her characters, Kostova pored over biographies of artists and painters. all-out Monet madness? Probably not, but one thing is certain: The Swan Thieves will “Sometimes . . . I think of this book as basically a biogkeep readers entertained and inspire them to reflect on some proraphy,” she says. And her characters are so believable, so found subjects—like the nature of genius, the power of romantic fully fleshed out, that it feels that way for readers as well. love and the purpose of art.

Kostova also makes astute observations about the alAndrew Marlow, an amateur painter and accomplished psychialowances made for genius, a theme, she notes, that has trist, lives a solitary, structured life—until he begins treating re“plagued art and art literature since it began.” She says, nowned artist Robert Oliver, who was arrested for attacking a canvas “With The Historian, I liked the idea of writing about in the National Gallery of Art. Marlow’s quest to understand this a supernatural topic and trying to make it human, and troubled genius leads him into the lives of the women Robert loved, with this book I think I was really intrigued with the idea including the enigmatic dark-haired beauty who haunts him. of writing on these rather time-worn subjects, the partly This hefty novel travels from the East Coast of the U.S. to the mad artist and the subject of genius and what genius is coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th. In allowed to do and not allowed to do.” a recent interview from her home in the mountains of North CaroAsked if she identifies with Robert’s obsessive nature, lina, Kostova, in a quiet, measured voice, discussed the challenges of Kostova says she sometimes envies that kind of singlewriting a novel that spans time and place. mindedness, but adds, “I also love to live in the world. A “I haven’t written much about American places before this, and lot of other things are very important to me, like family it was really wonderful. . . . It’s surprisingly challenging, I think, to and friends and social service and just the ordinary parts write about your own time and place. I know that’s what most writof life.” She says of Robert, “He can’t live properly in the ers do, but I had somehow shirked it for years.” world . . . in a way that sustains other people.”

Also difficult, says Kostova, is writing about visual art. “It is a very Elizabeth kostova Marlow, she explains, is challenged by Robert because challenging subject, and as usual, I didn’t make it easy for myself, but he doesn’t seem to care about being cured or healed. KosI like these challenges.” She adds, “It’s so hard to convey a painting tova muses, “I think in the person of Robert he’s faced in words, and you’re partly relying on your reader’s recognition of Kostova’s lush second novel with his life choices.” certain styles and images.”

As in The Historian, Kostova’s affinity for letters as a Asked what it was about French Impressionism that so captured ranges across two centuries literary device lends a sense of immediacy and intimacy her imagination, Kostova explains, “I was really drawn to it. And to the narrative (in a way reminiscent of A.S. Byatt’s Posagain it’s just one of those topics, like Dracula, that we’re so familiar in its exploration of session). “We all would love to read other people’s mail with that I wanted to see if I could make something fresh out of it. I if that were permitted, right?” she laughs. “There’s this know that, personally, I had the experience of getting really tired of love and madness. sense of a letter that takes you right to the heart of someImpressionist painting because we see it everywhere, and it looks so body’s life, and that’s not really true in our era, but it’s a pretty and tame, and it’s poorly reproduced on all kinds of objects, very direct way to convey character.” so I thought this might be interesting to go back and really look at The intriguing title of Kostova’s new novel alludes to the myth of Leda and the swan, some of those paintings again. And when I started going back to museums and seeing these paintings in the flesh, I was so overwhelmed by them. They’re so wonderful in real but its deeper meaning lies at the heart of the novel’s mystery—one that keeps readers life, and Impressionism is so textured that you really have a sense of people working with turning the pages (all 576 of them). “I’ve always loved Greek myths . . . and swans are such the brush when you look at the originals that you don’t with emblems of beauty and grace; they’ve been so important in painting and sculpture, and we still have this reverence for them even in contemporary life that I think is very interreproductions.”

Kostova’s research took her to Paris and Normandy and into esting. . . . Swans are a funny thing, they’re kind of like dragons: once you start thinking museums and libraries. In addition, she says, “I studied a lot about them you see them everywhere culturally.”

In the novel, Kostova describes Marlow’s experience upon seeing one of Robert’s of art history in college and that helped me, and I talked with art historians, and until paintings: “At any moment something might happen; that was the remarkable thing. He I was about 15, I really had caught the instant of shock, of total change, of disbelief. . . . She was inches away from me, breathing and real, in the second of unreal calm before complete distress, and I loved to paint.”

The Swan Thieves knew myself powerless. I realized, then, for the first time, what Robert had accomplished.”

She gleaned details

By Elizabeth Kostova from artist friends, who Much like the paintings she brings to life in The Swan Thieves, Kostova’s eloquent prose Little, Brown helped with the techni- possesses the power to both transport and inspire.  $26.99, 576 pages calities of painting, and ISBN 9780316065788 Also available on audio her own sensory recol- Katherine Wyrick writes from Little Rock. © DEBORAH FEINGOLD

E

Beyond black and white Review by Stephenie Harrison Imagine a distant future in which the job you hold and your social position—not to mention who you can marry—depend critically on the colors you are able to see. Such is the world in which Eddie Russet finds himself in Jasper Fforde’s latest novel, Shades of Grey (Viking, $25.95, 392 pages, ISBN 9780670019632).

After an ill-advised marriage greatly depleted the Russet family’s Red vision several generations ago, the Russets have struggled over the years to regain their social standing and vibrant Red perception through carefully planned marriages with other high-standing Reds. In this vein, it is Eddie’s fiercest hope that he can win the hand of Constance Oxblood, who is practically Red royalty, and take over her family’s string business. All this changes, however, when a foolhardy prank gets Eddie

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FICTION

and his father sent to the Outer Fringes, where Eddie encounters a lowly Grey named Jane. In the blink of an eye, Eddie is irrevocably in love. Eddie soon learns that it will take a lot more than poor poetry to curry Jane’s favor, and her friendship may mean often running afoul of authority. In his attempts to lessen her hostility towards him, Eddie’s blinders begin to lift and he finally begins to see beyond red to something far more dangerous: the Truth.

Sounds zany and outlandish? It is! Fforde’s novels are akin to a Monty Python episode put to print, or a Salvador Dalí painting brought to life, and readers who are able to suspend their disbelief are in for a breathtaking and illuminating literary adventure. When the pieces of Fforde’s tricky puzzle fall into place, the resultant climax is an explosive kaleidoscope of emotion that will startle and unsettle, while also igniting a desperate need to nab the next volume in this dazzling new series. With romance, adventure, conspiracies and plenty of laughs, Shades of Grey is high-energy storytelling that offers something for every reader.  19 Stephenie Harrison writes from Nashville.

INTERVIEW She was his last chance for a future of happiness…he just didn’t know it…

USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Interview by Carla Jean Whitley lthough it’s been eagerly anticipated as a debut, the epic novel Roses isn’t the first outing for author Leila Meacham. In the mid-1980s, Meacham wrote and published a handful of romance novels. But it wasn’t a process she enjoyed much. At the time, she was teaching English, and the solitary process of writing took her away from preparing lesson plans, learning about new techniques and enjoying hobbies like gardening.

“I guess the difference is the years. I had other things I wanted to do,” Meacham says from her San Antonio home during a recent telephone interview. “I just didn’t want to spend the time cooped up.”

But after retiring, Meacham ran through her list of retirement goals. She and her husband traveled. Thirteen years into retirement, at age 65, she was left with a question: Now what?

The answer was Roses.

“One day I was in bed, drinking my cup of coffee, and I just thought to myself, ‘I’ve got so much to offer somebody somewhere or someLEILA thing. I just don’t know what to do with the MEACHAM rest of my life,’” Meacham recalls. “I will defend this to my dying day: A voice in my head said, ‘You will get down Roses and you will finish Roses.’ I like to believe that’s a divine inspiration.”

Meacham had begun the novel in 1985, when a bad case of pneumonia forced her to temporarily resign from teaching. As years passed, the typewritten pages of the novel were stored in a box in a closet, almost abandoned as Meacham and her husband moved from one house to another. “My husband said, ‘Oh, go ahead and take it. You’ll regret it if you don’t.’ ” Six years ago, his suspicions proved accurate as Meacham pulled the box off the shelf and resumed writing.

The novel traces nearly 70 years in the history of the Toliver family, owners of a cotton plantation in a fictional Texas town. When patriarch Vernon Toliver dies, he entrusts the land to his daughter, Mary, because he knows she will love and care for it. His wife and son are outraged.

That decision and the stubborn love that motivated it determine the course of Mary Toliver’s life. She’s unwilling to compromise anything that would negatively affect her beloved Somerset plantation, whether it means sacrificing her fair complexion to work in the field or the man she loves because he won’t settle for second place in her heart.

The decisions Mary makes, and the lies that accompany them, alter the history of the Toliver clan and its relationships with the town’s other founding families, the department store-owning DuMonts and timber magnates the Roses Warwicks.

By Leila Meacham Through a series of flashbacks—first Mary Toliver’s, then Grand Central Percy Warwick’s and finally Mary’s great-niece Rachel’s— $24.99, 609 pages Meacham reveals just how much Mary lost by dedicating ISBN 9780446550000 her life to the land, and why she has sold the land in her determination to save Rachel from the same fate.

It’s only appropriate that this 600-page epic took Meacham five years to write. The narrative sprawls across geography as much as time, stretching from the fictional Texas burg of Howbutker to Lubbock, Dallas and points between. (“The two together—cotton and timber—you don’t find that in the same state” anywhere but Texas, Meacham says.)

The five years Meacham devoted to the story were filled with as many interruptions as the book has plot twists. “But I persevered because I felt like I promised God I would complete this book,” she says. “Just as sure as I’m talking to you, I was assured from the get-go, you write the book and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Now the 71-year-old Meacham is not only anticipating book signings to support the book, she’s also hard at work on another epic novel, this time with a more modern focus. So what happened to the woman who so disliked the solitary nature of writing?

“I didn’t like the confinement, the frustration of trying to get your thoughts on paper,” Meacham recalls. “Oddly enough, I’m happiest when I’m writing now. And I’m all by myself and anything in the world can come out on the page.”

“What this has done for me has made me aware that I can write. Now, I don’t know if you’ll agree with me. But I feel that I can write. I can tell a story.” 

A

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© MARIE LANGMORE

delivers a passionate and stunningly sensual historical debut.

Retired Texas writer revives a dream and relaunches her writing career

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PROOF BY SEDUCTION • Courtney Milan

“One of the finest historical romances I have read in years.”

—New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn

www.HQNBooks.com www.CourtneyMilan.com

Carla Jean Whitley reads, writes and lives near three generations of her family in Birmingham, Alabama.

ROMANCE A whole new world Are you ready for romance in the New Year? January’s selections will take you back to old friends and introduce fresh storylines sure to start 2010 with a bang.

An exciting adventure awaits in Joss Ware’s post-apocalyptic romance, Beyond the Night (Avon, $7.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9780061734014). Dr. Elliott Drake and four companions awaken after a 50-year sleep to discover their contemporary world has changed.

Cities are gone and civilization nearly destroyed, while small outposts of people are threatened by zombie-like “gangas” and others known only as “Strangers.” As Elliott and friends travel about trying to fathom their new circumstances and abilities, they encounter a beautiful woman named Jade. Intrigued, Elliott is pleased to find her again in the town of Envy, where he becomes part of Jade’s group, bent on determinBY christie ridgway ing what forces changed the world and how they can defeat the Strangers who they suspect are out to destroy them. In these desolate times, Jade and Elliott learn to trust each other and find meaning through their love. Fast-paced and imaginative, this story sets up a compelling situation readers will look forward to revisiting in future books.

The pastor and the stripper Returning to Robyn Carr’s small town of Virgin River in Forbidden Falls (MIRA, $7.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780778327493) is a true pleasure. Newly minted pastor Noah Kincaid buys the tumbled-down church there and quickly finds himself rehabilitating more than an abandoned building. There’s the scruffy, injured dog he finds as well as the young woman who applies for the position of pastor’s assistant. Her resume is extensive . . . and includes a stint as a stripper. Sexy, funny and terminally optimistic, Ellie Baldwin is used to being down on her luck—but she’s in big trouble now with her children under the thumb of her controlling ex. She needs the respectable job and Noah needs someone committed to hard work. It seems to be an employer-employee match made in heaven, except when their feelings grow beyond business. Can a man-of-the-cloth make a future with a woman who used to take off her clothes?

Carr’s story is peopled by characters with dimension and authentic dilemmas that make the happy ending just that much sweeter.

English beauty, stubborn Scotsman

Western ways Kiki Warner’s western historical romance, Pieces of Sky (Berkley Sensation, $15, 432 pages, ISBN 9780425232149), is a passionate tale about ties: to the land, to family and between lovers. In 1869, Englishwoman Jessica Thornton has left her home for the New Mexico Territory while carrying a terrible secret. A stagecoach accident requires that she rely on handsome-but-rough rancher Brady Wilkins, and she ends up recuperating at his home. The man’s strength and sensuality speak to her, even as she fears she’ll never come first in his heart. Brady Wilkins thinks Jessica is too delicate for life on the land he’s working so hard to hold onto, but his heart wants to hold onto her too. Can he make a compromise between the ranch he loves and the woman he wants? Warner has penned a gripping love story that portrays the life-ordeath struggles that faced those trying to tame the frontier. Readers will look forward to upcoming novels about the other honorable and handsome Wilkins brothers. o Christie Ridgway writes contemporary romance from her home in Southern California.

antastic F ICT ION by abulous AUTHORS The Breach

By Patrick Lee $7.99, 9780061584459 Ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the President of the United States. Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact—and the race toward Apocalypse begins in earnest.

Bitten by Cupid

By Lynsay Sands, Pamela Palmer and Jamie Rush $7.99, 9780061894459 On Valentine’s Day, some women want roses. But some just want to make it through the day alive. In Bitten By Cupid, New York Times best-selling author Lynsay Sands and newcomers Pamela Palmer and Jaime Rush present three tales of dangerous desire, where giving in to temptation could turn deadly, and even immortality won‘t keep you safe from Cupid’s bow.

Bones of Betrayal

By Jefferson Bass $7.99, 9780061284755 Forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton is shocked when an autopsy reveals the cause of an elderly scientist’s death: a radioactive pellet inside his body. Who would commit such a horrific crime? The answers may lie with the victim’s aging ex-wife, Beatrice, a captivating, yet utterly unreliable storyteller. Careening between history and fantasy, dementia and lucidity, Beatrice leads him to darker truths than he could have imagined.

The Bone Chamber

By Robin Burcell $7.99, 9780061122293 Mysteriously summoned to Quantico to help re-create the face of a murdered, mutilated young woman, FBI forensic artist Special Agent Sydney Fitzpatrick knows immediately this is no ordinary crime. Now her hunt for a killer is carrying her from Washington to Rome to the hidden chamber of a legendary tomb—on the trail of a fabled treasure of the Knights Templar . . . and a curse.

At the Duke’s Pleasure

By Tracy Anne Warren $7.99, 9780061673429 Book three in the Byrons of Braebourne series features Edward Byron, Duke of Clybourne. Duty requires he wed, so Edward decides on a long-standing arranged marriage. He expects his betrothed will be thrilled with his decision—but Lady Claire Marsden’s not about to accept a loveless marriage. And so she begins a battle of outrageous resistance, forcing Edward to learn that he must lose his heart in order to win his bride.

www.harpercollins.com

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Jude Deveraux offers a mid-18th-century historical romance set in Scotland and America in Days of Gold (Atria, $25.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9781439107942). Angus McTern is fascinated by English beauty Edilean Talbot, the niece of the man who owns the McTern clan’s ancestral home. Though McTerns still live on the land, they’re beholden to Edilean’s cruel uncle, who is determined to secure her inheritance for himself by marrying her off to one of his unpleasant friends. But Edilean is determined to outwit her uncle, and through a series of misfortunes and mishaps, she finds herself being rescued from the impending marriage by Angus—and on her way to America with him as her husband-in-name-only. Both part ways at journey’s end, though they’re not far from each other’s thoughts. Years pass before new threats to Angus and Edilean reunite them. Can Angus look past their class differences to acknowledge his feelings?

Can Edilean trust him to stay by her side forever? Likeable characters and satisfying endings for a cast of supporting players make this a memorable read.

1 F

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Book clubs New paperbacks for reading groups The Women

By T.C. Boyle Boyle’s latest is an innovative piece of historical fiction with a passionate genius at its center. A memoriam of sorts to architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the novel presents a mosaic of the man by looking at four of his lovers—a quartet of wildly different women, each of whom has a singular experience with the temperamental artist. Narrated by a fictional Japanese-American character named Tadeshi Soto, who serves as Wright’s apprentice and offers an inside view of his private life, the book steps back in time to revisit the scenes Penguin of the great architect’s various affairs. Olgivanna is an iron- $16, 464 pages ISBN 9780143116479 willed dancer from Montenegro, while Miriam, a high-strung Southerner, has a taste for drugs. The adoring Kitty becomes Wright’s first wife, but his intellectual equal is Mamah, with whom he shares a deep connection. Tadeshi also acknowledges the importance of Wright’s magical home in Wisconsin—the house called Taliesin. The events that occur within its walls—the conflicts, the fires, the emotional turmoil—reveal the torment that fueled Wright’s creative genius. There’s a wonderful authenticity to Boyle’s personification of each woman, and his grasp of history—of the ways in which facts get twisted over time— gives this richly detailed book an extra layer of complexity. Expertly constructed and emotionally probing, this is another first-class piece of fiction from Boyle. A reading group guide is available at penguin.com and vpbookclub.com.

Lark and Termite

By Jayne Anne Phillips A finalist for the National Book Award, Phillips’ poignant, well-crafted novel is set in the 1950s and focuses on a struggling Southern family. The novel follows two main narrative lines—that of Robert Leavitt, an Army corporal fighting for his life in Korea, and that of his mute, physically handicapped son, Termite, who lives in West Virginia. In Robert’s absence, Termite is cared for by his 17-year-old half-sister, Lark, and their aunt, Nonie, who puts in grueling days at the local diner Vintage in order to make ends meet for the family. Lark, who never $14.95, 304 pages knew her parents, devotes all of her energy to Termite, fearful ISBN 9780375701931 that he might be taken away by state authorities because of his disabilities. Lark is training to be a secretary, but the reality of limited opportunities in West Virginia makes her efforts seem futile. When a kind-hearted social worker arrives, the precarious balance the family has established is upset. Unexpected revelations about Lark’s past soon follow, altering the course of the future. Phillips moves skillfully between the two plots, creating wonderful juxtapositions between Robert’s story and the teenagers’ narrative. Told from the perspectives of three very different protagonists, this lovely, melancholy novel can only bolster Phillips’ reputation as a major novelist. A reading group guide is available at readinggroupcenter.com.

Very Valentine JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

By Adriana Trigiani Set in modern-day Manhattan, this old-fashioned tale of love and family is the first book in a new trilogy from Trigiani, whose earlier Big Stone Gap series was a book club favorite.

Thirty-three-year-old Valentine Roncalli comes from a respected clan of Italian cobblers whose store, the Angelini Shoe Company, is one of the few remaining locally owned establishments in Greenwich Village. Crafters of breathtaking wedding shoes, the company has been in business since 1903 but is now Harper struggling financially. The task of reviving the enterprise lies $14.99, 416 pages in the hands of Valentine, whose skill and pluck are put to the ISBN 9780061257063 test as she tries to update an institution that’s rooted in bygone traditions. In the company of her grandmother, a talented craftswoman, Valentine travels to Italy to learn the rudiments of the trade and find special materials for a new shoe design—one that will hopefully outclass the family’s competitors. In the meantime, Valentine struggles to put a sour relationship behind her. She also enjoys the attentions of handsome, urbane Roman Falconi, the proprietor of a fine restaurant, who seems like the perfect match. But an unexpected business trip to Tuscany opens new doors for Valentine, and she finds herself falling in love—with Italy itself. Mixing the energy of contemporary New York with the old-world charm of Europe, Trigiani has produced a heartwarming love story—a briskly paced book filled with lavish details and romance aplenty. A reading group guide is available at harpercollins.com o 22 —JULIE HALE

WOMEN & MONEY

How to control your own purse strings Feature by Stephanie Gerber omen may be the great communicators, but given the state of the economy, it’s no surprise that ladies aren’t clamoring to talk about personal finances.

And January may top the list of the worst months to come out of the cave of denial as the post-holiday bills start pouring in.

To face your financial statement with less fear, we’ve found three books that mix selfhelp, financial how-to and a big dose of female sensibility. Each of these accessible books recommends opening up about money, and they give you the advice you need to make the conversations a little easier—whether it’s with your spouse, financial advisor or debt collector.

To get you inspired to take charge of your wealth (start with positive thinking!) in 2010, pick up Live It, Love It, Earn It: A Woman’s Guide to Financial Freedom (Portfolio, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 9781591842552). Marianna Olszewski, a popular money and lifestyle coach with years of Wall Street experience, writes in an engaging style that educates without being overwhelming.

Olszewski focuses first on maximizing your potential to achieve financial independence by finding balance in all areas of life (diet, sleep, exercise) and adding more fun to the everyday. It feels a bit like you’ve wandered into a “best life” episode of “Oprah,” but it succeeds in energizing and opening your mind to new possibilities.

Part two then gets into the financial practicalities of dealing with debt, cleaning up credit and saving for retirement. However, Olszewski goes beyond the basics by coaching the reader on uncovering why and how their individual money histories got them where they are today. She includes activities and questions to defuse emotions around money and even suggests that it’s OK to love money. The personalized “fun spending plan” reframes the money perspective to make it less boring than following a basic budget.

The final strategies focus on action, and the interactive approach helps you make the most of the advice. Whether you do it on your own, inspired by the personal stories from powerful women in the book, or start a group to work on the exercises together, Live It, Love It, Earn It will energize how you think about—and act on—money.

While you’re still feeling empowered, tackle Get Financially Naked: How to Talk Money with Your Honey (Adams Media, $12.95, 208 pages, ISBN 9781440502019). This succinct guide teaches women in committed relationships how to talk successfully about money with their mate—without fighting. It’s no surprise that many gals simply avoid this tough conversation, since 85 percent of all couples say money causes tension in their marriage (according to Money magazine). But, while the conversation may not be appropriate for a first date, authors Manisha Thakor and Sharon Kedar say it’s a must to discuss what you own, what you owe, your income and your credit scores before moving in together or getting married. No problem, right?

Start by baring all and getting naked with yourself first, then warm up to doing it with your partner. Helpful “foreplay” questions get the ball rolling, and the financial compatibility quiz is revealing and eye-opening. The authors are refreshingly honest, reassuring the reader that you don’t have to love—or even like— dealing with money to be successful. Their best advice is that personal finance should be simple. Focus on the big stuff: house, car, kids, retirement and family. And the common sense, straightforward advice on these five key lifetime expenses makes it truly seem easy.

It’s having the courage to have the “get naked” talk before saying “I do” that is really powerful. The roadmap developed by Thakor and Kedar helps readers navigate these landmine conversations and get to happily ever after.

Another distinctive female perspective on financial independence is A Purse of Your Own (Fireside, $15, 320 pages, ISBN 9781416570813). It’s based on a metaphor we can all relate to: an impulsive splurge on a designer bag to fool everyone into thinking we have it all put together. This is what author and wealth coach Deborah Owens calls a “counterfeit purse.”

With 20 years of financial industry experience, Owens turns the purse metaphor into a wealth philosophy and provides tips, action steps and “purseonality profiles” for her seven must-have wealthy habits. It starts with cleaning out that purse to cultivate a Wealthy Outlook that allows you to dream big again. The remaining habits teach the basics of investing, with a heavy focus on owning stocks.

Some of the best advice comes at the end as Owens details how to start your own Purse Club and covers nine “pursessentials. ” The no-nonsense tips on hiring a financial planner, speaking the financial lingo and establishing your daughter’s purse allow you to start putting your new wealth habits into practice with confidence.

Pick up any of these valuable books to start your purse makeover in 2010. o Stephanie Gerber writes from Kentucky, where her purse has turned into a diaper bag.

W

PERSONAL FINANCE

Getting and giving

Making your money work for you—and your world Feature by Linda M. Castellitto or those of you who’ve put “Get my finances under control” at the top of your New Year’s resolutions, we’ve compiled a reading list to make it happen. Whether you need a step-by-step approach to getting a handle on your money, advice for recovering from the market plunge or ways to work philanthropy into your budget, the advisors below have a plan to help. These six volumes vary in terms of voice, length and philosophy, but they all work toward the same goal: helping readers better manage their money so they can do good and enjoy life, worry-free. And what could be better than that?

F

Big book of personal finance First published in 1991, Making the Most of Your Money Now (Simon & Schuster, $35, 1,264 pages, ISBN 9780743269964) has grown by more than 200 pages and has been significantly revised to include advice for readers struggling to achieve balance in a still-unstable economy. Jane Bryant Quinn, a longtime financial journalist, shares her own financial missteps (there were more than a few) as a lead-in to advising readers on what she has learned, from “keep all your insurance plans simple” to “tune your BS detector to high.” This lengthy tome includes worksheets (in the appendices and throughout), filing-system strategies, a primer on CDs, advice on paying for college, retirement-planning tips and a lot more. While some of the information may seem rudimentary, the book’s structure makes it easy to flip to pertinent sections, and it provides plenty of information and ideas for undertaking a soup-to-nuts personalfinance improvement plan.

Do the math

Financial recovery, Cramer-style From his CNBC show “Mad Money” to the website he founded, TheStreet.com, to his numerous books

A powerful plan for giving From working at a refugee camp in the former Yugoslavia to conducting fundraising and generosity training at U.S. corporations to founding Raising Change (a fundraising group that works in America and abroad), Kathy LeMay has been actively involved in working to improve the lives of people around the globe.

In The Generosity Plan (Atria, $15, 272 pages, ISBN 9781582702346), she advocates for an incremental approach to effecting positive change, noting that if you’re generous in your daily life, you “will develop a habit of giving that will transform you and expand philanthropy to its fullest potential.” She recommends reflecting on your past giving—was it through money? Time?

What sorts of activities?— and identifying the causes that are most meaningful to you. A “giving formula” will determine how much money can comfortably be shared, especially in uncertain financial times, and giving goals can be set. An appendix offers further food for thought with questions and points to ponder—information that would be useful for passing along the philosophy of generosity and philanthropy to family, friends or colleagues. It’s a strong finish to a thoughtful, comprehensive resource.

Small donations, big impact While media stories about über-rich philanthropists—from Bill Gates to Oprah Winfrey and the like— may give the impression that only large donations can

lead to positive changes in the world, Wendy Smith begs to differ. In Give a Little: How Your Small Donations Can Transform Our World (Hyperion, $14.99, 368 pages, ISBN 9781401323400), she makes a strong argument for casting aside all-ornothing thinking in favor of making small donations. Among other statistics, she cites a study by Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy that found “most of the giving to the tsunami relief efforts came from gifts of less than $50 made by millions of Americans . . . similar to the charitable response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and what we believe occurred after Hurricane Katrina.” Armed with this information, and the knowledge that small contributions have a ripple effect, Smith profiles groups that ad­dress hunger, health, poverty, education and access to tools, information and infrastructure. She includes anecdotes about people and places that have benefited from small contributions, plus appendices with contact information and methods for assessing various organizations. Give a Little makes a compelling case for the value of including a “donations” line in our personal budgets—no matter how small the amount may be.  Linda M. Castellitto wrangles her finances in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Cutting through the clutter The first step toward improving your personal finances is getting organized, and Regina Leeds knows organizing: she’s the author of five books on achieving greater orderliness—and sanity—at home and at work.

In her latest, One Year to an Organized Financial Life (Da Capo, $16.95, 288 pages, ISBN 9780738213675), she has partnered with financial advisor Rus­­sell Wild to offer stepby-step advice for an orderly and effective approach to personal finance. Leeds describes the book as a “holistic resource . . . so you can live a life that is calmer, richer and organized.” Using what she describes as a “zen organizing” method, she takes readers through one year and recommends routines and strategies for getting your financial house in order. The daily, weekly and monthly goals are specific and manageable; those who follow each step are bound to have the promised peace of mind by year’s end.

—LINDA M. CASTELLITTO

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Saving for retirement can seem daunting or mysterious: we know we should do it, but aren’t sure how—or how much to save. In Your Money Ratios: 8 Simple Tools for Financial Security (Avery, $26, 272 pages, ISBN 9781583333631), Charles Farrell, an investment advisor and CBS Moneywatch columnist, has devised a set of tools aimed at helping readers be more aware and in control of their financial present and future. For starters, he writes, “All decisions you make should help you move from being a laborer to being a capitalist.” With that in mind, he describes key ratios (e.g., capital to income, mortgage to income) and offers formulas that will help readers determine how much they should be saving each year in order to retire at a particular age or income level. In addition to straight dollar-figure calculations, he explores and advises on investment vehicles, insurance and real estate.

Your Money Ratios is a no-nonsense, comprehensive resource for those ready to grab the reins of personal finance once and for all.

on money and investing, Jim Cramer has spent a long time educating consumers about investing. In his latest book, Jim Cramer’s Getting Back to Even: Your Personal Economic Recovery Plan (Simon & Schuster, $26, 368 pages, ISBN 9781439158012), he and co-writer/ nephew Cliff Mason, who’s head writer for “Mad Money,” dive right in to his advice for recovering from the 2008 stock-market crash and the continuing fallout: Chapter 1 is entitled “Don’t Give Up!” Cramer notes that he’s had personal experience with getting back to even—after his hedge fund was down $91 million in October 1998, he finished that year at a two percent profit. Of course, many readers may not be dealing in millions, so Cramer is careful to offer advice for new and experienced, wealthy and not-so-wealthy investors alike. Highlights include 25 rules for “post-apocalyptic investing” and details on five regional banks that earn high returns and also serve as templates for how to analyze and buy bank stocks. Throughout, Cramer mixes encouragement with signature exclamations, plus to-the-point exhortations like “Empathy is great, but it won’t make you money. You need concrete solutions, and this book is filled with them.”

23

FICTION

Keeping the faith in uncertain times fundity.

The novel opens with the elderly Mother Suzanne Ravenel, former headmistress of Mount St. Gabriel, who has been chosen by alumni to write a memoir and history of the school. Mount St. Gabriel, a Catholic school set in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina, was founded by a British nun whose personal concept of “holy daring” supported her through conversion

24

Signet, $7.99, 9780451228741

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PARANORMAL

ROMANCE

Daemon When a computer games designer dies, he leaves behind a program that unravels the Internet. It corrupts, kills, and runs independent of human control. Detective Peter Sebeck must wrest the world fromthe malevolent virtual enemy before its ultimate purpose is realized: todestroy civilization.

Death’s Mistress Dorina Basarab is a dhampir—halfhuman, half-vampire. Back home in Brooklynafter thedemiseof her insane Uncle Dracula, Dory’s hoping her life is about to calmdown. But soon Dory realizes someone is killing vampire Senate members, and if she can’t stop themurderer, her friendsmaybenext.

Early Dawn Matthew Coulter can’t stand to see a woman being mistreated. So when he spots EdenPaxton, who’s beenkidnapped by a band of murderous outlaws, Matthewfeels compelledtosave her. But is Matthew’s obsession with revenge stronger than their growing passionfor eachother?

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THRILLER

Bone Magic Another equinox is here, andlife’s gettingmoretumultuous for theD’Artigo sisters. Then, Camille is summoned to Otherworld, thinking she’ll reunite with her long-lost soul mate Trillian.

But once there, she must undergo a drastic ritual that will forever change her andthosesheloves.

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JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

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PAPERBACK PICKS

FICTION

PARANORMAL

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High Anxiety Kate Holly needs a temporary secretary. Amanda Davis is a competent worker with a friendly personality and—after altering her hairstyle and fashion sense to identically match Kate’s—more issues than a lifetime subscription to Psychology Today.

Running Hot Jayne Ann Krentz’s New York Times bestseller is “full of fun and thrills . . . irresistible (Seattle Times).”

When two gifted psychics, Librarian Grace Renquist and ex-cop-turnedbartender Luther Malone, join forces to hunt for a killer, the duo takes passiontoa whole newlevel.

Street Game The new GhostWalker novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan. Years ago, GhostWalkers Mack McKinley and Jaimie Fielding were lovers. Now they’ve been reunited on the violent streets byaruthless enemywhocould destroythemboth.

TheTemplar Cross Israeli archaeologist Rafi Wanounou comes to retired Lt. Col. John Holliday with desperate news. His niece, and Rafi’s fiancé, has been kidnapped.

Their search for Peggy will lead them to a conspiracy involving an ancient Egyptian legend and the darkest secretsof theOrder ofTemplar Knights.

to Catholicism, immigration to the United States and the opening of a Catholic school in a predominantly Protestant community.

Ravenel attended Mount St. Gabriel as a boarding student in the 1920s and stayed on as teacher and headmistress until the school closed in 1990. Her memories flow freely, but she cannot get past the difficult year of 1952, when the actions of a single headstrong ninth grader resulted in several girls leaving the school and her own temporary leave of absence. This incident continues to haunt Ravenel with feelings of unresolved anger and shame.

The teenager at the center of the commotion is Tildy Stratton, an obstinate and precocious young woman.

Tildy’s older sister, aunt and mother all attended Mount St. Gabriel, and Tildy is torn between forging GAIL GODWIN her own path and following the course of those who went before her. Her best friends, early bloomer Maud Norton and Chloe Vick, haunted by the memory of her dead mother (also a Mount St. Gabriel alumna), both struggle to assert themselves against the conflicting wishes, dreams and desires of family and friends. All the girls hover at the mid-point between childhood and adulthood, aware of their womanly powers and burgeoning knowledge but reluctant to make full use of them.

Complex intergenerational relationships of blood, friendship and passion abound in this powerful novel. Best friends jockey for position, closeness threatens to spill over into physical intimacy and the power struggles between mothers and daughters, teachers and students seethe and swarm. Godwin’s characters are worthy of our outrage as well as our sympathy and understanding, and she never shies away from the messy or the complex.

Unfinished Desires is based on Godwin’s own experiences at a Catholic day school in North Carolina, but the wise, human story she tells reaches beyond the boundaries of region and religion, satisfying any reader looking for a good story. o Lauren Bufferd writes from Nashville. © BETH BLISS

Review by Lauren Bufferd It’s only January, but if you plan on reading just one great novel in 2010, this might be it. Unfinished Desires is a big old-fashioned book about jealousy and passion at a Catholic girl’s school, written with best-selling author Gail Godwin’s trademark depth and humor. It goes down easy, but Godwin’s 13th novel is filled with penetrating observations on women’s friendships, family and faith; it may just surprise you with its pro-

Unfinished Desires

By Gail Godwin Random House $26, 416 pages ISBN 9780345483201

READ REVIEWS ONLINE AT BookPage.com

SPORTS

Building a football empire Review by Pete Croatto The National Football League is such a dominant force in American culture that it’s hard to imagine it ever suffering growing pains. After all, this is the same league whose games are a Sunday ritual for millions. But in the 1920s, professional football didn’t resonate with the public. It was the victim of poor organization and a bad reputation. In his terrific The First Star: Red Grange and the Barnstorming Tour that Launched the NFL, Sports Illustrated staff writer Lars Anderson examines how three men put the NFL on the path to legitimacy.

During his time at the University of Illinois, nobody could match Grange’s incendiary talent. According to Anderson, he “made plays on the field when it mattered most, not when the game was a blowout.” Grange entranced George Halas, coach/co-owner of the Chicago Bears, who knew that Grange could save the struggling league. Halas worked tirelessly with Grange’s agent, C.C. Pyle, and secured pro football’s first superstar.

The deal made Pyle—a smooth talker and sharp promoter—and Grange barrels of money. Grange then had to earn it by playing with the Bears on a gruesome 19-game barnstorming tour consisting of 10 games in 18 days on the East The First Star Coast. After a Christmas break, the team played nine games By Lars Anderson Random House in five weeks, starting in Florida and ending in Seattle.

Though it’s fascinating, Anderson doesn’t just recap the $26, 256 pages horrors of the tour; he also offers rich portraits of the men ISBN 9781400067299 Also available on audio who saved a sport. Grange, the product of a less than affluent childhood, turned pro because he needed money. But he earned it, legitimizing the game and making its players fashionable, Anderson explains.

Halas eventually became a football legend and multimillionaire, but in the early years his mother urged him to return to his old railroad job. And Pyle, simply put, is the character Mark Twain never created.

Brought to life by Anderson’s storytelling prowess and biographical flair, The First Star is a gripping account of the creation of an American institution. o Pete Croatto is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.

HISTORY

Ordinary life in an extraordinary place

Pat Tillman’s sad tale It would be hard to find a newspaper-reading/TV-watching American who didn’t know that Pat Tillman walked away from a promising, highly paid career in the NFL to join the Army in 2002 and that, as an elite Army Ranger, he was killed in Afghanistan in April 2004. The details of his death—that he was killed by “friendly fire” and that the Army and the Bush administration went to great lengths to cover it up, using Tillman as a poster boy and keeping the truth from his family—came out only after years of his mother’s tireless crusade. Soberly narrated by Scott Brick, Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory (Random House Audio, $40, 13 hours unabridged, ISBN 9780739357842) sets the story in the complex context

BY SUKEY HOWARD of our post-9/11 entry into two wars and offers a compelling portrait of Tillman, fleshed out by interviews with his family, the wife he so adored, his friends and his comrades, as well as his diaries. The young man who emerges is a strong-willed, natural leader: curious, constantly reading, a true patriot who lived by his own set of rules. In his almost minute-by-minute description of Tillman’s sad, pointless death, Krakauer makes the “fog of war” intensely real, intensely affecting. An American tragedy, eloquently told.

Laugh therapy If doctors could prescribe laugh therapy, David Sedaris “pills” might prove more popular than Lipitor or an unmentionable beginning with V. In lieu of Sedaris-in-tablet-form and much more fun, we have the real thing, a new, audio-only, previously unreleased recording of the divine David reading his own laugh-out-loud essays. I’d heard some of Live for Your Listening Pleasure (Hachette Audio, $17.98, 75 minutes unabridged, ISBN 9781600247187) on NPR, but that only made it better, like finding a treasured possession that’s been misplaced. Sedaris can tease out the humor in almost any situation and make it more amusing with his unique timing and delivery. And here he lets his fabulous talent for mimicry shine. I recommend keeping a Sedaris CD close at hand for those all-too-common bleak moments when you need a pick-me-up guaranteed to make you smile and see the funnier side of life.

A call to action In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore put global warming in the global spotlight. In the next phase, Gore held a series of “Solution Summits” with cutting-edge scientists, policy makers and others to find real solutions to this staggering problem. Those potential solutions are gathered in Our Choice (Simon & Schuster Audio, $29.99, 6.5 hours abridged, ISBN 9780743572040), his new clarion call to all of us, everywhere, to heed the warning and find the moral courage to do what needs to be done.

Audio of the month

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Review by Alison Hood The power of a personal story is wielded to strong effect in Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, a largely oral history “based upon seven years of conversations with North Koreans.” In an expertly constructed narrative that blends riveting storytelling, thorough research and astute investigate reporting, Demick paints a shocking picture of daily life in the socialist Republic of North Korea through the stories of six defectors now living in South Korea.

At the close of World War II, after Japan’s surrender in 1945, the U.S. military arbitrarily divided the Korean peninsula into two sectors, North and South, to be overseen by the Soviet Union and the United States. Kim Il-sung soon came to power in North Korea, creating an Orwellian socialist regime that plunged the country into economic chaos and famine. By the 1990s, manufacturing and trade had stopped, jobs and salaries dried up and government systems regulating health care and food distribution crumbled. Millions of people starved to death. Those who survived lived in darkness, both metaphorical and, due to the universal Nothing to Envy lack of electrical power, actual.

The book’s chilling opening, which shows an entirely By Barbara Demick darkened night sky over North Korea, stands in terrible Spiegel & Grau contrast to the “enlightened” doctrine that every North Ko- $26, 336 pages rean is taught: that their country is superior, that their “dear ISBN 9780385523905 father” (now Kim Il-sung’s son, Kim Jong-il) is their loving Also available on audio protector-provider and that they have “nothing to envy.”

The stories of the North Koreans profiled give the lie to this line of propaganda; theirs are lives of deprivation, secrecy and fear.

Nothing to Envy is an eye-opening book about a country that remains mostly hidden and off-limits to the rest of the world. Demick expertly balances her excellent grasp of North Korea’s history and culture with six sensitively presented personal stories, each rife with the emotional trauma of cultural betrayal, to create an indelible portrait of one of the last modern Communist regimes. o Alison Hood writes from Marin County, California.

THE SPOKEN WORD

Hilary Mantel, author of this year’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, Wolf Hall (Macmillan Audio, $49.99, 23 hours unabridged, 9781427210166), conjures up Henry VIII and his vast embattled court—including Anne Boleyn and, most especially, Thomas Cromwell—so brilliantly, so effectively that, had she been living then, she would probably have been accused of witchcraft. Her ability to get inside the characters in this extraordinary, wonderfully paced saga, to capture their essences, their language, their thoughts and cadences is amazing. And Simon Slater’s reading is equal to Mantel’s masterpiece, his voice shifting to match each speaker, with touches of rough British dialect, German and French accents expertly handled. Cromwell, a man who can “draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury,” stars in this pageant of the upheaval caused by Henry’s unrelenting desire to divorce Katherine of Aragon to marry Anne and his unyielding need for a male heir. In tracing Cromwell’s rise from a lowly blacksmith’s son to Henry’s most powerful and trusted aide, Mantel has set a 25 new standard for historical fiction. o

MEET Taeeun Yoo

CHILDREN’S BOOKS On the streets of Mumbai Review by Dean Schneider “We stay, we starve,” says Gopal’s father, Baba, having decided to move his family from their rural village to Mumbai, where there are jobs and a new life. Eleven-year-old Gopal is torn. The city offers “film stars, cloud-reaching buildings, and mirror-shiny cars,” but he will miss sitting in the gorus-chinch tree dreaming of pirates and kings and magicians.

Gopal is a natural storyteller with a love for the details of his village life—the hills and forest, the pond and birds—and this skill will save his life.

When they get to Mumbai, Gopal realizes that the city is being flooded with people from the rural states looking for a better life. When the family is separated from Baba and ends up sleeping on the streets, Gopal feels the need to earn money for his family and is soon conned by a man promising a job in a factory. Gopal ends up a slave with five other boys, locked in a little building and forced to make beaded frames in harsh conditions, for no money and little food. They’re not even allowed to speak or use their real names.

Author Kashmira Sheth was born in India and lived in Mumbai from ages eight to 17. In Boys Without Names, she ably portrays Gopal’s indomitable spirit, as his illicit evening storytelling sessions create a bond with the other Boys without boys. Together, they become a family, even though each Names has already lost a family of his own. With echoes of the Lost Boys in Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion and By Kashmira Sheth & Bray/HarperCollins even Slumdog Millionaire, this is a tightly woven tale of a Balzer $15.99, 320 pages boy’s will to survive, the power of story and the bonds of ISBN 9780061857607 friends tied together in the hope of a better day. Like the Ages 9 to 14 story of the jackal and the ants Gopal tells one evening, the boys work together to defeat the evil boss.

Adroitly contrasting the rich sensory detail of Gopal’s village life and the sensory deprivation of his factory life, Sheth has created a story worthy of her storytelling protagonist. o Dean Schneider teaches middle school English in Nashville.

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

Steps on a perilous journey

26

Taeeun Yoo was born in Korea and moved to New York City to attend the School of Visual Arts, where she received an M.F.A. She has illustrated four children’s books, including the January release So Many Days (Atheneum, $15.99, 40 pages, ISBN 9781416958576), written by Alison McGhee.

Review by Robin Smith Ludelphia Bennett has quilting in her fingertips, her heart and her brain. Her 10 years of life have been both a challenge and a joy. Blind in one eye and wearing a patch, Lu works alongside her mother and father caring for the animals and fields they sharecrop. Her closest companion is Delilah, her beloved mule. Lu’s family lives in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, far from any town or city or signs of modernity, but not far from the ravages of the Great Depression.

When Lu’s mother is on the edge of death following the birth of a daughter, the young girl makes a rash decision that changes her life and the lives of the people of Gee’s Bend. Tucking her quilting in her pocket, Lu decides to trek to Camden, the nearest town, where she hears there is a doctor who might help her ailing mother. Lu’s journey, like most heroic quests, brings her face-to-face with strange folks and new situations that will test her and change her.

Running like a solid thread through this captivating novel are the words of Lu’s mother, spoken while she taught her daughter about quilting. Lu has learned that a quilt needs to be balanced and that, if you make a mistake Leaving with color or stitching, you need to take the quilt apart Gee’s Bend and start again. Look for fabric wherever you are, even in the home of a crazed white woman who holds your fate, By Irene Latham and the fate of all the folks of Gee’s Bend, in her hand. Tell Putnam $16.99, 240 pages your story through your quilt.

ISBN 9780399251795 Irene Latham stitches a beautiful word quilt of her own Ages 9 to 14 with Leaving Gee’s Bend, which is based on the real history of the community. There was a time when the owner’s wife foreclosed on all the residents of the Bend, taking all their animals and tools as collateral, leaving them unable to farm or cook. And the Red Cross really did step in and save the settlement. Today the stunning Gee’s Bend quilts are shown in exhibits around the world. Latham has looked behind the genius of their handiwork and told a tale that will stay with the reader forever—just like a quilt. o Robin Smith is stitching an improvisational quilt, inspired by the quilters of Gee’s Bend.

TEEN READING Twin siblings take Patterson readers on a supernatural thrill ride

M

Witch & Wizard paints a foreboding picture of what the world would be like if innovation and curiosity were criminal. What inspired you to tell this story?

The idea for The New Order came about after thinking, what would it be like to have all art, music and freedom of expression taken away? And what if the youth were somehow enabled to fight back for these freedoms that they hold so dear?

tially. I only read when I was required to read. Later in college, when I took a night-shift job at a local hospital to help pay my tuition, I started reading a lot. That’s when I fell in love with books.

How does the child and teen you were then inform your books for young readers today?

© KELLLY CAMPBELL

INTERVIEW BY LINDA M. CASTELLITTO otivated by a desire to interest his son, Jack, in reading, super-successful author James Patterson took his first step into young adult fiction in 2005 with the Maximum Ride series, which—like his books for adults—soared straight to the top of bestseller lists. Now the seemingly tireless Patterson is launching a new series for teen readers with the supernatural adventure story Witch & Wizard (Little, Brown, $17.99, 320 pages, ISBN 9780316036245). The heroes are twin 15-year-olds Wisty (a witch) and Whit (a wizard), whose teenaged existence is rudely interrupted by the arrival of henchmen representing The New Order, a totalitarian regime bent on suppressing any hint of nonconformity.

We reached the prolific Patterson at his home office in Palm Beach, Florida, to ask about the new book, his efforts to get kids excited about reading and more. The New Order likely would not approve.

JAMES PATTERSON

What sort of research did you do for the book?

You’ll find that the book is eerily similar to a lot that has happened in recent history. It’s real scary stuff—and scarier still is that people really have enforced such laws outside of Whit and Wisty’s fictitious world.

What do you hope readers will get out of Witch & Wizard?

I don’t really do messages, but I do like a good story. And I hope readers get lost in this one. The book introduces a new world—or worlds, actually—and a strong, fiery brother-and-sister duo. They learn they are a little different when their powers start up, powers that are enhanced as the world around them gets more dangerous. For those who have been waiting for a series as mouthwatering and addictive as Harry Potter, this’ll do it.

Did your son give you any interesting and/or surprising feedback?

I always had a creative spirit. It was when I was older, working at that hospital, that I realized I couldn’t go any longer without writing down all the wild stuff I was witnessing.

What kills me is that so many kids, like me as a boy, miss out on the joy of reading. I believe we should spend less time worrying about the quantity of books children read and more time introducing them to quality books that will turn them on and then them into lifelong readers—they’ll thank us for it.

Do you have a different approach to writing your books for young readers vs. writing your adult fiction?

I don’t discriminate against ideas on the basis of the audiences they’re best for. I like to think I do romances when it’s a romantic storyline, I do thrillers when they’re thrilling, and I write for kids when the idea for a story would work best with them. The various characters bring about the books’ differences more than a conscious decision to write a different way.

What do you hope to accomplish with your children’s book website, ReadKiddoRead.com?

We need to let parents know on a regular basis that “good parents give great books.” It’s surprising how many people don’t really think to do that; they rely on schools, or think the reading habit will kick in on its own. ReadKiddoRead lists only the best books out of the thousands of children’s books published every year—it’s an easy tool for parents to see what’s out there that will actually work to get their kids engaged. I also talk to a lot of great authors, and we give away free books every month.

Jack is a tough critic. I usually come to him with the finished package and pray that he likes it.

Will there be more Whit and Wisty books? Any tidbits you can share?

Were you an avid reader as a child?

What’s next?

Although I was a very good student (and high school valedictorian) growing up in Newburgh, New York, I had very little interest in reading for enjoyment—at least ini-

Stay tuned for an illustrated series I’m working on about middle school. And the sixth book in the Maximum Ride series, Fang, will be out in March. o

A new beginning at flight’s end

On grieving and growing up

Review by Angela Leeper “I don’t want ends. I want beginnings,” thinks Charlotte “Charlie” Steer when her single mother moves the two of them to a house in the country in Flightsend. After her mother’s recent delivery of a stillborn baby, Charlie reluctantly accepts the move to Flightsend, a fixer-upper that backs up to an abandoned World War II landing strip. But the 16-year-old can’t figure out why her mother would turn her back on her boyfriend Sean, the baby’s father and the only father Charlie has known for the last five years, especially when he’s eight years younger than her mother, attractive, funny and committed.

During the summer before Year 12, as Charlie finds her niche in the village as a waitress at a cultural retreat, she begins to understand relationships and the complicated forms and boundaries of love and friendship in this multilayered narrative. As she tries to rekindle the romance between Sean and her mother, she begins to wonder if her feelings for him as a stepfather have turned into a more mature love.

Complicating her emotions are a young art teacher’s subtle Flightsend yet inappropriate touches and encouragement when she decides to study art. Then there’s the German pilot who By Linda Newbery Fickling stealthily lands near Flightsend, knows the secret behind David $15.99, 256 pages the hidden cross in the woods and stirs her mother out of ISBN 9780385752039 her depression.

Ages 13 and up Newbery makes Charlie and her circle of loved ones the kind of people readers care about with her realistic yet quiet storytelling and vivid descriptions of their countryside environs. She gives the bright teen a new way to look at endings and lets her see that from loss comes healing, from goodbyes come new hellos and from a move comes a home. o Angela Leeper is a librarian at the University of Richmond.

Review by James Neal Webb Most adults would probably agree that the wisdom that comes with age is in large part due to having experienced both love and the death of a loved one. They’d also probably agree that while the former can be painful, the latter is infinitely more so, and it’s the one thing they wouldn’t wish on anyone else. In Jennifer R. Hubbard’s debut novel The Secret Year, Colt Morrissey isn’t so lucky: Julia Vernon, the girl he’s been secretly seeing for the past year, has died tragically, and to make it worse, he’s had to keep the grief bottled up.

Then one day, Julia’s brother Michael confronts him with Julia’s journal, tells him he knows about their relationship and gives him the book.

In the days and weeks that follow, as he slowly relives their romance from Julia’s point of view, Colt will change the way he feels about Julia, his friends, his family and ultimately himself. It won’t be easy, though; Syd, the girl who’s been his pal since grade school, has suddenly taken an interest in him that is more than friendly, and Colt in turn is finding himself attracted to Kirby, Michael’s girlfriend. And at The Secret Year home, Colt’s older brother comes home from college with a startling announcement. All of these elements pivot around By Jennifer R. Hubbard the dynamic of the culture clash between Colt’s lower-class Viking 192 pages neighborhood and Julia’s friends (and boyfriend Austin) $16.99, ISBN 9780670011537 from the “right” side of the tracks on Black Mountain.

Ages 14 and up Teen readers will see a lot of themselves in this book, and that includes some things that parents may find uncomfortable. Hubbard succeeds in avoiding the obvious clichés in The Secret Year; her characterizations are realistic, as is the plot. There are no easy solutions in life, and no storybook endings—we make the best of what fate gives us, and that is what Colt does. o 27 James Neal Webb has more wisdom than he’d like, unfortunately.

Assuming they make it out alive in the first . . . yes, there will be more.

JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

This month’s top publisher picks

HC 9780316013567 $16.99

HC 9781423113539 $16.99

HC 9780769660622 $14.95

The Lion and the Mouse

Jerry Pinkney In this adaptation of one of Aesop’s most celebrated fables, a ferocious lion and a cowering mouse learn that no act of kindness is ever wasted.

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

First Ballet

Ten Little Bears

School Specialty Counting is fun with the Ten Little Bears! This book features a rhyming tale, 3-D characters and a pop-up that reinforces reading development while encouraging children to count.

School Specialty

Deanna Caswell, Illustrated by Elizabeth Matthews In this beautiful picture book, Caswell and Matthews conspire to recreate all the joy and wonder of a child’s first theatrical experience—to relive again and again.

Hyperion

HC 9780545153775 $16.99

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood

David Benedictus, Illustrated by Mark Burgess It was 80 years ago, on the publication of The House at Pooh Corner, when Christopher Robin said good-bye to Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. Now they are all back together in new adventures.

Dutton’s Children’s

Family Huddle

Peyton Manning, Eli Manning and Archie Manning, Illustrated by Jim Madsen Huddle up with the most famous family in football—the Mannings! Peyton and Eli are now NFL superstars, but they are still kids in Family Huddle. The boys joke around and play football at every opportunity.

Scholastic

Amy Huntley A haunting and hopeful debut teen novel about a girl who revisits random moments in her life through the objects she’s lost—and learns surprising things about her life and death.

Balzer & Bray

HC 9780470423547 $29.95

So Easy

Ellie Krieger From best-selling author and Food Network personality comes So Easy, for creating delicious and healthy recipes—easy enough for even the busiest people to prepare.

Wiley

The Maze Runner

James Dashner Thomas wakes up in the Glade, remembering nothing, surrounded by a group of boys. Like Thomas, they remember nothing. To survive, they must solve the maze that surrounds them and escape..

Delacorte Books for Young Readers

HC 9780753461075 $22.99

HC 9780061776793 $16.99

The Everafter

HC 9780756654412 $40

HC 9780385737944 $16.99

HC 9780525421603 $19.99

Lost Worlds

Role of a Lifetime

James Brown with Nathan Whitaker This part memoir, part self-help book includes lessons from James Brown’s faith and life experiences as a sports commentator and athlete.

FaithWords

Rita Carter Combining the latest findings in neuroscience with state-of-theart illustrations, this comprehensive book by acclaimed science writer Rita Carter reveals fascinating details about our most potent human organ. Includes an interactive DVD. DK

HC 9781596433953 $29.99

John Howe This visually stunning book takes readers on a historical, archaeological and mythological journey through lost worlds such as Atlantis, Camelot and Mohenjo-Daro.

Kingfisher

HC 9780446541176 $24.99

The Human Brain Book

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book Edited by Anita Silvey In this family gift book edited by Anita Silvey, more than 100 celebrities and public figures recall inspiring lessons learned from children’s books.

Roaring Brook

HC 9780764162411 $29.99

PB 9780061470912 $16.99

The Deluxe Food Lover’s Companion

State by State

Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst This enhanced new reference volume will give home chefs more knowledge about good food and elegant dining. It is a perfect gift for anyone who loves to cook and eat.

Barron’s Educational Series

Edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey Inspired by the classic WPA State Guides of the 1930s, this modern collection features original, thought-provoking portraits of each of the 50 states.

Ecco

HC 9781605420714 $25.95

HC 9781592642557 $24.95

The Sound of Building Coffins Louis Maistros Meticulously drawn in lyrical prose, this tale of death and rebirth, devastation and redemption, will draw you into a world of beauty and pain, as alluring as it is dangerous.

The Toby Press

Happy: A Memoir

Heather Graham The greatest magic of Christmas is the enchantment of true love in this illustrated romantic masterpiece by New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham.

Medallion Press

Alex Lemon

HC 9781577316718 $18

Have a New Husband by Friday

Timothy Keller The New York Times bestseller from a “pioneer of the new urban Christians” (Christian Today magazine) that offers a solid platform for true believers and a powerful argument for pursuing the belief in God. Riverhead

Dr. Kevin Leman Self-help guru Dr. Kevin Leman shows even the most frustrated wife how she can open her husband’s heart—in just five days.

Revell

HC 9781578606030 $24

Cincinnatus: The Secret Plot to Save America

Rusty McClure & David Stern A PGA tournament fixing scheme links a washed-up golfer and a DOJ attorney. The duo is challenged by a powerful brotherhood formed during America’s quest for independence and encounter paranormal mysteries as they try to prevent a plot of draconian consequences.

Ternary Publishers

Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera

Ron Schick Author and historian Ron Schick delivers a landmark publication that sheds new light on the work of Norman Rockwell, one of America’s most celebrated illustrators.

Little, Brown

Guardians of Being

Eckhart Tolle, Illustrated by Patrick McDonnell Combining words of wisdom by Eckhart Tolle with delightful illustrations by Patrick McDonnell, this book offers lessons of the present moment, as embodied by the dogs and cats who share our world.

New World Library

HC 9781605295954 $23.99

Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire

Grayton Carter, Illustrated by Risko A revealing glimpse into the lives of 101 prominent pop-culture figures, culled from the popular Proust Questionnaire page of Vanity Fair. A hilarious, candid and endlessly fascinating collection.

Rodale Books

HC 9780446539258 $35

HC 9780316006934 $40

HC 9780547134642 $28

How to Be a Movie Star

Happy is an electric portrait of a young man confronting mortality and the limits of his own body. This moving memoir of poet Alex Lemon is a heart-wrenching story of illness and addiction told in unflinching prose.

Scribner

HC 9780800719128 $17.99

PB 9781594483493 $16

The Reason for God

HC 9781416550235 $25

There Be Dragons

True Compass

Edward M. Kennedy For the first time, one of America’s greatest leaders tells his personal story—of his legendary family, politics and 50 years at the center of national events.

Twelve

William J. Mann “This is a smart book about a surprisingly savvy superstar. It’s one of the best Hollywood biographies I’ve ever read.”

—Ed Sikov, author of Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

PB 9781401341220 $14.99

The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club Gil McNeil A winning tale for every woman who has ever dreamed of starting over, or being a better mother or knitting a really nice scarf.

Hyperion

HC 9781845334840 $45

New Encyclopedia of Gardening Techniques

American Horticultural Society Learn up-to-date skills in this practical book of step-by-step techniques from the American Horticultural Society. Gardeners will love the definitive explanations and color illustrations.

Octopus

HC 9781586487737 $26.95

Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit

Andrew A. Rooney This wonderful, diverse collection spanning the writing career of the celebrated 60 Minutes commentator and best-selling author is a great gift and must-have for fans.

Public Affairs

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41478

E

ver since the first humans built a fire in their dark cave, people have realized the importance of proper indoor lighting. But ever since Edison invented the light bulb, lighting technology has, unfortunately, remained relatively prehistoric.

COOKING Greener and leaner If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to go greener, go meatless or go with less meat, Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health: More than 200 New Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes for Delicious and Nutrient-Rich Dishes (Simon & Schuster, $24.99, 368 pages, ISBN 9781416548874), the 12th cookbook by the Moosewood Collective, one of the most respected names in whole food cooking, is a great way to get with the program. The 19 fine folks who own and operate Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York—many of whom have been together since 1973—cook and share food focused on ethnic grain-based cuisines, high in plant foods and low in saturated fats, that avoid additives and artificial, synthetic processed ingredients. Their concern here is to come up with “healthier ways

BY SYBIL PRATT to prepare some of our old favorites” and to add new dishes that will soon become favorites. Though I can’t tell you if their recommendations are truly healthier (that’s a matter for the medical/nutritional pros), I can tell you that many of these recipes will please even the most committed carnivores and delight those of us looking for ways to prepare everyday dishes that may be better for our bodies and better for our planet.

Stirring it up Barbara Lynch grew up in a working-class housing project in South Boston, eating food that came out of a box, jar or can. If she hadn’t taken Mrs. Logozzo’s Home Ec class in high school, she might never have found her true calling. But she did, and with a lot of hard work and a true love of food, she’s now a James Beard Award-winning chef and the owner of seven culinary establishments in Boston. Lynch is a “big believer in first impressions,” as am I, and after my first flip through Stir: Mixing It Up In the Italian Tradition (HMH, $35, 352 pages, ISBN 9780618576814), I was ready to spend a lot more time with these recipes. Lynch’s take on food has depth and sensual appeal; she’s passionate about cooking and wants you to savor that special joy. Most of her food is not for weeknight quickies, but for those precious times when you can slow down and relish the process of creating a delicious meal. Tomato Tarte Tatin (small treats with explosive flavor), Creamy Chestnut Bisque, Spicy Lobster Bolognese, Chicken Meatball Lasagnettes (yes, individual lasagnas), Red Wine-Braised Shortribs and tangy Yogurt Panna Cotta are just a small sampling of Lynch’s culinary creativity, all carefully detailed here.

At home with Marco

A new global phenomenon Review by John T. Slania Save for our popular culture and our fast food, there is little that the United States exports anymore. But move over Miley, Madonna and McDonald’s: America’s newest export is madness. At least, that’s the thesis of Ethan Watters’ Crazy Like Us. Watters argues that Americans are as overbearing and influential in their treatment of mental health as they are with their other major exports. “In teaching the rest of the world to think like us,” he writes, “we have been, for better and worse, homogenizing the way the world goes mad.” More specifically, American-born psychoses like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia are being taught to people in foreign countries. And because American drug companies stand to make billions from treating these worldwide maladies, they are encouraging this behavior.

Watters argues that because of cultural, religious and other historical differences, a one-size-fits-all approach to mental health treatment doesn’t work: “Cross-cultural researchers and anthropologists . . . have shown that the experience of mental illness cannot be separated from culture.”

He supports his position with detailed case studies in which Western doctors failed in their treatment of mental health Crazy Like Us disorders in foreign countries. And from his research, he By Ethan Watters makes some eyebrow-raising allegations, such as that in Free Press Hong Kong, teenagers began suffering from anorexia after $26, 320 pages Western experts started raising awareness of the disorder. He ISBN 9781416587088 also posits that when Western crisis counselors swooped in to treat the PTSD they expected after a tsunami devastated a portion of Sri Lanka, in some cases they actually caused local communities more distress.

The major defect of Crazy Like Us is that it doesn’t spend enough time acknowledging that perhaps in some cases, the lessons Americans are teaching foreign nations about mental health treatment might actually be worthwhile. For instance, do Third World countries with no concept of mental disorders benefit in any way when Western doctors provide treatment? Still, the provocative thesis and the exhaustive research behind Watters’ examples makes Crazy Like Us worthy of consideration as we grapple to understand the impact of globalization—even if it is just a state of mind. o John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

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JANUARY 2010 BOOKPAGE = www.bookpage.com

In his foreword to Marco Canora’s Salt to Taste (Rodale, $35, 288 pages, ISBN 9781594867804), renowned “celebrity chef” Tom Colicchio tells us that he knew Marco had “good hands”—that innate knack, the touch and talent that make a great cook—when he was just a newcomer to the sizzling stoves at Gramercy Tavern. Putting those hands to good use, Canora has come a long way since then, with three eminent eateries in New York and now this fabulous debut cookbook that honors his Tuscan heritage and his ardor for the simple and seasonal. The title reflects his overall approach to cooking, relying on your senses to guide you rather than on rigid recipes, depending on your taste buds to coax out intense flavors. When you “salt to taste,” you have to sample, smell, listen and watch as you cook, and Canora tries to make this process understandable, building your confidence while he’s at it, so that you can develop the culinary savvy the pros take for granted. Canora uses an excellent device for imparting his advice, tips and thoughtful guidance; almost every recipe (and there are over 100) has highlighted ingredients and techniques that are detailed and explained in the margins—it’s as if he’s standing right there next to you. o

PSYCHOLOGY

31

WORDNOOK

By the editors of Merriam-Webster

Fit for a king

Roll of the dice

Dear Editor: My wife and I own a 200-year-old house and have been renovating it over the past several years. She calls the renovation a Sisyphean task, but won’t tell me what that means. Can you?

I. C. Whiting, Maine

Dear Editor: My mom used to like to use the phrase at sixes and sevens to describe something that was in a disorderly state.

Can you tell me the origin of this saying?

L. W. Sioux City, Iowa

A task described as Sisyphean is one that requires continual effort and will probably never be completed.

The word derives from the legend of Sisyphus, a king of ancient Corinth.

According to the story, the king cheated Death by having him chained so that he couldn’t bring Sisyphus to the underworld. As a result, no one could die. But Death was rescued by Ares, the god of war, and Sisyphus was forced to Hades. Before leaving, however, he instructed his wife, Merope, not to perform the customary ceremonies and to leave his corpse unburied. When he arrived at Hades, he demanded to return to Corinth to punish his wife for failing to properly perform his funeral rites.

He was allowed to do so, and having once again escaped Death, he resumed his life with the living.

Eventually Death reclaimed Sisyphus, and it is for the eternal punishment he received that he is most famous.

He was condemned to push a huge boulder repeatedly up a hill, only to have it roll back down again every time it nears the top. It is this part of the legend that gives rise to the use of Sisyphean to refer to toil that seemingly has no end.

The phrase sixes and sevens has been around in various forms since the 14th century. Chaucer used it in 1374 in “Troilus and Criseyde,” where it appears in the phrase to set on six and seven, meaning “to risk one’s all” or “to be careless.”

The origins of sixes and sevens are most likely in the language of old dice games. In Chaucer’s day, cinque was the word for “five” and sice was the word for “six.”

In one game, a roll of cinque and sice was a long shot and to bet on such a roll or to set on cinque and sice was considered extremely risky or even foolish.

Over time, the meaning of to set on cinque and sice became extended, and it was used to describe general carelessness or the confusion and disorder that might result from it. Cinque and sice became six and seven and later sixes and sevens. The use most familiar today, in which at sixes and sevens has the meaning “being in disorder,” emerged in the 16th century.

The switch from cinque (five) to seven may have occurred simply because they sound and look a bit alike, or it may be a joke on the idea of rolling a seven (impossible with one die) or on the unlucky sum of six and seven—13.

All wet Dear Editor: What does the word crab in the phrase catch a crab mean? I’ve heard it used in reference to crew racing, but have not been able to figure out the meaning.

K. D. Amherst, Massachusetts To catch a crab in rowing is to make an error in technique that can have some nasty results. What happens is that the rower fails to lift the oar completely out of the water on the return stroke. The resulting force of the water on the blade can be enough to drive the oar’s handle into the rower. The rower can be unseated, and the boat even capsized, through this blunder. The phrase has also been used to refer to the rower missing a stroke entirely (i.e., the oar never dips into the water on the stroke) or making any other faulty stroke, but these uses are regarded as improper by people initiated in the sport.

The phrase catch a crab most likely originated with the observation that this clumsy stroke makes it appear that the rower has literally caught a crab on the end of the oar, and that the crab is holding the oar down under the water. The phrase is very old, dating back to the 18th century.  Please send correspondence regarding Word Nook to:

Language Research Service P.O. Box 281 Springfield, MA 01102