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america’s book review
HOT PURSUIT
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Hampton Sides on the search for MLK’s killer
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sarah silverman Controversial comedian shows her softer side
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life after ‘pi’ Yann Martel’s new novel is a stellar second act
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emily giffin talks marriage, family and forgiveness
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contents
may 2010 w w w. B o o k Pa g e . c o m
features 12
emily giffin
interview yann martel
Beatrice and Virgil’s talking animals put another face on a very human evil
Marriage, family and fidelity
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hampton sides An international manhunt
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sarah silverman Meet the author of The Bedwetter
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mother’s day
Q&A with the author of Innocent
lynne rae perkins
24 NONFICTION
Writing is a family affair
TOP PICK: The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick Also reviewed: Get Capone by Jonathan Eig;
graduation Preparing for the rest of your life
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20 FICTION
TOP PICK: Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende Also reviewed: Private Life by Jane Smiley; Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey; The Long Song by Andrea Levy; Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok; Every Last One by Anna Quindlen; Innocent by Scott Turow; Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden; The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer; The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel
Three cheers for Mom!
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reviews
scott turow
tom lichtenheld Meet the author-illustrator of Bridget’s Beret
Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House by Megham Daum; A Game of Character by Craig Robinson; Winston’s War by Max Hastings; The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore; Passages in Caregiving by Gail Sheehy
30 CHILDREN’S TOP PICK: Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine Also reviewed: The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan; Please Take Me for a Walk by Susan Gal; Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman; Bullet Point by Peter Abrahams; The Six Rules of Maybe by Deb Caletti
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departments 03 03 04
buzz girl Bestseller watch Well read An American life story
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audio Will he get a second chance?
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author enablers Every cookbook needs a hook
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whodunit Inspired by real life
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book clubs What’s new in paperback
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romance
america’s book review
It’s getting warmer
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Lifestyles Making time for Mom
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cooking Comme les Français
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departments Finally, franzen
Our publishing insider gets the skinny on tomorrow’s bestsellers
The return of harry? This year’s Easter Egg Roll at the White House was a star-studded affair. Among the notable appearances? J.K. Rowling, reading from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. When asked by reporters if she plans to publish another book any time soon, Rowling responded, “I’m quite sure in the not-too-distant future, I will bring out another book.” According to CNN, she did not rule out the possibility of “another ‘Potter’-themed novel somewhere down the line.” Potter fans, start your engines.
bestseller watch Release dates for some of the guaranteed blockbusters hitting shelves in May:
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spoken from the heart By Laura Bush
Scribner, $30, ISBN 9781439155202 The highly anticipated memoir from the notoriously private former first lady.
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executive intent By Dale Brown
Morrow, $26.99, ISBN 9780061560859 It’s president against vice president in Brown’s near-future political thriller.
last night at chateau marmont By Lauren Weisberger
Simon & Schuster, $25.99 ISBN 9781439136614 What happens when normal girls are left behind by their new-celeb exes? They get revenge in Weisberger’s latest.
It’s been nine long years since readers fell in love with Jonathan Franzen and The Corrections. Though he published two novels before The Corrections, and has published a collection of essays and a memoir since, audiences have been rabid for a new Franzen novel. And on August 31, they’ll get one: Freedom, published by FSG. Here’s our summary: Freedom centers on Patty and Walter Berglund, a couple who lead the first wave of eco-conscious city-dwellers to colonize a slowly gentrifying neighborhood in St. Paul. They’re “pioneers of Whole Foods” who lead an exemfranzen plary yuppified lifestyle—until they don’t. Suddenly their son would rather live in the McMansion next door with their Republican neighbors; Walter is working for a coal company and Patty is falling apart. Sounds like material ripe for Franzen’s picking. Now, how do we get our hands on an advance copy?
MORE FROM MEYER Look out, Twilight fans—Stephenie Meyer has a trick up her sleeve. On June 5, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will publish The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, a novella written from the perspective of Tanner, a member of Victoria’s vampire army in Eclipse. A first printing of 1.5 million has been announced, with one dollar from every sale of the $13.99 hardcover going to the American Red Cross. As a special treat for fans, the novella will be available for free download at www.breetanner.com from June 7 until July 5.
farm to film Ree Drummond—aka The Pioneer Woman—has been an Internet sensation for some time. Readers flock to her website, and she’s already published a successful cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl. But it seems the sky’s the limit for Drummond: she signed a deal to publish her romantic memoir, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels,
Buzz Girl OUR NEW LOOK Regular readers of BookPage will notice that our May issue has an updated design with several improvements: • A new typeface that makes all the content more readable • Top Picks: Look for the red logo that marks our choice for the best book in each genre • A layout that makes your favorite sections easier to find: Departments such as Audio, Book Clubs and Whodunit are at the front of every issue, followed by features, reviews and children’s books • Reviews are grouped by genre, giving you a headstart on finding the books you love to read We’re always working to make BookPage a better resource for booklovers, and we hope these changes will make it even easier to discover your next great book. — Ly n n G r e e n , e d i t o r
with William Morrow on Valentine’s Day 2011. And if that’s not sweet enough, Columbia Pictures is developing a romantic comedy based on her real-life love story, with Reese Witherspoon attached to star. Now if we only knew who was playing her dreamy cowboy husband, Marlboro Man . . .
waiting for mcmillan If you’ve spent the past 18 years wondering what happened to the memorable heroines from Terry McMillan’s 1992 hit Waiting to Exhale, the wait is almost over. On September 7, Viking will publish Getting to Happy, a sequel to McMillan’s runaway bestseller (the movie version, directed by Forest Whitaker, starred Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett).
going gaga For all you Lady Gaga fans, be on the lookout for Poker Face: The Rise and Rise of Lady Gaga, on sale September 14 from Hyperion. New York Post reporter Maureen Callahgaga an will pen the “biography of singer, composer, songwriter, designer, performance artist, and general phenomenon Lady Gaga.”
New York Times bestseller and Booker Prize Finalist
Dr. Faraday is called to see a patient at Hundreds Hall. The once impressive estate is in decline, and the Ayers family is struggling with a changing society and conflicts of their own. But are they haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his.
NOW IN PAPERBACK
RIVERHEAD A Member of Penguin Group (USA) penguin.com
$16/9781594484469
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departments
a storied past Marrowbone Cut, the central location in The Marrowbone Marble Company, is a West Virginia mountain hollow with a mythic quality— a place out of time. Yet the events that transpire there are all too real, fueled by optimism, but tempered with violence. The story begins in 1941. Loyal Ledford, an 18-year-old orphan, works the swing shift at the Mann
well read column by robert Weibezahl
Glass Company and dates the owner’s granddaughter, Rachel. Ledford is a restless young man, and after Pearl Harbor, he is keen to enlist. At Guadalcanal, he witnesses unspeakable horrors and, caught up in the bloodthirst of war, partakes in his own savage act of revenge—a moment that will haunt him forever and shape the outcome of his life. Back home, Ledford marries Rachel, who inherits the factory and bears the first of their three children. Marked by his war experiences, Ledford descends into a state of drunkenness, but is rescued from a desultory fate by Don Staples, a theologian with a steadfast, almost 19th-century sense of righteousness. Through Staples, Ledford meets his cousins, the last inhabitants of the family’s contested land holdings at Marrowbone. Inspired by a dream, he moves his family to the mountains and starts the Marrowbone Marble Company, manufacturers of glass playing marbles. Ledford’s venture attracts likeminded folks who yearn for a communal utopia. One pioneer is Mack
Wells, a black man whom Ledford befriended at the glass company. From the start, the friendship between these two men of different races raises eyebrows in the segregated South, and the interracial living at Marrowbone enrages some of the white people in the surrounding community. As the 1950s give way to the ’60s, Marrowbone becomes both a beacon for the Civil Rights movement and a target for its enemies. Ledford and the others battle the endemic graft that is diverting federal War on Poverty monies into the pockets of local politicos. Their efforts will circle back to the kind of violence that Ledford has spent his postwar life trying to prevent. A beautifully realized novel, The Marrowbone Marble Company hinges on important mileposts of the mid-20th century: World War II, racism, the Civil Rights movement and liberalism vs. Communism. Yet in some ways, the narrative feels untouched by our modern age, for although he writes of relatively recent history, Taylor—whose first novel, The Ballad of Trenchmouth
Taggart, was a finalist for the NBCC Award—employs burnished prose that suggests an older time. This old-fashioned, leisurely approach captures the timelessness of the West Virginia landscape, and it also aids in the slow development of its artfully drawn characters. Central among these is Loyal Ledford himself. A renegade who rejects the precast American Dream for something more elusive, perhaps even unattainable, this scarred, flawed man embodies a familiar component of our national character: hope.
The Marrowbone Marble Company By Glenn Taylor Ecco $24.99, 368 pages ISBN 9780061923937
LITERARY FICTION
From the new york times bestselling author
STEVE MARTINI
Don’t miss the explosive and
“terrifically exciting”* thrillers featuring Defense Attorney Paul Madriani
THE TRUTH KILLS… www.harpercollins.com
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Now in paperback!
www.stevemartini.com
*Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
New in hardcover, available June 1st!
MAN’S BEST FRIEND The two main characters in Susan Wilson’s One Good Dog (Macmillan Audio, $34.99, 8.5 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781427209238) are males with deep, expressive brown eyes; one wears shoes and shaves, the other barks and wags his tail. Adam March was the personification of ambition, a 40-something corporate wunderkind with a whippet-thin, super-materialistic wife. Then, in one terrible moment, Adam slapped his assistant—and his career, wife, daughter, money and hope vanished. Chance, a tough, proud part-pit bull, part-who-knows-what, raised in an inner-city cellar to fight, was taken to the pound after a raid. Down and out, Adam didn’t want a dog; Chance didn’t want to be a pet. In alternating chapters, man, performed by Fred Berman, and dog, performed by Rick Adamson, tell the story of how they became a “pack of two.” Don’t worry, Chance isn’t a cutesy talking animal; he’s a real dog, who sees the world through canine eyes. And Adam doesn’t become a saint; he’s a real man who has to figure out what’s truly important. This pull-at-your-heartstrings tale is charming and fun.
MOTHER’S DAY SPECIAL Celebrate the woman who brought you forth with something a little different this year. Motherhood: A Radio Collection (Highbridge Audio, $24.95, 2 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781615730407), with 19 stories and songs gathered from live “Prairie Home Companion” broadcasts, lasts longer than flowers, has far fewer calories than
audio
author enablers
column by sukey howard
column by kathi kamen goldmark & Sam Barry
chocolates and is definitely more entertaining than either. But do remember that an ode to Mom from Garrison Keillor and the “Prairie Home Companion” gang is not a sweet Hallmark card. Their take is more like the flip side of sentimentality—a humorous, well-meant reality check. The mothers here are not all paragons of virtue; they can nag, and they have guilt trips and mama-drama down to a fine art, but they also care and comfort, and their roles as protector, teacher, advisor, confidante and dedicated publicist are given a fair shake. Joining in for guest appearances are Robin and Linda Williams, Inga Swearingen, the Rankin Family and more.
AUDIO OF THE MONTH In an earlier novel, Swedish crime fiction star Henning Mankell asked, “Why does barbarism always wear a human face?” He doesn’t offer a definitive answer in The Man From Beijing, a thriller that crisscrosses time and place, from the present in bleak northern Sweden to the past in China and Nevada, affectingly read by Rosalyn Landors. But Mankell does show us the face of the man who systematically slaughtered 19 people in a tiny Swedish hamlet and, ultimately, the face of the Beijing oligarch behind it all. The story unfolds as Birgitta Roslin, a Swedish judge distantly related to two of the victims, makes connections between the horrific treatment of Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, the recent killing of a Reno family and this brutal mass murder. A grand tour-de-force that even includes insights into China’s current foreign policy.
The Man From Beijing By Henning Mankell Random House Audio $45, 15.5 hours unabridged ISBN 9780307712356
THRILLER
BY THE NUMBERS Dear Author Enablers, I am putting the finishing touches on my query letter(s). I have been having a heck of time finding the number of books sold for a specific series and the average age of the self-help book reader. I have been to three libraries, two bookstores and all over the Internet with no success. Can you direct me to a place where I might be able to obtain this info? Janet Alden Bristol, Connecticut
Questions on writing and publishing? Email authorenabler@aol.com
LET’S GET COOKING Dear Author Enablers, What are the chances of getting a cookbook published in today’s market? I have been cooking and baking since I could walk, and where I live the winters are long and I have plenty of time to test recipes! Cathy Blatnik Okemos, Michigan We asked Bill LeBlond, Editorial Director of Food and Drink at Chronicle Books, to answer your question: “It isn’t easy for an unknown author to get a cookbook published if the cookbook is just a collection of her recipes. A cookbook needs a hook: The Big Book of Casseroles, The Thanksgiving Table, Big Fat Cookies, The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy. If the author is famous, then her name by itself is the hook. Paula Deen and Rachael Ray can sell a cookbook on their names alone. Even for books that have a good hook, publishers are looking for authors with platforms from which they can sell their books. At a minimum, authors should be actively blogging and utilizing social networks. Cathy will need to demonstrate to a publisher that her blog gets many hits and that she has lots of followers on Facebook and Twitter. It should be noted that there has never been a better time to self-publish. Web sites such as lulu.com make it easy to create a book and print it in reasonable numbers. For unknown writers who want to publish their own wonderful collections of recipes, self-publishing may be the answer.” Thanks, Bill! When are you going to invite us over for dinner?
Publishers don’t expect you to come up with accurate sales figures for previously published books similar to yours (aka “comparison titles”). They can do this themselves through a service called BookScan. Your comparison titles should be books that have remained in print and done well, preferably recently— although a classic in your genre is not a bad thing to include. You can figure out a lot by looking around your local bookstore. Which books are stacked and displayed front and center? The books that are welldisplayed and promoted are likely to be better-selling, more widely known titles. Don’t get too hung up on this step in the process—your role does not include providing a complete sales overview.
PAPER TRAIL Dear Author Enablers, Can you direct a retired newspaper editor and columnist of many years to a source for marketing my columns? I’m an essayist, have won numerous writers’ contests and have also self-published and contributed to other authors’ anthologies. Isa “Kitty” Mady Montesano, Washington Sounds like it’s time to bite the bullet and write a thoughtful, wellorganized book proposal; then send it with an irresistible query letter to literary agents who specialize in this sort of book. There are many resources available to walk you through this process: A book called How to Write a Book Proposal by Michael Larsen is one we often recommend. (Shameless plug: Our new book will also include this information. It’s called Write That Book Already! and will be available in bookstores this month.) Make sure to mention your awards and include a sample of your best work.
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Hypnosis opens the door to the past… but what happens if the truth on the other side is something you can’t live with? International bestselling author
conjures a mesmerizing follow-up to the first two books in her unique Reincarnationist series.
On sale now! Also available
www.MJRose.com www.MIRABooks.com
“Rose is an unusually skillful storyteller.” —Washington Post
Whodunit column by Bruce Tierney
FATHER AND SON
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION Our first Whodunit entry, Ace Atkins’ Infamous (Putnam, $25.95, 416 pages, ISBN 9780399156304), isn’t exactly a whodunit, since we know the perpetrator’s identity from early on. It is rather a novelization of a true-life incident, the kidnapping of oilman Charles Urschel by infamous (hence the title) desperado George “Machine Gun” Kelly. Sourced from period documents, newspaper articles, recollections of family members and, in one memorable case, an interview with a now-102-year-old Tupelo bank teller once held up by Kelly, the book brings the Depressionera gangster’s life and times into crisp focus. Infamous chronicles the 56 days between the Urschel kidnapping and Kelly’s eventual capture, an epic road trip of close to 20,000 miles across the South and the Midwest with the Feds in hot pursuit. Subterfuges and betrayals abound on both sides of the law, blurring the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. Even Kelly’s femme fatale wife is not above the fray, perhaps willing to deal her husband a losing hand in order to save her own skin. Theirs is without a doubt a star-crossed, or more precisely, star-double-crossed love story. Clever and provocative, Infamous will stay with you well beyond the final pages.
Second up is an impressive debut from Maine journalist Paul Doiron, The Poacher’s Son (Minotaur, $24.99, 336 pages, ISBN 9780312558468). They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but in game warden Mike Bowditch’s case, the maxim could not be further from the truth: His father Jack is a notorious poacher and, as such, not pleased with his son’s choice of careers. The two have been more or less estranged for many years when Mike gets a panicky call from Jack, who is wanted for questioning in the death of a Maine policeman. Jack has what he describes as a watertight alibi, but the authorities disagree. He is reluctant to turn himself in, fearing for his life at the hands of vengeful cops mourning the loss of one of their own. So Mike and a semi-retired pilot friend head off into the deep Maine woods, so remote it is accessible only on foot or by floatplane, on a time-sensitive mission to clear Jack’s name. The setting is wildly atmospheric, the pacing swift and the characters well drawn. The Poacher’s Son is easily one of the best debut novels in recent memory.
TERROR IN THE WINDY CITY Michael Harvey’s The Third Rail (Knopf, $24.95, 304 pages, ISBN 9780307272508) has its roots in an actual Chicago event, an elevated train accident in 1977 in which four CTA cars derailed, suspended briefly from the high tracks before crashing down to the street below, killing 11. Fast forward 30-some years, and a spree killer is terrorizing the Windy City, apparently in some misguided retribution for the train incident from so long ago. PI Michael Kelly has strong memories of the accident; as a child, he was in one of the derailed train cars dangling high above the street, a memory that haunts him to this day. Now, seemingly by chance, he is onsite as one of the killings takes place, and he charges after the shooter—only to find out that he has been played, and indeed is the “king’s pawn” in a deadly (and accelerating) game of terror. The Third Rail is the third installment in the Michael
Kelly saga (after The Chicago Way and The Fifth Floor), and author Harvey gathers momentum with each new book. I’m looking forward to number four, which, according to Harvey, may well be a riff on one of the central themes from The Third Rail.
MYSTERY OF THE MONTH South African novelist Malla Nunn is back with the second book in her Emmanuel Cooper series, Let the Dead Lie, set in 1950s Durban. As the book opens, ex-policeman Cooper is suffering from the fallout of his last case (chronicled in Nunn’s debut, A Beautiful Place to Die), in which he lost both his job and his coveted identification labeling him as “white” in South Africa’s oppressively race-conscious society. He is working an undercover dockside assignment for his old boss (and sometime nemesis) Inspector van Niekirk when he discovers the body of a young boy, his throat slit by person or persons unknown. Cooper is quickly identified as the prime suspect in the killing and
apprehended by the authorities, who know he didn’t do the deed, but a) they need a quick resolution to the case, and b) Cooper has been a thorn in their side for some time. Van Niekirk is able to secure Cooper’s release for 48 hours, thus beginning a race against time to prove his innocence. Nunn’s depiction of apartheid-era South Africa is atmospheric, and the multifaceted character of Cooper is unique in modern crime fiction. Let the Dead Lie has a list price of just $15; I guarantee it will be the best $15 you will spend on a mystery all year.
LET THE DEAD LIE By Malla Nunn Washington Square Press $15, 400 pages ISBN 9781416586227
CRIME FICTION
IN A WORLD WHERE
POWER IS TAKEN, NOT GIVEN,
CHAOS IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS Security consultant Peter Avakian’s job is to keep people safe— but when he’s pulled into a shadow world of nations battling over the world’s oil supply, it’s all he can do to stay alive himself.
“Suspenseful… gripping. [Chase’s] quirky, brilliant Avakian will easily entice fans to follow his future adventures.” —Publishers Weekly on DARKNESS UNDER HEAVEN www.MIRABooks.com http://FJChase.Books.OfficeLive.com
On sale now!
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book clubs
Emily St. John Mandel follows up her electric debut, Last Night in Montreal, with a spellbinding new novel
THE SINGERʼS GUN “Riveting” “Utterly Convincing”
“Provocative” “A Wild Read”
“Smart” “Masterful”
“Authentic”
“Holy Cow!” *
column by julie hale
New paperback releases for reading groups
FORD’S FAILED UTOPIA A finalist for the National Book Award, Greg Grandin’s compelling Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Picador, $16, 432 pages, ISBN 9780312429621) brings to vivid life an extraordinary chapter in the career of Henry Ford. During the 1920s, Ford bought land in Brazil’s Amazon River basin, hoping to turn it into a rubber plantation that would supply his car business. He also dreamed of founding a town there that would resemble the sort of company-based community he had helped to establish in the U.S. Over a span of 18 years, Ford worked to fulfill this vision, sinking big money into the town, which was equipped with a golf course, movie theaters and Cape Cod-inspired houses. But the failure of the rubber industry, coupled with the natives’ resistance to the prudish value system Ford promoted, led to Fordlandia’s eventual demise. Grandin’s account of Ford’s forced urbanization of the jungle is larger than life, with the scale and weight of an epic story.
CONROY IN CHARLESTON
#1 INDIE NEXT PICK FOR MAY Available at your local independent bookstore Unbridled Books
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* Read
more at unbridledbooks.com
South of Broad (Dial, $16, 544 pages, ISBN 9780385344074), Pat Conroy’s first novel in 14 years, is a sharply drawn portrait of the New South. Narrated by Leopold (Leo) Bloom King, a local gossip columnist looking back on his teenage years in the 1960s, the narrative offers glimpses of old Charleston, its blue-blooded families and the sense of change that
pervaded the era. In high school, Leo mixes with a socially diverse crowd that includes Starla and Niles Whitehead, a pair of impoverished orphans from Appalachia; Ike Jefferson, one of the first black students integrated into Leo’s school; and twins Sheba and Trevor Poe—seemingly pictureperfect Southern siblings. The group remains connected over the years, and the ways in which their stories unfold are surprising and poignant. In 1989, the gang comes together to help Sheba find Trevor, who is missing in California—a reunion that brings the group full circle. Smart and sharp, Leo makes for a companionable narrator, and his insights into marriage, maturity and family have a wonderful authenticity. This is a big-hearted novel, and fans of its beloved author will savor every page.
TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS Monica Ali’s latest novel, In the Kitchen, is set in London’s Imperial Hotel, where executive chef Gordon Lightfoot oversees a staff of eccentric characters. The day-to-day routine of his kitchen, rendered by Ali in prose that’s wonderfully vibrant and precise, is turned upside down by the brutal murder of a hotel porter, a man from Ukraine. The crime brings to light the clandestine world of illegal immigrants and upsets Gordon’s sense of well-being. He had hoped to open his own restaurant but soon finds that his grip on reality is slipping. Betraying his fiancée, he becomes mixed up with a prostitute—a Belarusian who may be involved in a sex ring that’s based in the Imperial. Using the hotel as a microcosm for modern Europe, Ali skillfully examines such timely topics as gender, immigration and class. Author of the acclaimed novel Brick Lane (2003), Ali now serves up a complex, multilayered mystery.
in the kitchen By Monica Ali Scribner $16, 448 pages ISBN 9781416571698
FICTION
romance c o l u m n b y c h r i s t i e r i d g way
heating things up With summer’s approach, it’s time for books destined to fill those long hours of daylight or the warmth of a flower-scented night with steamy stories. From regency to contemporary romances, this month’s selections really turn up the heat. Enjoy! Readers will delight in returning to Serenity, South Carolina, and the friends, neighbors and lovers there in Sweet Tea at Sunrise (MIRA, $7.99, 400 pages, ISBN 9780778328452) by Sherryl Woods. Sarah Price has returned home with her two young children after the disintegration of her marriage. Her job in the local diner puts her in the direct path of handsome stranger Travis McDonald. He flirts as naturally as he breathes, so Sarah can’t take him seriously—or can she? When he offers her a job, it only intensifies the conflict she feels. Ex-baseball star Travis wants to put down roots and he wants Sarah too, though he’s stymied about how best to convince the relationship-shy woman to take him on. Other characters from the series weave in and out, offering new insights to the couple and sometimes further complications. A great read for warm afternoons and for those who enjoy watching likeable characters grow and change.
A regency romp Regency heiress Sophie Stanton has finally caught the attention of the man she loves in Sex and the Single Earl (Zebra, $6.99, 352 pages, ISBN 9781420106558) by Vanessa Kelly. Interested in Sophie’s lands,
Simon St. James has decided he will marry her. Unfortunately, trouble trails Sophie, and the gossip that ensues once the two are set to marry might blow up Simon’s careful plans to expand his holdings and keep Sophie out of trouble. But their attraction is explosive too, and while Sophie is unsure of Simon’s motives, she can’t turn from what she finds in his arms. However, when she discovers how coldblooded he’s been in courting her, can he convince the girl he’s always watched over that she’s the woman he wants beside him for the rest of his life? Sexy and charming, this fast-paced romance will have readers rooting for Sophie and Simon to survive impending scandal and find their happy-ever-after.
romance of the month What could be better than a wedding . . . except wedding cake? Baking such scrumptious delights is the specialty of Laurel McBane, the heroine in book three of Nora Roberts’ Bride Quartet, Savor the Moment. Laurel is content with her place in the wedding planning company she runs with her three pals, but her personal life is not so successful. Though all her life she’s been attracted to her best friend’s brother, Ivy League lawyer Delaney Brown, she’s sure he’ll never see her that way—until the day she plants a killer kiss on him. What follows is the pleasure of watching two people negotiate a new kind of relationship and fall deeply in love. With weddings as the atmosphere surrounding the story, this is romance with a capital R, as well as a lovely look into the dynamics of close female friendship. Readers will close it with a heartfelt sigh.
savor the moment By Nora Roberts Berkley $16, 352 pages ISBN 9780425233689 Also available on audio
CONTEMPORARY
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antastic F ICT ION by abulous AUTHORS
Nothing But Trouble By Rachel Gibson $7.99, 9780061579097 Chelsea Ross’s acting career has been a total bust. But leaving Hollywood to become the personal assistant to a famous hockey player could be her stupidest career move ever. If Chelsea didn’t need the money, she’d be running from the world’s biggest jerk as fast as her feet could carry her. When the bad boy puts the moves on her, Chelsea knows it’s time she banished him to the penalty box if only she could resist the kind of trouble he has in mind!
A Lady’s Guide to Improper Behavior By Suzanne Enoch $7.99, 9780061662218 Theresa Weller understands the rules of decorum. Colonel Bartholomew James is the complete opposite of everything a gentleman should be—but with one searing kiss, Tess can think of no one else. She invites him on carriage rides, dares him to dance and does her best to civilize this impossible rogue. Bartholomew understands that Tess wants to be seen as a proper miss, but deep down he knows she is precisely the sort to spark his desire—a most improper lady.
Dead Men’s Dust By Matt Hilton $7.99, 9780061717192 Former military operative and ex-CIA agent Joe Hunter solves problems. Now Hunter’s brother has disappeared after stealing from the wrong man, Tubal Cain, a seriously deranged thrill killer. Cain is charming, smart, arrogant—a psychopath. He won’t stop until the thief is found and appropriately punished—which means Joe’s brother will die slowly, horribly, unless Hunter finds him first.
Shadows Still Remain By Peter De Jonge $7.99, 9780061882265 Detective Darlene O’Hara has a massive chip on her shoulder. When her case—the death of a beautiful, brilliant NYU student—turns high-profile and is handed to a legendary NYPD Homicide detective, she refuses to let it go. But Darlene’s unauthorized investigation is taking her and her partner into the worst parts of the city—where the same shocking secrets that destroyed a teenager threaten to obliterate her life and career.
www.harpercollins.com
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lifestyles
cooking
column by joanna brichetto
column by sybil pratt
realistic standards. Users don’t have to make every single scrumptious thing in Laura Lee Burch’s Sew Magical for Baby (Leisure Arts, $19.95, 128 pages, ISBN 9781574863284). Just the trimmed burp cloth, perhaps, or a giant fabric photo cube. It’s not like we have to felt our own wool to make the sheep mobile. How about a sun hat with puppy ears, or my favorite: life-size fabric fruit and veg in a brown felt sack? Simple stitches and patterns guide users through 20 toys and accessories for lucky babies and toddlers. Burch, an upscale boutique owner, understands the fine line between cute and cloying, and makes sure every offering is truly magical.
Blue Ribbon’s most-loved recipes from nibbles, snacks and toasts through main dishes, sides, salads, soups, sandwiches and desserts to those oh-so-comforting breakfast and brunch specials. Inspired by their apprenticeships in Paris and beyond, “culinary tourism” with their father, family traditions (including a memorable Matzoh Ball Soup) and favorites from the Jersey joints of their youth, Bruce and Eric’s passion is for making whatever they make the best it can be. They don’t shy away from meat and potatoes—try the Really Good Brisket—or rich, dense desserts like Chocolate Bruno, not to mention a succulent sandwich made with duck breasts and bacon. The instructions are carefully written for the home cook, as are the tips offered in “Blue Ribbon Wisdom” and their fun, informative headers.
Mom comes first New moms need lots of help; the postpartum period is rough. Baby gets all the attention while Mom is at the bottom of everyone’s list—especially her own—for even basic care. If regular bathing and balanced meals are ancient history, workouts and decent hair are mere myth. And since a new mom can’t think straight—she has, after all, “just built a whole new person”— she needs someone who can. Enter Dana Wood, a mother, veteran journalist, blogger and guide to navigating the return of the real you. Momover (Adams Media, $14.95, 256 pages, ISBN 9781440500305) is clever, sane and funny. Cheaper than a postpartum doula or therapy, it gets down to the basics of mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health unique to the new mom. In fact, the book is organized by these headings, making it easy to use even when readers are sleep-deprived. Sleep, not surprisingly, merits an entire chapter and includes a bit of science and a lot of common sense. Other chapters detail how to reduce stress, be mindful of negative self-talk, start a realistic workout plan and feed yourself properly. Her message is simple: Mom first. Easy to say, hard to do, but Momover can help.
And one for baby
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I hesitate to mention this book lest its baby-centered perfection seem at odds with the other two. But this crafty little gem need not interfere with a new mom’s self-care regimen or her adoption of more
top pick for lifestyles “You can’t have it all,” says Lisa Quinn, mother of two, former HGTV host, “recovering perfectionist” and author of Life’s Too Short to Fold Fitted Sheets. If this declaration sounds like a dubious message for moms, read on. Quinn lowers the bar on our unrealistic standards, arguing that when we demonstrate to our kids that a “spotless house is more important than fun,” it is time for an intervention. How to maintain your properly adjusted expectations? Learn when and how to just say no, and find out why multitasking really means doing a lot of things badly. Quinn also doles out decorating cheats from a pro, demonstrates how the appearance of cleanliness can be had with a minimum of planning and upkeep, and provides the rip-out-and-stick-on-the-fridge epiphany “17 Meals Made From a Deli Chicken.” She dishes out common sense with a wit that wears well, all in the service of helping moms get through the day.
LIFE’S TOO SHORT TO FOLD FITTED SHEETS By Lisa Quinn Chronicle $18.95, 168 pages ISBN 9780811869935
HOUSE & HOME
french flair That elusive “quoi” in “je ne sais quoi” that seems to give French women their unique edge became a bit more comprehensible when Mireille Guiliano gave us the inside scoop in French Women Don’t Get Fat. She made it clear that the great Gallic gift of eating well and sensuously while keeping fit and trim doesn’t come in the form of a strict diet. Rather, French women have an attitude about eating and living, about self-acceptance and balance, that anyone, anywhere, can easily and happily espouse. Now, with The French Women Don’t Get Fat Cookbook (Atria, $24.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9781439148969), Mireille returns with the recipes to back up her theory of living life well. I can’t tell you that you’ll lose weight, but I can tell you that these 123 recipes, flavored with Mireille’s charmingly personal reflections, offer her sensible approach to making pleasurable meals (three a day, s’il vous plaît) that produce maximum results with minimum effort. She’s added menus and, bien sûr, a little advice on serving champagne.
BLUE RIBBON BROTHERS The Bromberg brothers have always done everything together, including going to Le Cordon Bleu, opening their super-successful Blue Ribbon restaurant in 1992 and then its eight equally successful offshoots. So it’s no surprise that their debut book, Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $35, 256 pages, ISBN 9780307407948), is a collaborative effort, one that shares
cookbook of the month “Life is short, always eat dessert first.” If you’re a follower of that profound precept or just the owner of an active sweet tooth, David Lebovitz’s Ready for Dessert is a must. Lebovitz, blogger, author of four previous cookbooks and former member of Chez Panisse’s pastry department, has revisited, revamped and perfected over 170 of his all-time greatest hits in this elegantly produced, scrumptiously illustrated collection. David eschews the fussy and over-elaborate and embraces the bold and intensely flavored—just bite into his moist, spicy Fresh Ginger Cake with a dollop of whipped cream-lightened lemon curd, and you’ll get the picture. His header notes are chatty, his directions thorough and supportive and his take on the sweet side of life inspired and inspiring.
Ready for Dessert By David Lebovitz Ten Speed $35, 288 pages ISBN 9781580081382
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“ The
Book of the Year.”
interview
EMILY GIFFIN I n t e r v i e w b y A BBY P L E S S ER
—USA Today
Give The
Help
this Mother’s Day “[A] wise, poignant novel . . . You’ll catch yourself cheering out loud.” —People
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amy einhorn books/putnam a member of penguin Group (uSa) Inc.
I
THE HEART OF A MARRIAGE
n her best-selling novels, Emily Giffin asks questions most of us can’t imagine answering. What if you fell in love with your best friend’s fiancé—and he loved you back? What if you and your husband agreed not to have children—and then he decided he wanted a baby? And what if you realized you had a shot with the “one that got away”—after you were happily married to someone else?
It’s tough, provocative questions like these that inspire Giffin, and have laid the groundwork for blockbusters like Something Borrowed, Baby Proof and Love the One You’re With. A single lawyer on the cusp of 30 when she wrote her debut novel, Giffin has matured along with her protagonists. Now, in her fifth novel, Heart of the Matter, she explores what happens to a marriage when another woman enters the picture. “I don’t think my books are very plot-intensive,” Giffin says during a lively phone call to the Atlanta home she shares with her husband and three young children. “They are much more about how situations are described and how events unfold. I write about characters who are unsympathetic in some ways—or if they’re not unsympathetic, they’re at least making unsympathetic choices. And I think that’s very true to life. If you sample the people in your life, even ones you respect and love, you can go through pretty much all of them and think of a time when they’ve made a choice that you wouldn’t
have approved of, or you would have strongly discouraged. But that’s what makes us human, the fact that we can make mistakes and we can hurt the people that we love, but those sorts of offenses don’t make us unlovable as a person.” And that’s the issue at hand in Heart of the Matter: Can you make mistakes, hurt the people you love and come back out on the other side? Nick and Tessa Russo appear to have it all; they are a happily married couple with two young children living in an upscale Boston suburb. Nick is a renowned pediatric surgeon and Tessa has recently left her career to raise their children full time. They love each other, their life together and their children. But when a freak accident at a neighborhood sleepover lands six-year-old Charlie Anderson—and his shell-shocked single mother, Valerie—in the hospital under Nick’s care, everything changes. Nick becomes deeply involved in Charlie’s care and recovery and finds himself growing more and more attracted to Valerie, while
Tessa struggles to retain her identity in her new role as full-time mom. Valerie knows she has feelings for Nick, but she is unable to distinguish actual romantic desire from her appreciation and affection for the man who saved her son’s life. And though she can’t seem to shake her feelings, Valerie is not the type of woman who would ever want to break up a marriage. Giffin was inspired to write about the complex doctor/patient bond in Heart of the Matter after she attended a charity function at a children’s hospital she supports. At the benefit, a young mother described the care she received when her son was born with a severe facial deformity that required countless surgeries. The moment she delivered her baby, the birth room fell silent, and the woman knew something was wrong with her son. “It was really dramatic as she was telling her story,” Giffin says. “She described the surgeon who came into the room. He introduced himself as one of the leading plastic surgeons in the world and said, ‘I’m here to take care of your son,’ and she was
just overcome by instant gratitude and affinity for this man who was basically saying, ‘I am going to save your son—and I’m going to save your family.’ And I just thought to myself, oh, how close she must have felt with him. Because in the beginning, I didn’t know for sure I was going to write about infidelity, it was going to be more about a marriage in crisis. But that was the inspiration for Valerie’s story.� Told in alternating perspectives— Tessa in the first person and Valerie in the third—Heart of the Matter is an exercise in the “will they or won’t they� scenario. In fact, more than half of the novel goes by before we learn if anything ever happens with Nick and Valerie. The book is really more about the “what if� questions that arise in a complicated situation like this—for Tessa, Valerie, Nick and their families—than the actual act of infidelity. Giffin says, “It’s one of those stories that seems very easy to interpret—that if this happens, then this happens. Infidelity is not that uncommon, but it’s something that
people—particularly women—fear. It’s discussed all the time and some people feel that if it were a strictly physical thing, well, you could get over that. Others feel, well, if you’re going to betray, you better feel something. And I think showing both narrative sides of the story is a way to highlight the complications of marriage, how complex infidelity can be and how really the grass is always greener. You can show that a lot more effectively by having two narratives. And I wanted to be closer to one of them. I think the book is a bit more about Tessa and Nick as individuals, and their marriage. That’s why I chose to write Tessa in the first person.� Because the reader is privy to both Tessa’s and Valerie’s perspectives, we know more about what’s really happening at any given moment than either woman does. But we still don’t know whether or not Nick will cross the line with Valerie, or what might happen if he does. And that’s the beauty of Giffin’s work: You think you know what’s going to happen. You think
you know what you would do if it happened to you. But really, you have no idea. “Life is not black and white. And no two situations are ever alike,� Giffin explains. “Every relationship is so different—every friendship, every mother/daughter relationship, and certainly every marriage is different. When people make missteps or when people betray each other or make mistakes to hurt each other, it’s never the same. Just as there is no relationship that’s the same, no betrayal is the same. Ultimately the story is about forgiveness, and down the line, everyone has someone to forgive.� Heart of the Matter is a messy, complicated, often uncomfortable portrait of a marriage—and two families—in crisis. But it has everything readers love about Emily Giffin’s books: the heart, the empathy, the truth. “I have plenty of vices, but one thing I think I do right in life is I try to look at things from someone else’s point of view,� Giffin says. “If you can feel empathy for people, you’re a lot farther along
in understanding and getting along with people—and having a greater understanding of yourself.�
Heart of the Matter
By Emily Giffin, St. Martin’s, $26.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9780312554163, also available on audio
Visit BookPage.com for more on Giffin and the upcoming film version of Something Borrowed
Who says a woman can’t keep a secret? NEWƒFROMƒAWARD-WINNINGƒAUTHORƒROBINƒLEEƒHATCHER The third book in The Sisters of Bethlehem Springs series. In A Ma er of Character, the year is 1918 and writing gri y dime novels simply isn’t done by a woman. So Daphne McKinley—smart, pre y, talented— publishes her rough-and-tumble books under a male pseudonym. But when a newspaperman enlists her aid in restoring his grandfather’s good name, Daphne finds herself re-examining the power of her words and reconsidering the direction of her life. ble Availa ver e r whe are booksd. sol
RobinLeeHatcher.com
Other books in The Sisters of Bethlehem Springs series.
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interview
HAMPTON SIDES I n t e r v i e w b y j ay macd o n a l d
© GARY OAKLEY
RETRACING AN ASSASSIN’S TRAIL
M
emphis historian and subculture explorer Hampton Sides was six years old on April 4, 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel by a prison escapee named James Earl Ray. Sides remembers that his father, who worked at the Memphis law firm that represented King during his marches on behalf of the city’s striking garbage workers, came home that evening, poured himself a stiff drink and braced his family for the worst. “He was extremely worried that the city was going to rip apart and there was going to be a race riot,” Sides recalls. “Black and white, no one knew what was going to happen next. It was fairly terrifying.” Memphis would be one of the few major American cities spared widespread rioting in the wake of the assassination, but its scars of rage and guilt have been slow to heal. Sides brings it all back home in
Hellhound on His Trail, a narrative history with the pace of a thriller and the bite of a Howlin’ Wolf blues song. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material, Sides employs an alternating narrative to build profiles of King and Ray in the months leading up to their fatal collision. King, who fears that his nonviolent movement is losing relevance, convinces his inner circle to decamp to Memphis and march in support of the largely black garbage workers. In the meantime, Ray, a small-time thief and Missouri prison fugitive with delusions of grandeur fueled by George Wallace’s racist presidential campaign, drifts back to the U.S. after hiding
THE SEARCH IS ON...
rev i s e d & u p d a te d
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Join the conversation: Facebook.com/donaldmillerfan —Twitter.com/donmilleris
in Mexico, assumes the alias of Eric Galt, rents an apartment in King’s hometown of Atlanta, buys a highcaliber rifle and follows King to Memphis with intent to kill. Employing the same storytelling prowess he displayed in Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers, Sides ratchets up the tension by tracking Ray under his assumed name, a technique that enables us to suspend our feelings toward the historical figure and gain fresh insight into the mind of Eric Galt, assassin. “I decided it was important to let Ray be whoever he is saying he is at any given point in the story,” Sides explains. “The ease with which he moved about the country and assumed these various identities is a big part of who he is, and the mystery is enhanced by that. Who is this guy with all these names? So I decided that the reader should find out it’s James Earl Ray at the point in the story where the FBI found out it was James Earl Ray. That ends up being like on page 300.” Sides’ brick-by-brick portrait of Ray shows what madness can result from a birthright of racism, poverty and ignorance. A loner by temperament, Ray was a desultory dabbler, unwilling or unable to commit to anything—except murder. “He was kind of an empty vessel of the culture, all these fads and trends, from bartending school to hypnosis to weird self-help books like Psycho-Cybernetics to locksmith school to dance lessons,” Sides says. As if two larger-than-life figures were not enough, Sides also juggles a third: J. Edgar Hoover, the iconic G-man who supervised the largest manhunt in American history—a two-month, four-country search that ultimately involved 3,500 FBI agents and cost $2 million. Hoover
not only loathed King, he also disdained Attorney General Ramsay Clark, his boss under President Lyndon Johnson. “What Ramsay Clark said to me was, nothing was more important to Hoover than the reputation of the FBI, and he felt that it was at stake here because people were going to find out how much he’d been bugging and eavesdropping and smearing King,” Sides relates. “So in a paradoxical way, Hoover’s hatred of King intensified the manhunt and made it more desperate.” The manhunt, which consumes the second half of the book, reads like a crime novel worthy of Joseph Wambaugh or Michael Connelly. Sides studied under John Hershey (Hiroshima) at Yale and developed his love for narrative history out of the New Journalism movement of the ’60s. Would he ever consider flipping the coin and trying his hand at historical fiction? “Honestly, whenever I read historical fiction, I have a problem,” he admits. “It’s sort of like, will the real fact please stand up? Even really good literary historical fiction like E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, I’m thinking, what about the real Houdini? How much of this is real and how much of this is in [the author’s] own mind? I just think that the real story is always more interesting.”
Hellhound on his Trail By Hampton Sides Doubleday $28.95, 480 pages ISBN 9780385523929 Also available on audio
HISTORY
N OW I N PA P E R B A C K
“The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder will remind you of your first love and the power of friendship. As the saying goes,
‘You’ll laugh, you’ll cry.’ But, really, you will.” “Wells weaves that magic spell again.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Calla Lily is a sweetie….
This is a novel full of miracles, with characters more colorful than a Crayola 64-crayon box. It’s just the right dose of Southern charm.” —Seattle Times
TSELL TIMES BES NEW YORK
ER
S L L E W A C C E REB M ES BE ST SE LL ER # 1 NE W YO RK TI D AU TH OR OF TH E -Y A S IS TE R H O O
S O F TH E YA D IV IN E S EC R ET
“Down-to-earth and comforting…
[A] good-hearted, wishful-thinking book.”
O N
V
E L
A
—Washington Post
—Real Simple
REBECCA WELLS’ BELOVED NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERS:
The Y R O L G G N I CROWN of R E D N O P Y L I CALLA L
Book Clubs and Ya-Ya Groups!
Visit www.rebeccawellsbooks.com to read Rebecca’s blog, download the reading group guide, sign up for her newsletter, and register your Ya-Ya group! Become a fan of Rebecca Wells on Facebook. Follow @rwellswrites on Twitter.
14 New and Selected Stories from the Bestselling Author of The Last Girls
meet SARAH SILVERMAN
“These stories are classic Lee Smith . . . What I love most is how the stories pull you back to read them again, simply for their big vision of life.”—Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun
“In almost every one of [her stories] there is a moment of vision, or love, or unclothed wonder that transforms something plain into something transcendent.” —The New York Times Book Review Read an excerpt at www.algonquin.com/leesmith. Available Wherever Books Are Sold
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Algonquin Books •
www.algonquin.com
The Bedwetter Since launching her career in comedy as a writer for “Saturday Night Live,” Sarah Silverman has become a hilariously provocative performer in film and television, including a starring role in her own Comedy Central series, “The Sarah Silverman Program.” The Bedwetter (Harper, $25.99, 272 pages, ISBN 9780061856433) is her first book. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Duck.
interview
yann martel © GEOFF HOWE
Interview by alden mudge
A moving follow-up to ‘life of pi’ The end of Yann Martel’s extraordinary new novel, Beatrice and Virgil, is shocking and moving and will, as great philosophical novels should, launch a thousand questions. One of those questions will surely be: How does this book— which features a writer named Henry whose particulars seem similar to Martel’s own, a cheerless taxidermist who seeks Henry’s literary advice, and bits and pieces of the taxidermist’s play about a donkey named Beatrice and a monkey named Virgil—have anything to do with the Holocaust? The novel contains none of the iconic events and images we associate with that evil, the word itself is rarely uttered in the book . . . and yet. “I have always been interested in the Holocaust,” Martel says during a call to his hotel room in Toronto. Martel and his partner, novelist Alice Kuipers, and their sevenmonth-old son Theo (who coos occasionally in the background) are visiting with family while en route from their home in Saskatoon to a literary festival in Dubai. In conversation, Martel speaks rapidly, unspooling long, eloquent skeins of thought. He praises “the undervalued, underappreciated, stunning landscapes of the prairies,” and the “very strong sense of community in small, isolated places” like Saskatoon, before returning to the origins of his new novel. “I lived in France as a child for a few years. My parents were diplomats. And the Second World War, which for North Americans is a foreign tragedy, a foreign adventure, is for Europeans right on their doorstep. The scars of the war are vivid.
I remember being taught about the Second World War and about the Holocaust, and it just stuck out, the Holocaust did. Wars are a thrill to a child’s imagination. Going to war makes a kind of sense: You hate someone, you go to war with them. But to my child’s mind—and even to an adult’s mind—there seemed to be no logic to the Holocaust. It stayed in my mind as a little kernel and I just kept coming back to it, reading books on it and seeing In the the movies. It just stayed first novel with me. And I since his finally decided phenomenal to write on it.” Martel was bestseller, living in Berlin, Martel once beginning to again uses work on the new book, an animal his third story to make when book, Life of Pi, profound won the Man points about Booker Prize for fiction in 2002 humanity. and “went planetary,” selling seven million copies worldwide. “So I toured for two years,” Martel says, “and I loved it. Before that I was an impoverished writer who had never gone on a tour or anything. I stopped writing and just enjoyed it.” Returning to the book he’d been working on, Martel struggled. “I was an outsider. I was not a victim. I was not a victimizer. I have no family connection whatsoever, so I wondered, how could I write about it? Also, there’s something very story-killing about the Holocaust,
which is why it is so dominated by the nonfictional mode. Finally my entry point was animals. Using animals again allowed me to tiptoe up to a subject without being obvious,” Martel says. “What I like about writing about animals is that very few writers of adult fiction use animals. Animals have been confined to children’s fiction, which is a mistake because there’s so much more that can be done with animals than just telling children’s stories.” In fact, this being an odd, vivid, layered, multifaceted gem of a novel, it is possible to read Beatrice and Virgil as a book about environmentalism and animal rights, the interpretative slant that the taxidermist-playwright himself seems to prefer. Or as a story about human responsibility and human culpability. Or as a story about the uses and misuses of storytelling. Or as a story about writer’s block and the creative enterprise. But however one chooses to read it, it is a testament to Martel’s great faith in and commitment to the art of fiction. “Great art works because it tells an emotional truth,” Martel says. “I suppose great histories could be both factually and emotionally true, but history is very cumbersome. What’s wonderful about art is that it gets at the emotional essence of things and it plays around with the facts. There’s a danger to that; you can manipulate things and you can peddle gross lies. It can be a dangerous tool, but also a very powerful one [which] if well used can deliver more than a history can. A work of art is the beginning of a discussion. It’s part of a dialogue. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to say, ‘Listen, this is what I’m saying; what do you think?’” Martel’s artful new novel Beatrice and Virgil is sure to make readers think—and to make them demand from other readers: What do you think?
Beatrice and Virgil By Yann Martel Spiegel & Grau $24, 224 pages ISBN 9781400069262 Also available on audio
fiction
new York Times Bestseller
Give something captivating this Mother’s Day!
“Shattering, immensely
satisfying.”
—People ★★★★
“Laced with intrigue
. . . Readers . . . will be enthralled.” —The New York Times Book Review
“War, love, betrayal
. . . intensely readable.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “A rare and exquisite story . . . Transports you out of time, out of place, into a world you can feel on your very skin.” —Elizabeth Gilbert
www.janiceyklee.com Penguin Books A member of Penguin Group (USA) www.penguin.com Also available on Penguin Audio and as an eBook
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features
MOTHER’S DAY
SALUTING MOM ON HER SPECIAL DAY by LINDA M. CASTELLITTO
C
elebrating Mother’s Day is always a treat, but this trio of books will make the day more meaningful, thanks to their insight, inspiration and humor.
Kelly Corrigan—writer, wife, mother, cancer survivor—became a household name after the publication of her best-selling memoir, The Middle Place, and popular YouTube video, which has 4.7 million views to date. Her inspirational message takes yet another form in Lift (Voice, $16.99, 96 pages, ISBN 9781401341244), a letter to her two young daughters, Claire and Georgia. She shares memories and milestones, and muses on how parenthood has changed her: “Before I was your mom, I didn’t have one of those plastic dividers in my silverware drawer. I’d just take the basket out of the dishwasher and dump all the knives, forks, and spoons right into the drawer.” She writes with honesty and elegance about her
terror at Claire’s illness, her joy at a friend’s impending motherhood and her sorrow about the death of another friend’s child. And through it all, Corrigan evokes parallels between hang gliding and life: One must go through turbulence to achieve altitude, the titular “lift.” At 96 pages, Lift reads like a letter to a friend—a short read that will leave a lasting impression.
Super survival guide Working moms don’t have a lot of time, but even the most harried mother should steal a few moments to enjoy Just Let Me Lie Down: Necessary Terms for the Half-Insane Working Mom (Little, Brown, $24.99, 272 pages, ISBN 9780316068284). This handy
survival-primer will offer a laugh, some respite or both. Kristin van Ogtrop, editor of Real Simple magazine, shares her own half-insane moments, from the cringe-inducing introduction (alas, vomiting is involved) to the funny work- and home-life tidbits throughout. Dispatches from the worlds of career and motherhood intersect in entries ranging from “Nanny envy” to “Sisterhood of the black, lightweight wool pants”— and there are important questions, too, like “Why do working moms and stay-at-home moms make such assumptions about each other?” Really, there’s something for every mom here, not least an entry to which any mother can relate: “Time management: What?”
LUCKY IN LOVE A few years ago, three friends— successful journalists, all—learned they had another important thing
in common: They were nearing 40, childless, with no potential fathers in sight. Three Wishes (Little, Brown, $24.99, 288 pages, ISBN 9780316079068) is a memoir-timesthree about what happens when coauthor Carey Goldberg decides to go to a sperm bank. The eight vials she purchases turn out to have an unexpected effect: As each woman consider using the vials, she falls in love and becomes pregnant without an assist from science. Goldberg, Beth Jones and Pamela Ferdinand take turns sharing their stories, which are not without heartbreak, but happiness and hope ultimately prevail in this surprising tribute to friendship and motherhood, despite the odds.
That perfect love may be just around the corner in Fool’s Gold, California From New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author
Visit Fool’s Gold for a brand-new trilogy featuring Mallery’s characteristic blend of love, wit and heartwarming storytelling.
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GRADUATION LESSONS FOR LIFE’S JOURNEY by DEANNA LARSON
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ap, gown, diploma: now what? Having many options can be as difficult as having none, but the risk-taking and wisdom in these books will help any new grad make the important decisions.
A YEAR OF CAREERS After graduating from college, Sean Aiken was overcome with pressure to live up to his potential. Still living in his parents’ basement at 25, searching job boards and newspaper ads, he thought: Wouldn’t it be great to know exactly what these jobs were like before committing to them? The OneWeek Job Project (Villard, $15, 320 pages, ISBN 9780345508034) documents Aiken’s brazen, funny and
often fascinating search for the job that will make him happy (and pay the bills). Aiken starts by accepting an offer to be a bungee “jump master,” a fit symbol for his plunge into uncertainty. Then, using connections and media buzz to find work, he travels more than 46,000 miles in a year-long journey, taking on 52 jobs from snowshoe guide, florist and dairy farmer to NHL mascot, Air Force recruit and firefighter. Along the way, he notes the salary of each position and what he took away from the experience. In the end, he concludes that a career is “merely a vehicle to fulfill our passion”—and that happiness depends greatly on your co-workers, and the chance to do meaningful work.
SEARCHING FOR SATISFACTION What do you do with your life when you’re the offspring of a billionaire, expected to use Dad’s money to zoom to the top? If you’re Peter Buffett, son of renowned investor Warren Buffett, you ditch the silver spoon and forge your own path. Buffett, now an Emmy Awardwinning producer and composer, details his road to personal and
professional accomplishments in Life Is What You Make It (Harmony, $23.99, 272 pages, ISBN 9780307464712). When he reached adulthood, Buffett received a relatively small inheritance (under six figures), along with fatherly advice to find what made him happy and try to help others. The modest sum allowed him to discover a passion for music and spend a few frugal years getting established without worrying about the bills. Buffett shares what he learned working his way up in the competitive world of TV and film composing in thoughtful, inspiring sections including “No One Deserves Anything” and “The Gentle Art of Giving Back.” He believes that anyone can have the “advantages” of discipline, integrity and vision that produce the best careers—and the best lives.
LOST AND FOUND Like most of us, Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett and Amanda Pressner talked about quitting their jobs (in their case, high-powered New York media jobs) to backpack around the world. The difference: They actually did it. The Lost Girls (Harper, $24.99, 560 pages, ISBN 9780061689062) is the story of their 60,000-mile journey, told from their perspectives as newbie world travelers and searchers. The book places the reader smack-dab in the moment as the three friends hike up for sunrise over Machu Picchu, try to design a volunteer project for orphaned girls in Kenya (their solution is heartwarming) and discover a mystical $4 day spa near a forest temple in Laos. There are amusing and sometimes frightening culture clashes aplenty, but the real appeal of the story is the long road they take together, each supporting the others on a soul-searching quest to create a life that matters.
Losing everything has made Lexi hold those she loves tightly. Hell is determined to loosen her grip. Lexi lives in the shadow of choices her husband made. Especially Grant’s choice to leave seven years ago, without a word. Her relationship with their daughter, Molly, is now the most important thing in her life. Lexi will do anything – work grueling hours, attend church on her only day off, sacrifice financially – just to see Molly smile. When Grant shows up declaring his intent to re-enter their daughter’s life, Lexi is skeptical of his motives. She soon determines not to let him near Molly. Then a drug dealer named Warden arrives on Lexi’s doorstep, demanding payment of Grant’s old debts. But that’s just the earthly perspective. Staggering supernatural events are spilling into her world in real and shocking ways. Hell’s fury is great, but Heaven’s power is greater still. In a novel that defies easy categorization, this has all the early buzz of the breakthrough read of 2010.
* Healy’s first solo novel is exciting and engrossing. The adventure-filled main story and a heart-pounding supernatural spiritual element are woven together seamlessly to create a winning combination sure to appeal to readers. – ROMANTIC TIMES BOOK REVIEWS . . . 4 stars (top rating)
www.erinhealy.com
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reviews ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA
fiction
allende’S survival SONG RE V IE W BY E l i z a B o r n é
As a storyteller, Isabel Allende is concerned with the most universal of themes: spirituality, motherhood, love. And in Island Beneath the Sea, her first work of fiction since 2006, she asks us to confront a fundamental need that, for most, is taken entirely for granted: freedom—its cost, worth and meaning. The novel follows the life of Tété, a slave in the colony of SaintDomingue (now Haiti) at the turn of the 19th century. Her master is Toulouse Valmorain, a sugarcane plantation owner. Throughout their inexorably intertwined lives, he depends on Tété to care for his ailing, insufferable wife; act as a mother to his son; and satisfy his sexual desires, a horrific chore that leads to their bastard child—the beautiful Rosette, whom Tété loves unconditionally, in spite of her painful genesis. After the death of Valmorain’s wife, during the slave rebellion led by TousBy Isabel Allende, Harper, $26.99, 464 pages, saint Louverture, Tété saves her master’s life: She warns him that the planISBN 9780061988240, also available on audio tation will be burned by rebels, and they flee to Cuba, then New Orleans. As a condition for her favor, Tété asks Valmorain to sign a paper granting freedom to her and Rosette. He agrees, although it takes years for the promise to be realized. Despite the tragic nature of the story, there are uplifting moments in Island Beneath the Sea, especially when Allende writes about female self-reliance and the power of Tété’s faith in the loa of Voodoo. Also deeply affecting are her portrayal of the madness of racism and the warped societal codes it engenders. Island Beneath the Sea is classic Allende—sensual, gripping and infused with a touch of magic. And though she lives through many heartbreaking moments, Tété is nothing if not a survivor and an inspiration. She will take her place alongside her many literary sisters: Blanca Trueba, Eliza Sommers and the long line of resilient female characters from Allende’s boundless imagination.
Private Life By Jane Smiley Knopf $26.95, 336 pages ISBN 9781400040605 Also available on audio
HISTORICAL FICTION
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By 1880s American standards, Margaret Mayfield is an old maid. Both her sisters have married and are starting families of their own, but Margaret, plain and quiet at 27, seems destined for a life at home with her mother. While riding her bicycle in the fields outside her Missouri town, she meets Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. A handsome astronomer who believes he’s on the verge of fame and fortune for his brilliant work, he marries Margaret and moves her to the naval base in San Francisco where he manages the observatory. And that’s where the story gets a little weird. At first, Margaret and Andrew are
happy, or at least content; she cooks and cleans, he works and writes. She strives to understand his passionate study of, essentially, air and distant objects in the sky. Through the years, Margaret carves out a life for herself, exploring San Francisco, doing charity work and joining a knitting club (which partakes in the occasional game of poker). She makes friends, the most vibrant of whom is gossipy, tomboyish Dora, a journalist who travels the world in search of her next big story. But as Margaret broadens her world, Andrew shrinks into his own, shunning friendship in favor of solitary hours of studying the skies. As the years pass, his reticence gives way to eccentricity, then paranoia. With World War II looming, Andrew becomes something much more dangerous—to himself, to Margaret and to everyone they know. Author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley again creates in Private Life a quiet, elegant story that is somehow both sweeping and intimate. From the great San Francisco fire of 1906 to the internment camps of World War II, Smiley uses the
stormy backdrop of American history to examine one marriage, with its sacrifices both small and great. —Amy Scribner
PARROT AND Olivier IN AMERICA By Peter Carey Knopf $26.95, 400 pages ISBN 9780307592620 Also available on audio
Tocqueville, Parrot and Olivier in America tells the story of OlivierJean-Baptist de Clarel de Barfleur, a lovably priggish French noble who, after narrowly escaping the Revolution’s wrath, is shipped off to America under the pretext of studying the New World’s progressive prison system. Also sent, as Olivier’s servant and spy, is an Englishman known simply as Parrot—the son of a printer-turned-forger and survivor of an Australian penal colony. Almost immediately the two clash, and each feels himself quite unfortunate to be in the company of the other. Try as they might, the two foils just cannot seem to shake each other, and what begins as animosity gradually grows into a loving and harmonious camaraderie. Alternating between Olivier and Parrot’s distinct viewpoints and voices, Carey takes readers on a picaresque and galloping romp through bygone times with delightfully antiquated dialogue and prose. The plot itself is too wonderfully convoluted to recount here, but suffice it to say there is an one-armed Marquis, a hysterical artist mistress and her dour mother and no shortage of colorful schemers along the way. The electricity and pace is exhilarating, rather than exhausting, and ultimately Carey’s enthusiasm and energy become our own. As much as Parrot and Olivier in America is a wickedly brilliant novel of events, it is also a tender paean to American democracy. After all, if insurmountable class is allegedly what separates our heroes to begin with, it is their eventual shared belief in egalitarianism that allows them the greatest gift Carey has to offer: friendship. —j i l l i a n q u i n t
LITERARY FICTION
the long song
To say that Parrot and Olivier in America, Peter Carey’s newest novel, is prodigiously researched is perhaps to miss the point. For while Carey is known for his at once wry and reverent take on historical fiction, and while his scrupulous study and vast knowledge of the 19th century is apparent on every page, it is rather the Booker Prize winner’s thoroughly unquantifiable ability to inhabit his setting that so distinguishes him as a writer. Based on the life of Alexis de
By Andrea Levy FSG $26, 320 pages ISBN 9780374192174
LITERARY FICTION
Andrea Levy’s Small Island is a hard act to follow. Winner of numerous British awards in 2004 and 2005, the novel was catapulted across the Atlantic to further praise
reviews and critical acclaim. While Small Island follows the lives of four characters in post-WWII London, in Levy’s latest, The Long Song, the location shifts to 19th-century Jamaica in and around the years following the abolition of slavery. Though it lacks the span and richness of her earlier work, Levy’s exuberance, lively language and finely honed sense of the droll— mixed with the gravity of historical events—make this new novel a pleasure to read. The Long Song is sung by Miss July, a former slave whose life began well before the 10-day Baptist War of 1831 brought an end to slavery on the island. Born on the Amity sugar plantation, the product of the rape of an African field hand by a Scottish overseer, July is taken up as a young girl by her owner’s meddling, needy sister Caroline, renamed Marguerite and moved into the house as a lady’s maid. It is under the somewhat inattentive eye of her mistress that July hears about the events that led to the end of her enforced servitude. But it is the domestic that interests her—the caprice and cruelty of her masters, the subtle ways she and the other house slaves conspire to fool Caroline and the rivalries July forms with other mulatto ladies of the town as they compete with one another for male attention. When the handsome and progressive English overseer Robert Goodwin comes to the plantation, his presence sets off a chain of events that prove life-changing for both July and her mistress. Levy plays with July’s story by bracketing the novel with an introduction and epilogue by July’s son Thomas Kinsman, a successful Jamaican publisher whose very position in the town indicates the drastic change in the fortunes of Jamaican blacks since July’s childhood. In truth, Thomas cannot keep out of his mother’s story and periodically breaks in, allegedly to offer advice or to comply with her request for more paper, but really to remind us that no tale ever belongs to just one teller. Who is telling the better story is up to the reader. Levy’s wit and her expert control of well-populated comic scenes, so familiar from Small Island, are not lost in The Long Song. At first, the humor seems an uneasy fit with the subject matter, but Levy’s mastery of her subject and the alternating
fiction voices of July and Kinsman, who so confidently claim their own stories, provide a solid bedrock for the occasional dip into farce. —Lauren Bufferd
GIRL IN TRANSLATION By Jean Kwok Riverhead $25.95, 304 pages ISBN 9781594487569 Also available on audio
COMING-OF-AGE
It’s no easy trick to age a character 20 years in 300 pages and never once let the narrative voice falter or sound jarring. But Girl in Translation is no ordinary coming-of-age novel. Or rather, it is ordinary, in the sense of being universal, even though the story’s primary setting will strike most readers as exotic and unfamiliar. Kimberly Chang is an 11-year-old who has just come to America with her widowed mother. Their only contact in the U.S. is Kimberly’s aunt, Paula, who comes across as petty and begrudging. She sets Kimberly and her mother up in an apartment, making a big show of her generosity, but it’s a condemned ruin in a rough part of Brooklyn. Kimberly and her mother owe huge debts to Paula, so they don’t complain; in fact, they go to work in her clothing factory for illegally low pay. Meanwhile, Kimberly struggles to be the A student she was in Hong Kong, despite barely speaking English. She has no phone, can’t go out at night and wears handmade clothing, which essentially makes her a social pariah. And she has a debilitating crush on a boy who works at her Aunt Paula’s factory. The story has the weight of fate, partly because of its universal themes and partly because of the intermittent references to Chinese traditions and traditional ways of thinking and talking. Jean Kwok, who, like Kimberly, came to Brooklyn from Hong Kong as a young girl, lets her remarkable protagonist develop at her own pace. Kimberly begins to learn English, and picks up buried meanings in the Chinese words she thought she knew. Sometimes she translates idiomatic expressions for the reader—a
charming touch that just borders on being overdone. At any rate, Kimberly is such a sympathetic narrator that you’d forgive her anything. This is tested in the book’s final twist, when she makes a series of impossible choices that change everything. Even as you worry about what might happen, you trust her—after all, you’ve watched her grow up. —Becky Ohlsen
to come home early with a broken arm, he becomes depressed enough to see Ruby’s therapist. Kiernan begins showing up at the house again, ostensibly to keep Max company, but his presence feels creepy to Mary Beth, and she asks him to end his visits. The situation becomes increasingly awkward over the fall, with Ruby asking Kiernan to just leave her in peace. On New Year’s things take a violent turn, one which Mary Beth relives over and
top
EVERY LAST ONE By Anna Quindlen Random House $26, 320 pages ISBN 9781400065745 Also available on audio
shelf
this month’s top publisher picks
WOMEN’S FICTION
Anna Quindlen’s previous novels have all been centered on families—whether average, nontraditional or dysfunctional; she even calls herself “hyperdomestic.” It comes as no surprise, then, that her sixth novel, Every Last One, begins with a lengthy description of the minutiae of the everyday life of Mary Beth Latham—wife, mother of three teenagers and owner of a successful landscaping business. Her husband Glen, an ophthalmologist, eats the same thing every morning and leaves for work at the same time. Ruby, their “beautiful and distinctive” 17-year-old daughter, is a free spirit who aspires to be a poet. The 14-year-old twins, Alex and Max, are complete opposites of one another, manifested by the line painted down the center of their bedroom, dividing it into halves of light blue and lime green. Every day, Mary Beth tells us, is “Average. Ordinary.” But looking beneath the placid surface of their lives, we learn of a few worrisome details. Ruby has been through a bout of anorexia— which is now, with a therapist’s help, in the past—and she has just broken up with her longtime boyfriend Kiernan, who is not taking the ending of their relationship well. Max is finding it increasingly difficult being the nerdy, moody twin of the handsome, popular Alex, proficient in three sports. All three children go away to camp that summer, but when Max has
PB 9780802864956 $14.99 www.eerdmans.com
Eva’s Story: A Survivor’s Tale by the Stepsister of Anne Frank Eva Schloss
Like her posthumous stepsister Anne Frank, Eva Schloss was imprisoned in a concentration camp as a young teen, but unlike Anne, Eva lived to tell her survivor’s tale. Eerdmans
PB 9781434376633 $12.99 www.lovingeyesarewatching.com
The Guardians: Loving Eyes are Watching Richard Williams
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. AuthorHouse
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q&a
SCOTT TUROW
BACK TO THE BEGINNING
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Although Presumed Innocent was a blockbuster bestseller, it took you 23 years to publish a follow-up. Did you always intend to write a sequel to tie up loose ends? To be honest, I thought for many years that I never would write a sequel. I always thought self-imitation is an inherently limiting thing for a writer, and I was afraid of trying to equal a book whose success at the time depended in part on breaking new ground. [But] at this stage, I was no longer worried about constraining myself. And by now, enough time has passed that I thought many people would be curious about Rusty—starting first of all with me. Some of the events in Innocent eerily echo Rusty’s experiences in Presumed Innocent. How do you approach these parallel circumstances but twist them so they are fresh and new? Well, I think one of the deepest truths about life is that people are sometimes compelled for reasons they don’t understand to keep repeating the same mistakes. So I regarded the parallel circumstances as deeply revealing of the character, and full of a meaning that wasn’t as clearly there the first time around. All the characters in Innocent are informed by the experience of the first book, and are trying desperately, in a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes, not to step in the same river twice. Often lawyers who become authors of legal thrillers have a difficult time developing a fluid writing style, but your writing has always been gripping and accessible. What is your secret? I was a novelist before I was a lawyer, having been a creative writing fellow at Stanford before I headed to law school. As a result, I was not trying to “find” my narrative voice after my style had been shaped by legal writing. I see legal writing as a distinct and somewhat limited voice that I’ve mastered, but one that does not really interfere with the creative
©JEREMY LAWSON
est-selling author Scott Turow talks with BookPage about his return to the characters that made him famous.
reviews over, wondering if she could have prevented the horrific outcome. Quindlen explores Mary Beth’s altered life with such acute empathy that readers can palpably experience her anguish and agonize over each step she takes in her slow recovery as if it were their own. She has penned an unforgettable novel about one woman realizing her worst fears, and then somehow finding the strength to survive. —Deborah Donovan
INNOCENT voice I’d found before. Given that you are still a practicing lawyer, what drives you to write fiction that also deals with the law? I always say that the great break of my literary career was going to law school—it was one of the most fortuitous decisions of my life. I was a lecturer in the English department at Stanford, and for me going to law school meant giving up a teaching career. But I realized I was passionate about the law and the questions it asks, about deciding right from wrong for an entire society, fashioning rules that are firm yet flexible enough to fit the multitude of human circumstances. Those questions continue to preoccupy me. The truth is that I became not only a much more successful writer when I started writing about the law, but also a much better one as well, because I was writing about things that gripped me to the core. The law often relies on individuals interpreting laws and regulations as best they can. To what extent do you think your novels contain characters and actions that are subject to the interpretation of your readers? Without subscribing too heartily to deconstructionism, there is a truth that every reader reads a book his or her own way. But art of all kinds also depends on creating universals; in the case of narrative, we seek to create a fully imagined individual, a character, to whose life readers have something of a universal reaction. There are great differences in nuance in terms of readers’ responses, but if there is not a common element, a book is probably not a success.
By Scott Turow Grand Central $27.99, 416 pages ISBN 9780446562423 Also available on audio
LEGAL THRILLER
FICTION Not for long. But after several exciting liaisons, Sabich dumps Anna, even though he has fallen deeply in love. Ironically, the broken-hearted Anna later meets Nat, now 28, quite by accident. He is instantly smitten with her, but she is convinced the relationship would be unseemly. If all of this sounds a little tawdry, be assured that Turow carries it off with skill and flair. The big question is: How will all of this play in the murder trial? The court scenes are riveting, subject to legal twists that keep the reader in constant doubt as to the verdict. Forget the no-sequels rule: Turow is better than ever, especially in the development of his complex characters. And if this one also makes its way to the screen, Harrison Ford is still available. — D e n n i s Ly t h g o e
MOLLY FOX’S BIRTHDAY Not all lawyers are capable of translating legal speak into compelling fiction. One of the remarkable exceptions is Scott Turow, the Harvard-educated attorney and prolific author. In 1987, Turow scored big with his first novel, Presumed Innocent, the suspenseful story of Rusty Sabich, a Midwestern prosecutor who finds himself on trial for the vicious murder of Carolyn Polhemus, a young colleague with whom he had had an affair. The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for 45 weeks. In 1990, it was translated to film with Harrison Ford starring as Sabich, whose brilliant defense attorney, Sandy Stern, goes head to head with the unglamorous but canny Tommy Molto. Now, 23 years later, Turow has written Innocent, a long-awaited sequel. Sabich, now 60, chief judge of an appellate court and candidate for the state supreme court, is accused of killing his wife, Barbara, a mathematics scholar. Many of the same characters are back, including Stern, Molto and Sabich’s son, Nat, who was a little boy during the first case. Sabich has engaged in a second affair, this time with a beautiful and witty law clerk 25 years his junior. Anna is not quite “drop dead gorgeous,” but she’s close enough. Sabich can’t believe that such an attractive young woman is on the make for him, and initially he is determined to resist.
By Deirdre Madden Picador $14, 240 pages ISBN 9780312429546
LITERARY FICTION
On the surface, Molly Fox’s Birthday, originally published in the U.K. and a finalist for the prestigious Orange Prize, feels miniscule in scope—it takes place over the course of one nearly painstakingly ordinary day, within the walls of a small house, largely occupied by just one character. But within these confines lie a treasure chest of memories, which author Deirdre Madden unpacks with perfect precision and which make this very quiet novel scream with importance. It is the longest day of the summer—Molly Fox’s birthday—but Molly, a world-renowned stage actress, is not at her Dublin home. Rather, she has swapped with an old playwright friend, the unnamed narrator, who has set up shop in Molly’s cottage to work. Over the course of the day, the narrator is visited by figures important to both of their lives—Molly’s troubled brother, Fergus, and perhaps more notably, the third member of their decades-long friendship, an art historian named Andrew.
reviews As the day progresses, the narrator thinks about her life and those of her friends in an achingly real, relatable way. She struggles with her career, particularly as compared to her more successful friend, and quietly muses on the things she once thought she might have had, like a husband and a child. Art, friendship, politics, family and especially the theater preside as pillars of various strengths in the narrator’s mind, and are dealt with deftly and beautifully. And though the narrator is the only consistent character throughout the novel, others, particularly Molly herself, look on as if from offstage. Many writers would buckle and fail quickly without a more obvious plotline, but Madden soars, creating a mosaic of memories that is not only insightful and compassionate, but remarkably compelling as well. With much flashier competition on the market, Madden’s subtle hand is a rare and very welcome commodity. —Rebecca Shapiro
The Invisible Bridge By Julie Orringer Knopf $26.95, 624 pages ISBN 9781400041169 Also available on audio
Historical fiction
FICTION revoked and he’s forced to return to Hungary. Klara soon follows, and the second half of the novel traces their increasingly desperate struggle to survive as Hitler’s armies move across Europe. Andras is drafted into the labor service and dispatched to a life of backbreaking and dehumanizing toil. Orringer spares few details in describing the ever more perilous conditions he and his brother Tibor, a medical student who eventually joins him, must face. Meanwhile, Klara and her family slowly slip into penury, as representatives of Hungary’s puppet government extract escalating bribes to allow her to maintain a grim secret from her past. The odds that all of these characters will escape a dire fate grow longer as the novel proceeds, but the resolution for each is anything but predictable. The story of Hungary’s Jews— more than 400,000 of them slaughtered by the Nazis—is perhaps not as well known as those of some of Europe’s larger Jewish communities. Though the pace of the novel flags at times, it’s easy to forgive Orringer’s desire to share with readers her intimate knowledge of the story’s time and place. In recounting the daring gestures, the miraculous escapes and coincidences separating those who lived from those who died in the blackness of the Holocaust, she captures most vividly “the excruciating smallness, the pinpoint upon which every life was balanced.”
Aria started an underground business that is far worse. Anton vows to leave his life of crime behind him, but just weeks before his wedding, Aria tells him she needs his help closing a deal. If Anton refuses this one last task, she’ll be forced to tell his fiancée who he really is. So it is that Anton finds himself returning to his old life in order to keep his new one, all the while praying he doesn’t lose everything as a result. The Singer’s Gun is a nail-biting thriller overflowing with highstakes issues such as blackmail,
theft, fraud and human trafficking. In Mandel’s hands, these acts are transmuted into a morally nebulous gray zone, in which the complexities of life fail to be easily captured in terms of black and white, right and wrong. At times the characters’ motivations are inscrutable, and not all plot threads are neatly bound at the novel’s conclusion, but this is a turbulent and diverting read that manages to both entertain and prompt valuable contemplation of its stickier issues. — S t e p h e n i e H a rr i s o n
New titles from
Mountain Nature Jennifer FrickRuppert HC $45 9780807833865 PB $20 9780807871164
A lively account of the Southern Appalachians, extending from north Georgia to northern Virginia. Stories of the animals and plants of the region are intertwined with descriptions of the seasons, giving readers a glimpse into the interlinked rhythms of nature.
University Presses
—Harvey Freedenberg
Julie Orringer’s first novel, The Invisible Bridge, is an old-fashioned epic of two families caught in the maelstrom of Europe of the 1930s and ’40s. Demonstrating a surehanded ability to balance intense personal drama with an account of the era’s epochal events, Orringer has created a work of impressive scope and emotional depth. Andras Lévi, an idealistic young Hungarian Jew, arrives in Paris in 1937 to study architecture on scholarship at the École Spéciale. Soon he meets fellow Hungarian Klara Morgenstern, a gifted dance instructor nine years his senior and the mother of a teenage daughter. Her enigmatic past at first distances her from Andras and then draws the two closer as the storm clouds of war gather over France. But Andras’ promising career is cut short in 1939, when his visa is
the SINGER’S GUN By Emily St. John Mandel Unbridled $24.95, 304 pages ISBN 9781936071647
HC $35 9780807833803
HC $40 9781887366830
When Janey Comes Marching Home
This Louisiana Thing That Drives Me
Laura Browder This powerful collection of photographs with oral histories provides a dramatic portrait of women at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and will change the ways we think about women and war.
Reggie Scott Young, Marcia Gaudet & Wiley Cash Explores the land, literature and legacy of Louisiana writer Ernest Gaines; includes a comprehensive introduction by Gaines and over 100 photographs from his personal collection.
Literary thriller
How far would you go to hide the truth of your past? Would you risk your job, your marriage, perhaps even your life? This is the quandary Anton Waker faces in The Singer’s Gun, Emily St. John Mandel’s second literary thriller. He has always longed for a normal life, but Anton is not like most people; his parents make their living dealing in stolen antiques, and he and his cousin
Up From the Cradle of Jazz Jason Berry, Jonathan Foose & Tad Jones
Real NASCAR Daniel S. Pierce HC $30 9780807833841
Daniel Pierce offers a revealing new look at the sport from its beginnings on Daytona Beach and Piedmont dirt tracks through the early 1970s when the sport spread beyond its southern roots and gained national recognition.
University of North Carolina Press
www.uncpress.unc.edu
HC $40 9781887366915 PB $30 9781887366878
The definitive treatment of New Orleans music and Mardi Gras Indian traditions from the rise of rhythm and blues through the post-Hurricane Katrina resurrection.
UL at Lafayette Press www.ulpress.org
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The extraordinary story of Ella Mae Cheeks Johnson
On Sale nOw
reviews THE LAST STAND
PENGUIN BOOKS
www.penguin.com
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TRAGEDY AT LITTLE BIGHORN R e v i e w b y E d w a r d M o rr i s
The defeat of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry near the Little Bighorn River on June 25, 1876, has been so painstakingly chronicled and relentlessly mythologized that it’s hard to imagine anyone could find much new to say about it. And apart from providing a few fresh minor details, Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand doesn’t change the overall picture of the battle that has come down to us. Nor does he find Custer less arrogant and impulsive than a succession of other historians claimed him to be. Instead, Philbrick’s great service is to sift through the bounty of original sources from both sides of the fray, factor in recent forensic discoveries from the battlefield and emerge with a documentary-like narrative that has all the aspects of a Greek tragedy. Essentially a washout at West Point but a valiant fighter for the Union in the Civil War, Ohio-born George Armstrong Custer soon enough found himself on the sword’s edge of Indian removal in the rapidly developing By Nathaniel Philbrick, Viking, $30, 496 pages ISBN 9780670021727, also available on audio West, a task he relished. He was supported in his ambitions (which extended to the political and journalistic) by his doting wife, Elizabeth, who followed him to virtually every wilderness outpost. Philbrick immerses the reader in the dull minutiae and stark terror of the battle at Little Bighorn, using the same close-up, minute-by-minute perspective he demonstrated in Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea. He not only delves into the characters of Custer and his subordinate officers but also identifies by name and actions dozens of Lakota, Cheyenne, Sioux and Arapaho people who witnessed or fought alongside Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in the epic battle. Philbrick’s scholarship is equally epic; his appendices, notes and bibliography take up 135 pages, and he includes 18 maps. Like that of all historians, Philbrick’s account of Custer’s final hours rests on speculation. But it is well-informed and reasonable speculation—and immensely vivid.
GET CAPONE
An inspirational woman who lived her 106 years with compassion and hope— from Jim Crow to the Obama inauguration.
nonfiction
By Jonathan Eig Simon & Schuster $28, 480 pages ISBN 9781416580591 Also available on audio
AMERICAN history
I’m a Chicago guy. Been one all my life. So I thought I knew everything there is to know about the “Chicago Way.” You know, using hustle and muscle to get power and money. But along comes this other Chicago guy, Jonathan Eig, to teach me some new things. His book, Get Capone, is about the guy who made the “Chicago Way” famous. Al “Scarface” Capone, that is—the most notorious Chicago gangster of all time. Most people know Capone from the blockbuster movie The Untouchables. I love that movie. But it only paints a broad picture of Capone, and the guy credited for jailing him: Eliot Ness. It turns out
that the government’s plot to get Capone ran much deeper than Ness and his small band of agents. Everyone from President Herbert Hoover to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover conspired to get Capone for years. They finally got him for income tax evasion. But it took a lot more work than Ness simply stumbling upon the mobster’s accounting ledgers, as portrayed in the movie. That’s what I like about Eig’s book. There’s a lot of detail. Which impressed me, as a Chicago guy who thought he knew everything. Like when I walk by Holy Name Cathedral in the city’s Gold Coast. I always knew the bullet holes in the façade were from a gangland shooting. But now I know from Get Capone that the shots were fired by some of Capone’s hit men from a building across the street, killing several rival mobsters. I also learned that Scarface spent as much time in Cicero, Illinois, and Miami, Florida, as he did in Chicago. Meanwhile, he had a wife and kid who lived quietly in a bungalow on Chicago’s South Side. See, Capone got around. Which explains how he caught a social disease that
eventually killed him. I learned all this from the book. Get Capone is great because it adds to the legend while dispelling some of the myths. From one Chicago guy to another: Good job, Jonathan Eig. —J o h n T. S l a n i a
LIFE WOULD BE PERFECT IF I LIVED IN that house By Meghan Daum Knopf $24.95, 256 pages ISBN 9780307270665
MEMOIR
If you’ve never pored over the real estate section long after your coffee has gone lukewarm, or gone to an open house for a place you have absolutely no intention of buying, you are a better person than I am. There is something beguiling, almost voyeuristic, about peeking into someone else’s home and
nonfiction imagining yourself living there. The siren song of house-shopping has never been so exquisitely or cannily captured as in Meghan Daum’s memoir, which is ostensibly about her search for the perfect house. But it’s about so much more. She traces her parents’ own peripatetic tendencies (the family lived in Texas, California, Illinois and New Jersey during her childhood) and how it affected her own skewed definition of home. Daum moved no fewer than 10 times during her four years at Vassar College. After college, she did a stint in a pre-war apartment in Manhattan, followed by a move to a drafty farmhouse in Lincoln, Nebraska (where she based her thoroughly wonderful 2003 novel, The Quality of Life Report), before landing permanently (maybe) in Los Angeles just before the housing bubble burst. Only after she dragged her possessions from one coast to the other did she realize that maybe the nomad routine was more about her search for identity than her search for shelter. It was about her need to live somewhere that would make her “downright fabulous.” Friends and potential suitors had to point at her latest choice of residence and say: “ ‘She’s no Ally McBeal in a twee Boston apartment with her roommate and hallucinations of maternal longing; she’s Jennifer Beals living alone with her pit bull in her loft in Flashdance. . . . She may not have a farm, but she’s still got a little Willa Cather in her. Someone buy this woman a drink!’ ” Funny, self-deprecating and wise, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House is a joyously honest look at what Daum calls “mastering the nearly impossible art of how to be at home.”
young and his resume isn’t rich in scandal or easily recited accomplishments. Robinson was an excellent college basketball player who has become a very good coach at Oregon State University. But he may be best known as the older brother of First Lady Michelle Obama, who,
ale! s n o w o N The beloved author of the world-wide best-selling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series
The Double comfort Safari Club Mma Ramotswe, proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and Mma Makutsi venture to the north of Botswana, to the stunning Okavango Delta, to visit a safari lodge where there have been several unexplained and troubling events–including the demise of one of the guests.
“LIKE HER CREATOR, MMA RAMOTSWE IS THAT WISEST OF WISE PEOPLE, ONE WHO USES HER WISDOM TO BRING HAPPINESS TO OTHERS.” © Chris Watt
A GAME OF CHARACTER
MEMOIR
swered in Robinson’s book, A Game of Character—a combination of autobiography, motivational handbook and presidential campaign log. Though he does touch on a bit of everything, the book is really an upbeat look at his own rise to prominence.
“Of course mystery fans are cheering” —Library Journal
—Amy Scribner
By Craig Robinson Gotham $26, 288 pages ISBN 9781592405480
while dating the future leader of the free world, asked her brother to gauge her then-boyfriend’s character by playing pick-up hoops. Whether President Obama had started his odd practice of wearing his shirt tucked into his sweats when he hooped it up isn’t an-
—The Guardian www.AlexanderMcCallSmith.com
Published by Pantheon Also available as an audio and eBook
Some may consider Craig Robinson’s background a little bland to warrant a memoir. He’s relatively
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New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author
DOROTHEA BENTON FRANK A Paperback Publishing Event Published simultaneously in mass market and trade paper, the long awaited sequel to her first novel, the bestselling Sullivan’s Island. www.dotfrank.com
New hardcover Lowcountry Summer on sale June 15
Kick back with a good book!
nonfiction Along with baby sister “Miche,” Robinson grew up in the Southside of Chicago, the son of working-class parents who preached honesty, discipline and hard work. The love Robinson had for his parents worked both ways. When he was accepted to Princeton, which did not offer athletic scholarships, his parents paid for the tuition through loans and credit cards, never suggesting young Craig should go anywhere else. After graduation, Robinson played pro ball for two years in England, which started his love affair with coaching. Despite a successful career in finance and an MBA, basketball still had a pull, so Robinson coached part-time before getting a full-time, low-paying job as an assistant coach at hapless Northwestern. It was a drastic career change— a divorced Robinson had to move back to his childhood home—but one that led to a rewarding new career as well as a second marriage. Mixed in with the autobiographical touches is a ton of motivational prose (complete with exclamation points) that should make Robinson a smash on the corporate speaker circuit. That can be ignored. What shouldn’t be ignored is how Robinson’s determination and principles allowed him to succeed on his terms. As A Game of Character makes clear, Craig Robinson is not riding on Barack’s designer coattails or on the hem of Michelle’s designer dress. —Pete Croatto
Winston’s War By Max Hastings Knopf $35, 576 pages ISBN 9780307268396
history
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of Book the Day
Winston Churchill’s foremost quality was his strength of will, according to Max Hastings, renowned British author of many widely acclaimed books of military history. In his superb new book, Winston’s War, Hastings relates how the great statesman and warrior used his rhetorical, military and diplomatic skills to triumph as Prime Minister
in the first three years of World War II, and then shows how, from 1943 to 1945, events and Churchill’s own misjudgments often worked against him. When Churchill became prime minister in 1940, many in the nation’s ruling class thought his administration would not last long and were skeptical of military victory. Numerous political leaders thought it inevitable that the country would negotiate with Hitler. Hastings says Churchill “survived in office not because he overcame the private doubts of . . . skeptics, which he did not, but by the face of courage and defiance that he presented to the nation,” primarily in the seven public speeches he gave over the BBC in 1940. Yet despite the usual view that 1940, when Britain stood alone, was the pivotal year for the country’s survival, Hastings believes that 1942 “was the most torrid phase” of Churchill’s wartime leadership. By that time, with crushing military defeats and bombardments from the air, the British people were weary of war. Hastings is even-handed in his appraisal of Churchill. No other British statesman could have dealt as skillfully with President Roosevelt and the American people as he did, and Churchill was aware earlier than most that Russia must be an ally of his country. On the other hand, there was Churchill’s monumental egotism. He believed, for example, that he was exceptionally prepared to lead armed forces, although he had neither military staff training nor experience with higher field command. And he could be intolerant of evidence unless it agreed with his own instincts, though he could usually be reasonable at least on major decisions. Hastings’ compelling and nuanced narrative not only weaves the complex story of Churchill’s military and diplomatic strategy, but also depicts his relationships with the British people, other politicians and his commanders in the field, as well as Allied leaders. There are glimpses into his personal life, and Hastings’ many sources include Churchill’s own six-volume history of the period (which Hastings calls “poor history, if sometimes peerless prose”). This very readable and insightful overview of Churchill’s wartime achievements deserves a wide readership. —Roger Bishop
THE OTHER WES MOORE By Wes Moore Spiegel & Grau $25, 256 pages ISBN 9780385528191 Also available on audio
BIOGRAPHY
Wes Moore—Rhodes scholar, army officer and one-time Special Assistant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—discovered one day in a newspaper article that he shared a name with someone whose life had taken a far different turn. Though they were born only a year apart in the same Baltimore neighborhood, the other Wes Moore was now doomed to spend the rest of his life in prison after committing a robbery that culminated in the death of a police officer. Determined to discover how two people from such similar backgrounds could wind up in vastly different circumstances, one Wes Moore decided to research the other. The Other Wes Moore shows there are no easy explanations. Moore the author makes no attempt to justify the imprisoned Moore’s actions, even while detailing a familiar litany of neglect, absence of male role models and bad choices. The successful Wes Moore also shows he was far from perfect in his youth, but thanks to his loving family’s insistence that he fulfill his potential, he excelled in academics and forged a satisfying career. Through hundreds of interviews, not only with his namesake, but with police, social workers and others, Moore’s book reaffirms the impact that even one tough parent can have on a child’s ultimate success or failure. It also dispels some myths, most notably the contention that everyone who grows up in the mean streets eventually either emulates the negative behavior surrounding them or is overcome by it. Writer and journalist Moore emphatically says the other Wes Moore is not a victim. But he does see him as another person who fell through the cracks. Their one-on-one discussions crackle with intensity, as the two men frequently disagree. Still, the author continually wrestles with
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nonfiction the reality that they aren’t nearly as different as their social positions indicate. While in prison, Moore has acknowledged his guilt, converted to Islam, become a grandfather and accepted the fact that he’ll probably never be released. The two Moores
share the priority of keeping other young men, especially black kids, from mimicking his behavior and making the same mistakes. The Other Wes Moore contains a detailed resource guide, providing parents with the names of organizations that can help them in times
of need and offer counsel before problematic cases degenerate into hopeless outcomes. He knows he can’t save everyone, but Wes Moore is determined to do whatever he can to prevent the emergence of more “other Wes Moore” situations. —Ron Wynn
Signet, $7.99, 9780451229717
FICTION
PARANORMAL
Indigo Blue IndigoWolf istornbetweenthewhite andComancheworlds of her parents. Noone understands her elusive spirit—until JakeRandcomestotownto act as foreman of her family’s ranch. But Jake’s real motives are as secret as his true identity and as personal as his growing attraction to Indigo.
The Insider Corporate attorney Will Connelly is a prime suspect in a murder, the target of an S.E.C. insider trading investigation and a pawn in a complex scheme involving the Russian mafia and a terrorist plot. Now, hemust ensurethat a deadly enemy doesn’t gain access to thenation’smost sensitiveinformation.
Love in the Time of Dragons When it comes to love, one woman is scaling back her expectations. Tully Sullivanis just likeany other suburban mom—except she’s just woken upin a strange place surrounded by even stranger people who keep insisting that they’re dragons—and that she’s onetoo.
ROMANCE
PARANORMAL
ROMANCE
PARANORMAL
One Enchanted Evening When a duty-bound knight takes on thetaskof rebuildingarun-downcastleinEngland, andacostumedesigner gets her chance to shine by showcasingher fairy-taledesignsat anupscale party in an authentic medieval castle, themagicof thenight will orchestrate animprobablehappily-ever-after.
Running Scared Lexi Johns’ main purpose in life tofree her best friendfromtheSentinels.Zach, the Sentinel she has been running from,hasonegoal: toconvinceher that their destinies areentwined.Themagic Zachhas absorbedcoulddestroyhimif hedoesn’tfindthewomantochannel it for him—andLexi istheone.
Straight Up HidingfromNewYork’sIrishmob,Liam O’Brienis inIrelandworkingas a bartender. Aislinn McCafferty is the local ice queen, a fact Liamlearns the hard waywhenhepursuesherafteracceptinga wager fromthepub’s owner. But neither of themexpects this battle of thesexestoturnintoanunlikelylove.
UndeadandUnwelcome BetsyTaylor has problems only a vampirequeencouldunderstand.This time, she’s en route to Cape Cod with the bodyof her werewolf best friendintow. Will she be welcomed with fangs or friendship? Meanwhile, Betsy discovers that her half-sister is theDevil’s daughter andcan’t wait toraisehell.
Jove, $7.99, 9780515147926
Berkley, $7.99, 9780425234662
ROMANCE
Brimstone Guns-for-hire Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch—introducedinRobertB.Parker’s Appaloosa—areback.Whentheytrack down the woman who stole Virgil’s heart, they find a dispirited prostitute rather than the innocent beauty she oncewas.Nowtheymust saveher,even if murder isthepriceof redemption.
Onyx , $7.99, 9780451412904
FICTION
Jove, $7.99, 9780515147919
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Berkley, $7.99, 9780425234624
Signet, $7.99, 9780451229724
Berkley, $9.99, 9780425234617
PAPERBACK PICKS
passages in caregiving By Gail Sheehy Morrow $27.99, 416 pages ISBN 9780061661204
AGING
Since publishing her groundbreaking book Passages in 1976, Gail Sheehy has trained her keen eye upon diverse facets of modern American culture and life: everything from war and politics to prostitution and menopause. Now she has taken on caregiving—an exploding social phenomenon that currently affects the lives of nearly 50 million American adults. The call came one day when Sheehy was sitting in a beauty salon. It was about her husband, Clay. It was about cancer. In the ensuing weeks, her life changed radically: “I had a new role. Family caregiver.” Caring for an elder, once-independent adult—whether a parent, life partner, relative or friend—can be a heartbreaking and backbreaking full-time job, and most often one without pay. Sheehy was her husband’s primary caregiver for the last 17 years of his life, a process she believes is a journey that “opens up possibilities for true intimacy and reconnection at the deepest level.” As we have come to expect from Sheehy, Passages in Caregiving is well and thoroughly researched, and the straight-talking narrative is a blend of trenchant yet sensitive prose, fact, story and strategy. Sheehy writes from her own “raw experience” of caregiving, weaving her personal story throughout, along with the stories of other families. She likens the caregiving journey to navigating the twists in a labyrinth, a device that, unlike the confounding riddle of a maze, “orders chaos.” She names eight major turnings around the labyrinth, from “shock and mobilization” through to “the long goodbye,” illustrates them with moving and apt personal stories, then offers practical resources and empowering strategies for coping with their challenges. There is, Sheehy says, “life after caregiving,” and Passages in Caregiving is a crucial roadmap to that new life. —Alison Hood
© KATE FAIRMAN
children’s books
SUMMER PLANS TAKE A DETOUR
T
he writing and artwork in Lynne Rae Perkins’ books spring from her ever-creative, Renaissancewoman brain—but her family has played a role in many of her works, too, from 2006 Newbery winner Criss Cross to her new teen novel. In Criss Cross, a photo sequence shows a comb falling out of a character’s pocket. The model? Her husband, Bill. “We did a really low-tech staging session,” she says in an interview from her home in Northern Lower Michigan. As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth involved her husband (an anecdote from his father made its way into the plot), 16-year-old son (her research-road-trip companion) and college-student daughter (who suggested the book’s final line). This dovetails nicely with the book’s themes, which center on family—both the blood-relatives kind and the true-friends sort. At the heart of the novel is 16-year-old Ry, who’s off to archaeology camp for the summer, until he learns the camp has shut down. When his train stops for a short break, he disembarks to call his grandfather, who is house- and dog-sitting while Ry’s parents enjoy an island vacation. Alas, Ry’s train leaves without him, he can’t get any cell phone reception, and he’s left alone many miles from the nearest town. He presses on, though, moving from head-shaking disbelief to a sort of dream-state acceptance combined with a determination to get to his family, even if he has no idea how that’s going to work. Talk about a wacky summer vacation. Perkins says the story began to percolate in her brain after she read Mark Salzman’s The Laughing Su-
tra. “I read a description that called it a ‘picaresque.’ I didn’t know the exact definition, so I looked it up, and the dictionary said it’s a story told in episodes with a rogue as the main character.” “At the same time,” she says, “I was thinking about a friend who died in an accident when my son was a year old. He was a really interesting character and I wish my son could’ve known him. I thought I’d introduce them in the book.” Indeed, when Ry meets Del, a smart, laid-back fellow with MacGyverish tendencies, his life gets even more exhaustingly exciting and surprising. Adventures range from a comical shoe-shopping expedition to falling out of a tree to a grand trek by air, land and sea. But Ry isn’t the only one who finds himself engaged in assorted escapades: Perkins gives the reader dispatches from Ry’s parents’ vacation and his grandfather’s misadventures, the former amid palm trees, the latter, maple and aspen. And the dogs—oh, the hilarious dogs, whose exploits we follow via black-and-white comic-book-style panels tucked in among the text. “[The idea for that] just popped into my mind one day,” Perkins says. “I was thinking about The Incredible Journey and how funny it would be if the dogs didn’t know where they were going. I sent scribbled sketches to my editor, and she went for it.”
interview
by linda M. castellitto
Ideas like that are what sets Perkins’ work apart. Criss Cross was lauded for its mélange of words— including haiku and Q&As—and art. Like that book, As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth combines imagery and words that illustrate what it’s like to be a teenager who longs for freedom and excitement . . . and what happens when he gets it. Fortunately, Perkins’ longstanding relationship with Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, has afforded her artistic freedom. “Not that they’ll publish anything I do,” she says with a laugh. “But I’ve always felt respected, and they raise really good questions.” Greenwillow gave Perkins a start on her unexpected path to becoming a writer. “I was trying to get work as an illustrator, and Ava Weiss at Greenwillow asked me if I wrote. I had a story I’d written just for the sake of doing illustrations for my portfolio, and they published it: Home Lovely, my first book, in 1995.” Since then, Perkins has created
six picture books and three novels, moving between age groups as well as juggling drawing and writing. She says, “I needed to reassure myself periodically because I was more confident about the drawing than the writing. I’m starting to feel more comfortable with writing, though.” Her current project takes her back to art: illustrating a picture book by Esmé Raji Codell. “It’s my first time illustrating someone else’s book, which is what I originally wanted to do,” Perkins says. “Now I’ll find out if I really can do it.”
as easy as falling off the face of the earth By Lynne Rae Perkins Greenwillow $16.99, 352 pages ISBN 9780061870910 Ages 12 and up
TEEN
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children’s books MOCKINGBIRD
reviews
THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD r e v i e w b y R O BI N S M I T H
Caitlin Smith’s unusual world has suddenly become even more confusing. Her older brother has been killed, and she is left to figure out how to go on, helped by her bereft father and a school counselor. The whole community is trying to make sense of the tragedy, but closure, so elusive for everyone, is especially hard for a girl with Asperger’s syndrome. Caitlin is not good at feelings. She does not want to have friends, mostly because it’s too hard. She’s working to master the concepts that are so important in the real world, words like finesse, closure and empathy. Her brother Devon had always been there to help her decipher the mysteries of normal behavior, like making eye contact. Only Devon could help Caitlin comprehend their mother’s death from cancer. To Kill a Mockingbird was Devon’s favorite movie; he was her Jem and she was his Scout. But, By Kathryn Erskine, Philomel, $15.99, 240 pages, alas, all that is left of Devon after the funeral is the chest he was building ISBN 9780399252648, ages 9 to 14 for his Eagle Scout project. Author Kathryn Erskine allows the reader into Caitlin’s highly organized, literal world and captures the overwhelming grief that comes over a town when a child is killed in a school shooting. It takes Caitlin—with her newfound power of empathy and the lessons she learned from Devon—to help her father and her community come to terms with the tragedy and to heal. This is a gentle book, gripping and poignant, but not manipulative. While middle schoolers are the book’s target audience, folks of all ages will find much to admire in Mockingbird, a story that stayed with this reader long after the final triumphant page.
The Red Pyramid By Rick Riordan Hyperion $17.99, 528 pages ISBN 9781423113386 Ages 9 to 12
MIDDLE GRADE
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The author of the wildly popular Percy Jackson series introduces a new set of heroes to his legions of fans in Book One of the Kane Chronicles series. Siblings Carter and Sadie Kane have been raised on opposite sides of the globe—Sadie with her grandparents in London and Carter with his father, who travels the world studying Egyptian artifacts. Once a year, the Kane siblings get together, and this time the visit starts with a bang—the Rosetta Stone explodes and their father is taken away in a magical coffin. And that’s just in the first few pages! Part Men in Black, part Avatar, this nonstop thriller reads like a movie. Sadie and Carter, who barely know each other, are thrust into confusing situations where nothing is quite what it seems to be. They
soon learn that animals, people and everyday objects in the modern world have links to Egyptian magic and religion. Indeed, the Kane family is part of a lineage that leads all the way back to the first Egyptians. The Red Pyramid takes place in a magical world with its own rules and history; the numerous mentions of Egyptian gods had me running to reference guides and making lists of names to keep up. Sadie and Carter spend most of their time fighting monsters and one another and just a bit of time really getting to know each other. No doubt future volumes in this action-packed adventure series will flesh out this sister-and-brother team a little more thoroughly. — R O BI N S M I T H
PLEASE TAKE ME FOR A WALK By Susan Gal Knopf $15.99, 40 pages ISBN 9780375858635 Ages 3 to 6
PICTURE BOOK
You don’t have to be a dog person to enjoy Please Take Me for a Walk, but it can’t hurt. Author-illustrator
Susan Gal begins her second picture book with lively end pages that invite the reader into the fascinating social life of dogs as they mix and mingle. From there we follow one perky pup into the body of the book, where he turns and eagerly solicits the reader, “Will you please take me for a walk?” With his bright eyes and playful expression, this little dog is extremely persuasive as he enumerates the enticing possibilities of a walk. Using fresh illustrations in a layered blend of computer collage and charcoal on paper, Gal creates a welcoming world filled with a captivating variety of dogs and their colorful human counterparts. She enhances the sense of hustle and bustle by superimposing dotted lines tracing the trails of the busy pets across a grass-green map. The abundant activity in the friendly village warrants repeated exploration by children, and though this book is wonderful as a read-aloud, the clear picture clues, spare text and repetition make it a nice choice for beginning readers as well. Perhaps they will recognize the need to plead. Meanwhile, our persistent protagonist reiterates his one-on-one appeal. Even if you’re not swayed by the promise of the wind lifting your
ears or the sun warming your belly, he’s bound to clinch the deal with his final flattering request. Flashing those adoring eyes, he delivers the zinger by revealing that the most compelling reason to go for a walk is, and I quote, “so everyone can see my best friend and me.” Were you wondering who was on the end of the leash that trails tantalizingly off the page? Pick up this book, and it could be YOU! —ALLISON HAMMOND
Alchemy and Meggy Swann By Karen Cushman Clarion $16, 176 pages ISBN 9780547231846 Ages 10 to 14
MIDDLE GRADE
Meggy Swann is appalled by the bustle and filth of Elizabethan London when her father, an alchemist who doesn’t set much store by truth or integrity, summons her to the city to work as his apprentice. Meggy has been used to living a secluded life in a country village with only her grandmother and her goose Louise as friends. With her crippled legs, Meggy has endured taunts and threats, but her father’s utter contempt for her surpasses all the difficult experiences of her past. Guarded, skeptical and tentative, Meggy surprises herself by making several friends in her new London neighborhood. As her father works toward his goal—discovering the secret to transforming ordinary metals into gold and giving humans immortality—she works tirelessly as his apprentice despite her weak legs and walking canes. She considers him a harmless if devoted alchemist until she discovers his dark secret, a secret she is determined to make right in her own unorthodox way. Newbery winner Karen Cushman shows the realities of day-to-day life through believable and endearing characters whose lives are representative of their time period. In Alchemy and Meggy Swann, Cushman provides virtually no backstory for Meggy and no indications of her future, choosing instead to focus only on her first few weeks in London. Using the language of Elizabethan London, she brings the story
meet Tom Lichtenheld © KEVIN WHITE
reviews vividly to life for young readers and provides a fascinating look at life in the 16th century. —KATHERINE COCHRAN
Bullet Point By Peter Abrahams HarperTeen $16.99, 304 pages ISBN 9780061227691 Ages 14 and up
TEEN
Times are bad for 17-year-old Wyatt Lathem. All extracurricular activities at East Canton High have been cut due to the poor economy, so Wyatt’s baseball season is over before it begins. His coach advises Wyatt to get out—out of the school, out of the town—since there’s no future there, a move made more urgent by a violent clash between Wyatt and his volatile stepfather. What Wyatt really wants to do is put his life in order, like those nicely aligned bullet points on his English teacher’s blackboard. So, after the fight, he heads to Silver City to live with his Aunt Hildy. Right off the bat, he meets sexy and mysterious Greer, a 19-year-old girl with a reputation; soon they are sleeping together, and Wyatt doesn’t quite seem to realize he’s in over his head. It turns out that Wyatt and Greer have quite a bit in common. Their stepfathers are both jerks, and their fathers are both inmates at the nearby prison. Greer’s father is in for committing arson, Wyatt’s dad for murder. Greer says her father thinks Wyatt’s is innocent, and when Wyatt begins getting phone calls from his father, after years of hearing nothing from him, a plan begins to percolate: He will help his father escape and prove his innocence. It’s fitting that Wyatt Lathem’s last name is an anagram for Hamlet: His father has been a ghostly presence in his life, and he is about to look into his father’s past to become the stuff of tragedy. By the end of the tale, no lives are left unaffected. Death looms, but so does reconciliation in this thrilling tale of family, bad decisions conceived with earnest good intentions, love and hope. Abrahams devises his tale meticulously, creating a believable
teenaged protagonist with the right mix of earnestness, innocence and naiveté. Like the Shakespearean tragedy that lends it an undertone of menace, this tale quickens its pace as the players come together to take their fated roles, and Wyatt is forever changed by it all. — D ean S chneider
The Six Rules of Maybe By Deb Caletti Simon Pulse $16.99, 336 pages ISBN 9781416979692 Ages 13 and up
TEEN
While 17-year-old Scarlet Ellis has always been the nice one in her family, her moody, selfish older sister, Juliet, has always been quick to dump a long line of boyfriends. Although they were once close as children, their now-tenuous relationship becomes even more difficult when Juliet returns to their Pacific Northwest island home, married to gorgeous, romantic Hayden—and pregnant. As Juliet pushes away her new husband and chases after her one serious high school boyfriend, Scarlet is trying hard not to fall in love with Hayden. She dedicates herself, as always, to rescuing those around her, including her eccentric neighbors: a retired mailman who has started checking his mail wearing nothing more than his slippers, an artistic Goth girl who wants a date to the prom and an older couple selling their home to answer the email pleas for money from a plantation owner in the Ivory Coast. But eventually she begins to realize that she needs to follow a gift from Hayden: the “Rules of Maybe,” a set of directions to achieve her own dreams, wants and wishes. Scarlet’s spot-on musings about high school and her elaborate network of relationships lead her to see that she can still be nice while taking care of her own needs and desires. She also begins to understand her relationship with Juliet better, and she may even find a little romance that she doesn’t have to share. These discoveries tug on the heart in all the right places. — A n g e l a Lee p er
Tom Lichtenheld was already a successful art director when his first children’s book, Everything I Know About Pirates, was published in 2000. Since then, he has written and/or illustrated many popular books, including the bestseller Duck! Rabbit! His latest picture book is Bridget’s Beret (Holt, $16.99, 40 pages, ISBN 9780805087758).
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WORDNOOK
By the editors of Merriam-Webster
Weird and wonderful Dear Editor: Someone told me recently that to be called weird is really a compliment, since the word originally meant “magical, fantastic.” Is this true? G. O. Tucson, Arizona While today calling someone weird is not usually meant as a compliment, it’s true that weird began its life as a noun spelled wyrd and meaning “fate, destiny.” Shakespeare used this noun as an adjective in his play Macbeth, where he called the three Fates the “weird sisters.” Soon a more general sense of “weird” developed: “of, relating to, or caused by witchcraft or the supernatural: magical.” In most of our evidence of this use of the word, the connotations aren’t too positive. Things and people that are weird in this sense are usually strangely and uncomfortably magical, not wonderfully so. The same is also true for the most recent use of the adjective. In this use, weird does indeed mean “fantastic” (although the supernatural connotations are lost), but
again it’s the “outlandish” or at least “odd or strange” meaning of the word that’s usually intended. Of course, in some cases oddness is considered positively, as in, for example, a happy coincidence. The negative connotation of weird is also tempered in the phrase “weird and wonderful,” which usually describes something unfamiliar but enjoyable nonetheless.
The quirks of quarks Dear Editor: I was surprised to find that my dictionary says the scientific term quark was only coined in 1964. Can you tell me about its history? J. P. Montague, Texas American physicist Murray Gell-Mann coined the term quark for the hypothetical, fractionally charged constituents of baryons and mesons. According to Gell-Mann’s own account, he was in the habit of using names like squeak and squork for peculiar objects, and the word quork (rhyming with pork) happened to be the word he picked for
these particles. Some months after he began calling them quorks, he ran across the line “Three quarks for Muster Mark” in James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. The line struck him as apropos, since the hypothetical particles came in threes, and he adopted Joyce’s spelling for his quork. Joyce clearly meant quark to rhyme with Mark, but Gell-Mann worked out a rationale for his own pronunciation based on the vowel of the word quart. Joyce himself apparently took the word from German, in which language it refers to a soft type of cheese. It’s also used as a synonym for the German word quatsch, meaning “trivial nonsense.” Quark’s whimsical tradition has been continued by attributing to it six “flavors”—up, down, strange, charm, top and bottom. All this would doubtless have confirmed H.L. Mencken in his opinion, expressed in a letter written in 1930, that “physics itself, as currently practised, is largely moonshine.”
Tales of Canterbury Dear Editor: My dictionary says that the verb
canter comes from the place name Canterbury, England, and that Canterbury referred to the gait of horses ridden by pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. Can you elaborate? D. G. New Salem, Massachusetts Canter does indeed come from Canterbury or Canterbury gallop. The story is that in 1170, Thomas of Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. Almost immediately Beckett’s grave became a major pilgrimage site. The popularity of the pilgrim destination grew greater still when Beckett was canonized in 1173. According to tradition, riders would approach Canterbury at a slow gallop, which became known as the Canterbury gallop. Eventually the shortened form canter was used for the gait. Canter later became a verb, meaning “to ride a horse at a canter.” Please send correspondence regarding Word Nook to: Language Research Service P.O. Box 281 Springfield, MA 01102